I love to write western novels. I grew up reading Louis L’Amour and had the great pleasure of getting my first western fiction story publishing in a California publication, Far West, and being featured on the front page with L’Amour. I’ve gone on to write several western fiction books and stories, the latest being Bloody Wes Teague. This is the story of a man who was a lawman and who is now a rancher. He is confronted with an issue as old as mankind. Teague finds the lines blurred between vengeance and justice.

It is a love story, the story of a man and woman who fall in love and return to Wyoming to live out their lives together. But, their love story turns tragic and suddenly, they are both thrown into a whirlwind of violence and they struggle to survive.

It was an interesting book in a lot of ways. It didn’t start out to be a love story, but began with a romance between a man and woman. However, the love between them becomes  the driving force behind their survival. I loved doing the book.

Beginning a western is always easy. I like taking a strong character and placing him in a scene and “watching” him act out his role. In this story, my character literally took over the story. He took it in directions I had not planned and to an ending that I had not intended. I know that I have a great character when he or she does something like that. It means they are developed early and such that they have a reality that compels the writer to let them act according to his or her character traits.

I wanted the character to become a Christian by the end of the novel…but he didn’t. It just would not work. There was some serious thought on the subject of God and His will, but in the end, the main character remains ambivalent.