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Interview with Jenni L. Walsh, author of Becoming Bonnie

April 11, 2017May 7, 2024torforge

Becoming Bonnie is the story of Bonnelyn Parker, a young woman who has her whole life ahead of her – until she meets the young Clyde Barrow. We asked Jenni L. Walsh some questions about her upcoming book about half of the famous criminal duo.

Will you tell us a little about Becoming Bonnie and what inspired you to write it?

Becoming Bonnie is the story of how Bonnie becomes the Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde. The novel begins with her as Bonnelyn, a fictional name I dreamed up to depict her as a wholesome, church-going gal. By the novel’s end, she’s Bonnie, half of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo.

That transformation is the crux of the story, taking a young girl who was promised the American dream but who was instead given the Great Depression. The circumstances, hurdles, and obstacles she faces all lead to the pinnacle moment where she falls for a convicted felon—and turns to crime herself.

Interestingly enough, this story isn’t the one I first sought to tell. Driven by my desire to write the story of an iconic figure, I first began writing my own version of Bonnie and Clyde’s 1930s crime spree. I quickly put on the brakes, realizing I first needed readers to understand who Bonnie really was. What made her tick? What was her background? Why was she so loyal to Clyde Barrow? So I put what I’d written aside, hoping to one day use it in a sequel, and started over, going back five years to tell Bonnie Parker’s origin story, which also allowed me to drop Bonnie into a 1920s speakeasy in the middle of a foxtrot. Now that was a good time.

What did you enjoy most about writing it, and what was most challenging?

Both these questions can be answered with the same answer: Not much about Bonnie Parker’s background is known.

Sure, we know some things about Bonnie’s upbringing and her passions in life, along with how she met Clyde Barrow, but ultimately, I had a lot of leeway to tell the story I wanted to tell. I took what realities I could find, though one person’s account often contradicted with another’s first-hand anecdote, and I used those ‘truths’ as guideposts. Then I took the reader from point A to point B with whatever my imagination dreamed up. This was a lot of fun, but being Bonnie Parker is an actual person, I also had fears of misrepresenting her—and that I’d get called out for it. Even though Becoming Bonnie is fictional, I want those familiar with her real-life story to feel satisfied with my spin on it.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned while researching Becoming Bonnie?

Along with Bonnie’s background, I also dove into Clyde’s. While his violent and criminal actions are inexcusable, it was fascinating to see how he got to a place where crime was his answer, and maybe, just maybe, how his story would’ve gone differently if life wouldn’t zigged instead of zagged. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as my book touches upon these elements, but as a boy Clyde got a sickness that took some of his hearing. In his teens, he tried to apply to the Navy, however he received a medical rejection. But what if he hadn’t? What if Clyde joined the Navy? Would it have been the structure he needed? Would it have been a way for him to get what he wanted out of life? And ultimately, would he ever have met Bonnie Parker? You’ll see in Becoming Bonnie, that Bonnie has a very large role in Clyde becoming who he is, as well.

What’s your favorite word?

So, there’s one word I had to use when I set my book in the 1920s. Heebie-jeebies.

That word, or maybe its a phrase, has stuck with me for nearly twenty-two years, ever since witnessing this adorable back and forth on Boy Meets World:

Topanga: Why are you looking at me like that?
Cory: I will always look at you like this.
Topanga: Well, stop.
Cory: Why?
Topanga: Because you’re giving me the heebie-jeebies.
Cory: Good.

What’s the first book you remember loving?

One of the first books I bought for my kids because of a vague remembrance was Are You My Mother? My own mom said she used to read it nonstop to me when I was a youngster.

What’s your favorite method of procrastination?

Besides the obvious answer of social media, I procrastinate so much by rereading what I’ve already written, instead of writing brand new words and continuing my story. I’m sure there are worse forms of procrastination out there, but it eats up huge chunks of time, when I already have such small windows of time to write, thanks to my very demanding but very cute one-year-old and three-year-old.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently busy writing the sequel to Becoming Bonnie called Being Bonnie. I’m excited to get the chance to write the story I first set out to tell, and to continue Bonnie and Clyde’s story into the 1930s. The contrast of the settings from one book to the other has been a fun challenge to tackle, along with how I’m going to bring Bonnie’s story to an end.

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Follow Jenni L. Walsh on Twitter, on Facebook, and on her website.

Author Features

Interview with Sherri Smith, Author of Follow Me Down

March 14, 2017May 16, 2024torforge

Mia Haas has built her life far from the North Dakota town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she is forced to return home. Back to the people she left behind, the person she used to be, and the secrets she thought she’d buried.

We sat down with Sherri Smith to talk about recent reads, writing rituals, and how her research made some pharmacists a little suspicious. Get a preview of the first chapter here!

