Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger is Available Today

 

Today is the climax of the relentless crescendo of hyperbole surrounding the release of my first Western, Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walte Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger. Some may consider my use of “hyperbole” to itself be hyperbolic. Based on my standards of marketing, I do not.

Dead Shot was as much fun as I’ve had writing a book. The research was fun. Finding a voice I liked was fun. Even the first draft, which I usually consider to be the literary equivalent of searching excrement for intestinal parasites, was fun. Reading it to The Beloved Spouse™ was a lot of fun, especially when I saw her reaction, which was as encouraging as any I have received from her on a book, and she’s endured listened to them all.

In short, I enjoyed the entire process.

[Editor’s Note: It is generally accepted to be bad practice to use a loved one as a sounding board when judging the merit of a work in progress. This is not the case with TBS. She is not bashful about pointing out weaknesses or things that don’t make sense to her. While I don’t always take her suggestions, I always consider them, often discuss them, sometimes at length. Even if I don’t incorporate a suggestion, I have come to trust her opinion enough to know that, if she pointed something out, I need to make a change, even if it’s not the one she’d like.]

I shared a draft with J.D. Rhoades, author of the Jack Keller series (among others) as well as a highly acclaimed Western of his own, The Killing Look. Here’s what he had to say about Dead Shot:

"A fascinating, picaresque journey through a tumultuous post-Civil-War American West. Walter tells his tale with scrupulous honesty and wry wit as he encounters legends and makes a few of his own. Fans of Thomas Berger's Little Big Man are going to love this one. Highly recommended. "

I’m as happy with how Dead Shot turned out as I’ve been with anything I’ve written. What’s on the page captures when I had in my head as well or better as any previous work, whether novel, short story, or flash fiction. It’s even made me reconsider bringing out the Western I abandoned a few years ago, though that won’t be anytime soon, as I have ideas I want to work on stacked up like jets over LaGuardia Airport in bad weather.

One last excerpt before I leave you to your holiday preparations.

Knowing about marshals’ ability to collect rewards, you may wonder what I found attractive about bounty hunting. It was simple. As a bounty hunter I was not constrained by having to serve routine warrants, transport prisoners, or stand guard over a jail or courtroom. I was also not required to pay to bury anyone I might have to kill. So long as I turned in the wanted party, I was paid, often on the spot.

Bounty hunting was lonely work. You rarely took partners unless going after a gang, and then you kept one eye on your pards for fear one of them might decide to increase the size of his share by cutting down the number of shares. I typically stayed away from the big money bounties, or those marked “Dead or Alive.” I made a decent living picking up some of the lesser outlaws, as they were not as likely to shoot it out, especially with a man who had my reputation with a gun.

Dead Shot is available for free download through my website in MOBI, EPUB, and PDF formats by visiting https://danakingauthor.com/. 

Dead Shot Available in One Week

 My first Western, Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger becomes available next Friday, November 22. This date was chosen as a courtesy to my dozens of readers, as I know the holidays are a busy time and you might like to get this order off your plate before Thanksgiving makes life hectic. (Canadian readers should ignore the Thanksgiving part. Yours has come and gone. I hope you had a good one.)

Over the past weeks I’ve posted about how and why I wrote Dead Shot,. Today I thought I’d talk a little about why Westerns matter at all, since the core of the book, Walt’s time on the range, took place 120 – 150 years ago.

Western stories – in particular Western movies – have shaped American culture and politics since their advent. The image of the lone cowboy riding into town to right injustice has become so iconic a lot of people in this country – too many, frankly – think that’s how things were and, even worse, should be today. To them, everyone should not only have the right to carry a gun, but should carry one. They believe that’s what it takes to be safe in a world far less dangerous than they would have you believe.

The people who lived on the frontier, where guns were often a necessity, would have liked nothing better than to see fewer of them. Rifles and shotguns were critical for subsistence hunting in a land where the closest meat market might be two days’ ride with no guarantee the meat purchased wasn’t already half spoiled.

Guns were also needed for personal protection. The frontier was a place where a farmer’s wife could watch him disappear over the horizon for a simple run into town for supplies with no assurance she’d ever see him again, no way to check on him, and no way to notify anyone if he didn’t return. Pa would be wise to arm himself on the way to and from town, even if he left the gun in the wagon while he was there.

