Preston Lewis's Blog, page 4

Western Humor

September True West

The September issue of True West has a review of my latest novel by Spur Award-winning author Rod Miller.  Of Bluster’s Last Stand, Rod says “if there’s one thing missing from most western bookshelves, it’s humor.”  He goes on to praise me for filling the gap with my protagonist H.H. Lomax.

He concludes the review by noting that “while Lomax’s accounts of Old West events don’t always jibe with what’s in the history books, they’ll have you laughing at what might have happened—and maybe did.”

Rod is also good at giving a humorous spin on the west with his character Rawhide Robinson, who spawns smiles and laughs wherever he goes on the frontier.

The review comes on the heels of word that Bluster’s Last Stand was a finalist for the Will Rogers Medallion Award for humor on the west.  Charles F. Williams, executive director of the WRMA Committee, wrote “As always, Western Humor-Written is one of our most enjoyable categories, and this year was no exception.  Yours is one of many outstanding books, and it continues the tradition of memorable Western Humor that Will established and embellished.”  The winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion will be announced in October in Fort Worth.

So it’s been a good month for me and H.H. Lomax, my imaginary friend.

Good Humor Man

Medallion

 

I received word today that my historical novel Bluster’s Last Stand on the Battle of the Little Bighorn has been named a finalist in the Western Humor-Written category of the 2018 Will Rogers Medallion Award competition. It is an honor that my humor can now be associated with the name of Will Rogers, who was one of the nation’s most beloved humorists ever.

The awards will be presented this Fall in Fort Worth. We are looking forward to attending. It’s a long story, but a dream about Will Rogers years ago inspired a line in one of my books that got me in trouble with my wife! Maybe this will make amends to her.

 

 

 

True Story

One of the most enjoyable things about being a member of Western Writers of America is the creative people you get to meet, like Lee Goldberg this year. He invited me a couple years ago to become a member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers for my previous novels based on the Bonanza television series. Since then we’d shared Facebook posts and some e-mails, but had never met in person.

Preston Lewis & Lee Goldberg

Lee is a talented writer, screenwriter, publisher and producer known for his work on several different TV crime series, including Diagnosis: Murder and Monk, among others. He is a two-time Edgar Award nominee by the Mystery Writers of America and two-time Shamus Award nominee by the Private Eye Writers of America. He and another fine novelist, Max Allan Collins, established the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. Additionally, Lee is co-founder and publisher of Brash Books, whose author Leo W. Banks earned two Spur Awards in Billings for his debut novel Double Wide.

Lee’s latest book True Fiction is a great read, both a hilarious and scary page-turner. It’s hilarious because Lee develops great characters in amusing circumstances, and scary because the book gives insight into the reach of the nation’s security agencies into our lives. I can’t wait to get his next novel, Killer Thriller, due out in February, largely because his protagonist is an author!

Two-Thirds There

An old adage has it that everyone has at least one book in them and a few people can come up with two, but it takes three published books to be considered a legitimate author.  So, I was pleased when New Mexico Showdown first appeared in print.

Pinnacle published New Mexico Showdown in 1989 and it was my second published novel.  Consequently, I was two-thirds of the way to being a novelist when it appeared in bookstores and on newsstands.

So, it is great to get a new cover for it as New Mexico Showdown is coming out in September in the large print edition.  Both Harriet and I liked the eye-catching cover and the memories its re-issue bring back.

The story follows an Apache renegade named Sulky who vows revenge on the gang of bandits who killed his wife.  The story is told through the eyes of Sulky, the sheriff who is on the trail of the bandits and a naïve young boy called Dummy who has been kidnapped by the gang.  It’s a different twist on the vengeance plot of many Westerns.

It’s nice to see New Mexico Showdown back in print, thanks to Five Star Publishing of Waterville, Maine.

Stealing History

Lincoln County Courthouse

We just returned from a trip to Ruidoso and the obligatory visit to Lincoln, N.M., where Billy the Kid rode into legend.  I’ve been there many times over the years to walk what President Rutherford B. Hayes once called “the most dangerous street in America.”  I’ve climbed the stairs where Billy the Kid made his last escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse while awaiting his hanging.  This site, more than any other, spawned my interest in Old West history.

