Charlene Raddon Talks About Her Western Paranormal Romance Novel

Any day a new book is released is an exciting one for the author. I’m thrilled to announce that my eBook, The Scent of Roses, is now available. The Scent of Roses is a sequel to my last eBook, To Have And To Hold, but it stands alone and does not need to be read in order to be enjoyed.

Whip Kincaid, from The Scent of Roses, is the half-brother of Buck Maddux from To Have and To Hold. Whip also has a twin, Cale, who readers first meet in Buck’s story, later in Whip’s. Someday Cale will have his own story.

A touch of paranormal elements made The Scent of Roses a fun story to write. Who doesn’t enjoy haunted houses?

When I first moved from Los Angeles to Utah, I lived in a small town, in an old home called The Whitmore Mansion by locals. This is the abode described as Rose House in The Scent of Roses. No secret passageways, but there were double parlors, two elaborate fireplaces, fretwork, and several porches. The main porch crossed the front of the house, formed a half-gazebo at the corner and continued halfway around building. Besides the kitchen and pantry, there were two dining rooms, formal and informal, and two staircases, one for the family and one for the maid. The second floor boasted of four bedrooms, a large bathroom with a claw-footed bathtub, a maid’s room, another porch, and an “attic” staircase. Before my sister bought this home, nothing had been done with the third floor. After I joined my sister and her family there, we cleaned out the dust from the attic and partially finished four rooms with full ceilings, two with one sloped wall/ceiling, a turret, three balconies, and a fair sized storage area. This became my humble new quarters. All I lacked was a kitchen, bathroom, running water and heat.

Living there was a fascinating experience for a city girl like me. During the winter I shoveled coal into the old furnace and reminded myself how good I had it compared to my mother’s early beginnings in dugout homes.

But, back to my book. Rosalyn Delaney, the heroine of The Scent of Roses, came to Whisky Ridge, Arizona expecting to receive aid from her estranged husband, Josiah Bullock, in escaping the crazed leader of a polygamist cult determined to have her. Broke and at the end of her rope, she has nowhere else to go. But Josiah is dead, murdered the very evening of her arrival. The town is in an uproar, searching for the suspected killer, Josiah’s business partner, Whip Kincaid.

Many questions pop up in the first chapter. Where is the Whip Kincaid? Is he a killer? Is Rosalyn safe there? What causes the strange noises she hears in the night?

Read the book and find out.

I intended to finish my education in Utah, get my degree in fine arts and paint the beautiful and unique landscapes of the State. Instead I discovered romance novels and wound up creating images with words instead of paint. Writing is a meticulous art. I enjoy the challenges it presents. My first historical novel was published by Kensington Books in 1994. Four others followed. Those books are now becoming available as eBooks from Tirgearr Publishing, and an entirely new book is due out in November.

Writing has taught me a great deal, about people, life, and emotions, but mostly about myself. I discovered I love playing god, creating my own worlds, populating them with people I hatched myself, and then sitting back and seeing how they respond to whatever situation I’ve placed them in. If that sounds odd, it’s because you’re not a writer. Characters in a book have a way of taking on a life. At times they refuse to recite the lines I’ve written for them. Often they ad lib. They surprise me, tickle me, infuriate me, and I love each and every one with all my heart. They are my children.

You can find The Scent of Roses at Amazon.com and  learn more about Charlene Raddon at the following sites::

http://charleneraddon.com

http://charleneraddon.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/CRaddon

https://facebook.com/charleneb.b.raddon 

Remembering Louis L'Amour



1908-1988

Louis Dearborn L'Amour (La Moore) was not only the West's best-selling storyteller, he was the consummate Western man, a pattern for the white-hatted heroes he wrote about. Hardworking and soft-spoken, he was proud of his accomplishments, yet despite rumors to the contrary, he was often shy in his remembrances. L'Amour literally elevated himself by his proverbial boot straps, and in the process, left footprints in the marketing landscape that few writers will be able to fill.

Luck had nothing to do with his success, he said not long before his death in 1988. "Nor have I had any connections or breaks that I did not create for myself. I just tried to write the best I could about things I knew."

There are realities that writers must consider, he was quick to add. "No publisher is going to do anything for you that you don't earn. They simply can't afford to. Once a writer proves he can make money, they will often extend themselves. There's no magic, just hard work."

The work ethic was instilled in L'Amour as a child by his parents in Jamestown, North Dakota. His father, a veterinarian and farm machinery salesman, was involved in local politics. He served as alderman of Jamestown's largest ward for many years as well as deputy sheriff, but he lost his mayoral race. "People in small towns doubled in brass, you might say."

Young Louie enjoyed playing cowboys and Indians, and roughhoused in the family barn, which doubled as his father's veterinary hospital. He did more than his share of reading, particularly G. A. Henty, an Englishman who wrote of wars through the nineteenth century. L'Amour said, "It enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics."

 The L'Amour family library encompassed some five hundred books, among them the works of Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, and Poe, as well as popular American and English writers. The youngest of the L'Amour children, Louie remembered reading a five-volume Collier's History of the World while he was small enough to sit in his father's lap.

 "I think all things you read influence your writing to some degree. And if you don't learn anything else, you learn something about living and the use of words."

 His serious reading began at twelve with a collection of biographies titled The Genius of Solitude. "The only one I remember is Socrates, the first chapter, but I remember it well." A book of natural history followed, which he tried unsuccessfully to locate years later for his children. During adolescence, L'Amour immersed himself in books of chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and the history of aircraft.

 His concentrated self-education resulted in boredom with school. "I was just spinning my wheels," he said, "so it was no real hardship for me to leave. I had to go to work to find myself a change." L'Amour left school and Jamestown at fifteen, after completing the tenth grade. Since crop failures were common in North Dakota, and his father's livelihood was linked to the farming community, he decided to find his niche elsewhere. By hitchhiking and riding the rails, he arrived in Oklahoma City to visit an older brother, who was the governor's secretary, but he soon moved on.