Will you tell us a little about Follow Me Down and what inspired you to write it?

Follow Me Down is about a woman forced to return to her hometown after learning that her twin brother has disappeared the same day the body of his high school student is pulled from the river.

I was inspired to write it, because it was the sort of book I love to read. It’s full of small town secrets, a troubled main character, guilt, addiction and the complexities of sibling relationships.

What kind of research did you do for Follow Me Down?

I did learn a great deal about different prescription drugs and their varied effects on the body. I also figured out that pharmacists find you to be pretty sketchy when you keep asking about the sort of pills that make an appearance in Follow Me Down.

What’s your favorite word?

I am not sure I have a favorite word, more so word combinations like, ‘happy hour’ or ‘nap time’ or ‘buy one get one.’ All of those work for me.

Which books are currently in your to-read pile?

I have a never-ending tower of books. Right now I am reading Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough (I am halfway through and can’t tell where it’s going.) I am reading my first Peter Swanson, Her Every Fear, and I can’t wait to read his other books. I am also just finished reading While They Slept by Kathryn Harrison, a true-crime story about a son who murdered his parents and younger sister. It’s a brilliant and insightful book on how this sort of heartbreaking tragedy can unfold.

What’s the first book you remember reading?

By grade 5, I was reading my mom’s books: Danielle Steele, Mary Higgins Clark, Jackie Collins (should not have been reading Jackie Collins at that age,) Sidney Sheldon. I loved being able to access these sophisticated adult worlds so different from own, and I think this initiated me into being a voracious reader.

What’s your favorite thing about being a writer?

The loose hours. Working in my PJ’s. Being home with my children. Leading a double life, because that’s what writing can feel like when you get sucked into the lives you’re creating.

If you could only recommend one book, what would it be?

I would recommend picking out a book that makes you uncomfortable, for whatever reason, at least twice a year. Don’t play it safe when it comes to reading.

What’s your favorite method of procrastination?

With two small children I am no longer allowed the luxury of procrastination, which is too bad because I do think it’s a useful tool when it comes to writing. Some of my best ideas have come to me, when I’ve been doing anything but sitting in front of my computer.

Do you have any writing rituals?

Coffee and sitting.

What’s next for you?

I am currently writing another suspense novel. I don’t want to say too much about it at this point other than it takes place at a wellness retreat, involves psychotropic tea and murder.

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You can find Sherri Smith on Twitter (@SL_Smith), Facebook, or visit her website.

Author Features

Finding Inspiration Inside a NYC Courthouse

February 28, 2017May 7, 2024torforge1 Comment

Written by Kevin Egan

A Shattered Circle is my third thriller set in the New York County Courthouse in lower Manhattan. The iconic courthouse is a magnet not only for lawyers and litigants but also for tourists and movie production crews. In my two previous novels, the courthouse functioned as a character. Midnight focused on the self-contained world of a judge’s chambers. (The judge was dead, a minor fact his staff concealed for three days.) The Missing Piece featured the search for a stolen trial exhibit – a Roman urn worth $5 million – and took the reader to little-known corners of the complex building.

A Shattered Circle also explores the interior design of the courthouse, from the private assignations in a hidden room at the bottom of a back stairwell to the very public grand rotunda and its brilliant History of the Law mural arching 75 feet above the marble floor. But deep in its beating heart, A Shattered Circle is the story of a marriage.

The married couple are Bill and Barbara Lonergan. Bill is a judge and Barbara was his secretary before becoming his wife. Bill is a kind of courthouse raconteur – a story-teller, a jokester, the perfect hale-fellow-well-met. But after falling off a ladder, he has shown signs of dementia, and Barbara has drawn a protective circle around him to preserve his health, his reputation, and his career. Though the new Bill is more quiet and remote, he still shows flashes of his garrulous personality. Though he no longer confronts lawyers directly, he still issues rulings with the help, and sometimes the prodding, of his law clerk. The circle seems to be holding the outside world at bay, but as the Lonergans’ story opens, outside forces are massing. A disgruntled litigant files a judicial complaint, which could lead to a hearing that will expose Bill’s mental decline. A private detective investigating the murder of a lawyer in upstate New York badgers chambers for an audience with Bill. And a court officer, looking into a 25 year old courthouse murder as a favor to a friend, begins to ask Barbara uncomfortable questions.

I have spent most of my court career as a law clerk for two different judges. Working for a judge is a particular kind of job because you essentially meld your intellect, your legal philosophy, sometimes even your personality with those of the judge. The judge’s friends become your friends. The judge’s enemies become, well, not exactly your enemies but people you might rather avoid. And if the judge is married – and both of my judges had exceptionally solid marriages – you treat the spouse with the utmost respect and deference.

