I started to read a Western novel today while waiting on some car repairs. It opened during the Civil War, in a Union prison camp. Problem was, this Union prison camp was in Montana, which also had railroads and cattletowns. I haven't checked it out, but I'm pretty sure this is all wrong. I put the book aside without reading any more. Other than the historical inaccuracies, it seemed to be fairly well written, and I wondered if maybe I was being unfair to it. I'm sure I've committed some howlers in my books that I'm unaware of. But I'm quicker on the trigger than I used to be when it comes to setting books aside if anything about them bothers me. Too many books, not enough time, as the old saying goes.
I moved on to THE CONCRETE BLONDE, the third Harry Bosch book by Michael Connelly, and I'm enjoying it very much. This is my third Connelly novel in the past couple of months, which is unusual for me. I usually space out authors more than that. But when I find one I really like, I tend to read them more quickly for a while.
Today I made library runs, bought groceries, and took care of a few other errands. No writing, but I plan to get back to it tomorrow. Since this is the last day of August, my total for the month will be 327 pages.
I missed posting yesterday because I was busy helping out with my dad. Even with a professional caregiver on hand, one of the kids (I have an older brother and sister) has to be around much of the time, too. Ya gotta love my dad: he can't walk anymore, can barely talk, and yet there he was this morning doing his best to tell the nurse who was there all about how I was a writer. Being a tough old bird who grew up in the Depression, he's not the sort to toss compliments around directly (I think the only thing he ever said to me about one of my books was that it was hard to find a good place to stop reading -- which if you think about it is a pretty nice compliment), but he's always been a tireless promoter of my work. When he was still working as a TV repairman, he always carried around copies of my books in his truck and sold them to his customers. He had a regular circuit going. He also went with me to a couple of Western Writers of America conventions and had a great time hanging around with many of the writers whose work he had read. He never was quite sure about the writing business, but when he saw that Elmer Kelton and I were friends, he decided maybe it was okay after all.
Moving on, I got the following email this morning:
This is to notify you that my father Peter Ruber recently suffered a major stroke. Although he is now out of danger, the hospital neurologists are still in the process of evaluating him to see what brain/memory damage may have occurred.
Regards,
Nikolai Ruber
Peter Ruber and I have become pretty good friends over the past few months. He's recommended quite a few excellent authors to me that I hadn't sampled before, and also sent me some of his novels. The ones I've read so far have been very good. I'll definitely be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers.
I've managed to work some the past couple of days and have kept the new novel rolling along, though not at what you'd call a blistering pace. I'm enjoying it so far, but it's still early on. I also read Max Brand's "Reata", the first short novel in a series of seven about the character of the same name. I think some of these were combined into a fix-up novel and published some time back by Dodd, Mead and then in paperback by Pocket Books, but they're now being reprinted in their original short novel versions in assorted Brand collections published in hardback and large print by Thorndike and in mass-market paperback by Leisure. "Reata" is an excellent story with some nice touches of self-mockery on Faust's part, and I'm looking forward to reading the others. I'll start reading something else tonight, but right now I have no idea what it'll be.
I was able to get started on the new book today and wrote a 12-page prologue. As always when I've been away from it for a few days, the act of writing is very enjoyable. Just putting the words together feels good. After several days in a row of it, it's not as much fun, of course. That's why I'm not one of those "I write every day of the year" writers. That's fine if it works, but it doesn't for me.
Speaking of writing, there's a very nice little essay about it today on Ed's Place , by Ed Gorman. Ed says a lot of things that a lot of writers have probably felt. I know I have. Highly recommended.
I'm reading "Burma Guns", a novelette by E. Hoffmann Price from the July 1940 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURE that was recently reprinted as a chapbook by Black Dog Books. Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books has reprinted a lot of classic pulp fiction over the past few years and done a great job of it.