"By then I was broke and I got a job in West Texas skinning dead cattle that died from a prolonged drought. They had been dead a while. Some fellow was trying to save the hides and it was the most miserable job, but I learned a lot." The young man's boss was a seventy-nine-year-old wrangler raised by Apaches, who had ridden on war parties with Nana and Geronimo. "He was a very, very, hard old boy but I got along with him fine. He was the first to teach me about tracking and using herbs."

L'Amour left his odorous job, after three months sleeping on the ground and staying downwind from passersby. He had helped skin 965 head of cattle by staking their skulls and tying their hides to the bumper of an early model pickup truck.

 His next job was baling hay in New Mexico's Pecos Valley, across the road from Billy the Kid's grave. He visited the Maxwell home where Billy had been killed, and talked to the woman who offered the outlaw his last meal. L'Amour remembered her as "a pretty sharp old lady who still had all her buttons." He then talked to Judge Cole in Ruidoso, and got to know some thirty former gunfighters, rangers, and outlaws in the area. He regretted not knowing about a number of others.

While wandering about the West, he joined a circus in Phoenix, leaving three weeks later in El Paso. He then hoboed his way to Galveston, Texas, where he hired on as a merchant seaman. His first cruise was to the West Indies, his second to the British Isles. He tried his hand at writing during his travels, but his scribblings didn't include events as familiar as his Western heritage.

 L'Amour's family history is rich in frontier adventure. His maternal great-grandfather was scalped by the Sioux while a member of the Sibley Expedition, following the Little Crow Massacre in Minnesota. Both his grandfathers served in the Union army during the Civil War, and his maternal grandfather taught him military tactics by drawing battle plans on a blackboard.

    The novelist was especially proud of his mother's ancestry, beginning with Godfrey Dearborn, who arrived in this country in 1638, an antecedent of General Henry Dearborn, who marched with Arnold to Quebec. He also took part in the second Battle of Saratoga, Monmouth, Sullivan's raid on the Iroquois villages, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, and the surrender of Cornwallis, among others. Some of the general's diaries were published, and he and his wife corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, exchanging garden seeds.

General Dearborn's son, of the same name and rank, published half a dozen books, but L'Amour was only able to locate one of them, a biography of William Bainbridge, commander of "Old Ironsides." The book was published posthumously by Princeton University Press.

 L'Amour stressed the fact he had never taken a creative writing course, and that his post tenth-grade education had been earned from voluminous reading. While in Oklahoma City, L'Amour assisted Foster Harris and Walter Campbell in their creative writing courses after he began to publish. He later lectured at more than forty institutions of higher learning, principally the University of Oklahoma. He was also a featured speaker for the National Convention of Genealogists in San Francisco.

"I get many questions about people mentioned in my stories—people looking for relatives or family histories—or about conditions at the time, or to clarify some point on which they lack understanding. Few people realize how much language and word usage have changed. Half the nonsense written about Shakespeare would not have happened if people knew more about the language and customs of the time. For example, they write of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, which in those days meant bawdy men."

L'Amour's constant research turned up the little known fact that Wild Bill Hickok's ancestors were tenant farmers on the property owned by Shakespeare. He insisted that credit for the factual unearthing go to English writer, Joseph Rosa.

The novelist's first published story sold to True Gang Life, and a few of his poems were featured in The Farmer's Stockman, an Oklahoma-based magazine. He also wrote boxing articles for a newspaper, sans payment, after meeting two pretty young news reporters in Oregon, who gave him a byline. He was fighting professionally at the time, and knocked out thirty-four of fifty-one opponents during his light heavyweight career. He first stepped between the ropes at age sixteen, and fought more heavyweights than those in his own weight division.

His first short story sales concerned the West Indies, football, rodeo, "detective yarns," and a few Westerns. "I'd grown up in the West and absorbed live background, but I was too close to it. I wanted to write about something far away, you see." He spent ten months in China, and bicycled across India during his twenty years in the merchant marines.

 L'Amour's first big sale was Hondo, originally published in short story form by Collier's Magazine. "Dick Carroll of Fawcett Books asked me to come in, and he said, 'There's a novel here, and I'll buy it.' So I wrote it, and he bought it. Then John Wayne made a movie of it, and suddenly, everyone wanted Westerns."

 The writer had an important decision to make. "Westerns have always been regarded in this country as second rate literature. I didn't agree with that. I never have. The paperback book was regarded as third or fourth rate, and I didn't agree with that either. So I sat down and had a very serious talk with myself. "Do I take the ball and run with it, or do I stay the same course I'm on?

 "I decided to hell with it, that I was going to write damn good Westerns and I would make them accurate. I would show them that Westerns could be history, that they were important. Because to me, this was the most important phase of American history. The Western period, the pioneer period, did more to form American character than anything else done in this country. It should be taken seriously, and more attention should be given to it." The main difficulty he encountered was Eastern prejudice—those in the publishing business raised in the East, with little understanding of life west of the Mississippi River.

 L'Amour did not come into his own as a writer until mid-life, much like English novelist Joseph Conrad, who also spent years at sea before settling down to write. While L'Amour lived in Oklahoma City, he realized "there was something drastically wrong" with his writing. "The short stories I sent out came back like homing pigeons. So I got a bunch of short stories and studied them to see how they were written. I found what I had been doing wrong and that's when I began to sell."

 L'Amour's long-term association with Bantam Books began after his disillusionment with Fawcett, his first publisher, which only produced one of his novels a year. He said, "I have had, all the way along, to lead my publishers, sometimes by the nose. It hasn't been easy."

 Saul David, a Bantam Books editor, told L'Amour he could write three books a year, but it took some persuasion on the writer's part, who liked "to write fast." He admired David's courage and his ability to "swim against the tide. If you told him something could not be done, he'd do it."

