Larry D. Sweazy - A Pantser who Plots

This next interview is with Larry D. Sweazy, an award-winning author of Westerns, Mysteries, and more.  I love that he is a Pantser who also does some plotting. These interviews give the reader and writer an insight into the process of various writers and the work that goes into telling a story on the page. Read on, there is so much to learn.

Author Larry D. Sweazy

1. When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? 

I was an early reader, but I really fell in love with stories via the television. We had a black-and-white nineteen-inch Motorola with rabbit ears (with aluminum foil on the tips) that brought the outside world into our one-bedroom apartment. It was the 1960s, so there were a lot of Westerns on TV at the time, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and my mom’s favorite, The Big Valley. I liked Batman, but I didn’t fall for Star Trek or cops shows like The Mod Squad and Mannix until I was older. All of those shows were an escape, and I found the same kind of escape in books. It wasn’t until eighth grade when a poem that I’d written to a girl got intercepted by a teacher that I began thinking I might be able to write. He held me after English Lit class, told me the poem was pretty good, gave me a few books to read, and suggested that I pay attention in class. I did. It was the first good review I had. “You’re pretty good at this,” can go a long way to a small-town kid with no other visible talents.  I continued to write poetry in high school, and then after I left home, I pretty much decided that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. At that point, in my early twenties, everything I did, read, and invested in, revolved around becoming a published writer. 

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2. Did you chose the genre you write in or did it choose you?

Interesting question. I didn’t start out writing westerns, or mysteries for that matter. I started writing short stories, some speculative fiction, some horror in the Stephen King vein. Carrie came out while I was in high school, and I was an instant King fan. I still admire his work and his dedication to the craft and the writing life. I moved on to writing novels after a few years, and the third unpublished novel I wrote was a modern-day police procedural. There was a mystery conference not far from where I lived, and I attended out of curiosity, hoping to learn more about the genre. That conference really changed the direction I was heading. Once writers were real and in-person, the writing dream seemed more possible than it ever had. I tried writing mysteries for several years after that with no luck. I came close a couple of times, but I just couldn’t find a way to get published. Fate intervened a few years later. Or being in the right time, right place. Whatever you want to call it. A little luck brought an invitation to me to write a short story for a Marty Greenberg/Ed Gorman anthology. Ed asked me to write a modern-day Texas Ranger mystery short story and I did. It came out in a western anthology, with my story being the only modern story in the collection. I thought I was writing a mystery. That story, my first professionally published short story, went on to win the WWA Spur Award for short fiction. I was shocked. I went to the conference, met some amazing writers like Elmer Kelton, Don Coldsmith, and Loren Estleman, and a new world was introduced to me. But, of course, it wasn’t a new world. I had loved all of those western TV shows and movies as a kid. My first published novel (but the seventh one I’d written) was The Rattlesnake Season, the first book in the (seven-book, so far) Josiah Wolfe series. I would say westerns chose me, but maybe I was destined to write westerns from the beginning.  

3. Do you write in other genres? 

So far, I have published eight westerns and eight mysteries. But it depends on how you look at each novel. Most of my novels have elements of both genres in them, western and mystery, so the lines become blurred as far as I’m concerned. Genre gets defined by other people, librarians, publishers, booksellers, etc. And I don’t mind working in the confines of genre—just like I’m sure John McEnroe didn’t mind playing tennis inside the tennis court. It’s what a writer brings to the table that counts. What I love more than anything is story. And most of my stories involve characters on their own, facing the elements of nature, the harshness of life, loss, the cruelty of humans, all the while doing their best to survive, and being productive people making a contribution to the greater good. I like stories about reinvention and survival. Westerns are a great place for that kind of tale. But so is science fiction, horror, and every other genre. At this point, I hope to continue to grow and get better as a writer, and I think writing in other genres helps to keep me fresh, but I also think there’s a wide palette to work off of when it comes to writing westerns. I have a lot more stories to tell. 

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4. Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a pantser who plots two or three chapters ahead. I usually work off a synopsis of the story while giving myself permission to stop in and take in the view or visit someplace that looks interesting that I didn’t know existed when I started out. I think there has to be room for spontaneity, but I also like to know where I’m going (most of the time) when I pull out of the garage to take a trip or sit down to write a story. E. L. Doctorow said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” I think that pretty much covers how I write.

