WESTERN WRITERS CON. PT. 2, PLUS COMIC COWBOY LUNCH, FREE CONCERT TICKETS!

WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA CONVENTION Part 2

On Saturday morning, June 28^th, the last day of the Western Writers of America Convention began (if you missed my coverage of part 1, go HERE ) with three panel discussions.  Monty McCord, author of MUNDY’S LAW, moderated Steps to Successful Book Marketing.  He shared the stage with H. Alan Day, who co-wrote the best-selling memoir LAZY B. with his sister, Sandra Day O’Connor; literary agent and publicist Krista Soukup, owner of the Blue Cottage Agency; and Lynn Wiese Sneyd, author, and founder of LWS Literary Services, which handles editing and publicity as well as ghost-writing.   

Next up was Other People’s Lives: Writing Biography Right, moderated by JOHN MUIR: MAGNIFICENT TRAMP author Rod Miller.  One of the delightful admissions came from “THAT FIEND IN HELL”: SOAPY SMITH author Catherine Spude who announced that much of what she has written is riddled with lies!  She gave the example of writing her father’s obituary and, under pressure from her insistent mother, neglected to mention his previous marriage.  It’s worth remembering that when we’re fighting to get the testimony of people who were ‘there’, wherever ‘there’ happens to be, that just like all of us, primary sources have a tendency to improve stories, to skip over embarrassing elements, and to simply remember things incorrectly, even when doing their damndest to be honest.  Washington State University Press editor-in-chief Bob Clark attacked one of my personal peeves in alleged non-fiction: invented dialogue.  He also advised that in writing about the life and times of someone, to make sure it’s more of their life and less of their times.  Robert Larson, whose biographical subjects include Red Cloud and Gall, suggested starting a biography with a big event, and warned that in research, primary sources like obituaries and birth records are often wrong.  In answer to an audience question about researching, I believe it was Catherine Spude who suggested using Ancestry.com to find descendants of your subject, and make them your friends.

CRAZY HEART and WITH BLOOD IN THEIR EYES author Thomas Cobb chaired the last discussion, Truth and Fiction.  On the panel were Matthew P. Mayo, who last year won the Best Western Short Novel Spur for TUCKER’S RECKONING; two-time Spur Award winner Lucia St. Clair Robinson; and Ann Weisgarber, a Spur finalist this year for her historical novel THE PROMISE.   

After a break for lunch, the writers piled into a convoy of buses and headed to the Barnes & Noble store in nearby Citrus Heights for a massive book-signing event.   Spread throughout the massive emporium, clusters of authors sat with their books, signing them for the large contingent  of readers who strolled through the store. 

Among the authors I spoke to was Anne Hillerman.  With her first western novel, SPIDERWOMAN’S DAUGHTER, which won this year’s Spur Award for Best First Novel, she’s continuing the beloved novels that her father, the late and great Tony Hillerman, wrote.  I asked her what it was like to be stepping into those shoes.

ANNE HILLERMAN:  It was wonderful; it was a little bit intimidating, at least at first.  Because I was thinking of all the people who had loved my dad’s books for thirty years.  But then, once I started writing it, I really enjoyed it.  And I thought that all those people who had the potential to intimidate me also had the potential to love this book.  And it made me happy.  SPIDERWOMAN’S DAUGHTER is continuing the Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn series, with Bernadette Manolito as the main crime-solver.  My contract with Harper-Collins was for two books, so I’m finishing up the second novel now; it’s due August 1^st.  And I’m hoping they’ll have it out some time between April and August of 2015.”

HENRY:  You also have a strikingly beautiful book called TONY HILLERMAN’S LANDSCAPE.

ANNE HILLERMAN:  My husband, Don Strell, took the photos, and I wrote the text; the book is about places my dad loved.  (There are) descriptions of what those places are, and there are quotes from my dad’s books. And the last chapter is a piece that my dad wrote about why he loved living in Los Ranches, New Mexico.   

Bill Hill writes mostly about trails, and his books have covered the Pony Express, Oregon, Santa Fe, Lewis and Clark, California and Morman trails.   “Mainly the immigrant trails, the historic trails out west.  Yesterday and today I worked with them, so I could find old photos, drawings,  sketches.  Things that were made by the immigrants or the military, when they did their surveys, and go back and photograph the same places today. It’s a lot of fun.”  I asked him what audience his books are aimed at.  “Some are for the general audience, adults ordinarily.  Then we have introductory books about the trails, that have a little bit of everything in them.  So they have information about the early maps, diaries, guidebooks that were available to the travelers.  And a lot of ‘yesterday and today’ quotes that are related to those sites.  I like to pick two or three artists or immigrants who made sketches, and then follow them all along the west.  I’ve used people like Bruff, Tappin, Jackson, Simmons.  The last one, on the Pony Express, I used a lot of Jackson photos in addition to his sketches and paintings.” 