My two judges, and their spouses, became the models for the Lonergans. Not factual models; neither judge was a bird-watcher or had been, even briefly, a professional basketball player. But both spouses were exceedingly devoted and ferociously protective.

In Barbara, I needed to create a spouse who was even more devoted and more protective than her two real-life analogs. After Bill’s fall, she not only builds the protective circle but also manages every aspect of his life. It is exhausting work, even when doing something as mundane as taking a midday walk near the courthouse. As she reflects:

“She constantly worried about what he might do, what he might say, who they might encounter at an inconvenient moment. She constantly needed to think ahead, wargame the most routine activities to foresee any potential problem.”

Barbara believes that she can handle the private investigator simply by ignoring him. She believes she can prepare Bill for his disciplinary hearing by hiring a lawyer and arranging for cutting-edge therapy that will temporarily mask his dementia. To repel the inquisitive court officer, she drops her role as judge’s secretary and summons the high dudgeon of a judge’s wife. But ultimately, the protective circle shatters, and it shatters because of secrets the two spouses have kept from each other – secrets Bill cannot remember and secrets Barbara thought she had buried.

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Find Kevin Egan on his website.

Author Features

Bringing Lincoln and His White House to Life

February 14, 2017May 7, 2024torforge

Written by Burt Solomon

I’m basically a nonfiction guy, a journalist by trade. The Murder of Willie Lincoln is my first novel. Before this, I wrote three nonfiction books about U.S. history—one about baseball in the 1890s and two about Washington in the 1900s. And in researching and writing each one, there has come a moment when the time and place I’m writing about come alive in my head. And therefore—if I do my job right—in the reader’s.

For this book, the magical moment happened at the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, where Lincoln spent a lot of his summers. I have a couple of scenes set there, including a séance, so one day I was climbing the stairs to the second floor, where Tad, the surviving son, is stashed for a while in my story. I asked the guide about the banister. Yes, this was the original, and I’m thinking: Wow, Lincoln’s hands slid up and down this banister, and some of his molecules are probably still on it. That was the moment that Lincoln and my story came alive.

But these moments don’t happen by themselves, or easily, and it’s the job of the historian, and the historical novelist, to make them happen. They take a lot of work. Research.

In The Murder of Willie Lincoln, I changed a single fact—how 11-year-old Willie Lincoln died. I left almost everything else —the characters, the events of the day, even the weather in Washington City—exactly as they were. I hoped to make it as easy as possible for the reader to suspend disbelief.

Indeed, many things in Washington are still the same. The Capitol was there, though without a dome. The Washington Monument was there, though only a third of it. The White House was there, with a big greenhouse and without the West Wing. Many of the buildings were the same, and the landscape—and the political dynamics that we all know and love. Really, only the decimal points have moved.

Even so, the Washington City of 1862 smelled and felt and sounded different than it does now. I needed it to come alive, and the way to do this was just like for nonfiction—research, research, research. Reading the newspapers of the time, magazine articles, plowing through books about Washington. The trick is in the accretion of details. To get the hogs in the gutter, and the smells of the wretched canal that was really an open sewer—it’s where Constitution Avenue is now—with what an olfactory savant described as “70 separate and distinct stinks.”

Ah, Washington—literally, a swamp to be drained.

I also spent days at the National Library of Medicine’s wonderful history section, delving into the technical details about embalming—by the method that was probably used on Willie Lincoln. (I have a really gross scene about that.) And I found a medicine-slash-poison common at the time that mimicked the symptoms of typhoid fever in all but one respect. That exception, which you’d rather not read over breakfast, I’ve used in the plotline.

Things I found in my research I worked into the plot. Stuff actually happened that I never could have made up. Maybe my favorite example involves John Watt, the White House gardener, who blackmailed Mary Lincoln for $20k and walked away with $1,500 and a military commission. Watt was an expert in padding his invoices, and he taught this skill to Mary Lincoln, who needed the money to supplement what Congress was willing to give her for all the redecorating, the new china, the new servants’ uniforms, her clothes, the grand parties. John Watt accompanied her on shopping trips to Philadelphia and New York and showed her the ropes. Apparently she wrote three letters to him that acknowledged her transgressions, leaving her open for blackmail.

Research also informed my characters. For some of them, such as John Watt, very little is known, so I made it all up. For the characters known to history, I tried to stick as close to what is known as possible. But the trick is to understand them from the inside, so you can figure out how they speak and act. So that they sound right—and different from one another—and so their actions make sense. Mark Twain once said that fiction is harder than nonfiction because it has to make sense.