Courthouse Stairway

 

Though I have learned something new about the Lincoln County War with each visit, no trip was more impressionable than my first stopover when my parents took me there in the late 1950s.  Today Lincoln is a New Mexico Historic Site managed by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, but back then the Lincoln County Courthouse was overseen by a private organization.  The museum was old-style, just glass cases with labeled artifacts and little if any interpretation.

One glass case displayed a sidearm from every Lincoln County sheriff up to that time and included the most memorable and haunting artifact I had ever seen.  Over the barrel of one revolver was a crude cardboard arrow with hand lettering that said something like “note the three notches.”  The arrow pointed to the barrel of the gun where three slight scratches represented the men who had been killed with this weapon.  I found it unfathomable that the lives of three men could be relegated to such modest marks on a gun barrel.  I had always assumed that notches were big gashes on the butt of a revolver so these subtle scratches seemed all the more sinister.

Bullet Hole

Fast forward two decades later when Harriet and I moved to Lubbock and took our first vacation to Ruidoso after returning to Texas from the Midwest.  We, of course, visited Lincoln.  At the courthouse I asked one of the volunteers what had happened to the guns of all the sheriffs and was told that someone had broken into the courthouse several years before and had stolen them all.  Although the FBI was called in to investigate, the guns were never recovered.

It infuriated me then and still does to this day that some selfish individual stole those guns and deprived future generations of children the opportunity to see and experience them as I had as a child.  On this visit I retold this story to one of the site Rangers, whose grandfather had been a sheriff of Lincoln County, but she was unfamiliar with the story or if the guns had yet been recovered.  She did say that more recently in 2015 a Thompson submachine-gun that had been used by the sheriff’s office in the 1930s and was on display in the historic courthouse was also stolen.

Sad!  Among thieving vermin only those who would steal from the elderly are lower than those who would rob history from us all.

Back in the Saddle Again

Writing is a creative, yet solitary endeavor.  What makes it worse is that writers, unlike painters or sculptors, don’t really have anything to frame or display when they are done other than a thick stack of typing paper, which is not very glamorous.  That’s why it’s always fun to get a new book cover of an upcoming publication.

New Cover

This one is special because Hard Texas Winter, my first published novel, is scheduled to return to print in June from Five Star Publishing, which is bringing it out in a large-print edition.

I got into writing westerns quite by accident.  When Scott was born, I realized I was going to need to start bringing in extra income to put that boy through college.  I didn’t want an outside job since that would take me away more from the family, so I thought I could try writing.  But what?

Then I read in the newspaper that Bantam was conducting a first western contest with a prize of $10,000, if memory serves me correct.  So I started typing my novel on an IBM Selectric (not the self-correcting model, so it was tedious) and sent it in by the deadline.  The manuscript remains the only one I ever completed without a word processor, which as Elmer Kelton once told me “takes the pick-and-shovel work out of writing.”   He was right.

I wrote Hard Texas Winter so long ago that there was no such thing as FedEx or United Parcel.  So I sent my manuscript by certified mail with a return receipt requested to make sure they got it and I wouldn’t worry about any delay in fattening my new son’s college account.  However, it didn’t take Bantam long to review my submission because I got their rejection letter back before I got the return receipt saying they had received my manuscript.

Original Cover

Even though I didn’t win with Bantam, I did have a finished manuscript to circulate among publishers and Tower picked up the Western.  The original title was Winter Stay, but they changed it to Hard Texas Winter.  Years later, a Bantam editor (not the one who had rejected Winter Stay) told me that books with Texas in the title always did better than other Westerns.  That’s true for me as Hard Texas Winter was my first book and Blood of Texas won me a Spur Award for Best Novel.

So, it’s great to see Hard Texas Winter back in print, especially with such a striking cover.  Thanks to Five Star for picking up the book and bringing back such pleasant memories.  Hard Texas Winter, the first of my 30 novels over the years, opened up several doors for me, including affiliation with Western Writers of America, as fine and welcoming an organization as I have ever been associated with, and the opportunity to meet dozens of wonderful writers over the years.

