Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:05): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This podcast is dedicated to the aspiring writer and artist and will provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or new to it, I thank you very much. I would also appreciate if you took a moment to follow it on whatever platform you used to listen to your podcasts. Writers of the Future is one of the longest running writing competitions in the world, now celebrating over four decades of providing a helping hand, as initially conceived by L. Ron Hubbard.

We are here at the Western Writers of America Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve had a few Western guests in the past and I’m very excited to welcome today’s guest, Johnny D. Boggs, who is an amazing Western writer and author of what I consider one of the most intricately written stories I’ve ever read and thoroughly enjoyed. I met Johnny back in 2012 at a Western Writers of America conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Johnny is the author of over 50 Westerns praised by Booklist, “Among the best Western writers at work today,” which I couldn’t agree with more, and has won a record ten Spur Awards. Is it still ten? Okay, still ten Spur Awards, the highest honor paid in the Western genre. While I will be speaking with him about his novel “Northfield,” which I was referring to a moment ago, we’ll also address his journey as a writer. Welcome, Johnny.

Johnny D. Boggs (01:25): Thanks. It’s good to be here.

John Goodwin (01:33): So, this is the Writers of the Future Podcast, and I’ve listened to writers and readers across a hundred and sixty countries. So to begin describe the Western genre and why it is important to you.

Johnny D. Boggs (01:39): It’s what I grew up on. I mean I’m originally from the South. I’m a southerner, but you know, I grew up on the tail end of the Western T V craze. So Bonanza was still around, Virginian and Gunsmoke was my favorite. So I kinda like that. And I just think that was my introduction to the West and I think part of it was growing up in…

John Goodwin (01:55): And the Rifleman too. I used to love the Rifleman. “Pa, pa!”

Johnny D. Boggs (02:08): …swampy piney woods of South Carolina, when you turn on the T V you say, Wow, look at that. That’s wide open. They can see where they’re actually going. It’s not like they’re in a tunnel all the time. And they got to ride cool horses and wear cool hats. So I think that was part of the inspiration there. And then at some point I actually bought a book called “The Illustrated History of the American West” and I found it at a store and I started reading that and I said wow this is, the movies don’t get it really all that right. I mean this is what it was really liked and it’s not always a pleasant or a fun story. It’s often sad and tragic but it’s an American story and I think that’s what drew me to that.

John Goodwin (02:52): Okay, that’s, I mean, that’s pretty amazing. I grew up in Arizona and I just love the West and I love every opportunity to get a hat, I get to don the garb, which doesn’t happen very often in Los Angeles. So if you’re able to, if you can describe the different periods of the Western genre, because that’s one thing that people think of the Western, and they’re mostly just think of the 1865 to 1895 period, the romanticized period.

But there’s the before and there’s the after. And Taylor Sheridan definitely has taken into the various time periods stuff. But if you can like define what some of these different periods are, because people listening to this podcast, I mean it’s like I said, 160 countries around the world. So the American West and what we’ve just been listening to the last day and a half too about the romance and the history of the West and what it actually did with Buffalo Bill Cody, he kinda like he, it was like he just kinda like conquered the world with his account of the West.

Johnny D. Boggs (03:50): Well I say the West really begins. I mean we think most people think of the West as west of the Mississippi River. But it’s actually the West begins when the first European settlers arrive on the East Coast. And you can go back even farther than that. The West was around before that, and there’s some people that have written about pre contact before the, when the only people here were the natives.

So, the West can gonna go and, but I think most people define the West as like post Civil War, 1865 to the, you know, 1890s. But you know, the mountain man era, but and again, like I said, the… I’ve written novels set in the backwoods of South Carolina there in the 1700-1800s, early 1800s or late 1700s, and that was the West of that time too. So it’s just a been a gradually defined, a moved line where the frontier began.

John Goodwin (04:43): So the romanticized period is the 1865, 1895. Was that mostly because of Hollywood that made it that? Or was that really the period that it was? ‘Cause it could have…

Johnny D. Boggs (04:56): I don’t think there was anything romantic about being out west in 1865 or 1875 or 1885. I mean it was a tough, tough world. A lot tougher than it is now. But we romanticize that because that’s just a myth, myth, myth. And a lot of people still write that kind of myth, mythical westerns and they sell. I mean, Louis L’Amour made a tremendous career about writing about that kind of tough loner hero who gets the girl in the end and brings justice about.

John Goodwin (05:28): Yeah, and the whole, the story of Sackets Land going from when they come from England. And move all the way across the West. But I know that with you mentioned the, like Bonanza. I mean, every Sunday night that was my Sunday night popcorn and my Coke or Pepsi and watching Bonanza which was on I think right after Disney. But anyway, that was my, I love that and those other shows you mentioned there just there was a…

But it was also how Hollywood portrayed it too that made it like, wow, That was so cool what people went through. And then you do your homework and you find out it was different. Then you watch something that Taylor Sheridan does and you go like, no. It’s like…

Johnny D. Boggs (06:13): But it’s popular.

John Goodwin (06:16): Very popular. Is probably closer to truth.

Was it 1773? Was that the first series? Is that I think that’s gosh. That’s where everybody dies. You think normally Hollywood has it so that the protagonist gets through starts at the beginning and they make it all the way through and then they survive it, but then 1773, just that the girl is, Okay, she’s got it, she’s got it, and at the very end then she gets shot and she’s dead. It’s like, What? But that’s and the German settlers make all the way through and then they get smallpox wherever it was, and then they make it across through that and then they get an Indian attack and, but that’s…

Johnny D. Boggs (06:56): But it’s a story.

John Goodwin (06:59): People are totally, you know gravitate towards that. But so the popularity though of then the romanticized period, because it comes and goes, but right now it’s got a bit of a resurgence because of Taylor Sheridan.

Johnny D. Boggs (07:14): Taylor Sheridan’s done a lot for the for the West, whether it’s good or bad. I mean, but people watch it. I mean he’s got a name recognition. And I think actually when as a filmmaker, I think the films that he did, you know, “Hell or High Water” and I think that those are really strong contemporary Westerns and some of the best I think contemporary Western films that have come out in recent years are the two that he did.

