Review: Storyteller: Helpful Hints and Tall Tales From the Writing Life - Carlton Stowers

I first met Carlton Stowers many years ago at one of the mass autograph parties TCU Press used to sponsor every December. The idea was that they would gather twenty or thirty local authors in one place, and people could come and buy signed books to give as Christmas presents. The events were usually held at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens in those days. It seemed like they sold quite a few books, but for me, the real appeal was the chance to see old friends I didn’t run into in person that often—Elmer Kelton, Jory Sherman, Kerry Newcomb, G. Clifton Wisler—and to make new friends such as, well, Carlton Stowers.

I knew who Carlton Stowers was before that. I’d seen the name many times and knew he was an Edgar Award-winning author of true crime books. I believe he was acquainted with Bill Crider, too, and I’d heard Bill speak of him. But I didn’t read true crime books so I’d never sampled his work. However, when we were introduced and I spent some time talking to the guy, we were friends right away. His interests ranged ‘way beyond true crime, and I remember telling him one time, after he’d spun a great yarn about a distant relative of his who’d ridden with Pancho Villa, “You really need to be writing fiction. You’d be great at it.”

Eventually he did, but we’ll get to that.

For several years, Stowers attended the annual Howard Days get-together in Cross Plains with his friend and literary agent Jim Donovan (a fine writer his own self), and we had lengthy, hugely enjoyable conversations about everything under the sun, as they say. I haven’t been able to make it to Cross Plains for several years now, and those conversations with Carlton are among the things I really miss. Maybe one of these days.

So, to the point of this review, last year TCU Press published STORYTELLER: HELPFUL HINTS AND TALL TALES FROM THE WRITING LIFE. It’s part memoir, part how-to book, and it’s full of entertaining stories about Stowers’ life and his varied careers as a sports reporter, columnist, feature writer, ghostwriter for sports and entertainment figures, and of course, his award-winning years as an author of true crime books. I said above that I didn’t read true crime, and I still don’t, but I swear, I really need to read Carlton’s books because I know they must be well-written and compelling. Mixed in with these reminiscences are plenty of useful, practical tips about writing non-fiction of all sorts.

There’s also a section about Stowers’ career as a Western novelist. He’s written six novels so far, and they’re all excellent. I hope he does more. In the meantime, and until I get around to reading some of those true crime books, I’m very glad to have read STORYTELLER. It’s a superb book about the writing life, and if that interests you, I give it my highest recommendation. You can find it in trade paperback on Amazon.

The Wrap Up

READING

I read 127 books this year, a small increase from last year's 116. 77 of them were e-books, so while that makes up the majority of my reading, I still read quite a few print books, too, and I expect that rough split to continue. 33 of the 127 were review copies. I wasn't able to review all the books that were sent to me, but I read and blogged about as many of them as I could and I'm sure some of the others will show up on the blog in the future. 21 of the 127 were books that I edited and published. In looking through the list, I noticed that I didn't read any books published in 2015 by the so-called Big Five. The only new books I read from traditional publishers came from Kensington and Baen, companies that have distribution deals with the Big Five but are independently owned, and there were only a few of those. Everything else I read was either small press, self-published, or decades old. This wasn't intentional. I'm certainly not boycotting the Big Five. But it's an unavoidable fact that they're publishing less and less that I want to take the time to read these days, while there's so much good stuff coming out from those other sources that I couldn't even hope to keep up with it. The important thing to me is that I don't think I'll ever run out of good books to read.

Which brings us to my top ten favorites of the books I read this year, in alphabetical order by author:

LIE CATCHERS, Paul Bishop

THE CRIME OF OUR LIVES, Lawrence Block

THE SHOTGUN RIDER, Peter Brandvold

TARZAN THE TERRIBLE, Edgar Rice Burroughs

THE BIG DRIFT, Patrick Dearen

101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS, Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers

FIRE WITH FIRE, Charles E. Gannon

TURN ON THE HEAT, A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

RIVER RANGE, L.P. Holmes

WAITING FOR A COMET, Richard Prosch

My short list had 17 books on it, and I could have added another dozen or more that were pretty close. So it wasn't easy getting this list down to 10, but there they are, for what it's worth.

