BookLife

Matthew P. Mayo has a keen eye for the absurd.  Sure, his Westerns are steeped in authenticity and boiled in action, but it is Mayo’s skewed vision of the world that lingers long after the final page.  He shows us the mythic West with the sharp, clear eye of a realist looking through rippled glass.

Mayo is the author of the novels Winters’ War, Wrong Town, and Hot Lead, Cold Heart, and the editor of Where Legends Ride:  New tales of the Old West.  At his finest, Mayo captures the surreal and very human quality of everyday life in the 19^th century West.  His protagonists meet whatever comes their way with nonchalance; they struggle in a world of misperceptions and uncertain realities, come what may.  Time and again they must sort out the mythic from the mundane, the weak from the strong, the bizarre from the necessary.  Yet, even deep within the most tangled cases of mistaken identity and the darkest of back alley nights, Mayo is always in control of his craft. 

In Hot Lead, Cold Heart, for instance, the protagonist Mason, a grizzled gunman who kills only those who deserve it, rides slowly through the woods to take care of one last problem before hanging up his gun.  The problem?  He must settle a score with a porcine megalomaniac whose sweaty grip on the town Cayuse Falls is slipping quickly away. On the way, Mason meets a big-hearted Irish drummer with logorrhea, a pair of mismatched sisters on a rampage, and a donkey and mule team that always shows up at just the right time. But the most compelling character is Rip, the town Marshall, who is caught between a manipulative benefactor and an ambitious wife. The overall effect of Hot Lead, Cold Heart is as much Louis L’Amour’s Hondo as it is Barry Hannah’s Never Die or Percival Everett’s God’s Country.

In an earlier Booklife interview, Mayo and I discussed non-fiction and the freelancing life.  Below we talk about writing evocative prose, crafting gritty characters, and writing action-packed Westerns.

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What do you write about?

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Matthew P. Mayo:  Some of the themes that interest me are self-reliance, overcoming adversity, the satisfaction felt when a tough job is well in hand, that sort of thing. In truth, I don’t put that much thought into it. I just try to do what I do, and do it better each time out of the gate. I don’t think it would all fall to pieces if I overanalyzed it, but … why risk it?

Mostly I write about the things that I’ve always enjoyed reading about by some of my favorite novelists. A few of the many who come to mind: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, Loren D. Estleman, Robert J. Randisi, James Reasoner, Larry D. Sweazy, Peter Brandvold, Johnny D. Boggs. I could go on for days….

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What kind of Westerns do you write?  What are the key elements?  How do you know when you’re really writing well in genre?

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Matthew P. Mayo: The Westerns I most like to read, and so, try to write, have fast-paced plots, gritty characters in dire situations, and full, evocative writing that puts me smack-dab in the middle of the action. (I also like reading and writing about snowy climes, hence my fondness for “Northerns”.)

I don’t think about “genre” so much as keeping readers entertained. And I figure that if I’m digging what I’m writing, then they will, too. A good example is the opening scene of one of my Westerns, Wrong Town, in which the protagonist wakes up just in time to be mauled by a grizzly. I loved writing it and I’ve received lots of positive mail about it, so something worked.

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I get a strong “how did he do that?” response when reading your work.  So, I’ve got to ask you to parse out “full, evocative writing” and “gritty characters in dire situations.”  I mean, how do you do that, anyway?

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Matthew P. Mayo: Well, that’s mighty flattering, thanks. But I’m just writing, trying to make a scene come alive for the reader. I do that in part by making sure to include sights, sounds, smells, textures, colors, actions, and reactions–all the things that we experience in a day’s time. That’s what I mean by trying to make the writing “evocative”. As far as making it gritty, for the non-fiction, that’s a matter of finding the right “moment” in the first place. Then I tease out the grimmer aspects, perhaps accentuate telling details (a drop of sweat quivering on a nose-tip!). A couple of folks have told me my writing is visual, that reading it was like watching a movie. I’ll take that. I’m pleased that it comes across that way. It’s not something I’ve intended. I’m just trying to write good, pulpy action embedded in a solid story.

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Okay, so if you had two months to write a Western for Black Horse, how would you go about it?  Where would you start?  How would you follow through?

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Matthew P. Mayo: I’d ransack my idea file–I have tons of ideas, just not enough time to pursue them all–and then I’d rough out a plot. I’ve tried the seat-of-the-pants method and while it initially felt freeing, it ended up causing more headache than not for me because I had to go back and redo all sorts of stuff to make it work. I found myself considering the use of coincidence too much, and that’s always pretty obvious to readers. So I prefer to know, at least roughly, where I’m going—even by cobbling together a rudimentary outline.

One of my favorite writers, Loren D. Estleman, recommends doing so in his helpful book, Writing the Popular Novel. But at the same time he’s careful to say that an outline is a “useful tool, not a sacred text.” After that, I’d figure out how many words the final manuscript must contain, divide that by 60 days, and that will give me the number of words I need to hit each day. Then I’d sit down and do the fun part.

I love Black Horse Westerns, by the way. And I hope that America will soon discover what the Brits already know, via this line of books–that short (50,000 words), pulpy, action-oriented, solidly written Westerns are just what the doctor ordered. Robert Hale Ltd. has been publishing them for decades and they show no signs of letting up. In fact, they just announced a deal with Faber to release Black Horse Westerns in eBook “bundles”–that is, four BHWs for one low price. Which makes them easier than ever for Americans to read.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.  He is the staff Interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine and a frequent contributor to Kobold Quarterly.  He teaches at Wofford College and Montessori Academy in Spartanburg, SC.  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.