So there’s, you can say something about that. And like I said, the contemporary and the contemporary West does exist in the literature now too. I mean, some of the best sellers now. Ann Hillerman, continuing in Tony’s career. CJ Box with his mysteries and Craig Johnson with the Longmire series. I mean, and those are Westerns. They just happen to be Western set in the modern day.

John Goodwin (08:05): Yeah. And this guy named Johnny Boggs, too. Close friends to Johnny D. Boggs.

So,I mean I also grew up with John Wayne and his version of the West, you know, as he was told and I mean, I love that and it was great and I don’t know how much validity it had to what was really happening, but he definitely was great.

Johnny D. Boggs (08:36): And then he personified the West. And you can go back into some of the you know William S. Hart, the silent westerns that he made. I mean, it all and it just kind of… Then you get Tom Mix and where they’re wearing these huge hats, which is crazy in that era, and then into, you know, James Stewart turned his career around by making westerns when he started out with Winchester Seventy-three. You can go farther back, Destry Rides Again, but yeah, those westerns that James Stewart made with Anthony Mann. Those are lean, tight, gritty, sometimes kind of disturbing Westerns to watch. But you know, the Westerns started growing up, I think, post-World War II. Like most much of America grew up after World War II.

John Goodwin (09:18): Yeah. The Sons of Katie Elder ’cause that also touched on the grit a bit, you know, even though John Wayne comes out and saves the day.

Johnny D. Boggs (09:26): Saves the day as John Wayne usually does.

John Goodwin (09:30): So on you’ve written over fifty books. So a little bit ’cause this is Writers of The Future. So people are interested in writing, well sometimes, well if they can do it, I can do it type of a thing, which I like to do. So I like to encourage writers that want to be able to go. So this one here, this is the Western. I’ve interviewed Melody. I’ve I had Bob Bose Bell as a guest recently.

And somebody else too, but I’m trying to do a series of Westerns so I can get that repetition of the message like look at for Western writers, check this out, check this out, check and then encourage that because that it’s a genre I think is really important for reasons that we discussed coming up the elevator. So tell me about your journey to becoming a writer.

Johnny D. Boggs (10:16): Well it started with in third grade and the English part of the class, the teacher said, Okay, take out a piece of paper and write a, write a tale. And I have no idea what I wrote, but I was like, Well, wait a minute, what do you mean? I just can write something, make it completely up? Yeah, that’s the idea. Just write a tale, tell a story. And I have no recollection of what I wrote, but I just remember that feeling I got. I said, Well, this was pretty cool.

And after that that’s pretty much what I was doing. I would write, you know, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade. You know, I was writing s story, I was a freelance writer. I’d you know, someone would say, Can you write me a science fiction story? Okay. Can you write me a mystery? Okay. And then can you started writing some Westerns too? And that’s kind of what got me hooked on it. And then about, in that time when I was growing up and getting older, the only really westerns you could find on a bookstore, at least in South Carolina were Louis L’Amour and I started reading those and at the you know he was published by Bantam and he had at the back of the books there was a, you could order. And so I just ripped out the page once I didn’t have a checking account. I guess I sent mailed cash to do Yeah, yeah. So I just and I checked out some I checked Shane and I only think I knew about Shane was that that it was a movie. So I checked Shane by Jack Schaefer.

And then I came down there and there was an Elmer Kelton novel and it was called Massacre at Goliad. And I’d read enough history that I knew about Goliad and the Alamo. And I said, Well, you know, I’ve seen the movies about the Alamo, but I’ve never read anything about Goliad. So I got the Elmer Kelton, and Elmer Kelton actually later met him and we were friends and he was inspiration.

John Goodwin (12:03): Yeah, he gave a really nice letter for me when I joined WWA. I wrote to him. He didn’t come that year and then the following year he passed in 2010 or so. But he gave a really nice letter response to one of the books I sent him, you know, Hubbard books. It was like he was a great, he said he’d read the Hubbard stuff as part of growing up as a…

Johnny D. Boggs (12:23): Yes, he was a super super guy, so pleasant guy, great writer, and an inspiration to a lot of members of Western Writers of America. And I just read those two novels and Shane was, struck me by the poetic beauty of how he could tell that story, which is a traditional Western. And then Massacre at Goliad, I just said, Wow, this is really gritty and I was kind of mad that Elmer Kelton killed off one of the guys that I liked. I said, Well that was a mean thing to do. But that really turned me on. And that changed my kind of thinking because I was just writing all this, you know copying what I’m seeing on TV. And after, why I started, And I said, Well, wait a minute, this is a little grittier, this is a little more real, and that’s kind of what I want to be writing. And I just started moving on that direction.

I picked up, you know, A. B. Guthrie Jr. and I picked up some other writers of historical Westerns and that kinda just changed my whole focus and what I wanted to do. And I was smart enough, I guess, to think, you know, you probably just don’t start out writing books and making a living. You probably already get some, a job that pays something that you can do. And well, you like writing and you like sports, why don’t you go into newspapers? So I majored in journalism. Which was you know at the time was a good move. And I went to work for newspapers. And, but that was, the idea was saying this is to pay my way. This is so I can pay my bills and then I can start writing.

I started writing short stories you know, some of,for you get two contributors’ copies. That’s your payment. But some actually paid, you know, five bucks, ten bucks. I remember I sold one to a magazine that was in somewhere in West Texas and they were gonna pay me a hundred and fifty dollars. And I was like, Man, I’ve never made more than five or ten and they said we like the story and I said, Okay, great and the magazine went out of out of business before my story was published or I got a check. So that’s why I tell people it’s not an easy way to make a living. So you’ve gotta be pretty much dedicated to that and get used to the ups and downs.

John Goodwin (14:43): But that’s good though, ’cause I’ve talked to artists before who made their decision, I’m only gonna do art. So they would do jobs where they would make flyers and put on, go around place on windshields of cars and stuff like that. But then they were doing their art as they were so they could pay the bills while they were doing art. So for yourself, picking a profession that enhanced your ability to write.

