{"id":783,"date":"2010-07-16T11:54:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T17:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/?p=783"},"modified":"2011-04-07T10:50:33","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T16:50:33","slug":"the-epic-nature-of-storytelling-russell-davis-on-writing-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/2010\/07\/the-epic-nature-of-storytelling-russell-davis-on-writing-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"The Epic Nature of Storytelling: Russell Davis on Writing the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn a lot of ways, Westerns are the most American of stories,\u201d said novelist and editor Russell Davis<\/a>, \u201cbut I think what any writer might gain in reading good westerns is a sense of landscape and how important, even critical, landscape can be to a story.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in Westerns, that landscape is often presented on an epic scale, regardless of how short or long the novels is.<\/p>\n

Russell Davis writes across the genres under his own name and a variety of house names.\u00a0 I first encountered his fiction with Fire Zone<\/a>, an action-adventure novel in Don Pendleton’s Executioner series.\u00a0 A new writer to a long-running series, Davis brought a Western feel, including richly descriptive prose, hard-hitting action, and a sureness<\/em>, to a series that can be a little uneven from month-to-month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After I read Fire Zone<\/a>, I looked up Russell Davis.\u00a0 And that\u2019s when things got interesting\u2026
\n
\nDavis is a Midwesterner living in Nevada where he trains horses for endurance.\u00a0 He is (as of this week) a former president of the Science Fiction Writers of America<\/a>, as well as an active member of the Western Writers of America<\/a>.\u00a0 So he writes Westerns, too.<\/p>\n

Pretty much, too my thinking, that means that Russell Davis writes action<\/em> novels.\u00a0 Fortunately, he also writes novels with compelling characters and beautifully real landscapes.<\/p>\n

Davis has published more than 20 novels and edited more than a dozen anthologies.\u00a0 He\u2019s got a stack of contracts sitting on his desk and more titles on the way.\u00a0 Below, he and I talk about the \u201cwestern sensibility\u201d he brings to all his stories and the epic nature of storytelling.\u00a0 Oh, and common sense, too.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy about writing the West?<\/strong><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Russell Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0 I grew up hearing stories about the West, and reading a lot of Western novels. I can remember visiting my grandfather and him giving me several large grocery bags full of paperbacks by Elmer Kelton<\/a>, Louis L\u2019Amour<\/a>, and many others. So, for me, writing about the West is like coming home. I like how it feels to journey there, and I enjoy the legendary nature of it.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

What is the biggest challenge in writing the West?
\n<\/strong>*
\nRussell Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0 I suspect it\u2019s avoiding the easy clich\u00e9s we\u2019re all familiar with \u2013 the gunslinger at high noon, the prototypical gambler, the fast-talking snake oil salesman. Sadly, these clich\u00e9s, so overused, are difficult to avoid, since they\u2019re part of the story landscape we all grew up with.
\n*
\nHow have your novels and\/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?<\/strong>
\n*
\nRussell Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019d say the process is smoother from a technical standpoint, but realistically speaking, it changes every time because every story is different.
\n*
\nAction-adventure, science fiction, western… whichever genre you are writing in, your books all seem to have that “western sensibility” (as the name of your blog<\/a> suggests). What does it mean to have a western sensibility in writing?
\n<\/strong>*
\nRussell Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0 Hmmm. It\u2019s funny that you mention the blog. I started with a blog called Western Reason, which was strictly focused on western-related topics. Then I went to Western Sensibility because I wanted to expand to broader topics like politics. My feeling is that a western sensibility in writing means an appreciation, perhaps, of both the mythic or iconic or even epic nature of storytelling, but also an appreciation for common sense. I try to bring a \u201ccowboy\u201d approach to my work, no matter what genre it is I\u2019m working in. Interestingly enough, I\u2019m launching (yet another) new blog this summer, because I\u2019m expanding again — but the sensibility of the blog will still be very western.
\n*<\/p>\n

What are you working on now, and what’s next?
\n<\/strong>*
\nRussell Davis:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m very busy at the moment, having just signed to write four more books for Gold Eagle. In the western-related field, I\u2019m working on a Jesse James novel that I\u2019m very excited about. I have several young adult projects in the works as well. In July, and then again in November, I have western anthologies that I edited with Martin Greenberg<\/a> coming out \u2013 the first one is Ghost Towns<\/em> and the next one is called Law of the Gun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jeremy L. C. Jones <\/em><\/a>is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.\u00a0 Jones is a frequent contributor to <\/em>Clarkesworld Magazine<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 He is also the director of <\/em>Shared Worlds<\/em><\/a>, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and <\/em>Jeff VanderMeer <\/em><\/a>designed in 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn a lot of ways, Westerns are the most American of stories,\u201d said novelist and editor Russell Davis, \u201cbut I think what any writer might gain in reading good westerns is a sense of landscape and how important, even critical, landscape can be to a story.\u201d And in Westerns, that landscape is often presented on an epic scale, regardless of how short or long the novels is. Russell Davis writes across the genres under his own name and a variety of house names.\u00a0 I first encountered his fiction with Fire Zone, an action-adventure novel in Don Pendleton’s Executioner series.\u00a0 A new writer to a long-running series, Davis brought a Western feel, including richly descriptive prose, hard-hitting action, and a sureness, to a series that can be a little uneven from month-to-month.\u00a0 After I read Fire Zone, I looked up Russell Davis.\u00a0 And that\u2019s when things got interesting\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}