Bill Markley, author of DEADWOOD DEAD MEN, and WWA new member chairman, has written non-fiction, both for books and for magazines like TRUE WEST, but he’s branched out into fiction, and finds it liberating.  “For the past twelve years I’ve written non-fiction, and when you write non-fiction, you stick to the facts.  And in any story there’s always holes in the facts, and you think, ‘If I only had this one more piece of information it would make my story complete.’  With my new book, DEADWOOD DEAD MEN, it’s historical fiction, and I started thinking about this one story: why did this actually happen the way it did?  Why don’t I just create the scene in the barroom as it happened?  One thing grew into another, and I had the first chapter done.  And the editor of this publication said, ‘Write the story.’  So that’s how I got into writing historical fiction.  It’s Deadwood, August 1876, couple weeks after Wild Bill gets shot, and there was a series of murders.  And there were always rumors that there was a gang behind the scenes pulling the strings.”  Interestingly, Bill’s career with the west started onscreen.  “I got my start in the film DANCES WITH WOLVES.  I kept a journal during the filming, and then self-published.  I was in the opening Civil War scene, when they were going to cut Kevin Costner’s foot off.   Then I switched to Confederates, and I’m one of the guys who tries to shoot him off his horse.   I wasn’t a reenactor then, but I am now.  I was also in the films SON OF THE MORNING STAR, FAR AND AWAY with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, in the big land-rush scene at the end.  That was a crazy deal – 250 wagons, a thousand riders.  The insurance actuaries predicted that there would be one death, and a lot of injuries, but no one died.  Then I was in GETTYSBURG and CRAZY HORSE.”  

There were a lot of writers of western fact and fiction present, but Harlan Hague, whose book THE PEOPLE will be published by Five Star in August, was my first interview with a writer of western speculative fiction.   “The People are a confederation of plains tribes that have put aside ancient enmities and formed a joint opposition to the United States.  They decided that they had an enemy worse than the next tribe over the hill.  I rearranged time and place so outrageously that I don’t mention places or places in the story, but I would guess it was in the 1840s.  The tribe on which I focus is a tribe which supposedly went extinct in the 1820s.  They had lived on Newfoundland.  But in my book I rescue the Beothuk and have them migrate westward and settle on the western plains.” 

James E. Meuller’s third book, SHOOTING ARROWS AND SLINGING MUD – CUSTER, THE PRESS, AND THE LITTLE BIGHORN, has been in the works for about twenty years, ever since the author was working towards his PhD at the University of Texas, Austin.  “Custer was stationed there on reconstruction duty after the Civil War, and there’s actually a picture of a U.T. building with Custer sitting on the steps.  At that point I wrote a paper for a class about Custer and the press coverage.  Then I wrote a series of academic articles.  It took about two and a half years to write the book after I got the contract, but I’ve actually been working on it for about twenty years.  It’s a study of how the Little Bighorn was covered in newspapers of the day, and talks about various aspects of the coverage, including humor.  For example, within a week or less of the battle, newspapers were telling jokes about it.  One newspaper in Kentucky had on its front page that Custer’s death was ‘Siouxicide!’  There are chapters discussing how accurate and inaccurate the coverage was. There’s a chapter on the impact on the 1876 presidential campaign, because it was an election year.  Surprisingly, it didn’t have that much impact.  The battle was front-page news from July through August.  But relatively quickly, the Hamburg Massacre, which was a race riot in South Carolina, between a black militia unit and ex-Confederate soldiers, knocked the Little Bighorn off the front page.  ”         

I was eager to talk to Paul Colt, author of BOOTS AND SADDLES – A CALL TO GLORY, because I overheard that it was about Blackjack Pershing’s pursuit of Pancho Villa.  My grandfather, Henry Charles Parke, whom I am named after, rode in Pershing’s cavalry in that adventure.  “It’s a historical dramatization.  I like to do what I call unexpected history, where it focuses on some little known or overlooked aspect of a famous character of event.  Everybody knows George Patton because of George C. Scott’s dramatic portrayal.  But most people don’t know that early in his career he was a cavalry officer; he was the Army’s first saber master.  And on the cusp of the twentieth century, just before World War One, he could already see that the cavalry was on its last days.  He was very frustrated; he was 32 years old, still a 2^nd lieutenant and he was thinking of resigning his commission.  Then Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, Woodrow Wilson sent Pershing into Mexico to get him.  Patton talks his way onto Pershing’s staff; during that nine month campaign, Pershing puts his arm around Patton and saves his career.”   

