 |
Jean Henry Mead
Books by
Jean Henry-Mead
click on book to order
IBSN 1-929077-79-3 Page Free Publishing
[ Read Review ]
Actual historic events, including the Five State Governor's Pact to exterminate outlaws, are the basis for this Wyoming
historical novel. Little-known members of the Wild Bunch kidnap a young girl and take her to the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout where
they plan the ill-fated Belle Fourche Bank Robbery. An
epilogue details Wild Bunch members' fates.
IBSN: 1-929077-78-5 Page Free Publishing
First in a series of amateur sleuth novels, Shirl Lock
& Holmes features two women living in a retirement village, one a private detective's widow, the other a mystery novel buff.
When club members die alphabetically, Shirley Lock and Dora Holmes try to solve the murders themselves,
suspecting they're
on the killer's list. An inexperienced sheriff and Dora's beautiful daughter complicate the plot. The novel is sprinkled with humor.
Maverick Writers
ISBN: 0-87004-331-5
Caxton
#1 on the Mid-West Book Review List
Jean Mead interviewed some of the West's best mavericks:
A. B. Guthrie, Louis L'Amour, Lucia St. Clair Robson, Loren Estleman, Jeanne Williams, Elmore Leonard, Will Henry, Elmer Kelton, Fred Grove, Janet Dailey, Frank Waters, Stan Steiner, Irene Bennett Brown, Don Coldsmith, Hollywood screenwriters and many others. They were candid about their lives, successes and failures, as well as with their advice to
fledglings.
Casper Country: Wyoming's Heartland
ISBN: 0-87108-738-3 Pruett Publishing Co.
A centennial history unfolds in this 200-page coffee table book. Ninety-seven years' worth of microfilmed newspapers were scanned to research central Wyoming's colorful past. Two hundred photos include travelers along the Mormon, Oregon and
California trails as well as Fort Caspar, where soldiers were massacred by the Sioux. Among them was a young, red-haired lieutenant, Caspar Collins, for whom the town, army post and mountain were named. The town's name was misspelled by a 19th
century clerk and never changed. Cowboys and rustlers, oil men and railroaders ride through Casper Country's pages. The hangings of "Cattle Kate" and Tom Horn, the Johnson County War, and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang's escapades are
well told. Gambling was rampant in the hell-for-broke town as oil gushed from high plains wells, making Casper one of the richest cities in the nation--until
the petroleum boom went bust.
|
Jean Henry-Mead writes mysteries and Western historical fact and fiction. She's a member of Western Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, EPIC, and a sustaining member of Women Writing the West. She's also a former news reporter and magazine editor. In her spare time Jean enjoys oil painting, singing, dancing, photography, travel (especially around the West), and helping fledgling writers online through her association with several online workshops and forums.
TSF: Jean, what made you decide to become a writer?
I must have been born with scribblers DNA. My first novel was written in fourth grade with pencil on construction paper, a chapter a day to entertain classmates. Fortunately, it was never published. I was undecided which career path to take while in high school. I was a voracious reader, wrote for the school newspaper, played violin, drew charicatures of my family and friends, and sang in a cappella choir. My orchestra leader was ecstatic when I broke a string and quit, but I was chosen as my high school's soprano to sing in the Los Angeles All-City Choir. That narrowed my choices down to writing, vocal, and art, but I married the same year I graduated high school. I didn't attend college until I was 29, newly divorced with four small daughters. I studied journalism, worked on the campus newspaper and was eventually editor-in-chief while working 35 hours a week for a Central California daily. Between Bobby Sox Softball, YMCA, girl scouts, classes, homework, and my job, I got little sleep, but I was having the time of my life. My youngest daughter Susie often accompanied me to classes, which probably influenced her, because she's now teaching school. All four daughters have writing talent, which we inherited from my father. Although he had little schooling, Dad wrote beautiful poetry as well as a short story titled, "The Owl Hoot Trail."
TSF: Do you read mostly fiction or nonfiction?
I mainly read nonfiction while I worked as a news reporter, but as my desire to write fiction grew, I read more novels. I now find that my nonfiction books are invaluable for novel research. I have bookcases in every room and haven't gone to the library in years especially now that I can access virtually anything on the Internet. What a boon for writers!
