Writing the Old West ~ by Kristine Raymond

It was no surprise to anyone, including me, that the setting for my first book was 1800s Arizona Territory.  From as far back as early childhood, I've been a fan.  I remember sitting on the floor next to my dad watching western movies.  Maybe I was too young to understand the plot, but the action and wildness and lawlessness stirred something inside that I didn't quite comprehend.  All I knew was when that opening theme played and a mounted cowboy rode across the screen, a spark lit deep within my soul that burns to this day.

So, imagine my delight upon discovering Saturday Afternoon at the Westerns.  Now, growing up, my siblings and I were not allowed to sit around in front of the TV all day, so I had to get creative.  Brokering a deal with my mother, she agreed to let me stay indoors and watch television as long as I was 'domestically-occupied'.  Translation - I had to iron my dad's work shirts for the week.  It took me years longer than it should have to realize which one of us got the better end of the bargain, and, to this day, I despise ironing - though I still love my westerns.  Hmmm...maybe I did come out ahead on that one.

© Levy-Gardner-Laven/Four Star Television

The Big Valley was, and is to this day, my favorite.  (I own the entire series on DVD).  I never tire of watching the Barkleys and wanted desperately, as a kid, to move to Stockton, CA.  While I haven't made it that far west yet, the wide open landscape and scenic vistas in this show, and others I watched, are what prompted me to move to Arizona in my early 20s.  But, that's a story for another time.

© Xanadu Productions Inc or its successors

The High Chaparral was my next favorite.  Even as I type this, I can hear the opening theme.  The energy.  The excitement.  The anticipation.  A siren song to a kid with wanderlust in her veins, long before I understood the meaning of the word. 

There were others shows that held a similar appeal.  Alias Smith and Jones, The Rifleman, and Bonanza, and a few years later, Guns of Paradise and The Magnificent Seven.  So, when I sat down to write my first novel, I envisioned a dusty town, a sweeping ranch, and the thundering of hooves.  The backdrop of any great western.  Next came the six-shooters, the hats, the boots and swagger.  In other words, the cowboys.  The story is a romance with a touch of suspense like so many others out there,  but, for me, it's the setting that elevates it to a new plane.

© Kristine Raymond

Writing about the Old West isn't easy, especially for a gal who grew up near the ocean and had only the likes of the Barkleys and Cannons and Cartwrights for reference (okay, yes; I also had books and Google, but for the sake of this post, I'm relying on my television viewing experiences 😉 ), but it gave me a great excuse to pop a disc into the DVD player and revisit my childhood for a few hours.  Without the iron and ironing board!      

Oh, and I always rooted for the horses.


Excerpt from Here to Stay (Book One in the Hidden Springs series)

          Ryan’s Ranch was four hundred and fifty acres of scrub brush and arroyos, trees and grassland.  There was a large stream that ran through the property, a tributary of the Verde River.  Stands of cottonwoods grew along its banks.  Ten miles to the west, the Black Hills loomed, their peaks rugged and uninviting.  It was easy to get lost in those mountains and an ideal place for bandits to hide.  The landscape on the ranch was varying; there were native grasses for pasture and dry, dusty areas that seemed to grow nothing but rock.  Closer to the mountains were abandoned gold and silver mines, Cooper’s mine among them.  Streams and creeks flowed randomly through the property, in some areas forming deep pools that made excellent fishing holes.  During the monsoon season, dry creek beds would fill with fast moving water and flowers brightened the landscape with brilliant color.

          The day broke clear and bright.  It’s warm for this time in April, thought Kate, as she brushed her hair from her face.  She had been up since four, making biscuits and checking to make sure that they had everything they needed to start putting up the fence.  Carly was going to make dinner for everyone each day so that was one thing Kate didn’t have to worry about.  She didn’t need any delays.  Each day put her that much closer to seeing her dream become a reality.  Her own horse ranch!  Her father would have loved it.  She smiled, and then the smile faded as she thought about her father and Christopher.