Fiction writer Thom Nicholson’s inspiration for REVENGE OF THE STOLEN DOVE came from life.  I asked if the dove of the title was of the soiled variety.  “When I was eighteen, I met a 95-year-old woman who, when she was sixteen, working in her father’s field in Nebraska, two men came by in a wagon and scooped her up.  Took her to Denver, addicted her to opium, turned her into a prostitute and sold her to a brothel.  And it took her ten years to get away; she went back to Nebraska, and her family was gone.  She never saw them again, ever.  She didn’t have any skill other than what she’d been doing.  So she went back to doing that, and was a prostitute, and became a madam.  She bought property, and when I met her at 95 she was a genteel woman of leisure living off her investments.  She told me part of the story.  I told her I had to hear the rest.  She told me to come back later; when I did, she had died.  So I had to make up the (rest of the) story for her.  So this is written in her honor.”  

I knew that evening I’d be watching Clu Gulager -- famous for his role as Sheriff Ryker in THE VIRGINIAN, and as Billy the Kid in THE TALL MAN, and movies as disparate as THE KILLERS and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW -- emcee the Spur Awards that night.   But when I spotted him at Barnes & Noble, I thought it would be a better time to get an interview.  I was right.  To say the talk was wide-ranging is an understatement, but even if I got few direct answers to my questions, the responses were always informative and entertaining.  I asked him why he was attending the convention. 

Clu channeling Jack Benny

CLU GULAGER:  Sex.  Pure sex.  It’s a sexual reasoning I have.  Most people here are not spring chickens – certainly I am not.  And I am drawn to women who are not spring chickens; and there are quite a few here.   

HENRY:  It is the Western Writers of America convention.  Have you done any writing yourself?

CLU GULAGER:  I write scenes for my film-acting workshop, for the actors.  Other than that, I am very, very intimidated by you guys, and your editors.  Because wordsmiths, to me, are the supreme art.  And I know that Picasso wouldn’t enjoy me saying it, but I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again.  Tonight I’ve got to say a couple of words; and I’m very frightened.  Because I know the cynicism that goes into writing.  I’ve written enough to know that you have to be somewhat skeptical of all of your sources, of your subject, and of your wording – and especially your syntax. I have written a western that I like, a screenplay, and my son, who is a filmmaker (writer/director John Gulager), likes a lot, called MISTER.  And I’ve written about fifteen screenplays, none of which have been done.  We’ve gotten some of them partially made, and then run out of money all the time.  I should probably know your films --

HENRY:  It depends how late you stay up, and what strange channels you watch.

CLU GULAGER:  Well, I don’t watch TV.  I don’t have any machines in my house, except a refrigerator, and a stove that’s broken.  And of course, my head.  That machine doesn’t function well at this time, but it’s there; I sleep with it.

HENRY:  Okay, this will come out of left field: what was it like doing THE TALL MAN, with Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett?

CLU GULAGER:  He looked like a turtle, when he was looking good.  Otherwise he looked to me like he was about to crumple, most of the time.  Alcoholics tend to feel badly when they get up in the mornings, and we started shooting early.  So by noon he was about ready to go home.  That’s showbiz talk. 

HENRY:  Was he drinking while you were doing the show?

CLU GULAGER:  Oh yes.  We sat down from time to time.  I was a young actor, and did not like that.  I knew everything then.  And what I know now you could put on the head of a needle. 

HENRY:  What is your favorite role among your screen performances?

CLU GULAGER:  Oh, I enjoyed mounting Cybil Shepherd on a pool table in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.  That was fun.

HENRY:  That sounds fun.

CLU GULAGER:  Thank you.  I enjoyed shooting Alan Alda in the belly with a double-barreled shotgun in THE GLASS HOUSE.  He deserved it.

HENRY:  For a long time.

CLU GULAGER:  Mm-hm – yup.  I got him at the end of the movie.  And I enjoyed it when Randolph Scott’s pony fell with me while I was doing Billy the Kid.  Fell with me in a gully in the back lot of Universal and almost killed me.  I enjoyed that a lot because I felt it would be a good story to tell.  I never tell it, but I’m telling you.

