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Jean Henry-Mead
began her writing career in 1968 as a news reporter and photographer in central California while serving as her college newspaper's editor-in-chief. She later worked as staff writer-editor-photographer in San Diego, and news reporter in Casper, Wyoming. She also served as editor of In Wyoming magazine.

Mead's freelance articles have appeared in national publications as well as magazines in Norway and West Germany, which have won more than twenty state, regional and national writing awards. Her six books include three volumes of interviews: Maverick Writers, Wyoming in Profile and The Westerners; Casper Country, a centennial history of central Wyoming; and two novels: Escape on the Wind (featuring the Wild Bunch), and Shirl Lock & Holmes (first in a mystery series). She's currently working on her third novel, a Wyoming historical. Founder of the Western Writers Hall of Fame, she's a 23-year member of Western Writers of America (WWA) and former secretary-treasurer; sustaining member of Women Writing the West (WWW), past president of Wyoming Writers, Inc.(WWI), and owner/moderator of the Western Writers Forum on Yahoogroups.com.

Maverick Writers' 271 pages are packed with humor, photos, writing advice and biographies. Authors profiled include: A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Louis L'Amour, Will Henry, Elmer Kelton, Dee Brown, Loren D. Estleman, Peggy Simson Curry, Don Coldsmith, Stephen and Wayne D. Overholser, Don Worcester, Janet Dailey, Matt Braun, Gordon Shirreffs, Lucia St. Clair Robson, Elmore Leonard, J.T. Edson, Benjamin Capps, Jeanne Williams, Douglas Capps and other legends of Western Literature.

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Will Henry is also included in The Westerners, a new collection of Mead's favorite interviews among hundreds conducted over twenty years. Other notables in the book are Vice President Dick Cheney, singer Chris LeDoux, attorney Gerry Spence, sportscaster Curt Gowdy, Marlboro Man, Darrel Winfield; aviatrix and Amelia Earhart friend, Lucile Wright; 96-year-old former cowgirl Beth McElfresh, 91-year-old former cowboy Maynard Lehman,
and a host of others. Out just in time for Christmas on CD-ROM (next year in print). Signed copies are only $14.95.

Click to visit Jean Henry-Mead's Website

Legends in Western Literature:
British Western Novelist
J.T. Edson Interview
by Jean Henry-Mead

British novelist J. T. Edson had no literary pretensions. He wrote for money and didn't care who knew it. With more than 130 books to his credit, he said "writers are a bunch of bone-idle layabouts who found a good way of making a living without working."

    An entertaining chap, Edson's tongue had been stuck in his cheek so long that he was rarely taken seriously, although he did have his moments of introspection. "I can make more money and do less work writing than any other job I'm capable of doing," he said. "I'm a damn good dog trainer, but there ain't a lot of jobs for training dogs to bite people these days. I learned to train them during the army for twelve-and-a-half years."

    When asked if he served during World War II, Edson sputtered. "I'm not that old. I fought in the dirty little bush fire wars in Malaya and Kenya. I'm only a bonny twenty-eight, you see." He laughed uproariously, often in a high-pitched giggle. "But about this age business, I was leaning against the bardon't forget to mention the White Line Hotel, will ya? I get a free pint every time it's mentioned. I was still at the bar when one of our women Royal Army dog trainers from my old outfit came in and told me her father had been reading my books when she was in kindergarten. I really needed that."

    The majority of Edson's work was Old West escapist fiction and he wrote similar novels about pioneering Englishmen in Kenya. The Western novel, he said, has its strongest appeal among the English working class. However, during depressed economic cycles, sales of all genres decline. He attributes part of the slump to increased library shelf space for paperbacks.

    His annual Public Lending Rights royalties from library book loans were close to the 5,000-pound limit, so Edson concluded the appeal of Western novels is high in the United Kingdom, although readers have been borrowing more books from libraries, rather than buying them. Previous sales to Third World nations have nearly vanished, cutting off potential sales because underdeveloped countries were not paying their bills.

    The real money in the U.K. is in paperbacks, he said, where 50,000-copy first editions are the rule for Western novels. Edson's books were popular in western Europe as well, and he could expect most to be reprinted within six months. Nineteen of his traditional Westerns sold in excess of a million copies.