 

5. Is there a writing routine you follow or do you write when the muse strikes?

I grew up in a factory town and come from a blue-collar background. Punch in, punch out, show up every day or you don’t get paid. Slack off and you lose your job. I show up everyday. That’s pretty much my routine. I write a thousand words a day, five days a week, and most times seven days a week when I’m writing a first draft. If I waited for the muse to strike, I’d never hit a deadline. I would get distracted by something else. Oh, look a squirrel! I’m curious about everything. I have to be disciplined and regimented in most all of the aspects of my life, or I would just sit and watch the birds at the birdfeeder all day (or the squirrels) and get nothing done.

Amazon

6. Where did you get the idea for your latest release and tell a bit about the story?

I really wanted to explore a western hero who is a hero until he screws up. Then what is he? Lost Mountain Pass is the first book in my new series from Kensington featuring Trusty Dawson, a Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1888 Indian Territory. Trusty makes a fatal mistake while escorting a federal judge home from a trial and spends the rest of the book trying to redeem himself and regain the meaning of his name. I wanted to defy expectations a little bit. Trusty is not the usual western hero. I know that’s a risk, but I’m hoping readers will enjoy the ride, all the while experiencing the expected trappings of what a western is supposed to be and what a western can be. 

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7.  What advice would you give to those who dream of writing, or what advice would you give your younger self?

Don’t be desperate to get published. If you’re going to be desperate about something, be desperate about becoming a good writer. Be willing to serve an apprenticeship. No one is a master craftsman out of the gate. Don’t publish until you’re ready. Just because you can publish your work doesn’t mean you should. You won’t avoid rejection. If you self-publish and have no sales, that’s rejection. If you send your work out too soon to an agent or publisher and get rejected, that’s part of the journey for us all. Rejection is part of the deal. I still get rejected. I have a project out on submission right now that’s been rejected thirty-four times. Writing doesn’t get any easier. It’s a long-haul proposition. But if you stick with it, don’t let anyone or anything discourage you, then maybe luck will find you sitting at your desk. Maybe luck will ask you to write a story for them. You never know where that bit of luck will take you. But you have to be ready. And the only way to be ready is to write. Read and write. That’s the secret. Read and write as much as possible, and don’t give up, no matter what.  

I hope you enjoyed this interview and perhaps learned even more about this career we call writer/author. 

Amazon Author Page

http://www.larrydsweazy.com/

Follow on Twitter: @larrydsweazy 

http://www.facebook.com/larrysweazyauthor

Post (c) by Doris McCraw All Rights Reserved

Sample 2: Six-guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas

 For Halloween Western Fictioneers presents a sample of a second story in Six-Guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas

The Longest Night 

by Larry D. Sweazy

LARRY D. SWEAZY won the WWA Spur Award for Best Short Fiction in 2005, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction 2011 and 2012, and was nominated for a SFMS Derringer award in 2007. He has published over 50 articles and short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; The Adventure of the Missing Detective; Boys’ Life; Hardboiled, and other publications and anthologies. Larry is the author of the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (Berkley). He is a member of MWA (Mystery Writers of America), WWA (Western Writers of America), and WF (Western Fictioneers). Larry lives in the Midwest, with his wife, Rose, two dogs, and a cat. www.larrydsweazy.com

 The flames had died down, leaving only the glowing orange coals to give off any heat. Neither man noticed; they were fast asleep after a long journey. But the wolves noticed. They could smell the meat of a fresh kill, see the white-tailed deer strung up from a gangly cottonwood by its hooves, left, oddly, to bleed out overnight.

The alpha, a stoic gray wolf, his fur dotted with more than a fair share of scars, padded around the perimeter of the makeshift camp as softly as he could. The deer felt like bait left out to draw in the pack. Something wasn’t right. The behavior of the humans was unusual—or the alpha assumed they were stupid. Unaware of the way of the world beyond the fire.

The rest of the pack stood in wait, just beyond the shadows, listening for the grunts and growls that would command them into action.

