20 October 2005 If you’ve noticed, Leslie King, the talented designer of this website, has created a new section devoted to the Ozarks. On it, you will find words that convey my feeling for this part of the country, along with some books relating to the region. If you read the words on the page, you’ll understand why I asked her to add this page to my website. The Vigilante, just published by Berkley, shows up on that page, because it is a western novel that I set in the Ozarks, which, of course, was, and is, a part of the great American West. In writing the book, its timeframe being more than 100 years ago, I realized how little has changed since then. The way it is, is the way it was. Yes, there are more people there now, but the timeless hills remain. It was a pleasure to write about a place where I once lived and use my imagination to go back in time to a place that always seemed timeless to me. The central character in The Vigilante is Lew Wetzel Zane. When I was a boy, I read a remarkable trilogy by Zane Gray about his family in Zanesville, Ohio, and one of the books was about Betty Zane, and it was so entitled. There was a character in the trilogy named Lew Wetzel, an uneducated backwoodsman, whom the Indians called Deathwind. The French sobriquet for this character was le vent de la morte. The wind always came up, seemingly from nowhere, each time Wetzel was about to attack an enemy. The character haunted me for all these years, and I found a way to bring his memory back to life. My Lew Wetzel Zane has that same eerie wind spring up each time he is about to kill a man or an animal. It’s as if the wind is some kind of spirit messenger. I believed it when I read about Wetzel as a boy, and I believe it now. When I’m out in the woods and a wind or a breeze comes up, I listen to it. It carries messages on its zephyrs. Animals can read those messages, and sometimes, so can I. Wetzel was very fond of Betty Zane and he often appeared at her doorstep with a freshly killed deer or just to warn the family about hostile Indians. I imagined that Betty and Lew may have had a brief affair and my character was a descendant of that illicit union. Wetzel was a superb tracker and more at home in the woods than he was in civilization. So, I drew my character’s bloodlines from Wetzel and the Zane family. In the novel, I also added elements to the towns that did not exist then, nor now. A novelist may do this because we all carry a thing called “creative license.” I also moved buildings around to suit my purposes for the story. Where a church once stood, I replaced it with a school. But, I did not tamper with the landscape itself. The town where Zane lives was called something else at the time the story takes place, but it wasn’t really a town then, either. The settlers called their valley by a different name that was replaced by another as the town grew and they named it after the Indian tribe that once lived there. But, at the time I lived there, the population was 39. I hope the book finds a wide audience and lasts half as long as that trilogy by Zane Gray. I’m working with another fascinating character at the moment with the first book in another series for Harper, SHADOW RIDER. That is what the Indians call Zak Cody. The Mexicans call him jinete de sombra. The shadow horseman. He rides a black horse named Nox, the Latin word for night, and he is a man of the earth, a quarter breed with Oglala blood, working undercover and outside the military for General George Crook and President Ulysses S. Grant. Zak has the same feeling for the Indians of his day as Crook had, believing that they are victims of many injustices. This may be an Avon book or a Harper Torch. At this point, I don’t know where it will wind up. The book is set in 1871 around Fort Bowie, in Arizona, when Cochise was alive. The whites want to eliminate the Chircahua entirely and Zak is fighting those elements. But, there is treachery in the military, too, because many of the soldiers think of the Apache as animals to be shot and killed on sight. Zak holds the rank of Colonel, but is not in uniform, nor is he bound by military regulations. Some know who he really is; others do not. He is Crook’s secret weapon against those who would persecute the Indian race. I finished writing THE BARON DECISION, but the name will probably be changed. The last book in the series will be called THE BARON LEGACY and I’ll deliver that to Forge next year. It will be a sad day when I finish writing that last of 8 books, since I’ve lived with those characters in the Rio Grande Valley for so long. But, as they saying goes, all good things must come to an end. In the meantime, I still have 3 other series I’m writing, THE VIGILANTE, THE SAVAGE GUN, and SHADOW RIDER. I finished writing the first in the Savage Gun series and think it will break new ground for the western. It is deeper and richer than any of the other paperback westerns I’ve written. The major character is named John Savage and the Colt he uses is his father’s who was killed by bandits. It is a very special gun with a legend on its barrel that holds a lot of meaning for me and for him. I have other book proposals either out to market or waiting to be sent to an interested editor. It takes so long to get a book approved these days that I like to keep some proposals on hand. Besides, sometimes, often, in fact, editors will ask for a book from me, and so I try and have something to send them while the thought is still fresh on their minds. Even, so, however, it still takes an inordinate amount of time to get a book approved and contracts issued. It takes even longer for both the advances on signing, and for the remainder of the advance to be paid on D&A (Delivery of the manuscript and Acceptance). And, the publishers are no longer allowing me to write books ahead of deadline, even though I may want to give myself some time between books. If I send a book in early, the package won’t even be opened until after the deadline. Then, the slow process of reading and accepting and sending out the check begins. So, in a sense, I am always behind, when, if allowed to do so, I could always be ahead. Make sense? I thought not. It’s just another sign that publishers have forgotten that their entire organization is built upon a single entity, the writer. Without the writer, there would be no publishing industry. Yet, in almost all cases, the publisher thinks of the writer as little more than a sheep to be sheared. And, no eating of grass in between shearings, of course. Well, that’s the journal for now. There are more books in the pipeline. I just wonder if any of these series will last beyond the 3-book contracts that began them. If so, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. J.S.