Mamatas has been freelance writing and editing for little over a decade now.  His experiences have been, to say the least, varied.  In fact, his CV reads like a cut-and-paste from 12 different writer’s bibliographies.  His list of credits is all over the map.

On his blog, in his essays, and especially in his new book, Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life, Mamatas writes with wit, honesty, and openness.  Even when he’s getting himself into to trouble, he’s wide open and funny about it.  (Or maybe that’s part of the reason why he’s getting in trouble?)

Sometimes I don’t agree with Mamatas, but I keep reading–whether to see what he’ll say next, to be convinced by what he has to say, or to find out how he’s going to get himself out of this one!

Indeed, his openness sometimes makes him a target.

“I write, and publish, for the abuse as much as anything else,” says Mamatas in a guest post over at the Apex Book Company blog. “Which is lucky for me, since I get so much of it.”

Starve Better is as much about craft as it is about career.  And the message from the start is clear: Freelancing is not just working the tightrope without a net; it’s working the tightrope without a rope… yet the writer keeps writing.

“The only thing I can guarantee for readers of Starve Better is this: your checks will not arrive on time,” says Mamatas in the introduction to Starve Better.

If you’ve had at least one invoice go unpaid, one publication go under before your story ran, or one typo printed under your byline… you’ll be doing the “so true” shudder from page one of Starve Better.

If you haven’t had any of these things happen to you…  heads up.

Here’s a paragraph, again from Mamatas’ Apex guest post, that ought to keep you coming back this week to see what Mamatas has to say: “I keep writing because I want to raise a freak flag and see who salutes, and see who prepares counter-protests. If I can keep my material out there despite the nasty emails and the occasional invitation to a parking lot punch-up, then there’s hope. If editors or publishers will still take a chance, and accept my work though it doesn’t ‘quite fit’ or exists ‘outside the box’ or ‘pushes the boundary of profanity for what I am most comfortable printing’—to quote from some acceptance letters—then the inevitable nastiness that follows is worth it. Anyone can write what the market or the public wants, after all. The trick is to write what nobody should want…but which gets published anyway because quality still matters more than propriety or profit. That’s how one starves better.”

Smith is a historian, artist, and writer of both fiction and non-fiction.  His novels include Spirit Rider, Return of the Spirit Rider, Blood of Bass Tillman, Death Mask and last year’s Ride for Rule Cordell. 

Whether writing about Texas Rangers, farm boys, or outlaws, Smith gives readers a look inside the hearts and minds of the people who face hardships day in and day out.  When Smith writes about a range war, shoot-out, or cattle drive, readers are reminded that character and plot are inextricably linked–that plot grows out of character and character grows through plot.

“I am fascinated by the power of the human spirit,” said Smith, “the ability to take blows and grow beyond them.   To never give up.   Everyone gets knocked down; how one reacts to that is the key to success.  This challenge to life is enhanced, in my opinion, in dealing with the rawness – and greatness — of the American West.”

Below, Smith and I talk about riding the West, creating characters, and bending (or not bending) the truth in Westerns.

What do you enjoy about writing about the West?

Cotton Smith:  Just about everything.  I think the West is essentially the soul of America.  It is what we want, down deep, to be.  Independent.  Brave.  Strong.  As my dear friend, the late and great Don Coldsmith, used to tell me — there are countless stories waiting to be told.

Early in my life, I “rode with Roy, Gene, Hoppy and Wild Bill on the silver screen” and played “cowboys and Indians”– and this infatuation turned into a lifelong love of the West, truly learning what happened there and why.  Realizing, for example, that the Texas cattle drives were among some of the most daring of entrepreneurial adventures.  Learning that citizens of the early cowtowns would make trips to Texas to encourage cattlemen to come their way: “You’ll cross fewer rivers . . . and we’ve got everything you’ll want in town.” (And they did.) 

Take a look in your refrigerator.  Virtually everything there had to be made by our ancestors. Imagine that!

Where does a Western novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, historical event, somewhere else altogether?

Cotton Smith:  Good question!  All of my stories are character driven.  So I start with my main character and a general sense of the story I want to tell.  Then I look for some dramatic point to begin, something to stop the reader and make him want to know more.  Sometimes, I find that the first chapter in my first draft becomes my eighth or so when the writing is finished.  The trick is to get right up against a critical point of action or mystery.

My main character will be right there.  Even if it’s a sequel.

I don’t outline. Well, I did outline one of my early books and, at one point, the characters took over and went another direction.  Sounds corny, but it’s true. I have in mind one or two key elements I want to communicate.  So, in a way, I read the story for the first time as it is written.   Some authors write detailed outlines.  That’s great as long as you don’t consider it the completion of your effort; because you’re just getting started.  And don’t be afraid to change your outline when the characters take over!

How do you develop your characters so deeply?  Make them so…  human? 

Cotton Smith:  A good protagonist must be a distinctive person, someone the reader cares about and relates to at some level.   Reading fiction is about escape, so give the reader a fun place to go and want to stay.  The hero must have flaws, but also must have a drive to succeed.  The worse the situation, the more we understand what he is up against. 

All of us have holes in our game.  I look for ways to make him real.  Try describing a relative or a friend, then push it a little further.  The “real” Hopalong Cassidy was a wise-cracking, smart-aleck foreman of the Bar 20.  Not the mild fellow in the movies.  But that’s another story.

Simply describing a character is not making him so.  The reader must see him through his actions and his speech.  Consistently.

Remember, villains have a good side, too.  In fact, try turning your next villain into a hero and see what happens.

I do a lot of rewriting – “layering”, I call it.  Making certain my characters are real, have quirky things they do.  But don’t mistake a few quirks for a personality.

In Behold a Red Horse, the strongest of three brothers is blinded by a wild horse kicking him, making him, most likely, the first-ever blind Western book character hero.  In Spirit Rider, Panther-Strikes, an Oglala-raised white man, loses his Oglala wife in an inter-tribal raid, rejects his Indian upbringing and returns to “the white man’s world” to become an astute businessman.  He is confronted with the kidnapping of his former brother-in-law by outlaws and finds that he must return to his Oglala ways to try to save him.

In Pray For Texas, Rule Cordell is devastated when his dog, a stray, is killed in a Civil War battle.  Around him is all manner of death, yet losing an innocent dog brings him to his knees.  He is an intense Confederate cavalryman trying to deal with the awful reality that the South has lost – and with it, the painful realization that his evil minister father was right that he shouldn’t give himself to a cause.  Throughout the book, he wears the stem of a rose on his lapel; the original rose was given to him by JEB Stuart’s widow at the great general’s funeral.  That’s intensity.

In Blood of Bass Tillman, Bass Tillman is an older man who has long ago given up gunfighting to become a respected lawyer in his adopted town of Longmont.  That gentle life is snapped when his son and wife are murdered.

How do you write such compelling dialogue?

Cotton Smith:  Don’t put “information” into the dialogue that isn’t logical.  There are other ways to get this detail across.

Say it out loud after you write it.  Does it sound like something someone would actually say?  If not, write it again.  For the most part, we don’t speak in complete sentences.

If your character has a dialect or a speech impediment, be consistent with it throughout the book.  At the same time, make sure it isn’t too exaggerated; the reader won’t want to work that hard.

Be careful of long three-person conversations.  They rarely work.

Any advice for writing action scenes?

Cotton Smith:  Keep it real.  Tense.  And keep adjectives and adverbs to a minimum.  Gunfighters rarely met each other in the street, to test their abilities with a fast draw.  Why would anyone do that?   Unless a bullet struck the heart or the brain, it was likely a person, expecting to be hit, could keep going in combat.   It is very hard to shoot accurately from horseback – and few horses would stand steady for it. 

If it’s a fistfight, study a televised fight and write down the blows delivered.  Understand what it takes to knock a man down or out.  Remember, the knuckles will be hurt.

How much and what sort of research do you do?  How much can you bend the  truth?

Cotton Smith:  I do a great deal of research even though most of my stories are pure fiction.  Still, it is important to know what it’s really like on a Texas cattle ranch in winter . . . the specifics of certain weapons . . .  handling a new horse . . .  and so on.   These details add interest and value and make the story convincing.

At the same time, a writer must recognize that he or she likely knows more about such details than almost anyone and must use them sparingly, or else the book gets bogged down.

As far as “bending the truth” is concerned, that depends on what you are writing.  If it is a story about what would have happened if Wild Bill Hickok had survived his Deadwood murder, the writer is immediately creating something “new” – and that has its own problems.  If, however, a real character pops into the story, then be careful.  Some writers don’t like to put words into the mouths of historical figures.  I don’t mind if it is consistent with what we know about him. 