 L'Amour maintained the schedule he had worked for years until just before his death, at 81. "I'm not rigid about it," he said. "I work every day, seven days a week, and that's not a problem. However, if something comes up and I want to take a little trip, I do it. I come back and go to work again."

 Rising at 5:30 or 6:00, he'd read two Los Angeles newspapers and The Wall Street Journal before breakfast. His work day then began. At noon he sometimes stopped for lunch, often meeting friends at a restaurant. He said he occasionally went alone at an off-hour to make notes for a forthcoming novel, although he was rarely known to use them. "But, I can discuss it with myself, and the direction the book will follow."

He usually returned to his IBM Wheelwriter after lunch for an hour, or he used that time to read. He would also file mounds of research material crowding his large office. Three-foot stacks of paper neatly flanked three sides of his desk. He had no secretary and didn't want one, because "it would keep me busy finding work for her to do." Only he knew where to file research material so that he could find it. He also answered his own mail, but only a small percentage of some 5,000 letters that arrived annually.

His personal library contained more than 10,000 books, with hinged bookcases revealing floor-to-ceiling shelves behind the visible ones. He also left behind map drawers, much like those on ships, with geographical charts of every country on earth. The world was literally at his fingertips.

 Little physical research was done during his latter years because he had already been there. "Usually I write about places I've been," he said. "I knocked around the world for twenty years, and one of the things I did was file a claim on a mining camp where I had to do a hundred hours work a year to hold it. Sometimes I hired somebody to do it, or miss out on a good job."

Although he only two-finger typed one draft, he admitted to rewriting on occasion. "Usually if I find something wrong, I rewrite the whole page. Occasionally I reread the previous day's work, and that's only when there's been a break in continuity. My feeling is that if one plans to rewrite, one is careless, figuring to pick it up the next time around. I wrote for the pulps and to make any money, one had to produce a lot. I drilled myself in getting it right the first time."

His wife Kathy proofread his work, checking for typos and redundancies. She rarely found misspelled words and no one changed his work, "not even editors. They never have, not since that first sale when the editor sent my story back and said to cut 1,500 words. I thought, 'Ah baloney, I just don't know how I could possibly do that. I hate it." Chuckling, he added: "Now when I look at it, I wonder where all the words went."

 During the mid-1980s, his novels crowded book store racks along with adult Westerns that he hated. "Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, the Brontes, Checkov, Thackeray, and many others, who used sex, did it with wit and charm," he said. "Sex in current books is clumsily done, indicating that most writers really know very little about it. They write like a bunch of small boys out behind a barn. They are crudely lewd. There's no fun in their sex and nobody appears to be having a good time."

 L'Amour advised fledglings to read and write "everything you can. Keep writing, putting words on paper and learn to express yourself. One difficulty I find of people who write is that they don't read enough. And our schools aren't giving enough background in American literature. I think you should have a pretty good idea what's been done before you try to do it. And you can learn some valuable things by writing. I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant."

 A sentimentalist, L'Amour adopted a white dove before his first novel sold. The dove had taken up residence in the novelist's garage and was brought into the house and named Rama-Cita after two deities of East Indian mythology. The name was later shortened to Rama when the bird was found to be male. The dove could be heard throughout the L'Amour's large Spanish-style home as though in an echo chamber, and outlived most of its species as the writer's "good luck mascot."

 Louis L'Amour was visibly proud of his children. His son Beau, at the time of the interview, was a film producer's creative consultant, who wrote in his famous father's wake. His pretty younger sister Angelique also writes. Both L'Amour offspring planned at the time to produce biographies of their father, in addition to the one he was writing at the time of his death. L'Amour wanted to be remembered as a storyteller—a man who told the American story, or one version of it."

 Among his legion of books, Walking Drum, a twelfth century adventure, was the most fun to write. When asked which had been his favorite, he said, "I like them all. There's bits and pieces of books that I think are good. I never rework a book. I'd rather use what I've learned on the next one, you see, and make it a little bit better.

"The worst of it is that I'm no longer a kid and I'm just now getting to be a good writer. Just now."

(Excerpted from Maverick Writers and Weserners: Candid & Historic Interviews)

© 2013 Jean Henry-Mead

Joyce B. Lohse Revisited

Joyce Lohse is an award-winning biographer and journalist, who accepted induction in the Colorado Women Hall of Fame for Eliza Routt, the subject of one of her biographies. Since 2002, she has worked as administrator for Women Writing the West.

Joyce, your books have won quite a few awards, which tells me that you spend a lot of time in research and writing. Which book was the most difficult to write and which did you enjoy most?

Each book has its own set of advantages and challenges. My shortest book, Justina Ford: Medical Pioneer, the first title in the “Now You Know Bio” series from Filter Press, was most difficult to write. Although Dr. Ford was a wonderful character, research material contemporary to her lifetime was scarce. Fortunately, she received recognition and was interviewed toward the end of her life. Through those precious retrospective articles, I was able to find her voice, and learn about her experiences, obstacles, and personality.

First Governor, First Lady: John and Eliza Routt of Colorado, is a personal favorite. For years, I was a journalistic drifter, unsure how and where to apply my writing skills. Through genealogy research of my ancestral cousin, Eliza Pickrell Routt, I found my niche in the world of biographies. Extensive research of the Routt’s lives and characters took about five years. That project also helped develop my knowledge and love of Colorado history. In 2008, I attained and accepted induction in the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame for Eliza Routt. It was an accomplishment to speak on her behalf, and share her story with an audience of 750+ people.

Tell us about your journalism background. When did you begin writing?

I wrote stories and learned the power of the pen at an early age. A poem I wrote about my father riding the commuter train to Chicago each day was published in the local newspaper. Readers loved it. Soon, I was editor of the junior high newspaper, and was forevermore hooked on writing.

Later, at Northern Illinois University, I received a rock solid, old-school journalism education, producing stories with yellow second sheets on a manual typewriter. My specialties were feature writing and photojournalism. I especially enjoyed writing profiles about people and their lives.

For whom do you write?