    "I read Nelson Nye and numerous other action-escapism-adventure Western authors before starting to write," he said. "I also read various classic Westerns such as Shane, and to be frank, they left me cold. I far preferred the virile stories which (British) middle-class management snobs refer to as the pulps.' One of my pet hates is that they regard all Western novels as being substandard and unworthy of their superior intellect.

    "I believe one reason I'm so successful in this field is because my roots are from the same working class stock as my readers. Unlike practically all of my contemporaries and various newcomers in the field, I don't regard writing Westerns beneath my dignity, and am willing to have my own name, not a pseudonym, on my books."

    Edson first supported his Western writing habit by composing the text for British comic books. "The company I was working for is very posh," he said. "They don't call them comic books, they're boys' papers.' You write and tell the artist what to put in his little panels. It's a very demanding and interesting style of writing. You must comprise a 3,000-word short story in forty frames while keeping the limitations in mind."

    The burly novelist next worked as a postman while writing part time. Edson had gained considerable weight as a cartoonist and decided to walk it off while increasing his Western sales at Corgi Publishers. "At fourteen pounds to the stone, I weighed twenty stones, twelve, and my doctor was giving me hints like sending the undertaker round. I didn't want to work in the first place, so as soon as I gathered enough money to stop working, I did." Not working meant writing full time, which he did from 1961 until his death.

    Edson made many research trips "across the pond," but was more concerned that his work was entertaining than adhering to historical facts. In his Calamity Jane series, he had his heroine tied to a sawmill log, which prompted a call from his editor. She said: "John, I wouldn't have believed that any author would have dared to do this. And if they did, I wouldn't believe they could get away with it."

    The author replied, "I've got another marvelous idea that's never been done before. The nasty is going to fasten Calamity Jane to a railroad track."

    His novels usually tied into his fictional family of characters: members of the "OD Connected Ranch's floating outfit." His sergeants Alvin Fog, Ranse Smith, and Mark Scrapton of Company Z, Texas Rangers, are the grandsons of his original characters: Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, and the Ysabel Kid. Those and related continuing characters allowed him to plug various titles in Edson books by means of footnotes and references. He insisted that it was good business, although some of his peers disapproved.

    The irrepressible Englishman averaged a book every six to eight weeks when all was going well. He said,"The fastest I ever did one was eleven days, working eighteen hours a day. When I was young and lusty, when I first started working for Corgi Publishing, I was doing eight books a year. But now I've dropped down to the three to five I'm committed to do."

    Edson suffered from a heart condition. He said in order to get his daily exercise, he walked half a mile each forenoon to the White Line Hotel. There he bent his elbow with a couple of pints of ale before returning to his typewriter. Some of his fans looked forward to his daily visits to the hotel pub, where he happily held court. The J. T. Edson Appreciation Society encompassed some fifteen hundred fans, who received a monthly newsletter featuring photos and his family background. One issue featured a cover photo of three-year-old J. T. in the buff on a bearskin rug.

    He had a legion of U.S. fans, and listed honorary titles on his stationary. They included admiral of the Texas navy, and deputy sheriff of both Travis County, Texas, and Thurston County, Washington. Edson was given a ten-city promotional tour of the West by Berkeley, which published a number of his books in this country. Corgi, his British publisher, sent him to military bases in western Europe, particularly Germany, to promote his work. He said, "The troops are my best market.

    "God willing and we don't get a socialist government, I'll be back next year," he always told fellow Western Writers of America members at annual conventions. Edson supported the concept of reader's conferences following each convention. "I'm one writer who knows just how important the readers are. This is one aspect of what--to me at any rate--is a business sadly neglected in the past. Regardless of reviews put out by professional critics, who don't buy the bloody books they are commenting on; in the final analysis, it is the reader who goes into the bookstore and slaps money down on the counter, and who decides whether a book is successful."

Copyright 2002 by Jean Henry-Mead. Excerpted from Maverick Writers and her forthcoming book, The Westerners (November 2002 from Medallion Press.) Reprinted here by permission of the author.