HENRY:  Randolph Scott was not in the show with you, was he? 

CLU GULAGER:  No, he’d gone, but he left his pony, and that’s what they gave me to ride.  It was 19, and I rode it for a while.  Then it gave out, and they gave me another horse that was so high that I could hardly mount it.  This one time Ronald Reagan came on the set; his wife was in it with me – very good actor, Nancy.   He came on.  I had a hard time getting on that damn horse.  So about the eighth time, I just fell flat and just lay there.  He said, “Clu.  Clu.”  I said, “Yeah, Ron?”  He said, “I’ll tell you how I did it.  I started mounting the horse, and just as I started to get up, I said, ‘Cut.’  And so they cut, and then they showed me on top of the horse, already mounted.”  I said, “Thank you.”  I wanted to tell him to shove it, you know, but I couldn’t, because he was the future governor and president.  Good guy; real good guy.  He’s the one that closed all the Indian schools.  And the Indians wouldn’t go to the white schools, so they just stopped going to school.  I’m an Indian.  So all my friends who taught in Indian schools said, “Look, could you help us, could you talk with Ron and ask him not to do it?  Tell him that the kids won’t go to the white schools?”  And I said, “Yeah.”  But I never did.  I didn’t feel – not my place.  He was not going to listen to me. 

HENRY:  Was that when he was Governor of California?

CLU GULAGER:  President.  They were economizing.  They were conservatives from Illinois.  And he believed in saving moola, no matter the consequences.  But he was a kind gentle man to me.  I did a movie called THE KILLERS with him.  He played a villain.  He was very good; very good.  He hated it.

HENRY:  Wasn’t that his last movie?

CLU GULAGER:  Yeah.  But he was really good in it.  You see, his agent ran Universal, Lew Wasserman.  So Lew prevailed upon him: “Look, I’ve helped you all these years.  We need you in this picture.”  It was a TV movie, not worth two cents.  He didn’t want to do the movie, but he had to do it, because Lew got him elected Governor, and eventually President, and he knew which side his bread was buttered on, and he took it seriously, this political activity he was engaged in.  He loved it.  Nancy said, “He doesn’t like show business any more.  He likes politics; he’s very interested in politics, Clu.”  And I knew what she was talking about, because of my whole family; I come from a political background.  You do get involved with different things.  I don’t know what you’re involved in other than your writing, but you do become obsessed with things.  And look what happened.  He could fall asleep in an instant, in a meeting of Congress.  Brilliant, brilliant mind – you try falling asleep when you’re President, in the middle of Congress.  He could nap, and not even be drunk.  I don’t think he drank to excess.

HENRY:  Now in THE KILLERS, you were with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson.

CLU GULAGER:  Yes, and I hit Angie Dickinson in the face as hard as I could, and I enjoyed it.

HENRY:  So you’re really fond of her, I take it.

CLU GULAGER:  I like her, except for one time I asked her to come down to The New Beverly.  (Note: The New Beverly is a revival house in L.A. owned and operated by Quentin Tarantino; very funky and very chic.)  We were showing THE KILLERS, and I’d talk with her.  And she said she couldn’t make it.  And I wanted to say…but I didn’t; I’m a gentleman.

HENRY:  THE KILLERS was directed by Don Siegal.  What was he like? 

CLU GULAGER:  I loved him as a person, very much.  Very kind and gentle.  We bonded, we were very good friends.  And his boy, Kristopher Tabori was a good friend of mine.  I must say that one of his films was one of my favorite horror films for decades.  And that was INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, with Kevin McCarthy, in black and white.  And then other things took over.  I loved ALIEN a lot, that Don O’Bannon wrote.  And Dan O’Bannon wrote a piece one time for me, called RETURN OF THE LIVNG DEAD.  And I did it.  And I said, how come you cast me in this thing, because I was a cowboy actor, kind of a legitimate actor.   And this was nonsense.  And he said, well, who would you put in it?  And I thought and thought, and I couldn’t think of anyone that would accept that role, it was so ridiculous.  I said, I can’t think of anyone.  He said, there you go.   

THE SPUR AWARDS DINNER

Jim Beaver

The convention was capped that night with the banquet, and the bestowing of the Spur Awards.  The main course was salmon, the desert was tiramisu, and the entertainment began with a bit of time-travel.  We were brought back to a mid-80s western film festival.  Actor and film historian Jim Beaver, known for his roles in DEADWOOD, SUPERNATURAL and JUSTIFIED, was hard to recognize within a wreath of crusty whiskers, as he played the festival’s special guest, an amalgam of all the great and near-great and not-that-great sidekicks of yesteryear.  To the delight of we hard-core cowboy-movie nerds, peppered among the jokes were frequent references to the most obscure of B-western productions. 

