Don Johnson

Western Author Interviews in the Archives...

Matt Braun

Frederick
Chiaventone

Patti Dickinson

Fred Grove

Jean Henry-Mead

Louis L'Amour

Cynthia Leitich-Smith

Stan Lynde

John D. Nesbitt

Robert J. Randisi

Dale L. Walker

TSF: How did you learn to write?

DJ: I guess what I know about writing I learned by reading. I never really knew anyone who wrote fiction. I've always read just about everything I could lay hands on from the time I learned the alphabet. Consequently my first writing was really, really bad. My writing has been improved by books I've read on writing well. A rather obscure book, The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, a book primarily for writers of plays, opened my eyes to the underlying dramatic structure of good writing. Several other books by Dean Koontz, Meredith & Fuitzgerald and others have affected the way I write.

TSF:   What pulp fiction publications did you write for?

DJ: I don't remember them all. I have slept on it since then. Amazing Stories and Fantastic Stories are a couple that stick in my mind. I left them primarily because they died. A writing magazine recommended radio writing to take the place of pulps, so I got into radio writing (commercials). I later got into television and then went to work for advertising agencies, and my corruption had begun. For the majority of writers, the money was always light years better on the advertising side.

TSF: Do you read mostly fiction or nonfiction? Who are your favorite authors?

DJ: I like to read fiction although I also read a great deal of nonfiction 9 much of it as research (at least that's what I tell myself.) My favorite authors are: Elmer Kelton, Winston Churchill, Dean Koontz, J. Evetts Haley, J. Frank Dobie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Larry McMurtry, Edgar A. Poe. I like writing that transcends genre. I just like reading about people (or creatures) that seem real and believable to me. Some of the characters dreamed up by some writers today are less real to me than the most fantastic BEM (bug-eyed monster) created by the most imaginative sci-fi writer.

TSF: Whose work has had the greatest influence on you?

DJ: Winston Churchill showed me the beauty and the power of the English language. Frank Dobie illuminated the simple but elegant virtues of much of the life in the old West. J. Evetts Haley was one of the more lyrical writers of historical material.

TSF: You are from Texas, how has that affected what you write?

DJ: I live in North Texas and have lived in West and Southwest Texas most of my life. It has, without a doubt, greatly influenced the way I feel and write. I think and hope a sense of place comes through in my writing because that is basically what it is about. The times I write about, for the most part, will never exist again. Most of my writing takes place in the Southwest region of the United States. I know the geography, the people and the various times of that region better than elsewhere.

TSF: Tell us a little more about BRASADA.

DJ: Brasada is very much a story of its time and place. The place and period have not received the attention they merit from story tellers. The confluence of violent and passionate action is probably unique in history. Juarista fought Maximillian in Mexico, Rebels fought Yankees, Texas and Mexicans scrapped as usual, and bandits roamed the area with little official opposition. The corrupt carpetbagger government in Texas created another source of passionate resistance to orderly rule of law.

TSF:   What led you to write this story?

DJ: It started some time back when I owned a ranch on the Mexican border. On an aerial view of the ranch, I could see two faint parallel lines that ran across the ranch into the Rio Grande Valley which were not visible from the ground. An investigation provoked by my curiosity revealed that the lines were remnants of ruts cut by the wheels of hundreds of wagons involved in "Operation Algodón," a tactic used by the Confederacy toward the end of the Civil War by which the South's cotton was moved overland into Mexico and from there to Europe's and New England's mills by ships of neutral registry thereby avoiding the Federal Naval blockade. This operation enriched the participating merchants, Rebel, Yankee, and European alike, kept the
South solvent, and doubtless significantly prolonged the duration of the War Between the States.

Research into this particular activity led to a novel based on several "what ifs" that became feasible under such conditions as existed at that time and place.

TSF: Any plans for a sequel?

DJ: I have tentatively started a story to take place immediately after the happenings in Brasada with some of the same characters taking a minor role and Bain MacDuff assuming a major role. Actually Brasada hasn't had the commercial success nor the wide distribution that would cause a publisher to leap at the chance to publish a sequel, although a number of readers have asked for one.

