Journal Notes

I’m off to Gold Hill, Nevada tomorrow to take part in the Old West lecture series there. I’ll be speaking on the subject of women doctors of the Old West. I met an interesting gentlemen this past week while I was at the Capitol Public Radio studios. He had just completed a trip to Africa where he was part of a program that helped educate people about STDs and the HIV virus. The teenagers there are given false information about the virus and are being told (by their teachers no less) that the HIV virus is found in condoms. I was shocked to learn the odd things some believe. It reminded me of when I was doing the research for the book The Doctor Wore Petticoats. I learned that men and women on the frontier who were suffering with an STD believed the water around Lake Tahoe could heal them. They soaked themselves in the water around Emerald Bay. I can’t help but think about that whenever I drive by that area and see people swimming. Very interesting.

I spent the better part of the day working on the book about the intrepid posse. My focus has been about Marshal Bill Tilghman and his law enforcement techniques. He was interested in learning every aspect of the law and that made him different from Earp, Masterson, and Bassett. Out of the four men he was the only one that made being a police officer a way of life. The other men dabbled in the business, but it was Tilghman’s profession. Bat Masterson said that Tilghman was “the finest of us all.” On more than one occasion, Marshal Tilghman was wrongly accused of a crime. I guess that kind of thing has been going on longer than I even imagined. In Tilghman’s case however, the people who really did commit the crime were made to pay and he was vendicated.

And so ends another work week. I’ve got a good start on chapter four of the posse book and will be traveling to Sacramento this coming week to do further research on the book about school marms of the Old West. I’m glad to see that westerns are still alive at the theatres. I think there will always be an audience for them. People like it when the guys in the white hats outgun the guys in the black hats. There’s something very satisfying about that kind of justice. It’s been my own personal experience that the bad guys (or girls as in this paticular case) never get what’s coming to them. In a truly good western evil never triumphs. If only art imitated life.

One of the reasons why I agree to run ads in major publications like True West Magazine and American Cowboy is not just because of the quality of the periodical, but because of the quality of the advertisement. Jeff Galpin at House of Print and Copy in Grass Valley is the graphic designer who creates the ads and I couldn’t be more pleased. He does such a fine job that anyone would be proud to show off his work. He and his wife are so talented they are doing the art for the children’s book I’m writing. The book is entitled The Christmas Adventures of Cowboy Ned and it should be released by Christmas 2008.

I continue to work on the book about schoolmarms of the Old West. I’ve been writing on a chapter about a 66 year-old woman who traveled to Oregon from Independence in 1846. She weighed 108 pounds and walked with a cane. After she arrived in the Oregon territory she went to work teaching school and caring for orphans. The strength of character in the women from back then is amazing. I have four wonderful neices and hope they grow up to have the same courage as the ladies I’ve had the honor to write about. My neices are Taylor and Jordan Parry and Melissa and Amanda Enss. What a delight they’ve been.

I’m going to be working on an article for True West Magazine on what’s it’s like to live in Grass Valley, California. There is a great deal of history in the Gold Rush town and I’m proud to get a chance to write about it. Sixteen years ago when I moved here I didn’t think I was going to like it. It was cold and snowing and I had spent so much of my time in Arizona…I had my doubts. But it turns out that this place is home to me now and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Maybe Kansas, or Tombstone, or Deming, New Mexico…

One of my next projects is going to be a story of frontier justice. I’m am fixated on bad people getting their come-upings. I haven’t personally experienced that. I don’t know that a lot of people have. Most of the bad people I’ve been personally acquainted with have never gotten what’s coming to them. Maybe that’s why stories like The Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead, or Once Upon a Time in the West are so popular. I haven’t really been passionate about writing much else. Perhaps writing a story like that would do me a world of good.

I was only in Dodge City for a short time, but I miss it. The people, the history. It was a delightful place and I look forward to going back when the book is released. I heard from the producers of the film project I’m working on. The screenwriter finished the rewrite and they are heading out to the studios soon. Wish I could have been the one to rewrite the piece, but they needed a name writer and that ain’t me.

I’m pinning a lot of hope on this book I’m writing entitled Thunder Over the Prairie. I am working very hard to make sure it’s accurate and I have every source listed. I want this western to open the door to other writing opportunities. Lately, I don’t have the passion I used to…for anything. A personal crisis has left me drained. Bad things happen and the hurt that accompanies it is overwhelming. The hurt should kill you, but you keep going. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is the story, the next writing project. Don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t write.

I’m disappointed in the sales for Tales Behind the Tombstones. I thought it would do better than what it has. Maybe it needs to be out there a bit longer. The Lady Was a Gambler comes out in October. I think that will do well. I always thought writing books would look like it did for Kathleen Turner’s character in Romancing the Stone. The words would pour out of her fingers onto the typewriter. She’d celebrate the completion of the book with her cat, deliver it to her publisher, who would read it right then and who loved the work, and would put the promotional staff at the publishing house to work promoting the book. Few things are as good as they appear in the movies.