Saddlebums Interview: Elizabeth Fackler

Western and mystery writer Elizabeth Fackler is best known for her critically-acclaimed Seth Strummar series, which has been described as a saga of sexual politics on the American frontier. Her Westerns are characterized by a grittiness that owes to careful historical observation and realistic characterizations, making her novels truly groundbreaking depictions of the West.

According to Ed Gorman, "Elizabeth Fackler has a unique approach to the novel and speaks in a voice all her own. She takes familiar elements and makes them seem startling and new through the dazzle of her prose and the humanity of her forgiving gaze."

Mrs. Fackler has also written several historical novels including Billy the Kid: The Legend of El Chivato and Texas Lily, both of which are set against the backdrop of the Lincoln County War. Most recently, she has authored a series of contemporary mysteries for Five Star Publishing.

You have alternatively written both mysteries and Westerns with similar critical success. In this, it seems that you are not alone as numerous authors from Elmore Leonard to Harry Whittington to Robert Randisi and several others have done the same. Are there any affinities between the genres that have led so many talented writers to try their hands at both?

The affinities are structural. The plots of both revolve around a protagonist at odds with the world. As the story unfolds, the protagonist subdues the disruptive forces and regains a sort of stasis that lasts as long as it takes the reader to close the book. By that I mean, the stasis is momentary, and if we could follow the story farther than the author allows, the stasis would soon be lost. Perhaps all this could be said of any novel; maybe it is the energetic drive to conclusion that distinguishes the two genres. In both mysteries and Westerns, no words are squandered on self-indulgent asides, each is a stepping stone on the protagonist’s path toward whatever he finds on the final page.

Your novels tend to have strong male lead characters (Seth Strummar, Frank James, Devon Gray) and yet they are usually counterbalanced by equally strong secondary female characters. Is this a conscious decision on your part?

A story arrives from behind the eyes of the protagonist. Like the melody and the lyrics when I write a song, the protagonist and the story arrive together. My male protagonists are attracted to women who are worthy of them and who interest me. Writing a novel requires many hours spent in your characters’ company, so I try to find entertaining people to hang out with.

What led you to start writing in the Western genre?

I love men on horses and women in long skirts.

The study of the historical West has undergone drastic changes in recent decades as academia has attempted to demystify supposedly entrenched preconceptions about this period of American history. This has resulted in innovative research on subjects such as the role of women in the West and history from the point of view of Native Americans. On the other hand, it has led to demonizing from some academics that see the expansion to the West as a particularly bleak episode in the history of this country. Would you agree with this assessment and, if so, do you think these new perceptions and attitudes have influenced modern-day Western fiction?

To paraphrase an Englishman, it was the best and worst of times. Maybe they all are. I can’t see that what we as a nation are doing in the world today is any kinder than what we did in the nineteenth century. I can’t think of any era that was less bleak. Are they referring to the so-called Revolutionary War, slavery, or the Civil War? Are they less bleak? Or the two world wars, the Great Depression, the Mexican-American or the Spanish-American War? The history of civilization is bleak. The acknowledgement of that has influenced all thinking. The beauty of the nineteen-century American pioneers is that they truly believed the future would be better. That’s an enviable attitude and imbues them with a buoyant optimism that keeps the story afloat.

What role does research play in your writing especially when it comes to novels such as Billy the Kid: The Legend of El Chivato and Texas Lily?

Both of those novels were based on thirty years of research. For Texas Lily, I did additional research on New Mexico cattle ranching in the late nineteenth century. I read everything available on the Lincoln County War before it ever occurred to me to write the story myself. I did so because I felt no one had told it the way it was meant to be told.

Although there are precedents for demythologized portrayals of the West, the grittiness of novels like Blood Kin and its frank depiction of violence and sex makes it seem in many ways a Western ahead of its time. What was the feedback from your editors when you first turned in the manuscript? What about critics and readers when it was finally published?

The publisher initially demanded that I delete all the “kinky” (their word) scenes. I protested and my editor went to bat for me and the publisher acquiesced. The reviews were amusing. One was by a nun who, although she called my writing “powerful,” took exception to my harlot comparing herself to the Blessed Mother. My favorite said Blood Kin took its inspiration more from Last Tango in Paris than Dry Gulch Ambush. I still use that in my promos. I know I offended many traditional readers of the genre, and I’m sorry they can’t see the value in my stories. Readers often have the same reaction to my mysteries — that the sex is too graphic — but I like writing about passion.