The hardest character, of course—the most intimidating of all—was Lincoln. The idea of writing dialogue for Lincoln scared the hell out of me. For one thing, his voice is so complex—both homespun and august, vulgar but biblical, sly and witty but solemn and serious. And for another, he’s … Lincoln. The grandest we’ve got.

So how do you do it? You read about him—but you can’t read all 15,000 books, nor do you want to—and you touch the banister and you handle a paper with his signature and you close your eyes and try to imagine.

But for Lincoln in particular, something else is going on. He has seeped so deeply into Americans’ consciousness that I think we all have a bit of Lincoln inside of us. There’s the penny and the $5 bill, but that’s not all of Lincoln we carry around with us. We carry him inside of our heads. We know what he sounds like. We know him as the best part of ourselves.

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Author Features

Lawyers Should Not Write Romance Novels

January 3, 2017May 10, 2024torforge2 Comments

Written by Erin Lyon

Truly. Because we do cruel and terrible things to commitment and everlasting love. Things like, say, replacing marriage with seven-year contracts so that relationships can be managed via contract law. And putting an expiration date on that contract so that couples get to decide whether or not to continue the relationship every seven years. Tragic, really. Psh. Lawyers.

Or (hear me out), maybe it’s actually an awesome idea. I’m pretty sure I would have had Elizabeth Taylor’s full support on this. She was married eight (8) times – two of which were to the same man. Tell me that wasn’t a woman whose life would have been vastly simplified if each time she fell in love she had only been committing to seven years!

Even in the literary world, so many relationships would have benefitted from my proposal. Case in point:

Catherine and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a poor nobody so Catherine marries boring old Linton. Then Heathcliff comes back all rich and sexy but Cathy’s already hitched. In my world, a few years after Heathcliff came home, Cathy and Linton’s contract would have expired, leaving Catherine free to choose Heathcliff (like she should have done from the beginning, obviously). She would then have opted to not re-up with Linton and, voila, no one is dying of a broken heart or plotting generations of revenge. (Seriously, Heathcliff – find a hobby that doesn’t involve torturing your enemies and their descendants over a 20-year period. That might be going a tad overboard.)

Romeo and Juliet. This one is too easy. Warring families, a secret marriage, dual suicide. Yikes. Under my idea? Everyone knows that minors can’t legally enter into contracts and Juliet is only 13! Ergo, no contract is ever (legally) signed. Romeo and Juliet grow up a little bit and Juliet realizes she wants to be a writer (which Romeo doesn’t support) and Romeo ends up hooking up with the girl from the Verona market. Everyone parts ways without all that unnecessary suicide stuff.

Jane and Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. Scandal ensues when Mr. Rochester falls in love with his daughter’s plain-Jane governess, Jane Eyre, and he marries her. Spoiler alert! He was still married to his first wife! In his defense, Wife #1 had gone completely mad years before so he locked her up in the tower (probably prudent for the safety of all involved given that she did slip past her nurse one night and do her best to flambé Mr. Rochester while he slept). Ah, but the simplicity of contracts. Mr. Rochester’s contract would have had an incapacity provision so that once his first wife’s elevator stopped going to the top floor, so to speak, the contract would have been null and void and poor Jane would never have been publicly humiliated by accidentally marrying a married man.

Mrs. de Winter and Maxim in Rebecca. Maxim de Winter is married to the cheating, narcissistic Rebecca – at least until she dies under mysterious circumstances. Then Maxim meets our mousy-but-delightful, never-to-be-named heroine and marries her (allowing us to simply call her Mrs. de Winter). Sure, we find out later that Rebecca was a manipulative bitch who sparked Maxim into a rage and he actually shot her and dumped her body. (Perhaps a bit of an overreaction.) Anyway, point being, the night Maxim killed Rebecca, she had been rudely confessing to being pregnant with another man’s baby and claimed that she would raise the child as Maxim’s and there was nothing he could do to stop her! (If you’re anything like me, you’re oddly at peace with Maxim getting away with murder in this book.) But! Under contract law, Maxim would have sued her for breach of contract, taken her for everything she was worth, and sent her lying ass to go live with her baby-daddy. (Yes, yes. I am well aware she wasn’t actually pregnant, but she still admitted to the infidelity which would be sufficient for breach as long as you have a good lawyer.)

So, to conclude, lawyers probably should write romance novels. Just think of the second chances at love we’d be providing! (Not to mention all the literary lives we’d be saving.) I rest my case.

Follow Erin Lyon on Twitter and on her website.

Author Features

Interview with W. Bruce Cameron, Author of A Dog’s Purpose

December 6, 2016May 17, 2024torforge

As any lover of dogs will tell you, there’s nothing quite like the friendships between human beings and their canine companions. A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron gives us humans a chance at a dog’s eye view of the world, and next month it’s coming to the big screen! We sat down with the author to talk about adaptations and, of course, dogs – on and off set.

