An interview with Jake, alias Clayton, Tyler and Hank
RIDING THE LONG, LONG TRAIL

Keith Hetherington

Australian Keith James Hetherington's writing career spans more than five decades.

He has written commercial fiction — short and novel length — in most categories, radio plays, and scripts for television. Today, he is one of the brightest stars in the Black Horse Western sky. Nearly every month you can find one of his books on the Robert Hale Ltd list. Occasionally there are two!

"Hetherington? I see no Hetherington," someone mutters. And you won't. For BHWs, Keith uses four pen-names: Jake Douglas, Clayton Nash, Tyler Hatch and Hank J. Kirby (the Madigan series). His prodigious output makes most of his colleagues look like slow coaches, and his superbly crafted westerns contain the lessons of experience.

Keith started writing stories young, when he was about 12 years old. This was during the Second World War and he used to make up small books, cut from exercise books. In those distant days, "cut and paste" had nothing to do with the then non-existent home computer.

He says, "To illustrate the stories — war yarns mostly — I hacked pictures out of a magazine of the time called Victory. Played around with that sort of thing for a few years. . . ."

But Keith was soon an adult and found himself working at a chemical factory in Brisbane. "One day I filled my boot with boiling water. When I took off the sock, the skin came, too. I had a week off and bought a book of locally published western stories. Coincidentally, this was put out by Leisure Westerns, at that time owned by a Harold Edwards, who wrote much of the content."

One of the stories was called Jailbreak Justice. Just as many another aspiring writer has done, Keith thought, "Hell, I can write as good as that!"

Off his feet and with time on his hands, Keith wrote a story called The Texan. "Yeah, I know — very original."

The story ran to about ten pages in an exercise book. Once it was finished, he thought why not send it away? The submission was made, but nothing heard for a couple of months.

"Then one day a cheque for the handsome sum of six pounds fifteen shillings arrived with a request for more stories — and I was a writer! Over the moon, I kept a string of short stories going."

The Edwards company was later purchased by Jack Atkins who turned it into Cleveland Publishing Co, which became well-known for its popular short novels. These were saddlestiched and digest-sized, and marketed through the magazine trade.

"Cleveland took over, asked for some crime yarns as well, and it went on from there. They eventually asked for regular contributions, one a month, then they began publishing 15,000 and later 48,000 word novelettes and I got into that. When I wanted something, like a motorbike or a trip to England, I'd write like hell and save the same way, until I had enough, then ease off.

"I soon realized I could make more writing at my fast rate than I could working for a boss. I took the plunge just before I got married in 1957 and began churning them out: westerns, a couple of Larry Kent crime thillers, and the Carl Dekker series, which was about a world-weary adventurer, each yarn set in a different city or country."

Markets abounded. Keith also wrote short stories that separated pin-ups in Man magazine and the digest-sized Pocket Man, and for a similar New Zealand magazine called Stag.

During the 1960s a boys' adventure book, Scuba Buccaneers by James Keith, was published by Angus and Robertson in Australia, and during the '70s, two Keith Conway thrillers were published as hardcovers by Hale in Britain: Naked Nemesis and Hammerhead Reef. "One of the thrillers went to paperback but I didn't find out for something like 14 years when I picked up a copy at a book exchange," Keith says."I'd forgotten to notify Hale's of change of address — change of state, actually — so they wouldn't pay me interest on the fees due!"

Earlier, Keith had taken a job as a journalist in the Queensland Health Department. "This involved writing short radio plays as well as articles. I became editor, and a Yank who worked for me went to work for the television series maker Crawford Productions in Melbourne. He kept pestering me to write for TV. There was big money there at the time, so I gave it a go. When I got tired of flying back and forth between Melbourne and Brisbane at weekends for editing of scripts, I moved to Melbourne in 1971 and got to work for Crawfords full-time — though I worked as a freelance from home."