          No! she thought to herself, you have too much to do.  You can’t think about them right now.  She shook her head as if to clear the unhappy memories and put another pot of coffee on the stove to boil.  She would need plenty of coffee this morning to keep the men fueled up and working.  Besides herself and Daniel, there were the three men she had hired yesterday, plus two she had talked to earlier in the week.  Rusty Flanagan was just a kid, no more than sixteen or seventeen, and worked part-time in the general store.  Simon Archer wasn’t much older and apprenticed at the blacksmith shop behind the livery, with Lars Jensen.  Even though they were young, they both seemed like hard workers and they could use the money. 

          “Riders coming,” she heard Daniel call.  Kate grabbed the pot of now boiling coffee and made her way outside.  She had set up a table earlier with plates, cloth napkins, tin cups and utensils, plus a tray of biscuits, kept steaming hot under a towel.  There was also honey and jam for the biscuits and sugar for the coffee.  She set the hot pot down next to the one she had brought out earlier, just as the riders were dismounting.

          “Morning, Miz’ Ryan,” Jack said. “You look lovely this morning.”

          Sam made a wry face behind Jack’s back and Kate bit back the smile that threatened to appear.

          “Thank you, Mr. Tanner.  Help yourselves to biscuits and coffee.  It’s going to be a long day so I want to get started as soon as possible.”

          Kate turned and walked over to her horse.  The gelding was already saddled and waiting patiently for her to mount.  She patted him gently and he nuzzled her in return.  She noticed Sam watching them.  “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked.  “His name is Ciarán.   It means ‘dark one’ in Gaelic.”

          As she swung herself into the saddle, Sam couldn’t help but admire the rider more than the horse.  He wondered where her family was; how she came to be on her own.  She seemed to hold herself away from the others, not that she was unkind but her body language said ‘stay away’.  Sam wanted to be the one to make her say ‘come here’.  Crazy, he thought to himself, I don’t know anything about her.  But he was drawn to her in some inexplicable way.  He vowed to make sure he worked alongside of her to try and get her to open up.  He was more than willing to tell a few tales about himself in order to make that happen.

          “Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to do some work?” Jack asked as he rode by, churning up as much dust as possible.

          “I’m coming,” coughed Sam, “I’m coming”.

Get it here 

Best Damn Banana Pudding Recipe by Rhonda Frankhouser

Happy June, everyone! I'm buried in 2nd round edits on Book 3 of my Ruby's Ranch Series, Legacy of Ruby's Ranch, sooooooo, I thought I'd leave you all with a quick and delicious family recipe for a fabulous summer treat. Banana Pudding!!! It's not fancy but it's a family favorite. 

I know it's naughty and we're all perpetually on a diet, but when I want to calm down, reminisce and bring a smile to my man's face, I make this. It works every time. There's always tomorrow for healthy eating.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 ripe but not rotting bananas
• 2 large packages of instant (yes, instant) Jello vanilla pudding
• Half and half (use in place of regular milk required on the box recipe)
• Whipped cream (lots)
• 1 box of Nilla wafers

1. Layer the bottom of a clear cake pan with wafers (Sometimes I make individual servings in Mason jars or use a beautiful trifle dish to look prettier).
2. Wedge slivers of two bananas to cover the wafers.
3. Mix one packet of pudding with Half n Half and cover wafers and bananas (Trust me on this-delish).
4. Layer with whipped cream.
5. Repeat the first 4 steps with another layer of each ingredient so you have one huge, gooey, delicious banana lasagna.
6. Crumble the top with crushed Nilla wafers and refrigerate until set. A couple hours.

Enjoy!!!

Wanna send my amazing father-in-law in Cali some Happy Father's Day love and blow a Happy Father's Day kiss to my sweet dad, who's playing guitars and riding broncs in heaven. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers as I push through these edits. Have I mentioned, it's not my favorite part of being a writer??? 

But isn't my new cover beeee-U-T-full???