The only book I’ve written so far with a strong sense of actual history is Return of the Spirit Rider.  The year is 1876.  Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and others occupy some of the pages, along with fictional characters.  I made certain that they were in the right places at the right times, according to history.  It added to the flavor of the story, but it could have been told without using them.

What’s next for you?

Cotton Smith:  My next book comes out in November.  Shadow Crossing from Leisure Books is a story about U. S. Deputy Marshal Sell Hoback growing up knowing the Colorado mountain wilderness and loving it.   His brothers and sister — and his father, a U. S. Deputy Marshal — saw to it that he learned well.  The family even had a secret bear claw initiation built around a three-day wilderness trek when each child was fourteen.  Each Hoback wore the bear claw on a leather strand around his – or her – neck as a mark of pride.

When his father is murdered by an unknown assailant, Sell Hoback becomes a deputy marshal in his place.   It was something he had wanted to do since childhood.  During the Civil War, Sell was decorated for bravery; his older brother, Court, won the Medal of Honor, but became a known gunfighter afterward, an outlaw some said. A third brother, Matthew, died in the conflict. His oldest brother, Jamison, became a teacher and his sister, Katherine, became a successful horse rancher.  Lots of fun!

Lastly, any parting words?

Cotton Smith:  If you love to write, don’t let anything stand in your way.

There is a tendency among inexperienced writers to create too much back-story at the beginning of their books.  That can be deadly.  You want the reader to experience the story, not read about it.  If you need all this back-story, start your novel there.  My fourth novel, Spirit Rider, was actually my first, although it was never published in the way it was originally written.

Don’t let anyone read your material, except someone who can buy it – or someone who has sold their work.

Be an observer of people.  Keep notes.  It’s good to keep a small memo pad with you at all times.  Good ideas need to be written down, right then and there.

Any coincidence – an independent, uncontrollable act – should go against the hero.

Too many adjectives and adverbs spoil the soup.

Be careful about writing in the first person.  It can prove to be a trap.

Write a little every day.  No excuses. 

Don’t submit something until it is your best, then go after it.  Be careful about self-published books.  Unless you just want to stroke your ego and end up with a garage full of books.  Keep working and find a real publisher.  They are out there.

The American West is alive and well.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Sherman is the author of more than 400 books, including the recent novel The Amarillo Trail (as by Ralph Compton), which came out today.  Death Rattle and Savage Vengeance are due out later this summer.

I’ll hold off on talking about his excellent new book on writing, Master Course in Writing (High Hill Press).  I want to save Master Course for a full-length review.  Suffice it to say that Sherman is a highly respected teacher known for changing whole careers with a bit of well-timed advice or gentle wisdom.  And in Master Course he lays it all out in a straightforward and compelling writing “course”.

Though Sherman is legally blind, his vision of the writing process has never been clearer, never sharper. He is at the top of his craft.  His prose, whether non-fiction or fiction, has never been fiercer, has never been more elegant than it is today.  So, grab a seat at the master’s knee and listen up while Sherman talks about writing fiction in general and the western in particular.

I almost don’t know where to start! You’ve been a full-time writer for more than fifty years.  What do you enjoy about writing?

Jory Sherman: There are so many things I enjoy about writing, but I think the most enjoyment I get from writing is the feeling I get from using language, the English language, which is the richest in the world.  I love seeing ideas take shape in my mind and then using language’s powerful symbols to convey those ideas.  I have an almost mystical feeling about language and words, as if a sentence is a secret code that can unlock the mysteries of the human mind, can reveal ancient myths and stories that have lain buried in the human subconscious since man came into being on this earth.  I believe that, in the beginning, there was the thought and then came the word, the logos.  Language brought me to writing and sustains me even after more than 50 years of putting thoughts into words.

How has the writer’s job changed in the last half century?

Jory Sherman: The writer’s job has not changed much except in form and content.  The writer still must tell a compelling story, and if he or she uses mythic structure, the underpinnings of myth, then the story can enter the deepest part of a reader’s consciousness and seem almost real.  I believe that each person is a born storyteller, that storytelling is in our DNA.  The writer must plumb that subconscious, that ancient part of the mind, to find not only the story, but a way to tell that story to any reader now living or to those yet unborn.

Writing has remained the same, despite the labels assigned to the craft over the ages, such as romanticism, realism, or any number of like designations.  In fact, I learn a great deal from reading a wide variety of writing by such authors as Turgenev, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Celine, Dostoevesky, Faulkner, Hemingway, Flaubert, Dickens, Thoreau, Emerson, Jack Kerouac, Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, Loren D. Estleman, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, Pat Conroy, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme’, Mark Twain, Jonathan Franzen or James Lee Burke.  Some peculiarities of language usage have fallen by the wayside, but the essentials still exist that spring from observation and the author’s ear for human speech.  It is a complex process, but the writer of today can learn not only from his or her contemporaries but from the masters of the past, beginning, perhaps with Homer.

Where does a Western novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, historical event, somewhere else altogether?

Jory Sherman: I usually start with a scene.  Then I imagine a character in that scene.  This is after I have written down a number of titles and chosen one for my story or novel.  To give a story a name removes all obstacles, all fear.  If there is to be some reference to history, then I will have done the research and will fill in my background from that information.  I no longer plot a novel as was once required by publishers, but just develop a story from characters in a certain time and place.  This works for me because I believe that the act of writing itself is a self-propelling process.  The key to every story is in the story itself, that theme, action, plot twists, and ending all occur naturally by the very process of writing.  I never question what I write and do not edit my own work.  I know the story will come out the way I have envisioned it as I write it.

How do you turn words into nearly human characters?

Jory Sherman: I use an age-old simple formula, which is “an appealing character struggles against great odds to achieve a worthwhile  goal.”  Each word in this sentence is important, and it springs from Joseph Campbell and it’s called “the hero’s journey.”  Some event brings a character into the foreground and that character is asked to leave his or her comfort zone and take on a dangerous task fraught with many perils.  The hero enters the deepest darkest cave and slays the dragon which has interfered with normal human life.  The hero returns from the final battle with both experience and, perhaps, a boon to mankind.

The writer must keenly observe many real-life characters and listen to what they say, how they talk.  In each writer there are many characters and he or she will never use up all of them.  We are not only chameleons, we are actors with many masks and we find the depths of characters within our own complex selves.  E pluribus unum. From many characters within us, we find one and make him or her a hero.  The hero is always human with an Achilles heel.  The hero has flaws.  His character is shaped by life and the writing must convey this learning process, this journey through the maze of obstacles until the goal is attained. I try to capture the personality of each character. The word personality derives from the Greek, persona, which is the word for “mask.”  The personality is what a person presents to the world, not what is really inside.  So, a character wears a mask, but the writer must plumb the character’s thoughts and actions to portray the truth of a person’s true character.

How do you write compelling dialogue–dialogue that deepens character and propels the plot forward?

Jory Sherman: I wish there were an easy answer to this question.  To me, dialogue must advance the story as well as show character.  So, each character must have a different voice and a different agenda in the life of the story.  I depend on my ear to construct dialogue, and all written dialogue is a compromise. People do not talk the way a fictitious character speaks.  All of the uhs, and ahs, pauses and mispronunciations are usually absent in fictional dialogue.  But, we can give a semblance of human speech to our characters by careful attention to the rhythm of human speech, the meter, and match the character’s mind with the words.  Each real person has a distinct speech pattern.  So, too, should the fictional character.  You can further describe speech with adjectives or adverbs, or verbs that portray tone, shading, anger, defeat, gloating or any number of human conditions.  Speech often portrays a person’s station in life, especially in the Western novel or story.  So, the writer’s ear comes into play here.  Dialogue is one of the writer’s most valuable tools.

How on earth do you write such beautiful descriptive scenes?

Jory Sherman: Are you talking about those scenes which most editors want me to cut out or shrink to a smaller size?  I don’t know how beautiful these descriptive scenes are, but my argument to the editor who wants me to cut them down or eliminate them, is that I am writing about the West, and the West has a feeling to it. The landscapes can be spectacular and I want to take the reader to that place in the West where he or she can see both the beauty and the terror of a particular place.

While we may be writing about a time and place that no longer exists, we can breathe that time and place back into existence.  We roam the West and we go to places where few seldom go and some of the places and people are still there, off the back roads, living simply in uninhabitable places, close to the land, close to nature.  That is where I am most comfortable, most happy, and where I often take the reader when we are making our hero’s journey across this great land.

There may be music in some of those descriptions, and if there is, it is because that music comes from the land, from the West itself. I try to paint the imagery of the Great Plains, the might of the rivers, and the majesty of the mountains.  I have been to those places I write about and I paint those pictures with words, with language.

