Thoughts - The West and The Western

Post by Doris McCraw - aka Angela Raines

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As the planet continues its journey around the star we call the Sun, I have spent time pondering Westerns, Awards, Exclusion, and Inclusion. 

I believe sometimes we get caught up in our own worlds, be that the worlds of our own creation, or perhaps the things that are happening in the world around us this in no way is diminishing the importance of those worlds to a person. At the same time, it seems that as we talk about the "demise" of the Western, which does not seem to happen. It may be our definition is a bit narrow.

We all have those stories that we grew up on. I remember watching 'Have Gun Will Travel' and purchasing the children's book version of one of the stories. I remember seeing my grandfather's paperback books. Those with the rough, formidable male, with pistol drawn, protecting the weak, timid female on the cover. As I got older I read many of the stories from the 40s and 50s up through the present day. 

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I've often wondered why writers of Western Romance shy away from the Adult Western? Why do readers and writers of these various sub-genres of the Western think that they're exclusive in the stories they love? It never made sense to me that Western Romance had to be put in Romance or Adult Westerns were sometimes excluded from various outlets. 

Much like other genres, the Western is the story of the human condition. Sometimes, the endings may be heart-wrenching while other times it's a happily ever after. One is not exclusive to the other. While not a super fan I enjoy the occasional Zombie Western, Adult Western, and even a Western Romance. I have enjoyed some of those stories and others I didn't care for, but that does mean everyone else has to agree with me. That is the joy of the Over-Arching 'Western' story.

I truly do believe supporting writers who tell the story of the West, regardless of the sub-genre, can only enhance the work of others. 

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We recently announced the Peacemaker Awards. To me, this is a cause for celebration. We are telling the world these are wonderful stories and we invite them to enjoy the human experience that the stories offer. I would love to see the post announcing those awards shared by every single Western Fictioneer member on their own social media. Getting the word out about the commonality and the uniqueness of the West, in my opinion, is important. 

Let's not only share the stories we write but share what our fellow members are doing. I truly do believe that the stories we tell regardless of the sub-genre are a way to let the world know how the people who lived in the Old West overcame their challenges, and those readers, in inhabiting the characters realize they can also survive and thrive.

Thank you for listening. Care to share your thoughts? The more we share, the more we grow.

Peacemaker Award Winners and Finalists

Doris McCraw - President, Western Fictioneers.

Persistence & Patience - An Interview with Vicky Rose

This week we interview author Vicky Rose aka Easy Jackson in our continuing series of Women Writers in Western Fictioneers. The journey to being a writer/storyteller is unique to each author. At the same time, there is so much to be learned from the sharing of their journey.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?  

 

I think a better question would be “when did I start writing without being forced to?” In sixth grade, I wrote a play about Jesse and Frank James. I was enamored with the whole bad boy mystique at that time. Thankfully, I grew out of it—sort of.  

 

In my twenties, I got serious about writing a novel. But I realized that in order to produce something of value, I needed to get more wisdom. 

 

I began again in my forties. Not really any wiser, but more desperate. I didn’t want to spend a lifetime doing jobs I hated. This time, I realized I needed to get a better grounding in the mechanics of writing. I enrolled in college, eventually earning a degree in journalism. The classes I took in history and photography have been a tremendous help to me. Knowing how to research and do the basics of photography are important for writing and promoting.  I wish I had taken classes in marketing, too. Today's authors are expected to be masters of the language and have a flair for promotion. 

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I always have to ask, did you choose the genre you write in, or did it choose you? 

 

I grew up in a small Texas town with a history of violence, cowboy gangs, rowdy saloons, vigilantism, and hangings. I loved its rich history, and there is no escaping love.  

 

 

What or who was the nudge that gave you faith that you could and wanted to be published? 

 

My sixth-grade classmates liked the James play I wrote, but not the second one I did. That taught me an important lesson. You really have to dig deep each time you sit down to write. A professor at Sam Houston State University would put encouraging notes on papers I turned in. “Excellent,” “I love your tart wit,” things like that. I kept those papers and every time I doubted my writing skills, I would drag them out and reread her comments.   

 

Do you think your life experiences influence or hinder your writing? 

 

Every life experience any author has influences how he or she sees the world and what he or she writes about. However, I’m a firm believer that every person is unique and views the world in entirely different ways. My older sister hated where we grew up and used those feelings to build a life as far removed from a small town as she could get. I embraced it and used it as a base to expand my horizons.  

 

That’s why authors can take a cattle drive, a gunfight, a battle, anything in history, and come up with a different way of telling it. The possibilities are as endless as the people weaving the stories.  

 

Tennessee Smith 1 & 2
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Where did you get the idea for your latest release and tell a bit about the story?  

 

I’m producing a movie from an original screenplay I wrote, Lost Pines. It is an incredible challenge, and I’m still working on getting it off the ground. My latest novel is Muskrat Hill.  