What are your thoughts about the present state of the Western genre and what do you think the future holds for the Western story?

The Western story will survive, if only as a peripheral genre with a small but loyal readership. The trick is finding publishers who will keep the work in print. People now are in love with technology and that leads authors to set their stories on the cutting-edge of progress if not in the future. Some of those stories are transplanted heroic plots that work well in any era. But there are those of us who will always enjoy horses and canyons, stars and mountains, and the flattering glow of candlelight.

Most writers are voracious readers and you are probably not the exception. What do you read for pleasure?

Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Wild West, The Sun are magazines we receive; I read most of each issue. Right now I’m reading The Life and Death of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain by A.M. Gibson. I was led to it by reading another book about Fountain, Corey Recko’s Murder on the White Sands. Before that I read N. Scott Momaday’s The Man Made of Words, and before that, Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger. I am also sporadically reading from Sallie Tisdale’s Women of the Way, stories about women Buddhist teachers. All reading I do is for pleasure, unless it’s the instruction book for a new appliance or a contract or such.

Do you have any writing influences? How about influences in the Western genre?

The whole world, every word I’ve read, and every experience I’ve known is a writing influence. I read Zane Gray as a child but my landscape descriptions don’t compare to his. My favorite author and book of my formative years was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Are there any Western writers you would like to see back in print? Likewise, are there any new writers that have caught your attention?

I would love to see my Westerns back in print. None of them are except El Chivato which I have to push constantly to keep available.

Are you writing anything right now? Can you tell us more about any other projects you are currently involved with?

I have a nascent publishing company called Western Star Books. So far we have published the first, never-before-published novel of my Seth Strummar series, Bone Justice, and A Calendar of the Lincoln County War. Both of them are available through my website. I have a mystery starring Elizabeth Garrett, the daughter of Pat Garrett, nearing completion.

What is the greatest satisfaction of your writing career? Is there anything else you still feel you need to accomplish?

The greatest satisfaction is that I did it. And I’m still here, still being published. I am working on achieving calm abiding at the moment of my death so I will have a good rebirth.

Saddlebums Review: Tales from Deadwood by Mike Jameson

Tales from Deadwood is the first in a series of three novels featuring a lavish mixture of dime-novel mythology, historical fact, plenty of action, and a whole lot of the Old West, which sums to an original and fresh novel. It chronicles the lives of several men and women who make their way to Deadwood, South Dakota in search of wealth on the newly discovered gold of the Black Hills, including all of the regular players: Wild Bill Hickok, Charley Utter, Al Swearengen, Calamity Jane; and a few new ones as well.

Dan Ryan is the central character in the story, and the novel opens with him defending a wagon train from an Indian attack. He, along with the other men in the party, repel the attack, and Dan makes a new friend in the process. He and Bellamy Bridges decide to partner up, and when they finally reach Deadwood they purchase a claim. The relationship between Dan and Bellamy—plus a few whores, a madam, a gambler, and an old general—is the main storyline, but it isn’t the only storyline.

The other plotline follows Wild Bill Hickok and his entourage as they travel from Cheyenne to Deadwood. Wild Bill doesn’t make it to Deadwood before the end of the novel, but Mr. Jameson does an admirable job of painting him as a strong, courageous, patient, and kind man who protects his friends and shows uncommon patience with his admirers.

Tales from Deadwood is not a rip-off of HBO’s Deadwood, but instead it is story that stands on its own merits—the characters are portrayed significantly different, and the storyline focuses on places and people the television series does not. It is a traditional western with enough action, lore, and suspense to please the core readership of the genre, but the characters and simple, sparse prose is done with the economy and expertise that will also appeal to nearly anyone who enjoys a well-told tale.

Saddlebums Interview: Stephen Lodge

Stephen Lodge is an old hand in Hollywood. He was introduced to “B” Westerns as a young boy, and he has loved the genre ever since. He began acting professionally at the age of twelve, and when he was sixteen he performed at the Corrigan Western Movie Ranch. His first writing credit came on the James Coburn film The Honkers, and since then he has written or directed three major film productions including the Kenny Rogers television film Rio Diablo.