The program continued with a series of special awards.  The first, The Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement, went to Robert J. Conley.  As a Cherokee, he wrote about the west from a not too common perspective, writing short stories, novels and non-fiction, including THE CHEROKEE ENCYCLOPEDIA. 

A beloved and much honored member, described as ‘the face and heart of the WWA,’ he died this February, at the age of 73.  But fortunately, this was not a posthumous presentation; Candy Moulton, executive director of the WWA, aware of his health problems, travelled to his home in Sylva, North Carolina, and made the presentation a week before his death.  Along with all the remembrances of him, his leather-braided cane was placed across the top of the lectern.    

Clu Gulager, a close friend of Conley, and part Cherokee himself, told the audience of the time he asked Conley to play a lawman in a film, and Conley eagerly agreed, even though he had to shave his head for the part.  And then, to Gulager’s chagrin, that scene ended up on the cutting-room floor!

Johnny Boggs and Ollie Reed

The Stirrup Award was presented to Ollie Reed Jr., by Roundup Magazine editor Johnny D. Boggs, for his article on the LONGMIRE TV series. 

Diane & John Gulager, C. Courtney Joyner, Clu Gulager, Kirk Ellis

The Lariat Award for exceptional support to the WWA and literature of the West, went to Tucson radio host Emil Franzi.  The Branding Iron Award for support to the WWA and its goals went to writer and, until recently, chair of the membership committee, Rod Miller. 

Anne Hillerman & Sherry Monahan

Clu and new WWA President Sherry Monahan handed out the Spurs.   The Spur for Best Western Contemporary novel went to James Lee Burke for LIGHT OF THE WORLD.  Best Western Historical Novel was SILENT WE STOOD, by Henry Chappell.  Best Western Traditional Novel was CROSSING PURGATORY, by Gary Schanbacher.  Anne Hillerman’s SPIDER WOMAN’S DAUGHTER was the Best First Novel.  Mark Lee Garner’s SHOT ALL TO HELL: JESSE JAMES, THE NORTHFIELD RAID, AND THE WILD WEST’S GREATEST ESCAPE, was Best Western Non-Fiction – Historical.  Best Western Nonfiction – Contemporary, was William Philpott’s VACATIONLAND. 

Earle Labor and his family of researchers

Best Western Nonfiction - Biography was JACK LONDON: AN AMERICAN LIFE, a book sixty years in the making, by Earle Labor.  Just a personal note here:  I was delighted that Labor, who brought on-stage his family of researchers, credited his interest in the subject with a book he read as a kid, JACK LONDON’S STORIES FOR BOYS.  It was also my father’s favorite book as a kid, and the one he gave to me when I was bored with what they were having me to read in school.

Juni Fisher

Best Western Juvenile Fiction was PAPA’S GOLD by Ellen Gray Massey.  Best Western Juvenile Nonfiction was Jean A. Lukesh’s EAGLE OF DELIGHT.  STORYTELLER (Best Illustrated Children’s Book) was YOSEMITE’S SONGSTER: ONE COYOTE’S STORY, by Ginger Wadsworth, illustrated by Daniel San Souci.  Best Western Short Fiction Story went to CABIN FEVER by Brett Cogburn.  Best Western Poem, by Amy Glynn, was CHAMISE.  Best Western Song was STILL THERE, by Waddie Mitchell and Juni Fisher, and Juni was there to perform it.  Best Western Documentary was INDIAN RELAY by M.L. Smoker.  Best Western Short Nonfiction was THE OTHER JAMES BROTHER by Mark Lee Gardner in Wild West Magazine.

Me & Clu bid a fond farewell to the WWA Convention!

WEDNESDAY LUNCH @ THE AUTRY: COWBOYS AND COMICS: FAST ON THE DRAW!

Wednesday, July 16, at High Noon, Rob Word’s ‘A Word On Westerns’ Cowboy Lunch will take place, as it does on the third Wednesday of every month.  The focus this time will be on western-themed comic books.  As Rob points out, “The boom years for television westerns were in the 1950's and 1960's.  It was the same with comic books. The shelves of dime and drug stores were filled with comics featuring glossy covers of practically every TV and movie western.  And new western heroes like Ghost Rider, The Rawhide Kid, The Trigger Twins and Tomahawk were being offered in glorious Four Color stories.  Westerns were outselling superheroes and you'll discover some things you didn't know about the reasons why!”

