Peter Brandvold writes under his own name and his pen name, Frank Leslie.  His recent books include The Devil’s Winchester (as Peter Brandvold), Bullet for a Halfbreed (as Frank Leslie) and Longarm and the Crossfire Girl (as Tabor Evans).  Under any name or in any series, Brandvold is known for writing violent action particularly well.  His secret seems to be his great care in developing life-like characters.

Sherry Monahan is a freelance writer, editor, and genealogist who specializes in the Victorian Western migration.  She is a contributing editor at True West magazine, as well as the author of the recent Cary, NC and the forthcoming E.M.H.: The Aristocratic Ranch Wife.  In addition to freelance writing and editing, Monahan hires out as a professional researcher who helps people not only trace their ancestry but to also flesh out the details.

Tom Piccirilli writes short fiction and novels across the genres.  His most recent crime novel, Every Shallow Cut, which many reviewers are saying is his best novel yet, is about a down and out writer.:  “It’s something of a meta-fiction,” said Piccirilli, “even though very little in the story has actually ever happened. But there’s a sense about it that it could happen at any moment.”  Piccirilli also offers a manuscript critique service.

Below, each of them talks about working in what Brandvold calls “an insecure occupation.”

How long have you been working as a full-time writer and what sort of work do you do?

Peter Brandvold:  I’ve been work full-time as a Western novelist since 1998–so, about thirteen years now.  Long enough that I’d have a really rough time working a “real” job.

Sherry Monahan:  I’ve been freelancing since 1998, but I’ve been doing it full-time since I was laid off in 2008. I write about current and historical food, travel, alcohol, and research—pretty much anything that I’m passionate about and can get paid for!

Tom Piccirilli:  I’ve been a full-time novelist/fiction writer since I started in the biz, back when I sold my first novel Dark Father in 1990. 

As to what sort of work I do, I write.  For years I wrote horror novels and short fiction with occasional jumps into Westerns, mysteries, dark fantasy, and erotica. Now I mainly focus on crime fiction.

What is a typical day like for you?

Tom Piccirilli:  I keep my own hours.  I write for a bit, then I’ll watch a movie, then go back to writing, then read for a while, then write some more.  Across the length of the day I try to get a clean thousand words or more finished.

Peter Brandvold:  A typical day starts fairly early in the morning–around 6 AM.  I get up, make coffee, and start in writing hard for about 45 minutes.  I try to hammer out 500 words before I take the dogs and myself out for a brisk morning hike in the mountains around where I live or am currently bouncing around–either Colorado or Arizona, though I also spend some time in my home state of North Dakota, as well. 

I come back, have breakfast, try to write another 500 words before noon, have lunch, then maybe read for a while or go see a movie–if I’m around a theater–come back, and hammer out another thousand words before five or six. 

I try to get a minimum of 2000 words written every day–seven days a week.  I don’t take days off.  My schedule is too packed for that, and I’m also so addicted to writing that I really have to write every day.  There’s also an irrational feeling that if I don’t write every day, I’ll lose momentum.  I guess it’s an OCD thing.  But I really love it, too, and just don’t need to take time off.

Sherry Monahan:  There is no typical day when you freelance because you never know what’s coming your way. I do, however, go to my home office every morning about 8:30 and work on something until about 5:30. It’s different from a traditional day job because I can work from home and don’t have to commute. If I don’t have any deadlines looming, I can work on what I feel like working on, which is great when you’re creative juices are flowing.

Is there anything you wish you’d known before you took the plunge into freelancing?

Peter Brandvold:  No.  I’m glad I didn’t know about any of it, because I might have chickened out.  I’m talking the lack of the usual safety nets you get in more traditional lines of work.  Freelancing is an insecure occupation.  You’re only as solvent as the contracts you already have lined up.  After you’ve fulfilled those, you always have to hustle for more.  But this has been good for me, taught me self-reliance and given me a more Zen way of looking at life–it’s one day of work at a time.  One book at a time.  When I’m really good, I’m seeing just one sentence at a time, and that’s really the best state to be in. 

