Andrea Hughes interviews western Author JORY SHERMAN

Jory Sherman

AH: Firstly, thank you for taking time out to do this interview with us.

JS: You’re welcome, Andrea. But, I’m wondering about that adverb you used at the beginning of your sentence. I regard adverbs in my writing almost as I do rattlesnakes and try to avoid them. Adverbs rob a writer of his or her descriptive powers. Not poisonous, maybe, but predatory.

AH: I'll bear that in mind! You have a fascinating story about how you became interested in writing. Can you tell us a bit about this?

JS: I began to write very early. My sister Kay and I learned to read before we attended kindergarten. I think we both started reading when we were four or five years old. And, our house was full of books. But I never thought of becoming a professional writer until I got out of the Navy when I was not yet 21. I had no education beyond high school since I joined when I was just barely 17. The first thing I bought was a typewriter, but I didn’t know how to create characters or dialogue and I did not know how to plot. Others recognized my ability long before I did. 

I was a manic-depressive, in a special ward at Ft. Miley Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco. My therapists asked to tape my sessions in psychotherapy. Then, after a time, they asked me if I would like to get out of going to Occupational Therapy, where I made belts and wallets, and I said I’d kill to get out of it. My psychotherapist offered me a private office, a typewriter and reams of blank paper. That’s when I began to write, without any knowledge or direction. I wrote poetry, not prose. It just poured out of me. None of it was publishable, but it started me on my journey to become a writer.

AH: I think a fact few people know about you was that you were part of the “Beat movement”, with Jack Kerouac in the 1960s. This must have been a fascinating experience. Can you tell me how this influenced your writing, and what it did for you personally?

JS: To those of us who lived in North Beach during the late 50s and early 60s there was no beat movement. To us, beat was a shortened form of beatitude and many of us published our poetry in a magazine called Beatitude. Then, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who owned City Lights book store created a quote by Jack Kerouac which paraphrased Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, “You are all a lost generation.” Lawrence’s quote was “you’re all a beat generation.”

Jack Kerouac

It was a joke, but it caught on with newspaper columnist Herb Caen, and went international. It was a great time of my life, living in that small section of San Francisco. It was a crossroads and meeting place for many of the greatest minds of our generation, as Allen Ginsberg put it in his poem Howl. The poet was king and you could eat lunch at Eric Nord’s Co-existence Bagel Shoppe for free if you were a published poet. You would be served a beer and a great sandwich. I ate lunch there every day because my wife and I were poor, at first. It’s a long story, but that experience was the greatest of my life and I owe a great deal to everyone I met during those halcyon days.

AH: Another fact people may be surprised about is that you are blind, and became blind quite late in life. How did this have an affect on your writing, and how do you cope with the practicalities of reading/writing?

JS:  I am legally blind, as opposed to being illegally blind. Both of my retinas disintegrated, leaving large holes in my eyes. It was not, as people think, macular degeneration. My right eye went first, over a period of days and a year later the left eye developed a hole. I spent a year on the Missouri program, seeing opthalmologists and learning to cope with poor vision, but a steadily declining one. 

My wife Charlotte and I were doing a lot of book tours across Texas and we finally sold our home in Forsyth, Missouri and just lived in trailers and motorhomes on the road. I spent a year with the Texas Commission for the Blind. They sent a delightful woman out once a week who taught me to use the red and white cane. I learned to fold paper money a certain way depending on a bill’s value. They sent us to the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Antonio where I met with computer technicians who tested me on several monitors, and a couple of magnification programs. 

I learned that only a 19 inch screen would work for me and I use a program called MAGIC developed by Freedom Scientific. This program allows me to see the icons and labels on my screen. When I write I elevate the typeface to 14 pt. Bold, because, even with magnification, I have difficulty seeing skinny letters like ls and ts and is, punctuation marks, etc. 

I had 3 eye operations at LSU (Louisiana State University) hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. That was a horrible and painful experience and my eyesight kept diminishing until I was no longer able to drive, even with special glasses. I have 6 pairs of glasses, each for a different purpose. I use a pair for the computer, and these have tinted lenses. In order to read, I must use a halogen lamp, special reading glasses and a magnifying glass. So, I no longer read except to do research and can only last about 10 minutes with a book or paper. I subscribe to Audible.com and get 2 books a month, which I listen to on an MP3 player.

