STORYTELLERS-7: VICKY J. ROSE by Tom RIzzo

Vicky J. Rose grew up a small central Texas town listening to stories about gunfighters, outlaws, buried treasure, and Indians. So it made sense to write about them. And she did. 

In the sixth grade, she wrote a play about Jesse and Frank James. The desire to write pushed her to complete a couple of novels in her twenties that, by her own admission, didn't find the light of day.

About a year after submitting them, an editor finally got around to looking at one of the stories. 

"Obviously searching for something, anything, complimentary, to say about it, the editor said, 'It has a very nice title,' ” Vicky recalled. "I quit writing for a long time, thinking I needed to gather further experience and wisdom before trying again," she said. 

Several  years later, she tried again. This time, the results were different.  

She has written articles for Angelo State University’s Oasis and other publications as well as the anthologies of the Texas Folklore Society. 

Her short story, "A Promise Broken, A Promise Kept," in La Frontera’s Broken Promises anthology, ranked as a 2014 Spur Finalist. 

Lately, Vicky has turned her focus to writing novels.

1. You received an award last year for your short story—"A Promise Broken, A Promise Kept"—which ranked among the top three stories in Western Writers of America’s short fiction category. Tell us a little about that memorable author moment.

I could lie and say, “Oh, I was so thrilled; it was such a great honor,” etc., etc. But my first feelings were of disappointment because I didn’t win the Spur! I had a great belief in that story. 

Later, I did begin to realize what a great honor it is be a Spur finalist, and I am thrilled.  

2. You've written in the novel and short story formats. What different challenges to each present? 

It’s hard not to be too verbose in a short story. Everything has to be leaner. Every sentence, every word, has to count toward the point the author is trying to make. 

I took a class in screenwriting at Sam Houston State University, Dan Rather’s alma mater. The professor had us do an outline and all that stuff first. 

Then he told us our script could only be ten pages long. You should have heard the whining and complaining that it couldn’t be done but it is possible to pare down a story to its basic idea.  

When an author begins a novel, he or she is getting into a canoe and rowing down a river. The challenge is to stay on course, keep moving, and not be led down byways that go nowhere

3. What was the inspiration behind your novel, "Treasure Hunt in Tie Town"?

I had done some interviews around my hometown about local buried treasure legends for a paper I wanted to present to a history organization I belong to. It was turned down, and instead, the woman who was choosing the papers talked about her mother-in-law’s plate collection.

I tweaked it, submitted it to Lost Treasure magazine, and they jumped on it. Later, I thought it would make an interesting premise for a novel. Being shoved aside for somebody’s mother-in-law’s plate collection was the best thing that happened to that story. 

On a broader note, when I sit down to write a novel, it helps me to ask myself, “Who am I writing this for?”

Larry McMurtry stated he wanted to write a really good Western that would debunk the mystique of the Old West. With Lonesome Dove, I think he added even more layers to the mystique of the Old West, but he did write a fantastic novel. 

With Treasure Hunt, my goal was to simply write a really good Western. I don’t know how men feel about it. Women tell me they love it. But that’s the difference between men and women. 

I used to cut hair for a living. Men will say, “Thanks,” and that’s about it. With women, they either love it, or they are crying because they don’t like what you’ve done. That’s the reason I cut mainly men’s hair; I couldn’t take the drama. 

Another novel, tentatively titled Muskrat Hill, has been picked up by Kensington and will soon be published in their e-book and print-on-demand line.

 4. You write both fiction and non-fiction. How does your background play into your storytelling?

I grew up in a small town steeped in the history of the Wild West. After the Civil War, it became a hotbed of violence. It was so bad, Print Olive and his family had to leave and move to Colorado.

I had ancestors with ties to both sides of the law. It took vigilante justice to put a stop to the bloodshed because the law was afraid to even go there.

We knew we were from a backward small town that other people in the county looked down upon even years later, but we also realized we were special because of it. 

While in my fifties, I went to SHSU and later earned a degree in journalism from Angelo State University. Screenwriter and movie producer Frank Q. Dobbs told our newspaper writing class, “English majors read; journalism majors write.” 

 5. When did you first discover your love for writing? Any particular book or film or anything else inspire you? 

I’m not sure about a book or film, but when I was in sixth grade that play I wrote about Jesse James earned me praise from my family and friends. Since I’d never been praised for anything else, I thought it might be something I could possibly be good at. All my life, I’ve been a sporadic writer.