Johnny D. Boggs (15:06): Had a newspaper job, so I was making money. I had a steady paycheck coming in. And I also started writing freelancing for magazines. And what I learned there was you never turn down an assignment if you, unless you absolutely have to. Editors don’t like rejection any more than writers do. And the other thing I said, you don’t know who’s gonna read that story, and you don’t know where that editor’s gonna move next time.

‘Cause I followed a few editors from place to place and it, the pay got better and the stories got better and the market was better. So yeah.

John Goodwin (15:44): Yeah, so that’s actually a good piece of advice to give to people listening to this and to writers too. It’s not an advice like beggars can’t be choosy. It’s just that if you’re a writer, editors move around. Right. And editors talk to each other. Right. So if you had experiences where it paid off by being nice to one another that it…

Johnny D. Boggs (16:06): Absolutely. I’ve had editors, you know, pass my name on to because I, so an editor will call me out of the blue and say, Hey, so and so told us about you and said you’re a good person to work with and would you be interested in writing for this magazine? And here’s what we pay, here’s what we’re looking for. And yeah, so yeah, it does help. I mean like I said, it’s not an easy way to make a living. So you think and you say yes a lot more than you say no.

John Goodwin (16:35): Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s also I think important that people realize if you’re going to sometimes maybe it’s not so much today, but maybe it is, on magazines where if somebody bails on it or they don’t make a deadline and now they’re stuck with I need to get this I’ve got a hole now. I need I need five thousand words or seven thousand words to become that go to person that they can call and say, Look, I need a five thousand Blah this can you do that? Yep.

Johnny D. Boggs (17:07): That’s right. And so what and that’s what you have to do. And like I said, you never turn down the assignment. And what you do, you do the best job you can. And you know, you don’t be married to your pros because if they want a rewrite, you know, there’s a reason they want a rewrite. So then you give them what they want. Sometimes you know, I really don’t like that, but if that’s what they want, okay, we’ll try it.

John Goodwin (17:32): Yeah, exactly. And then now in terms, have you found where you benefited despite staying in communication with your editor or with your publisher so that, you know, instead of leading them on or, you know, there’s a fun story that Hubbard wrote called Typewriter in a Sky.

Johnny D. Boggs (17:51): Great, great, greatness. I was gonna say that’s my favorite of his novels. That’s just wonderful.

John Goodwin (18:00): Yeah, ’cause he’s just, you know, Horace Hackett.

Johnny D. Boggs (18:03): Yeah.

John Goodwin (18:07): He’s gotten the advance, he spent it, and he hasn’t done word one. So the publisher says tell me about this story. And he’s just like ahhhhhhh.  He’s really, really good on that one there.

So now you’ve written over fifty books. So any particular favorite topics? ‘Cause you’ve covered a lot of field.

Johnny D. Boggs (18:27): I’ve done a few cattle drive novels and those sold and that that was but I’ve all I’ve also been on cattle drives. Now no working rancher in his or her right mind’s ever gonna hire me as a working cowboy. But I’ve you know, I did those for magazine assignments basically and I, so I’m kinda familiar of there I mean, there is nothing romantic about driving cattle. I mean, the first time I did it was for a magazine article on a ranching family in Arizona.

And they were just they just invited us gonna do the article and they said, Well, why don’t you come up? We’re doing our spring drive. And it’s just, you know, be four or five days in this in the saddle and we’re just driving up into the White Mountains. And I said, Sure, sure. So, you know, I was riding up and riding drag, you know, and they were doing a bunch of Herefords and about a hundred head, something like that, from the from the, you know, winter grounds to the summer grounds in the national forest.

And I remember when I was done with the cattle drive, and this was like a hundred head of cattle, not the thousands that they were driving up in Texas, but my glasses were so crusted and scratched from the dust and dirt and grime from riding on the back of the herd, I had to get a new good to get new lenses. I mean, it’s that is the reality of what the West was like. I mean, it was it was not a fun job.

John Goodwin (19:50): No, I was gonna say like did you have to wear bandanas?

Johnny D. Boggs (19:53): Yeah, sometimes yeah. Yeah, I mean that’s and that’s why they were carried bandanas ’cause you’re eating all this dust. Yeah. I said, there’s nothing fun about that. I did a couple of other long long drives like that and it was the same thing. I said, Man, and then, you know, you are really, the first thing I remembered, and it was on the first drive, you know, two days in the saddle, man.

All day. And when you come up and you gotta get on that horse, you’re like I was I was thinking, my God, I, my legs aren’t gonna get, can’t find the stirrup. I can’t lift them that high. I’m so damn sore. This it’s gonna be terrible. And then I look around, and that old cowboy is leading his horse to a lower ground so he’s higher up so he can get in it, and another one’s standing on a overturned tree trunk so he can get in. I said, wait a minute, that’s the cowboy way.

John Goodwin (20:51): Yeah, I was gonna say that’s if you’re not used to that, just riding all day and then chafing you inside of your thighs is like wow.

Johnny D. Boggs (20:59): Well you wear long underwear underneath the jeans or whatever you’re wearing and then you wear chaps over that. I mean that’s all for protection and…

John Goodwin (21:09): At least you didn’t have to go through the chaparral.

Johnny D. Boggs (21:11): Well no, I did not have to go through chaparral on that one.

John Goodwin (21:14): Yeah. So then okay, so then any other so you got the drives any other favorite topic?

Johnny D. Boggs (21:22): I’ve done a lot on the James Younger gang. I did Northfield, which you’ve mentioned. And I’ve done a lot and I think a lot of that just kind of a it draws me into it. I mean, A, it’s almost as much of a southern story as it is a western story when you’re talking about the James and Youngers. And that’s basically the bloody, you know, war in Missouri and Kansas. So I think that kind of pulled me into it a little bit and…

John Goodwin (21:26): We’re gonna talk about that.

