Things started getting Western late in my life, about the time a person would have an affair, quit a job, pick up and move. Instead of doing any of those, I started reading and watching Westerns. Didn’t matter what kind: lurid pulps or supermarket romances, celluloid classics or far-out frontier flicks.
Somewhere during that time, probably in long-plane-flight desperation, I picked up a paperback (the kind with a purple cover and a steely-eyed, bare-chested man in tight jeans). “I can write better than this,” I said with the certainty born out of ignorance, and thus started my writing career. Whether I have done, can do, or will ever do “better” than that hard-working author is a question, but that cocky statement sure got the job done.
Several years on, I’ve traveled extensively throughout the West, enough to know the difference between a real cowboy and a poser, and to appreciate them both. I’ve devoted myself to studying the Western in all its forms and permutations, as geeky as that sounds. I have more Western kitsch than is legal, and, at last count 17 20 21 pairs of cowboy boots, a visual library of anything from historical commentary to cowboy porn, and two hundred and eighty three hundred and two paperback westerns (most of which I’ve read). Can there be such a thing as a degree in Western mythology?
In between collecting, I’m a writer and artist whose themes dip into the genre’s style, and there are some published stories out there in the cyberspace frontier. You might catch me at a reading in NYC, where I’ve featured and enjoyed the fine company of many of the city’s finest writers and poets. And someday soon, a novel set in the modern but no less wild West will be completed.
Until we meet in person, happy virtual trails to you.
Bucko