Thursday 29 November 2018

ANDREW McBRIDE interviewed by SCOTT HARRIS


I was recently interviewed by acclaimed western author SCOTT HARRIS for his ‘Friday Forum’ blog, which you can find here: https://scottharriswest.com/forum-featuring-andrew-mcbride/
I talk about westerns and my writing, including my novel‘The Peacemaker.’ Scott very kindly agreed to the interview appearing on my blog also.

Questions in bold.

1.       When—and why—did you first fall in love with Westerns?
As a kid growing up in England in the 60s I fell in love with westerns watching movies and shows on TV. I was particularly taken by ‘The High Chaparral’ TV series, its Arizona location photography and the background of the Apache Wars, which sparked a life-long interest in Native American history and culture.
(I’ve given a fuller appreciation of ‘The High Chaparral’ in an earlier blog:  https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2017/09/in-praise-of-high-chaparral.html)
In the 70s when I was entering adulthood I had a pal who turned me on to reading westerns, starting with the ‘McAllister’ series by MATT CHISOLM.


2.       Who are your three favorite Western writers?
The first of several impossible questions you’re going to torture me with during this interview. I have to pick three out of the likes of Ralph Cotton, Fred Grove, Louis L’Amour, Glendon Swarthout, Robert MacLeod, A. B. Guthrie Jnr., Lewis B. Patten, Jack Schaefer, Dorothy M. Johnson, Charles Neider etc.? Three who I followed fairly slavishly when I was cutting my teeth on reading westerns were WILL HENRY, GORDON SHIRREFFS and MATT CHISOLM – I devoured Chisolm’s ‘McAllister’ series, and then found out he was British, which inspired me – so let’s go with those three.




3.       Which Western do you wish you’d written?
Hondo’ by LOUIS L’AMOUR. In some ways Hondo is the template western hero and I’m sure my main character in all my westerns, Calvin Taylor, owes something to him. Once, to warm myself up for a writing project, I re-wrote the first chapter of ‘Hondo’ and then had to stop myself from re-writing the whole novel! I think that would be an interesting exercise for another Scott Harris-helmed ’52 weeks’ project – get us lesser mortals to follow in the footsteps of the greats and re-write, in our own words, a chapter from a classic western novel.  


4.       What is the most recent Western you’ve read?
I read a few recently that didn’t happen for me so I’m not going to mention them. I also re-read some old favourites. The most recent ‘new’ western I read and liked was ‘Geronimo must die’ by J.R. Lindermuth.
(You can find ‘Geronimo must die’ here https://www.amazon.com/Geronimo-Must-Die-J-Lindermuth-ebook/dp/B06XFZJG5H/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=


5.       The “Desert Island” question.
          What are your three favorite Western books?
Impossible to say – but as you’ve cornered me I’ll play along. ‘Little Big Man’ by THOMAS BERGER, which deals with tragic events and yet manages to be extremely funny in places, and has subtleties the film lacks;


Blood Brother’ by ELLIOTT ARNOLD, which deals with the Apache chief Cochise and had a huge influence on my writing, particularly ‘The Peacemaker’;


and ‘The Buffalo Soldiers’ by JOHN PREBBLE which tackles numerous western clichés in a startling and original way. I don’t think you’ll find a better written western. And Prebble was also a Brit!

          What are your three favorite Western movies?
Even more unanswerable than the ‘3 books’ question. But as John Wayne and John Ford were, IMHO, the two most important people in western movie history one would have to be a combination of their talents. Which boils down to a wrestling match between ‘Stagecoach’ and ‘Fort Apache’ – I think I’ll go for ‘Fort Apache’.


John Wayne and Henry Fonda in ‘Fort Apache’ (1948)

‘Ride the High Country’ for its elegiac quality and the wonderful performances of Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea.


Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in ‘Ride the High Country’ (1962)

Hombre’ which is based on a great ELMORE LEONARD novel that almost made it into my ‘best 3 books’ list.


Paul Newman in ‘Hombre’ (1967)

I’ve posted about how ‘Hombre’ – both book and film – influenced my writing: https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2017/07/giveaway-andrew-mcbride-on-how-book-and.html
6.       Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite—and why?
‘The Peacemaker.’ I like all my first five published books, but they were of necessity short, which meant they had to be action-centric, dependent on a fast pace. With a longer book like ‘The Peacemaker’ I could slow down a bit, spend more time on character and atmosphere. I got to play around with a real historical person – in this case Cochise. I was able to write a proper love story. I could provide what John Ford called ‘grace notes’ in his movies, quiet, reflective bits where not much happens but they give the story added texture and depth. I was very grateful to my publishers for letting me do that.


7.       What is the most recent Western you’ve written?
The most recent western item I’ve finished is my short story ‘Spectres at the Feast’ which you were kind enough to include in your excellent ‘The Shot Rang Out’ anthology (which I review here https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2018/05/my-review-of-shot-rang-out-by-scott.html )


8.       Can you tell us anything about your next book?
I’m going through a slightly frustrating time at the moment. I have one project that won’t die! In other words it’s proving difficult to finish it off. I’m stalled on several others, waiting for responses from publishers etc. I did make a start on a new western, which has an elegiac, end-of-the-west quality and I’m keen to get stuck into it, but tidying up other projects keeps preventing me from having a clear run at it.
9.       If you could go back in time, what would be the time and place in the Old West you’d like to have lived in for a year?
I’d only want to pop back for a few hours. I’m an Alamo buff, so I’d love to solve the eternal mystery of what happened there on the morning of March 6th 1836, particularly to Davy Crockett. However, if I did find myself in the middle of the final assault on the Alamo I’d like to be both invisible and invulnerable, to avoid all the bullets, cannon balls and bayonets in the neighbourhood!


