WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA CONVENTION 2014
Last week, I headed out for the six-and-a half-hour
drive from L.A. to the state’s capitol, Sacramento, for the annual convention
of the Western Writers of America, a professional writers’ organization that
has been in business since 1953. And
this organization is seriously about business as well as literature – the
members are all professional writers, whether they write traditional western
fiction, decidedly non-tradition western fiction, history, biography, books for
children, western screenplays or teleplays, or western music. I haven’t joined the outfit (yet), so I was
very grateful to be allowed to attend.
Having waited until after the rush hour, the
highways were clear, and in well under an hour I was beyond the TMZ – the
thirty mile zone, measured from the center of L.A. That measurement determined which western
movie towns were officially ‘local’ – like Melody Ranch, Paramount Ranch,
Corriganville – and which, like Pioneertown, got workers a boost in salary for
travel. I was quickly out of the movie west and into
the real west, typified at its bleakest by acres of dead orchards that lined
the ‘5’, often with posted signs demanding something be done about water
rights. It was a very different world
when I passed the California Aqueduct, where everything was green. I recalled a dozen western movies and a
hundred TV episodes where men were killing each other over water rights. I recalled CHINATOWN, too.
Sacramento was a logical choice for the gathering,
being nearly ground zero for the Gold Rush of 1849. The Convention began on Tuesday, June 24th,
commencing with a tour of the California Museum and California State
Capitol. It was followed by receptions
to welcome new members, and to give a chance for members to mingle, renew
friendships, have a glass of wine, and cut a rug. Wednesday
began with Authors Guild General Counsel Jan Constantine providing an update on
the status of the writers VS. Google lawsuit – over Google’ s providing
unauthorized previews of copyrighted writings – as well as other legal
issues. This was followed by a panel
discussing California Overland Trails, and those infamously poor map-readers,
the Donner Party – speakers included Terry Del Bene, author of THE DONNER PARTY
COOKBOOK. Later panels examined Gold
Rush Entertainers Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree and Lillie Langtry; the history
of the Pony Express; research sources and techniques for writers; and the
marketing of western literature. Speakers
on the various panels included well-known western authors Chris Enss, Johnny D.
Boggs, and the new President of the WWA, Sherry Monahan. The evening was capped with a screening of
the Oregon PBS-produced documentary, THE MODOC WAR, with remarks by
writer-producer Kami Horton, and Modoc Indian Cheewa James.
Thursday began with breakfast networking
roundtables, and a wide array of topics, including developing characters,
reenacting, daily life in the Victorian west, developing story for young
readers, John Steinbeck’s work, screenwriting, short fiction, marketing your
book, inspiration for western songs, and Roundup
Magazine – not this blog, but the magazine of the WWA, which is edited by
Johnny D. Boggs. Among the speakers were
those mentioned before, plus outgoing President Dusty Richards, Win Blevins, C.
Courtney Joyner, Rod Miller and Jim Jones.
Later that morning, the Keynote Address was by Liping Zhu, an advocate
for including Chinese characters in Western stories. This was followed by a trip to Old Town
Sacramento, featuring visits to the Delta King Paddlewheel, Wells Fargo Museum,
and the wonderful California Railroad Museum.
Next up, the Homestead Dinner and Auction – the
Homestead Foundation supports WWA by helping to fund educational programs,
awards, and pays for participation by industry pros. The auction, the Foundations’ main
fundraiser, included a wide array of member-contributed Western books, art,
jewelry, toys, and even the pilot script from JUSTIFIED.
Chip MacGregor & Holly Lorincz
Friday opened with a unique discussion, looking at
The Modoc War, the documentary about it, and the broader topic of writing for
and selling to PBS and the National Park Service. This was followed by a discussion focusing on
how to pitch a project. Panelists Chip
MacGregor and Holly Lorincz, both of the MacGregor Literary Agency, were
generous with their no-nonsense advice.
Among the points they made: the need to have the work completed before
you pitch it; to have a one-sentence pitch, and
a two or three minute pitch if they’re interested, and a 2 or 3 page synopsis so they can take something with them –
and the need to practice your verbal pitch instead of winging it. Skip
feels that this is a new Golden Age of publishing – that more books are
published, sold and read than ever before.