While many are just now experimenting with e-books, you got involved with them over a decade ago.

Jory Sherman: We are just now on the leading edge of e-book technology.  We have seen the publishers shut down their Western lines.  They have cut the amount of advances drastically, those that still publish Western novels.  No attempt has ever been made by the publishing industry to advance the Western.  Yet, this genre is our native American literature.  It is unique, because our West is unique.  Other nations have tried to copy it and failed.  The West represents so much of our nation’s past and its future promise that it will never die.  Yet the publishing industry is helping to kill it.  E-books hold out a promise for the Western to finally reach every corner of the earth and the idea of it will be just as compelling to foreign readers as Zane Grey and Owen Wister, James Fenimore Cooper, et al, were to our grandfathers and great grandfathers.

The e-book publisher does not make the writer wait 8 months to a year before deciding to publish a book.  They do not take a year to produce a book.  They can have your book digitally available to a worldwide market in a few weeks.  The cost is much less than a hardcover, usually, and with the new devices such as the Kindle, Nook, Sony, Ipad, and a host of other ereaders, the market will expand exponentially, in my opinion.  I have a Kindle and it can even read to me and turn the pages.  Since I am legally blind, this is a wonderful gift.  I can no longer read a printed book.  Instead, I subscribe to audible.com and get two audio books a month for a low price.  With the Kindle I can buy books at a lower price and read them as fast or faster than I could when I had my sight.  With e-books, the royalties are better than they ever were with traditional publishers. Granted, there are no advances, but when we got large advances, those had to be earned through mass sales and paid back before any royalties accrued.  So, I do not see this as a disadvantage.  E-books never go out of print.  There is no inventory to drain a publisher’s finances.  The future is here and e-books will open the world to many new readers.

*

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Blakely also writes cowboy books.  He’s the author of 16 novels, including A Tale Out of Luck, which was co-written with Willie Nelson.  Three of Blakely’s novels, Moon Medicine, Comanche Moon, and Shortgrass Song, were nominated for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Novel.  The novel Summer of Pearls won a Spur and so did his song, “The Last Wild White Buffalo.”  He’s currently working on a novel with country music legend Kenny Rogers.

Blakely grew up in “ranching and cowboying” in Texas.  His songs and novels are filled with quirky characters that reflect the vast Texas landscape.  On stage or in print, Blakely has a way of letting a song or story unfold in its own time, on its own terms.  Below, Blakely and I talk about learning from his father, setting out on his own, and getting back up after being knocked down.

So, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but it does roll away at least a little bit, right?

Mike Blakely: My father developed a career as a non-fiction writer and a professional humorist as I was growing up.  He had books and humor albums to his credit.  He was also a musician, primarily a fiddle player.  It helped me a lot to realize that a simple country boy could get a book published and play music in front of audiences.  I, however, gravitated toward fiction as a writer.  And I began writing my own songs, whereas my dad played mostly traditional songs.

Were there any others who were particularly influential when you were young?

Mike Blakely: As a prose writer, I was influenced by J. Frank Dobie and Elmer Kelton.  My musical influences came from the country and rock hits of the day, and from the traditional cowboy songs and fiddle tunes I learned from my dad and his cronies.

In what ways did serving in the Air Force prepare you for a life of writing and performing?

Mike Blakely: I met guys from all over the states in the military.  They all brought different kinds of music into the barracks.  Some of my Air Force friends were guitar players from California, Arkansas, Florida, and Oregon.  That made for a pretty broad jam session.  Also, points of view from around the country influenced my prose writing in the years that followed.

How does music–listening, playing, writing it–enhance your fiction writing?

Mike Blakely: For one thing, I tend to write about musicians, using them as fictional characters.  Also, musical things like rhythm, cadence, and tempo can be applied to fiction writing to a certain degree.

Why Westerns?  And how has your understanding of the genre changed from Vendetta Gold to Come Sundown?

Mike Blakely: I grew up ranching and cowboying.  With my dad teaching me at first, I trained horses, and learned how to hunt.  All these endeavors are links to the days of the frontier.  I’ve learned that there is a lot of room inside the western genre.  There are shoot-‘em-ups, and carefully researched historical novels, and a lot of middle ground in between.  Other than that, I’m not sure I fully understand the western genre, or need to.

What is “style” and how would you describe yours?

Mike Blakely: Style might refer to the amount of detail an author uses, which naturally affects the pace of the writing.  It might also involve character development, plot or lack thereof, humor, level of violence, dialogue, and a million other choices an author makes.  As for my style, I attempt to create strong characters, vivid yet fast-moving episodes, and a surprise twist or two.

Roy Huckaby, Plenty Man, Horseback, Carrol Moncrief…  what makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling western protagonist in particular?

Mike Blakely: I like protagonists who behave like real people.  They struggle just like we all do.  However, they all posses something special or even quirky that sets them apart – again, like we all do.  I like a protagonist who can be admired.  You can knock him down time after time, but he always gets back up.

What about an antagonist?

Mike Blakely: Antagonists are fun because they are inherently predisposed to break the rules.  Anything goes with a twisted, wicked mind.  And, they can really stir up a plot when the story starts to lag.

Any advice for writing action scenes?

Mike Blakely: Pick up the pace, use active verbs and sparse narrative description.  Rewrite actions scenes over and over until they take on the cadence of an up-tempo ballad.

How’d you like working with Willie Nelson on A Tale of Luck?

Mike Blakely: Working with Willie was a phenomenal experience.  We met when we could, given Willie’s busy tour schedule.  The rest of the time, we corresponded by email.  He often replied from his Blackberry or I-Phone.  Most of the characters in the book were his inventions.  The setting, too, was based on Willie’s ranch and the western movie-set town he built there, called Luck, Texas.  And, of course, the protagonist was designed to be a character Willie could portray in the movie.  I pounded out the rough draft, and Willie made changes as he saw fit.  We worked very well together. The project led to my current deal, co-writing a book with Kenny Rogers.  It’s my first non-western novel – a music business story set in 1975.

Any parting words?

Mike Blakely: It is wise to write for the market, but it’s suicidal not to write from the heart.

The adage says, “Write what you know.”  But, Jean Auel didn’t know a thing about prehistoric peoples when she got the idea to write Clan of the Cave Bear.  She educated herself, and wrote a classic.  She wrote what she learned.

If you’re not fascinated by it, don’t write about it.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Okay, I haven’t read all of his books.  (“No one has,” Randisi once told me, “not even me.”)  But I’ve read a lot of them, as many as I can get my hands on, and I’ve enjoyed every last one of them.  In fact, I have to be careful with a Randisi novel.  If I start it, I will finish it in as few sitting as possible and that can be problematic if I have things like papers to grade, deadlines to meet, or… sleep to get.

What’s the shortest distance between reality and another world, another place and time?  Simple.  Page one of a Randisi novel.

Most of Randisi’s novels have appeared in The Gunsmith action-western series (formerly adult Western series) under the name J. R. Roberts.  (The Gunsmith #353: The Deadly Chest came out this month.)  Randisi has written in just about every form and every genre—from action-adventure to science fiction to erotica–but he is best known for writing private eye fiction and Westerns.  The sixth book in his Rat Pack Mysteries series, Fly Me to the Morgue, comes out this June, and a new The Gunsmith novel comes out each month with one Giant Gunsmith each fall.

Below, Randisi and I talk about writing, getting knocked down and getting back up, and about always moving forward but looking back every now and then.

Crow Bait opens with Lancaster beaten nearly to death.  It takes him two tries just to stand up.  It’s the story of survival, of determination, of revenge and redemption, of a beaten up man and a broken down horse.  After more than thirty years, 500+ books, and an ever-changing publishing industry… do you ever feel like Lancaster?

Robert J. Randisi: Jeremy, I’ve been knocked down so many times there’s just nothing to do but get up. Back in the 70′s I sold two short stories to a brand new magazine, thought I had found myself a regular market, only to have them fold after eight issues.  I had the editor of a paperback house who wanted to give me a four book contract for a private eye series, only for him to be told that his buying had been frozen, and he couldn’t buy anything for nine months.   I had a book that was actually in the window of a B. Dalton on 5th Avenue in Manhattan when the company went out of business and the books had to be pulled. This business is filled with disappointments and bruises.  And it still happens. Believe me, there’s nothing else to do but get up.

What is a typical writing day like for you? Didn’t you mention one time that you go through a new keyboard each month?

Robert J. Randisi: I don’t think my keyboard situation is unusual. I wipe the letters off the keys and have to buy a new ‘board about four or five times a year. Recently someone gave me two extra keyboards, so I think I’m okay for a while.