The blindness did not seem to affect my ability to write. I no longer need to turn on the lights in my office. I have learned to adjust and be more careful when I walk since I can only see about 3 inches. I have developed an inner vision that is more powerful than sight and I am grateful for this gift. My imagination was always pretty sound, but now it is boundless. I always loved radio drama and wrote for radio while I was in the Navy. Later I wrote a series of audio dramas on youth and drugs, alcohol, which were very successful. When I write, I think visually, so going blind was no big deal. I think of my blindness as a gift, a wondrous gift.

AH: I have read a number of your books now and you have a very distinct writing style with great descriptive technique.  Can you tell me how you developed this?

JS: I used to have a quote by Joseph Conrad on a wall where I wrote. That quote was my guidance system when I wrote novels and short stories. I don’t remember all of  it, but he said something like, “My job is to make you see, feel, and hear….” That part of the quote has stayed with me. 

I put myself in every story. I pay attention to small details that can make a scene believable, and I try to paint vivid pictures with words. I love language and the English language is the richest in the world. So, I have all those colors to use and I try to make the reader feel and see what I am seeing and feeling in my mind as I write. I don’t think it’s any particular style, it’s just the way I “see” and write using language.  Language is our greatest gift, as writers. To me, it’s boundless and magical.

AH: You are renowned as one of America’s best western writers. Can you tell me what attracted you to the western genre?

JS:  Fate brought me to the western. My father’s aunt was B.M. Bower, who wrote westerns under that name. He was very proud of her and we had all of her books, which he read to us. I had been corresponding with Louis L’Amour while I was living in Ensenada, Baja California, but had never thought about writing westerns.

I was writing adventure novels. One day I was sitting in the office of the editor of Major Books, talking with her boss, my friend Harold Straubing. The art director, Wil Hulsey, came into the office holding up a cover for a western novel called GUN FOR HIRE. I had worked with Wil when I was a magazine editor and he painted a lot of the illustrations I used for the stories I bought. He had painted this one, which showed a lone gunfighter on a vacant western street. He asked Harold what he should do, since the writer under contract had gotten a block and said he would never write again. 

I laughed and jokingly said that I could write a novel just from looking at Wil’s cover. The others laughed too. I went back to my home in Big Bear Lake and forgot all about it. About 2 weeks later, the editor, whose name I can’t recall, called me and asked me if I could write GUN FOR HIRE in 3 weeks if she sent me the cover. I said yes. She sent the cover and I went down to a friend’s homesteaded cabin in Antelope Valley where I often retreated to write. It was a lonely, desolate place, no people. 

My friend never stayed there again since he said he almost went nuts there. I finished the book in 2 weeks. It originally sold for 50 cents, then went into other printings, with higher cover prices, 75 cents, 95 cents, 1.25. It went through many printings and I did well with it. I sent a proposal to Zebra featuring a character named Gunn. We were living in Apple Valley when Leslie Gelbman, the editor, called me and asked if I could make a series out of Gunn. I said I could. Then, she said, “I mean an adult western series.” I said I had no objection except that putting in sex scenes would slow down the action. She said, “I thought that was the action.” 

So, that was my first series and it sold very well, became a big hit in Germany and other countries. Many noted writers were writing adult westerns under pseudonyms and I said I wasn’t going to hide behind a pseudonym. The adult western actually saved the genre which had gone into decline. That was how I got into writing westerns. 

AH: What western projects are you working on at the moment? 

JS:  I have some proposals written, and one series hanging fire at Berkley.  I have another series planned that no publisher has seen yet, and I have several more which I would love to write, but no publisher is interested in western material these days.  So, I’m onto other fields.  The last few series I’ve written, for Berkley, Pocket Books, Harper Collins, have all either faded away after 3 books or gone down after the first one (Pocket).

AH : I have read quite a few interviews with authors that quote you as being one of their greatest influences. Who would you say influenced you in developing your writing career?

JS: I began as a poet. But, before I began to write I did not know any writers. In San Francisco, of course, I met a number of writers who became friends, Richard Brautigan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Duncan, Bob Kaufman, Leslie Woolf Hedley, Charles Bukowski, Frank Herbert, and many others. My earliest influence was James Joyce. I read ULYSSES when I was 10 years old, and had read it 15 times by the time I was 15. Again, it was his dexterity with language that attracted me. I can’t say that any of the writers I met and got to know influenced the way I wrote, but all were inspirations. I’ve gone my own way, but no doubt my writing was influenced by many of the writers I have known and admired over the years, writers like Loren D. Estleman, Richard S. Wheeler, Elmer Kelton, James Lee Burke, Louis L’Amour and others too numerous to mention.

