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.

Shelfbuzz Picks The Shopkeeper

The Shopkeeper has been selected by Shelfbuzz as a featured book based on the cover design.

A Childhood Trauma Stays With You for Life

Me striking a Steve Dancy pose.

Recently I changed my Facebook profile picture to me as a youngster dressed up in my new chaps. The picture reminded me of a traumatic experience inflicted on me by my mother. This same summer, a man knocked on the door offering to take my picture on his pony. Directly behind him stood a real horse. A real horse. I couldn’t believe it. Despite my begging, my mother would have nothing to do with it. I have no recollection of how much he charged, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple dollars. I was crestfallen.

I ran to my room to pout, but then I saw my six-shooter in a holster with enough genuine silver studs to make Roy Rogers jealous. I had an idea. In a jiffy, I was dressed in chaps with my shiny guns hanging from my skinny waist. Running down the block I caught up with the man and his pony. My first sight was crushing. My best friend sat astride the horse looking as proud as Rin Tin Tin at the end of an episode.

Rusty had a horse and a dog!

I learned I was the lone outcast. All of my friends’ moms had popped for a picture. Despite hanging around for five more houses, the man never offered to let me sit on the pony. I was savvy enough to know he wouldn’t waste film on me because of my stingy mother, but I had hoped that if I looked the part he would at least let me sit on the horse for a bit. No such luck. I slunk home completely dejected.

I never forgot the disappointment and humiliation. One night over drinks, I told this horrifying tale to my best friend. At the end, he got up and left the room. I was puzzled about his indifference until he returned with an old photograph. It was a picture my him sitting on a pony with a gun in his hand. Darn. I had expected commiseration ... or possibly a taller tale of childhood trauma. Instead, he rubbed salt in the wound. After all these years, I was devastated once again. 

Look at that pistol. Yet he still got his picture taken.

The Return—Now Available in Audio!

The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale is now available in audio. Jim Tedder has done an exceptional job in narrating this fourth book in the Steve Dancy series.

It's the summer of 1880, and Thomas Edison's incandescent bulb is poised to put the gaslight industry out of business. Knowing a good business opportunity, former New York shopkeeper Steve Dancy sets out to obtain a license for Edison's electric lamp. Edison agrees, under one condition: Dancy and his friends must stop the saboteurs who are disrupting his electrification of Wall Street.

After two years of misadventures out West, the assignment appears to be right up his alley. But new troubles await him in New York City. Dancy has brought a woman with him, and his high-society family disapproves. More worrisome, he has also unknowingly dragged along a feud that began out West. The feud could cost him Edison's backing ... and possibly his life.

In the near future, I will receive some promotional codes for free copies of The Return. If you would like a free audio copy of The Return, send me a note at jimbest@jamesdbest.com.

Audio: A whole new way to enjoy the Steve Dancy Tales