TSF: Favorite author?
While I was learning to write fiction my favorite was Dean Koontz, although I never read other horror novelists. I still like the way he strings his words together. Now I have so many favorites, it would be impossible to choose although A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s work first interested me in the Western genre. And I still consider interviewing him in his Montana hideaway the peak of my journalism career. Interviewing Louis L'Amour in his home office comes in a close second.
TSF: Whose work has had the greatest influence on you?
Ernest Hemingway's lean style influenced me most. His journalism background influenced his own fiction, and I identified with that. I have a framed photo of him on my computer desk and was unaware I had been born on his birthday July 21 until I read his biography.
TSF: Let's talk about some of the books you've written. Which was your first?
Wyoming in Profile is a collection of interviews with fellow Wyomingites. I was surprised to find that so many influential and unusual people had either originated here or adopted Wyoming as home, among them: attorney Gerry Spence, sportscaster Curt Gowdy, Marlboro Man Darrell Winfield, former White House Chief-of-Staff and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, country singer Chris LeDoux, U.S. senators Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson, Governor and Mrs. Herschler, artists, craftsmen and other natives of the cowboy state. It was the first and only time I left my family to drive around the state conducting interviews. I should write a book about the experience, including the morticians convention at a Jackson Hole hotel, where I was trying to catch a few winks between interviews. Morticians really know how to party (most of the night). Then there was the cocktail party I crashed to interview Curt Gowdy. The batteries fell from my tape recorder and rolled under a massive desk, so I had to interview him the following day in a crowded bank lobby where he was the main attraction. Interviewing Gerry Spence turned out to be nearly as traumatic because he insisted we conduct his interview in a Ramada Inn lobby during a lawyer's convention, where he was holding court for many of his admirers. The Marlboro Man gave me one word answers to my questions because previous interviewers had a field day with his humorous quips, which nearly cost him his job. So it was a difficult book to write, but it sold out quickly here in the cowboy state.
TSF: Have any of the nonfiction books you've written contributed to your recently released first fiction novel?
Yes, my second nonfiction book, Casper Country: Wyoming's Heartland, contributed greatly to my first novel, Escape on the Wind, because I spent nearly five years researching and writing a centennial history of central Wyoming. The little known facts I unearthed about the area and Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch served as background for the novel.
TSF: Tell us a little bit about Escape on the Wind. Where did you get your ideas for it?
I spent over two years at a microfilm machine reading newspapers dating from 1888, when Casper's first newsman established his press. There were also quotes from other instate newspapers, including the Laramie Boomerang, Cheyenne Leader and the Rawlins paper, so I had a good feeling for life in the fledgling state of Wyoming. I was fortunate that the warden of the Wyoming penitentiary was a shirt-tail relative, so I was able to not only visit the facility, but obtain records of Wild Bunch members' prison records. I was especially interested in little known gang member Tom "Peep" O'Day, a bungling, alcoholic horsethief who botched the infamous Belle Fourche Bank robbery, which is the novel's central focus.
TSF: What did you enjoy most about writing Escape on the Wind?
I enjoyed getting to know the real Wild Bunch and writing about Tom O'Day, my favorite character. I learned that the Sundance Kid wasn't Butch Cassidy's best friend and constant companion until after Butch's friend, Elzy Lay, was imprisoned for train robbery. During that same period, the Five State Governor's Pact to exterminate outlaws was enacted, forcing outlaws to flee the country to Alaska and South America. I hope readers will enjoy the humor provided by "Peep" O'Day, "Flat Nose" George Curry, and the interaction of various gang members, as well as the plight of a young woman, Andrea "Andy" Bordeaux, who is kidnapped and taken to the Hole-in-the-Wall.
TSF: I enjoyed the humor O'Day provided. You have a talent for bringing characters to life and fleshing them out even the minor ones. For example, the sheepherding spinster twins who lived alone in the Badlands, minor characters, but interesting...
