BookLife

Cameron Judd’s recent novel, Outlaw Train, tells the story of a deputy left in charge, a train full of “curiosities,” and a whole mess of miscreants up to no good.  A bit weirder (in the best of ways) than most of Judd’s novels, Outlaw Train does have all the clean lines, gut-twisting plotting, and vivid characters.

If Max Brand and Sherwood Anderson collaborated on a novel, it might go sort of like Outlaw Train.  Read it for the characterization, for the plotting, for the style.  I read Judd’s novels with my mouth open and a pen in my hand, taking notes on craft and highlighting beautiful turns of phrase.

Continue reading →

Howard Hopkins writes horror and Westerns.  I first encountered his work with “The Ballad of Jesse Barnett,” which appeared in Matthew P. Mayo’s excellent anthology, Where Legends Ride: New Tales from the Old West.  The surface action of the story is relatively static–a woman sits in a chair waiting for her abusive husband to return home.  But Hopkins (writing as Lance Howard) presents more than a simple revenge story–he explores the nature of domestic abuse, the complex web of self-loathing and guilt, the painful search for the moment a life went horribly wrong. Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, freelance writer Johnny D. Boggs received 22 letters from a group of fifth-graders in Tampa, FL.  They loved his story “Rites of Autumn” from the September issue of Boy’s Life and many of them suggested he expand it into a novel.  It was the sort of day that keeps a writer going through the deadlines, dry spells, long nights, and crazy travel schedules.
Continue reading →

A Hard Way, But the Best Way: James Reasoner on Freelancing

Texas-novelist James Reasoner has published more than 250 books under at least three dozen different names.  Why lead with the numbers?  Because this is an interview about freelance writing and when you add the quantity with the unimpeachable quality of the books, it goes a long way toward conveying how hard Reasoner works.  And he works hard not just because it’s a living, but because he loves writing books.

It’s a good time to be a James Reasoner fan.  He’s regularly contributing new novels to established series (such as Longarm as by Tabor Evans), writing Westerns under his own name, and reprinting his backlist in e-book formats.  This month saw the release of Redemption Kansas, a novel with all the edge, all the switchback plotting, tight prose, and vivid characters of a Reasoner classic.
Continue reading →