Cowboys are cool. Cows, not so much

“A mine is a hole in the ground, owned by a liar.” Mark Twain

I recently saw a college friend for the first time in decades. He seemed surprised to learn I wrote novels. I guess I need to work on that world famous part. 

“What do you write?” he asked.

“Westerns.”

He immediately made a disparaging crack about cowboys and Indians.

I explained there were no cowboys in my novels.

He was incredulous. “Then what do you write about?”

“I write about people … people who happened to live on the American frontier. My characters live in cities, towns and camps, not on the range. They’re miners, businessmen, politicians, schoolmarms, shopkeepers, lumbermen, lawyers, doctors, newspapermen, and they come in all ages and in both sexes.”

“Bad guys?”

“Oh yeah, outlaws aplenty. Otherwise you don’t have a story.”

“And gunfights?”

“Of course. They’re part of the genre. But in six books, I’ve only had one duel where two men stood off against each other. My gunfights are more realistic to the history of the West.”

“But no cowboys?”

“Nary a one. Cows didn’t draw people west. Money laying in the dirt got people to get up and leave home. Mining drew far more people than ranching. The romantic cowboy has been written about since Owen Wister and The Virginian, and cowboys have become the stable of Western literature. When I started writing Westerns I wanted to do something different, so I wrote about mining, instead of ranching.”

Virginia City

I continued, “Cowboys have become such a cliché that most people don’t know that Tombstone was a mining town, not a cow town. Denver started as a mining camp. Mark Twain’s encounters with the Wild West occurred in Virginia City, where $305 million was mined from the Comstock Lode.  (Still, the fictional Cartwright’s Ponderosa gets all the attention.) 240 million troy ounces of silver were extracted from Leadville. Almost all of our ghost towns were once thriving mining camps. Mining was an exciting industry that drew every kind of character to the West.  Wyatt Earp made a career of following the action, and he abandoned cows to chase after silver and gold.”

“So you don’t like cowboys?” He said this with an undue sense of satisfaction.

“I do. Cowboys are self-reliant, live by a code, and are skillful with horses, ropes, guns, and nature. I believe their individualism is a metaphor for an important American value. But others have already written about cowboys, cow towns, and the open range. I wanted to explode another facet of the Wild West, so I write about mining, which allows me to get into bustling cities and the technology revolution of railroads, telegraphs, and electricity. Instead of lamenting the demise of the Wild West, I examine the influences that eventually tamed the frontier.

 “Is there drama in mining?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? Money is power … and the power-crazed chase after wealth with a passion. Mining drew fortune seekers, politicians, shysters, engineers, shopkeepers, and people with every kind of scheme under the sun to separate miners from their money. Most rail lines after the transcontinental contest connected mines to markets. Everybody chased after the money: good men, bad men, and hard cases that enforced the will of the greedy.”

“Okay, okay, you convinced me,” he said. “I’ll try one of your books.”

As Hollywood says, this story has been inspired by true events. That means a conversation did occur somewhat along these lines, but I was much less articulate in real life.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Did McDonald's invent fast food?

I recently watched The Founder with Michael Keaton. I enjoyed the film. It’s an interesting character study and does a good job of telling the McDonald’s story. (I personally think McDonald’s has lost its way, but no worries, In and Out Burger picked up the business model and did it one better by delivering great burgers.) The story, of course, is about the invention of fast food, the bane of the calorie conscious the world over.

However, the concept of fast food reminded me of something I ran across in my research for The Shopkeeper. I wanted to make my western series different from the norm, so I focused on miners instead of cowboys and other traditional icons of the frontier. Mine workers start early in the morning, and I discovered they frequently ate biscuits standing up in a saloon.  This may be the real start of fast food. (McDonalds just slapped egg, sausage, and cheese inside the biscuit.)

Here’s how I used that tidbit of research in The Shopkeeper.

Other meals I eat for fuel, but I dawdle over breakfast—and Mary cooks a hell of a breakfast. Mary ran the restaurant across the street from my ragtag hotel. It was not a restaurant in a New York sense, but nonetheless it was the best place to eat in Pickhandle Gulch. Her small building, plank floors, and long tables were all made from unfinished lumber, but a few touches like lace curtains had softened the rough appearance. Breakfast for miners usually consisted of biscuits eaten standing up in some stale-smelling saloon. Not fancy, but quick. They needed to get to work. Mary catered to the mine owners, town merchants, and people like myself, who had the time and money to eat a slow, hearty breakfast.