Mr. Lodge has also written several Western novels, including Shadows of Eagles, Nickel-Plated Dream and Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit. The Midwest Book Review has described his writing “like dripping pigments on a canvas, Mr. Lodge’s descriptive phrases bring the characters to full-size dimension.”

You have had an impressive career in Hollywood, as an actor, writer, director, and even stuntman. What are a few of your most memorable moments working in film and television?

First was finding out I sold my first script. Number two was getting the call telling me that I’d sold number two. And since I’ve only had three produced, you should already know the answer to the third.

Also, when I walked onto the CBS Studio Center lot for the very first time, knowing full well it had been Republic Pictures in years past; then walking the back lot and seeing all the old Western sets I had been in love with since childhood.

Doing the same thing at the Columbia Ranch; MGM Lot #2; The Warner Bros. back lot; Universal Back Lot; walking around the Hal Roach studio right before it was demolished; visiting Iverson’s Ranch for the first time; Melody Ranch; same with Corriganville, etc. etc. etc. You can see I was almost as impressed by the sets and locations as I was the actors.

You wrote the Kenny Rogers television movie Rio Diablo. It had a large and impressive cast including Stacy Keach, and musicians Travis Tritt and Naomi Judd. What was your experience working on this film? Would you do it again?

I was recovering from a serious illness when Rio Diablo was shot. I didn’t work on the show; but my wife and I flew to location in Brackettville, Texas, and spent time on the Alamo Village set with my writing partners, Frank Q. Dobbs, and David S. Cass, Sr. I took a lot of photos which are available on my Behind the Scenes web site; you can get there through: http://www.stephenlodge.com/

Most writers are voracious readers, and I’m wondering what you read for pleasure?

I read mostly non-fiction politically oriented books; but when I read fiction it’s usually Western based.

“I learned to write by reading every script my aunt and uncle brought me. My aunt worked for Columbia Pictures, so I had access to every script Columbia produced and released.”

I have read that you were enthralled with film and theater as a boy. Are there any films or plays that had a particular impact on your development as a writer?

I learned to write by reading every script my aunt and uncle brought me. My aunt worked for Columbia Pictures, so I had access to every script Columbia produced and released. My uncle worked in TV, so I got to read a lot of television scripts, too. The one script I have used as my bible over the years is Carl Foreman’s The Guns of Navarone.

Now I want to turn to the western genre specifically. What first led you to the genre?

Without a doubt it was getting our first television set when I was five years old. Because early television needed to fill all those empty hours, they showed old B-Westerns from dawn to dusk. I fell in love with Westerns (the western genre) the very first time I saw one.

What are a few of the western writers who have most influenced your work?

First and foremost, Clair Huffaker (The War Wagon, Rio Conchos, Flaming Star); a friend introduced me to him when I was writing my first novel 25 years ago, and he was kind enough to walk me through the basics; second is Burt Kennedy, who wrote some really great Western movies. Today I like reading Elmer Kelton novels.

If you could bring back the work of one western writer who would it be? Is there a specific title?

Burt Kennedy–the stories he wrote for those Bud Boetticher-Randolph Scott Westerns are unbeatable. My favorite of Burt’s is The Name is Buchanan; plus The Tall T, his screen adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel.

“Western novelists are still turning out some really good stories. But I can’t say that much for Hollywood. The Westerns I’ve watched recently are all too touchy-feely for me.”

What do you think about the western genre today, and what do you think the future holds for the western story?

Western novelists are still turning out some really good stories. But I can’t say that much for Hollywood. The Westerns I’ve watched recently are all too touchy-feely for me. As for the future of Westerns, I hope they become popular once again; but who knows–our nation’s youth just doesn’t seem to be interested in reading Westerns today like they did in the past. Plus, there is a certain element in this country who continue to put Westerns down; in particular the Cowboy. Until something really big Western comes along to convince this country that Western novels and movies aren’t so bad after all, I’ll just have to keep plugging along.

Okay, now I want to get down to your current work. What is your latest novel?

The current title is Whiskey Tears. Two young and boastful Texas racecar drivers are hired by a fading country star’s new manager to retrieve the intoxicated thrush from a low-life cantina in a Mexican border-town where she has ended up after one of her booze-filled tangents. Whiskey Tears is looking for a publisher.