My schedule is to write day and night.  Since there are other things that must be done during the day–banking, the post office, groceries, answering the phone–my most productive hours are 11 pm to 4 am.  Usually, I work on one book during the day, and another at night.

What do you enjoy about writing in general and writing the West in particular?

Robert J. Randisi: Writing is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. Despite the fact that you needed publishers to get your work into the stores–and that’s changing now–you’re pretty much your own boss. You set your own hours. And I love sitting at my keyboard, creating characters and situations.

The legend of the West is interesting to me, as are the “Legends,” and it’s fun to think I’ve created my own Legend in the Gunsmith.

Where do you typically start with a Gunsmith novel?  What’s the process from there?  How much pre-writing and outlining do you do?

Robert J. Randisi: No outlines, no pre-writing (whatever that is). I come up with a task for the Gunsmith, and he has to accomplish it in 220 pages or more.   We go through it together. I really don’t know what’s going to happen from one chapter to another.  These are not books you can take very seriously, as I have to write one a month.

The Gunsmith is one of the longest running Western series. How do you keep the series from feeling repetitious?

Robert J. Randisi: The Gunsmith is the 4th longest running series. There are certain aspects that must repeat, but if I can keep myself interested, I can keep the reader interested.  And there are a lot of fans just waiting for Clint’s next adventure.

What is it about Clint Adams that has made him so enduring?  That has kept you and so many readers so interested for so long?

Robert J. Randisi: Clint Adams is an honorable man in a mostly dishonorable land–the old west. Yet he has to develop as the West develops. He has the ability to kill any man with a gun, but as he gets older, as he develops as a man, he finds it necessary less and less.  If a problem can be solved without a gun, he much prefers it. The 360+ books have taken him to the precipice of the 20th century. He has to change with the times. If he was the same man in every book, I don’t think he would have endured.

You have the remarkable ability to bring a character to life in as few words as possible.  What goes into the creation and presentation of a compelling character in general and a compelling western character in particular?

Robert J. Randisi: There must be a certain number of characters in any book–Western, mystery, whatever–who the reader has never encountered before. Their journey must be their own–that means their history, their formative years, and the way they’ve decided to live their lives as a result.  It’s a little easier in Westerns because there are fewer rules of society to deal with.

How are Western heroes and private eyes the same?

Robert J. Randisi: They each adhere to their own codes. That’s basically it. Neither is constrained by the rules of a company, an organization, or even the law.  They both bend the law to their own wills. They find it necessary to do so to achieve their goals.

Dialogue seems to play a crucial role in your novels.  What should dialogue do and what’s the secret to writing it?

Robert J. Randisi: Dialogue should advance the story. It should also provide a window into the personality of the character. If the reader can get to know the character through dialogue, rather than pages and pages of exposition and description, the book simply moves faster.

The secret to writing good, realistic dialogue is . . . wait for it . . . “Listen!”

Any advice for writing action scenes?

Robert J. Randisi: Remember to keep things “moving.”  Action means movement. And I don’t just mean walking, running, fighting, shooting . . . I mean keep the story moving forward.  A good story cannot stand still. Everything has to advance the story.

You’ve started and been integral in a number of professional writers’ organizations, including The Private Eye Writers of America and The Western Fictioneers.  What is the Western Fictioneers and what are the benefits of membership for a writer?

Robert J. Randisi: Western Fictioneers was started by me and a handful of other Western writers who like to read and write about “the traditional West.”  Our members must be fiction writers.  You’ll pardon me, Jeremy, but no academics need apply–unless they write fiction about the West.

We’ve seen a swing in awards over the past few years toward the more “literary” and “modern” works of the West.  So we’ve also created The Peacemaker Award. This year we’ll be presenting awards to The Best Western Novel and the Best Western Short Story. As for the novel we don’t have a length limit, we don’t separate hardcovers from paperbacks. When we present an award to the Best Novel, that’s exactly what we mean–the best novel about the Traditional West. For more information folks can go to our website and our blog.

Any parting words? Words of encouragement or caution?

Robert J. Randisi: Please don’t forget about the Old West. It’s our history, and it’s important to be aware of it. Progress is fine, but we can get lost in technology.  I caution everyone against never looking back.  Forward is fine, it’s where we’re going, but there would be nothing ahead of us without what happened behind us.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

And so is the Western.

A legend is both a tale from the past–a time polished mixture of truth and myth–and the hero (or heel, as C. Courtney Joyner points out) featured in that tale.  There is the story with all its elements and there is the character with a story.  And there’s time between then and now.

Below, eight of the contributors to A Fistful of Legends edited by Nik Morton and Charles T. Whipple talk mostly about the legend as the character—what is the stuff of legends and what goes into the creation of a legendary character in Western fiction.

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Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin is the author of The Tarnished Star, Arkansas Smith, and the forthcoming The Ballad of Delta Rose.

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles is the author of Coalmine, The Fourth Horseman, and Lawmen.

C. Courtney Joyner is a screenwriter and director who also writes fiction and non-fiction, including The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors and Writers.

Matthew P. Mayo is the author of Winters’ War, Wrong Town, and Hot Lead, Cold Heart.  Mayo also edited the Express Western anthology, Where Legends Ride.

Nik Morton/Ross Morton is the author of Death at Bethesda Falls, The $300 Man, and the forthcoming Blind Justice at Wedlock.  Morton also is the co-editor of A Fistful of Legends.

Bobby Nash writes comics, screenplays, and fiction, including the novel, Evils Ways.

Alfred Wallon writes Westerns in German and English.  He’s co-written the Doug Thorne Westerns, All Guns Blazing and Alaska Hell, with David Whitehead/Ben Bridges.

Charles T. Whipple/Chuck Tyrell is author of Guns of Ponderosa, The KillingTrail, and Hell Fire in Paradise.  Whipple is also is the co-editor of A Fistful of Legends.

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What is the stuff of legends?  And how do you create a legendary Western character?

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles: Legends… the West is full of legends. When it comes to fiction there are  Edge, Jubal Cade, Herne The Hunter, Bodie, James Gunn, Hart The Regulator plus White Apache, Longarm, Lone Star, Raider, Gunsmith, etc. As the West created its own myths, so writers from all parts of the world have added their own.

Matthew P. Mayo: The notion of a square-jawed, white-hatted, flawless man snapping of perfect shots and laying low the bad guys is an ideal, and while it can be fun to write about, it’s more satisfying to write about the old West as it really was. By and large, it was peopled with men, women, and children all working hard at getting by, and dreaming of one day getting ahead. They were short, fat, tall, thin, had funny teeth and bad hair and wore all manner of clothes. And most men didn’t wear sidearms. There’s room for both the ideal and the real. Maybe the most successful “legends” are the ones in which both notions meet.

Charles Whipple/Chuck Tyrell: I think a character about whom a series can be written is not the same as a legendary character. Shane became a legend, but not a series. Edge became a series, but I’m not sure he’s a legend. I reckon the Sacketts and the Talons of L’Amour’s novels are legends to some, but Lance Kilkenny is one of the more memorable of his characters, in my estimation.

When speaking of memorable Western characters, the Virginian always comes up, as do Nathan Brittles and Amos (Ethan in the movie) Edwards. We always remember the name Hondo, but personally, I can’t remember what kind of man he was. I do remember that he noticed and did what needed to be done around the homestead. Doing the things the absent husband had neglected. This often happens in L’Amour’s Westerns. Doing what needs to be done.

Sometimes a character is memorable before he walks on the stage, that is, he brings a history with him, a reputation that other characters recognize and move toward or shrink from. Other times a character gains memorability as she moves through the story. Starting with uncertainty, learning as she moves along, and coming to a realization at the end. The Quick and the Dead is an example of this kind of story.

Gary Dobbs: Legends are larger than life characters and the Western lends itself so well to such people. Of course, it helps that the real West was a place of legend. In some senses I often think of the landscape of the Western along the same lines as the landscapes created by fantasy authors. Stephen King highlighted this with his Dark Tower series which is basically a Western mixed in with a little Lord of the Rings. The gunfighter of the fictional Old West is in some ways similar to the all powerful wizard. He has a skill with his guns which is almost magical, and think of the mysticism often given to Indians in Western novels. In this kind of environment it is easy to create legendary characters since their actions are invariably larger than life.

Charles Whipple/Chuck Tyrell: So what makes a memorable character? A human being faced with seemingly insurmountable tasks. In recent film history, the king of England was faced with making a speech. A fairly simple task for most people, an Everest of a task for him. The effort, and the refusal to give up, made the king in that film memorable. A protagonist in a Western may fact the same kind of simple task, made virtually impossible by some quirk of the hero’s makeup, past, present, or even future conditions, can turn a simple character into a memorable one.