True History

Earlier this month I had the chance to attend the Texas State Historical Association annual meeting in San Marcos.  Those are always wonderful meetings if you love history and enjoy meeting people who have the same passion.

Paula Mitchell Marks

And Die in the West

The meeting gave me the chance to catch up with Paula Mitchell Marks, who was ending her term as TSHA president.  Paula and I go a ways back through our affiliation with Western Writers of America.  Paula won a Spur for her book Precious Dust, which examined the American gold rush era from 1848-1900.

Although Precious Dust is a well-written and researched book, my favorite of her books is And Die in the West, an account of Tombstone, Arizona Territory and the events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Her account in my view is the best chronicle of the culture and incidents that culminated in the famous shootout.  Paula treats the various factions involved in the disputes equally and fairly, unlike many accounts which tend to glorify the Earps at the expense of the others.

And Die in the West was the best of the dozens of books written on Tombstone that I used when researching Mix-Up at the O.K. Corral.  Her book provided a coherent chronology of facts and events that became the skeleton for my fictional account as told by H.H. Lomax.

If you interested in reading about the history behind the legend of the Earps, the Clantons, the McLaurys, Doc Holliday and the O.K. Corral, I would recommend Paula’s book.  Anything researched and written by her is top-notch.

 

Not Killing Custer

My favorite fiction genre is the historical novel.  I’ve always loved history and have enjoyed reading and writing novels that insert fictional characters into historical events.  One of my favorite western historical novels of all time is The Court Martial of George Armstrong Custer by Douglas C. Jones.

When I started writing westerns, one of the first things I did was to try to run down all the Spur-winning novels up to that time and read them.  I hesitated on The Court Martial of George Armstrong Custer because the premise—that Custer had survived the Little Bighorn and was called to account for his failures—was so absurd that I just couldn’t believe the novel could hold my interest.  Boy was I wrong as it was one of only four books I can remember reading in a single sitting.  I would subsequently read all of his historical novels and found he had a great sense of story and an engaging style.

Jones was a resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I did some genealogical research before attending a Western Writers of American meeting in Branson, Missouri, in 1984.  I decided to call him and see if I could drop by with my family so he could sign copies of his books for me.  I couldn’t believe I had called him and that he said to come on over.  He signed all my books and encouraged me with my writing in the 30 minutes or so we had together.

Nine years later I returned to Washington County, Arkansas, for a WWA meeting in Springdale where I received my first Spur Award.  Jones was also there that year to received WWA’s Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in writing.  One of my great memories of that occasion was walking by his table to receive my Spur.  He made eye contact, smiled and gave me a thumbs-up gesture for my accomplishment.  It was a proud moment with that accolade coming from such a fine writer.

If you are interested in a great historical novel that is filled with accurate history in spite of its counter-factual premise, I would recommend The Court Martial of George Armstrong Custer.  And, I am pleased to have followed in Doug Jones’ footsteps with my own counterfactual historical novel on Custer and the Little Bighorn in my latest, Bluster’s Last Stand.

 

Writing Insights

Like many folks, I’ve been a fan of Peanuts for as long as I can remember because of the wonderful characters and the understated philosophical insights into life that Charles Schulz provided on a daily basis for half a century.

There’s an old adage in writing that it is harder to write short than long, best stated by Mark Twain in correspondence to a friend when he said he would’ve written a short letter, but he didn’t have the time.  Good writing in short packages is the biggest challenge of all, yet Schulz did it on a daily basis for 50 years.  Not only that, he also illustrated and captioned each panel he did for the newspapers.

Last year I decided I would secure the 25 volumes in The Complete Peanuts and read about Charlie Brown from the beginning, since Charlie and I were born the same year.  I’ve aged since then while Charlie never did, though he certainly matured over the years.  I knew that Schulz wanted to call the comic strip Li’l Folks, but I didn’t realize until reading this collection that the name was changed by the syndicate as homage to the Peanut Gallery, where kids sat for The Howdy Dowdy Show, my favorite TV production as a child.  Thus, Peanuts referred to the little folks, though Schulz never really liked the title.

I have just started volume 19, covering the years 1987-88, and have enjoyed this chance to meet all the characters from the beginning and to re-live the trends and issues I grew up with as reflected in the comic strip.

