Page 79 - The Westerner Magazine Halloween 2018
P. 79
Writing Cimarron these stories will be set in a saloon. So my
initial aim was to come up with a setting that
Jack’s Real Wild readers might not immediately expect, and
West: A Novel the first idea that popped into my mind was
some sort of trick-shooting act in a Wild
West show. That’s what I ran with in my
short story contribution, Pride of the Prairie.
(As it turns out, the 52 contributing authors
were a whole lot more creative than I had
given them credit for, and they set their
stories in a wide variety of places and
situations. My sincerest apologies, fellow
writers, for the heretofore-unconfessed
slight.)
I had a great deal of fun writing the 500-
word micro-short Pride of the Prairie, and
my wife absolutely loved the story. Now,
GP Hutchinson just because she’s married to me doesn’t
necessarily mean my wife is automatically
crazy about any and everything I write. I
A Full-Length Novel from an 18-Word appreciate her being frank with me about
Prompt what she likes and doesn’t like. You as
readers certainly benefit from her early
Back in January, popular author Scott Harris feedback. Anyway, her enthusiasm about the
invited 51 other published Western writers short story made the next step a no-brainer
to join him in an exciting, visionary project. for me—Pride of the Prairie had to be
Each author would take the exact same 18- expanded into a full-length novel. And that’s
word prompt, and around that prompt, craft how Cimarron Jack’s Real Wild West was
a Western short story of precisely 500 words born.
(not 499 and not 501). The result was the
celebrated anthology The Shot Rang Out— From the short story, I already had three
52 Western short stories that each principle characters—Cimarron Jack
incorporated the lines: “The shot rang out. I Wheatley, the relatively young owner of the
heard her scream at the same time the bottle Wild West extravaganza; the lovely Miss
crashed to the floor.” Adelia Flynn, the show’s sharpshooting top
star; and Comanche Joe Tucker, a Native
When Scott Harris graciously invited me to American with keen tomahawk-throwing
contribute to the compilation, I thought, skills. The task ahead of me was to expand
Given the prompt, I’ll bet a good number of