Thank you! The Barlow sisters are fictitious but I subconsciously based them on two elderly sisters I interviewed some years ago in northern Wyoming. They had been "cowboys" during the early 1900s, and owned a sheep ranch north of the Hole-in-the-Wall. Dust blowing from the beautiful red bluffs on their ranch coated their sheep, so they had the only pink animals I had ever seen. They also guided game hunters on their land while they were in their 80s. I didn't realize while I was writing about the Barlow twins that they had evolved from my encounters with the elderly Wyoming sheepherders. The real sisters convinced me that you're only old when you think you're old. That revelation also led me to write my amateur sleuth novel, Shirl Lock & Holmes, featuring two widows living in a California retirement village, who discover their club members are dying alphabetically.
TSF: How do you write so convincingly from the male viewpoint?
I grew up with four brothers and was the only girl in the neighborhood. We were all close in age so I naturally became a tom boy. To protect me, Dad bought a small pair of boxing gloves and taught me how to use them. I won my first and only boxing match, which gained me the respect of the boys and from then one, I was one of them.
TSF: You now live in Wyoming. Has that had any effect on what you write?
Yes, I married a Wyomingite while living in my home state of California. The subsequent move to Wyoming piqued my interest in what writer Bill Bragg called "A wild and woolly place." I read all I could about Wyoming history, and visited the Hole-in-the-Wall, where the Wild Bunch and hundreds of law breakers hid out, including Frank and Jesse James. Researching and writing Escape on the Wind took me on a great adventure, which I hope my readers will experience because the novel closely follows actual historical events.
TSF: You've won quite a few writing awards. Tell us a little more about that.
Over the years I've been fortunate to win more than twenty state, regional and national nonfiction awards, and my third book, Maverick Writers, topped the MidWest Book Review list; but fiction writing--with the exception of my first novel written in fourth grade came about relatively late in my writing career, and it was like learning to write from scratch. Journalism is surface writing mainly, dealing primarily with the facts, while fiction deals with emotions and delves beneath the surface. To date, I've won a short story award. However, my first two novels were recently released simultaneously, and because they're out on CD-ROM, they are only eligible for an Eppie Award. Eppies are awarded for the best e-books in several categories. The Eppie winners will be announced in July of 2000, in time for the first EPIC (electronic book writers) convention in Omaha the following month. My publisher, Page Free Publishing (Books On Screen) is coming out with download and disk versions of both my novels soon, and Escape on the Wind is under consideration at TOR for a print version.
TSF: If you could only afford to have 3 books in your personal library, which three titles (other than your own) would they be?
That's a tough one. I have a large library so it would be difficult to choose. I guess I would have to say my unabridged Webster's Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, and a dictionary of Western slang.
TSF: Any upcoming booksignings or projects that we can look forward to?
I hosted a WWA National Booksigning Event in Casper, before I fell on the ice and fractured my arm. I plan to promote my books again after the spring thaw here in Wyoming, as well as in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, where the bank robbery took place.
TSF: What prompted you to write Maverick Writers?
I was serving as publicity director for WWA and thought it would be a good idea to write a book about some of our more successful members, such as Louis L'Amour, Will Henry, Elmore Leonard, Dee Brown, Fred Grove, and Elmer Kelton. By the time I finished, I had more than 60 interviews and was told to cut at least ten from the book. That was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do, because some of them were friends. There were no interview books of advice on writing when I started and I learned quite a lot about composing fiction from the authors I interviewed. I also began a long-term correspondence with Fred Grove, who became my mentor and encouraged me to write my first novel.
TSF: Thank you very much for taking time to do this interview. Any parting words, advice... or favorite quote?
I'll quote a number of maverick writers I interviewed, who said, "Read, read, read, and write every day if you want to be published." Some of us have businesses to run, full-time jobs and children to raise, so finding time to write is a luxury. I had to give up TV viewing, except for the evening news, and moved to the country where few friends and neighbors venture out this far on a regular basis. Daily planting your pants to your computer chair is the single most important aspect of successful writing, in my opinion.
One of my favorite quotes came from Wayne Overholser: "Writing is an itch you can't quite scratch." My friend Peggy Simson Curry once said, " Characters take over in fiction and are as alive as people I meet . . . " I hope my own characters are that alive and vivid to my readers. That's what good writing's all about.
Copyright © 2000 ReadTheWest.com. All rights reserved.
|