How has the movie, A Dog’s Purpose, changed your life?

I have always been so interested in reading that I forget that most people don’t dispose all of their income at the bookstore. When one of my novels is published I’m surprised it isn’t mentioned on the floor of Congress or put into the minutes at the UN. What seems hugely important to me doesn’t really register with most folks. So for a long time I’ve had to tell people what I’ve written and what it’s about. Now, though, when I say I’ve written A Dog’s Purpose, they’ve all heard of it. That has given me the illusion that I am more popular.

What was it like to interact with the canine stars on set?

Okay, you caught me. I was supposed to be talking to the actors, the producer, the director, and instead I spent all my time playing with the dogs. I bonded with the Corgi to the point I think he and I both thought he would be flying home with me, and rolling around with the dogs on set was the most fun I’ve had in some time. I don’t think the dog trainers were too happy with me, though. I was a bit of a distraction.

What, creatively, is the difference between writing a novel and adapting a screenplay?

Adaption is like sitting down and deciding which of your fingers to cut off. It’s all about what to throw out, because if you try to take all of A Dog’s Purpose and cram it into a movie, you’re going to have a five-hour movie. There is so much story that has to go, so much character detail. It’s like tossing ballast out of a hot air balloon—for it to fly, you have to dump stuff. I think the movie is magnificent, but it is not the whole picture. For that, you have to read the novel. I think understanding, for example, what is going on in Todd’s head, or why the dog’s first starts thinking about purpose, or why Buddy returns to the dog park, will really enrich the movie-going experience.

Will there will be a sequel to the A Dog’s Purpose movie?

If enough people go to the movie when it comes out, everything is in place to begin work on the sequel almost immediately. So, fingers crossed.

You have your own dog at home, Tucker. How did he come into your life?

Tucker was abandoned as a newborn with his siblings in a box outside of a city shelter, an act of heartlessness that is the inspiration for my novel The Dogs of Christmas. (Spoiler alert: it’s really happy). My daughter runs an animal rescue in Denver (www.lifeisbetter.org) and picked up the puppies and gave them to a mother dog who had just weaned her pups the day before. The mother dog nursed the little abandoned puppies until they were old enough to be adopted, and by that time, my daughter knew Tucker was the dog for us. She had a real talent for that: matching people with pets. She brought Tucker to us and he’s been in charge of the house ever since.

What else do you have in the works?

I have a set of books for younger readers that are based on the A Dog’s Purpose Ellie’s Story details the life of Ellie, the search-and-rescue dog. Bailey’s Story tells the life of Bailey, the childhood pet. Both of those are just out. And in the fall of 2017 we’ll see the publication of Molly’s Story, the cancer-sniffing dog. On the adult front, A Dog’s Way Home will be out in May. It tells the story of a dog banished by breed-specific legislation who, taken far away from her family, decides to find her way back—through hundreds of miles of wilderness. And in June, A Dad’s Purpose, which is a humorous look at what it is like to be a father in today’s world.

I’ve read A Dog’s Purpose—what should I read next?

I would highly recommend the next novel in the series: A Dog’s Journey continues the story of the dog in A Dog’s Purpose, pretty much picking up right where the first book left off. A Dog’s Journey actually has a high reader-rating than A Dog’s Purpose, but I’ll leave it up to the individual to decide which one is better.

Buy A Dog’s Purpose here:

Follow W. Bruce Cameron on Twitter (@adogspurpose) and Facebook, or visit his website.

Author Features

The Modern Day Western

September 27, 2016May 10, 2024torforge

Written by Jon Land

My Caitlin Strong books have often been referred to as modern day westerns. While I’d like to take credit for starting that trend, it goes back far longer than Caitlin and me. In fact, the contemporary western dates all the way back to the national disillusion over the Vietnam War, coupled in rapid succession by loss of faith in our own government thanks to Watergate. The country found itself craving old-fashioned, no-holds-barred heroes who could we believe in. Strong (no pun intended!) men with a simple ethos and base nobility in which they stood as the lone hope against bad guys determined to make the world worse for ordinary people. The trend, in my humble opinion, began not in books, but in movies. So, in honor of the release of The Magnificent Seven remake, let’s explore seven examples of the modern day western that have so influenced the form of the thriller novel in pop culture.

Dirty Harry: Clint Eastwood’s seminal, star-making turn as a loner cop breaking all the rules to track down a serial killer. The setting of 1970s San Francisco could just as easily have been the plains roamed by the Man with No Name in the spaghetti westerns in which Clint cut his teeth. Harry Callahan is a character literally defined by his gun, making the .44 Magnum famous as well. A great uncredited rewrite by John Millius turned a simple cop film into a portrait of a modern day gunfighter’s obsession with seeing justice done, ending in identical fashion to the Gary Cooper classic High Noon.