As I entered her tidy café, the aroma pulled the trigger on my appetite. I took my usual seat at a table by the window, and Mary sauntered over with a cup of black coffee that suspended its own little cloud of steam above the rim.

“What’ll ya have today, Mr. Dancy?”

“Everything.”

“Everything it is—over easy, crispy, and soaked in grease.”

“You got it,” I said.

Risk taker, Rule Breaker, Game Changer

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Now what?

I've written ten books and contributed to another five. Millions of words, all typed with two fingers. I would have learned to touch type, but I don't think that fast. When I finished the sixth Steve Dancy Tale, I wanted a break, not from writing, but from Steve. Now, I writing a sequel to The Shut Mouth Society. Actually, it's not a sequel, it just uses the same characters. The title is Deluge, and it's a disaster story. I'll vent all my frustrations in relentless waves of destruction and mayhem so I can return to Steve fresh as a huckleberry.

Western Fiction Review reviews Wanted II

New review of Wanted II by the Western Fiction Review. This is a U.K. based website and it's great to get some overseas exposure.

You don’t need to have read any of the previous tales to enjoy any of the stories found here, but you may well find yourself rushing out to read more about some, or all, of them.

Here you will find stories that range from the traditional approach to western storytelling to one that borders on the mystical. There is plenty of action, some shocks, animal stars, and humour to be found in these fast moving tales, so there should be something to satisfy every western reader.

The Western Writer's Group is back, bringing you brand new,
original stories from characters you love. 

Story arcs drive the popularity of TV series. Can it do the same for a book series?

In novels, a story arc usually refers to rhythm of a story from introduction, to big trouble, to resolution. Basically, the rise and fall of tension and emotion in a story. In most novels, this story arc is self-contained in a single book. Not so, for television.

How does a story arc work different for television? Dictionary.com defines it as "a continuing storyline in a television series that gradually unfolds over several episodes." I would add "or seasons." Think about the hunt for Red John in the Mentalist, or the quest for the throne in Game of Thrones, or the feud between Deputy Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder in Justified. In television, a good story arc threads it's way through multiple episodes that tell self-contained stories with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Despite the pervasiveness of the term, everything carried along from one episode to another is not a story arc. "Space: the final frontier" from Star Trek is setting, not story arc. The solution of the crime in Bosch takes an entire season, but this television program is more akin to what we used to call a mini-series. Same for the old television program 24. These are dramatizations of a novel or single story over many episodes. A true story arc involves an embedded, larger mystery in a series of smaller stories. Without closure to this grand mystery, the series is hard to put aside. It's also important that a story arc can be resolved. In fact, it is the promise of resolution that draws in the audience week after week. They want the answer to this puzzle. 

So, can the television style of a story arc help pull along readers of a book series? I'm not an expert, but J. K. Rowling is. Each Harry Potter included a self-contained story, along with the gradual reveal of the Lord Voldemort mystery. Handled deftly, a long running story arc can pull readers through the entire series. The problem is you can't string along readers forever. Readers feel they are owed resolution. The trick is to present this resolution in a manner that is not the death knell of the story.

Crossing the Animas resolves the series-long story arc of the Steve Dancy Tales. It's yet to be seen if I did it in a manner that allows me to reboot the series with a wholly new story arc.

I bet I did. Just wait. See where the story goes next.

The Evolution of a Big Diehl Book Cover

Book covers are a big deal. People really do judge a book by its cover. The Steve Dancy Tales always use black and white photos with only my name in color. For those who follow this blog, you already know my son designs my covers. (I joke that I'm getting his pricy art school tuition back one book cover at a time. In truth, his billing rate to real clients makes me embarrassed to ask him to do yet another cover.)

For Crossing the Animas we picked a great photo by William Diehl. Admittedly, this is a modern photograph, but the subject matter is vintage. Here is the original photo and resulting cover side by side. It may look simple, but there's craft in the cropping and lettering.

We didn't just select this photo on a whim. Here are some of the concepts covers we considered.

The construction of Denver & Rio Grande line between Durango & Silverton plays a key role in the story, and Diehl's iconic photograph fit the plot perfectly.

If you like trains, the Old West, or just great photography, visit the William Diehl website. Here are a couple more samples of his art.

Crossing the Animas

The trade paperback edition of Crossing the Animas is now available. You can buy it at Amazon here.

You might be surprised by the plot. Steve gets into trouble once again. McAllen builds a horse ranch, Sharp finds a long-lost love, and Steve and Virginia plan a wedding. Bad guys aplenty want to disrupt all of their plans. Wonder how it will work out.