 

My favorite character, of course, is Snoopy, the Walter Mutty of the canine world and an aspiring writer.  His travails at the typewriter and the hilarious rejection letters provide a genuine window into the life of a writer.  Snoopy remains the greatest writer in comic strip history, adapting to the publishing trends of the time.  For instance, when Lucy tells him that he needed to do a political thriller, he writes “It was a dark and stormy night,” then pauses before typing “Suddenly, a vote rang out!”

Other characters, such as Sally, also give great writing insight as well.  For instance, in the Sept. 25, 1984, strip, Sally tells her big brother “Our homework assignment is to describe a sunset.”  She thinks for a moment, then writes, “The Sun went down as red as a banana.”  She turns to Charlie Brown and then says, “Makes you appreciate the beauty of the written word, doesn’t it?”

During its peak, Peanuts ran in 2,600 papers in 75 countries and in 21 languages.  In all, Schulz illustrated almost 18,000 strips over his 50 years of doing Peanuts and took but one vacation, a five-week break to celebrate his 75th birthday.  He not only wrote short, but he also wrote well on a daily basis with great insight into life.  Fortunately, “Classic Peanuts” still runs in many newspapers and a variety of animated specials still keep the lovable loser Charlie Brown and all his friends in our hearts and minds.

For those that want to re-live the Peanuts experience and to enjoy its humorous insights into writing, I recommend The Complete Peanuts.

Thumbs Up for Bluster’s

Last year ended with a flurry of great Web reviews for Bluster’s Last Stand.  What is most gratifying is that whatever flaws the reviewers found, they all liked my protagonist, H.H. Lomax.

The Lone Star Literary Life website started its review this way:  “Reading nineteenth-century Old West memoirs can be a fast way to fall asleep — unless they have been written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by San Angelo novelist Preston Lewis, a Spur Award winner and former president of the Western Writers of America.  Bluster’s Last Stand is the frequently hilarious fourth book in Lewis’s Memoirs of H. H. Lomax series.  In this new entry, Lomax survives the Battle of Adobe Walls, gets into a deadly feud with General George Armstrong Custer (whom he derides as ‘General Bluster’), and later lands an unusual job in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  Along the way, he also works as a bouncer and guard in a Waco bordello and prospects for gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota.”

LSLL concludes “Bluster’s Last Stand is clever, absorbing Old West entertainment, a book that delights as well as informs.”

The Clueless Gent blog posed several questions:  “Do you have to be an historical fiction aficionado to enjoy Bluster’s Last Stand?  NOPE.  Do you have to enjoy tall tales of the ‘Old West’ to find this story engaging?  NOPE.  Did I find this book particularly fun to read?  Hell yeah!!!!  Why?  CHARACTERS!!!!  …  H.H. Lomax had an uncanny way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place at the right time, depending on your perspective).  … H.H. Lomax has quickly become one of my very favorite characters!”

The Reading by Moonlight blog by Ruthie Jones said “Bluster’s Last Stand is absolutely hilarious. Traipsing alongside H.H. Lomax, aka Leadeye Lomax, as he goes about his adventures is fun and exhilarating, to be sure.  But it’s Lomax himself who provides the most entertainment, with his quick wit, ingenuity, and uncanny ability to always land on his feet.  Lomax’s escapades in Bluster’s Last Stand take the reader on a wild ride from beginning to end.  The writing is quite snappy, and Lomax’s attitude as he muddles through his predicaments is both pragmatic and amusing.  Preston Lewis’s ability to develop a character is second to none.”

The Missusgonzo blog concluded “Even if you don’t care much for history, I think you will find this book entertaining. Lomax’s hilarity and heart of gold soften the blow of the harsh realities in this part of history, and make them interesting.  Or if you want to set the humor aside, there are some provoking thoughts on morality and perception that might stir you up.  I look forward to reading more about Lomax’s adventures.”

Very gratifying, these reviews.  A couple reviewers, however, dinged the book for a “very few” comma and spelling errors, but in my defense I am, after all, transcribing from Lomax’s pencil-written recollections on Big Chief tablets.