Follow Rhonda at www.rhondafrankhouserbooks.com,
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ARCHETYPES, MYTHS AND THE STORY OF THE WEST: part two -writers and screenwriters

Photo (c) by Doris McCraw

Part two of the discussion of writing stories/novels and screen writing. This section deals with some of the similarities between the two and the underlying importance of engaging your reader/watcher.

For those who would like to review the first part, you can access it here: writers and screenwriters

So here we go.

• Psychological effect
  • It’s important for writers to understand the human psyche. By doing so the writer can effectively communicate their message to their audience.
    • The best stories include both sides of conflict equally, thus allowing the audience to form their own opinions.

When we start a story, we usually have an idea of where we’d like the story to go. As noted above, some of the best stories have multiple views of what is happening. I’ve heard it said a story is only as good as it’s villain. I don’t know how others feel, but in my first published novella, “Home for His Heart”, I felt I needed a villain who was strong enough to force the hero and heroine out of their respective fears. That the villain felt justified in his actions made him even scarier than just a bad person.

• Symbolic Linkage – Symbolic links are a handy tool for any writer. Most audiences are smart and are have a common culture; therefore writers can effectively use what some audiences might already have been subjected to.

The story of the West has been told by many authors in many different forms. This is also true of the film industry. As we look back to the early western writers and film makers we see a cleaner delineation of good and bad. We can reference events and most will understand the connection. As time has passed, the stories have become more complex, the line between hero and villain have sometimes been blurred. One of my favorite films is the original ‘3:10 to Yuma’ with Van Johnson and Glen Ford. Although you know who the hero and who the villain are, the story adds the element of good in the bad. The remake with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe added more on screen violence and more of the pieces of good and bad for both the hero and the villain. However, if you really want to see how one story can be told is a myriad of ways, read the original short story by Elmore Leonard. It is a great, yet short read.

photo (c) by Doris McCraw

• Archetypes – Another way to engage your audience is the use of archetypes. In particular the concept of an archetype reveals recurring mental images and/or themes that encompass many different cultures and societies throughout time. One could say that we as humans innately understand archetypes from birth. Character examples might include: The Hero, The Caregiver, or The Wizard. Story specific examples might include: The Hero or The Rebirth.

If there is a more perfect description of the Cowboy as hero, I don’t know what is might be. We have the archetype right there. The Cowboy is the hero, the caregiver and for some a wizard who is there to save the day. When I was writing “Chasing a Chance” my hero was just a man who wanted to find and help the woman he’d always loved. Through the story he learns just how much he was capable of. In some ways, his journey is one of rebirth into who he always was.

• Myths – With archetypes also comes the use of Myths. Constructing your own myths, legends and saga can also have a big impact on an audience. Myths help make a connection in the same way that both symbolic links and archetypes do. As a myth story unfolds the audience instinctively understands what’s at stake and instantly realizes this is an epic larger then life adventure ahead.

We as Western and Western Romance writers make use of the myths of the West in our storytelling. It is what has drawn us to the genre and keeps us telling its story.

So as storytellers, what part of myth, archetype and symbolic links do you use? I realize I love telling stories of people who come to understand what they are capable of and of making peace with their past. The stories of the West, the journeys and new starts fit so well with the men and women I come to love as I strive to tell their stories.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

writing fiction as

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

The Wild West Show: Shaping a Legend

My last two posts about Comanche captives were based largely on the book by Scott Zesch, The Captured. I found everything about his account of the lives of the captives he followed fascinating, but perhaps the last chapter made me sit back and say "wow." The dust had barely settled on the plains after the brutal conflicts of the Indian Wars, and next we find many of the participants together again performing in the Wild West Show. It put me in mind of the television series Westworld, with characters being swapped in and out for the entertainment of a paying audience. Except the players were real characters from history: Sitting Bull, Anne Oakley, Chief Joseph, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and even whites who'd been taken captive as children.

Whether you were an Indian, a captive, or a Texas Ranger a person has to eat and joining the show put money in pockets. This was the new west.