WRITING

As those of you who have read yesterday's post are aware, I wrote just over a million words this year, the 11^th consecutive year I've reached that mark. That breaks down to 12 novels and 7 shorter pieces of fiction, most of them novelette or novella length. Right now my plan is write at least that much in 2016. I'll need to if I'm going to keep up with the projects I've committed to do. It's a lot of hard work, but I'm still having fun so I don't see any reason to stop now.

PUBLISHING

Rough Edges Press continues to occupy a significant portion of my time. With plenty of invaluable technical help from Livia, along with some great covers, REP brought out 9 books in the Blaze! Adult Western series, along with a number of reprints and originals from Stephen Mertz, Ed Gorman, John Hegenberger, James J. Griffin, and David Hardy. We published three original anthologies, the two WEIRD MENACE volumes and the Alternate History anthology TALES FROM THE OTHERVERSE. The Blaze! series will continue in 2016, along with a full slate of original and reprint novels and collections, and we'll also have a big science fiction anthology next summer, if all goes according to plan. More details on that later. UPDATE: I added a picture of all the books REP published in 2015 to the top of the post.

So you can see there's plenty going on to keep me busy. I guess I stay out of trouble that way. Many thanks to those of you who have stuck with the blog for another year. I'll be around.

101 Essential Texas Books - Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers

101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS is itself an essential book about Texas. Written by Glenn Dromgoole, whose newspaper columns I used to read when he worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and my buddy Carlton Stowers, this volume discusses not just the 101 books of the title but many others as well that cover Texas from one end to the other—and that's quite a stretch. Fiction, literature, biographies, politics, oil and cattle, law and order, sports, food and drink, books for young readers, they're all here, with the added bonus that Dromgoole and Stowers set out to write only about books that are currently in print, so if anything here really catches your interest, you can easily pick up a copy and read it.

On a personal level, the authors covered include a number of friends past and present such as Elmer Kelton, Bill Crider, Joe Lansdale, Neal Barrett Jr., James Donovan, Sandra Brown, and Jeff Guinn. The foreword is by James Ward Lee.

The brief discussions of the books cited (a page or two each) really whetted my appetite to read some of the ones I'd never heard of, as well as books that I've known about for years but never gotten around to reading. I'd really like to start reading more non-fiction, and there's plenty in here to delve into. My only quibble, and it's a slight one, is that the authors didn't include any of their own excellent books, but I suppose I can understand that. If you have any interest at all in Texas literature, 101 ESSENTIAL TEXAS BOOKS is a great introduction to the subject, while at the same time being a very entertaining volume in its own right. Highly recommended.

Comanche Trail - Carlton Stowers

I've known Carlton Stowers for many years. He's a journalist, an award-winning, bestselling author of true crime books, a collaborator on a number of celebrity autobiographies, and in recent years has written several critically acclaimed volumes of historical non-fiction about small-town Texas, often sports-related. He's also a great yarn-spinner in person, and I've told him many times that he ought to be writing novels. A while back he contributed a chapter to NOAH'S RIDE, the round-robin Western novel published by TCU Press, which further convinced me he ought to try his hand at fiction.

Now, Stowers has written his first full-length novel, the recently released COMANCHE TRAIL, published by Signet as part of the Ralph Compton series. Given his background in true crime and non-fiction, it makes sense that Stowers would use the real-life case of the Bloody Benders as the jumping-off point for his story. The Bender family operated a small tavern and inn in Kansas, but their real business was robbing and murdering unwary travelers. They're sometimes referred to as America's first serial killers. They weren't—I think that dubious honor goes to the Harpe brothers—but that doesn't really matter here.

A shiftless young man named Thad Taylor, who spends a lot of his time drinking and getting thrown in jail, winds up connected by tragedy to the Benders. When the family's gruesome crimes are discovered, they go on the run. History doesn't record what happened to them, but Stowers offers the reader one possible scenario, as Thad Taylor sets out after them on a vengeance quest that will take him from Kansas through Indian Territory and deep into Texas. Along the way he makes a friend—a great character named Tater Barclay—fights Indians, outlaws, and hired killers, and finds romance. It's a great example of a personal story that becomes epic in scope.

Stowers' terse, hardboiled prose fits very well with a story that's as grim and gritty as they come, and his plot takes some unexpected twists along the way. There are also some welcome moments of humor here and there, and Thad and Tater are about as likable a pair of heroes as you're ever likely to find. COMANCHE TRAIL is top-notch Western entertainment, and I hope we can look forward to more Carlton Stowers novels in the future.