6. How do you approach the storytelling process once you get an idea? Do you plot things out or create as you write? 

I never was good at outlines, but since taking that screenwriting course, I’ve had good luck writing a screenplay about an idea first, and then turning it into a novel. 

They don’t always resemble one another closely when I’m finished, but writing a screenplay helps me to visualize the story I’m trying to tell.

  7. If you could meet one person from the Old West, who would it be and what one question would you ask? 

I would want to talk to my g-g-g-grandmother, Zillah Thompson Jackson, and I couldn’t stop with just one question. I would want to ask her: 

• Why did you allow my g-g-g-grandfather to put a ladder against your window and steal you away on a fast horse when you were engaged to another man?
• Why did you come to Texas? What was it like to be on the run from Santa Anna’s army?
• How did it feel to be so close to the Battle of San Jacinto, you could hear the gunfire?
• How did you tolerate living in fear of Indian attacks?”

And when she answered, I would hope that just a little bit of her courage would rub off on me.

More about Vicky Rose:

• Website 
• Broken Promises Anthology 
• Treasure Hunt in Tie Town

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Western Trail Blazer Salutes Jory Sherman

Rebecca Vickery from Western Trail Blazer has given us permission to shine a spotlight on one of their favorite authors and ours, Jory Sherman.

It's hard to even know where to start talking about Jory. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer, and awarded lifetime achievement awards from both Western Fictioneers and Western Writers of America. Moreover, he had been a selfless guiding light to countless writers at the beginning of their careers (and beyond.)

The past few months have been rough for Jory, who suffers from congestive heart failure and stage five kidney disease. His family has set up PROJECT STORYTELLER to raise money for his medical expenses... you can follow the link to make a donation, and we urge you to do so.

We also want to showcase the Jory Sherman works available from WTB and Publishing by Rebecca J. Vickery, listed below. So by all means, make a donation to PROJECT STORYTELLER, and buy any of these Jory Sherman books you haven't read -you'll be glad you did, and you'll be helping one of our industry's giants.

The Running Gun: Smashwords   Amazon

The Ballad of Pinewood Lake: Smashwords   Amazon

Abandoned:   Smashwords   Amazon

 

First Love, Lost Love:   Smashwords   Amazon 

Bukowski & Me: The Beast and the Bastard:   Smashwords   Amazon 

O Fictioneers!

Troy D. Smith

http://www.troyduanesmith.com/

 Western Fictioneers is a professional organization for authors who produce fiction about the West (bet you didn’t see that coming.) It is not affiliated with Western Writers of America, Inc., but neither are the two mutually exclusive. Many of us are members of both groups, in fact. Why, then, the need for two different writers’ organizations, both centering on the American West? The answer to that question lies in our focus, I believe. WWA covers a lot of different kinds of writing: popular history (the kind you find in such excellent magazines as True West and Wild West), academic history (the denser, analytical stuff one finds in equally excellent journals such as Western Historical Quarterly), songwriting, poetry, children’s books, screenplays, teleplays- including documentaries, biographies, and, of course, fiction. Even under the umbrella of Western fiction, though, there is a lot of variety. WWA got its start, in 1953, mainly promoting the types of traditional Western stories one could see regularly at the time on the silver screen. Eventually, though, WWA authors were just as likely to be producing other Western or frontier-themed fiction: stories set in 1770s North Carolina, or 1740s New York State; stories about wildcatters in the oil fields of 1920s Oklahoma; cowboys in the 1940s; modern-day Cherokee law officers solving mysteries; truck stop waitresses looking for love in 1970s Montana. All these forms, in my opinion, are equally valid and equally entertaining. In recent years, though, those of us who also write the good old-fashioned traditional Western stories that were once the backbone of our genre have begun to fear that our kind of tale –still loved not only by us but by our readers –was in danger of being squeezed so far to the margin that it might fall right off the edge. So we formed this group, in order to promote not just our work but the traditional Western in general, in a more focused way than broader groups such as WWA are able to do.


I decided to write this essay extolling the traditional Western because I, like many of us represented here, wear many different literary hats. I have written a lot of articles for popular history magazines and books, and earn the lion’s share of my bread and butter as a professional historian, writing for academic audiences. I also write poetry, and other types of fiction (mysteries, for example.)