Johnny D. Boggs (21:50): It just kind of intrigues me about those outlaws and how they can, you can turn these young kids into, you know, murderous thugs. So yeah, it’s not a pleasant story, but it does kind of pulls me into it a little bit. I mean, cattle drives aren’t that pleasant either, but they’re not quite as gory and violent and vicious as the Missouri Kansas border wars and stuff like that during the Civil War and post-Civil War.

John Goodwin (22:16): So then with, so just going into ’cause the book I read was Northfield, which I just thoroughly enjoyed, but you got the storyline, but the way you told the story, I’m just, I’ve never read a book like that.

Johnny D. Boggs (22:30): I had done a novel, a comic novel on in 1870s, early 1870s, Wild Bill Hickcock, Buffalo Bill Cody, and another scout named Texas Jack Omohundro went east. Ned Buntline, the dime novelist, wrote a play about them and took them east to play in these sordid melodramas and they were terrible actors and Hickok was drunk almost every night. But it was just kind of it was the, you know, the West comes east, and they were playing themselves on stage in this ridiculous stuff. And I told it in three parts, and each part, you know, Buffalo Bill had his say and then the first person, and then Hickok and then Cody and then Omohundro all got their way to tell the story.

So when I had been to, I’d done something on the James Younger gang again and the James Younger gang has a reunion …

John Goodwin (23:33): So you know that’s a Jesse James.

Johnny D. Boggs (23:53): … where the Jesse James and Cole Younger and Frank James and they had a reunion and they just invited me to come up there and I learned a lot. And then I just said, you know, I’d like to write a novel about Northfield and maybe I can do it that way. The same way with the…

And I thought first of all, just to let Frank tell the story and let Cole Younger tell the story and then Jesse James can tell the story. And then I said, No, it’s much bigger than that. I mean, this this was a raid on a town where the defenders came together and fought against these thugs trying to terrorize their town and rob their bank. And I said, You can’t just do that. So every chapter was from a different perspective. Outlaw, townsperson, even the young kid of the bank teller who was killed in the raid. And I said, this is how you need to tell that story. Just let everybody have their own viewpoint. And you get the viewpoints of why they’re defending their town, why they are robbing the bank and the relationships between the younger brothers and the James brothers. I just thought it was it was a way to do it. And I was I was I was pleased with that. I think of all the novels, I think that’s one of the ones that that I really thought I did a what I wanted to do.

John Goodwin (24:54): It was it was really good and but it seemed like sometimes on a movie. A movie that goes along this it’s never done just as a straight, you know, you shooting the whole thing like that. There’s always the various viewpoints on this stuff. And so you wrote a book like almost like a movie there because the scenes were like seamless. You know, as you went from one character to the next character, as this as the story’s moving forward, the event is transpiring on the timeline. And that timeline’s moving forward from all these different first person perspectives. And it seems like that would have been just a total amazingly rough time to put that together so that’s seamless, but that it has those things and it has continuity.

Johnny D. Boggs (25:42): Right. The hard part about that is one thing, when you’re writing that kind of story is you’re jumping from character to character to character and usually you, if you’re writing in third person, it’s usually from there’s not much of the viewpoint might change from the characters, but it’s n usually in third person stuff like that. And then you can go back the next you finish your job of the day, you turn off the computer, you go to bed, have dinner, you know.

John Goodwin (25:58): Yeah.

Johnny D. Boggs (26:12): get up the next morning and what I generally do is reread the chapter I wrote previously and that would get me into the routine and then the the feel to start pick up where I left off. But on this one where every viewpoint changes from the chapter is like, okay, I’ve got to forget this mindset. And I’m talking about instead of I’m talking about a a citizen in Northfield, I’m talking about, you know, Jim Younger or Frank James or somebody like that. so that that was a challenge and that was that made it a little harder to write. But I think in in the end, I think it’s it came out the way I really wanted it to.

John Goodwin (26:56): No, it was it was an amazing book and I just that’s why I keep on bringing it up and talking about it because I read a lot of books because with this podcast. I read about it a book a week, sometimes more when I come to a conference. And this one here also it’s one thing to write first person, you know, like, but then to really go into the voice of disparate characters. You know, you’ve got these outlaws and they’re motivated by…

James Brothers is revenge against the guy that moved up to Northfield. They they’re trying to get in with him because he killed they blew, he was with the Pinkertons, right? And so they blew up the house that his mom and brother lived in and so they want to get back revenge on him and then others wanted to, because of the end of the Civil War, now what do you guys do? You’re trained to be soldiers and to kill and now your South is over. What do you do? You know, you’re gonna get even with the North still trying to do that.

Johnny D. Boggs (27:55): And the mistake they made was they’re going up against, you know it it’s not just a town of people who ust been in the city all the time. These are Civil War veterans who fought for the North. And they’re not they’re gonna defend their town. I mean, that’s one thing that the Civil War did. So, you know, it trained you, people were trained as knew what to do and how to handle themselves in those kind of situations.

John Goodwin (28:18): And this is before FDIC on banks. So all your savings are in the bank. If they take it then there’s no insurance on it. It’s gone, It’s gone.

Johnny D. Boggs (28:26): That is your money and you’re gonna protect it ’cause that’s, your family depends on it. So yeah.

John Goodwin (28:32): Yeah. Yeah. So that’s yeah, it’s a whole different world back then. So that was just amazing. But also the, again the thing that got me ’cause it was the grit, you know, so it wasn’t okay. So they’re gonna go to Northfield, they’re gonna attempt a bank robbery and it’s gonna get thwarted, you know, and the good guy comes in riding tall in his saddle and he whistles up and here comes, you know, this or that the other thing and then bam the you know, the good guys win the day and the evil guys are thwarted. It’s not that. You know, it’s like so on research to do even a fiction story with the westerns, because you’ve also got an audience. An audience is a knowledgeable audience, right. For the most part, I would think, you know, or at least a fair enough number of them that if you get it wrong, you’re gonna hear about it in short order. So how does that play into writing Northfield or and then in general writing Western?