Also – and this observation came up panel after panel – the eBook has
created a whole new market for the short story and novella. And while in actual paper-type books,
nonfiction outsells fiction six to one, on eBooks, fiction outsells nonfiction
ten to one.
The next panel gave agents, editors and magazine and
book publishers a chance to introduce themselves – following the introductions,
writers could sign up to pitch to one or more of them. From TRUE WEST were editor Meghan Saar and
senior editor Stuart Rosebrook; Larry J. Martin from WOLF PACK PUBLISHING; Lou
Turner from HIGH HILL PRESS; Tiffany Schofield and Hazel Rumney from FIVE STAR
BOOKS; Dusty Richards, who is starting SADDLE-BAG EXPRESS an on-line magazine
he describes as a ‘Cowboy Facebook’, and is looking for short pieces; literary
agent Chip MacGregor; Duke Pennell of Pennell Publishing, whose site,
FrontierTales.com is full of free-to-read western stories; Kathleen Kelly of
University of Oklahoma Press; Martin Bartells, senior editor of WILD WEST; Bob
Clark, of the Washington State University Press; and Gary Goldstein, editorial
director of Kensington Books and Pinnacle, currently the only mass-market
paperback publisher of series westerns.
The mad rush -- writers sign up to pitch!
The speakers provided a clear demonstration of the
importance of researching your market, as the readerships and needs were very
different for each. Some were interested
in only fiction, or only non-fiction; some wanted only short stories or short
articles; others wanted VERY long manuscripts; some offered an advance against
royalties, others did not. Among the
surprises, while the eBook trade wants shorter pieces, real-book buyers want an
ever-longer read. Larry Martin revealed
that an increasing number of Germans are downloading their Western novels in
English. Meghan Saar said that TRUE WEST
is especially interested in articles set around historic anniversaries, and
advised that they be submitted a year in advance. Gary Goldstein put his needs most succinctly:
“Historical accuracy with a decent body count.”
Schmoozing 101 -- writers chat up Gary Goldstein of
Kensington Books
INTERVIEW WITH TIFFANY SCHOFIELD OF ‘FIVE STAR BOOKS’
I was able to catch up with Tiffany Schofield of FIVE
STAR BOOKS after the discussion, and ask some follow-up questions. I’m interested in the segmentation of the Western
book market, and intrigued that FIVE STAR’S bread and butter is the library
book market.
TIFFANY SCHOFIELD: With the library market, we sell
directly to distributors that handle library sales, that help the librarians
with the one-stop shop. Because they’re
so busy these days, and it’s harder and harder for them to do hand selections
of titles of what they want. So in the
library market we typically work with standing-order plans, where librarians can sign up to know exactly
how many titles they’ll get a month, and annually, so they know how much to
budget each year. It really helps them
with their planning and their budget, and they know it’s going to be a product
that’s 100% satisfaction guaranteed.
It’s peace of mind; they know they’re going to get something that their
patrons will love. It does act
differently than the trade market in a lot of ways. It’s kind of the square peg in a round hole.
HENRY: How
does the material written for the library market differ from what you would
write for regular mass-market?
TIFFANY SCHOFIELD:
Oh, that’s an interesting question.
I wish that Gary Goldstein was here to chat with us, because we joke all
the time that we share custody of our lovely Johnny Boggs. Some of
Johnny’s westerns, on the trade side with Gary, they always joke about how they
have a much higher body-count; there’s a lot more action, and things going
on. For the library market, Johnny has been
in our western list, but (his books) are really rooted so much more with
historical fiction. He’ll take an event from
history and then just build this amazing story around it, so it’s really not
just a western of the cowboy on a horse
with a gun, it’s this real person, it’s
Custer, so you get this history, with this fictional story wrapped around
it. Where probably in the Kensingtons
it’s more action, shoot-em-up, body count!
HENRY: Who
are your top authors?
