J.E.S. Hays asked me to write a blurb and by the end of the first vignette, I knew what would be my first word.  Here it is:

The League of Utah Writers is organized into Chapters.  Living as I do in Connecticut, I am fortunate that there is an at-large chapter, the Just Write Chapter.  Indeed, it has a critique group, in which I have already participated, and it has a Newsletter.  The President of the chapter, Ann Gordon, asked me to write a review of the recent League of Utah Writers Annual Conference held at the Davis Conference Center, in Layton, Utah.

An entrepreneur gets to be asked to write a review about an entrepreneur.  What a delight!  This review will appear in ROUNDUP Magazine, published bi-monthly by Western Writers of America.  Coming in February, maybe April, 2015, you can read it here, now:

for his book of poetry, Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series, published by Penguin Random House’s Perigee imprint.

I lamented to a friend that his publisher appeared to be unable to see Mr. Gregson’s value and contribution until he had 259,000 followers on Tumblr and 184,000 on Instagram — not to mention his 31,000 Twitter fans.  Proudly, the book’s editor was quoted “If we hadn’t had that, I don’t know if we would have pursued it.”  According to published reports, this representative of a publishing company that last published a book of poetry four decades ago went on to say, “We definitely look for authors to bring as much of a ready audience to the table as possible when we publish.”

My friend chided me for naiveté,  pointing out that I am more a trained businessman than a trained writer and should respect that it is only the profit that counts.  Well, I do respect the profit motive, but I think the business model would be greatly improved if it embraced independent judgment, good taste, and leadership.

Mr. Gregson’s example appears to make the case that authors are meant not only to do the author’s job of creating the work, in his case, poetry, but also of inventing and implementing the path to the marketplace.  One hears the wail that publishing is dying because of the internet.  Fortunately, authors, like Gregson, and including me, have access to the marketplace and the public because of the internet.  Publishing companies are dying because of the attitudes exposed by the Perigee quote.  Publishing is not dying.  It is transforming.  In Sheriff Simms’s world, “We don’t give a damn what the other people think, we know what is right.”

Innovation in business starts with, well, the innovation.  A vision of what the market needs or wants drives the innovation, but the invention comes before the market.  A publisher who views the job as not bringing new products to market (no Apple there) but riding the products that have already found their market may plead profit maximization.  Whatever the reason, it is a short-term strategy, a me-too strategy.  It is not the long-term path to pre-eminence.

Of course, I laud Mr. Gregson’s avenue to success.  I recognize my own path will require much the same attention to proving I have a market before an established NY publisher will decide what I am writing should be brought to the marketplace because it will achieve sales above breakeven.  That will happen.  Whether it happens before or after the world learns I have 31,000 Twitter fans I cannot say.

Amazon, self-serving though they may be, keeps track and attests to the power of the reviews posted there (and here.)

I invite you to look over my shoulder while I attempt to convince Western Fictioneers that Every Soul Is Free should be considered in their annual Peacemaker Awards for Best Western.  The contest sets a cut-off date of 1920 and I have suggested this is not an appropriate way to view western stories and values.  Courtney Joiner, the Chair of Judges, has asked in a very gentlemanly way “if you could tell me how much of the book takes place after 1920, which is our period cut-off date. This probably feels arbitrary, but I know the original rule was established to keep the focus of the Fictioneers on what’s considered ‘traditional westerns,’ it was felt that the work should fall into that time span.” Here is my response:

I believe one needs to review three arguments.

First, the specific question you asked: How much of the novel is pre-1920 v. how much is post-1920?  You were kind enough to note that the idea of measuring it is quite arbitrary and, indeed, may be subject to some wide interpretation in how to measure the “how much.”  Without submitting to you the entire outline of the novel under consideration for the Peacemaker Award competition, that outline would show 26% of the pages and 15% of the chapters. It would, however, show 100% of the tension because every bit of the dramatic question arises from events in 1869 and their subsequent evolution between two families.

