If you have seen the second edition of Blood Debt (the first edition was a mess, due to a bad editor – me – and bad formatting; it’s consequently destined to be a collector’s item someday) then you’ve also seen the banner on the cover announcing “A Llano Estacado Crime Novel.” That’s a pretty significant designation. It’s both a regional and genre-restrictive claim, pretty much disqualifying it as having very broad appeal.
Seeing that I had done such a thing, a lot of people asked me a very good question: “Why?” My answer was as simple as my mind:
“Well, there ain’t nobody else doing it.”
When I first conceived the story of Blood Debt, I had a lot of obstacles to overcome to make it a published novel. Number one, and the biggest obstacle, was my limited talent. I’ve been writing since I was six years old, stealing ideas from other, better, writers and trying to put my own spin on them. When I was nine I wrote a story called “The Bat From Carlsbad Caverns,” which was a blatant ripoff of A. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes masterpiece “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” That story never made it past my immediate family, but they seemed to enjoy it.
My instinct, which was a good one, was to follow the old writer’s advice “Write what you know.” I knew about Whiteface, Texas, and I stole knew how Doyle had written such a story, so I simply put them together and wrote about a giant bat terrorizing my hometown. Plagiarism at such a young age, by a novice writer, especially when the distribution of said story is so limited, is a way for a beginning novelist to learn the craft.
I read voraciously for the next forty years, enjoying various genres and authors. Add to that some life experience, and you have the training that someone like me needed to be able to produce more mature fiction.
One thing that stayed with me was the pride I have in being a Texan, and even more specifically a resident of the Llano Estacado.
The Llano encompasses a wide patch of west Texas, the Panhandle, and eastern New Mexico. (New Mexicans may resist that inclusion, but let’s face it. The rest of New Mexico considers southeastern New Mexico as part of Texas.) Anyone who has lived in the area any length of time has either known, or heard stories of weird and crazy going-on by neighbors they thought were normal. Murder, suicide, theft, organized crime, and other dark subjects are not just for the big cities on the coasts. They happen in every single small west Texas town at one time or another.
My research showed that the area was well represented in western fiction. Elmer Kelton, Louis L’Amour, and of course Larry McMurtry wrote fantastic western stories that featured the area. In country music we had Amarillo/Lubbock based Cooder Graw with a hit song (Thank you, Dodge!) fittingly titled “Llano Estacado.” Gary P. Nunn wrote an anthem to the area called “Home with the Armadillo,” (aka “London Homesick Blues”) with a line about “Country music from Amarillo and Abilene.” Pride in this area is as common as going to your high school’s football games in the fall.
What was missing, however, were stories that showed the complexity of the people who live here. Outsiders try to pigeonhole Llano residents as simple, uncomplicated (read “ignorant”) oilfield workers, farmers, and cowboys leading simple, uncomplicated lives.
Those of us who live here know better. When I decided to include “novelist” in my job title (along with freelance writer, ghostwriter, and writing coach,) I aimed at writing a series of novels that illustrate a) the personalities of the people who call the Llano Estacado home, and b) the crazy situations that normal people find themselves in, All. The. Time.
And so I created a new genre, the “Llano Estacado Crime Novel.”
That move is an enormous leap of faith, based on my burning desire to tell stories and my pride in living on the west Texas prairie. Folks who live here will hopefully feel a sense of familiarity with the characters and settings, even though they’re all fictional. And if I do my job as a storyteller at least half competently – pretty much the highest standard I can hope for – locals as well as those who live elsewhere will enjoy the stories.
Stay tuned for my next novel, DEAD WAIT, scheduled for publication this summer.
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