Johnny D. Boggs (29:31): Generally, I mean what you’re doing, you’re telling your story the way that you want to tell it. And you know, you make choices on how you’re gonna define these characters and what these characters are gonna be like. And what I think one of the and I I’ve learned this a little bit just from you know, you get letters sometimes. When you’re writing historical fiction based on actual people, a lot of times those people have relatives, and descendants, and they might not appreciate what you said about their great Uncle Dave. And I’ve gotten a couple of letters like that. I said, no, but one of the best ones was I wrote a novel called Spark on the Prairie, which was about the trial of Kiowa Indians for an Indian raid, and they were brought to civil trial in Jacksborough, Texas. And I wrote that the one of the lawyers had a, got a scare and his white, his hair turned completely white or something like that. And one of the relatives says, you know, from all the photos we we’ve seen of our Uncle Samuel or whatever his name was, you know, he was bald, so we appreciate you giving him hair

John Goodwin (30:47): So for someone who’s writing, and we’ll expand this out just not just to Westerners, but in general, if you’re gonna write something about a known famous character and build a story around that, what’s your recommendation in terms of honoring that person’s history versus just okay, I’m taking the name and I’m just gonna go off on a whole different tangent and turn them into a loser?

Johnny D. Boggs (31:16): You need to be true to who that person, I mean, do as much research as you can to find out about that person. And you know, what do we really know about that person? Is it all, did he make up his own story? Maybe. I mean, not exaggerated or stuff like that, but you need do as much research as you can and try to just be true to the person. and just try to be faithful to to everything that you’ve learned about that person and don’t try to turn him or her into, you know, Wonder Woman or Superman or something like that. Because, you know, we’re all human. We all have our ups and downs, our good points and bad points. And sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes we do the right thing. But yeah, I think you just have to be, just be faithful to who you think that person really was.

John Goodwin (32:07): Yeah, ’cause you’ve got like Buffalo Bill Cody. So will the real Buffalo Bill Cody please stand up? Because the stories that even he tells about himself, you know, did that really happen?

Johnny D. Boggs (32:18): This is one of the fun thing, well one thing that makes Buffalo Bill a great story as a character as he, how much of his is he telling and how much is he embellishing and how much is it whiskey driven and how much is it from his actual what he remembers actually happened. I mean, you know, he’s become kind of a sometimes he’s played as a buffoon and stuff like that. But you know, he he did a lot of, he did a lot of what he said he did.

John Goodwin (32:46): Well he’s the one that popularized, he was like the original like star. He was the first showman correcting that and he’s the one that like brought America. It was, isn’t he the one that’s Queen of England?

Johnny D. Boggs (32:59): Yep, applauded. Yes, yes. He performed for the Queen of England. I mean and I think he’s a fun character I mean, I think he’s maybe one of the most fun characters in all of the whole West. Because yeah, I think he had no problems exaggerating a lot and just being pompous and stuff like that. But at the same time, you know, he was a scout. And he risked his life for the army and then he actually, you know, would the American West be as popular today as it is if it hadn’t been for someone with Buffalo Bill Cody’s vision.

John Goodwin (33:42): Yeah, that I think that’s part of the thing. So, I mean, just listening to Paul Hutton’s, you know, speech, keynote speech just a few minutes ago, and the history and the evolution of the old West and what it meant and some of the stories you mentioned, Shane, you know, how he rides off and the significance of that, what that means of the end of the old and to the going into the unknown to bring the new, you know, the new West as it moves westward. So now I mean you did the period leading up to I guess the beginning of the 1900s. Do you, have you done more stuff since then too? Do you write more contemporary? ‘Cause it seems like once we hit the West Coast, you know, things changed.

Johnny D. Boggs (34:31): I’ve done a few contemporary western short stories I’ve never really gotten too much into it in the novel form but I’ve done some contemporary stories. And you know I grew up in the South. The first stories, my first published most of my first published stories were Southern Lit. because that’s a, and there was a bigger market for Southern Lit than it was for especially Western short fiction. It was really hard to find any markets that that would really like western fiction. I mean there were a few.

So I did some southern, what I learned though is, you know, the first southern kind of autobiographical story that I had published, I let my parents read, and my family read, my sisters read. And then I told myself, if you want to keep getting invited back for Christmas and Thanksgiving, you might not want to ever let them see another one of your Southern stories. Maybe you should start writing western. And what I’ve done a lot of times, I found out that I could do, I could take a lot of the farmers and the carpenters and all these people I worked with and knew growing up in South Carolina. And I could take them and put them out west and just change them a little bit.

And so they’re real to me because they’re based on real people. But when they read the novel, they don’t quite recognize themselves as the town drunk or the slob or the hardworking dummy. soy five

John Goodwin (36:17): Yeah. Barney Fife.

So now you worked on a project regarding Hubbard Western some years ago and read several as part of that. Any comment about Hubbard’s Westerns?

Johnny D. Boggs (36:33): This was a different period of time. But they’re traditional Westerns and they flow. And that is one of the things that, you know, when you read a lot because I you know I’ve read a number of early Western writers, mainly ’cause I wanted to see what it was like. I mean, what were they doing in the 1930s and 1940s and into the ‘50s and things like and places like that.

But yeah, I mean it’s it is the Westerns your grandfathers were reading and stuff like that. But the, he knew how to turn flight. And like I said, you know, when I, someone actually recommended Typewriter in the Sky. And I said, okay. So I found a paperback version. I said man, this is this is absolutely phenomenal. This is, this is just a great, great read. This is just a crazy story. And then you I think I said, Man, how did he come up with that idea?

And that’s the great thing, you know, I’m reading any novel, a science fiction novel. I remember reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, which is a literary science fiction novel in college, and I said how could someone think of this as an idea to make turn it into a novel and things like that? And then and the same with, you know, how did how did Louis L’Amore come up with Hondo? Or some of his other novels. I mean, yeah, I mean it’s always but it’s the imagination. And I

John Goodwin (37:54): Well he did Haunted Mesa too, was his.

Johnny D. Boggs (37:56): Which I didn’t think was very good.