Alfred Wallon: First of all I do some research about the time period and the character I want to write about. Then I create some additional fictional characters who accompany the historical person without changing the history. So I can always write a story based on historical fact, but very often told and described from another point of view.

Ross Morton: The character, whether male or female, has to be slightly larger than life, able to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles, never giving up, while holding onto the ideals and integrity that inform his or her every action.

Bobby Nash: I create my Western characters the same way I create any character. I get inside their heads, try to figure them out and get to know them. Then I drop the character(s) into a situation and see how they handle themselves. In any story, character is key. Whether said character becomes legendary or not, however, I’ll leave to history.

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles: I have never set out with a clear plan for my characters–they tend to build themselves. I often think that if you approach a story with preconceived ideas then it can become like fitting a jigsaw piece into the wrong place. There has to be some flexibility and it has to be believable. If someone wrote about two men facing each other six feet apart and missing with their opening volley, most folks would dismiss it as a bit unreal. But you get someone like Eugene Cunningham or James Reasoner writing that scene it becomes fact–because it did happen when Luke Short faced off with “Long Haired” Jim Courtwright. It is all in the way you tell it.

This is the power, the fun, and the creativity all working together.

And that is also the way to turn a little bit of real history and add a created legend into the bargain.

C. Courtney Joyner: I don’t think you can set out to create a legendary character on purpose.  To name only a few–Ethan Edwards, Shane, Hondo, Rooster Cogburn, Hud – I don’t believe that Le May, Schaeffer, L’Amour, Portis and McMurtry had in their minds that they were creating anything other than intriguing characters that we wanted to read about. One who had a past, and was haunted by it.

Perhaps that’s the common thread – these characters carry some dark bit of the history of the West with them, and it’s a burden.   They are not “good” men in the traditional sense (although L’Amour loved his tall, buck-skinned stoics), but men who were truly shaped by their lives and (in some cases) were trying to make peace with themselves by doing the right thing. In the case of Hud, he was a heel who learned nothing even while his world crashed down around him.  Hud was a creature of the modern west, in conflict with the old codes.   Heel or hero, we remember these characters because they are men in constant conflict, with themselves and their world, and how they handle that conflict is the stuff of great storytelling.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Whipple writes character-driven novels and stories in which the setting is very much a living, breathing character. (Whipple usually sets his Western novels in his native Arizona, but his new collection of short stories, A Matter of Tea and Other Stories, features stories set in Japan where he currently lives.  All proceeds from the book will go to relief efforts in Japan.) Below, Whipple talks about where his Western novels start and how he develops characters and settings.

What sort of Westerns do you write? And how are Black Horse Westerns different than a Solstice Western?

Charles T. Whipple: Maybe instead what kind of Westerns I write, I should talk about westerns I don’t write. No. That won’t work either. Who knows what the next one will be like? I don’t have a particular type of hero, and I don’t have a particular kind of bad man. Vulture Gold was triggered by a piece I read in Arizona Place Names, as I remember, about a very large bullion robbery in Vulture City. The marshal of Vulture City in my story had a Texas Ranger father and a Western Cherokee mother. Some folks didn’t like the idea of a half-breed marshal, but in the end, he proved them wrong. So Vulture Gold was a quest.

One of my books begins with a rape, then goes on to show the revenge the husband takes and the way he and his wife deal with her unwanted pregnancy. Another begins with a fire that takes the lives of the heroine’s two sons . . . and so on.

Black Horse Westerns are short, about 40,000 words. They tend to be action-oriented, and eschew fortuitous violence, sex, and tend to shy away from showing Native Americans in a bad light. I’ve yet to write a Western from a Native American’s POV, but there’s a story burbling in my head that may turn into one.

Solstice puts no word limit on their Westerns. My Solstice Western, The Snake Den, would never have made it past the BHW editor because it has some fairly graphic prison rape/abuse scenes in it, and it was half again too long to be a BHW.

Rebecca Vickery’s Western Trail Blazers imprint is incredibly flexible, and also has a line of Dime Novels that let you sell stories for $.99 and novellas for $2.99, which helps you get your stories out where Westerns lovers can find them.

Where does a Western novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, historical event, somewhere else altogether? And how do you develop the novel from there?

Charles T. Whipple: As I mentioned, Vulture Gold started with the story of an actual robbery. Revenge at Wolf Mountain started with a rape, but it features Garet and Laura Havelock, who were major characters in Vulture Gold. Trail of a Hard Man began with a call for help to Ness Havelock, who played an important role in Revenge. Guns of Ponderosa began with a displaced gang of men riding into a peaceful sawmill town. The story started with the town, a town I know well. In my mind’s eye, I saw the opening scene. Everything continued from there. The Killing Trail began with a promise to gun down the killer of the protagonist’s brothers. It’s an unusual tale that I’d like to hear people’s opinion of, actually. Hell Fire in Paradise starts with a job of arson that kills the two sons of the heroine, who loses her husband in a wagon wreck the same day. The book is a prequel to Guns of Ponderosa and has some of the same characters. A Man Called Breed began in the desert, but a flashback shows a saloon scene in which the hero savagely slashes the bicep of a man trying to throw him out of a saloon. The antagonists are Irish-Americans. Much of the reasons for their pursuit of the hero is due to their experience as immigrants in the Bowery of New York. Dollar a Day starts with a gunman being offered cowpoke wages to protect a town founded by a Puritan-type Christian sect. Again, the climax is quite different from many Westerns, maybe all other westerns. The book features characters from Hell Fire in Paradise and A Man Called Breed. The Snake Den starts with a young man being wrongly charged with theft, convicted, and sent to Yuma Prison (sparked by the fact that the youngest inmate of Yuma, actually, was only 14 years old).

The Snake Den…  Oh, glorious Snake Den…  It’s your first novel for Solstice and it’s a masterpiece. What compelled you to write a prison novel? Set in Yuma? With a fourteen-year-old protoganist? There’s got to be a story behind this one…

Charles T. Whipple: I sailed a boat down the West Coast, from Olympia, Washington, to San Diego, California (and on to La Paz, Mexico, after that). I then rented a car and drove across California to Yuma. No Western writer can go to or through Yuma without stopping off at the Yuma Territorial Prison (park) and the Arizona Historical Society. At the prison, I saw the cells, the dark cell, the caliche hill that is cut away to form the south wall, the women’s cells, the barbershop, the kitchen and mess hall, the latrine area, the sallyport, the towers where the guns were, the warden’s office, the infirmary, and so on. What doesn’t exist now, you can see on the model in the visitors room. While there, I learned that the youngest inmate in the history of the prison was 14 years old. There’s a story in that, right?

Grant’s Crossing is a fictitious town I created for Trail of a Hard Man. It lies at the juncture of the Zuni and Little Colorado Rivers. Felt like a good place for Shawn Brodie to get into trouble. History and records of the Yuma Prison told me the breakdown of prison population. The numbers in The Snake Den are correct. They also told me about the Chinamen there, which gave me the idea for Shoo Lee, which is a corruption of the name of the capital of the Loo Choo Kingdom, Shuri. Karate did develop in Okinawa. The kingdom was annexed by the Japanese in 1879. The Japanese changed the characters in Karate to make it mean “Empty Hand.” The original was Kara Ti, meaning Chinese Hand. I thought by having Shawn Brodie learn Kara Ti from Shoo Lee I could help him grow up and gain the confidence he’d need to be a man in the West.

The Warden’s wife, by the way, is modeled after my Aunt Harriet, who made the best oatmeal cookies ever. No one, repeat, no one could or can make cookies like Aunt Hat. Notice how young Shawn jumped through hoops for those cookies. Pure bribery.

What does a first chapter need to do and how do you do it?

Charles T. Whipple: The first chapter must give the reason for the conflict that carries the story. In general, a story (or a scene) begins with a conflict or a problem, goes through several developments in the handling of the problem, and then comes to a resolution (which can be that the hero loses). The first chapter sets it up.

Do you lean to a particular type of Western setting and why?

Charles T. Whipple: I set my stories in Arizona for the moment because to me, setting is a character. It can be the antagonist, as it was in The Three Godfathers, or it can be a big problem keeping the protagonist from achieving his aim. I’ve got shards of stories set on the Santa Fe trail and in New Orleans, but can’t push on with them because I don’t feel familiar enough with the settings. I had to go to Yuma Prison and sit in the Dark Cell (The Snake Den) before I could do justice to the setting of The Snake Den.

What is the relationship between character and setting in a Western? And how do you create and present that setting?