TIFFANY SCHOFIELD:
Our top western writers would be Johnny Boggs, Michael Zimmer, who’s
also here as well, Bill Brooks. Those are some of our top ones. We’ve also published a lot of the classic
writers – the Louis L’Amours, Max
Brands, Lauren Payne – the list goes on and on.
The literary rock-stars of yesterday!
HENRY: And how about of tomorrow? Are you looking for new writers?
TIFFANY SCHOFIELD:
We are; we have expanded our list, which started last July, thanks to
the Western Writers of America, and attending this conference. We realized how many people were still
writing these great stories who needed to find a publishing house. And thankfully in the library market, I think
because these stories are so deeply rooted with their non-fiction elements. But there’s not always (historical)
information you can find. So these
literary rock stars can build a whole story around it, so it’s kind of like
fictionalized non-fiction, if there is such a thing. And the librarians I think enjoying offering
that to their patrons, because not only do they get the feeling for what it
might have been to live in the 1800s American West, they learn about the
peoples, the cultures, the battles, from a fictionalized account that makes it
really interesting and keeps their attention.
HENRY: What else
should I know about you and FIVE STAR?
TIFFANY SCHOFIELD:
That we love discovering new writers, and I think libraries also enjoy
that. Sometimes in the trade, someone
walks into a bookstore, they’re going to look for a western; they’re going to
look for a Louis L’Amour, they’re going to look for a Max Brand, the perception
of the names that they recognize. Whereas
perhaps in the library market they’re open to new names, new voices. The same stories with a different twist.
INTERVIEW WITH MEGHAN SAAR, EDITOR OF ‘TRUE WEST’
Meghan Saar is the editor of the magazine which, now
in its 61st year, is the oldest and most recognized nonfiction
Western magazine in the business, TRUE WEST.
I wondered if the WWA convention was as valuable to magazine publishers
as it was to the writers themselves.
MEGHAN SAAR: I am here representing TRUE WEST because I’ve been coming to the WWA for eleven years, and it’s a fabulous place to
meet writers. Quite a few writers who
are regular contributors are regular members of WWA. It’s a good chance for me to reconnect with
them, and also to meet new writers, find out what’s going on in their lives,
what projects they’re working on, to see if we can get any more story ideas or
develop some relationships. Because when
you’re working on a history magazine, you never know when some idea is going to
hit you. It’s good to make contacts –
and I’ll think – oh, I remember that writer knew a lot about that (historical
figure). So l know who to contact. I find it very beneficial to build those
relationships.
HENRY: I
would think normally, day to day, you’re not face to face with that many
writers.
MEGHAN SAAR: No I’m not. And it’s a lot more fun, because you get a
much better sense of people when you meet them.
And they get a better sense of me.
A lot of people don’t know that I have a hearing loss, and when they
meet me they kind of understand -- ohhh, that’s why you’re always on email, and
don’t talk on the phone that much. So it’s
also helpful for me that they get to know me a little bit more.
HENRY: Have
you actually gotten writers that ended up working for you through these events?
MEGHAN SAAR: Every year; every year, there’s not a convention
that I haven’t got articles from; there’s
always been benefits in attending.
HENRY: Anything
else I should know?
MEGHAN SAAR:
Just that it’s a fabulous convention, and I really enjoy that it moves
around, because I do meet more people, because people come to what’s closer to
them. And I think that’s more fun. Not that I don’t like the regular crowd, I
do. But it’s nice to see new faces and
meet new people.
HENRY: How
many conventions do you go to in a year?
MEGHAN SAAR: This is the only one. This is it.
I do go to the Tucson Book Festival, but I don’t know if you’d call that
a convention. There are a lot of
writers, but they don’t go there to learn about writing or to mingle with each
other. They’re there to promote their
new books. I have done Woman Writing the West before; I did that one time. I
get asked by my bosses, ‘Where do you want to go?’ I say WWA; I don’t think I need to go
anywhere else. It works for me.
After a lunch break, the panel, From Page to Stage: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, examined
the business of adapting your own or someone else’s book to the screen, or
allowing it to be done. You couldn’t ask
for a more experienced group of writers on the subject, and with widely varied
experiences and points-of-view.
