Publishing house Hodder have signed up a self-published Western series featuring a gun-slinging nun, entitled, appropriately, Nunslinger by the mysterious Stark Holborn.
The ebooks were available on Amazon and iBooks but have been withdrawn before Hodder reissues them as a series of 12 digital titles priced at $1.59 apiece in the US and £0.99 in the UK.
The series is set in the 1860s and follows Sister Thomas Josephine on her journey across America to California, becoming a gun-toting nun along the way in her encounters with Western characters.
Westerns have proved to be popular in the graphic novel sector in recent years, with books such as Loveless, Scalped and Preacher (not strictly a Western but certainly Western-influenced), although we won’t mention Cowboys and Aliens.
Nunslinger looks to have the feel of a graphic novel with its premise and the brilliant cover artwork by UK artist Philip Harris who also illustrated a section of the book as a comic.
The author is an elusive character who has a profile of Wattpad giving his (or maybe her) name as Stark Fairweather Holborn, born in Wichita, Kansas, of no fixed abode, likely somewhere in Colorado, although Hodder seems to think the writer might be living in Bristol in the UK, a Wildish West of its own in a different way.
Holborn describes him(her)self as: Small-time bootlegger of fine wines. Small-time bootlegger of fine liquors, Small-time producer of moonshine. Now small-time writer of Penny Westerns. Likes are given as privacy and dislikes as neighbours.
The first books in the series will be published on Boxing Day and they could be a good antidote to the usual Christmas fare.