What are some of the frustrations of freelancing and how do you handle them?

Peter Brandvold:  Honestly, there are very few.  I wish I had better health insurance, but I’d rather be my own man than be someone else’s hammer in return for a steady paycheck and an insurance plan.  Now, if I had kids to support and provide health care for, that might be a different story.

Sherry Monahan:  The biggest frustration is not knowing how much work you’re going to get. That makes it hard to pay the bills. I know I have one consistent monthly job, so I use that as my constant.

Tom Piccirilli:  The frustrations of being a full-time writer of fiction (“freelancing” is a term used to describe writers who do non-fiction articles for pay, which isn’t what I do) are many and varied. No real stability, no health-insurance, no 401k plans, no retirement benefits.

What’s the best part?

Peter Brandvold:  Freedom, freedom, freedom.  As long as I get my 2000 words in each day, I can pretty much do what I want.  Sometimes I get those words in really early, and can take a long, long hike in the mountains, head off on some exploration in my pickup, or I can just sit out on the deck and watch the clouds go by.  Or watch a good movie on the Westerns channel! 

Sherry Monahan: The best part is being able to work from home, balance my projects as I like (as deadlines permit), and work on my book writing and genealogy research business. I love having the freedom to choose and be creative.

Tom Piccirilli:  Nobody tells me what to do.

Is there a project that you simply couldn’t have pulled off if you’d been working at a full-time day job?

Peter Brandvold:  I wrote my first three books while I was teaching.  I wrote during office hours, just before and just after class, when I probably should have been preparing for class.  So I was pretty distracted.  But it worked, though I’m sure my teaching suffered.  I wouldn’t want to do that for every book. 

I’d have to say I couldn’t have written a third of the books I’ve written if I’d had a full-time job.  I’d probably have had to write them on weekends or over the summer, and that would have been frustrating.  Writing is something you need a quiet mind for, and working another job isn’t conducive to a quite mind.

Sherry Monahan:  A few of them. I had a full-time job until 2008 and it was difficult trying to balance my life and my writing.

A salary… is it friend or foe?

Peter Brandvold:  Foe.  You become a slave to it.  It’s wonderful and deadly to the freelance writer.  It makes you too dependent.  You’re a dog howling at a nasty old farm-woman’s kitchen door.  I like the challenge and excitement of having to scramble for new assignments.

Sherry Monahan: Salary is always a friend. I have to pay my bills, travel to promote my books and do research, so without it, I would have to give up my dream.

Any parting words? Words of encouragement or caution?

Peter Brandvold:  Someone told me early on, when I’d had only a couple books published, not to quit my day job.  I didn’t listen to them though they easily could have turned out right.  But I made it work and thank the Four Winds I continue to make that work.  But it could stop at any time.  If you can handle that hard bit of reality, and have enough confidence in yourself in your abilities, then I say cut the safety net and freefall and try to make your living as a writer.  I can fairly confidently say, though, that it probably would not work for about 98% of the people out there–because they either lack the writing ability, the genuine obsessive-compulsive love for writing and reading, self-confidence, and lifelong focus and determination–I wanted to write since I was 12 years old, and that idea, that love for reading and writing, was in my head every day right up to now–or they won’t be able to make enough money to support themselves and their families.  That said, if you know it can work, then it will work.

Sherry Monahan:  Trying to earn a living as a freelance writer can be both fun and frustrating. You may want to keep your day job if you want to keep a roof over your head. It’s a very competitive market, so pick a subject that’s interesting and one you’re passionate about.

Tom Piccirilli:  Writing is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.  It will give you a satisfaction you’ve never known before, and quite possibly break your heart along the way.

*

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.

Now, when some people talk about a good story they mean a good reading experience. A good reading experience doesn’t necessarily involve a story at all. But many people, when they say a good story, mean a good plot, and want all the other elements of fiction subsumed to the plot. And not just any old plot, but the plot as detailed in the famous triangle of that old anti-Semite Gustav Freytag. (The anti-Semitism is why he’s pretty much known for his geometry rather than his creative writing, these days.) Rising action caused by a sequence of attempts and failures, while concurrently a set of revelations slowly illuminate the original cause of the dramatic action. Then there’s a climax, and a brief unwinding of the emotional tension caused by the conflict’s resolution.

