There is no such thing as a child who doesn't like stories.
There are children who don't like the stories they've been given.
Children who don't like the format they've been handed.
Children who don't like the conditions they've been asked to read in.
Strip all of that away and you will almost always find a child who loves a good story.
We just haven't found their version of one yet.
In ONE WEEK: The print issue of Black Market Fiction will be ready to order.
The commercial market spent twenty years declaring the Western dead. Indie writers kept writing them anyway. This is the June 2026 issue of Black Market Fiction, an independent fiction magazine for readers tired of what the big publishers are selling.
The Western issue collects four original stories plus two editorial features that frame what the genre is doing now. Inside this issue:
- The Ballad of the Surviving Western by Managing Editor Tia Ja'nae. An introduction tracing how the Western survived the gatekeepers who tried to bury it and the revisionists who tried to sanitize it.
- Blood-Red Pass by @micahedmurray A bounty hunter rides into a pass that earned its name.
- Unrepentant: Origin by @Rhinoup. A boy rides home from a hunt to find his world in ashes and the road south leading to hell.
- The Man in Back: Bone Tomahawk's Real Hero by Editor-in-Chief Kristin McTiernan. A defense of John Brooder as the actual moral center of the film.
- The Hidden Sea of the Ophir Mine by David Hardy. A Comstock-era mining operation uncovers something older than the men who dug it.
- He Who Rides the Pale Horse by Jake Vandenberg. A horse-breaker takes on the one bronco no man has stayed on, and discovers what the horse really is.
Presented for your enjoyment, the West, the way readers who never stopped loving it still want it.
5 Favorite Underrated American Authors:
Leonard Michaels
Jamaica Kincaid
Jerome Charyn
Gayl Jones
Robert Stone
John Keene
Carol Emschwiller
Gary Amdahl
James Lee Burke
Ishmael Reed
Cynthia Ozick
Dodie Bellay
Jane Bowles
Millhauser
Brodkey
Portis
Crews
Hawkes
Levis & all the poets
https://t.co/5oziGD35cF
Here is the live stream recording of me and @SaffronAsteria talking Podcasting, Literature, and Inspiration on the @indiosyncbooks podcast.We had a great time and Saffron has a ton of Dad Literati on her show. You should check it out!