No Peace, A Steve Dancy Tale

Honest westerns filled with dishonest people.

Progress Report

The latest Steve Dancy Tale has been returned from my editor and I have completed my review of her recommended changes. Again, she has done an excellent job of smoothing out my writing and catching errors. I have transmitted the manuscript to my book interior designer, who will prepare print and eBook formats for publication. As always, we're still flailing a bit with the cover design.

Yeah, this skit has it about right.

Many years ago, in what seems like a prior life, I wrote a nonfiction book on enterprise computing. At the time, I was a Chief Technology Officer for a Fortune 50 company. Since nonfiction is all about credentials, I had no trouble finding an agent and publisher. I was pretty happy. I had a Boston agent and Wiley & Sons as a publisher. This was going to be good.

I wanted to title my book Dinosaurs and Whippersnappers. I thought that would be a catchy title for a book about managing computer professionals. Unfortunately, my editor disagreed. In fact she disagreed with everything I wanted to write. She insisted that focus groups had determined that books with the word Digital in the title were in high demand. Against my wishes, she re-titled the book The Digital Organization. She also wanted the book to be about corporate America, insisting that I leverage my familiarity with a celebrity CEO. I also couldn't criticize any inane technology fad because Wiley had surely already published a book that claimed the craze would blow away all prior technology, reduce the corporate labor force by half, and eliminate childhood illness. 


None of this was good advice. By the time the book was eventually published, technologists were sick and tired of books with Digital in the title, my celebrity CEO had lost his luster, and all of my technology advice and references were woefully out of date. Business leaders, however, still had to manage computer professionals and my chapter on this subject kept the book alive in some MBA programs.

What brought all of this ancient history to mind? A hilarious skit by Mitchell and Webb. Way too close to my personal experience. Take a gander. 



The irony of all of this is that Wiley is still marketing The Digital Organization. Traditional publishing moves at a glacial pace, so this technology book was already obsolete by the time it hit bookshelves in 1997. Yet Wiley continues to offer a Kindle version for $49.95. Not many authors recommend against buying one of their own books, but I suggest you give this one a pass.

By the way, this experience taught me a lesson. Never write a book that has a shelf-life of six nanoseconds. This is a big reason why I write historical novels. They last forever. Even the contemporaneous books of Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, and Louisa May Alcott are now read as historical novels. I may not be of their caliber, but I sure want to write in their genre.

Did I just write a Western?

Working Cover

I'm about to send The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale to my editor. One step closer to publishing, but still a ways to go.

In this episode, Dancy and his friends visit Thomas Edison in New York City and Menlo Park, New Jersey. Although the story starts in Leadville, Colorado, the plot mostly takes place on the East Coast. Louis L'Amour once said, "If you write about a bygone period east of the Mississippi River, it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi it's a Western." So ... did geography change this from a Western to a historical novel? The Return includes the same characters, they act the same, and they get into more fights. (I’m talking about the protagonists, of course. The antagonists seem to keep getting killed.)

In the end, I believe it is still a Western because the characters are Westerners through and through. Even Steve Dancy has been transformed. Everyone is a fish out of water. Kinda like Crocodile Dundee meets the 19th century.

Why did I bring my characters east? As I've mentioned previously, The Virginian was the inspiration for the Steve Dancy books. I liked the end of Wister's book where the newly married Virginian and his wife visit her family in New Hampshire. It provided a great contrast between the supposed civilized East Coast versus the values and perspectives of the frontier. I wanted to do something similar with The Return.