AH: I know you see teaching as a very important part of your writing career. You also view your Story a month for $5 as a vital part of your teaching. Can you tell us about this scheme and how you see it helping writers to develop their skills? I have signed up for this myself and find it to be very helpful.

JS:  I do enjoy teaching and I have distilled the learning curve for new writers into a fresh streamlined course. I do a great deal of critiquing and mentoring. The Story A Month grew out of a workshop I conducted with 24 beginning writers, ranging in age from 13 to 84. We each began and finished a short story during the 4 week, 10 hour workshop. All of the stories were publishable. I wrote 2 stories and got the idea of writing a story a month from Bruce Holland Rogers, who offered 3 short shorts a month for $ 5.00 per year. He has since raised his price to $10.00 a year, and it’s still a bargain.  I’ve done this for 2 years but will not do it for another year.  It is very difficult to write a new story every month and concentrate on the novels. I’ll continue to write short stories of course, but I no longer want the pressure of a monthly deadline.

AH: The western has undergone a minor renaissance recently, with films like 3:10 to Yuma.I know it is a question often asked, but how do you see the future of the western genre?

JS:  I haven’t found a connection between western movies and a jump in sales for western novels. Some writers get excited when Hollywood produces a new western film, hoping that audiences will come to the bookstores and buy their novels. 3:10 to Yuma was a remake of an Elmore Leonard story, originally starring Glenn Ford. It was a gripping tale then and the remake is even better. 

The western novel once had the reputation of never losing money for the publishers. The book were not big sellers, necessarily, but they paid their way. Now, that is not the case. Many of the novels published today do not earn back their initial advance and soon go into the remainder bins. The demographics for western readers indicates that the readership consists of males between the ages of 49 and 80, so the readership is dying off at an alarming rate. 

The publishers failed to court the younger and the female readership, so the western is relegated to the small back shelves of bookstores. Out of sight, out of mind. My own feeling is that women and young adults have missed great reading experiences over the past 20 years or so. We have some really great writers in the western genre. But, the western will never die, just as the West will live on. The western is our native American literature, born and raised in the United States. Its allure has spread to England and Germany and Australia, even to Sweden, South America.

The West has assumed mythical proportions and the writers of today may look forward to a renaissance one of these days. It will not be because of movies, but because the West holds an enchantment and, as the world moves faster and is in the throes of destroying itself, those old times and values will once again return to the forefront of man’s consciousness. Man has always looked to the West for his inspiration and his search for a perfect world. Civilization began in Sumer, in the Tigris and Euphrates valley, now a war-torn hell-hole. Man headed westward, always, to the sea and beyond, into space. That is why the Western is so deeply embedded in our subconscious. The West is where mankind has always gone, and where he will end up and survive.

AH: Finally - sorry! - as you know, this website is dedicated to the Black Horse western, which has its own accomplished authors, and several beginners. What advice would you give to those just starting out in their writing, and secondly to those newly published authors who are seeking to improve their writing?

JS:  Black Horse Westerns are a sign of hope, a beacon in the wasteland of publishing. Very encouraging, I would say. If you look at the history of westerns, the writers of today are competing with the dead writers who came before. And, perhaps, this will always be so. We read Zane Grey, Owen Wister, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour. Their books are right alongside ours on the stands. 

The new writers would do well to read the old masters, and there are a great many of them, to learn how to depict a West that has largely vanished, look into the characters portrayed in fiction and find their counterparts in today’s fictional world. The West is still alive, it still exists. If one were to drive down those back roads, those old ranch roads, you will see the same people who ventured westward in the 18^th and 19ths centuries. I’ve met them, talked to them, ridden with them, hunted with them. A myth, after all, is only a smokescreen hiding real events, real worlds, a scrim in front of a stage full of people and life. 

The story of the West will never be fully told. Its riches are there for every new writer who seeks to mine that stretch of territory. I consider myself lucky in that I have been paid to go back to those olden days and find people my father and my grandpa knew. The western novel has served to protect and keep alive this rich heritage that is the American West, its native peoples and the pioneers. The western has served to portray the ignorance and cruelty of the settlers, as well as those who bucked the tide, scratched the ground for their livelihoods and lived the Golden Rule. So, the new writer may well find new trails to explore and keep this great myth alive until  the end of time.

AH: Thank you, Jory.