10.     Is there a question you’d wish I asked?
          The answer?
No. Answering questions 2 and 5 was traumatic enough!

Wednesday 21 November 2018

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: BROTHERS OF THE GUN by B. S. DUNN (BRENT TOWNS)


Brent Towns (who also writes as B. S. Dunn, Jake Henry, and Sam Clancy) tells me a favourite of his own novels is BROTHERS OF THE GUN – credited to B. S. Dunn.

Buford Lance is a rancher who sees his hard-won New Mexico range threatened by homesteaders. To ward them off he hires two gunmen – Lucas Kane (nicknamed the Gun King) and his brother Jordan (the Prince) - but ends up setting brother against brother.

There are a number of ‘brothers of the gun’ who feature in Old West history, including the James Brothers, The Youngers and Ben and Billy Thompson. And then of course there were the Earp Brothers.

Of the six Earp Brothers only NEWTON never served in a law-enforcement position. The remaining brothers all did, and three of them paid a high price.

WYATT (born 1848) lived longest, until 1929, surviving into the age of western motion pictures, meeting JOHN FORD among others, and was available to sell himself as the most important figure of the clan. Some authorities claim, however, that Wyatt inflated his own leadership role and VIRGIL was the real brains of this outfit. It was Virgil, after all, that enemies of the clan went after first in the aftermath of the legendary ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral.’


Virgil (born 1843) served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He worked at a variety of jobs, including peace officer, farmer, rail construction, stagecoach driver, sawmill sawyer, mailman and prospector. 
A reporter whose story was printed in the ‘San Francisco Examiner’ described Virgil in 1882: ‘His face, voice and manner were prepossessing. He is close to six feet in height, of medium build, chestnut hair, sandy mustache, light eyebrows, quiet, blue eyes and frank expression. He wore a wide-brimmed, slate-colored slouch hat, pants of a brown and white stripe, and a blue diagonal coat and vest.’
Virgil was a constable in Prescott, Arizona in 1878-79. In 1879 he served briefly as deputy U.S. marshal for the Tombstone District of Arizona. The next year Virgil was also appointed acting town marshal of Tombstone, becoming permanent city marshal in 1881. So he was the highest-ranking lawman, both deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal, when he led his brothers Morgan and Wyatt, plus Doc Holliday, into the ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ – they were merely his deputies, appointed as temporary assistants. 
But two months after the OK Corral, on the night of December 28 1881, Virgil was ambushed on the streets of Tombstone. He was shot in the back, hit with three shotgun rounds, shattering his left arm and leaving him permanently maimed. He then left Arizona.
Despite his injuries Virgil served once more as a lawman, as city marshal in Colton, California 1887-1888.
He died from pneumonia in 1905, aged 62.
In 1875, MORGAN (born 1851) became a deputy marshal in Dodge City, Kansas. In1879-1880, he served three months as a policeman in Butte, Montana.  He joined his brothers in Tombstone in time to participate at the OK Corral.


Four months later came a reckoning.

At 10:50 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, 1882, Morgan was playing billiards in a Tombstone billiard parlour while Wyatt watched. A shot through a windowed door struck Morgan in the back, fatally wounding him. Before dying, he reportedly said, ‘This is the last game of pool I'll ever play.’

WARREN (born 1855) occasionally served as a deputy for his brothers in Tombstone. But his father reportedly said of him: 'If Warren ever dies he will be shot. He is too hasty, quick-tempered and too ready to pick a quarrel. Besides he will not let bygones be bygones, and on that account, I expect that he will meet a violent death.’


Earp Senior was proved right. In 1900 Warren was involved in a drunken argument with a local cowboy in a saloon in Wilcox, Arizona. When it came to guns, Warren was shot in the chest and killed.

JAMES (born 1841) was only briefly a lawman, serving as a deputy marshal in Dodge City in 1878-1879 and once or twice as Virgil’s deputy in Tombstone. 

This deadly fraternal clash in BROTHERS OF THE GUN reminded me of NIGHT PASSAGE, where Audie Murphy and James Stewart are the brothers pitted against each other

Audie Murphy and James Stewart in ‘Night Passage’ (1957)

or SADDLE THE WIND, where the clash is between Robert Taylor and John Cassavetes.

Robert Taylor and John Cassavetes in ‘Saddle the Wind’ (1958)


Reviews of BROTHERS OF THE GUN:

‘Awesome …A gun slinger who takes you by surprise.’

‘What an exciting book. …a gun slinger who would not just kill for the money, he actually had a heart and a code he lived by.’

‘Fast paced, action packed, solid characters… This one ticks all the boxes of what I want in a Western.’

https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Gun-Black-Horse-Western-ebook/dp/B01N9RHM4H/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1493648994&sr=1-1 and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothers-Gun-Black-Horse-Western-ebook/dp/B01N9RHM4H/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542366900&sr=1-1&keywords=brothers+of+the+gun+b.+s.+dunn