------ It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of Van Holt, 'King of the Hellbound Westerns.'
He has taken the long trail.
He passed alone in his Tucson apartment on August 19, 2014, at the age of 72. He had been battling several illnesses that eventually deprived him of his mobility and some of his sharp, witty mind.
Van was a very private man and guarded his solitude very zealously. I worked closely with him for over five years, bringing to light most of the manuscripts he had written back in the 1980s and some from the 1990s. Though he was somewhat old fashioned and very shy of technology, (he did not have a computer and gave up using a typewriter only because he couldn't get his repaired) he was excited to learn about getting his works into ebook formats and available on the web . In the last months of his life, he rarely left his apartment. Compelled to finish his last novel? Maybe he felt the end was near.
He handed over the manuscript (handwritten) for The Men from Missouri only days before his passing. He often spoke of his desire that his characters, the only children he ever had, would live on in the pages and the minds of his fans and readers.
I, for one, am a better man having known Van Holt.
Happy Trails, Van. You will be missed. See y'all on the other side. - The Publisher

Van Holt wrote his first western when he was in high school and sent it to a literary agent, who soon returned it, saying it was too long but he would try to sell it if Holt would cut out 16,000 words. Young Holt couldn't bear to cut out any of his perfect western, so he threw it away and started writing another one.
A draft notice interrupted his plans to become the next Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour. A tour of duty as an MP stationed in South Korea was pretty much the usual MP stuff except for the time he nabbed a North Korean spy and had to talk the dimwitted desk sergeant out of letting the guy go. A briefcase stuffed with drawings of U.S. aircraft and the like only caused the overstuffed lifer behind the counter to rub his fat face, blink his bewildered eyes, and start eating a big candy bar to console himself. Imagine Van Holt's surprise a few days later when he heard that same dumb sergeant telling a group of new admirers how he himself had caught the famous spy one day when he was on his way to the mess hall.
Holt says there hasn't been too much excitement since he got out of the army, unless yo

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