Crossing the Animas, A Steve Dancy Tale

Crossing the Animas is available for the Kindle. The print format will along shortly. Center Point plans to publish the large print library edition early in 2018. No contract has been established for an audio version, but I'm sure that will come along later this year.

“Ben Law is tough… and mean. He enjoys taking care of problems for his boss. He won’t just verbally assault you. He and his men will hurt you. Bad.”

Steve Dancy is about to find this out. With his new home in Durango, Colorado, the kind with a nice white picket fence, and marriage on the horizon, the last thing Dancy wants is trouble.  Especially with a mining tycoon and his henchmen. But this is the frontier … and sometimes a feud finds you. Sometimes, it even chases you. When the quarrel endangers Dancy’s fiancée and friends, he has no choice but to fight.

And this is a fight Dancy must win.

P.S. Evidently Crossing the Animas is so new that searches may not turn it up. You can go directly to the product page here.

Wanted II, a collection of seven western short stories, is now available for Kindles. The paperback version will be along shortly. Try six western authors for only $2.99. You'll discover I have good company on these pages.























Don't forget about the recent release of the audio version of Jenny's Revenge. Even if you already read it, listening can double the pleasure.









I'm also writing three essays this year for Constituting America. This is a great site about the founding of our country. My first essay on Home Building & Loan v. Blaisdell (1934) has been published here. I'll let you know when the other two become available. Both are due by May 1, which looks pretty close. As the famed author, Douglas Adams said, "I love deadlines. I love the whoosing sound they make as they go by."

A New Steve Dancy Short Story

Wanted II is now available for pre-order at Amazon. Again, the book includes a Steve Dancy short story. This was a fun one for me. Steve is traveling by horseback from San Diego to Los Angeles when he's attacked by highwaymen. Grab a copy. At $2.99, the ebook is a great bargain with short stories by some of the best western writers of our day. Present company included, of course.

Jenny's Revenge in Audio

Jenny's Revenge is now available in print, ebook, large print, and audio formats.

Joe Formichella reads Jenny's Revenge. Joe is a seasoned author, editor, and audio performance professional. Check out the audio sample below. He's a Hackney Literary Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee.

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Jenny Bolton has plans, and they don't bode well for Steve Dancy.

Married at 15 to a Nevada politician, Jenny suffered repeated assaults, witnessed her husband's ghastly murder, buried her mother-in-law, and killed a man. Dancy, who had once served as her paladin, rejected her without as much as a goodbye. Abandoned on a raw frontier, she's single-handedly building an empire that spans the state. Despite her triumphs, she feels she never should have been left alone.

Soon to marry, Steve is eager to begin a new life, unaware that Jenny is mad for revenge.

Crossing the Animas back from Editor

A few days ago, my editor sent me the edited version of Crossing the Animas and related files. I'm anxious to reviewed her revisions, but I have some personal issues which require me to be in northern California.

Here is the remaining process to publication. Next, I go through every revision, one at a time. I do this to approve the change and improve my writing skill. After I have a clean edited manuscript, the book goes to my ebook formatter. He makes sure the book looks good on various ereaders. My proofreader gets at crack at the book next.

In the past, I published the print and ebook versions simultaneously. The world has changed. Now, more than 90% of my sales are electronic versions of the book. (Excluding library large print sales) So the ebook versions will be published without waiting for the longer print book process.

All of this means that the ebook version of Crossing the Animas should be available before the end of March. The print version will follow about sixty days later.

I hope you enjoy it.

Rough Cover Option

Happy New Year!

The first eight days of 2017 have already slipped away. I've been distracted by family and fun. It seems the only way to slow down time is to stayed bored. That's not going to happen.

After Christmas, we have made our winter trek to San Diego to avoid the worst of an Omaha winter. Ran right into Southern California cold, rain, and tiny surf. (Yesterday was perfect weather, but it lasted exactly 24-hours.) The small waves didn't bother me because as I grow older, waist-high surf has become my friend.

Today, Crossing The Animas achieved another milestone. My editor broke free of her backlog and starts work this week on my already perfect manuscript. (I always believe that until my book comes back bleeding red ink from every pore.) Prior to sending a manuscript to my editor, I have the book read by a few trusted readers. Thank you all for your sound advise and for saving me untold embarrassment.

Last year I agreed to participate in a short story anthology. I had never written a Steve Dancy short story and I didn't know how I would like the abbreviated format. I loved it. I deviated from my standard form and wrote "Snake in the Grass" from Joseph McAllen's point of view. It put my characters in a different light and gave me a fresh perspective on their motivations. Fun project. Wanted: A Western Story Selection has also been successful, so we have agreed to put together another set of short stories with the creative title of Wanted II. Look for it later this year.