 

My golden retriever had died, and people who live alone with one pet will understand the grief I felt. I had always wanted to do summer work in a national park, so before getting another dog, I got a job in the Grand Tetons. It ended up being a disaster. We had to room with other workers, and the girl I roomed with did everything she could to make my life so miserable I would leave so she could have the room to herself. On my days off, I would go to motels in the boondocks of Wyoming to begin a completely fictionalized novel, but one that captured the essence of a small western town.  

 

Eventually, I did leave and let her have the room, came home, and got another dog. It took a long time for me to finish Muskrat Hill and a long time to get it published, but I think it is the best thing I’ve done so far. The misery I felt in the Grand Tetons no doubt spurred me to write about a place in my heart.  

 

I’m not sure how the concept of Lost Pines got started. It’s about a sheriff who had an affair, regrets it, and is allowing his wife to beat him up over it, although she is no angel herself. One of the characters is a spoiled rich girl who decides she is going to champion the cause of an arrested killer. It eventually comes to light that her father is having an affair out of town, and she is subconsciously hoping that by raising a stink, he’ll come home for Christmas. It suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks—once I had done something stupid that embarrassed my father (well, probably more than once) that I always regretted and wondered why I had done it. It made me realize he had probably been doing something that was drawing him away from the family, and in my childish way, I was trying to let him know that I needed him. It brought a lot of healing and enlightenment to me, and I hope it does the same for audiences who see it.  

 

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What is your favorite to write, short stories, novellas or full-length novels? 

Always before, I would say novels. But I’ve produced two short stories recently for editor Richard Prosch, president of the Western Fictioneers, that I found very satisfying. Novels, screenplays, short stories, they all have a place in my repertoire.  Novellas, not so much. That’s like falling between two chairs. Not a short story, but not a novel. In any case, I haven’t attempted one yet.  

 

 

Do you ‘interview’ your characters before or at any time while telling their story and what do you do it they don’t cooperate with your story idea? 

 

My characters have a life of their own and drive the story. I’m just the person who writes it down.  

 

I’d like to interject here how important names are to characters. If the author finds just the right names for the characters, it is much easier to let them tell their own story. It is the emotion a name triggers in the author’s brain every time that name is typed that is important. 

 

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

 

My advice to young people considering a career in novel writing is to get a degree in law or medicine. In those two professions, you are working in the depths of human drama, and at the same time, can make money. Lawyers especially have more free time to hole up and write without really having to answer to anybody while keeping afloat financially. Policemen and firemen are the same; they just don’t make as much money or have quite as much leeway in their schedules.  

 

If a young person wants to write nonfiction, I would suggest going to college with the intention of becoming a professor. Not only will you be encouraged to write, it is almost mandatory. The only bad thing about teaching is that it is fishbowl living with a rather de rigueur mindset, and you’ll have to reach out in different ways to break out of that if you want to add depth and understanding to your writing.  

 

Of course, I didn’t do any of those things and just manage the best I can, juggling between earning a living, savoring life experiences, and trying to write about them.  

 

So many people think they want to write a book because they have a story they want to tell. My advice is, “Just do it.” Persistence and patience are what separates the wannabes from the doers. 

For more information check out the following links:

Website Links:

http://www.vickyjrose.com/  

 

http://www.easyjackson.com/  

https://lostpines.website/

 

The Bodie Kendrick Bounty Hunter Collection by Wayne D. Dundee

Bodie Kendrick is a tough but humane bounty hunter. Sometimes he finds his personal sense of justice at odds with the claims on a Wanted poster. But once he decides a fugitive deserves to be taken in, he'll see the job through—even if it means delivering his prisoner belly-down over a saddle.

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     In that sliver's worth of distraction, Veronica saw the only opening she was likely to get. With desperate suddenness, she yanked the Greener free. Whirling, thumbing back the hammers as she dropped into a slight crouch, she braced the stock solidly against her right hip and pulled both triggers at once. The barrels roared a ground-shaking report and the twin ten-gauge loads hit Tully square in the chest, nearly tearing him in half, lifting him two feet out of his saddle and depositing him like a shredded, leaking bundle of rags on the ground three full yards away.
     The kick of the sawed-off knocked Veronica to the ground also, dumping her unceremoniously on her rump, legs splayed wide in front of her, her head and shoulders threatened by the nervously shifting legs of the chestnut Kendrick was suddenly fighting to keep under control.
     Stung by stray buckshot, Tully's now riderless horse was screaming in alarm and rearing high on its back legs. Mort's and Butch's horses were reacting wildly as well, bucking and wheeling away even as the two men tried to aim shots at Kendrick and the woman. Guns cracked, bullets whined harmlessly wide and high. Mort and Butch cursed.
     From where she sat in the dirt, Veronica frantically reached to draw Kendrick's Colt from the holster of the gun belt she’d stripped away only moments ago. Twisting at the waist, shouting "Kendrick!,” she tossed the revolver up and back in a flat arc. The bounty hunter's big hand flashed out and closed solidly around it.
     Mort and Butch were still trying to get their horses settled down and shoot at the same time.
     Kendrick's first bullet hit Mort in the right hip; his second one, a split second later, hit higher, just under the right armpit, and knocked the Circle G man out of his saddle.
     Butch, in the meantime, got off two more wild shots.
     Kendrick's aim shifted. His third bullet caught Butch in the pad of muscle just above his left collarbone. Butch toppled away with a loud grunt of pain.
     It was over. A matter of seconds.

