\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
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
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\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
What do you enjoy about writing the West?<\/strong><\/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
What is the biggest challenge in writing the West?
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\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.
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\nHow have your novels and\/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?<\/strong>
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\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.
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\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?
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\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.
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What are you working on now, and what’s next?
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\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
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":"