Second, to the broader time question that you did not ask:  As I mentioned, this is the third in the High Mountain Sheriffs series. That series starts in 1853 and includes two sheriffs, Luke Willford Simms and John Willford Simms, whose stories precede this one of Mark Willford Simms. I have started the second book, John Willford, and we expect Pen-L Publishing to publish it as soon as it is ready. These are of a piece and it makes the story 67% or 75% or 100% prior to 1920, depending on what point of view you take.

Third, the point of view you take is all important: The real argument is that the values of the West where I grew up are timeless. You used the phrase “what’s considered ‘traditional westerns.’ ”  I will assert that every day of my life I was raised with traditional western values and putting a clock to them measures the wrong thing both about the traditional values and about the West. I acknowledge that a film noire type novel about a detective set in Wyoming in the 1950s is different from a Matt Dillon tale, but it is for your judges to determine whether it should win an award, not the rules. Further to my point, one of the reasons for this story and starting where I did is to show that the Old West lived way into the middle of the twentieth century, and nothing demonstrates that more than a posse, a horseback chase in the mountains, and a finale with gunfire.

Thank you very much for taking the time and effort to make this determination.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how it comes out. Of course, I hope to win, but first I hope to participate.

Right now, I am in a major debate with myself about whether the time it takes to write on this blog and post on my facebook Author’s page is worth it compared to the amount of work I have to do to sell Every Soul Is Free and finish my third novel.  (My third novel is far enough along I have sent it out to readers and editors and my editor wrote me yesterday, “Where the hell did she come from?” about a character who placed a call in the eighteenth chapter.  I had been living with her since the eleventh chapter, but apparently the reader hadn’t.  Major work to solve.) Anyway, debate aside, rewriting aside, I have a wonderful family of children and step-children (whom I think of without the “step-“) and they went running today in Portland, a half-marathon for some, a 5k for others. Everyone finished, in great time, and they are all beautiful, see them here.

In a short history of how Every Soul Is Free came to see the light of day, the trials of an adult-onset writer and his opinions on how the West and the western are unfortunately overlooked and often dismissed are not of much interest. What is of interest is “how the western novel is an unfortunately overlooked and often dismissed genre.” A painter and classmate used that phrase to start a discussion of his involvement with the art of the West, painting, sculpture, books, and movies.

I tried to get an agent, never did, no surprise for an unknown writer. Well-introduced to the most well-known agent representing western writers today, I uttered the first sentence of my pitch about a sheriff who is interrupted during Thanksgiving Dinner in 1948 and she stopped me to tell me the West ended in 1895. She could not sell such a book.

Born and raised in the West, far west of the Hudson, meaning not New Jersey, I am committed to a life of writing novels about ordinary men who live out heroic acts in facing every day. I see the west as a stage where this plays well. And it did not end in 1895.

That painter mentioned above is Mike Mazer and his words motivated this blog. “I love the geography of the west, the ‘wide open spaces’, the vistas, the topography, the variation, the history, the miles you can go with just plain nothing but the land…(I) fell in love with it and its vastness.”

Like me, Mike recognized that the first thing about that vast land is that it creates heroes. We all love heroes. “I love to see ‘bad guys’ brought to justice.” Westerns are the true American canvas for that. Beyond bringing bad guys to justice, self-reliance is the true stuff of heroes. Neither Westerners nor Americans are the only self-reliant people, but all self-reliant people are heroes in some way.

The West is the character of the land and the character of the people and some of them brought their pioneering spirit. Again, in Mike’s words, “people who took risks way beyond what I knew or know.” In this regard, the West has a really big capital W. You can start at the international dateline and travel west all around the world, reveling in pioneer spirit all the way around.

We’re at the beginning of this venture, so we really don’t know yet if we can sell a book that takes place in the West after 1895. What we really don’t know is if we can sell books about men and women who live inside the crucible created by the need to balance calling and family and work. I welcome you in joining me, again in Mike’s words, following “characters who took the other road.”