I write for “all ages.” My titles for the “Now You Know Bios” series from Filter Press, an independent commercial publisher in Palmer Lake, Colorado, makes them accessible to many readers. My simple and direct journalistic style lends itself to a wide reading audience. However, I need to restrain myself from getting carried away. For instance, I acquired enough material about General William Palmer and Baby Doe Tabor to write two or three bios.  Although it was a sad and painful process to remove half of my work from the Palmer manuscript, the book has done well. It received the 2010 Best YA Nonfiction Award from the Colorado Author’s League.

 

What sparks your interest in people that determines whether you write about them?

I enjoy writing about pioneers. It is extremely important that the stories of early pathfinders are shared and preserved in western history. Women’s history is especially important and appealing to me, although I do not wish to be pegged as only a women’s writer, or a feminist. For that reason, I also write about men. I choose all my subjects carefully. More accurately, they choose me. When good stories make themselves available or known to me, I am naturally compelled to share and preserve them through biographies.

What does membership in Women Writing the West mean to you?

Women Writing the West has a hugely positive impact on my writing. When I joined the group, I had one self-published book to my credit. My seventh book has since been published by Filter Press. WWW provides innumerable ideas, education, inspiration, and networking opportunities, as well as role models, friendships, and adventures in an otherwise isolated occupation. I am so fortunate to be part of a sharing community of talented western writers.

How would you spend your time, if not a writer?

My work has always revolved around publishing and administrative skills. For fifteen years, I was a self-employed typographer and pre-press graphic artist. I have worked in sidelines of writing, research, and publishing, but never far from it. Jaunts and outings with friends have a way of turning into research and photo excursions, often to historic settings, and always great fun.

What do you enjoy most about writing and what annoys you?

Research is the most enjoyable part of writing. Finding nuggets hiding in archives, or even in plain view, then implementing them into a story makes my spirit soar. Recently, I enjoyed experimenting with recipes from Baby Doe Tabor’s cookbook. It provided a strong connection with her for my book, Baby Doe Tabor: Matchless Silver Queen.  Also, nothing beats the euphoric feeling, or “writer’s rush,” of finding long sought-after or missing research elements, or finishing the last sentence in the last paragraph of a manuscript after months of hard work.

The worst part is when I prepare my tax return and realize my income is rather paltry. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “so it goes.”  As my publisher would say, “The intangibles, experiences associated with writing, are priceless.” In my opinion, writing is the best job in the world.

Why should the younger generation be interested in our Western heritage?

The American West was built and expanded from the collective courage, hard work, and independent spirits of pioneers, immigrants, and Native Americans. Through biographies, we learn about their accomplishments and successes, as well as mistakes, hardships, and tragedies, which all combined to create Western life and culture. To this day, people in the West maintain a strong pride and independence, which evolved from its pioneering past.

Advice to fledgling Western writers?

Maintain a high ethical standard. Do not cut corners. Respect and protect research materials, and choose sources carefully. Do all you can to locate, interpret, and preserve the truth. Be professional. Mistakes are inevitable. Own up to them, and move on. If you honestly feel you have done your best possible job, then you have.

Thank you, Joyce, for taking part in this series.

Joyce’s website: www.LohseWorks.com

Her blog site: www.Joyce4Books.WordPress.com

Down the Owlhoot Trail with Jes Hays

I've always loved Westerns, so it was natural that many of my stories turned out to be set in the Old West. My favorite characters are the tricksters, men and women who live by their wit, so that was another natural for me. I've had the Chance Knight character floating around in my head since the 70's, and he's starred in many an unpublished tale, but it wasn't until I started pairing him up with a serious, quiet partner that his humor really started to show through.

 

It took awhile to solidify the characters into what you'd recognize today, and to actually get to a point where I seriously considered myself a writer. I knew I wanted the characters to be outlaws - "badmen" who weren't quite as bad as they pretended - and they'd want to be the best in the business. I also knew that they wanted to become gentlemen of leisure, living off the money from their robberies. I just had to come up with plausible stories to get them to each of their goals. Some of the stories were written almost as chapters, with a definite timeline included, and need to be read in a specific order. Some tell the story of how they meet pivotal friends and mentors. Others are just adventure tales, set somewhere along their path to adulthood.

I'd written a couple of stories for JMS Books, and they requested that I write even more, and produce an anthology for them. It took around six months to write and edit all of the stories, and another couple of weeks to fine-tune the anthology until all of us were satisfied with the results. At the same time I was writing the anthology, I was working on a novel about the lads, called Outlaw Security. This will tell the story of how they are blackmailed by the government into going straight; and I'm working on final edits as you read this, so hopefully the novel will be making the rounds of agents and publishers before the end of the year. I wanted the anthology to tell the stories before the novel, when they were just youngsters finding their way along the owlhoot trail.
 

In the Old West, outlaws were called owlhoots because they rode at night, running and hiding from the law. Thus, the owlhoot trail was the outlaw life, and a natural title for the anthology.

About her lateste book: 

 

In the late 1800's, a couple of enterprising young fellows need a way to accomplish their goals: to make a fortune, make an impact, and make names for themselves. They decide that the best way to achieve these is to become Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid, the most successful outlaws West of the Mississippi. These are the stories of their travels along the owlhoot trail, on the way to becoming famous outlaws. The lads rob a stagecoach, run a con game, and teach the locals not to draw to an inside straight. They run into foul weather, hostile Indians, and another band of robbers out to take their hard-earned money. They even join a cattle drive. And in the midst of all the action, the two form a partnership that will last the rest of their lives.

_____

 

Jes Hays is the author of Outlaw Security and the Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid stories. She lives in South Carolina in a house full of books.

Ron Bishop, Part II



Ron Bishop wrote more than 200 pilots during his script and screenwriting career, and formed his own production company with Merlin Olson, among them a number of western projects. He wanted badly to produce a TV documentary about Ed Cantrell, the disgraced Wyoming lawman who shot his undercover agent between the eyes in the backseat of his patrol car. Cantrell was later exonerated but most people to this day question whether he was guilty. Bishop doubted that any of the television networks would air the production because they would shy away from firearms and guns during the 1970s.