Charles T. Whipple: Setting, to me, adds veracity to the story. You can tell (usually) when an author knows the country he’s writing about. When Dusty Richards writes about Arkansas, you can smell it and feel it because he knows the country so well. When Elmer Kelton wrote about Texas, you knew he was there, he’d seen it, smelled it, touched it. (I may be wrong about this but . . .) I tend to think people set Westerns in Gunsmoke-like towns because they don’t have to get specific, and they can write about “towns” from anywhere in the world. (OK guys, knock me down.)

What makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling Western protagonist in particular? What went into the creation of Matt Stryker and/or Garet Havelock

Charles T. Whipple: Actually, Matt Stryker is a work in progress. I still don’t know enough about him. He lost a wife. He was/is a bounty hunter. But he’s still an enigma in many ways. In fact, the current work in progress swirls around Matt Stryker, before he went to Ponderosa. He does have the same horse. And his problems are not as personal as perhaps they should be. We’ll see how it turns out.

Garet Havelock. Garet started life as Hawke Glidden. See why I changed the name? Yuk. Here’s a thing I did on him called “How to Be Garet Havelock”.

How to be Garet Havelock:

• Never draw your gun unless you are going to pull the trigger
• Never pull the trigger unless you are aiming to kill
• Never go against the law
• Love your woman to distraction
• Drink your coffee strong enough to melt spoons
• Take care of your horse first, then look after yourself
• Always be willing to help a neighbor
• You can lose a fight, but never give up
• Make friends with stray dogs
• Carry moccasins in your saddlebags
• Hanker for canned peaches
• Want to live
• Be ready to die
• Pay attention to the little things
• Always give the other person the benefit of the doubt
• Know about the birds and the bees (birds can warn of enemies and bees can lead you to water)
• Always carry hidden weapons
• Dream about owning a horse ranch
• Be quick to accept a badge
• Wear a steel brace on your left leg
• Respect your Cherokee Ma
• Respect your Ranger Pa
• Stop your horse just to watch the sun go down
• Push your horse to a canter so you won’t be late for dinner at home
• Don’t be afraid to tell her you love her
• Be true to your obligations
• Hope for a son
• Love a daughter
• Work from daylight to dark
• Blaze your own trails
• Back down from no man
• Practice with your handgun at least every other day

What about an antagonist? How do you build someone like Jake Cahill and/or Barnabas Donovan?

Charles T. Whipple: Jake Cahill came on the set fully fleshed out. He was bad to the core, and loyal to no one. Everything he did came from one source, the desire to best the other guy/girl, whatever it took.

I never really liked Barnabas Donovan’s name, but didn’t come up with another. He was a Kansas Redleg, a kind of highwayman in disguise, and his penchant for using spurious means to achieve his grander aims carried over from that formative era.

Any parting words of caution, encouragement, or advice?

Charles T. Whipple: Somewhere, sometime, something will spark a story. With some authors, it arrives full blown. All they have to do is write it down. Yukio Mishima was like that. He’d write a novel overnight, and wonder why all authors can’t do that. Well, many of us can’t. I usually have an idea and an opening scene. I write on it every day. I’m not like James Reasoner or Joe Konrath, authors who can write 7,000 words an hour. I do 300-500 words a day, almost always writing at the same time and place. But while I’m writing the story, and while I know what I think the ending is, inside, things start to happen. In my work in progress, I met a character named Kensington St. George. He came out of nowhere. A walk-on, but an important one. Another was Catherine de Merode. She has walked on for a short scene. She’s important. I just don’t know why yet.

At 500 words a day, an author can do two or three books a year. Or, if you’re writing a tome, you can do one, or one and a half. Keep at it.

Learn your craft. Read the good guys. Figure out how they put the words together. Then do them one better. Your style is always a work in progress. And it should keep getting better.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Whipple is an award-winning American journalist living in Chiba, Japan. His articles have appeared abroad in magazines such as Tokyo Journal, Boating New Zealand, and Honolulu Magazine and a bit closer to his native country in Time and Newsweek. Whipple also writes book-length non-fiction, in English and Japanese, with titles such as Seeing Japan and Inspired Shapes.

To get a taste of Whipple’s writing check out his brand new collection of short stories, A Matter of Tea and Other Stories. All proceeds from the book go to relief efforts in Japan following the recent earthquakes.

Charles Whipple doesn’t always write under his own name. For 300 or 400 words a day, he becomes someone else—Chuck Tyrell–and he returns to the land of his childhood—the American West. Mostly, Whipple’s Chuck Tyrell novels have appeared in Robert Hale Ltd.’s Black Horse Western line. Recent titles include Guns of Ponderosa, The Killing Trail, and Hell Fire in Paradise. His most recent novel, Snake Den, is his first with Solstice Publishing, while a $0.99 short, “The Prodigal”, is available on SmashWords.

Below, Whipple and I talk about Japan, growing up in the American West, and writing Westerns. Whipple will be back around tomorrow to talk some more about writing the West.

How’re things going where you live in Japan?  How are you and your family doing?

Charles T. Whipple: For a while, things were dicey. I was at the hospital down by the bay shore when the quake hit at 2:46, March 11. My checkup was over and I’d just put in my prescription for meds when the first shakes came. I paused for a moment, waiting for the trembling to subside, but it didn’t, so I sent outside on the smoking deck between the two 3-story wings of the hospital. In moments the earth was shaking so hard I had to hold onto an upright to stay on my feet. Two vans parked in front of the smoking deck danced like some giant puppeteer had them on strings. Fortunately, neither tipped over. The iron trusses of the second story walkway between the wings shrieked at the torture they were being put through. I wondered, seriously, if the hospital building would fall over on me.

My guess is the quake lasted about two minutes. It seemed like half a century.

When the temblor stopped. I went back to the pharmacy. Meds all over the place. I waited for 20 minutes or so for the prescription to be filled. I wondered if my car was in one piece.

I tried to call my wife. Cell phones didn’t work. For some reason, Japanese cell phone service providers cut off the cell phones whenever a disaster hits. In the aftermath of the Kobe quake in 1995, cell phones were put to very good use. I was there, helping where I could. Now, though, you can’t call anyone after a quake. Internet connections, however, were still up and I was able to contact my wife by email. She, too, was all right.

My car was in one piece. The engine started with no problem. Water gushed from a broken main in the driveway. Fuel leaked from a tank near the hospital. Crews were already on it when I drove out of the parking lot.

As I headed for my home on the high ground about 3 miles away, I saw signs of liquefaction in the low-lying areas, and just as I was about to go over a bridge over the railway, a strong after-quake started. I pulled off the side of the road rather than have the bridge come tumbling down with me on it. The bridge didn’t fall, and I drove home without further incident.

Nothing was broken at home. The dog seemed to take it all in stride. We had water and gas and power, though people on the flats two miles away had neither water nor power. 10 miles down the bayshore, an LPG tank farm burned, tanks exploding, jets of flame shooting out and licking up new tanks. The fires burned for two days.

Through the night, TV carried footage of tsunami eating up towns and villages along hundreds of miles of coastline. It also carried footage of the crippled nuclear power plants at Fukushima. At first, despite the hours of TV time expended on the nuclear plant, little hard information came. Even after the first hydrogen explosion, not much information came. Data still only comes in dribbles.

I live roughly 200 miles from the reactors and chance of a Chernobyl-type explosion is very very slim, they say. But even with a big explosion, little of the fallout would hit our home. That said, because there is so little known about the effects of low-level radiation, an explosion might cause a mass exodus from the Fukushima area.

The quake itself caused relatively little damage. The resulting 15-meter (50 feet) high tsunami crushed entire villages, lifted 20-ton fishing boats into rice paddies and onto the top of three-story buildings, and carried away an estimated 17,000 people. One man was found sitting on the roof of his house, nearly five miles out to sea. A dog was found in the same situation, three weeks after the quake.

My publisher, Rebecca Vickery, and I have put together a volume of my stories, A Matter of Tea and Other Stories, set in Japan. All proceeds from its sale, hers and mine, will go to the victims of the Tohoku–Pacific Ocean earthquake. I promise to see that every penny goes to the victims and not to pay the expenses of some charity organization.

If you have questions about what’s going on in Japan, just contact me. If I don’t know, I’ll find out.

Does something like this–the tragic disasters in Japan—inspire you to write or… something else altogether? What sort of impact does it have on your work/career?

Charles T. Whipple: Other than my regular daily slice of time spent writing the current WIP, nothing in that vein has changed. I have spent a lot more time helping people put their needs into English. And I’ve spent some hours at volunteer work. The week of April 13 I drove up to the quake center area with a van full of food and water. By the time we left, we had a dozen vans full of stuff.