My dad has gotten worse again, so I spent the morning in the doctor's office with him and my mother. We fully expected that he would be admitted to the hospital again, but instead the doctor prescribed a couple of new medications and let us take him home. Things are at the point where they can't do a whole lot for him other than try to find things that will make him more comfortable. I had plenty of time to study all the posters on the walls of the exam room and learned more about the brain than I ever wanted to know.
I had planned to start writing again today, but by the time I got home I didn't feel much like that, so I read parts of a couple of research books. I'm always amazed by how contradictory these books can be. These two were about the same subject but told considerably different stories. I've about decided that since I'm writing historical fiction, if I find something in a research book, it's fair game. I always chuckle about how historians feud and claim that their version is the only right one, and if you believe anything else, you're not only wrong but probably an idiot to boot.
I'm reading "The Strange Ride of Perry Woodstock" by Max Brand, in the collection THE FUGITIVE'S MISSION. So far this is a really good novella, one of the best Max Brand stories I've read.
This morning Livia and I decided we needed a little more research material for the new series we're about to start writing, so it was off to Fort Worth, to the main library downtown. I don't get down there very often, too much traffic, not enough parking, etc., but today it wasn't too bad. Of course, I can't resist browing through other books while I'm there, and I usually come home with some stuff I want to read in addition to the research books. Today it was a couple of Astro City graphic novels by Kurt Busiek and three large print Linford Westerns, reprints of books originally published in England by Robert Hale Ltd. as part of the Black Horse Western line.
I've read a couple of dozen Black Horse Westerns by various authors and really enjoy them. They're short (supposedly around 45,000 words, but I'd wager that most of them are actually shorter than that), well-written, and have plenty of action. Most of the authors are British, but there are some Americans who write for the line, too. There's an on-line newsletter about the line called Black Horse Express . I'm also a member of a Yahoo group devoted to the books, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blackhorsewesterns/ . Most of the members there are authors who write for the line. The books can be difficult and expensive to get in the U.S., but they show up sometimes on eBay and many libraries have at least a few of the Linford large print reprint editions. Highly recommended if you enjoy traditional action Westerns (and I do, of course).
When we got home I was able to finish reading the page proofs for that other book, found only two pages with mistakes on them. I'm glad that job's done so I can get back to writing, and to reading something that I didn't write!
I spent most of the day reading page proofs of a historical novel I did a while back. I think reading page proofs is my least favorite part of the writing process. (Well, that and waiting to get paid . . . ) In the first place, I'm not fond of revisiting a book I've written. Once I'm done, I'm done. Also, it takes time and concentration to read closely enough to catch typos. So far, I've read about half of the book, and I've found one page with a mistake on it. I don't know whether to be happy that they did such a good job on the production end, or grouchy because I'm wasting my time. It didn't help matters that today I got a box of pulp reprints that I'd ordered, and they're just crying out to be read. But I'll be diligent. I promise I will.
20 pages today wrapped up the current house-name Western. I liked it pretty well, thought it was one of the better series Westerns I've done recently. A friend of mine who writes a lot of these compares writing series Westerns to hitting a baseball: sometimes you strike out, sometimes you hit a nice sharp single to the outfield, sometimes you get lucky and knock one out of the park. But whatever you do, next time you gotta get up and take your swings again.
I'm still reading that Johnstone book, but I should finish it tonight. Next up is probably that Milton Lesser book I mentioned yesterday. Today while searching the Internet in an attempt to find out when and where the two stories in the book were originally published, I found a great site devoted to science fiction pulps and digests:
http://www.noosfere.com/showcase/pulps__magazines_americains.htm
It's in French, but it features cover scans and indexes for just about every SF magazine you can think of. Even if you don't speak French, the indexes are easy to decipher. I could spend hours going through this site looking at all the covers and wishing I had those issues. I do have some of them, but only a small fraction. Great stuff, highly recommended.