Moderator and WWA Veep-elect Kirk Ellis is the multi-award winning
adapter for three celebrated mini-series: ANNE FRANK, INTO THE WEST and JOHN
ADAMS.
Miles Swarthout (you’ll soon be
reading my interview with him from the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival) adapted
his father Glendon’s famous novel THE SHOOTIST for the screen. He also wrote early drafts of the upcoming
THE HOMESMAN, also based on a Glendon Swarthout novel, and will soon release
his novel THE LAST SHOOTIST, a follow-up to the classic. Miles is so committed to the screen that he
won’t start a novel without a clear idea of an actor who could play the lead character
in a movie. Multi-Spur-winning novelist Thomas
Cobb wrote the novel that became the Oscar winning film CRAZY HEART. His advice was to divorce yourself from the
adaptation process as much as possible, and just concentrate on the
prose-writing.
Anne Hillerman, daughter
of novelist Tony Hillerman, who has just written a mystery continuing her
father’s characters, was involved in the making of several movies based on his
books for PBS with producer Robert Redford.
Her father’s experience with the first filmed adaptation of the Leaphorn
and Chee stories, DARK WIND, was un-rewarding and awkward enough that Tony had
little to do with the later films. “But
he liked being on the set, because it was really fun for him to see that something
that he had written in thirty words, just eluded to, became a whole big deal in
the movie. And in my dad’s books, his
description of landscape was really part and parcel of why people love to read
his books. Well of course, in a script you
don’t need that, because you see it. So
all of those words that dad labored over so long, nobody needed it… My dad said the best part (of being on the
set) was the food – excellent coffee!”
INTERVIEW WITH KIRK ELLIS
I’d spent several hours of my drive to Sacramento
finishing the audio-book version of David McCullough’s biography, JOHN ADAMS,
which was the basis of Kirk Ellis’s miniseries script. I was eager to ask him about that, and about
INTO THE WEST.
KIRK ELLIS: I
was the writer and supervising producer for TNT for INTO THE WEST in 2005. And I was the co-executive producer and
writer for JOHN ADAMS in 2008.
HENRY: How do you attack a piece of work as big and
as – for film – as unstructured as JOHN ADAMS
KIRK ELLIS: I’ve
been at this a long time and I’ve discovered that the challenge with any
adaptation or subject derived from historic reality is all about finding the
right in-point and the right out-point, particularly the in-point, because where
you decide to start the story really determines the mood of the story, the
whole approach you’re taking to the character.
With JOHN ADAMS, it would have been very easy to start the story with
him as a young lawyer trying to make his way, meeting Abigail, play out all of
that courtship. But that would have been
a very different movie from the movie we made, which was from the beginning
going to be about John Adams as a man of principle, who would stake everything,
his reputation, his welfare, his family’s welfare, on a very firm belief in
what the America that he helped to create should represent. And so we start the story the night of the
Boston Massacre, with John coming back from the judicial circuit and discovering
that there has been this horrible shooting, and a representative of the
soldiers comes to him the next day and says there’s not a lawyer who will take
the case. And Adams without hesitating
does, because he believes that in a free country no man should lack a fair
trial; and that set the character for us.
And it was very much about who John Adams was, this New England Puritan
who believed that government was very much like the human character, that it
needed checks and balances. And that’s
the story we elected to tell. So once
you make those choices, and I’ve gotten better at it with each project over time,
then things tend to fall into place for you.
HENRY: How
about with INTO THE WEST? How did you approach that? Did that start as a novel?
KIRK ELLIS:
No, INTO THE WEST was actually an original idea by another writer, William
Mastrosimone, a very well-known playwright.
It was derived from an idea from
Steven Speilberg, who said in a meeting that, “I’d love to do HOW THE WEST WAS
WON, but I want to do it right. And I
want to do it from the point of view of two families, one Native American and
one Anglo family coming west in the Manifest Destiny movement.” So that’s how that started. So it was an effort to meld fictional
characters with real-life historical incident and people. I think that it was more successful in its
latter half than in its earlier half, as the story started to gel a bit
better. But that was a challenge too, because
it was, again, focusing on a vast panoply of characters, and deciding which
ones you were focusing on from episode to episode.