Can you tell us about the novel—or any other projects—you are working on now?

Besides Whiskey Tears, I have several other novels in the works; that way I can switch from one to another whenever I go blank.

At present, I’m putting together a book that will include all of my Hollywood Western essays, plus behind the scenes photos I’ve taken on various movie sets throughout my life.

Is there a particular novel of yours you would recommend to a reader who is unfamiliar with your work?

Nickel-plated Dream is based on a period in my life that I still hold dearly–when I worked as a stuntman-gunfighter for Ray “Crash” Corrigan, at his movie ranch, Corriganville. Though the story is fiction, it is based loosely on my personal experiences.

Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit is about a sensible, sober-minded Texas grandfather who imparts the American Cowboy legacy to his only grandchild as he and several of his grizzled cronies concoct a 1,000-mile longhorn cattle drive across 21st Century America.

Both should give anyone a nice introduction into my writing.

I have one last question, and I must warn it is a little vague. If you could choose any project to work on, what would it be?

I would love to work in some way on the movie version of my very first novel, Shadows of Eagles, which is presently out of publication. It’s a 1944-era Western that pits escaped Nazi prisoners against a posse of determined Texas Rangers. It’s historically correct in the fact that the United States had POW camps on US soil during World War II. And it's set in the Texas Big Bend, one of my favorite places to be.

Scouting the Web

It’s 3:10 to Yuma weekend and naturally all things West in the media are revolving around its screening this Friday.

■ Here’s a very thorough piece on the making of the film from the Hollywood Reporter. While we’re on the subject, The New York Times recently ran a very interesting article on Elmore Leonard’s Westerns on the screen, focused (as expected) on 3:10 to Yuma. And here’s an extensive interview with the film’s screenwriting team of Derek Haas and Michael Brandt.

■ The New York Post takes the opportunity to touch on the business (or, to be more exact, box office) side of film Westerns, focusing on how Hollywood is banking on four movie releases (two of which I wouldn’t technically consider Westerns, but what the heck) to “bridge the gap between this summer's $4 billion box office and the release of the end-of-year award contenders.”

According to the brief article, “Only three Westerns have grossed more than $100 million at the box office since 1980, and aside from ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ none of the Western-themed films released since 2000 has touched $70 million.”

■ It seems that 3:10 to Yuma has inspired everyone to make its own list of favorite Westerns. Here’s one from movie website Joblo.com, while First Showing.net enumerates its “Top Four Recommended Westerns to Watch Before Seeing 3:10 to Yuma.” Not to be one-upped, The Onion comes up with its own list of “17 Truly Grim Westerns.”

■ For Western art lovers, there’s a new magazine in town: Western Art Collector. Its voluminous first issue reads like a veritable fine art catalog with pages and pages of beautifully reproduced illustrations. You can take a sneak peek at its contents here.

■ The Spring 2007 issue of the Claremont Review of Books has an article on Larry McMurtry and the American West.

■ An excellent online resource for out-of-print fiction, Many Books.net has a vast Westerns library, including several turn-of the-century titles as well as novels and audio books from Max Brand, Bret Harte, Zane Grey, James Oliver Curwood, O. Henry, Clarence E. Mulford, Owen Wister and personal favorite Karl May (best known for his character Winnetou).

■ Ozarks Magazine recently ran a very nice profile of Dusty Richards.

■ Even if it’s not strictly Western-related, Astonishing Adventures Magazine, a new online publication dedicated to reviving pulp fiction, includes two items that might be of interest to Saddlebums readers: an interview with Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale and a very entertaining short story from newcomer Brad Reed, entitled “The Rude Tin Star.”

■ And finally, Venice’s film festival pays tribute to the "Spaghetti Western" this year by screening more than 30 Italian cowboy flicks.

Saddlebums Interview: Johnny D. Boggs

Two-time Spur Award winner Johnny D. Boggs could be considered the quintessential man of the West. One of the most talented contemporary Western writers, Boggs is also a prolific chronicler, often contributing historical articles and features to publications such as True West and Wild West.

A former sports journalist and editor, Boggs won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for his novel Camp Ford in 2006 and for his short story “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing” (featured in the anthology American West: Twenty New Stories from the Western Writers of America) in 2002. He was a Spur finalist for his novels Ten and Me in 2000 and The Hart Brand in 2007 and he also won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award in 2004 for his novel Spark on the Prairie.

