MAN OF THE WEST - DUSTY RICHARDS INTERVIEW

Accolades don't come much higher in the western fiction world than the Spur Award and the Tainted Archive's interview subject, Dusty Richards has snagged several. Along with writers like Elmer Kelton, Cormac Mccarthy, Larry McMurtry and William Johnston he's at the top of his game - and unlike William Johnston he's very much alive and kicking.

In person he looks every bit the western gentleman and could have stepped from a John Wayne movie. He has a vast knowledge of the western both past and present and I wondered what such a big voice in the genre liked to read?

"What do I read? My time to read is very limited. I’ll read ten times more historical books than fiction. Current books by people like Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtrey, if the story holds me I finish it, if it doesn’t I pass it on. No need to fill my shelves with books that have no reference for my own. I do read past authors like Alan LeMay and his Searcher’s novel. There was a man pounded words. It could have been his newspaper back ground but he could write. Elliot Arnold who did “Blood Brother” sent me to research the Apache wars. Will Henry and Tom Lea were my early favorites. But Charles Portis “True Grit” was a wonderful western—my true classic. Max Evans another—his novellas were beautiful. Robert Conley’s “Nickajack” a Spur winner, is one of the greatest books written about a native American."


Despite being a seasoned hand at writing, Dusty's prose displays the excitement and enthusiasm of someone in love with the process of creating fictional worlds. No matter how many times he sees his name in print one gets the feeling that the same level of excitement is felt as that first time.


"I don't know a greater honor for a Western writer. Spurs are the Oscars of the Western book. I can recall going to my first Western Writers of America Convention in San Antonio over two decades ago when I was trying to break into the New York market. I met those Spur winners that year and all the old hands that I'd read. I never thought this old cowboy would ever collect one of them. I was lucky to be writing and doing what I liked and had dreamed about."

Dusty loves the genre he works in, that much is clear from his books. I wondered what his writing routine was. How does he come up with his stories?

"How do I write my books? I have an idea. There’s a guy or gal and they have a problem that centers on another individual. Where at? What time period? Maybe I need to go read old newspaper for ideas. Then that’s started to ferment, I use a four quarter system. First quarter of my book my protagonist is lost. Second quarter, he is an orphan. Third quarter he is an emerging hero. Last quarter of the book he is a hero or martyr. Simply as can be, best guide I
ever found.

Several college profs across the country use “The Horse Creek Incident,” my 2007 Spur winner, as the ideal opening to pull people into read your book. That is flattery of the first kind.

John Nesbit, a recent Spur winner and I have have talked about it at various times. I think we pick up a book, many times, read some and say, “ I don’t want to listen to that voice for six hours.” Others stress the hook and scare new writer so they rewrote their first chapter twenty times and their first attempt was the best,

You must build faith in your fingers to brain production. My first draft is the book but I say that because I have written 94 novels for myself and under pseudonyms. I do it on a laptop Mac Pro. I wouldn’t own another tower model computer. The laptop has a wire less keyboard and mouse goes along. (my big fingers can type on the laptop but the board is better) At home I use a 24 inch Samsung screen and use 150 % type. My eyes are easily worn out.

I’ll have one of those real big screens when the price drops a little more. I have used the wheel idea for so long I can do my planning in my head. Where you put the central theme in as the wheel hub and your ideas as the spokes—simply a way to brain storm.

That uncouth old cowboy someone is saying, he’s never read Shakespeare or Joyce and has no good words for the real classic writers of Western lit. Tell the truth I found them hard to read like most middle readers do as far as for their pleasure. I never got that much out of their formalities, they were to me not what fiction was about.

Fiction lies in story telling that suspends your reader into another world. Have a voice that talks in your reader’s ear, bring him forth on that adventure so he smells the sagebrush, campfire smoke that makes his eye water and a hump back horse sky walking under his butt and you have a story. "

To listen to Dusty talk it is evident that he is a born storyteller. But when did he realise he wanted to be a writer? That he wanted to pound the keyboard for a living?

