1. What was your first Western novel or story and was it published?
My first
two Western novels, Riding to Sundown and
Brothers in Arms, were written in
1990... purely for my own entertainment. In those days I buffed and waxed
floors for a living, and would be locked in Wal-marts and K-marts alone for up
to twelve hours a night. I wasn’t paid by the hour, and it only took about half
the time to do the work, so I wound up writing to occupy myself. It never even
occurred to me at the time I could be published. A few years later I got
serious about writing, and decided to do a few short stories to see if I could
get them published and at least have something on my query letter when I tried
to sell my novels. My first short story was accepted at Louis L’Amour Magazine; they took several others too, and I thought
I’d found my gravy train, but then the magazine folded right after my first
story appeared. I kept selling stories, though. In the past year a lot of my
older stuff has been reprinted by Western Trail Blazer, and those first two
short novels I wrote while my wax was drying twenty years ago finally got into
print for the first time.
2.
What Western writer or writers of the
past were the biggest influence on your work?
Louis L’Amour was a big influence; I’d been reading
his novels while locked up in those stores before I ran out of books and
started writing my own. I also loved Elmer Kelton, and often paraphrase his
great quote: he didn’t write about a bad guy in a black hat versus a good guy
in a white hat, he wrote about two guys in gray hats, one trying to institute
change and one resisting it. I like that. I was also influenced by Larry
McMurtry; I like the way he plays with history, and how he uses humor to endear
characters to you before he suddenly visits horrific death and destruction on
them, making you care deeply about their fates. Beyond that, I could name a
whole slew of writers active in WF right now as big influences, and dozens of
classic writers –from Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, and Steinbeck to Stephen King,
Robert E. Howard and Stan Lee.
3.
What's the first Western you remember reading from cover to
cover?
Bowie’s Mine,
by Elmer Kelton. I read it in 1976, when I was eight… it was the first
“grown-up book” I ever read. I read it over and over, in fact, and can still
remember the opening scene in great detail.
4.
Who is your favorite historical Western figure, and why?
This one is a tie. Crazy Horse is
inspirational; he fought for his people and culture, and in innovative ways,
even when many of them abandoned him. I am also quite fond of Bill Tilghman; he
saw it all. Serving as a lawman in Dodge City with Earp and Masterson, federal
deputy marshal in Oklahoma Territory, and still taming oil boomtowns when he
was an old man in the 1920s. He had a sort of quiet efficiency that got the job
done while more boisterous attention-seekers got all the fame and glory.
5.
How much historical research do you do, and how do you go about
it?
It
helps that historical research is my day job. I spent several years
familiarizing myself with 19th century Indian Territory / Oklahoma
for my dissertation, and I plan to use that in future fiction works. Generally
speaking, though, it depends on the project. If I am writing about a historical
figure like Champ Ferguson, I want to get all the details down right. For Bound for the Promise-Land I spent six
months doing nothing but research, filling up several notebooks and poring
through slave narratives before I wrote my first sentence of narrative. I spend
a lot less time on a typical adventure story, but I still read a lot to make
sure I know the difference between point and drag, gee and haw.
6. Who is your favorite fictional character that you have created?
This
one is a tie, too. Both my favorite creations were supporting characters in
Civil War epics, and each served as a conscience for the hero. As such, they
were intrinsically good people, and therefore (to me, at least) very lovable.
The first is Lonnie Blake, ex-slave-turned-soldier-turned-preacher in Bound for the Promise-Land. I wanted my
hero, Alfred, to be a sort of everyman, and torn by conflicting emotions about
life and about racial issues. His two best friends, Lonnie and Chamas, played
the roles of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, each trying to sway him to their
perspective. Lonnie was the MLK figure, and –while a flawed human being
–approached life with love, compassion, and faith. My other favorite was not
quite so saintly –Rains Philpot was the sidekick of Champ Ferguson, the
notorious Confederate guerrilla that I wrote about in Good Rebel Soil. I wanted to structure Champ’s story like a Greek
tragedy: a brave, and likable, hero who has a fatal flaw (in Champ’s case, his
angry passions) which draws him inexorably to a doom that he knows he can’t
escape no matter how hard he tries. Rains is kind of simple-minded, intensely
loyal to his friend, and –despite the band’s violent activities –kind of an
innocent. It’s his voice that tries to pull Champ back from the abyss when he
goes too far. I had a soft spot for him –although his positive qualities were
entirely of my own invention, for the sake of a good story. I’m pretty sure the
real Rains Philpot was just as ruthless as Champ.
7. Who is your favorite fictional character that someone else
created?
Oh,
hands down, Augustus McRae from Lonesome
Dove. They just don’t come any better than Gus. Although I also have a soft
spot for Hewey Calloway, Elmer Kelton’s great cowboy character.
8. Do you make a living writing? If not, what is your day job?
I am a
history professor, currently teaching at Tennessee Tech. My dissertation, which
I hope to publish soon in book form, is about the Five Tribes of the Southeast
(and later Oklahoma –Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles) and
the process by which, in the first half of the 19th century, they
adopted plantation slavery and developed racial concepts unknown to previous
generations in their leaders’ quest to become “modern,” eventually allying (for
complicated reasons) with the Confederacy during the Civil War. I explore what
that whole process says about the connections between racial identity and
national identity, and how each is formed. This pulls together my three fields
of research: American Indians, slavery, and Southern history (Western history,
too.)
9. What do you plan to write in the future?
My next
big fiction project will be a crime novel. I plan to write several short
stories before that, though, to be included in various series of ebook shorts.
I’ll do a couple more tales for the Blackwell Western series being published by
WTB, as well as a couple of mystery series which should be available in the
next few months. One stars a 5th century Irish chieftain, Conor Mac
Cormac, who has a tendency to get involved in political intrigues in the days
of the late Roman Empire –where the murders are never as simple as they seem.
The other series will be called “Dead Rednecks!” and centers on an ex-con in
Knoxville, Hoss Qualls, whose efforts to
keep his nose clean are complicated by his many crazy relatives, especially his
semi-delusional brother who has opened a detective agency and constantly needs
Hoss’s help. Right now I am working on a story for an upcoming Lone Ranger
anthology.
10.
What made you decide to write Western fiction?
I
actually write in various genres: Western, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, and horror.
What success I have had, though, has mostly come from Westerns, and I don’t
think that is an accident. I like to write about characters who face their most
primal emotions. A story set on the frontier is very conducive to that; the
veneer is stripped away, and the primordial comes to the surface. You can cut
through the crap, in other words, and pretty darn quick.