HENRY: With JOHN ADAMS, you said that took six years
of your life. How about with INTO THE
WEST?
KIRK ELLIS:
INTO THE WEST came together very quickly. They were already shooting the miniseries in
Canada, and they were planning a move to Santa Fe, where I live. They had tremendous trouble with the
scripts. And I had done some work for
Dreamworks in the past. They called me
to find out if I would work as supervising producer and writer for the Santa Fe
sections, and I agreed, and so that was a very fast learning curve. I was literally writing some of those scripts
on my dining room table nights before the episodes were meant to be
shooting. It was literally research
books on Wounded Knee piled three or four deep spread out, existing script
pages that I was revising, everything attached to a printer. That was chaos in one sense, but out of chaos
sometimes comes a fairly decent script.
Next week I’ll have part two of my coverage of the
WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA convention, including the Barnes & Noble
book-signing, the Spur Awards Banquet, and an interview with the banquet’s
emcee, western star Clu Gulager.
‘COPS & COWBOYS’ COMING JULY 26!
On Saturday night, July 26th, at 6 p.m., head to the
historic Leonis Adobe Museum in Calabasas for the annual Mid-Valley Community Police Council
COPS & COWBOYS celebration!
There’ll be toe-tappin’ music, dancing, delicious barbecue, Black Jack
and Poker in the saloon, silent and live auctions and more!
The Leonis Adobe is Los Angeles City Cultural
Monument #1! Built in 1844, its early
years are a mystery, but some say it was a stagecoach stop along El Camino Real,
between Mission San Buenaventura and Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana. In the 1870s it was acquired by Miguel
Leonis, a Basque farmer who’d made a fortune in the sheep business, and his
wife Espiritu Chijulla, daughter of the local Chumash Chief. The Adobe presents an authentic view of 1800s
ranch life, and features several period buildings, a Chumash village, and
livestock, including Percheron horses and Longhorn Texas Cattle.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the MVCPC
raises funds for supplemental training for the officers of the Van Nuys
Station, for improvements to the station itself, and the LAPD’s Youth Programs,
including the Cadet Program, the Jeopardy Program, and the Juvenile Impact
Program. Your contributions will have a
direct impact on safety in this community!
For more information on these programs, go to www.midvalleypolicecouncil.org
Chumash village
Individual tickets start at $75 if you’re in the
LAPD, $150 if you’re not, with VIP tickets for $250. There are all kinds of tables, levels of
sponsorship, and advertising available in the program! To buy tickets, and learn more about what
will be a terrific night for a very deserving cause, please call 818-994-4661,
FAX 818-994-6181, email info@theproperimageevents.com,
or visit www.midvalleypolicecouncil.org
.
DON’T MISS ‘THE GRAPES OF WRATH’ SATURDAY, JULY 12
AT THE AUTRY!
In conjunction with their ROUTE 66 show, on Saturday
at 1:30 pm, the Autry will screen GRAPES OF WRATH, directed by John Ford from
the brilliant John Steinbeck novel. The
1940 Oscar winner for Ford’s direction, Jane Darwell’s supporting performance,
and with five more nominations, WRATH is one of both Steinbeck’s and Ford’s
greatest achievements, putting a human face, the face of the Joad family, on
what had been seen as anonymous Okies travelling Route 66, their farms lost, in
search of work and food.
Fonda, Carradine & Qualen
Wonderfully
adapted by Nunnally Johnson, it contains career-highlight performances by Henry
Fonda, John Carradine and John Qualen.
It will be introduced by Jeffrey Richardson, the Autry’s curator of both
Popular Culture and the Route 66 show, as well as Firearms. If you’ve never seen it, or never seen it in
35mm on a big screen, GRAPES OF WRATH is required viewing. And check out the Route 66 show before or
after, to put it all in context.
THAT’S A WRAP!
And that’s it for this week’s Round-up! Have a great week, and see ya Sunday!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright July 2014 by Henry C.
Parke – All Rights Reserved