"When did I start writing? I wrote “books” in high school. High school was a bore. And I even had a few snatched up by teachers and read to the class. High school’s lack of challenge almost wiped out college I was so spoiled. It was so easy and I never needed to study. At Arizona State University I wanted to major in writing fiction and major in agronomy. First semester I got an A in fiction writing one. Second semester was rhyme and meter—I am tone deaf to start with—if that’s what it took to be a western writer I’d never make it. So I dropped that course and the minor in ficiion writing Now that’s how bitter university courses were. Folks say they did me a favor. But I still wrote “novels” for my own amusem

ent. My teenage girls read them, in long hand in loose leaf notebooks, I must have a hundred or more, they wanted me to submit them.

“I said writers are like song writers in Nashville. You know how you get them off your porch.”

“No.”

“Pay them for the pizza.”

But I accepted the challenge. I am a story teller that’s what you have to be first to write fiction. I was not a typist. I was not an English Grammar major. I can’t tell you the rule why it is wrong, but only because I can hear it is not right in my ear. All these things I needed to learn plus all the 75 other things that go into building a story on the page. I made mistakes like waiting on worthless literary agents. I finally sold my own first book and hooked up with a real agent to handle negotiations.

She and I have been through the ninety plus books that I have sold since the early nineties—love her.

A seventy year old fan wrote

me and asked why did I write those books for Ralph Compton when my own books were so good? I said. “I like to eat.”

I have two Spurs. One for “The Horse Creek Incident” paper back novel. The second one for a “Comanche Moon” a novella in short fiction for Amazon. Com. My publisher in Texas said, “You have two, Louie only received one.”

I have two book of the year awards from Oklahoma Writers Federation, One is for “The Abilene Trail” part of the Ralph Compton series and “The Natural” the only contemporary I ever sold about rodeo. And I also have the western literature award from the Cowboy Symposium for my efforts to help others write and my books. I share that list with Max Evans and Elmer Kelton."

The back list continues to grow and will do so for some time. It is clear you can't keep someone like Dusty from spinning stories. As well as working under his own name he's also contributed HOUSE NAME books. I ask him about future projects.

"Future projects: Book #3 the Sundown Chaser from Birkley is out this week. It is the third one in the Herschel Baker series, the man who took on the big outfits and became the sheriff. This new book is about his father Thurman who rode off fifteen years earlier and they will meet at last in Montana. (there is U Tube review on it out now)

Book #4 is on my editor’s desk in New York. ‘Wulf’s Tracks” Herschel has a cousin Wulf Baker who’s mighty handy at training dogs and horses but he’s cross ways with his step father, Wulf goes looking Herschel and himself in this book. I suspect releases in early 2010

November 7^th release dat

e “Texas Bloody Feud” from Kensington. Book number one in the Texas feud series. Chet Brynes and the Bar C Ranch series comes on the shelves. A tough book about the family war

s in Texas. Chet heads a dysfunctional family, all living under one large roof, each family member with their own set of personal problems and goals.

I have a third series on my agent’s desk called the “The Frank Brothers.” Identical twins Grant and Lee orphaned at sixteen when their abusive father shoots their mother and then himself. Along with a widowed cousin Gertrude, who comes to be their guardian must hold the Turkey Track ranch together against Comanche and land grabbers. It’s gritty story about the Texas hill country during and after the civil war. There are six books planned if the series sell.

Real Quick on research. For the Herschel Baker books, we did intensive library research in Sheridan, Wyoming and Billings, Montana. Read lots of old papers. I had old rancher buddy took me all over that country as well as my wife Pat and I driving over lots of it. I have very extensive library of western history books. But the o

ld newspapers were the best, they tell you how they thought. Folks in Billings were so afraid any taint of crime and the railroad would go around them, so the pressure was on the law man to keep crime

down. If the railroad avoided you your town died.

We did the same in the Texas Hill country.

I closed those four trail drive books with an epilogue about what happened to those people in later life and where they were buried. An army captain in Iraq wrote me a letter and said would I send him a map of those cemeteries, he was going home to Texas soon and wanted to look their graves up. Of course I wrote him back and said they like the book were fictitious."

Dusty can be found HERE

Thanks Dusty - you are a true man of the west.