What led you to start writing Westerns?

I grew up on the tail end of the Westerns TV heyday, so series like Gunsmoke and The Virginian fueled my interest. I’d always been an avid reader, and once I discovered writers like Dorothy M. Johnson, Jack Schaefer and Will Henry, my mind was pretty much made up to write Westerns.

Can you tell us more about your Spur Award-winning novel Camp Ford? Would you consider it your best fiction work so far?

Camp Ford is best described as a Civil War-Baseball-Western, about a baseball game between Union prisoners of war and their Confederate guards at a P.O.W. camp in Texas. The idea began fermenting while watching a big-league game in Kansas City, and, like most of my projects, it turned into some kind of obsession and I had to write the story.

‘Bests’ are always open to the interpretation of the reader. At least a couple of reviewers have called Walk Proud, Stand Tall my best novel, but Camp Ford is probably my favorite one. It was a challenge to write, a lot of fun to research, and personal. I still think my best piece of fiction is a short story that also won a Spur, "A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing."

Writing, however, is like most other jobs. You should get better the more you work at, so I hope my best piece of fiction is still to come.

You have written – and continue to write – nonfiction about different aspects of American culture and the West in particular. Where does this interest in the West stem from? (On a completely unprofessional note, let me tell you how much I enjoyed your recent True West article about country music. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment about Kenny Rogers’ “Lady” being a key moment for country music going downhill).

I’ve always been interested in the West, the physical place, the spiritual place, the history, the people, the land, everything about it. I think it all goes back to growing up in the South, surrounded by forests, swamps and tobacco fields, and dreaming of those wide-open spaces and rugged mountains that I saw on TV or in John Ford’s Westerns, or pictured in my mind reading Louis L’Amour or A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

I know I’m quite lucky. Many writers I know have to write about just about everything to pay the bills. I get to write, in both fiction and magazine nonfiction, about what I love. So I’m blessed.

Thanks for the kind words about the True West piece!

"I’ve never tried to be politically correct, but historically correct."

Has your experience as a journalist had any influence in your development as a fiction writer?

Definitely. All those years in daily newspapers taught me the importance of deadlines and the fact that there’s no such thing as writer’s block, or there had better not be. You also learn the value of words, and the economy of words. I also have a strong discipline – not exactly sure where that came from – so switching from working on the chapter of a novel to writing a travel story for True West isn’t hard. You’re supposed to be a ‘trained observer’ as a journalist, so I’m always picking up things on magazine projects that I can file away for future use in a novel or short story.

The study of the historical West has undergone drastic changes in recent decades as academia has attempted to demystify supposedly entrenched preconceptions about this period in American history. This has resulted in both innovative research on the positive side as well as in demonizing from some academics that see the expansion to the West as a particularly bleak episode in the history of this country. Would you agree with this assessment and, if so, do you think these new perceptions and attitudes have influenced modern-day Western fiction?

Sure, I’d agree with that. History is always changing. Most people probably find that hard to believe, but it’s true. Historians uncover new information, or they put historical events in a different perspective. Custer goes from hero to villain and back and forth again. I still think one of the most important pieces of nonfiction to come around in years is Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. That certainly led to more histories told from a sympathetic view of the Indian Wars. More recently, Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder is a great narrative account of our westward expansion in which Kit Carson isn’t really glorified or vilified, but shown as a rather complex man in really complex times.

I like good writing and great research. I tend to favor a journalistic approach in covering all angles. I really have enjoyed what we might call revisionist histories, but at the same time I might toss away other revisionist accounts.

Certainly, you can see some influence of this in some fiction, but it really varies from writer to writer, publisher to publisher. I’ve never tried to be politically correct, but historically correct. And often I try to tell my stories from different viewpoints, showing what a Comanche warrior trying to protect his family thinks of buffalo hunters or what a Texas homesteader would think of Comanches after a bloody raid.

I’ve often said that I don’t write that often about good guys and bad guys. I write about people with strong feelings about what is good and bad, right and wrong, and often the people differ – strongly – about what’s good and bad, right and wrong.

What role does research play in your writing?

Research is half the battle, maybe even more. I’ll spend hours reading histories, tracking down bits and pieces, studying maps, visiting locations, wooing librarians and archivists for help.