I have again agreed to write essays for Constituting America's annual 90-Day Studies. This year's project will be about important Supreme Court cases. Nothing controversial there, I'm sure. I'll let you know when each of mine is published, but don't wait for me. Cathy Gillespie and Janine Turner do an exceptional job of pulling together bright minds to illuminate the Constitution, especially for the young people in our country.

Anyway, going to be a busy year. Guess I'll have to wait to slow down time.

In Desperate Need of Ruby Slippers

In a previous post I lamented our poor travel luck of late. The good news is that once we left the USA, all of our travel difficulties disappeared. We flew to Paris without incident, and took taxies, trains, and Metros without mishap. The bad news greeted us on reentry to the USA. The final leg of our flight was cancelled due to weather. Despite claims by Global Warming alarmists, airlines still consider weather an act of God. No free hotel. No paid one either. When weather has a temper tantrum, New York hotels fill up in a New York minute. A long taxi ride into the city found us a place to stay.

Our airline booked us out of LaGuardia the following evening. Since we were anxious to get home, we left for the city four hours ahead of our scheduled departure.  We wanted to miss the work traffic. What we didn’t know was that since our last uneventful trip to LaGuardia, some nincompoop decided to tear up all access roads simultaneously. It took two hours and a wheel barrow of money to get us to the terminal. But we still had a sense of humor. We laughed at our travails as we grabbed a glass of wine at the Delta Sky Club. We were in heaven. A quiet, little sanctuary hidden from the hubbub just outside the sliding glass doors. Then all hell broke loose. Alarms went off, tense announcements ordered us to evacuate immediately, and people rushed everywhere. First responders burst in from outside. Was it the Sky Club or the entire airport? Once we got outside the lounge, we found calm and order. Who had turned the world upside down? Apparently a short in the dishwasher. The culprit had been an electrical fire in the kitchen.

In our haste, we had brought our wine out with us and it was less than an hour before our flight time. C'est la vie. We’d manage. Heck, we’d already endured much worse than being thrown out of an airport lounge.

How naïve. Our early evening flight got delayed until the dead of night.

When I had a horrible game of golf, my eighteenth hole was always spectacular. I think it was someone’s sly way of enticing me back onto the links. In a similar fashion, once we landed in Omaha, everything went perfect. Technically, it was morning. At that hour, taxicabs were rare, but our luggage came out first and we beat the competition to the cab stand. Omaha traffic is light in comparison to big cities and non-existent in the wee hours. We flew home.

Six weeks of travel makes one homesick. Home, sweet home. There’s no place like home.

We think we’ll stay awhile.

Over 1,400 Book Reviews and Counting

I read every book review. Can't help myself. I'm perverse. I even like to read bad reviews. Dumb, I know, but it's a five minute exercise I enjoy with morning coffee.

• Over 1,400 Amazon reviews for an average of 4.4, with 525 of those for The Shopkeeper. 
• Nearly 4,000 Goodreads ratings for 4.0 and another 400 written reviews
• Plus dozens of professional reviews

Shopkeeper at Amazon

Goodreads

I appreciate every reader. A review or an email note gives me a feel for my audience and helps me connect with readers. Less than 1% of readers leave a text review and I'm grateful for every one. I don't just read them, I take note of what they like and don't like. Each review helps me with my next book. Thank you.

If you like short illustrated reviews, I get a kick out of 3-Panel Book Reviews by Lisa Brown.

Lisa Brown's 3-panel Book Review  of The Metamorphosis

A genuine Westerner?

I believe Mark Twain is the greatest western writer of all time. Not only did Tom and Huck live on the frontier, but Roughing It describes his own adventures in the Wild West, including his stint as a reporter in Virginia City when it was wilder than any cow town on Saturday night. Twain thought the West was a hoot, so he kept traveling in that direction until he reached the Hawaiian Islands. In 1866, he spent four months in paradise as a reporter for the Sacramento Union.

Here is a New York Times slide show about Twain in Hawaii

Here are a couple of things Mark Twain said about Hawaii.

This is the most magnificent, balmy atmosphere in the world--ought to take dead men out of grave.

The missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there.

Wanted: A Western Story Collection

Snake in the Grass

A Steve Dancy Tale

A lone wrangler with a fine herd of horses goes berserk in the middle of nowhere. 