Star Wars: A “space western” that contains all the staples of the form right down to the villainous gunfighter in black, as personified by Darth Vader, only with a light saber instead of a Colt .45. Add to that Luke Skywalker’s ingénue evolving into a heroic force of good, the blaster-wielding gunslinger in Han Solo, a rescue sequence (a la The Professionals), and a climactic gun battle transposed into outer space. The result draws upon Akira Kurosawa’s western-inspired samurai movies in crafting an industry-changing masterpiece.

Die Hard: Speaking of modern day gunfighters, Bruce Willis’s John McClane calls himself Roy Rogers and leaves us with a great take on this theme by uttering the famous line, “Yippy-Ki-Yay, mother_______!” to the villainous Hans Gruber amid their final shootout. In that sense, he’s the classic gunman who finds himself in the wrong place/town at the wrong time. Nakatomi Tower becomes a microcosm for a world run by bad guys at the expense of the rest of us. And, like Alan Ladd in Shane, McClane finds himself hopelessly outnumbered which doesn’t stop him from triumphing in the end.

Lethal Weapon: Jack Schaeffer conceived the aforementioned Shane as a kind of “savior psychopath,” who possesses many of the same qualities as those he’s determined to defeat. So it is with Mel Gibson’s Riggs character, as conceived by screenwriter Shane Black. The suicidal Riggs is utterly unhinged and every bit as much a psychopath as Mitchell Ryan’s Shadow Company stone faces, led by Gary Busey as Mr. Joshua. The final scene, in which Riggs challenges Joshua to what is essentially a gun fight without guns, opens with the line, “What do you say, Jack? You want a shot at the title?” Shane couldn’t have said it better.

Robocop (just the original, please!): When Tombstone was overrun by outlaws, they sent for Wyatt Earp. When Detroit of the future faces a comparable menace, they build their own Wyatt Earp in the form of the title character and let him loose to clean up the crime-riddled streets. Remember how Peter Weller’s character twirls his gun to impress the son his new identify forces him to abandon? You think the filmmakers didn’t know exactly the metaphor they were pushing? The film’s villainous Clarence Boddicker is the classic western outlaw, a power-mad creature of corruption it takes a machine with a heart bigger than most humans to bring down.

No Country for Old Men: The purest “postmodern” western on our list, since (in both the book and the exceptionally faithful film adaptation) Tommy Lee Jones’s saintly old-school sheriff never actually confronts Javier Bardem’s twistedly terrifying Anton Chigurh. But the drug deal gone wrong harks back to any number of stagecoach and bank robberies that define so many westerns. And Chigurh’s malevolent menace is reminiscent of every black-clad baddie ever to rampage through the Old West. A creature not so much of the land, as fate itself and thus defined purely in the moment, giving us no idea from where he came or where he’s going next.

Jack Reacher: Okay, Tom Cruise isn’t as big or as bruising as Lee Child’s iconic, nomadic hero who carries only a toothbrush while taming one town, and one book, after another. But Cruise otherwise nails the character’s sensibility to a T. Reacher is a classic western gunfighter, unable to settle down and on a quasi-Quixotic journey to right the wrongs of the world perpetrated on ordinary people like you and I. He vanquishes the bad guys, then mounts a bus instead of a horse to ride on to his next adventure. Not a whole lot different than Paladin from the classic TV western, Have Gun, Will Travel.

Those are my choices. Would love to hear if you have any you’d like to add.

Buy Strong Cold Dead here:

Author Features

Me and Robert Frost

August 30, 2016May 10, 2024torforge5 Comments

Written by Shannon Baker

and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Holy Cow, what a difference! When I was in college, I had plans. Big ones that involved corner offices and six-figure salaries, high heels, power suits, cocktail dresses. It was the same road all of us business majors hoped to travel. I attended the University of Nebraska (Go Big Red!) so it wouldn’t surprise a thinking person that at age 21, love hurtled into my life like the meteor that burned through our atmosphere wiping out the dinosaurs. In my little life, love had about the same impact. The man I oh-so naively fell for was a rancher in the Nebraska Sandhills.

I went traipsing off to a place where cattle outnumber people by more than fifty to one and my nearest neighbor lived five miles away as the crow flies. Living so far out I learned all the survival skills, such as how to stock a pantry, cook on the lean, stay warm when the electricity goes out for a week. *hint: body heat is greatly underestimated. I was outdoorsy, but in the cross-country skiing way, not in the round-u- cattle-in-a-blizzard kind of category.