It’s a great little structure. I use it, I teach it. We’ve been so thoroughly exposed to it in what we’ve read and watched for all our lives we almost confuse it for what comes naturally. But nothing comes naturally. Freytag’s triangle is an invention, not a discovery.  (And Aristotle didn’t discover anything either; he issued a prescription.) However it is an invention that has become hegemony and hegemony always contains the potential for tyranny. There are plenty of writers avoiding “good story” and plenty of editors who publish these stories. And they receive plenty of hate mail. Every Donald Barthelme story in The New Yorker led to a flood of angry letters and threats to cancel subscriptions. Good thing there was no Internet for the magazine to be published on at the time; the bigwigs would have taken a look at page hits and visit lengths and cut ol’ Don loose right away. We can’t sell acai berry juice with this shit!

Hegemony is the normalization of the particular. There are many other ways to tell stories and many other ways to structure a plot. An avant-garde almost by definition predates a rearguard. The tricks of what we call “postmodern” literature can be found in seminal works of literature such as Don Quixote. Hell, you can find most of them in the Old Testament, if you know where to look and read it as a work of fiction—a task ably accomplished by Stephen Moore in his survey of ancient literature, The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600. (You can tell he’s into postmodernism because he has two post-colons in his title!)

The normalization of “good story” allows for a particular sort of obnoxious criticism. The stuff that isn’t a “good story” is inevitably a “bad story.” Forget the obscurity of, say, second person point of view—there are people, would-be writers even, who are deeply suspicious of first person point of view. They see it as some kind of latter-day fancydancing, and that despite the fact that all of us, all the time, speak in the first person when we tell the stories of our lives to one another. Well, I suppose The Rock and other professional wrestlers might comprise a significant exception…

Any writer actually interested in squirming out from under the boot of the “good story” has few first-person narratives. I was called a Nazi—literally—for defending first person. I was just reading a review the other day in which the critic detailed a conversation she had with a graduate of the Clarion writers’ workshop. He denounced Flannery O’Connor as a “terrible writer” because in her stories she was “telling, not showing, the reader.” I gave a reading once along with another writer, and during the Q/A session this Hugo winner declared that fiction about the act of fiction was a new thing. (It’s actually a couple thousand years old.) One of my favorite rejection letters—this was for a collection of short fiction I was trying to place with an independent publisher—explained to me, sadly, that the book wouldn’t do because of the seventeen pieces only three of them were stories. The rest were “other things” that were confusing and weird.

There is a faux populism that goes along with this suspicion—hegemony leads to normalization, but it also leads to tyranny. People writing things other than “good stories” are fakes, frauds, interlopers into genre, poseurs and “artistes.”  A single successful strange book, such as House of Leaves leads people to demand, “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned storytelling!” The answer, that it’s in most of the other twenty thousand novels and stories in the bookstore, is unsatisfying because the existence of anything other than “good stories” are an affront. If people like stories that aren’t the “good stories” then…maybe not all good stories are good!

And indeed they ain’t. But good stories are plentiful enough, so there are sufficient excellent ones to satisfy any reader for a lifetime of any natural length. There’s no need to war against the stories that flout Freytag and his march through jeopardy and toward orgasm…uh, I mean climax. There is a need to war against “good story” though. “Good story” pushes the issue of who gets published off the table. “I don’t care if you’re white, black, yellow or green,” people say, “I just want a ‘good story.’” You should always be wary when the green people are marched out in defense of “good story”—also, purple polka-dots. “Good story” keeps writers chained to their desks, extruding consistent product for lesser sums each time around. That’s the thing about “good story”—it’s easy to learn and do. Supply increases faster than demand, so price sinks. And “good story” limits readers. Even the dumbest, most obscure, and worst writers will occasionally proclaim themselves champions of the ordinary working stiff who just wants to escape into a “good story.” Who would declare, “Well, I don’t want ‘good stories’ then! Give me something else!” It’s nearly impossible to conceive of saying, or thinking. That’s the ultimate power of “good story.”