The deer was easy pickings for a pack this size, bound and hung like it was, the hard work of the kill already done for them. There were twelve wolves in all, most of them hungry—but not starving. The pack was glad to see, and feel, the depths of winter, when the hunting was easier. The sick and tired were less of a challenge, less trouble to bring down. Especially the bison, weak, and caught knee-deep in snow. The snow season was more bountiful, but some of the pack still longed for the long days of summer when the sun offered more time to play—and kill.

There was snow on the ground, but not so much that it was difficult to walk. The leaves had turned to gold on the aspens and fallen to the ground, urging the elk to move to higher ground, off the moraine, more than two moons ago. The bison had begun to move, too, albeit slowly, gobbling at what tender roots they could find under the snow. All in the world was right, progressing along the way as it should. Except for the presence of the humans.

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Review of Six-Guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas

. . . VERDICT This anthology lives up to its claim of being "the most unusual Western Christmas anthology every published." For horror and Western aficionados.       Library Journal Review

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Six-guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas

 

Now Available

Put on your Santa hat and saddle up for this collection of creepy Christmas stories from the Western Fictioneers, the world's only organization of professional authors devoted solely to Western fiction. 'Tis the season for ghosts, vampires, monsters, aliens, and other bizarre creatures to make these Old West holiday tales truly special. Legendary Western author Robert J. Randisi spins the spectral yarn of "Sheriff Santa and the Ghost of Two Gun Jim". Peacemaker and Spur Award winning author Troy D. Smith takes the reader on a murderous Christmas journey to "Bitter Mountain". New York Times bestseller and Peacemaker Award winner James Reasoner writes about a strange encounter on the Staked Plains in "Presents for One and All". Larry D. Sweazy, two-time winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western fiction, tells the story of an epic battle between good and evil in "The Longest Night". An isolated stagecoach station under siege by Apaches is the setting of Cheryl Pierson's "The Keepers of Camelot", a tale of rebirth and redemption. These and many other stories by some of today's top writers in the Western field make SIX-GUNS AND SLAY BELLS the most unusual Western Christmas anthology ever published.

SIX-GUNS AND SLAY BELLS is the newest anthology from the Western Fictioneers.  Founded in 2010 to promote the oldest genuine American art form, WF is the only writers organization composed entirely of professional authors of traditional Western fiction.  Its worldwide membership includes best-selling, award-winning authors as well as the brightest up-and-coming new stars in the Western field.

SIX-GUNS AND SLAY BELLS is a collection of 15 Christmas-themed original Western stories with paranormal elements including ghosts, vampires, monsters, and aliens. The best-selling, award-winning line-up of authors includes Robert J. Randisi, Chuck Tyrell, Troy D. Smith, C. Courtney Joyner, Matthew P. Mayo, Douglas Hirt, James Reasoner, Jerry Guin, Charlie Steel, Clay More, Cheryl Pierson, Larry D. Sweazy, James J. Griffin, Christine Matthews, and L.J. Washburn.

Western Fictioneers previously published THE TRADITIONAL WEST, the largest anthology of all-original Western fiction ever published, which met with critical acclaim and included the Best Short Fiction winners of both the Peacemaker Award, given by WF, and the Spur Award, given by the Western Writers of America, as well as several other finalists for those awards.  Earlier this year WF published BLOODY TRAIL, the first book in the Wolf Creek series of collaborative novels with more to come.

This is an anthology you're not going to want to miss. Trade paperback only $12.00 E book $2.99.

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Publisher Weekly Reviews Six-guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas

According to this entertaining collection, Christmas in the Old West includes ghostly saloons, cryptic phrenological snake-oil salesmen, nightmarish men in black, ferocious Apaches, and ornery drunks. In Douglas Hirt's "Christmas Wraiths," tall tales turn true. A Texas Ranger and Santa Claus (calling himself Pop Edmunds) team up to defeat desperadoes and please children in James Reasoner's "Presents for One and All." The West is the staging ground for the eternal battle between good and ill in Cheryl Pierson's "The Keepers of Camelot." Even a monster helps secure justice in L.J. Washburn's "A Creature Was Stirring." The spirit of giving finds an impressive incarnation in Charlie Steel's "Joshua's Voice," in which human influence on the western landscape poses somber questions about the Great Frontier and extends the reach of this seasonal collection.