Why would he leave the gun in the wagon? Because a lot of towns, maybe even most of them, eventually had ordinances that prohibited carrying firearms inside the town limits. People checked their guns the same way we check our coats now. The folks in those towns were painfully aware of the misery caused by every swinging dick in town coming heeled.

That element isn’t very romantic, though, so it’s often overlooked, especially in what I call the good haircut Westerns of the 30s through most of the 60s. You know what I mean: men came into town after three weeks on the range with their hair cut and combed, with maybe a day’s growth of beard. That right there should have been a tip-off that the image about to be conveyed would be inaccurate, no matter how compelling the story.

(I make two exceptions to the above rule: Shane and the original The Magnificent Seven. The grooming in both is still pretty good, but the depictions of the lives lived are also unvarnished.)

The turning point came with The Wild Bunch; Westerns would never be the same after Sam Peckinpaugh’s masterpiece. Clint Eastwood then became virtual curator of the genre with a series of classics, including The Outlaw Josie Wales, High Plains Drifter,  and his Western tour-de-force, Unforgiven.

There were others. Off the top of my head Young Guns, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Appaloosa, Open Range and especially Monte Walsh worked overtime to dispel the image built up over the previous forty years. On television, Lonesome Dove stands alone. Some were better than others. None glamorized the West, though they often displayed the heroism required to survive on the frontier.

Walt Ferguson’s story includes many scenes based on actual events. Action scenes that might lead one to believe this is just another shoot-em-up. I hope that’s not the general takeaway. I wrote the book to be entertaining, but I also wanted to show that Walt’s exploits were only necessary because the frontier was such a dangerous place.

One last excerpt from the book sums up Wat’s feelings toward his time on the frontier. The “current economic situation” he refers to is the Great Depression.

The frontier is gone now and will never return. That is as it should be, and while I miss it, I do not yearn for its renaissance. The world can never remain too constant or it will become stagnant, and a stagnant pool cannot sustain life except maybe mosquitoes and Lord knows we need no more of them.

What I do not speak much of, and why I am not sorry the frontier is gone forever, are the hardships. As bad as things are during the current economic situation, people who were not there have no idea of the depredations and suffering endured by those who made the trip west when the prairie had never felt a plow blade and was run by Indians. Even without the Indians it was a dangerous and unforgiving place where starvation and disease were constant threats. A relatively minor injury, easily treated by a doctor today, could prevent a man from working and cast his family into ruin.

My heart went out to the homesteaders who broke their backs and buried their children in small family plots. They had no thoughts of riches, only of a better life than the one they left. Maybe to give their children a leg up. They linger across the prairie in unmarked graves covered with stone to keep the scavengers away. The men like me who wore guns get all the attention nowadays but those unnamed millions deserve the credit. I could never have done what any of them did.

Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger Drops in Two Weeks

 

Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger, drops November 22. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about what a departure it was for me to write a Western. Today I’ll come clean: it’s not as much of a departure as you might think. Dead Shot my second Western.

The still untitled novel was written in fits and starts several years ago after several western road trips put the bug in me. I squeezed bits in between drafts of Penns River and Nick Forte novels figuring I’d edit it into something usable.

The editing made it better, but I was still dissatisfied. The book struck me too much as a rehashing of my favorite scenes from other Westerns, both written and on film. I was pondering how to fix it, or if it was even worth fixing, when the character of Walter Ferguson came to me. The other book fell by the way during Walt’s lengthy gestation period.

These things happen. I’d thrown away thousands of words before. The Man in the Window, the third Forte novel, was almost half written when I decided I didn’t like where it was going. I salvaged what I liked and started over. The Man in the Window earned me a Shamus nomination as Best Paperback Original, so I guess I made the right decision.

The third Penns River novel, Resurrection Mall, started life as the fifth Forte. I was more than 30,000 words in and not liking how things were holding together – or, more accurately, not holding together – when it dawned on me what was wrong: this was a story better suited for Penns River. I threw away everything except the title and one sentence, shifted the whole operation to Penns River, and the rest went as smoothly as any book I’d written to that point.

Those experiences taught me to trust my judgment, so tossing a virtually finished novel did not keep me up at night. The time I worked on that book was well spent. I discovered what I needed to better understand to write a convincing Western, and that I needed to write a book in full, uninterrupted drafts if I wanted it to seem of a piece. I also needed a voice more suited to the period.