I took today off from writing (other than going back over what I wrote yesterday) and ran errands instead, including stops at a couple of bookstores. Here's what I wrote on the WesternPulps list about some of what I found:
Today I visited a little used bookstore I hadn't been to in quite a while. The last time I was there, they didn't have much of interest, but today there were some older Westerns on the shelves. I bought:
GUN HAWK, Ed Earl Repp (Hillman)
BORDER FEVER, C. William Harrison (Perma-Books)
THE GUNS OF FORT PETTICOAT, C. William Harrison (Gold Medal)
TWO FACES WEST, T.T. Flynn (Dell)
GHOST GOLD, Tom West (Pocket Books)
THE SHERIFF OF SAN MIGUEL, Allan Vaughan Elston (Dell -- a mapback)
THE ELKHORN FEUD, Philip Ketchum (Popular Library)
CONQUEST, Homer Hatten (Gold Medal)
EAGLE ON HIS WRIST, Homer Hatten (Gold Medal)
I also bought a Leisure Max Brand collection, THE LOST VALLEY, and an old Leisure Adult Western, SILVER LUST, by "Dallas Todd", who I suspect is a friend of mine. I was pretty pleased with this haul. I went in there to look for a book my daughter needed for school. Luckily I found it too, or I might have looked pretty bad coming out with all that good stuff for myself.
I bought one other book at that store, SECRET OF THE BLACK PLANET, by Milton Lesser, published by Belmont in 1965. This is a collection of two novellas, "Secret of the Black Planet" and "Son of the Black Chalice", both of them copyright 1951 by Ziff-Davis, so they were probably first published in AMAZING or FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Lesser wound up being mystery novelist Stephen Marlowe. I like his work a lot under both names, whether it's SF or mystery.
Earlier in the day I made my usual stop at Half Price Books. The haul there included two books by Lin Carter, BEYOND THE GATE OF DREAM and OUTWORLDER, ORON #5: THE GHOST ARMY by David C. Smith (about as hardboiled a sword-and-sorcery writer as you'll find this side of REH), and a couple of SF digests, ASTOUNDING from January 1960 and GALAXY from December 1967. It was a good day for book-buying.
Another post from WesternPulps, concering the movie HIDALGO:
I finally got a chance to watch this movie on DVD. I'd wanted to see it when it was in the theaters, but that never worked out. However, even on a smaller screen, it's a very impressive and entertaining film, the sort of pure adventure movie that doesn't get made as often as they used to. It's a little heavy-handed in places with its moralizing and mysticism (as you'd expect from John Fusco, who wrote SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON), but like SPIRIT, the story overcomes that and sweeps the viewer along, creating some good characters and genuine suspense along the way. Good performances, too, not the least of which comes from Hidalgo himself. And it's always good to see Omar Sharif again. (I always liked DR. ZHIVAGO.) I'd recommend this one to anybody who hasn't gotten around to seeing it yet.
I'm still reading the Johnstone book.
I went over to my folks' house today and spent a few hours with them, then came home and wrote. I usually stop for the day by six o'clock, even if I get a late start, but today I went on past that, thinking, "Well, I'll do a little more . . . well, I'll do a little more . . . " I wound up with 25 pages, which leaves me just one chapter to go to finish this book. Probably won't do it all tomorrow, but it should be wrapped up on Tuesday. As I may have mentioned before, I obsess about pages. I know this. But a little obsession is healthy, right? Right?
I'm reading REVENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN by William W. Johnstone. This is the fourth book in a long-running series. I read the first three a while back and decided to pick it up again. I was surprised that I remember as much about the first three books as I do. My memory isn't what it once was.
Livia and I were married twenty-eight years ago today. It's a cliche, but it really does seem like the blink of an eye in some ways and forever in others. I can't imagine the last twenty-eight years without her, though. I'm convinced that she's largely responsible for me being a writer, since she told me that if that was what I wanted to do, I had to really work at it. A few months later I sold my first story.
Anniversary or not, I turned out 20 pages today . . . but Livia's the one who told me to go out to the studio and get those pages done.