 

His association with his friend Merlin Olson began while Olson was still playing football. "We decided to have the business together and have fun doing it. If we weren't having fun, and we found ourselves with knotted stomachs, then we'd quit."

 

Bishop said that he didn't get credit for many of his motion picture scripts, and that the most difficult part of screenwriting is when "your script has been changed by eight or nine different ideas of what was  salable.And the idea that you start with is something in which you have a great deal of enthusiasm, but it never comes out the way you want. It's a helluva challenge and it's not the money so much as it's the idea that sooner or later you'll get one done the way you want. And that leads to all sorts of guys who get tired of being manipulated, and take on the mantle of director themselves.

 

"I'd work at it for two or three yeas and then just get furiously annoyed with the kind of people you'd be around, and just leave for a year or two. Then somebody would say, 'We'd like for you do to something, or I'd come back myself to do something that hadn't been done before, not realizing that there's nothing that hasn't been done before."

 

Between writing jobs, Bishop worked as a stunt man and wrestled professionally on the TV circuit during the 1940s when the sport was immensely popular. "In those days you'd earn fifty grand and if it was a three-fall match, you could bet your first fall any way yo wanted, but the other two had to be manipulated. It used to be some kind of brutal things. And then I was jumping in an air circus and making twenty-two hundred a week . . ."

 

The big guy admitted that he frittered away most of his money, with the exception of buying some land. "I really didn't pay much attention to it as an adult way of life. It seemed that I was around people who were totally frivolous and actually scared about everything they did. I've never been around people in a business where there's less courage and more manifestations of pseudo-courage in an executive capacity--parataicularly as the money gets harder to substantiate. You'll find people who are seeming leaders--who, when you know the snow off--haven't got nothin' there."

 

Bishop wrote "Gunsmoke" scripts as well as one "Bonanza," which,  he said, Michael Landon didn't like. He also wrote for "Wagon Train" and "Rawhide," as well as others during the golden age of western programming. "I'd usually go up in the mountains and just take a dog and a pack by myself for a while to try to get the thing out of my mind--let my subconscious work. And get an idea and come back and have a go at it."

 

When asked about the perils of screenwriting, he said, "Almost all beginning scriptwriters write too much. You've to to pare everything down. You can't have people standing around--the worst thing you can do to an actor is to give him a lot of language in which he's trying to figure out how he's going to be moving on that set to get all that crap out you've given him. You need to pare it down to the most succinct things. Give it the most dramatic edges. You have to have an ear. I depend almost entirely on whether a guy likes music. If he likes rhythm, then he knows the poetry that goes into word cadences, so those words are said just a little bit differently, and it makes it seem like fresh statement.

 

"Anybody interested in screenwriting should get Bill Goldman's book, Adventures in the Screen Trade.  That's a must because it will tell any writer who has had some kind of maturation in this business that he's not alone in all those agonies he has suffered, [which are] shared by all of us, and it's not petulance. It's kind of an academic torture that you allow yourself to go through. I don't think that it's vastly different from what executives in business go through, except that we do create the baby, and if you don't have the baby out there, you have no population."

Remembering Award-Winning Western Screenwriter Ron Bishop

 

1922-1988

Born on a train passing through Toldeo, Ohio, award-winning western screenwriter Ron Bishop spent his formative years on his family‘s sprawling Arizona cattle ranch. He attended Beverly Hills schools during his teens, and roamed freely through southern California’s back county, including the town of Bishop, which was named for his grandfather. After four years with the marines and the American Field Service in Burma and India during World War II, he studied briefly at Stanford University under notable writers such as Wallace Stegner.

Unable to adjust immediately to civilian life, the young veteran was asked to leave Stanford, but he remained in the Bay Area, where he befriended John Steinbeck and John Cheever. Steinback, he said, had also been expelled from Stanford. Some fifteen years later, Bishop won an Emmy for the televised version of Steinbeck’s Red Pony, which he wrote according to the author’s wishes. Ernest Hemingway was another friend during the infamous writer’s last years, and the two men occasionally celebrated their mutual birthday, July 21, at the Hemingway home in Ketchum, Idaho.

Bishop’s first published work was sold in 1946 to literary journals. His lusty western stories earned him $75 apiece, and were gleaned from his ranching background. During his first attempts at freelancing, the writer worked for the Alaska Steamship Company, laid pipe for the state’s railroad, and dog-teamed supplies to Fort Yukon while living in the bush country. When he returned to the lower forty eight, he impersonated San Francisco 49’ers right offensive guard Jim Cox for half the 1947-48 season, splitting the $4,000 annual salary with his gridiron look-a-like.

He also worked as a Holly stunt man, professional wrestler and ghost screenwriter. A former “Gunsmoke” scripter, he divided his time between his family home in Pacific Palisades, California, two ranches near Solvang, California; Ketchum, Idaho, and a mountain retreat in Cody, Wyoming, until his death in 1988. Writer-producer Ron Bishop was interviewed at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, where he was a member of the governing board.

I asked how he happened to get into screenwriting, and he replied that he had been doing some stunt work, and from that gradually began to understand the business of screenwriting. ”Writing for film, that is, because that encompasses TV and motion pictures. The whole process came to me in an offhanded way because guys would come to me, and I don’t know what their problems were, but they had to have a script finished. They really wanted additional dialogue—something to spruce up a character.”

 He was paid cash anonymously for his work and he wrote most of the dialogue for a number of scripts that he was proud of, for both television and film. When asked if he ever found out who he was ghosting for, he said, “Later, I learned who I had been writing for when I watched the films.

Why didn’t he write his own scripts instead of ghostwriting early in his career? “’Cause I liked to write and I didn’t know any better. It was just plain for the money. “

(Continued next week . . .)