Six-guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas will be available October 31st in Trade paperback ($12.00), and for Kindle ($2.99) and the Nook ($2.99).

Sweazy Won The 2011 Will Rogers Medallion Award

Larry D. Sweazy's novel, The Scorpion Trail (Josiah Wolfe #2), has won the 2011 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction.

The Will Rogers Medallion Award is presented each year to those books that represent an Outstanding Achievement in the publishing of Western Literature. They are books that exemplify outstanding excellence in content and design with an enduring quality that preserves and celebrates the history and spirit of the West and the memory of Will Rogers.

Congratulations Larry!

Review of Larry D. Sweazy's The Badger's Revenge

SWEAZY, LARRY D. The Badger’s Revenge. Berkley Publishing. Softcover, 320 pps., $6.99. ISBN 9780425240489.


The third book in Sweazy’s Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series, The Badger’s Revenge, is aptly titled, as the book serves up that cold dish left, right, and center. It also whips up a mess of guns, heat, trail dust, Texas Rangers, Comanche Indians, and people stuck in hard-luck lives, doing their best with the cards they’ve been dealt. This time out, Josiah Wolfe has a price on his head. He is dogged by two Comanche scouts, a murderous Irishman nicknamed The Badger, and the whiff of something—or someone—unseen and dangerous.

It’s a pleasure for me to sink back into the dusty, dangerous, and complex world of everyman Josiah Wolfe. His rich inner monologues, his self-doubts, and his moments of emotional vulnerability counter the convictions that form who he is and what he stands for. But in The Badger’s Revenge, that rigid moral core threatens to fill him completely.

As with all of Sweazy’s characters, Wolfe is refreshingly human. Even the bad guys aren’t wholly bad, they’re driven by understandable, if unacceptable, impulses. Wolfe is still plagued by a bloody war and the brutal deaths of his wife and daughters. His young son is a constant reminder of what should have been, and his trying friendship with Scrap Elliott hints at something unknown, but looming.

The Badger’s Revenge is a richly layered story that offers twists and turns that dare the reader to speculate who is guilty and why. There is blood, killing, deceit, anger, mistrust, and betrayal and, in the midst of it, Josiah Wolfe does his best to keep it all at arm’s length as he tries to make sense of the mayhem, even as bullets whistle by his ears. My only complaint is that since I have grown so fond of these characters and Sweazy’s artful unfolding of their predicaments, I have to wait for the fourth book before I find out what happens next.

—Matthew P. Mayo

Writing the West When You Don’t Live There

By Larry D. Sweazy

I didn’t grow up in the West. There were no mountains with snow-capped peaks outside my window, or streams brimming with cutthroat trout, or elk grazing on the moraine. I didn’t know what a moraine was when I was a kid.

Instead, there were corn fields. Miles and miles of them. Acre after acre of giant, tall grass, always reaching for the sky during the day, and aching and moaning as it grew at night. Beyond the corn fields was a park. Mounds State Park. I could see Indian burial mounds from my back yard. We hunted for arrowheads in the fields after it rained.

There were shallow rivers and creeks that ran high and fast in the spring, and low and dry in the summer. No cascading waterfalls, no deep glacial lakes. The land was as flat as a pancake. You could see a storm coming from miles away. Still, there were trees; maple, oak, sycamore, elm, towering to great heights in what remained of a once great and endless forest.

White-tail deer were an uncommon sight, and the only animals we saw regularly were squirrels and chipmunks. Eagles were on coins, not in the sky. And the only cowboy I ever saw was Cowboy Bob who came on TV at 3:30 in the afternoon to introduce a half hour of cartoons; original Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Popeye.

The West came into our house, at night, like a welcome guest, offering a pleasant relief from the trials of the day. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley, and The Wild, Wild West, were in their first-runs. Marshal Dillon, Ben Cartwright, and James West were indelibly imprinted on my young mind. And then there were the movies, westerns all day on Saturday with Audie Murphy or John Wayne, or at the drive-in on Saturday nights. We made grocery sacks full of popcorn, sat under the stars, stared up at that big screen and learned how to dream.