But there’s something special about Western stories. They are one of our primary forms of national myth, for one thing; like England’s Robin Hood and King Arthur stories, Japanese samurai tales, or Scandinavian countries’ Viking sagas. They also provide an ideal setting for generating drama, the backbone of good storytelling. For a truly stirring paean to the Western, see Jory Sherman’s entry that has appeared on this very blog site- I couldn’t possibly improve on it or add to it.


What I would like to do in this space, however, is talk about how Western fiction differs from Western history. I don’t favor one over the other, but I take a radically different approach with each. When dealing with historical fiction, it is very important to know and understand the history in which you choose to weave your story. Nothing drives me crazy as quickly as careless anachronism- a story about Civil War guerrillas that has them using cartridge-loaded Peacemakers, or about Republican Texas with Rangers using lever action repeating rifles. I am also annoyed by the use of words or phrases not in the vocabulary of the time, or stories that reference historical figures or events in an incorrect timeframe. Several of my WF friends can testify that my compulsive historian’s need to make sense of the Gunsmoke timeline strains not only my own sanity but also that of any poor souls forced to endure my tirades about it. Despite all that, I have made my share of historical errors in my novels, and I’m sure all my WF colleagues have done so as well –and I’m sure they all have stories about readers who immediately jumped on those errors, leaving us sheepish (a feeling no self-respecting cowboy should experience.)


Obviously, the need to get one’s facts straight is even more important when writing actual history. This, however, is where the difference between the two, and my diverging approaches to them, comes in. You see, in historical fiction the facts are important, but they are not the most important. First and foremost, you must have a good story. So, then, whereas an author does not want to make the kind of careless historical errors I described above, he or she may consciously decide to –well, make stuff up. Say you were writing a novel about Johnny Ringo. You might choose to consolidate 4 or 5 of Johnny’s real-life friends into one character, just to make the story easier to follow. You might combine several similar shootouts into one scene. Perhaps there is a legend about him that historians have demonstrated is probably untrue –but it’s a fun legend, and you want to use it anyhow. You are not married to the facts. I’ll give you a couple of cinematic examples. The movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp came out around the same time, and covered the same subject. Wyatt Earp was more historically accurate, and more detailed. Tombstone, however, was a better movie –because it told a better story.


It is also an author’s prerogative to intentionally change some historical facts in order to make their story more effective. Larry McMurtry tends to do this. If you are familiar with Texas history, and read McMurtry, he will mess with your mind. If you read Dead Man’s Walk and think “a-ha! Bigfoot Wallace! I know about him, and I know what becomes of him,” or do the same when you encounter Judge Roy Bean in Streets of Laredo, you will be lulled into a false sense of security. Then, when those characters meet fates you did not expect, the scenes will be shocking and powerful –and that was the author’s intention.


I have done a lot of research about the Civil War guerrilla Champ Ferguson. This resulted in a novel and a history article in Civil War Times Illustrated. In the article, Troy Smith the historian was obliged to tell exactly what really happened, as best it can be reconstructed (a word at odds with old Champ.) But in the book, Troy Smith the novelist had two goals: 1) tell a good story, and 2) do my best to show what it was like, and how it felt, to be in war-torn Civil War Tennessee. I could do both these things better by tweaking the facts. Very often, fiction allows a writer to tell a story that is ultimately more true than nonfiction could be. The facts are tools to be used by the artist, whose goal is to strike a chord in the reader’s heart that rings true whether they have experienced the particular circumstances being described or not.


I would like to close with a quote from Oakley Hall’s introduction to his classic 1958 Western novel Warlock. Hall’s words resonate with me, even though I would clarify one point: I think that history, too, is a search for truth beyond mere facts, as the professional historian’s job is to explain facts, not just list them. Here, then, is how Hall described his novel, and how I would describe any of mine:


“The fabric of the story … is made up of actual events interwoven with invented ones; by combining what did happen with what might have happened, I have tried to show what should have happened. Devotees of Western legend may consequently complain that I have used familiar elements to construct a fanciful design, and that I have rearranged or ignored the accepted facts. So I will reiterate that this work is a novel. The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.”


Or, to quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the facts become legend, print the legend.


(Unless you’re a historian.)