And yet…as writing loses its audience to television and the Web, Freytag’s triangle is in retreat. Reality TV doesn’t offer rising action and climaxes, and the revelations last only so long as the contestants do. Learning how we live now, or how the other half lives, through Twitter and blogging, doesn’t involve a march up one side of the triangle and a quick slide down the other. More of a forced march through a desert. And then there’s fiction itself—try mapping the many seasons of Lost onto the dictates of “good story.” Were Lost a novel, it would be 2000 pages long, with dozens of dropped plot threads, the introduction of a major and heretofore unknown character 1200 pages in (with new minor ones showing up on page 1945!), a couple more 1700 pages in, and then a bunch of alternative histories littering the interstices between chapters. Which wouldn’t be labeled chapters. Or interstices. Readers do want strange and new narratives—trapezoids and single rays stretching off into the horizon, and denouements that never finish their unwinding, a three dimensional snowflake with dozens of dendrites that are only beautiful from a distance—it’s just that “good story” is all they’re ever offered.  So they watch TV, and play video games, and read endless fanfiction where the same characters change radically with every writer and circumstance, and blog their own lives one sandwich and missed bus at a time, and they do what writers refuse to. So kill story now, before it’s too late. Before it kills you.

There are a few good reasons to ally with craft. Writing is hard work, and revision thankless. Yet, plenty of non-writers just imagine writers “being creative” and generating stories. Then the money flows on in. Writing skills can be learned, though mostly just by reading widely, and so it has a lot in common with other crafts. Practice makes…improvement. (Not perfect.) Then there’s the publishing aspect. Writers take assignments, write to certain themes or lengths, and many pride themselves on their ability to write anything.

However, writers often protest too much. I used to collect the sillier comments, but it got boring after the first few thousand. Here are a few of my favorites:

Writing in Starbucks is not writing. It is “trying to hook up with attractive members of the opposite (or same) sex by appearing to be a sensitive, tortured Artist.”

Oh, yes, I can hear the snickering from the fellows in the back row dressed in black turtlenecks, obscured by their haze of cigarette smoke, and trading witty barbs that are just regurgitations of something Nietzsche said much better.

The garret is a myth. Ignore it.

“Craft” today is not a counter to the Romantic vision of an artistic elite chosen by the Divine, it is a quasi-proletarian flinch often designed to protect one’s work from being compared to art, thus protecting it (and one’s ego) from its near-inevitable failure to stack up to the idea of art as a superlative. The craft metaphor also serves the production-driven processes of conglomerate publishing: books are published to fill slots and develop and extend categories on a mass scale, which militates against the individual nature of a piece of art. And yet, writers, as small businesspeople, also hope to avoid complete proletarianization (even when they write work-for-hire material to specifics as stringent as anything one might find in a fast food joint) and thus don’t dare embrace the industrial metaphor their masters long ago did. So they declare themselves to be craftspeople, a head higher than the cloth hats that used to read their stuff before everyone got television sets.

Writing is a balance between art and craft, but there is enough suspicion of art—it suggests snobbery, laziness, and even homosexuality in some of the more idiotically conservative quarters—that the stick must be bent in the other direction. Craft is a matter of artisanship, and artisanship is a matter of mastering a relatively small tool kit in order to solve a number of practical problems. These practical problems also allow for aesthetic flourishes to be added. You can thus have a basket with an interesting weave, for example, but you can’t have the weave by itself, without the basket.

Writing, by way of contrast, is a matter of deploying a relatively small number of tools from a toolkit of infinite size in order to solve problems that don’t exist until they are solved through the use of the tool. That’s art. This is what people are trying to say when they trot out that all canard about learning all the rules, and then forgetting them. They mean, “Some tools are far more commonly used than others. It’s generally helpful to start using some set of tools first, then you can search The Infinite Toolbox for others, once you’ve figured out what a handle is and what part of a widget to plug into the wookedtyclicket.”