Steve Dancy and Joseph McAllen must decide—help the crazed boy or ride off.

Wanted: A Western Story Collection ebook edition is available for pre-order at Amazon. The paperback edition will come along in a few weeks. The anthology includes a Steve Dancy short story. Since this was my first short story in the series, I decided to have a little fun and wrote it from Joseph McAllen's point of view.

From the Backcover

Seven bestselling western authors join forces in the time-honored tradition of the old West to deliver a collection of short stories featuring their most popular and beloved characters. Read about the adventures of Steve Dancy, Gideon Johann, Shad Cain, Lee Mattingly, the McCabes, Hunt-U.S. Marshal, and Jess Williams. Enjoy your favorite authors and discover new friends along the trail.

Trains are Trendy

I read that railroad construction is all the rage in Western novels. I suppose Hell on Wheels spiked the popularity of trains, but I find the trend troubling. I'm currently writing Crossing the Animas, my latest Steve Dancy Tale. As the title suggests, it takes place in the San Juan Mountains between Durango and Silverton. In 1882, the Denver & Rio Grande built a narrow gage line between the towns to get ore to market. Needless to say, the construction of the line is an element of my story.

My first impulse was to edit out the railroad construction. I didn't want to appear to be jumping on a fad. It went against my nature, I guess. (At the end of The Shopkeeper, I Wrote, "We rode out of Mason Valley with the sun at our backs." A Western chestnut has the hero rides off into the sunset, so I used the opposite direction tongue-in-cheek.) I decided against “pulling the pin” because the rail line construction wasn’t a huge element in the story and I liked the characters that came with the trains. I hate killing off characters to no purpose. I’ve heard of off-page violence and off-page sex, but off-page character assassination serves no purpose. Besides, trains and rail expansion have been an element of the Steve Dancy Tales from the beginning.

By the way, Hell on Wheels is a hell of a good show. Now if we could just get Justified back.

Hell on Wheels

My Second Short Story

I write novels. Seven and counting. (Plus six nonfiction books, if I include my ghost writing assignments.) I’ve previously written only one short story, for which I received an Honorable Mention as a finalist. Maybe that didn’t count. It was a newspaper contest for a one hundred word novel. In the beginning, I thought anyone could string together one hundred words, but it took me a week to create a draft fit for submittal. Short is hard.

All of this is preface to telling you that I have written my first real short story. “Snake in The Grass” is a Steve Dancy Tale with a twist. I won’t tell you the twist. You have to read it for yourself. Where? First, you’ll need to wait a few months. The book is an anthology written by seven top selling Western authors.

Wanted, A Western Story Collection includes stories by Brad Dennison, Lou Bradshaw, Tell Cotten, Robert J. Thomas, WL Cox, James D. Best, and Duane Boehm.

I’ll let you know when it becomes available. In the meantime, I’ll leave with a few of my favorite quotes about short stories.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. Edgar Allan Poe

A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. Stephen King

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn’t have to trawl through someone’s whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. Emma Donoghue

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn’t like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way. Stephen Colbert

Celebrating a Birthday in Gardnerville, Nevada

Historic U.S. Route 395

For my birthday we ran up from San Diego to Gardnerville, Nevada. We stopped overnight in Santa Clarita to pick up friends, so it feels like a party. It’s a beautiful drive up U.S. Route 395. High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart was filmed in Lone Pine, Charles Manson was jailed in Independence, Bishop lays claim to the oldest rodeo in the country, Mammoth remains my favorite ski resort, Lee Vining is named after a saloon patron who shot himself in the most private of parts, and Bodie makes other ghost towns appear stunted. Schat’s Bakery alone makes the long drive worthwhile. This doesn’t even mention the stunning scenery. All that open beautiful land makes you wonder why everyone huddles on top of each other in Los Angeles.

Gardnerville is in Carson Valley, south of Carson City. The whole region feels peaceful. Homes are spread out, friendly people abound, traffic moves swiftly on the single thoroughfare, and majestic mountains loom in every direction. It’s a great place to live or visit.

Except … I can’t believe the amount of mayhem I’ve invented in these precincts.

Several Steve Dancy Tales take place in Carson City and Virginia City. Whenever I visit, I’m reminded that I wrote about another time. The Carson Valley of today seems quiet and subdued, but when Mark Twain wandered these environs, the region could truly be called the Wild West.

If you want to experience the history of this region, Roughing It by Mark Twain and An Editor on the Comstock Lode by Wells Drury provide first-hand accounts of Virginia City in its heyday.