Booklife

Cotton Smith is as concerned with the interior landscape of his characters as he is with the exterior landscape of the West.  And horses.  He loves horses, and that affection shows throughout his excellent novels of Western adventure.

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.”
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Jory Sherman started out as a poet. Half a century later, he is a legend known for taking readers on heroic journeys across the West.

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.
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Mike Blakely writes and sings cowboy songs.  He’s recorded 11 albums of TexAmericana music, including the recent Homemade Serenade and  Live From Luckenbach (with Thomas Michael Riley).  Blakely plays somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 gigs a year, sometimes alone, sometimes with Michael Riley, and sometimes with his father, Doc Blakely, the well-known humorist.

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.
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Robert J. Randisi has written at least 13 novels a year—every year—since 1982.  The tally so far is somewhere over 550.  That number wouldn’t be as impressive if not for the fact that they are all good.

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.
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“The West,” says Raymond Foster below, “is full of legends.”

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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Journalist and novelist Charles T. Whipple writes most of his Westerns as Chuck Tyrell. Recent Chuck Tyrell titles include Guns of Ponderosa, The Killing Trail, and Hell Fire in Paradise all published as part of Robert Hale Ltd.’s Black Horse Western line. Whipple has also written a Chuck Tyrell novel, The Snake Den, for Solstice Publishing.

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.
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Charles T. Whipple’s Westerns are written with an old man’s wisdom filtered through a child’s wide-eyed sense of wonder. His stories ripple with the feel of folk tales and local legend, without losing the immediacy and realism of someone who’s been there. Whipple grew up in the American West, in a time when the pioneers had aged but were still living—at a time when a child dreamed as much of the 19^th century as 20th.

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. (more…)

Bad Boys by Frank Roderus opens with a man about to tell the woman he loves about his wild and rowdy past.  The novel ends…  well, it ends where it needs to end.  In between, the story ranges, in tone and content, from the romping good times of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to the more mature The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the picaresque tales of highwaymen and outlaws.  The prose is fast, tight, and as clear as spring water.  Each chapter moves deeply into the life of the central character, Danny Southern, and then moves on with only the faintest hint of sentimentality and a steady maturation.

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.
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