Guests will include legendary MAD MAGAZINE artist and ‘Bat Lash’ creator Sergio Aragones; ComicCon’s Mark Evianer; actor and would-be ‘Lieutenant Blueberry’ (a French Western strip) Martin Kove; Will Ryan on sidekicks who got their own comics; music by the lovely Saguaro Sisters; and Olympic Gold Medalist and stuntman Dean Smith, talking about his adventures with John Wayne.  You buy your lunch, but the entertainment is free!

DEAN SMITH SIGNS AUTOBIO ‘COWBOY STUNTMAN’ WEDNESDAY AT THE AUTRY!

If you needed another reason to go to the Autry on Wednesday, track & field Olympian-turned-stuntman Dean Smith will be signing his autobiography at the Autry!  Starting in 1957 on WAGON TRAIN and continuing through ROUGH RIDERS in 1997, Dean has stunted and stunt-coordinated in nearly a hundred movies and series, doubling for stars like Roy Rogers, James Garner (in 1994!), Doug McClure, Dale Robertson, and worked with John Wayne on THE ALAMO and MCCLINTOCK!    

WIN TWO TICKETS TO SEE G.T. HURLEY THURSDAY NIGHT!

I’ve got two free tickets to the first person who emails me at swansongmail@sbcglobal.net, and asks for them!  Part of the OutWest Concert series at the Repertory Playhouse (a.k.a. The Rep) at 24266 Main Street, Newhall, CA 91321, it is sponsored by the charming folks at OutWest Boutique – click their link on the upper left-hand corner of the Round-up to learn more.  Hurley comes from Montana, and he sings about his life as a rancher and hard-rock miner.  He’s opened for Baxter Black and Jon Chandler.  To buy tickets (in case you’re not the first with the email), which are $20, call 661-255-7087.

INSP COMING BACK TO DIREC-TV!

If you, like me, have been missing Saddle-up Saturday, and your required weekly doses of THE VIRGINIAN and HIGH CHAPARRAL, I have great news!  While no official announcement is being made, my sources at INSP have confirmed that folks who have continued to call DirecTV and complain about INSP being dropped are now being told that the station will be back on July 21^st! 

DICK JONES, ‘BUFFALO BILL JR.’, DIES

Dick Jones at the 2012 Silver Spurs

Last Monday, actor Dick Jones died at the age of 87.  Born in Snyder, Texas, he was a fine horseman by the age of four (no, that’s not a typo), and was quickly hired by Hoot Gibson to perform in his rodeo as the world’s youngest trick-rider and trick-roper. “Hoot told my mother the famous words: 'That kid ought to be in pictures.' She said, 'Whoopee!' and away we went to Hollywood.”

After a few years playing dozens of often uncredited bits in major features, Bs and OUR GANG shorts – he’s great as the pesky neighbor kid in NANCY DREW…REPORTER – he became famous as the voice of the wooden puppet who wanted to be a boy in Walt Disney’s PINOCCHIO.  Appreciated by western filmmakers for his saddle-skills, he was not only cast in the excellent ROCKY MOUNTAIN, with Errol Flynn; he was put on the film early, to see which actors could actually perform the various ‘mounts’ that were required.

Gene Autry was among the filmmakers who appreciated Dick’s talent and potential, and used him in five of his movies, most dramatically in LAST OF THE PONY RIDERS (1953), where Dick goes gunning for Gene.  Counting TV episodes, Dick and Gene shared the screen nineteen times.  And Autry produced the two series Dick is best remembered for, THE RANGE RIDER, where he played Jock Mahoney’s sidekick, Dick West; and BUFFALO BILL JR., where Dick was the title character.   Mahoney and Jones never used stuntmen, because no one could do the demanding stunt-work any better than the stars. 

In 1965, after REQUIUM FOR A GUNFIGHTER, he retired from the screen, and went into business.  But he never lost his fondness for the genre, sometimes attended film festivals, and over the past few years I met him several times at Silver Spur dinners and events at The Autry.  He was about the nicest man you’d want to meet.  I’m linking an episode of THE RANGE RIDER, so you can see Dick at work.  Enjoy!

THAT’S A WRAP!

That’s all for this Round-up!  Have a great week!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright July 2014 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA CONVENTION 2014, PLUS ‘COPS & COWBOYS’!

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 24^th, 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 61^st 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 26^th, 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