An interview with Charles Whipple
CONDUCTED BY MEMBERS OF THE BLACK HORSE DISCUSSION GROUP

Charles Whipple

BHDG: Welcome, Charlie, and thanks for agreeing to do this interview.

Thanks for the opportunity. I've posted an extract from my 4^th Black Horse Western GUNS OF PONDEROSA which will be out in March 2010.

Tough crowd, those Cahills. Who's going to stand up to them?

Along comes a tough town-tamer by the name of Matt Stryker. And a man called Breed who ain't exactly what he seems to be.

How did you choose Chuck Tyrell as your pen-name?

It's comes from my full name of Charles Tyrell Whipple.

What persuaded you to write westerns and who were your influences?

The first western I wrote was for a Louis L'Amour write-alike contest in 1979. I didn't win. The MS went into the bottom drawer and I concentrated on advertising copy, corporate literature, and the odd magazine article. I read lots of westerns. Had all L.L.'s books. Loved other authors like Gordon Sherriffs and Clair Huffaker.

What made you pick Hale (Black Horse Westerns)?

After the turn of the century I dusted off the old MS and sent it to Black Horse Westerns. Mr. Hale told me he liked the story but it was too long, and informed me of the word count.

I spent several months editing the manuscript before sending it to Hale again. This time it passed and became my first BHW, VENTURE GOLD. I wrote a sequel, REVENGE AT WOLF MOUNTAIN, which was also accepted, and a third "Havelock" novel in which the younger brother was the protagonist. GUNS OF PONDEROSA, written before and after my ill-fated solo circumnavigation, features new people and places, and THE KILLING TRAIL is the first of my BHWs to use Longhorn.

One thing I like about your writing is the terrain, flora and fauna. Does this come from personal knowledge or do you research?

Mostly I write about Northeast Arizona where I grew up. I have a book of flora and fauna of the various geographical strata of Arizona and just across the border into New Mexico it's about the same. I went to the Mohave Desert before I did the final edit of VULTURE GOLD. The places, the mountains, the flora and fauna, are authentic, though some do not exist today. For historical information, I use Arizona Place Names, which also gives the reason why the names were given and changed, and when that happened.

How did you come by your encyclopaedic knowledge of the rest of the Old West?

Part of it is from living there as a child and young man. Part is from reading history books. Part is from being a lifetime member of what used to be called the National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History. Now it's called NOLA. I have a library of non-fiction books on the Civil War and the westward expansion, too. Several hundred books, most of which I have read (Haven't read Catton's nine-volume history of the Civil War yet.)

Is it harder to write the feel of the American West while living in a much different culture, like that in Japan?

In Japan, I'm just home. My western persona comes from my early years. I'm not a Western geek. I like the west, its history, and its stories. I'm not a collector of memorabilia or someone who centres his entire life around western stuff. In a way, that puts me at a disadvantage re people like Elmer Kelton, Johnny Boggs, WC Jameson, Win Blevins, Kirby Jonas, and some of the other authors who live in the west.

How hard is it to write amidst your recent world travelling?

I didn't write westerns in New Zealand. My days were filled with boat-building.

Can you give us an insight into your working practices?

I answered that question in an earlier article:

Writing is a daily occupation. In late November, I finished my fourth novel. The event took place at Starbucks where I wrote most of the book. Each day at two o’clock, I drive to my local Starbucks, order a mocha or a hot chocolate and write novels for an hour. That usually results in about 500 more words to input on the laptop.

This novel is not my first coffee shop written one. Novel no.2 and novel no.3 were written at Mister Donut in Tokyo where coffee refills are free and endless. Nevertheless, about 500 words per sitting was the norm back then, too.

I write Western novels for Hale's BHW line. They are not long books, mostly about 45,000 words. But writing 500 words per Starbucks sitting gets me through a novel in three months. My little novels go fast. But even if you were writing a saga of 120,000 words, 500 a day would get you through the first draft in about eight months.

You don’t have to write your novels at Starbucks. In fact, you don’t have to do it over a cup of coffee. What you must have is the end of the novel – how the conflict that opens the book is going to be resolved. Once that is firm in your mind, you can write 500 words a day and finish a novel in a few months.

In a word, how do you write a novel? One, come up with a conflict. Two, decide how the conflict will be resolved. Three, write the action that goes between introduction of the conflict and its resolution at the rate of 500 words a day. Starbucks is just one place at which this can be accomplished. Copy edit. Revise. Print out. Mail to publisher. That’s all there is to it.

Other than the start and the end, do you plan your novels?

I've written each of my novels in a different way. VULTURE GOLD was based on an actual robbery of the Vulture Mine bullion room. I used the two Mexicans who were involved and added a third character who was my antagonist. The protagonist, Garet Havelock, is fictitious. I used several historical characters and made sure the geography was right, but the story was all the pain and trouble the protagonist had to do to do this job and get the gold back. He also got the girl.

Second novel REVENGE AT WOLF MOUNTAIN continued with Garet Havelock and his new wife. She gets raped and ends up hiding away at a Spanish hacienda. Part of the story is how she copes. Part is how Garet finds the perp and how revenge is exacted. I knew the characters and the conflict and what I wanted as an ending. I didn't know that perp until about three fourths the way through the book so I had to go back and put in some hints. The revenge was also a surprise to me. Written in 500-word bursts.

Third novel, TRAIL OF A HARD MAN, is about Garet Havelock's brother Johannes, who is nicknamed Ness. A friend asks for help. He can't say No. Trouble leads to trouble. The baddies make off with his girl. A man comes after Ness for killing his three brothers. Ness finally gets the girl back and beings the baddie in to the sheriff. I had the character. I had the situation. Then I just added scene after scene until the book was finished. One rule. Ness always went out of his way to help others. In the end, his basic goodness saves him. Written in 500-word bursts.

