Preston Lewis's Blog, page 4

The Writing Trail

In the life of a writer certain moments are particularly rewarding, such as seeing the cover art for the first time, getting your author’s copies or receiving a royalty check.  For me the most gratifying event of them all is completing the first draft.  Without it none of the other moments will follow and, most importantly, that occasion means I have triumphed over the tyranny of the blank screen/page and now have something to edit, which is where the real fun comes in.

I began in January writing the fifth book—a trail drive novel—in The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax and finished the first draft in early March—Hallelujah!  Then I had spent six weeks doing heavy editing, finishing up four days ago with the second draft.  I will do a third draft, giving the manuscript its final polish before I send it in ahead of a June 1st deadline.

Longhorns on the Move

Over the years, I’ve learned that no two writers have exactly the same approach to moving from blank page to finished manuscript.  I go through three drafts, the first being the most challenging because I am starting with nothing but doubts that I can transfer 300 to 500 pages of story from my brain through my fingers to the  keyboard and computer screen.  I just slog away at it, not worrying about style, story or the finer points of writing.  Once I have the first draft, then I have something to work with, and it is much more fun to “write.”

At the opposite end of the writing spectrum was the late Frank Roderus, a Spur Award-winning author who wrote with me a Bantam series in the 1990s based on the Bonanza television series.  Frank swore—and I had no reason to doubt him—that he did a single draft of his novels and never went to a second draft.  And, Frank made his living entirely from his writing!  I was never that good nor confident.

For me, the real writing comes in the second draft with the editing, though I didn’t understand that early in my college career.  While at Baylor, I asked legendary Texas journalism professor David McHam if I really had to take the required editing courses as I just wanted to be a writer.  I’ll never forget his response:  “Preston, I think you will find that good writing is good editing.”  Truer words were never spoken, and so I have come to value and enjoy the editing more than the writing, so to speak.

In First Herd to Abilene, my protagonist H.H. Lomax tramples on some of the myths and history of the Chisholm Trail to get a herd of longhorns to the first of the great Kansas cattle towns.  The comic western also provides the background and resolution of Lomax’s differences with Wild Bill Hickok as alluded to in the preceding volume, Bluster’s Last Stand, which won the 2018 Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award for written western humor.  First Herd, like Bluster’s, was fun to research, write and edit.

The first draft came to 547 pages, but by the time I edited it down it was a mere 484 pages.  While that is an inefficient way to write, it is what works best for me.  I’ll go through a third draft and make the final edits and polishes before I send the manuscript to my publisher so H.H. Lomax can ride again, this time up the Chisholm Trail, though he makes the case it should really be called the “Lomax Trail.”

A Taste of ‘Moonshine’

Over the holidays, I was pleased to receive the proof/review copies of Contention and Other Frontier Stories, which includes my short story “A Grave Too Many.”  It is always a thrill to get something published, but to be included in an anthology with so many fine writers and Spur Award winners is indeed a great honor. Coincidentally, Contention is scheduled for release on my birthday in May.

Contention and Other Frontier Stories Cover

“A Grave Too Many” is one of two short stories I had accepted last year for future anthologies.  Over the years I’ve written a few short stories, including most notably “One Man’s Word” in the short-lived Louis L’Amour Western Magazine back in the 1990s. 

Even so I’ve had more books published than short stories,
which I find harder to write, just because every word counts and must
contribute to the ultimate resolution of the plot.  You’ve got a lot more wiggle room in writing
a novel.

While I was cleaning out some old files from my youth, I
came across what I think to be the first western short story I ever wrote.  Though the tale’s not dated, I suspect it was
written when I was between the ages of 12 and 14.  It’s named “Moonshine Potter” and told in the
first person like my Memoirs of H.H.
Lomax series.  Too, there are touches
of humor in the piece.  So, without
further ado, I present my first western short story as corrected for spelling
and punctuation:

Moonshine Potter

                My
name is Moonshine Potter.  As I guess you
know, I’m the sheriff of Coffin.  That’s
a town in Texas.  The population is 629.  Wait just a minute, the undertaker wants to
see me.  Now as I was saying, the
population was 629, but now it’s 628. 

                Well,
I guess I had better go find the murderer of John McGraw.  He was the swingingest guitar player in
town.  First, let me find Messy
Names.  He’s the fastest draw in town. I
found him. 

                “Messy,”
I says, “I got reason to believe you killed John McGraw.”

                “Now,
Moonshine, you know I’ve got his autographed picture hanging on the wall of my
shack,” Messy replied. 

                “Well,
I’m coming back with a warrant of arrest,” I said menacingly.

                Well,
I got the warrant of arrest from the judge and went to find Messy.  I found him in the saloon drinking a bottle
of rust solvent.

                “Here’s
the warrant of arrest,” I said

                “I’ve
got an alibi,” said Messy.

                “What?”
I asked.

                “That
was the day I shot Jim Long for stealing my garbage,” he said.

                Well,
I arrested Messy.  He said he was going
to appeal to the judge, and he did, but it didn’t help.  His lawyer lectured about the whole
affair.  I observed Messy was perfectly
calm during the trial.  He was found
guilty of murder.  If he would have
surveyed the jury closely, he would have found out they were all McGraw’s
brothers.

                Well,
the city folks broke into the jail and hung Messy in the orchard under a
slender oak tree for his offenses.

                One
day I saw the only man in the world who would want to kill McGraw.  I induced him to talk.  He said he had chartered McGraw to play at
his square dance, but he didn’t and you know the rest.  So, I arrested Buffalo Hill.

                Although
Hill had an expert lawyer, he too was hung. 

                Today
the inscription on Messy Names’ tombstone reads, “Hung by Mistake.  Guess the Joke’s on Us.”

-the end-

There you have it. Perhaps you now understand why I have written more novels than short stories.  Even so, the movie rights are available for “Moonshine Potter.”

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.