A lot of WESTERN STORY covers seem to capture the moment just before gunplay erupts. That's the case with this one. I think it's a nice dramatic scene and I like it quite a bit. There's a lot to like inside the issue, too, with stories by Norman A. Fox, Harry F. Olmsted, William Heuman, Bennett Foster, and David Lavender, one of the few Western pulp writers I actually met before he passed away. Elmer Kelton, Bill Gulick, Thomas Thompson, Wayne C. Lee, and Fred Grove are others who come to mind. There may have been more.
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I'd love to hear any anecdotes or writing advice you heard from those old timers!
Unfortunately with most of them, our meetings were mostly just a handshake and me telling them I enjoyed their work. I sat next to Wayne Lee at a book signing and next to Fred Grove at a barbecue (at the same WWA convention, San Angelo in '91) but don't recall really talking shop with them. Elmer Kelton was the one I knew best, I saw him many times over the years, but we usually talked pulps since he was a big fan when he was a kid and I think I was the only pulp fan he knew as an adult. The old-timer who gave me the most writing feedback was Sam Merwin Jr., who was the editor at MSMM when I was trying to break in there. I'm sure they had printed rejection slips, but I never got one from Sam. Whenever he sent a story back he'd grab a piece of whatever scrap paper was handy and scrawl a note on it telling me what was wrong with the story, usually a lapse of logic in the plot. I had a lot of trouble with endings starting out. I'd write myself into a corner and then wrap things up with some big action scene that didn't make sense. I remember one such note that said, "This one starts out fine--then, blooie!" Sam was the first editor to really have faith in me, and I owe him a lot.
I wonder how many men in the time these westerns are set really wore (bright) red shirts. Few to none, I suspect.
I don't know about that, but I can say that I had bright red shirts when I was a kid in elementary school, in the early Sixties. They were my favorites.
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