The Wild Wild West
Recently I have had the urge to reread some of the stories of Louis L’Amour. I’ve slowly collected almost an entire library of his short stories. I thoroughly enjoy his writing. He gives a detailed description of places and people that puts my imagination into the stories. The other thing that draws me to his writing is he often uses wonderful turns of phrases that thoroughly describe a situation, that are so enticing it makes me wish I’d have said it before him.
I’ve read that Mr. L’Amour lived in many of the areas that he writes about, including the tales of a sailor at sea aboard ships in the South Pacific and as a detective in the hills of California. His ability to share his knowledge of the West and other areas of life staggers me. He makes me envious of his skills.
I find it easier for me to write short stories having difficulty to stretch a story into a book. That may be why my first four books are composed of short stories. Many of the core characters are the same, but each chapter is a mystery. Tommy Minerd is the main character in all of them. He is a retired homicide detective from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Because he’s retired, he cannot “solve crimes,” but can be involved in solving mysteries. My editor said that my writings are cozy mysteries, because I don’t include a lot of bloodshed or violence. In several of my first books I used a few curse words, because criminals don’t say, “Oh, golly gee” or “Rats.” I learned to use less and less of them in each consecutive book.
In one of my stories I wrote to be in a collection of tales for a fund raiser was about a gambler who escaped the wrath of a casino owner by riding a ship along the Newfoundland and Labrador Coast. He figured it would be the last place the angry husband of the woman with whom he had a dalliance. I relied on my trip there, remembering the sights when I traveled to Nain on the ship named “The Northern Ranger.”
It was an attempt to write like Louis L’Amour. I wrote to share what I’d seen on the trip with others, but what I got from my peers was that I should write travel brochures. Eventually, I needed to eliminate one lovely old lady. The other writers felt that her part describing an interlude had no direct bearing on the story