TSF: Tell us a little bit about your current book. Where did you get your idea for it?

DJ: I'm right in the middle of it. It's called On A Centipede's Back, inspired by an old cowboy toast. It's a character driven story of a misfit who drinks too much, gambles too much, is a womanizer, yet is unforgettable as a champion of the very young, the very old, and helpless animals. The challenge, as always, is getting the words right.

TSF: Speaking of getting the words right, is writing a discipline or a compulsion for you?

DJ: The actual writing is a discipline and can be quite painful for me. The rush of euphoria over getting a passage that I believe is exactly right triggers the compulsion. The fact that the two feelings can be only minutes apart adds to the visceral appeal writing has to me and I believe to most writers.

TSF: What did you enjoy most about writing this particular book?

DJ: I enjoy writing truth in fiction as opposed to politically correct bullshit revisionist history. I like to show that a character doesn't have to be perfect to be likable and worthy of fond remembrance. Real cowboys, for example,  were about 100% insensitive, but they had their points and the writer who can lead a reader to appreciate those points has done his or her job. I am a strong believer that the writer owes his or her reader an insight into the time and place within which the story takes place. It takes a lot of work sometimes to discover an accurate feel for such. That's why I normally limit myself to a time and place that I know intimately. That makes it much easier to make the locale and characters believable.

TSF: If you could only afford to have 3 books in your personal library, which three titles would they be?

DJ: I guess a Bible, History of the English Speaking Peoples by Churchill, Lone Star by Fehrenbach. I could reconstruct just about everything that surrounds me now with those books.

TSF: If you could have authored any novel ever written, which one would it be and why?

DJ: Just from the sheer expertise of the writing if would probably be The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think it was one of the most expertly crafted novels ever written. Another was The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. It's too hard to pick just one. To Kill A Mockingbird would have to be considered. Wonderful sense of time and place. McMurtry's Lonesome Dove was, of course, a tour 'd force. The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton comes to mind. I don't know I don't know which I'd have to settle for. I could well wish to have written any one of them.

TSF: Do you prepare an outline as you are preparing the plot in your stories?

DJ: That's a hard question to answer. It's maybe easier to explain. I do usually start with a short synopsis. Then I construct a detailed outline. Then I start to write the story. After the first two or three chapters, I'm so far off my outline I rewrite it. Then I try to stay a little closer to the outline but sometimes abandon it completely about halfway through the book. However, in writing Brasada, I stayed with the outline pretty closely throughout the writing. Only when it was published, and I was forced to cut the length of the manuscript severely, did I stray very far from the outline.

TSF: What would you say demands the most of a writer?

DJ: Perseverance. I think the hardest thing (at least for me) is to plant myself in front of the processor, do what I think I do well, and that's put one word in front of another until I've told the story I intended to tell.

TSF: What do you think of the electronic format in regard to publishing?

DJ: I am having three novellas published as a single entity in an electronic format, which I consider to be great news as novellas, for me, have always been virtually worthless. Writing them has always been an act of financial idiocy on my part. I think that's an example of the vast upheaval e-publishing is going to bring to the industry.

TSF: Since youve written several novellas, is that a length you prefer?

DJ: It depends entirely on the story to be told. I would have much preferred to have written the stories as novels. I think a couple of them had tremendous potential for a bit of financial success if they could have been published in novel length. Unfortunately the stories told themselves completely in fewer than 25,000 words. If I had stretched the telling just to make them "fit," they no longer would have been the stories I wanted to write.

TSF: What advice would you give to new writers trying to break into the market?

DJ: Take a careful look at the electronic publishing industry. It's the future of publishing (I think) and gives a new writer a fighting chance. Try interactive writing, multimedia, crossbreed stories with gaming. All these things are coming. It's just a matter of when.

TSF: Would you like to close with a favorite quote...

DJ: From the ending of my book, A Texas Elegy, "I don't cuss 'em so much for what they done. I cuss 'em because they DON'T KNOW what they done." That's the way I feel about the multinational corporations that have absorbed the publishing industry.

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