Readers of historical fiction and Western fiction know their stuff a lot these days, and if you make a mistake, they’ll let you hear about it. The shelves on my bookcases are overflowing, and I keep adding books.

At some point, however, your imagination has to take over, and you have to make choices about what piece of history is important and what details are going to bog down the story. That’s the big challenge in writing historical fiction.

"For the past few decades, Westerns have been branded an ugly stepchild of the genres. And, honestly, I’ve read a lot of Westerns that I haven’t liked at all (...) Westerns are a genre, but the great ones (...) go beyond that. Westerns can be, and often are, great literature. And the future’s always bright for great literature."

What are your thoughts about the present state of the Western genre and what do you think the future holds for the Western story?

It depends on what you call Western. I’ve never been a big fan of literary rules, boundaries and fences. Some publishers think a Western has to be set west of the Mississippi River between 1865 and 1900, but today we’re seeing Westerns set before European contact. And certainly I think the contemporary mysteries by Tony Hillerman and C.J. Box are Westerns. They’re about men with hats and guns bringing law and order to the West; the heroes just happen to be Navajo policemen in Tony’s case and a Wyoming game warden in Chuck’s. Those novels seem to do pretty well.

The traditional Western story has a loyal reader – writers like Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and Max Brand still sell a lot of books – but I’m hoping we can reach out to others. The biggest thing we have to do is hook young readers, get them interested in, well, first and foremost, reading! Then get them interested in our Western heritage and our history, and keep them reading into adulthood.

We do this, I think, by giving them strong stories they can relate to. Great writing. Wonderful characters. We transport them to another time, educate them while entertaining them.

I think you’ll see more crossover types of Westerns. I mean, Camp Ford is probably more a baseball novel than anything else, and I’ve written two novels (The Despoilers and Ghost Legion) set in the Backcountry of the Carolinas during the American Revolution. That’s not what most people would consider the West, but in 1780 that was definitely the frontier. Historical-Western crossovers, Western-mystery crossovers, and I’m reading Emma Bull’s Territory, which blends fantasy elements into a Western (Tombstone, Arizona) setting.

Another factor for Western fiction could be the success this fall of movies like 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the TV miniseries Comanche Moon.

For the past few decades, Westerns have been branded an ugly stepchild of the genres. And, honestly, I’ve read a lot of Westerns that I haven’t liked at all. Too predictable. Poorly written. Cardboard characters. Clichés. No sense of history and no sense of geography. Westerns are a genre, but the great ones – Monte Walsh, Lonesome Dove, The Big Sky, Warlock, The Time it Never Rained, From Where the Sun Now Stands, Welcome to Hard Times – go beyond that. Westerns can be, and often are, great literature. And the future’s always bright for great literature.

Most writers are voracious readers and you are probably not the exception. What do you read for pleasure?

I read a lot. Tons of nonfiction for research. Fiction, both for pleasure and to hone my craft. Look what this writer did. Why did this writer do that? I’m still a big fan of Will Henry/Clay Fisher, John Jakes. I like Elmore Leonard a lot, both his early Westerns and his crime novels. Sherman Alexie to Alice Sebold, Robert Frost to Johnny Cash. I always have a book nearby.

Do you have any writing influences? How about influences in the Western genre?

Mark Twain remains my favorite writer, probably my biggest influence. Alexandre Dumas probably was the first writer to take me out of that South Carolina bedroom and show me another world. I think you can probably see the influences of Charles Dickens and Jack London in my fiction. In the Western genre, I’ve already lauded Dorothy M. Johnson, Jack Shaefer and others. Elmer Kelton has always been an influence. So has Fred Grove. Jane Candia Coleman and Tim Champlin probably don’t get the praise they deserve, and my mother’s a big fan of Cotton Smith. Mike Blakely and David Marion Wilkinson are great friends and great Western writers, and I love ol’ Max Evans, who has been my mentor, even though he doesn’t know it. Red Shuttleworth’s Western poetry never fails to inspire.

"The biggest hurdle to convincing booksellers that the Western isn’t dead is seeing shelves full of dead authors. But Louis L’Amour, Max Brand and Zane Grey sell a lot of books (...) So do Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, but nobody’s calling the Mystery dead. I don’t know how we get past that."

Are there any Western writers you would like to see back in print?