John Goodwin (37:59): It was a different thing but it was like it was like, wow. I didn’t know ’cause he that was I’d never known him to do fantasy.

Johnny D. Boggs (38:04): Right. Yeah. And that’s basically what a lot of that was. So yeah, and I read, you know, I still go back and I’ll pick up an old novel, and read some of the old masters or the old people that the writers who you know no one’s ever heard of today. Yeah, so it’s fun. I think you read that and ’cause you’re always learning and you and you learn from reading yeah, I mean I will read something and say, Well, that’s not how I would have written this sentence and I would you know, edit the sentence in my own head and say, This is how I would have done it. But you pick up and it’s all, it’s just the process of learning. You learn by reading.

John Goodwin (38:43): Yeah, exactly. Which like I said, what Elmer Kelton when I sent him, I think it was Buckskin Brigades, and he just said, I used to read Hubbard’s stuff and that’s how I was like honing my craft by reading. You know, just like on the shoulders of your predecessors.

Johnny D. Boggs (38:59): Yeah. And the pr… I think the you know, like I said, Jack Schaeffer, and Dorothy M. Johnson, one of the early women writers of and she was a member of Western Writers of America, who wrote A Man Called Horse. And a number of other that were turned into, The Hanging Tree. And I just read hers and I said, Man, that, what a what a brilliant writer she was. And she was a journalist too. That’s one of the things. She taught journalism, majored in journalism in college in Montana and wrote for newspapers and stuff like that. And I think that’s pretty good, that was at the time a pretty good way of training.

John Goodwin (39:35): But I think just something that can you just keep your hand in. ‘Cause I’ve interviewed a lot of peace officers and they just, they also have to just if it’s a, I’ve done one who was an investigative, she was a senior investigator in Utah, a mother and she loved writing. So she had to work out for herself when am I gonna give up ’cause you have to get up early, but she, to be able to give time to writing, but then said, okay, I’m just I have to give up my TV to be able to do this because she had a full time job as the police. And that one there, you got, you’re on call constantly, even if you’re off, you’re still on.

So for you to be able to do your writing when you’re doing your other reporting stuff to write your novels, did you have any things, okay, I’m gonna have to give up this in order to have my love of writing fulfilled?

Johnny D. Boggs (40:27): Well when I was you know…

John Goodwin (40:30): When you had the full-time job.

Johnny D. Boggs (40:31): When I had the full-time job, you had to be selective in what you could do. And that was one of the reasons. I think that that was what’s, I had an opportunity to do some kind of article and I could not get away because of the job. And it would have been a pretty cool article, I thought. And that’s what that’s when I started thinking. And actually I had met a guy at Western Writers of America Convention. We actually roomed together for a couple of years to you know keep our expenses down.

And he had, he was in radio, but he had, and we were just talking once. He goes, Okay, now how much, how many you’re working forty hours a week? And I said, Well, in theory, yeah, but it’s more like you know, forty-six to forty-eight, probably, maybe fifty, in the newspaper game. He goes, Okay, if you didn’t have to spend those 50 hours doing what you’re doing, could you take on more assignments knowing that you’re not going to make as much money as you’re probably making now? But could you get by on that? And I said, I don’t know. I don’t I don’t… He says, Well, that’s what you gotta think about. And then that’s how you gotta decide if you can do that.

And you know what? You might have to take a part time job somewhere at some time. So but that’s something you need to think about. And can you do that? And that’s what kinda planted the seed. And then we were living in a southwestern part of Dallas. and I was commuting to Fort Worth for the, a newspaper job there and I and we got broken into. I think that was that was one of the key and it was also that was the year that there was like forty something consecutive days of over a hundred degree temperature. And I said, you know what? You know, New Mexico sounds like a nice place to live. You know, I won’t be making as much money, but you know why don’t we move to New Mexico and get a house and then you work full time and I’ll stay home and write full time and we’ll see how it works.

And she said yes.

John Goodwin (42:45): Good. That’s a good relationship too. But then you get to a point where you’re able then to pull in and get the royalties, start coming up with fifty books and you’re gonna have continuation checks.

Johnny D. Boggs (43:00): Yeah. So that that that’s one good thing. But a lot of them are still in print and I still get you know small checks and stuff like that. But yeah, again, another thing is like I said, you never know when someone’s gonna pick up a book. I mean I got you know, books that are really old and so I’ll get an email or sometimes even an actual letter. And I was like, man, you that, that’s an old, old book and you just well thank for it’s great. It’s fan mail. I mean that’s kinda strokes your ego a little bit. But you know, again, I mean it’s probably a little tougher now. I mean, it’s probably easier to get published, but it’s probably tougher to make a living as a writer these days. But yeah, I’m still doing it.

John Goodwin (43:41): Still here. So you still hang your hat over your head, say, I’m a writer. So now you’re talking about like out of print. But do you have the rights reverted back to you?

Johnny D. Boggs (43:46): I can, some of them I have the, I can get the rights back. And I’ve, and other ones, you know, they’re tied up with the publishers and places.

They’re still selling, so they’re still selling, still selling, I’m fine.

John Goodwin (44:04): And they’re not willing to give them back to you or are they also all available on like on Amazon and…

Johnny D. Boggs (44:14): Most of them are available on Amazon and a lot of times, you know, the publishers will pick up the E rights. Yeah, so a lot of them are, most of them are probably available as ebooks and so yeah.

John Goodwin (44:28): Have you have you ventured into audiobooks?

Johnny D. Boggs (44:31): Audiobooks are always arranged by through the publisher. But I mean that’s kind of a cool market. I listen I get audio books all the time and listen to ‘em when I’m driving ’cause I can’t find anything on the radio I really want to listen to or something like that. So yeah, I and it it’s interesting, especially when you, you get your own books. ’cause they will send me copies when they do an audio version of mine and I will I will, when I’m driving by myself, I will plug it in and listen to it. And sometimes you’re like, well, that’s not how I imagined that character saying that sentence, but that’s pretty kind of, that’s interesting. And then you’d say, man, I wrote that. That’s a pretty good sentence. And other times, my god, I wrote that. Where was the copy editor?