Fourth novel, GUNS OF PONDEROSA. The first thing I wrote was the extract above. I didn't know who was going to go up against the Cahills. But I had the deputy Sam Brady and Prudence Comstock, a feisty would-be newspaper woman. I knew I wanted Sam and Prudence to get together at the end, but didn't know how. Along came Matt Stryker and his back-watcher John Hall. Big shootout at the end. Breed plays a big part then. Brady works up enough courage to ask Prudence to a dance. Written every day a little at a time.

Fifth novel, THE KILLING TRAIL. The story of a young man whose brothers were killed by a drifter, Jared Carter. He vows revenge and grows up to be a gunman. The more he chases Carter, the more he sees the good things Carter does. Slowly he and Carter end up on the same side, and when the final showdown comes, he goes out to face Carter with an empty gun.

Sixth novel, HELL FIRE IN PARADISE. Working on now. Laurel has lost everything but her land on Paradise Creek. An antagonist wants the land, not to build a home like Laurel would, but to log off the big trees and sell the lower sections to the railroad as right of way to its new spur into Ponderosa. This town, which I used in GUNS OF PONDEROSA, is based on a town called McNary, where Arizona's largest sawmill was located. Paradise Creek is an actual stream, and as a boy, I caught more than one trout from it. There are several places along the creek that could be Paradise Ranch. I'm writing away at the pace of about one chapter a week, but I've had quite a bit of other writing to do.

You've often said you admire the hard-boiled writing style. Could you please explain why.

I like authors like Raymond Chandler and Robert Parker. Sparse prose with wonderful details but no explanation of them. The writer assumes the reader knows without an explanation. That's the problem I have with JT Edson. Especially in his later writing he tends to give the reader lessons in Western lore. If I say a mule train driver ties his load on with a diamond hitch, I assume the reader will either know or find out what a diamond hitch is. I remember one book of Edson's in which Old Devil Hardin watched a pack train being loaded, detail after detail, for what seemed like 50 pages. I'd rather just get the pack train on the road.

What steps or mindset do you adopt when writing from the female perspective?

So far I've not done anything differently, except I try to understand what a woman would do in whatever situation the protagonist is thrust into. Not yet sure I've pulled it off well. So far I can't spot any differences between Sunny Randall, a PI from Robert Parker, and the protagonists of Sue Grafton's novels. It may be that I'm not perceptive enough.

You wrote a rape scene from the female perspective, so how do you divorce yourself from the male thought process?

I did quite a bit of research on the woman's perspective for the rape in REVENGE. I can't remember the name of the book on rape and its aftermath, but it was a first person account by a woman who was raped and who chronicled all the trauma the incident caused her. It's not something a woman just puts behind her. It stays there. It affects her daily life. That's why Garet's wife went into hiding.

Are there any themes or situations you wouldn't use in a western?

I don't think I could write Brokeback Mountain. I have a finished manuscript about the youngest inmate of Yuma Prison, the one they called a Hell Hole, but it deals with sexual abuse of the boy by the sergeant of the guard and so far that's too much for publishers. Can't think of much else I wouldn't write about, I guess.

Which of your books would you recommend to a new reader?

TRAIL OF A HARD MAN has the right combination of tough but good protagonist with a love interest, potential antagonist that ends up on the side of the protagonist, and a truly grungy sadistic amoral con-man antagonist. I feel it is a good read.

I like a love interest in my westerns (not so much that it becomes a romance western), do you?

Always. Sometimes its subtle. Sometimes it doesn't pan out. But always. In my books, for example, Garet proposes to Laura on the last page of VULTURE GOLD. In the sequel, Garet and Laura are married, but Garet's brother Ness gets involved with Rita Pilar, daughter of a wealthy Spanish/Mexican rancher. Then in TRAIL OF A HARD MAN, Ness returns to Saint Johns after running away from Rita (he thinks he's not good enough, not the right class, he is half Cherokee, by the way). She sets him straight, and he proposes in the last chapter.

In GUNS OF PONDEROSA, Deputy Sam Brady has a thing for Prudence Comstock. By the final chapter, he's gained enough self-confidence to ask her out. In THE KILLING TRAIL, the love interest is on the side, but there. Even Laurel Baker in HELL FIRE IN PARADISE finds a new family to take the place of the one she lost.

I like the good guy to be clearly defined, with honourable attributes. Do you prefer hero or anti-hero?

Hmmm. I've only written one with an anti-hero, as it were. And he has an overdeveloped sense of honour that keeps him from being a cold-blooded killer. That was Nat Dylan in THE KILLING TRAIL. All my heroes have problems. The heroes of my first three BHW were half-breed Cherokees. They have to go a long way to prove themselves.

The town-tamer Matt Stryker in GUNS OF PONDEROSA gets beaten to within an inch of his life. His face is hideously scarred. He's a hard marshal in a town taken over by the Cahill gang. The newspaper thinks he's too hard. But he teaches a young deputy how to go the extra mile. The reader, especially at first doesn't realize that this hardboiled story is really about Sam Brady and Prudence Comstock. Yeah, they're on the good side, but they suffer like the dickens for it.

Aside from novels, have you got a story in mind for the anthology Where Legends Ride #2?

Actually, I do. Not finished yet, but with the working title of Kid McCullough.

Thanks for an entertaining interview. I hope you enjoyed it.

I did. Sorry if my answers were not as timely as might have been. In and out all weekend and probably didn't spend enough time answering people, but it was enjoyable.

Your answers were informative and suitably hard-boiled.

If it's hardboiled, the yolk doesn't drip down the front of your shirt.

Next Interview 5 June - Terry James