My father-in-law bought me a helluva good cutting horse. Named Big Enough because he wasn’t much larger than a pony. But that horse had a lot more cow savvy than I did. If you pointed him after a critter, you’d be hell-bent to get him stopped. Big Enough made me a good enough hand I got called on to work cattle often.

One blustery afternoon, we were out in the calving lot cutting heavies because there was a big storm coming in. What this meant is that my husband and father-in-law would slowly, ohmygod so slowly, ride through the bunched herd and quietly isolate one pregnant cow after another, checking their back ends to predict who would calve soon by “how loose” they were. When they chose one, they’d push it away from the rest and my job was to meet it, and Big Enough and I would walk it across the pasture, through the gate to a corral close to the house so they could keep an eye on her during the bad weather.

Our job was as fun as watching Jello harden. The culling went on for millennia, until I couldn’t feel my feet in the stirrups, my lips were probably the color of the icy Atlantic, and my fingers couldn’t grip the reins. All I could think about was the warm cinnamon rolls and hot coffee I had in the kitchen. Frozen brain drifting, I was snapped to attention by hollering. I think Big Enough had been dozing because when I kicked him to attention he startled and jumped. I grabbed the saddle horn to keep from pitching onto the hard ground.

My husband—never one for subtly—started screaming unmentionable things at me with the general gist that they’d kicked a cow our way and, because of our inattention, she’d double-backed into the herd. I kicked Big Enough after her and, smart guy that he was, he identified her immediately. He went after her, cutting her from the herd. She was a determined bossy and tried moves a Husker running back would be proud of. But Big Enough had her number and he’d feint and parry until all I could do was clamp my knees into his sides and white-knuckle the saddle horn.

Big Enough succeeded in getting her separated from the herd but she was riled up. You can imagine running a pregnant cow is not good, but by now, Big Enough was focused. The cow took off on a full run across the pen, my father-in-law and my husband were telling me to stop chasing the cow, in between all the cursing, of course. But a mere mortal was powerless against the force called Big Enough. My ski hat blew off, tears streaked from my eyes and froze before they reached my temples. We raced across the frozen pasture, the cow in a panic, Big Enough committed, and only me with enough foresight to notice the approaching three-strand barbed wire fence.

Big Enough only saw the cow, who only wanted to get away from us. I wedged my feet in the stirrups and pulled the reins with all my strength, standing and leaning back. This convoy was heading for disaster and nothing I did made any difference.

Big Enough didn’t slow. The fence loomed. The cow kept running. We were all going to die. I’m sure I ground a layer or two off my teeth.

The cow hit the fence at roughly 200 mph. She tangled in the wire and did a gymnast’s tumble. Still we careened toward her. We’d roll in the barbed wire. Big Enough would shred his flesh, maybe break a leg in the fall and have to be put down. I clenched, preparing for the Rodeo Apocalypse.

Did I mention Big Enough was smart?

He stopped inches from the fence line.

I didn’t. Like a cannonball, I shot out of the saddle, over the fence and landed in a heap on the frozen sand. The cow, tail still raised, turned from me and trotted into the corral. Big Enough stared at me in disappointment that I couldn’t do my job of staying in the saddle. My husband and father-in-law had already returned to sorting cattle.

A few minutes later I enjoyed coffee and rolls in my kitchen and about fifteen years later, I left the Sandhills for good.

I might have taken that well-traveled road after college to a business career. But I’m glad I took the one less traveled. No denying it was bumpy and rough, but along the way I discovered Kate Fox and now, I get to write her stories.

Buy Stripped Bare here:

Don’t forget to follow Shannon Baker on Twitter (@sbakerwriter) or visit her website.

Author Features

The Conflict Between Public and Private

June 1, 2016May 10, 2024torforge

Written by Stacey Kade

When I was twelve, I yelled at a lifeguard.

To be fair, he yelled at me first. Screamed at me, actually, for standing in the baby pool while visiting the infant sister of a friend and her mother, who was my chaperone at the pool that day.

I was humiliated and indignant. I was there talking to a mom, not messing around or hurting anyone. Plus, I knew the lifeguard. He was only a few years older, the (jerky) teenage son of my teacher. He could have just asked me to leave. But instead he was clearly on a power high from having been endowed with some authority and his own personal whistle.

Normally, I’m terrible with confrontation. I won’t even speak up if the restaurant gets my order wrong. But in this case, the perceived injustice lit a fire in me and I shouted back at him.

I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember his face going red and him telling me that I had a temper on me. At the time, I was pleased. I’d told him. I marched back to the “adult” pool, triumphant. That was the end of the encounter in my mind.