John Goodwin (45:28): ‘Cause I’ve, while I don’t think it’d be easy, I think again, going back to Northfield, you know, it would be like just an amazing if you had a multicast where somebody would take that on and just have the different characters perform or somebody who’s got a good enough voice that they could do all the different voices.

Johnny D. Boggs (45:46): They actually did something similar to that. They had different people reading with Northfield. And I thought that was pretty cool.

John Goodwin (45:51): Good then, I’d definitely want to get that, ’cause I thoroughly loved reading it. So I’d look I if it has your like thumbs up on that one there then okay I’ll, it’s I guess… I don’t, for me listening to an audiobook is a luxury because I read so much faster that I can listen. And I don’t dare go faster than 1.2 X ’cause then I just lose the, I get too much distracted.

Johnny D. Boggs (46:18): Right. Yeah, I don’t think you’re and especially if you’re driving ’cause you gotta focus on the road too. That’s, I don’t play at home, but I just plug into the you know, my truck’s old, it’s got a CD player, so…

John Goodwin (46:32): At least you didn’t say 8-Track.

Johnny D. Boggs (46:34): But I listen but I don’t think the comprehension is quite as good when you’re listening to it, especially when you’re driving, than when you’re actually sitting down and reading a hard copy. I think there’s something about the textual thing of turning the page and eye to brain.

John Goodwin (46:54): I do enjoy reading on Kindle either on my iPad here or on my phone because with a Kindle I can also, which helps a lot when I do podcast interviews. Cause I’ll highlight something, I’ll tag it. And so when I’m doing the interview, I can oka,y now right here you said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it’s like, and then the author’s like immediately like, Wow, you really did read my book.

Johnny D. Boggs (47:17): See I’m old fashioned. I dogear the page, I underline, I make a star or a question mark stuff.

John Goodwin (47:24): But yeah, I did that before, but then doing the interview, like right now I’m here. So fortunately I’m so familiar with and I because I read it a while ago, then I went through it again just before coming out here. You know, but that was one of those books I was just so enchanted with. I was okay, good, it’s gonna be easy for me to bring it all back again. So have you seen yourself a resurgence in the Western genre result of like Taylor Sheridan with the 1883 and 1923 and Yellowstone and now Landman at all.

Johnny D. Boggs (47:54): You see there’s Westerns being talked about a lot more than they had been before Taylor Sheridan started up. I think that’s, and that’s a good thing in and a little bit. Does it translate into more books being published? I don’t know about that. But it keeps the conversation out there. And when you say you’re writing a Western, now most people today if you’re saying you’re writing a Western, they might think you’re writing Yellowstone or something like that and so no, it’s actually historical.

But he’s certainly done a good, good help the market for contemporary Westerns. And again I think, you know, contemporary Westerns it was a saga that’s going on and it’s still the West and a lot of them are still facing the same, some of the same problems they were facing a hundred years ago. You know, cattle markets always vary, drought, storms, you know, it’s like I said, I mean riding’s a tough way to make a living and so is ranching.

John Goodwin (48:53): Yeah, yeah. I guess with advice now. So I’m wanted to ask you about what advice do you have for the aspiring Western writer? So like you you’ve got like Frank Guber who or Gruber, sorry, Frank Gruber who he penned dozens of Westerns never having set foot in the West. You know. So you’re thoroughly steeped in the traditions of the West. So what advice do you have? Like obviously you don’t have to be a Western person in order to write about the West ’cause he did it, but although that was also pulp era. Before the advent of TV and all this other stuff now that kinda like has leveled the playing field on stuff. So what advice do you have for the aspiring Western writer?

Johnny D. Boggs (49:36): Some of it’s the easier to research now. I mean, online research and things like I mean, you know, it’s good to visit where you’re writing about, but you don’t obviously have to and sometimes it’s not gonna be Texas.

John Goodwin (49:48): Use Google Maps, I can get down there and see what it looks like.

Johnny D. Boggs (49:51): And another thing, you know, sometimes you we don’t really think about that, but you know rivers change courses. Grassy savannas become full of trees and things like that. And so and that has been debated a couple of times. It says when you’re writing about, let’s say, a part of New Mexico, do you wanna write about how it looks now? Because that’s how people are gonna recognize it, or do you wanna write about how it really was and then people are gonna say, No, no, that tree’s not over there. There’s no trees over there.

Or that river doesn’t run that way, it cuts over this way. So and that’s a choice that the writers have to make. But yeah, do your research, read a lot and just well, write with passion.

John Goodwin (50:38): Yeah, so now on the research, because you mentioned about travel there and somebody yesterday in one of the panels was talking about, you know, the value of the computer now AI, you can just type in who was the president and blah blah blah, or who was the marshal and there and then all of a sudden instead of spending a week trying to research to find it, in twelve seconds it pops up there’s the answer to your question. So do you use that also as a tool to help you?

Johnny D. Boggs (51:06): I double check anything I because I, you know, I’ve Googled myself sometimes and said, No, that’s not accurate at all. But yeah, I mean it’s, it is easier to do that. But I think it’s good to have alternative sources if you, if you’re gonna use that. I mean I don’t trust Google because Google is not always accurate.

John Goodwin (51:08): For sure and double check whatever comes up in the computer.

Johnny D. Boggs (51:33): Yeah, and that’s the other thing. So yeah, I mean and you know, the other other part about that is books aren’t always accurate either. I mean, you know, writers make mistakes, historians make mistakes, and history kinda changes with more research. Yeah. You know, so people can debunk a lot of what was previous thought on different areas.

