Westerns in Literature

Western fiction has been hugely popular for almost two hundred years. Not only were Westerns popular in the United States, but the whole world devoured them. For decades, the Western was a staple of fiction, Hollywood, television, and daydreams. Today, many think Western fiction is moribund. They’re wrong. Authors like Johnny Boggs continue to carry on the tradition, and my own novels sell well. The popularity of Westerns is often measured against the impossible yardstick of the 1950s.

Some say we’ve become too sophisticated to swallow the traditional Western mythology. Those are people who have not taken a thoughtful look at Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, or even the glut of superheroes that plague theaters, bookshelves, and toy boxes. The stories are the same, only the venue has changed. The Western in its traditional garb will come roaring back when audiences tire of yet another iteration of CSI or men in tights.

Western fiction is frequently dismissed as not being serious literature. This misconception is perpetuated by classifying literary stories that occur in the Old West as something other than a Western. Many of the smart set believe Westerns can only be dime novels, pulp fiction, or straight-to-paperback formula bunkum. But the Western has a long and valid history in literature.

James Fenimore Cooper may have been the first Western author of note. The Last of the Mohicans and the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales were told in the Western tradition. Written in 1826 about events that supposedly occurred nearly seventy-five years prior, The Last of the Mohicans incorporates all the characteristics of a modern Western.

Mark Twain is universally acknowledged as one of the great American literary figures, but is seldom referred to as a Western writer. Yet, Roughing It is a first-hand description of the Wild West of Virginia City during the heyday of the Comstock Lode. Granted, Roughing It is Twain-enriched non-fiction, but The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are coming-of-age novels set in the American frontier. (By the way, Mark Twain hated James Fenimore Cooper's writing. You can read all about it here. Pretty funny.)

When Owen Wister published The Virginian in 1902, the novel received critical acclaim and was a huge bestseller, eventually spawning five films, a successful play, and a television series. An instant success, it sold over 20 thousand copies in the first month, an astonishing number for the time. It went on to sell over 200,000 thousand copies in the first year, and over a million and a half copies prior to Wister's death. This classic has never been out of print.

Max Brand, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Jack Schaefer, Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry, and Cormac McCarthy continued the Western tradition and all of them have been highly successful. Recently Nancy E. Turner (These is my Words) and Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers) have penned praiseworthy Westerns that are popular with readers.

Western literature has a grand heritage and will continue to appeal to readers all over the world.   Good writing, plots that move with assurance, and great characterization will elevate the genre back the top of the bestseller charts.

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters.

No Peace: Progress Report

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

My beta readers have finished and I've incorporated their suggestions. (Or not, depending on my mood.) Subsequently, I competed my third draft and sent No Peace to my editor. When she returns it, I'll have a final set of red ink to deal with. After that, it's book design and cover. Actually, we started on the cover, but so far haven't made any decisions. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's a snippet to whet your appetite.

I thought about all of this and became dejected. “So, all the outlaws in the region have been consolidated into a single gang and the law’s in bed with them. In fact, it leads them. Combined forces of over two hundred. The main culprit is a greedy, duly elected sheriff who fancies himself a dandy, and to top it off, he kills indiscriminately.”

Nelson looked sympathetic. “That’s about it. He likes the high-life, controls every outlaw within a hundred miles, and is on the lookout for a big stake.” He hesitated. “One more thing, he’s exceptionally handy with a gun. Also knifes and fists. If fighting’s involved, he mastered the tools and techniques. Worse, he applies his skill with a rage you would never believe until you see it.”

“He sounds crazy.”

“Now, you’re beginning to understand.”

I stood to leave.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Not sure. What do you think I should do?”

“If you can figure out a way to run, run like hell.”

The Steve Dancy Tales

How do you sell lots of books?

The most frequent question I get at book events is how to sell more books. This is disconcerting because I want to talk about how to write better books. Here's the short answer to the question: you sell more books by artfully writing a good story and then selling one book at a time. Many striving authors give up when they participate in an event and sell only a few books.  Throw away all of the social media and traditional marketing advice you've ever heard, the most powerful selling tool for books is word-of-mouth. Get your book into a reader's hands and if they like it, they'll become your salesperson. Get a dozen salespeople and they'll multiply into a hundred. But there is a prerequisite—you must first write a good book. No one recommends a book that bored or annoyed them. So tell a good story ... and tell it well.

See you at the Tucson Festival of Books.

Roundup Magazine reviews The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale

A book review of The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale appears in the February issue of Roundup Magazine—a publication of Westerns Writers of America.

After a plot summary, C. K. Crigger writes, “Well-written, fast-paced, interesting characters—what more can a reader want? Well I, for one, was taken with the excellent description of the late 1800s New York City. The look at Edison’s lab in Menlo Park struck me as right on, and putting the Western mentality into staid New York Society seemed fresh.”

Well, that made me feel good.

Was Curly from City Slickers right all along?

One thing. Just one thing.