Copyright 2013 Jean Henry Mead (also born on July 21)

Remembering "Doc" Sonnichsen, Part II

Doc Sonnichen’s humor and refreshingly honest look at the West’s most colorful characters were in sharp contrast to the work of other writers during the waning years of the depression. His most appealing attributes did little to convince publishers to produce his books.

He said he reacted with “misery and dismay” to his first rejection, “but kept on trying. I found, after further assaults on New York, that I was better at nonfiction than fiction, and that my long wind was better than my short wind. My first book sat on the desk of a New York agent for five years, after which I took it back and sold it to Caxton Printers. They kept it in print for twenty years, and it is still in print with the University of Arizona Press,” he said during our interview in 1986. The agent wrote, more in sorrow  than in anger, that she ‘always had great hopes for that book.’”

The best part of his writing was getting a letter of acceptance, the easiest part revising. “The worst is reading the report of an academic referee—who has not read the book and knows only that if he had been doing it, it would have been different and better.”

Sonnichsen spent an average four to five years researching his books before he began to write, although Pass of the North required thirty years of digging for the facts. Maintaining files on various subjects while he worked on others, he sometimes found that even fifteen years’ worth of research had just scratched the surface. “I worked intensely on the book for another five years, making it thirty in all,” he said of his El Paso book. “Tucson took only five years because time was getting short for me and I had to work as fast as I could. I go along with J. Frank Dobie, who said that it takes ten years to write a good book. It takes that much time to make sure one has all the facts and has had time to mull them over and draw conclusions.”

Doc didn’t follow a fixed schedule and had no idea how much time he spent on his work in progress.  He told budding writers that the secret of success is cultivating the ability to use fifteen minutes,  if that’s all they have. “I try not to give general advice. Each case is different. Much of my effort is spent in persuading people with something to say not to give up because [a major publisher] does not regard their work as suitable for the mass market.”

The Western market, he said, experienced its most dramatic change from the romantic view of the West—pulps, Zane Grey, and formula Westerns—to “stark realism on the one hand and sex-and-violence on the other. This is reflected in nonfiction. The winning of the West is now the raping of the West. The pioneers were not ‘bringers of civilization’, except in Louis L’Amour’s novels and a few survivors. The Indians are not painted demons and screeching savages. They are pre-industrials and in most ways superior to their conquerors. Geronimo has changed from the worst Indian who ever lived to a prophet and priest and savior of his people—George Washington J.C.  Geronimo.”

Sonnichsen composed most of his work on his typewriter, unless “I have to be careful. Then I start with a pencil draft. I do not use a word processor. I want to tinker with what I write and am not interested in turning out the finished product faster. My real reason, I suppose, is that I don’t want to be bothered with learning something new."

His kind of writer seldom worked under contract, rarely with an agent, and was pleased if his publisher produced three thousand copies of his books, paying him modest royalties. The retired professor said he never wrote for money, unlike the West’s “leading pornographers.”

The historian’s most difficult books concern Texas and New Mexico feuds. He traveled the Texas feud belt during World War II, talking to people who resisted his efforts to interview them, and ran “the risk of getting shot” for his efforts. “My salvation was the fact that I knew I was having difficulties or was in potential danger. My honest face and intentions saved me.

“The picture has changed for me. I started writing about feuds because I was puzzled by such patterns of conduct, foreign to my nature and upbringing. Feuds involved all kinds of people and they were interesting for different reasons. I rather like the reasoning of the French in the seventeenth century, who believed that human nature was the same in all ages, and dressed Alexander the Great as a courier of the court of Louis the XIV. I don’t think that any one group of people is more interesting than another,  and they are interesting for different reasons.

C. L. Sonnichsen retired from teaching in 1971, but not from writing. After forty –one years in El Paso, he moved with his wife to Tucson to become a senior editor of the Journal of Arizona History,  more than twenty books before his 90^th birthday in 1991.

Referring to himself as an historian, he said academic critics add the word “popular” to his title, “which is a reproach. I am convinced, however, that it is possible to be scholarly and readable at the same time.”

(Excerpted from my book, Maverick Writers, Caxton Press) 

Remembering C. L. "Doc" Sonnichsen

(1901-1991)

Charles Leland "Doc" Sonnichsen was a humorous and grassroots historian who specialized in frontier feuds,  folklore, gunslingers, gamblers, cattlemen and prisoners. Although he was born in Iowa in 1901 and grew up on a Minnesota farm, he considered himself a Southwesterner.

Sonnichsen was a good student, particularly in English, but math and science were subjects to be tolerated. “My brother and I were chief patrons of the local library and kept the part-time librarians busy. We liked long books because they didn’t have to be taken back so soon. And we read everything,, including the The American Boy and The Youth’s companion. Clarence Budington Kelland wrote a series for one of them, focusing on the activities of a fat boy named Tidd, who was smarter than anybody and overcame all obstacles. We had series books in those days, and I kept up with Englishman Henty and Horatio Alger, Jr.”

Although his farm hovered just above the poverty line, he was able to enroll at the University of Minnesota, where he majored in English literature and creative writing. “I was bookwormish and studious, but I got on well with my contemporaries.” He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1924, and his first job was assistant mastery of St. James High School in Minnesota.

"I had things published in the university magazine and newspaper and I thought about reaching farther, but I never did until I was in graduate school. Then I showered the wrong magazines with poems and short stories and had them promptly returned, to the great benefit of my modesty.”

Sonnichsen migrated to Texas with sheepskin in hand. There he was hired by the Texas College of Mines  in El Paso, following two years at Carnegie Tech. His specialty in English literature was of little use to him at TCM, for he was expected to teach American and Southwestern literature. He wondered if the latter actually existed. Frustrated  in his attempts to pursue his interests in English literature, the young man decided to make the best of his situation. He joined the Texas Folklore Society and was immediately elected president, a turning point in Sonnichsen’s  career.