When you get to be my age, you do everything you can to get another book or story out. There’s only so much time left. My hero Robert B. Parker died at his writing desk at age 77. If I do the same, I have only a few years to go. Still, I can’t write a million words a year like James Reasoner does, nor can I put out a book a month like Robert Randisi does. My pace is slower, but I still want to finish up as much as I can before the grim reaper comes.

Why Westerns? What is it you enjoy about writing the West?

Charles T. Whipple: I missed the hey-day. I wrote my first western in 1979, when Louis L’Amour was at his peak and many writers were seeing amazing success. People like Ray Hogan, Gordon Sherrifs, Clair Huffaker, and even Brian Garfield and Elmore Leonard got their starts writing westerns.

My first western, now available from Western Trail Blazers as an ebook and POD, was written for a Louis L’Amour write-alike contest. I didn’t win, so I figured I couldn‘t write fiction. The MS stayed in my bottom drawer (written on an IBM Selectric, by the way) for the next twenty years while I wrote magazine articles and advertising copy and corporate literature (annual reports, CSR reports, etc.).

I don’t remember where I heard of Black Horse Westerns, but I dusted off the MS and sent it to Mr. John Hale of Robert Hale Ltd. These were the days before electronic submissions. The letter from Mr. Hale said the book was publishable, but that it was 30% too long. Edit and resubmit, he said. I did, and the book was published. It reached the end of its contract with Black Horse Westerns last year, and Hale reverted the rights to me. Rebecca and I republished it under the Western Trail Blazers imprint late in 2010.

So why westerns when I live in Japan, a place that has intrigued millions with its unique culture and exotic history and background?

Born and raised in Arizona, my boyhood was spent in a subsistence situation. That is, we raised our own grain and vegetables and corn for house and silo and alfalfa for hay to feed horses and cows. We always had three milk cows, two milking and one pregnant. As the oldest boy, I got more than my share of milking chores. We always had pigs. We always had chickens. And we ran enough cows to add a few thousand dollars to the family coffers at auction time. I say thousands because my calf Sunday Shirt sold for $104 when I was in the 6^th grade. We probably sold a dozen or so two year olds then, so our income from the steers was a little over a thousand dollars in 1953 or so.

My grandparents were pioneers. Of course, Corydon Cooley, who owned the original ranch and worked as a guide for the Army at Fort Apache, came in the late 1860s or early ‘70s. My granddad came in 1876 from Nevada, where he’d worked at the silver mines to earn a nest egg.

My father wanted nothing more than to be a cowboy, and he was a cowboy almost until the day he died. He was also a school teacher and administrator.

So as a boy, I was steeped in the west. Not the west written by Owen Wister or A.B. Guthrie, but the west as it was in the 1940s and 1950s in Show Low, Arizona. The west in which a boy had his own horse that he was free to ride anywhere (I think I could ride before I could walk), in which a boy could catch mud cats and perch with a willow pole and 10 feet of line. Earthworms were for the taking so bait was no problem. I churned cream into butter. I helped fill the silo with ensilage. I drove the tractor (big John Deere) from age 9 and the pickup (when we were loading hay) from age 12. I held down calves while they were earmarked and castrated. I wielded branding iron and pocketknife alike. I helped butcher steers and pigs, and I’ve wrung the necks of more fryer roosters than I want to count. And when the season rolled around, the .30-30 came off the rack and my friends and I went out after mule deer. Or turkeys.

So I’ve lived the life. I’ve heard the stories from the pioneers. Stories of Chief Ptone of the White Mountain Apache tribe. Stories of Commodore Owens and the Snyder Gang in Round Valley. Stories of John Payne killing Mormon farmers when he rode for the Hashknife Outfit. Stories of Houck and Stott, who were models for The Oxbow Incident.

But they’re stories. Not bona fide history. And I want to leave a record of those stories behind. So I make new stories up. Blending in things I’ve heard and experiences I’ve had, and hope that my stories ring true to the reader.

How did your experiences growing up around Native-Americans and Mexican-Americans shape your vision of the West?

Charles T. Whipple: I met Johnny Gonzales again at our 50^th high school class reunion in 2009. He was the best-dressed guy in school, with penny loafers and smooth sharp-crease charcoal-gray trousers, pink shirts, and a ducktail hairdo much like Elvis’s. Today, Johnny is the same Johnny, but without the pink shirt and ducktail. In fact, he’d make a good priest. He’d not have to shave his head and leave the sides. It’s naturally that way. You see, Johnny is just like any other member of the class. And that’s how I try to portray the Mexican Americans, who were in Arizona long before any Caucasians came along, and Native Americans.

Both hyphen-Americans have cultures that can be used as story elements. None has to be an antagonist because of his or her race. In “A Man Called Breed,” the protagonist is half-white, half-Comanche, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre. His troubles come because of his racial background. But in the end, he gets an apology. In that story, a Native-American who will get his own story comes on stage. His adult name is Sparrow. Watch for him.

We should not allow people to forget about the West. We’re only scratching the surface of the stories there are to tell. The drama covers the spectrum. The settings cover the spectrum. The people cover the spectrum. And the tales are ageless. Help me carry the standard. Please.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

At the three-quarters mark, dread sets in—not simply because of some impending doom, but because it becomes increasingly hard to deny that the story will soon end.  It’s hard to stop reading Bad Boys—hard to put it down while in you’re reading it and hard to accept that it’s over when you finish.

Frank Roderus has been writing novels full-time for more than thirty years.  He’s written in a variety of genres—action-adventure, crime, mystery—but the majority of his 300+ books are Westerns.  He writes both stand-alone and series Westerns.  He’s been contributing steadily to the Longarm series (as by Tabor Evans) since #53 (in 1983).

When I asked Roderus what remained the same in all his novels–what was the constant–I was hoping he’d reveal to me the secret to writing a fresh and unique novel every time out of the gate.

“Oh, I do most earnestly hope there is no constant in them,” said Roderus, “at least not apart from reader involvement with my characters. Through the years I have been privileged to vicariously become a delightful array of people and professions. Cowboys, sure, but also badmen, telegraphers, storekeepers, drifters, snake oil salesmen… the list has gotten pretty long and I have enjoyed experiencing each of them. And hope to find more in the future.”

With Roderus, it all comes back to characters the reader can care about.  Below, Roderus and I talk about writing fiction in general and writing the West in particular.

You’ve been writing Western stories since you were five, novels since the late 70s, and writing full-time since 1980…  Are you still loving it?

Frank Roderus: I am still very much loving what I do and feel blessed to have had the opportunity for such a wonderfully enjoyable career. Writing has always been a joy for me and I did thoroughly enjoy my years as a newspaper reporter, but journalism is essentially a matter of finding something that is wrong and pointing that out to the readers. With fiction I can also point out that which is good in people. Besides, it is just plain fun to tweak the noses of the bad guys.

Where does a Western novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, historical event, somewhere else altogether?  And how do you develop the novel from there?

Frank Roderus: My books nearly always start for me by way of a character. I will find someone in my thoughts and he will tell the story from there. I just sit back and mentally watch the show unfold bit by bit and put that down on paper as it happens. The situations these characters find themselves in can be prompted by a newspaper story or something read in a history book, by almost anything. Much of my pleasure reading is non-fiction and those, especially first person accounts from long ago, will sometimes influence my characters but they become very much their own persons. In fact, some of my best friends have been my own characters.

What does a first chapter need to do and how do you do it?

Frank Roderus: I would hope that my first chapters give the reader something to care about. Good, bad or simply setting a tone, for the reader to care is the important thing. Or so I believe.

Danny Southern, Harlan Breen, Lyle Wilson… What makes for a compelling protagonist in general and a compelling Western protagonist in particular?

Frank Roderus: There again, for the reader to care is most important. Notice that I do not say the reader has to like the character. He can hate the rotten lousy so-and-so, and that is quite all right, just so long as he wants to see the fellow get his comeuppance and sticks around for the ride toward that end. I have come to believe that as long as I care, I can create a character who the reader will also care about. But I must genuinely care in order for this to happen. I don’t think the protagonist in a Western is markedly different from a character in a crime novel, a noir piece or even a romance, though. Any differences are on the surface–does this guy ride a sorrel horse or drive a red Ferrari–the heart and the emotions are constants and those are the basis for storytelling.

And how about an antagonist?

Frank Roderus: Same thing. He can have shades of gray in his character but there should be an emotional involvement in one’s feelings toward him. The reader may even like him… but should want to see him fall as a matter of simple justice.

Any advice for writing action scenes?

Frank Roderus: Action scenes are generally easy to write. I watch them play out in my mind and put down what I “see” there. I do have my own emotional involvement though and am completely wiped out by the end of the scene, very much as if I had physically participated in them, just without the blood and the bruises.

The middle of your novels never sag.  How do you keep the tension mounting, the plot moving, and the suspense building?