The Telegraph in London reports that “Scientists find secret to writing a best-selling novel.” Boy, was I eager to read that story. What claptrap. It concludes by stating, “Previous work has attempted to gain insights into the ‘secret recipe’ of successful books. But most of these studies were qualitative, based on a dozen books, and focused primarily on high-level content - the personalities of protagonists and antagonists and the plots. Our work examines a considerably larger collection - 800 books - over multiple genres, providing insights into lexical, syntactic, and discourse patterns that characterize the writing styles commonly shared among the successful literature.”

In other words, they counted the number of nouns, conjunctions, and such. Yup, I’m sure that’s the trick—arithmetic. According to these scientists, bestsellers shun action for introspective protagonists.

There used to be an old axiom of computing, GIGO, which meant garbage in, garbage out. Computers are obedient creatures. They do what they are told at the speed of light. If a scientist starts with faulty logic or data, the results smell rank. There is some good news in the study. Since it occurred in England, American tax dollars didn’t fund this particular busy-work. 

How to Sell a Half Million Books—After You’ve Been Dead 100 Years

Dead people publish new books all the time. Some of these books are unfinished manuscripts. Others are ghostwritten from scratch to take advantage of a famous name like Robert Ludlum. But there is one book composed by the actual author that was purposely withheld from the market for one hundred years, and after release, sold over a half million copies. Now that’s quite a feat.

Click to buy at Amazon

The author, of course, is Mark Twain, and the book is his autobiography … Volume 1. (The New Yorker has a fine article about Twain’s autobiography.) The second volume has just been released and is also projected to sell well. 

Twain specified in his will that his autobiography could not be published until 100 years after his death. He claimed that time would heal the wounded egos of those he assaulted. There is a lot of vitriol aimed at long forgotten people, but the only controversial aspect of his own life is an atheism well known by his contemporaries. In typical Twain humor, he wrote, “I have thought of fifteen hundred or two thousand incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet.”

The delayed publication was a grand publicity stunt by one of our nation’s foremost self-promoters. Twain believed, no, he knew that the great great grandchildren of his current readers would be interested in his life. He expected immortality of an earthly variety … and he was right.

The meandering style of the book has not garnered good reviews. Twain wrote that other autobiographies “patiently and dutifully follow a planned and undivergent course.” His own, by contrast, is “a pleasure excursion.” It “sidetracks itself anywhere that there is a circus, or a fresh excitement of any kind, and seldom waits until the show is over, but packs up and goes on again as soon as a fresher one is advertised.”

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Examiner.Com reviews The Return

I had a pleasant surprise today when I received notice of a new book review for the Steve Dancy Tales. Diane Scearce at Examiner.com reviewed The Return.

Scearce writes, “The reader can be assured The Return is as fast-paced and entertaining as the books leading up to Dancy’s latest adventure … The Return is a lively, old-fashioned style Western—clever, entertaining, and full of period references to give it authenticity. Best paces his stories so well readers will find it difficult to put down.”

Panel Speaker at the Tucson Festival of Books

I've been invited to be a panelist at the 2014 Tucson Festival of Books, which will be held March 15 and 16. The Festival will be held on the campus of the University of Arizona.

I'm honored because this is the largest book festival in the Southwest. At the moment, I'll be on four panels, but the agenda won't be finalized until the first of the year. If you are in the vicinity—or not—you should plan on attending. 120,000 people attended last year. It's a fun event and a great opportunity to meet and hear your favorite authors. You can see who has already committed by visiting the Tucson Festival of Books website.

I hope to see you there.

Catching Killers

January Magazine publishes a series titled “Five of a Kind," and one of the articles in the series is Bill Crider's, “Sleuths in Spurs” about Western mysteries.

He writes, “People are reading mysteries from just about any time period you can name. Except one. Nobody's reading mysteries set in America's Wild West.” Bummer. But not entirely true. My own Western mystery, Murder at Thumb Butte, has not knocked anyone off the NYT bestseller list, but sales are pleasingly steady. The audio version narrated by Jim Tedder and the large print edition have also sold well.

Crider not only summarizes “5 of a kind,” but goes on to lists many other Western mysteries. He forgot Murder at Thumb Butte, a traditional whodunit with a Western theme. To make up for his absentmindedness, here is a synopsis:

102 Amazon Reviews for 4.4 Stars
254 Goodreads Ratings for 4.1 Stars

In the spring of 1880, Steve Dancy travels to Prescott, Arizona to gain control of a remarkable invention. But on his first night in the territorial capital, his friend, Jeff Sharp is arrested for a midnight murder at Thumb Butte. Dancy launches a personal investigation to find the real murderer, only to discover the whole town wanted the victim dead. For help, he turns to another old friend and associate, Captain Joseph McAllen of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Can Dancy discover the true killer before his friend stretches a rope on the courthouse square?

If you like mysteries, don’t forget about crime dramas on the American frontier. Crider’s article can guide you to almost 50 good detective yarns.

He concludes his article by writing, “Western mysteries are all around, and anyone who refuses to read them because they feature horses and Colt revolvers is missing some wonderful reading.”