Ah. Now there’s where we come to the double-edged sword. The biggest hurdle to convincing booksellers that the Western isn’t dead is seeing shelves full of dead authors. But Louis L’Amour, Max Brand and Zane Grey sell a lot of books, and other dead authors like William J. Johnstone and Ralph Compton have become brand names with others writing under those names. And they sell. So do Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, but nobody’s calling the Mystery dead. I don’t know how we get past that.

On the other hand, I’ll read a lot of Will Henry/Clay Fisher titles. And Five Star and Leisure Books have done a great job reissuing the works of Les Savage, Jr., which is great for his legacy. He ran into hurdles when he was writing in the 1950s because editors and publishers forced him to follow their guidelines, but now his books are appearing, long after his death, the way he wanted them to appear. So I’m glad to see that. And enjoy reading his novels.

Are you writing anything right now? Can you tell us more about any other projects you are currently involved with?

We launched Northfield, an historical novel about the James-Younger Gang’s bank-robbery debacle in Northfield, Minnesota, this summer. A young-adult novel titled Doubtful Cañon comes out from Five Star in December. I just finished a period mystery set in the 1880s titled Killstraight, about a Comanche tribal policeman who returns to the reservation after years of boarding school. That’ll be out next summer, and I’ve just started a coming-of-age story set in New Mexico Territory at the outbreak of the Civil War. That one’s called Soldier’s Farewell. And I’m supposed to contribute an original short story to an anthology for Pinnacle Books. Plus tons of magazine work. I’ve no complaints being busy.

What is the greatest satisfaction of your writing career? Is there anything else you still feel you need to accomplish?

The greatest satisfaction is finishing a novel. And then starting another one. I think most writers would say the same thing. That’s the best and worst thing about writing. You always start with a blank page.

And I have plenty I want to accomplish. There’s a list of ideas and titles on my computer, and the list keeps growing. I know I’ll never get to every idea. The biggest challenge is picking what to write next. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do, and that’s greatly satisfying.

Saddlebums Review: The Savage Gun by Jory Sherman

Described by fellow writer Loren D. Estleman as a “national treasure,” Spur Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize-nominee Jory Sherman is a unique author. His prose approaches poetry and even when chronicling a violent and gory revenge story in The Savage Gun, a reader cannot help but be wondered at his command of the language and the ease with which he evokes a given setting through a mixture of imaginative metaphors and fast-paced action.

The Savage Gun tells the brutal coming-of-age story of John Savage, a young man who sees his family and closest friends slaughtered by a gang of bandits while working at their gold claim in a place known as Cripple Creek, high in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The ruthlessness exhibited by the assassins, led by the fierce Oliver Hobbart, steels the protagonist’s determination to avenge his loved ones.

As the story unfolds, John Savage - still called “Johnny” by his reluctant partner and the other survivor of the Cripple Creek massacre, Ben Russell – becomes an unfeeling yet obsessed individual, tracking Hobart’s gang through the wilds of Colorado. It is in these passages that Sherman’s prose shines, as in this rare moment of quiet when John lays to rest after catching up with the first of the killers. John disposes of him remorselessly, burying all shreds of his adolescent innocence for good:

“John slept deep beneath an ocean of soft rain and whispering wind through spruce boughs. He floated through October hills with the sumacs and the maples blazed with a vermillion fire and the oak leaves yellowed and browned in shady hollows and on the ridges where the white-tailed deer nibbled the last of the acorns while gray squirrels chattered on the slopes, their bottle-brush tails flickering nervously as they scurried through the skeletons of fallen leaves like fugitive church mice.”

The young Savage is becoming familiar with his father’s Colt, a finely-crafted weapon whose barrel reads in Spanish: “Ni me saques sin razón. Ni me guardes sin honor” (Do not draw me without reason, nor keep me without honor). The Colt rightfully instills fear in the surviving bandits who are heading for the town of Pueblo to cash in on the looted gold. There, they are to meet with the alluring Mexican cantina owner Rosa Delgado, as John comes to terms with a secret that connects her with both his father and the killer Hobart.

The Savage Gun is an old-fashioned Western with all the necessary elements of high adventure and drama plus a writing style that, while contrasting with contemporary genre writers’ penchant for barebones prose and quick scenes, makes for an engaging read.