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.
I'd love to hear any anecdotes or writing advice you heard from those old timers!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately 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.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many men in the time these westerns are set really wore (bright) red shirts. Few to none, I suspect.
ReplyDeleteI 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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