There are an infinite number of potential sentences (and paragraphs, and chapters) and thus a toolbox of infinite size. Even very simple communicative tasks can be accomplished in an infinite number of ways. When I visited London in 2000, I came across a broken escalator somewhere, and it was cordoned off. On the cordon there was a sign that read something like “Please Do Not Attempt To Use This Escalator Whilst Repairs Are Underway.” When I got home to Jersey City, one of the escalators eading up out of the Journal Square PATH station was also broken, and also had a sign. This one read something like “ELIVATOR NOT ORDER NO!!” (sic) Yes, the escalator was labeled an “elivator.”

Both communications—both tools—worked just fine. At least I didn’t see any wayward legs twisted into the teeth of the receding steps in either country. Both were pretty memorable too. As matters of art, they both have a lot to say about their creators as well.

Why think of writing as an art? For better or for worse, there is a connotation of seriousness about “art” that “craft” doesn’t have. Indeed, that’s why many writers claim to be craftspeople rather than artists—it’s a punt and a dodge. Writing is like any other result of practice; the more seriously you take it, the better you’ll be at it. The deeper you consider its structures and possibilities, the better you’ll be at it. Sticking with the common tools of “the craft” and viewing art with suspicion is self-limiting. Patricia Highsmith had a wonderful bit of advice for writers: “Suspense writers, present and future: Remember you are in good company. Dostoyevsky, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe…there are hacks in every kind of literary field…Aim at being a genius.”

Perhaps the term “genius” is even more fraught than “art”, so I’ll stick with the latter. Fight against the tyranny of craft. Aim to be an artist. Take each blank page as a formal challenge, not just a narrative or commercial challenge. Will many writers fail at being artists? Yes, most people fail at most things on most attempts. But a failed artist can end up being a fairly competent craftsperson, just from the attempt, and and the extended conceptions of the work. If one aims to be a craftsperson and fails at that, as most people do, then what sort of writer does one turn out to be?

Behaving in a professional manner, for writers, is really quite easy. Professional behavior basically means writing publishable work, meeting deadlines, not plagiarizing, and not libeling anyone with one’s work. The problem with discussions of professional behavior is that this brief list really is pretty much it, and if one is not yet writing publishable work then none of the rest matters. Well, that’s no way to become a publishing guru, or to sell aspiring writers all sorts of goods and services! And so was born “professionalism” which is running especially rampant in the field of science fiction and fantasy.

Professionalism is a complex of supposedly mandatory and proscribed behaviors that makes a writer “professional” regardless of their ability to write interesting material. Recently, at a science fiction convention I met a former student of mine, and he was very concerned about…his blog. Which he does not have. He was told, however, that today professional writers must all blog, but that these blogs must not offer up controversial political opinions, or negative reviews of popular books, or “ruffle feathers.” Everything must be “politically correct” he believed—to use that famously meaningless term I try so hard to get my students to stop using. I’d told the class Ronald Sukenick’s famous dictum, Use your imagination, or someone else will use it for you over and over.  Maybe one day it’ll stick. So, what to blog about? he wondered. What does a professional blog look like, and how does it lead to publishing deals? I recommended that he concentrate on finishing his book first, and making sure it was as good as it could be.

A few weeks later, at a different convention, the mildest of acquaintances fell into my arms, chagrined that she was drunk at a party, and that some editor or agent might also be at the same party. She’d already ruined herself professionally, and it was only Friday! Ah yes, a writer who enjoys a drink at a party. Very unprofessional; unheard of, really. Editors would surely be scandalized by the sight, had any actually been in a room and not themselves inebriated.

My two poor friends were much more concerned with “professionalism” than with professional behavior.