There's a scene in Zesch's book I found poignant. Gathered together after one show, former captive, Herman Lehmann, was reminiscing with a former Texas Ranger. Both men fell silent when it dawned on them the event each described was one and the same--only they were on different sides of the conflict. Herman, then a white Indian, was in a raiding party attacked by the Rangers. Herman narrowly escaped with his life when he was injured and trapped under his fallen horse. He watched as the Rangers chased down and decapitated his best friend. Decades later he came face to face on neutral ground with one of the murders.

How strange it all must have been. A way of life for all the participants was coming to an end at the same time they were active players in creating the myth of the American west.

I have a personal interest in the Wild West Show. I had a great aunt, Louise, who was a wild one (probably a soiled dove, to be honest). She and her best friend, Ethyl, cut a wide swath through the 1920's claiming to have been at virtually every important event at the time. St. Valentine's Day Massacre? They just happened to be vacationing with Al Capone at his Florida home when that happened.

When they were elderly, Louise invited Ethyl to live with them. What I remember from my visits is a large framed, photograph of Ethyl in costume posing next to a horse. She said she'd been a bareback rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. So she said. Anyway, that was my introduction to that bit of history.

It was a tamer west when Wild Bill Hickok introduced his Border Dramas in 1872. These dramas, featuring authentic Indians and frontiersmen, reenacted such real events as buffalo hunts on a small scale.

In 1883 Buffalo Bill Cody, true promoter that he was, took the wild west show to the next level. In its heyday he had over 1,000 performers traveling by train around the country. Custer's Last Stand was a popular reenactment along with stagecoach attacks, and women being taken captive by Indians. Other entertainments included races, shooting and roping competitions, trick riders, and music.

The Death of Custer

The Wild West Show was a thriving industry until just before WWI when other forms of recreation took it's place. Hollywood cashed in on the public's interest by making westerns and later TV series. Baseball and football caught on as the national pastime. And rodeos which were cheaper to attend, stole another segment of the Wild West Show's audience.

But, the Wild West Show did leave a legacy. The show helped define the legend of the west as we see it today, selling this image worldwide. It became the springboard for how the west was portrayed in popular culture for decades.

Buffalo Bill Saluting Queen Victoria

But was it accurate? Not entirely....

The grand concept behind the show was man's conquest of the wild. It depicted a glorified white dominated experience. The Native Americans were the villains in the piece, while the Black Americans were almost entirely left out.

Blacks were very much a part of the western landscape as settlers, soldiers, and cowboys. They were originally represented in the shows, most famously by black cowboy, Bill Picket. But when they proved less popular with the audience, blacks were taken out of the show, helping the part they played in taming the west to almost fade into history.

For the Native Americans the Wild West Show was a mixed blessing. One upside was that all performers received the same pay whether woman, Indian, or black, which was certainly different than the rest of America at the time. Indians could make more money than they could on the reservation, and they could take their families with them on the road with three square meals provided.

On the other hand, I can't imagine the effect it had on them to relive their demise over and over again. Not to mention being drawn as the bad guys who deserved what they got. The warrior Rain-in-the-Face who may or may not have been the man to dispatch General Custer (it was a confusing battle) also performed in the Wild West Show. Whether he got to repeatedly deliver the final blow to Custer in the show, I don't know. Custer's widow, Libby, watched the reenactment of the Battle of Little Big Horn and declared it "realistic." (In fact modern evidence gathered imply the battle was less of a heroic stand than a chaotic rout where scattered pockets of soldiers were mowed down by the overwhelming Indian forces.)

Rain-in-the-Face, the man who claimed to have killed Custer.

The west as portrayed in the Wild West Show continued to hold sway until the 1960's and 70's when the revisionist westerns started to appear. Films such as Little, Big Man, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were set in a grittier west. All players in the drama were painted with the same brush, where the line between good and bad was blurred. Indians had their own point of view. Outlaws were also likable fellows. And heroes didn't always behave heroically.

The old west is an uniquely American experience, and I'm sure future generations will continue to draw inspiration from this era. It will be interesting to see how the story evolves. So many stories, so many points of view to explore!

Do you have a favorite western? What do you think of the most current westerns?