The young college instructor soon learned why he had been chosen. “For a long time the society had been wanting to hold a joint meeting in El Paso with the New Mexico group, but they needed somebody on the  ground to run the show. The first man from El Paso to show up at the meeting was going to be president, whether he liked it or not.” Sonnichsen had fond memories  of the Texas Folklore Society meeting in 1935, but has been wary of accepting presidencies ever since.

He became well saturated with sand, sun and Southwestern folk tales. Hooked on his new environment, he immersed himself in his research and the Mexican language. His humorous quips and societal tolerance  made him one of the more popular teachers on campus, where he was head of the English department within two years of his arrival. Sonnichsen drew on his musical ability and previous experience as a touring tenor with the Harvard glee club, and generously sprinkled his students’ Mexican-American history lessons with border ballads.

During his teaching career, the wiry professor wrote books of the Southwest. His first, Billy King’s Tombstone: The Private Life of an Arizona Boom Town, was written in 1935, but he was unable to find a publisher until eight later.

(Next week: The conclusion. Excerpted from Maverick Writers, Caxton Printers.) 

A Conversation with Deanna Dickinson McCall

 

The New Mexico rancher recently joined WWA and published Mustang Spring, a collection of contemporary short stories and poetry, with The Frontier Project.

Deanna. what inspired you to write this collection?

The need to share and preserve the ranching culture, it is so misunderstood and underrated. Too many modern stories of the West aren’t real, they’re more of a portrayal of another “Dallas”, with nominal roles for women. The women included in Mustang Springs are true to life, strong and not perfect.

Tell us about your background and how it contributed to your writing.

I’m a multi-generational rancher, and love the life I was born into. I’m also a wife, mother and hired hand. Ranching and writing both take perseverance along with the ability to change at a moment’s notice.

 What was the most difficult aspect of raising children on a Nevada ranch without electricity or a phone? And why for 25 years?

The lack of electricity was the most difficult, it set the scene for lots of manual labor, such as making whipped cream by whipping with a fork, making butter by rolling a jar of cream, washing clothes in the spring and canning lots of food due to very limited refrigeration. It also made for very cold nights and hot days in that climate. Writing letters replaced phone calls, except in emergency circumstances.

We had an agreement with family, and were purchasing the ranch when things blew sky high, and left. We’d made so many sacrifices and invested our youth to lose everything. By then, we were ready for a better climate and easier way of life.

When did you begin writing? And why?

I began writing poetry as a child. My grandparents told stories and poems, sung songs of the old times. Granny made everything rhyme, simple playful things. She encouraged me at a very early age to write down the rhymes. I began to write prose a few years ago, an attempt to write what I wanted to read, things that rang true and would be good reading to people not only in the ranching/western culture, but to enlighten those with misconceptions of our way of life.

 

Who most influenced your own writing?

I’ve had a great mentor, Andy Wilkinson. He taught me to pare and pare again, until only the true center remained. I love Elmer Kelton, his works ring true.

 Tell us about your characters.

There are hardened ranchers, ones who’ve fought the government and can’t change with the times. There are men doing their best to save family and cattle at incredible risk. There are young women and mature women, women who are capable in their roles and who face diversity head on. Women who give birth in a bathtub unexpectedly, women who fight for their lives, and don’t give up when the odds are against them. There are young girls fighting poverty and racial prejudice and there are young boys, growing up in a world confusing to them with ideas foreign to their upbringing.

Are any of your characters drawn from life or are they pure imagination?

They’re drawn from people I’ve known, including family. I may have mixed traits or mannerisms to get the character I wanted. A couple of the stories and characters are based on events that happened in my life.

Tells about “Riding,” which was selected as Album of the Year for 2012 by the Academy of Western Artists.

Gail Steiger produced the album for me.  It is a compilation of my poetry, new poems and old favorites. I was shocked to learn it had won, it has no sound effects or background music. The poems chosen are poems from my heart, ones that bring both tears and laughter.

 Advice for fledgling short story writers and western poets.

Perfect your work. Even after you think it is finished, go back after letting it sit. That is the hardest part for me; I want things to be done! It doesn’t pay, you need to cut, re-work, re-phrase continually. Time and time again.

Most of all be authentic. I cannot emphasize that enough; nothing is worse than really being immersed in reading something and then hit something that is just wrong, such as the infamous maverick steer. If you’re not sure, either research until you know for a certainty it is correct, or omit it.

Your social media links.

https://www.facebook.com/DeannaDickinsonMcCall?ref=hl 

A Conversation with Doug Hocking

 

Doug Hocking is an independent scholar and novelist who has completed advanced studies in History, Ethnography and Historical Archaeology and lives and breathes Way Out West. His principal interest is in New Mexico Territory from the Mexican War up through the Civil War. It was an exciting period when the land was new and isolated from the rest of the country and violence ran at its high mark. Following leads from source to end he is learning about the Santa Fe Trail, the Fur Trade, the Mexican and Civil Wars, the Apache, the Penitentes and percussion cap weapons.

Doug, tell us about your latest, book.

Massacre at Point of Rocks is an historical novel set in New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail in 1849. I’ve recreated the New Mexico of that era and closely followed historic events, exploring the change in understanding of our fathers and heroes that come with growing up at the same time looking into what it means to be a hero in the real world. James White, bringing his wife and infant child to Santa Fe, separated with two wagons from their caravan. Encountering Jicarilla Apaches, the men were soon dead and the woman and child captive. There were numerous failed rescue attempts until Kit Carson was enlisted to guide a mixed battalion of dragoons and volunteers. The heroic scout discovered and followed trail by then a month old. A cavalry charge and a blizzard cap the tale.

Do you write about Arizona exclusively?