John Goodwin (51:55): Yeah, I remember when I was talking with Bob Bose Bell. That’s one of the issues he has with True West, because they always like to be like a true West. They’re, they like to pride themselves on being factual. And there’s always somebody trying to come up and challenge this, challenge that. And sometimes when he finds out it’s wrong, he has to print in the next issue a disclaimer saying, Okay, sorry. You know, this is I found out was pointed out that this was an incorrect thing. So now this is the real history and this stuff. And there is constantly new things coming up but that’s also too…

One of the things about history is that it’s told from the perspective of the victor, right? Of the survivor. And so, we don’t have to tell that story about how we got into this mess. So we’ll just talk about that. I made it out. And since the only survivor, I’ll tell my story. And you’re dealing with that as well when you do this. So the last thing I wanted to go over here is why is the Western Writers of America important to you and why should others pay attention to it as a writing organization to consider membership?

Johnny D. Boggs (53:06): I mean, first of all you have to be a published writer or in in the publishing field to be a member. So that there is that. But, you know, self-publishing is, doesn’t have the stigma that it had.

John Goodwin (53:19): Yeah. It’s no longer vanity.

Johnny D. Boggs (53:25): And I always say, you know, if you if you’ve got enough faith to publish your own your own work, I mean I admire that ’cause I don’t.

John Goodwin (53:37): Well there’s some guys today that got their finalist awards that were self-published on Kindlepreneur.

Johnny D. Boggs (53:40): Right. So yeah, I mean it it’s been around since the 1950s. And it has gone through different phases, but it supports the literature of the American West and it supports literature written by all types of people. I think you have native writers, we have black writers, Hispanic, I mean it and it’s all Western. So, and it’s a good organization to, good to go.

And I say, I mean, I wouldn’t have the career that I have now if I hadn’t joined Western Wriers of America.

John Goodwin (54:18): That’s good. And I’ve, this is my fourth time coming out to it. The last time was in 2014. And it’s the thing that membership organizations and one thing in general for a writer, it’s a very lonely profession.

Johnny D. Boggs (54:35): Yeah, I think that that’s a big part of it. ‘Cause you know, and we sit around alone in a room for eight hours a day, maybe, maybe ten, maybe four, however long you have time to write. And it’s kind of good to come back as one of our members, Bill Markley once said, it’s kinda like a mountain man rendezvous. You’re trapping in the wilderness all this time, and then you come down to the rendezvous to sell your wares.

And this is what WWA the convention is all about. You’re reunited with your own kind. People that have been doing the same thing you’ve been doing, for all these months. And now you get to blow off some steam and talk shop and say, you know, here’s what I, here’s the problem I have with chapter three. What do you think? And stuff like that. And you’re also meeting the people who are buying the fur pelts.

People with, who have the ability to offer you a book contract or give you a magazine assignment or something like that. So it’s business and it’s fun, and it’s educational.

John Goodwin (55:43): Yeah. I think one thing people don’t realize until you’ve actually attended, you know, how much you miss it until you’ve actually experienced it and they’re like, Wow, I’ve been missing this all this time. I had no idea. And it’s real easy to see I had no idea after the facts. But you have to look at it like, no, you don’t have an idea until you’ve actually experienced being there with other like minded people.

Johnny D. Boggs (56:07): Right. And you know, I’ve, the thing I think that’s really always impressed me about Western Writers of America is by all rights, I mean, it’s a small market. Western fiction and nonfiction, it’s really small compared to other categories. We should really be kind of protective about, you know, our what we have, the publishers that we have that are publishing us, because this is your competition could be your competition, but everybody is really helpful.

Yeah. And there’s none of this no, I’m not telling you anything about that. I mean, no, no. I’m not telling you my editor’s name. No, you don’t, I don’t know who my agent is. So yeah. So things like that. But it is everybody is extremely helpful.

John Goodwin (56:52): That’s my reality. I’ve experienced that for sure. So now what’s the good first book for someone not familiar with Johnny D. Boggs to read by Johnny D. Boggs?

Johnny D. Boggs (57:03): It depends on what your interests are. I mean I…

John Goodwin (57:06): Start from the top and roll it down.

Johnny D. Boggs (57:08): Well, we’ve mentioned Northfield and I’ve written about the James Younger gang a few times and I’ve done the Cattle Drive novels. My favorite novel that I’ve ever written, I’m not saying it’s the best, it did win a Spur Award, was Camp Ford, which was a hardcover from Five Star Press.

Back when Five Star was publishing Westerns. And it was a Civil War baseball novel about set in Camp Ford, which was an actual prison camp for Union soldiers, in Texas during the Civil War. And there was a story that the Confederate guards played the Union POWs in a baseball game, and that’s basically what it’s about. It’s a, I called it baseball’s or literature’s first Civil War escape, P.O.W. Escape Baseball Western.

As I’m not saying it’s the best thing I ever, I’ve ever written, but it’s still the one that kinda holds a special place because I’m a baseball fan. And I kind of, if I had to write the novel again I probably wouldn’t write it the way I did. But that and then we mentioned Northfield. I think that’s pretty good. The Cattle Drive novels, A Thousand Texas Longhorns turned out pretty well. The last one I did won the Spur Award last year.

Bloody Newton, which is about Newton, Kansas’ one year as a cattle town. I won a Spur a few years back for a novel called Return to Red River, which my editor pitched to me as a sequel to the novel that John Wayne’s movie Red River was based upon. The novel had gone out of copyright, so it was fair game. And he said, Can you write a sequel to Red River. And one of the challenges on that was most people are familiar with the movie, but the novel is substantially different as in several cases than the film.

John Goodwin (59:12): This belt buckle I got was, Dakota Livesay gave it to me, but it’s that one. It’s a Red River belt buckle.

Johnny D. Boggs (59:15): The Red River D. cool for you, man. I don’t have one of those.

John Goodwin (59:23): Well that’s great. So how can people find you?

Johnny D. Boggs (59:26): JohnnyDBoggs dot com.

John Goodwin (59:28): Excellent. Well, thank you very much.

And thank you very much for listening. Subscribe to the Writers of the Future Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We also have been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network where you can find these podcasts as well. Writers and Illustrators of the Future, our contests created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. It is free to enter and open to amateur short story writers and artists of science fiction or fantasy.

Again, thank you very much, Johnny.

Johnny D. Boggs (59:59): Thank you. Appreciate it.