Frank Roderus: Oh, my. You can’t know how pleased I am for you to say that. Maintaining pace is not always a simple thing to do and I can’t always judge how well I have done it. What I try to remember in the middle of a yarn, when all the characters and the main direction of the story have been established, is to throw in some new problems for the protagonist to overcome. Those needn’t be central to the main story but they do need to be true to the character. You can also slip in something playful.

The end game… what does the final chapter need to do?  How do you manage the fine balance between too many and too few threads tied up?  How do you ensure the reader leaves satisfied and comes back for more when the next one comes out?

Frank Roderus: I probably am guilty of weaving too few threads, not too many. I just try to wrap up what is there so there is some closure for my protagonist, whether good guy or bad. Leaving the reader satisfied is always a goal but since I am not creating series characters there is no compelling reason for the reader to return. He knows he will not find someone familiar in my next book, but I do hope he will feel he can find someone interesting.

Speaking of the next one, what can we expect from Ransom?

Frank Roderus: Ransom is about relationships, man and woman, father and daughter, divorced man and his ex wife’s lover… and of course with a bad guy/kidnapper thrown into the mix.

Any parting words?  Words of encouragement or caution for the writers out there?

Frank Roderus: Oh, encouragement, by all means. It has always been difficult to get into print, always will be, but it is worth the struggle. The thing a new writer must do is write something so darn good, so completely compelling, that an editor simply can’t turn it down.

As for caution, I would advise newcomers to avoid the easy route of e-pub until he has sold at least one book to a legitimate print publisher. There are two reasons for this. The first and more obvious is that the e-pub houses generally do not have staff to properly edit, and the writer needs the input of editorial staff in order to have his work fully judged. He really cannot adequately judge it himself. Secondly, and more important, the print houses have established distribution and distribution is the most difficult part of the publishing process.  That said, writing is more fun than almost anything. Do it. Revel in it. And keep at it until you do get that miracle of an acceptance letter.

If I may toss in a bit of advice here, the Western Writers of America holds seminars at their annual meetings that can be invaluable to newcomers. While one must be published in order to become a member of WWA, you do not have to belong to the organization to attend the conventions. Check their website for details about those summer meetings. And once you are published, you might want to consider Western Fictioneers as a source of information, encouragement and fellowship also. It too has a website that may be of interest.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

In his introduction to the anthology, novelist (and legend) James Reasoner speaks lovingly of the Western’s “tremendous power to entertain” and its “universality”:

You can tell any sort of story as a Western: comedy, tragedy, action, romance. You can pit man against nature, man against his fellow man, man against himself – or woman against herself, since strong female characters have been a tradition in Westerns going back decades…

In many ways, the Western genre remains as boundless and new as the Western frontier once was.  Just west of that ridge, as it were, anything is possible.  And as a result, the genre, like the characters and settings at its core, is larger than life.

Below the brief bios, eight of the contributors to A Fistful of Legends talk about the power of the Western.

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Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin is the author of The Tarnished Star, Arkansas Smith, and the forthcoming The Ballad of Delta Rose.

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles is the author of Coalmine, The Fourth Horseman, and Lawmen.

C. Courtney Joyner is a screenwriter and director who also writes fiction and non-fiction, including The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors and Writers.

Matthew P. Mayo is the author of Winters’ War, Wrong Town, and Hot Lead, Cold Heart.  Mayo also edited the Express Western anthology, Where Legends Ride.

Nik Morton/Ross Morton is the author of Death at Bethesda Falls, The $300 Man, and the forthcoming Blind Justice at Wedlock.  Morton also is the co-editor of A Fistful of Legends.

Bobby Nash writes comics, screenplays, and fiction, including the novel, Evils Ways.

Alfred Wallon writes Westerns in German and English.  He’s co-written the Doug Thorne Westerns, All Guns Blazing and Alaska Hell, with David Whitehead/Ben Bridges.

Charles T. Whipple/Chuck Tyrell is author of Guns of Ponderosa, The KillingTrail, and Hell Fire in Paradise.  Whipple is also is the co-editor of A Fistful of Legends.

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In the introduction to A Fistful of Legends, James Reasoner says, “Western fiction has a tremendous power to entertain.”  Where does that power come from and in what ways do you tap into when you write about the West?

Gary Dobbs/Jack Martin: The central strength of the Western is its optimism and sense of individualism–the optimism of the golden future around the next bend, or across that creek. And the sense that an individual can exist on his/her own strengths and not rely on state handouts. There’s a great feeling of newness in the Western genre–a new land, an untamed frontier. Add all that together and you have the perfect recipe for both adventure and romance. Come on, who can resist that?

C. Courtney Joyner: I think Western fiction’s power to entertain comes from two places: the iconic nature of the subject matter, and the reader’s own built-in associations with Westerns.   The history of the West as we know it, from books or movies or TV, is a part of the American consciousness; our brains are wired into the genre simply because we’ve learned about the origins of our own country and heritage in the classroom or the movies. Sometimes the history ain’t too accurate, but it sure as hell is exciting!

Bobby Nash: Western fiction, like any good fiction, is meant to entertain. Can there be social commentary? Sure. Does there have to be? Not really. The Western is part and parcel of American history. Whether you’re a fan of the genre or not, you’ve undoubtedly seen at least one Western movie or TV show, or you’ve studied some of the heroes and villains of the Wild West in school. With Westerns, your heroes tend to be larger than life, braving an untamed wilderness, battling against the elements, fending off attacks from savages, or standing up to the scheming land barons trying to take their land. How can those struggles not be entertaining reads?

Alfred Wallon: It has something to do with the fact that most of us
 have grown up with this kind of literature. I’ve been reading Westerns since my  early childhood, and I’ve always been fascinated with them. Maybe it´s because of the fact that a good Western contains nearly everything which makes a good 
story: interesting characters, high moral and ethic values and the dream to find out what´s behind the horizon….

C. Courtney Joyner: Anyone who picks up a Western is ready for a journey, even if they’ve never read a Western novel before, because they’ve seen the images of Eastwood and The Duke riding the open range, and standing tall against the odds.

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles: The visual West comes even more alive with the power of the descriptive word. Owen Wister, Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour paint word pictures that fire up the imagination.

Matthew P. Mayo: Engaging, successful Western fiction is often peopled with ordinary people forced into extraordinary levels of endeavor. It rouses the intrepid, self-reliant pioneer spirit in many of us. Unfortunately, that’s a feeling that, day by day, we seem to be losing, for various reasons. Fortunately, we have touchstones such as Westerns to help remind us, guide us in our own quests, and offer us inspiration. Tapping into it comes from tapping into that aforementioned feeling of self-reliance and right-over-wrong. Inspiration for such feelings can come from taking in the day’s news and hearing about all the injustices perpetrated on the oppressed masses by privileged idiots the world over. The same thing happened in the 19th century West.

C. Courtney Joyner: In a world where we have so little personal control over our destinies, and being an individual has become more and more difficult, readers and watchers want to embrace the values and feelings of that simpler time, (and what we imagine) a simpler world.  One man making a difference. We would like to be able to stand up and be counted, and if we can’t do that in our everyday lives, we can do it all in the pages of a good Western.

Raymond Foster/Jack Giles: Let’s see–the Western has tremendous power to entertain. Guess you could say that the power comes, in part, from a mis-spent childhood falling in love with the Western myth.

The West was an iconic period in the history of the United States but as a kid growing up on the streets of North London, I didn’t know that. Hopalong Cassidy was as real as Jesse James; the Lone Ranger as real as Wyatt Earp and so on. Fact and fiction was a blur when I was running around being the fastest draw on the street.

Nik Morton/Ross Morton: The Western story tends to possess a strong moral sense. It’s not simplistic good vs. bad, however; it somehow uses the history and the landscape to evoke mythic realism while revealing the human condition.

Alfred Wallon: A fellow writer once asked me an interesting question, “What do Homer´s Odyssey and a Western story have in common?” The answer is quite simple: “The weapons are different, but the quest is the same…”

Charles T. Whipple/Chuck Tyrell: To me the West is a period of growth. It can show how people create a community, how towns and people move from might is right to rule by law and compassion. In the Western, there is little help from “Big Brother,” at least in our age of Western writing. (There was a time, such as when Elmore Leonard was first writing in the 1950s, when US Army vs. Apaches was the basic story line.)

The Western allows a hero to be bigger than life. It allows women to be strong and willful. It allows the country to be a character. It allows people to make tremendous changes in their lives. It allows outlaws to have a heart. It allows heroes to come back from disfigurement and near death. It allows authors to address some of the problems of today’s society in terms nearer to black and white.

And the Western allows good people to come out ahead.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.