All those things not only made Dead Shot a better book, it made it a treat to write. I never had as much fun researching anything I’ve written, thanks mostly to the lively storytelling of those who wrote the histories and memoirs I used in my research. All the books listed below are well worth your time if you have an interest in Western history; the History Channel series, True West, is also recommended. (Alas, Wild West Tech has only random episodes available on YouTube.)

The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters, Leon Claire Metz

The American West, Dee Brown

Why the West was Wild, Miller Snell

We Pointed Them North, “Teddy Blue” Abbott

The Johnson County War, Bill O’Neal

Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills, David Milch (Focuses on the TV show but has a lot of good historical perspective)

Old Bill Miner: Last of the Famous Western Bandits, Frank W. Anderson

A Texas Cowboy: Or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony, Charlie Siringo

Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier, Bat Masterson

Dodge City, Tom Clavin

Gunfighter, Joseph G. Rosa

Beyond the Law, Emmitt Dalton

 

Last time I left you with a brief excerpt of Walt’s early life. Today I’ll tease you with a little of his military experience in the 11^th Pennsylvania Volunteers.

I would have been happy to have no cause to fire my weapon during the War of Southern Rebellion, but I ended up doing more than my share of killing. There were two reasons for this. At Chancellorsville I saw a Rebel blow the head off my best friend, Charlie Bagby, while Charlie lay wounded and helpless. I killed that man and the three who were with him. After that I took it as my part to kill my share and Charlie’s too. It seemed only fair.

The other reason I killed so many was that I was good at it. A man should never shirk a God-given gift. The Almighty made me so I could send a bullet anywhere my eye landed. To deny that talent would be akin to blasphemy.

I was fortunate to have a captain who recognized my ability and took full advantage of it. Much of my time between engagements was spent hunting to bring back game that added variety to a diet I would not wish on vermin. Some of the other men resented that I was excused from the less glamorous duties of a soldier, such as digging and filling latrines or standing night watch. They got over it when they realized Company C was the best-fed outfit in the regiment.

As for the other Western, I’ve seen and read quite a few in the past several years that are also mostly rehashings of classic plots and scenes; the secret is in the execution. So, as Billy Crystal said in The Princess Bride, it’s not completely dead.

Go West, Old Man

 The Western novel lingers. I set it aside when I got stuck, then the current Penns River story took precedence. I thought to look west between Penns River drafts but was asked to contribute to an anthology, which was well worth the diversion. I have high hopes for the project.

 A couple of weekends ago The Beloved Spouse and I spent an evening with Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece, Unforgiven. The story bears no resemblance to mine except for the time period and general geographic are, but it put the bug in me. Every couple of days since then I find myself reaching for the journal or opening Scrivener to add notes. If nothing else, I figured out what was holding me up.

 A year or so ago I came across half a dozen writing tips from Edith Wharton that sum up what my problem had been.

1.     Know your scope. The original plan was to write a book about a town cobbled out of four ranches, and the frictions that ensued. This was too broad. The real story concerns the interactions of a town marshal, his protégé, and a federal who comes to town in pursuit of a fugitive.

2.     Do less, better. I’m narrowing the scope to sharpen the focus.

3.     Lead with your characters. Whatever goes on in town must support the three main characters in some way, which means I need to create fully realized settings and subordinate characters who help add depth to the big three.

4.     Dialog is where you learn most about your characters. This I already had pretty well under control.

5.     Create peaks and valleys. I had them, but they were random. Pushing the emphasis more toward the three major characters will help with this.

6.     Have a point. I had one when I started but it became diffused. Writing about a town can show certain qualities of the people, but focusing on the people allows a point to be made more relatable.

 I’m changing the name of the town, and the title. The town, formerly called “Necessity” because the founding ranchers desperately needed something to provide them with economies of scale on the Wyoming prairie, is now called “Savior Springs” after a wagon train that got lost was saved from dying of thirst by the source of water and decided they’d gone far enough. (I suspect in time I’ll come up with a reason for the town to prosper, at least enough to support the story.)

 The title, which was to be “Necessity, Wyoming Territory,” (about the town, right?) will now be “Lawmen.” That’s who it’s about now, with the added benefit of having more of a Western sound to it. I’m revved up to get the next draft of the WIP done so I can get back to this.

 Good thing I’ll be retired in a couple of weeks.