By late 1975, most of the Crawford cop shows had been axed and this phase in Keith's career ended. "I'd worked night-time for Cleveland before going to Crawfords, and now went back to that. I did a western a month as well a few yarns for Penthouse and Treasure Hunting mags."

The name under which he was best known for his Cleveland westerns was probably Kirk Hamilton. Other pen-names were Brett Waring and Clint McCall. The company eventually sold some of the Hamilton books for reissue by Nordon Publications of New York, publishers before Dorchester of the paperback series, Leisure Books. The books were presented in the United States as doubles, giving readers two complete novels for the price of one.

Thus The 12:10 From San Antone was bound with Only the Swift, and Rio Renegade with Bullet for Bannerman. American readers have also enjoyed the more readily available, Ulverscroft large-print editions of Hetherington BHWs. James Reasoner, himself a very experienced and versatile writer of commercial fiction, came across the Jake Douglas title, Quick On the Trigger. He said, "I think it's the first Hetherington book I've read, and I thought it was very good; had a nice, hardboiled feel to it." During the '80s two more hardback thrillers were written under Keith's real name for Hale. These were Judas Coast (a title echoed in his later Douglas BHW/Linford Judas Pass) and A Dragon Out of the South. Both thrillers went into paperback and large-print editions.

"Also, for Cleveland, I did Warhawks, a series on mercenaries — as in soldiers of fortune, that is, not the current run of finance 'experts'. I wrote ten books. Les Atkins, the son of Jack, published six but said they weren't selling, although I'd had some pretty good feedback. But that's the way it goes in the paperback trade, I guess." Cleveland bought the books outright — "just didn't publish all of them, as far as I know, but it means they own them lock, stock and smokin' barrel. Unfortunately, they'd be way out of date now as far as weaponry and combat situations are concerned." Along the way, Keith spent a year or so wandering trails overseas — Egypt, Italy, Spain, France, and a long time in the United Kingdom.

"Writing for Cleveland went on for years, till they had a surfeit of my yarns — that was around 1990, I think. By then I'd written about 500 books. The total must now be approaching or passing 600. "I did some freelancing, then started corresponding with BHW writer Dave Whitehead and he more or less talked me into giving Hale's a go — and that's where we are right now." Keith's first BHW, Loner from Laramie by Jake Douglas, appeared in August 1995. July 2005 saw publication of 'Lucky' Montana by Clayton Nash. This month, it will be the turn of Jake Douglas with Law at American River and in December will come Cheyenne Gallows by Tyler Hatch and Rogue's Range by Clayton Nash.

Westerns under the Hetherington bylines are routinely reissued in the Ulverscroft large-print series, Linford and Magna Dales.

Like many professional writers of long experience, Keith doesn't "really want to get into" the "how do you write?" question. Maybe that's for the greenhorns! But he is a firm believer in avoiding gaffes, so research is important to him.

"I hate to read a western and come across a modern saying, or find a guy using a gun that wasn't on the market for another ten or twenty years. I try to avoid those things myself, but no doubt inadvertently fall by the wayside now and again. I've always been interested in weapons, especially firearms, and have been a sporting shooter since the early 1960s, though most of it is done from an armchair these days . . . I've plenty of good tomes on firearms and use them. Same with Spanish lingo for authenticity in westerns located south of the Border. I'm an archer also, and you might find the occasional bit of bow-and-arrow lore dropped into a cowboy yarn."

Today, like writing folk everywhere, Keith isn't enamoured of the mundane side of life. "But I guess I can take it in my stride like every other fellow. I often think back to my early teens when I was dead keen to find an island of my own and build a house and live the life of Riley. Just a dream, but I'm still a sucker for tropical islands and waving palms. I've always liked sharks, too, and my wife says it's all part of the same syndrome: I was a shark in another incarnation, and that's why I love the sea so much."

Keith apologises for "waffling on", as he calls it.

"Have a final shootout awaiting me in the latest epic, so better go face down this villain and hope my hero walks away from the deal. Adios . . . and keep in touch."