But it wasn’t, not really. A couple days later, my dad pulled me aside and asked me if I had yelled at the lifeguard. I admitted it readily and explained my reasoning. But he told me I had to apologize. Because the teacher and his son went to our church and my dad was the pastor. The lifeguard had told his father on me and his father had gone to mine. Whether I was right or wrong (my perspective now as an adult is more nuanced) didn’t matter, it was the principal of the thing. I was supposed to set a good example.

That was the first time I experienced the conflict between public and personal identity. Between “Pastor’s Daughter” and “Stacey.”

I’m fascinated by identity, particularly the clash between public and personal. We all have public personas. Every post on Facebook or Twitter is weighed consciously or unconsciously against the idea we want people to have of us.

For most of us, the differences between our public and private faces are relatively minor, and the choice to make that distinction is ours. But for others, that’s not the case.

In 738 Days, Amanda Grace is a former abductee. At fifteen, she was kidnapped on her way home from school. Her parents, desperate to find her, opened up their lives up to the media, to keep her case in the spotlight and to get the public invested in finding their daughter. And it worked—Amanda’s face and her story were on every newspaper, magazine, news site and channel in the country.

But when she’s found, two years later, that investment doesn’t just go away. Everyone knows Amanda’s story, the horrific details of what happened to her during her captivity. Amanda is now a public figure, of sorts, and not by choice. People feel they know her, that they own her in some way, this “miracle girl” who survived. Her private identity has become a very public one. And now it’s hard for her to let her guard down, to trust anyone with the sliver of personal life she has left.

Chase Henry is a former teen star whose poster kept Amanda sane during her years of captivity. Chase’s public image has taken a beating, thanks to a series of less-than-awesome choices he made (drugs, alcohol, fights, excessive spending.) He’s sober now but washed up, a Hollywood pariah at twenty-four, unless he can convince the media to portray him in a better light. He doesn’t want the public attention, but he needs it if his career is going to continue. For Chase, a true private identity is a luxury he can’t afford at the moment. What Chase Henry, the man, wants has to be less important than what Chase Henry, the star, does.

Amanda and Chase’s identity needs conflict, of course, which makes it all the more complicated when they fall for each other. I had so much fun playing with the public/private lines, which are often blurred when it comes to famous and infamous in this country.

And for the record, I have never yelled at another water-safety official, whistle-bearing or no.

Buy 738 Days today:

Find out more about Stacey Kade on Twitter, Facebook, and on her website.

Author Features

Writing What You Know

June 1, 2016May 10, 2024torforge

Written by Katie Schickel

Why write about mermaids? Why not vampires, witches, or zombies? Or unicorns, for that matter. The answer is simple: I write what I know, and I know what the world looks like a hundred feet below the surface.

First of all, it’s dark down there. Everything is tinted blue. I’ve bled under water, bitten by a spotted eel, and watched my blood ooze black from my body, because red is the first color of the light spectrum to disappear. Vision can be deceiving. Currents, cross-currents, poor visibility, and flickering schools of fish make for a disorienting experience. Your eyes play tricks on you. You think you see the hull of shipwreck through the haze, but as you swim closer, nothing is there, and instead, another shape materializes in your peripheral vision. You give chase, only to find empty ocean where sunlight is reflected by particulates in the water, making liquid appear solid. Your sense of sound is just as unreliable.The roar of an engine far away might sound like a jet taking off right beside you. Even touch is misleading. I’ve brushed up against fire coral, which looks and feels harmless under water, but burns as soon as your skin hits air.

When my character, Jess, transforms into a mermaid, she doesn’t frolic in a coconut-shelled bikini and swim merrily through the ocean. She’s disoriented. Her senses are garbled. And she’s scared, just as I have been countless times in the ocean.

In my twenties, I was a dive master and dive instructor in the Florida Keys, where I logged hundreds of hours under water, in all weather, and all conditions. In my spare time, I worked as a freelance travel writer for dive magazines, picking up assignments throughout the Caribbean, and eventually as the managing editor for a dive magazine. I’ve done shark dives, swam with a whale shark in Australia, filmed a swordfish in Panama, cave-dived in Eleuthera, gotten nitrogen narcosis on a deep dive in Andros, and a case of the bends (decompression sickness) on airplane to Nassau. I’ve been besieged by schooling barracuda, surrounded by hunting dolphins, circled by sharks. I’ve explored shipwrecks and plane wrecks from Bermuda to Palau. I’ve been swept away by currents, trapped inside a shipwreck in zero visibility, and tossed around in big seas. In other words, without realizing it, I was gathering a hoard of material to someday write a book about a mermaid.

All those years as a professional scuba diver weren’t wasted after all. With The Mermaid’s Secret, I wanted the reader to feel what it’s really like under the sea, in all its spectacular beauty, as well as its dangers.

Buy The Mermaid’s Secret today:

Find out more about Kaie Schickel on Twitter and on her website.

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