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In 1975 I was an economist for the State of Nevada which was a good but boring job. I wanted to be a novelist and had started writing westerns five years earlier, one book a year around my "regular" job. But I wasn't getting bought by New York and had a stack of rejection slips. Still, I'm stubborn and I could see that my writing was getting better with each rejected novel. And on a snowy winter night I stepped out of the local movie theater after seeing HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood but I hadn't particularly liked that movie and I got to thinking... what if I write about a character that is the antithesis of the stereotype western heroes? What if I create a main character that is past his prime, can't shoot or ride a horse...but, he is an ex-bare knuckles champion and circus strongman?
And so I wrote the DERBY MAN which was published by Doubleday in 1976 and who became a classic western dime novelist hero with a wonderful and funny girlfriend named Dolly Beavers. Together, they toured the West and wrote about great events. In all I wrote six DERBY MAN novels, then a whole lot more westerns always enjoying my characters and settings.
I also liked the challenge of researching much longer novels and wrote six RIVER'S WEST SERIES and FIVE NATIONAL PARK SERIES historical novels. I find that creating great, memorable characters is the key to good writing along with telling an exciting tale with historical accuracy. Getting the history and geography right means traveling to remote and usually beautiful places in the West and that's a joy and an adventure.
My childhood and college background being a Cal Poly Animal Science graduate and a pretty decent horsemen has guided me well in series like THE HORSEMEN. I never went back to a steady paying job and I haven't looked back thinking I should have kept being an economist. I've won two Western Writers of America Spur Awards and in 2019 was honored by the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Peacemaker's Award. It's been a long, interesting trail and I still believe that truer words have never been spoken than, "There's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse."
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