Completely Different From the Previous One: Johnny D. Boggs on Writing the West

No two of Johnny D. Boggs’ books are the same.  Each one is set in the American West, sure, but each one also does the unexpected.  Boggs seems constantly to be seeking out new ground, new ways of telling stories, new corners of the American West to call his own.  His occasional iconoclasm grows out of a deep and abiding love for good storytelling in general and the literature of the West in particular.

Boggs writes in a style rooted both in the dramatic arts and journalism.  His fiction is praised as gritty and action-packed as often as it’s praised as being character-driven.  His plots twist and turn and his characters, as he mentions below, often have strong opinions in a confusing world.  Deeply accurate historical research and a mildly twisted imagination steep his novels in liveliness and authenticity.

Before going freelance full-time, Boggs worked as a sports writer for the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  These days he contributes regularly to such publications as True West, Wild West, and Boys’ Life. His non-fiction covers all aspects of the West, from travel to history, profiles to apparel.

(While Boggs does not write “cowboy books,” he is indeed an extremely well-dressed cowboy, thanks to his freelance work reviewing Western-wear.  In fact, his hats, shirts, and boots are the topic of discussion wherever and whenever Western writers convene.)

Boggs has won the Spur Award from Western Writers of America (twice), as well as the Western Heritage Wrangler Award.  He is a former president of the Western Writers of America where he led the charge for innovation in the genre.

Below, Boggs and I talk about the literature he loves and writes – the very literature he is constantly help to re-define.

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What do you enjoy about writing the West?

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Johnny D. Boggs: I don’t know if I actually enjoy anything about writing. It’s more of an addiction. But I’m drawn to the history, the people, the land. I’ve often asked myself if I really write “Westerns.” I rarely write about white hats and black hats. My characters mostly wear gray hats. I’m mostly writing about people often struggling to come to terms with who they are. My stories are just typically set in the West.

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And what is the biggest challenge in writing the West?

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Johnny D. Boggs: Readers are more savvy and they know what you’re writing about, so you have to do the historical research. That’s an absolute. Were the trains running where you have them? What types of weapons would have been used? During the heyday of the pulps, say from the 1920s to the 1950s, readers wanted escapism. History didn’t matter. Today, I think more and more readers want to not only be entertained, they want to be educated. And they want multi-dimensional characters, people who make mistakes. I’ve often said that I don’t write about right and wrong, but about people with strong ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong, and often those views clash with another person’s views.

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 How have your novels and/or your approach to writing them changed over the years?

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Johnny D. Boggs: I started out doing blood-and-thunders, traditional shoot-em-ups, which was good training for writing and storytelling. I think the majority of my work now is more character driven, more determined by history. I’m a professional writer. I write for a living. So I definitely take a more professional approach to my craft.

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You write in both the first and third person POVs.  Do you prefer one over the other? Have you ever started a book in one point of view then switched/recast it in another?
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Johnny D. Boggs: When I first come up with an idea for a novel, I ask myself, ‘What’s the best way to write this?’ First person? Third person? Limited viewpoint? Multiple views? I prefer writing in first person, and I think that comes back to all those theater classes I took in college. It’s about acting, finding the driving force behind your character, his or her motivation, and letting the character take over. But not all novels will work in first person.

I probably reworked the openings of Hard Winter four or five times, moving from first person to third, and back again, before I finally settled on something I thought might work. And I’m currently reworking a novel I finished in dual first-person voices to third person. It was an experiment. A good one. It just didn’t work.

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And what are some of the most interesting and innovative things you see going on in the genre?

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Johnny D. Boggs: Most people think of the West as a period west of the Mississippi River from 1865 to say about 1900, but I’ve read some excellent contemporary Westerns. Aryn Kyle’s The God of Animals, Don Birchfield’s crazy satire Field of Honor, Brady Udall’s The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. Plus the wonderful Western-set mysteries of C.J. Box, Michael McGarrity and the late, great Tony Hillerman.

There are also some fabulous Indian writers telling stories from the Native viewpoints: Sherman Alexie — his Flight blew me away — Debra Magpie Earling, Joseph Marshall and Robert Conley among them.

There are some successful writers rethinking the American West with great skill like Loren D. Estleman, Tim Champlin, Lucia St. Clair Robson.

And I don’t think the traditional Western will ever die, especially with such writers as John D. Nesbitt and Cotton Smith telling non-traditional traditional Westerns.

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Which of your books is a good one to start with?

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Johnny D. Boggs: Ha! I’m the worst judge. And I’ve always tried to write novels completely different from the previous one. I never wanted to be pegged as a Texas writer, a New Mexico writer, a writer of lawmen, a writer of cowboys. I’ve ranged from the American Revolution to contemporary times. My plan was that I hoped readers would say, “I don’t know what Johnny D. Boggs is writing about this time, but I’m betting it’ll be a good story.”

That said, my favorite novel is Camp Ford, about a baseball game between Union POWs and Confederate guards.  Northfield is probably the best novel, on a literary scale, that I’ve ever written. A lot of readers have really liked Walk Proud, Stand Tall, and I — keep in mind, I don’t like all of my novels — kind of like The Big Fifty, The Hart Brand, Spark on the Prairie, Hard Winter, Ghost Legion, Doubtful Canon and East of the Border. But if you don’t like them, that’s OK. I can take bad reviews.

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What can a writer who doesn’t usually read Westerns learn from reading within the genre?

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Johnny D. Boggs:  A good historical Western, say from Lucia St. Clair Robson, David Wilkinson or Mike Blakely, can teach some pretty solid history. A well-written traditional Western, say from Mike Kearby, Max McCoy or Cotton Smith, can provide some fun escapism. There are writers who follow the rules and writers who bend or even break rules. There are writers who try to clone Louis L’Amour and those who’ll turn L’Amour on his ear (I prefer those who try the latter).

I think most genres get a bad rap as being inferior fiction, but there is a lot of innovative stuff coming out in genres, whether it’s science fiction or thriller or mystery or Western. I think you can learn a great deal about writing by reading other genres, so I’ll find myself reading a fantastic thriller by David Morrell or Tom Piccirilli, or an old hard-boiled mystery by William P. McGivern or Raymond Chandler plus current or classic Westerns as often as I’ll go back to Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens or Alexander Dumas.

 

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What’s next for you?

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Johnny D. Boggs: I just finished a fairly tongue-in-cheek, fast-moving action novel for Kensington titled West Texas Kill, am reworking that young-adult novel from first person to third about a Union POW and runaway slave making their way across the South and Texas at the end of the Civil War (called South by Southwest). Then I’ll get cranking on an historical Western about black Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves.

 

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.