You can pick up this exciting collection by Wayne D. Dundee at Amazon for only 99 cents!

The Story Behind the Unfinished Story

Writers have their own kind of jargon.

People who write without a formal outline on hand sometimes refer to themselves as “pantsers” as in “writing by the seat of the pants.” Or we say that we “write into the dark.”

This month you might hear your normally lucid and rational writer friend start babbling about “NaNoWriMo” —which stands for National Novel Writing Month, a time when some hunker down during the holidays to finally finish that WIP.

And there’s another one! (WIP is—of course—an acronym for Work in Progress.)

The piece of jargon I’ve been thinking about today is “Trunk Story.” How many of you reading this have a trunk story you could dredge up, probably within a few minutes? How many of you have more than one?

Here’s another question. Should a Trunk Story be complete?

Is it a finished work, but put away in the trunk—nowadays usually an electronic trunk—because it didn’t find a home or was deemed unworthy?

Or, like old scraps stashed away in a quilter’s horde, is a lot of the material in your trunk in pieces?

Three years ago, I started on one such scrap, a story called “If Stars Hate Wire.”

It started off well enough. It ended without an ending. Or and ending that left me thinking...what next?

Tuck O’Brian and Ron Bruce are two cowboys in 1903 Nebraska, working on the Graham-Jessom spread. Like a lot of ranch hands at the time, they’re forced to deal with a changing landscape. The Kinkaiders are coming, and these new settlers (often called “nesters”) seem to be getting all the breaks.

And all the sympathy.

I had two reasons I wanted to explore Tuck and Ron’s story. One was to take a look at the traditional rancher vs. farmer conflict from the POV of a typical cowboy of the times. I also wanted to write about the general development of the Nebraska Sandhills.

I got a few pages in, enjoyed what I had written.

And just stopped.

Sometimes we stop because we can’t see light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes we’re just not happy with what we’ve done. We don’t like the characters. Or maybe the setting seems wrong.

In this case, I stopped because I realized early on that this was going to be longer than a few thousand words. The scope of the story was more than I was comfortable committing to in the few days I had to write.

Now that it's back out in the open...I'm not so sure.  Please give it a read and tell me what you would do. Would you wrap it up, or continue? Or put it back in the trunk?

Please share some comments, and your own Trunk Story stories below.

You can read the unfinished story “If the Stars Hate Wire,” here.


After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. In 2016, Richard roped the Spur Award for short fiction given by Western Writers of America. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com

The Story Behind the Story: Ida Tully and the Telephone

I'm gonna date myself severely here and admit that I grew up with a telephone party line.

In this future-I-never-imagined, where everybody has instant access to a phone of their very own, the concept of a communications line shared by several neighbors seems almost surreal. But it's indeed how we lived.

The big plastic phone with the rotary dial went off twice in quick succession, and we knew it rang for us. If it went off with one long ring or three quick rings, or any other combination of rings, it was for somebody else. Which didn't stop my mom from picking up the phone to listen to the conversations there.

They say there's no privacy in small towns, but back then there was no privacy in the country either.

So I always wanted to write a story about a phone.

Last week, I had a chance.

I was typing waist deep in a story called "Drowning on Dry Land," treading water. The hero was a greenhorn cowboy with a twisted ankle, stuck with a newborn calf in a flooding creek and more rain on the way. I needed him to find a way to call for help.

Insert handy plot device: a low-hanging telephone line. My hero finds an unlikely branch and miraculously tosses it up, snags the line, pulls it down. The old busybody on the other end notices the phone is out of order and sends a posse from the ranch to repair it. Naturally, they find the hero and all is well.

I typed THE END, reviewed the story, wasn't satisfied with it (did it seem phoned-in?) and archived it for later.

But the image of vexing a telephone busy-body by tearing down the line stayed with me.

So with a new blank document, I sat down and wrote "Ida Tully and the Telephone."

A new story from the fragments of another. Have you ever had that happen?

Ringing in around 2,500 words, this one took three sessions (not counting the original story) --one hour and two half hour sittings.

Please read "Ida Tully and the Telephone" here.

After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. In 2016, Richard roped the Spur Award for short fiction given by Western Writers of America. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com