It didn’t matter that Monument Valley was not outside my window...the entire West was alive and well in that little black and white box that sat in the corner. TV was not an idiot to me, it was a window to the world.

And later, though not that much later, the West came into my house by way of books, another window, and escape. I was lucky to grow up in a house where books were welcomed, traded back and forth among friends and family like little gifts, intended to make life a little better. Stories shared together were treasures, that were far and few between, otherwise.

Paperbacks were often worn, creased and dog-eared, the books fully used up before they were put on the shelf for the final time, generally Scotch-taped together. I was lucky that what I read was not censored. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Mandingo was out of the question, but Raymond Chandler and Jack London weren’t, and I tackled them at a younger age than I probably should have. Elmore Leonard was an early influence, too. Imagine my thrill the day, years later, when I got to pick up the phone and call the man, and spend almost two hours talking about his books and writing. Talk about a full-circle moment.

My first big trip as a kid was when I was 14, and I went to Austin, Texas, to spend time with my sister and brother-in-law who had been transferred there. Texas, I tell you, was the promised land. Big hats, big boots, big everything. I expected to see John Wayne saunter around every corner. It was like home, except the grass felt different on my bare feet, and the air was not as heavy, just hotter. Hotter than I had ever experienced before. And holy crap, you could drink Dr. Pepper and eat Moon Pies, and it meant you were normal. Folks where I lived turned their noses up at Dr. Pepper. Leaving Texas was hard, because I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see on that trip. No Alamo, no Chisum Trail. No Texas Ranger. Next time. It would have to wait.

And it wouldn’t be long. Basic Training for the U.S. Air Force took me to Lackland AFB in San Antonio. Back to Texas three years later after that first trip. This time I was 17, and I wasn’t on a sightseeing tour. Then off to North Dakota, Lewis and Clark country, and then back to Texas for four more years.

And then back home. East of the Mississippi. To plant roots. Settle in. Grow up and start chasing the dream.

I would always feel part Westerner, part Texan, part wanderer. Books, TV, and Movies went with me everywhere I went. A.B. Guthrie, Owen Wister, the classics, as well as the paperbacks that hit the book racks at the 7-Eleven every month. I knew I wanted to be a writer from a young age, knew I wanted to tell stories about quests and adventures, but that’s another story. It’s not a mistake that I ended up writing westerns, it just took me a little while, and a big nudge from the universe, to figure it out.

I’ve been back to the West many times since, traveling, sightseeing, but never putting my boots under the bed for very long. Someday, I may live there again. Retiring in Texas has a nice ring to it. I have a feel for the land, know the people, and the past a little bit. That helps, I think, to be comfortable.

The West still comes into my house. Movies. Books. Art. And from books that I write myself, now. I may sit at a desk and view the West from a distance, but I’m about as close as one can get without being there.

I miss the West everyday, but I get to ride the Hill Country alongside my protagonist, Josiah Wolfe, a Texas Ranger in 1874, trying to make a life for himself. The red-tail hawks soar overhead while the jack rabbits scamper for cover. Rattlesnakes ready for their prey on the shady side of a rock, and rooter skunks dig for food for their young. I listen for the fight for survival that will surely ensue, and I swear I can hear the whimper of death as the skunk succumbs. Leander McNelly lives in my world, and Juan Cortina and John Wesley Hardin, too, along with a host of made up characters, but all true Texans, I promise you.

I don’t apologize for writing about a place I don’t live in. I’ve been there, spent time there, and I go there everyday in my imagination, and with the extensive research I do for each and every book that I write. The cool thing is, nowadays, I get to bring people along with me.

Larry D. Sweazy (http://www.larrydsweazy.com/) is the author of the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (Berkley). THE RATTLESNAKE SEASON and THE SCORPION TRAIL are available at bookstores everywhere. The third book in the series, THE BADGER’S REVENGE, will be released in April, 2011. He lives in Noblesville, Indiana, with his wife Rose, two dogs, and a cat.