Why would someone want to be a professional writer? Rejection is constant, cash flow unpredictable, audiences fickle, and the publishing industry is falling apart. It’s easy enough to write for one’s own edification, or for some non-commercial community, if personal expression is one’s goal. There’s only one real reason to write professionally—no boss! All you need is professional behavior. Professionalism, by way of contrast, makes everyone a writer’s boss. Every Facebook friend, Twitter follower, newspaper reader, and book buyer is one’s employer, and what do they pay? Royalties on a hardcover are what, ten percent of cover price? Two dollars and fifty cents, payable somewhere between eighteen months and three years after the purchase of a book, and that’s if one’s publisher doesn’t go bankrupt. At least my real boss could rook me out of tens of thousands of dollars a year, and he doesn’t read my blog or check to see if I’m wearing dress shoes to work.

Few writers would care about the demands and declarations of these new bosses—tweet this, don’t talk about that, how dare you not like Dr. Who!—except that so many beginning writers themselves have joined the cult of professionalism and have begun to police one another. Not only do they believe in the supposed rules of professionalism themselves, they propagate the nonsense through their own social networking. It’s all rather nightmarish: don’t complain about rejection letters or reviews, don’t talk about editors and agents on Twitter or your blog, wear khakis and not blue jeans to conferences and bring plenty of business cards, keep away from politics except for the fannishly correct (and legitimate) concerns about diversity in publications in your public utterances. This advice is the new currency in the community of aspiring writers because it’s easy to give and easy to follow. What’s hard is writing.

And those are the at least reasonable demands of professionalism. I’ve heard people earnestly report that they never use American flag stamps when mailing submissions because liberal editors may take such stamps as a conservative political statement. I’ve eavesdropped on serious discussions about the userids of one’s “professional” email address; don’t use hyphens or underscores between first name and last! There are writers who hate writing short stories, but write and try to publish them anyway because it’s “expected” (by whom?) and  to “build their brand.” (Brand of what? Crappy writer?) I’ve lost track of the number of blog posts I’ve read that warn in a little preface of ranting and possibly losing friends and letting it all hang out…that turn into a jeremiad against, say, littering. Nothing controversial, remember! (On the other hand, blogging requests for people to act as personal unpaid valets during a convention appearance is not only “professional”, it’s in vogue.) My favorite is the person who somehow decided that it would be “unprofessional” to strike up a conversation with a certain editor at a writer’s conference—instead he just followed her around all weekend, hoping that she’d eventually turn around at some point and say hello.

It’s also worth noting that these rules regarding professionalism often only go one way—feel free to mock, insult, sneer at, or slander someone not in a position to help your career. Say, someone who is just as poorly published as you are, or someone who currently only edits work in translation and thus isn’t in a position to buy a short story or acquire a book.

Now some elements of professionalism have merit. Whining about negative reviews and rejection letters is unattractive, though nobody has ever been harmed by doing so, not even when every fan in the blogosphere swore to never buy a book by Anne Rice or Alice Hoffman or whomever ever again. You certainly shouldn’t send anyone threatening letters, but that’s true whether you want to be a writer or not. But here’s the dirty little secret about all the rest of it, speaking as an editor and the friend and colleague of many other editors. If your Twitter account is named JoeBlowWriter or we see a Facebook friend request from someone named JaneDoe_Author, we cringe. We laugh at “official” websites—get enough fans that someone makes an unofficial one and then we might care. We’re not concerned if you pumped your fist when Osama bin Laden was assassinated, or if you like to dress in short skirts. Your bookmarks and business cards generally tend toward the amateurish, and are rather secondary anyway. When the conventions are over, 95 percent of them go right into the trash. If we want to contact you, it’s generally pretty easy to figure out how to do so…even if you put an underscore between your first and last names in your email address. Here is what we care about:

Can you write well? I mean, really write well. Note, not write well enough—we have plenty of folks who can do that, and they’ll change their names every five years on command and write whatever we like, to order. Can you write well?

Are you ready to say “Yes” to a solicitation? Not “Maybe.” Not “But I don’t know if I’m any good at that”, but “Yes”?

Can you meet a deadline?

You know, not professionalism. Professional behavior.

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.