I write about New Mexico, southern Colorado and Arizona. I feel more limited by time than by place having, I hope, mastered the 1840s and 50s and understanding the surrounding decades I try to bring them to life for my readers. Tools–including weapons–change, trails change, politics and economics change. I strive to get the geography right, so that places a limit. Fortunately, there are hundreds of great stories within these limits. I’m trained as an historian, historical archaeologist and ethnographer. Shining a light into the cracks and crevices of history, I’ve found that the history we thought we knew is almost always wrong when compared to the primary sources. Too many people become violently angry when you try to correct their vision of the past. I live near Tombstone and know the town and its history well, but I avoid writing about it. It’s easier, and safer, to tell the truth in a novel.

Which came first, writing or photography? And which do you enjoy most?

I won my first photography award when I was 7. By the time I was 10, I was shooting slides to illustrate talks for supporting churches for my parents’ mission to the Jicarilla Apache. I’ve shot many great photos, but what I really do is tell and illustrate stories. That carries over into my writing. Editors and friends have commented on how vivid the descriptions are in my writing. It’s been compared to watching a movie. I see the world through my camera lens and it carries over, but I love writing the best. The camera has limits.

Has your digital camera improved your photography?

The new cameras do everything for you and have an unbelievable range for light and distance. This is both a blessing and a curse. You have to find out what the camera is doing and why and then fool it into doing what you want. The new cameras will take brilliant, in focus, perfectly lighted completely bland photos. Imperfections in lighting and selective focus make for great photos. I’m glad I learned on a film camera; the techniques carry over. But film was expensive and it took forever to come back developed. 

When and why did your start writing?

My mother was always pushing me to write. Her ancestors, who were theologians and college professors, had been writing since Colonial times. My great-aunt was a poet whose love affair with the publisher nearly brought down McClure’s Magazine. The staff became suspicious because her poetry was so bad they couldn’t believe he was publishing it. I didn’t care for her poems, either. I had an obstacle to overcome. My writing was heavily criticized throughout high school and I didn’t think myself much of a writer. In college and the Army, I had occasion to discover that my skills were better than any of those around me. After that, it was a matter of finding circumstances where I had time to write. Army retirement helped with that. Now it has become a matter of having something to say and the need and ability to say it. I want to revive American heroes. Our nation needs them and my heroes have always been cowboys.

Which western writer influenced your own work, and why?

I’ve read and enjoyed a great many Louis L’Amour tales and consider myself a storyteller first as he did. I hope I do a better job than he in getting the terrain right. I wish I could write like Tony Hillerman who did splendid work revealing other cultures. I see people I knew in his writing. It is wonderful how Hillerman can tell us what a Dineh is thinking without making him a white man. One of my favorite scenes is at the end of a ceremonial. A white man has violated ritual and the Pueblo cause him to disappear. When you’ve lived with these people, you know the edge of danger that exists. My favorite though is James D. Doss who writes with a wonderful, dry sense of humor that I’d like to emulate. My writing reflects elements of all of them. I’d be remiss not to mention writers like Will Bagley and Marc Simmons. My bookshelves are crammed with works of history, archaeology and ethnography. These are my inspiration for stories.

Do you foresee resurgence in western book sales? And have ebooks contributed to an increase?

I pray for it every day. Without our heroes we are lost as a nation. It is up to us to create new heroes and bring old ones back to life. Two years ago I watched Inglorious Basterds with a group of college kids. They laughed at the most hideous, gruesome and unforgivable murders. I asked one afterwards why he had laughed. “Killing Nazis is funny,” he said. “But they were only German soldiers,” I told him. “All Germans are Nazis!” This ill-favored mish-mash of history coming from a college graduate is frightening. It’s the reason I think giving a Spur Award to Tarantino is bad for all Western Writers. His work destroys much of what is good and leaves behind a slimy film of lies and misrepresentations. Science Fiction is doing a better job of reviving the western with western heroes fighting with ray-guns on the frontier of outer space. Joss Whedon ought to get a Spur Award for Serenity and the Firefly series.

eBooks are the future. My wife, whose dream is to be left totally alone to read for the rest of her life, is on her second Kindle. Smashwords looks like the best deal for writers even if it doesn’t have Amazon’s distribution.  eBooks are too convenient and you can have an entire library with you all the time. They are going to be less expensive. Smashwords says their average price is between $2.99 and $4.99. You can read in bed without a light and without your wrist cramping from the weight.

Advice for fledgling western writers?

If you’re not already famous, strive to become so. Murder, mayhem and bank robberies sell books. Bill O’Reilly’s books aren’t best sellers because he doesn’t flog them every night on national TV. In the end, you are responsible for promoting yourself and your book. Write everything you can for publication, promote yourself on social media and the Internet, take every speaking engagement you’re offered. I started doing the Facebook Page for my corral of the Westerners who have proven a wonderful source of information and contacts. I’ve posted announcements of community events for every town in southeast Arizona and it’s paid off in more contacts and invitations to speak. Start thinking early about who is going to read your book, why they’ll read it and where they’ll find out about it. Marketing to the world at large is a recipe for disaster.

Thanks, Doug. What are your social media outlets?

I’ve got my own web site and blog, www.doughocking.com. Update the blog constantly with interviews and stories. Use photos to attract attention. The Internet notices the activity and raises your position on search engines.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bisbee-Corral-of-the-Westerners/212363982170893 is the Facebook Page for the Bisbee Corral of the Westerners. Take a look at the kinds of things I post and repost. If I’ve got an important story, I share it in other groups after a day or so. Each time I share, it comes back to the top of the Newsfeed and Timeline.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Doug-Hocking/264649760252852 is my business, or writer’s, Page. I avoid politics and religion on this page because I want the broadest possible audience. I post at least twice a week with photo albums of places I’ve been and things I’m working on. I’m a member of over 100 groups and thus have lots of places to share things if I think they group will be interested. Watch the Timeline and find the best times of day to post. Accept lots of new friends.

I have a YouTube account so I can post videos. Many items on Facebook have been linked from YouTube to my Web Site. That gets people to the www.doughocking.com rather than just posting them on Facebook.

I don’t Tweet. Too many women of ill-repute were following me. What can I say? I’m a handsome guy.