WESTERN WORDSLINGERS
JOHNNY D. BOGGS
Johnny D.
Boggs is a writer’s writer. He is a professional wordslinger at the top of his
trade able to apply his exceptional craft to any literary form. Award winning
Western novels, short stories, non-fiction articles, young adult fiction, and
more are all within his oeuvre. Since becoming a full-time fiction writer he
has won four Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and a prestigious
Western Heritage Wrangler Award.
Born in 1962,
and growing up on a farm in Timmonsville, South Carolina, Boggs knew he wanted
to be a writer at an early age. He also showed an immediate affinity for the
business side of writing. Starting in the third grade, Boggs began writing his
own stories—featuring archetypical popular characters—and selling them to his
classmates. Unexpectedly, his profits outstripped picking peanuts, hanging
tobacco, odd-jobs, and other traditional boyhood tasks.
Boggs’ love
of the Western genre grew from watching Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and other
Western TV shows with his dad. A distant Charleston TV station—which could be
watched if his family’s TV antenna was positioned just right—showed a lot of
Western movies, including John Wayne Theater on Saturday afternoons. It also
enabled him to watch and rewatch Gunfight at the OK Corral uncountable times.
The West was also “…a long, long way from the swamps and tobacco fields of
South Carolina,” which to its allure.
His original
love of the six-gun genre was further nurtured by comic books featuring Daniel
Boone and Billy the Kid, which he read until they were tattered and frayed.
When he was older, the Western section of nearby Ray’s Novel Shop provided
fodder for his fertile imagination. The stories stirred something deep in his
psyche and he began to see the West as much more than a physical location. For
Boggs, the West encompassed an ideal with the power to induce a spiritual
connection with readers.
While
studying journalism at the University of Carolina, Boggs also immersed himself
in film and theatre courses, fueling his passion for film history. Discussing
the accuracy of Western movies, Boggs contends, “Films are supposed to
entertain…When I watch a movie, I want to be entertained. My Darling
Clementine, which got the year of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral wrong,
entertains. I have to admit Chisum is a guilty pleasure. I even like They Died
With Their Boots On. But Son of the Morning Star and Gods and Generals, which
got the history right, failed at entertainment.”
Obtaining his
journalism degree in 1984, his literary ambitions guided him to follow Horace
Greeley’s oft-quoted advice to go west. He ended up in Texas where he spent
fifteen years working for the Dallas Times Herald and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
becoming an assistant sports editor for both publications. Eventually, he
burned out on the Texas weather, the Dallas traffic, and big city crime. He
joked to his wife about moving to New Mexico to get away from it all. She,
however, took him seriously and went all in on the idea. Several months later,
the couple packed up and headed for Santa Fe, were they have resided ever
since.
In moving to
Santa Fe, Boggs didn’t just leave Texas behind. He also left behind the daily
grind of journalism, turning to writing novels and articles for his livelihood…
“I was doing what I want to do and, for the most part, writing what I want to
write, even if I might sometimes wonder how I’ll pay the bills.”
His love for
Westerns remained strong, but siren song of the television and movie version of
the Wild West began to fade. He replaced it with a fascination for the gritty
reality of the American West, its true history and real life characters. While
staking claim to Mark Twain as his favorite writer, Boggs also found
inspiration in the works of Jack Schaefer (Shane) and Montana’s most successful
Western writer—Dorothy M. Johnson. Boggs considers both authors literary
fiction masters who just happened to write about the West.
Johnson was
known as a witty, gritty, little bobcat of a woman. Refreshingly, her Western
characters were not invincible. In stories like The Hanging Tree, A Man Called
Horse, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (all of which were made into
movies), Johnson conceived the narratives by questioning the Western myth of
manly bravado—“I asked myself, what if one of these big bold gunmen who are
having the traditional walkdown is not fearless, and what if he can’t even
shoot. Then what have you got?”
Jack Schaefer
wrote other novels, but the giant shadow of Shane eclipses them all. In
creating the character from his most famous work, Schaefer devises a stone
killer who finds himself suffering in anguish over the struggle to do right
when his every instinct wants to do otherwise. This explorations of human
mortality evokes from the reader admiration, respect, and finally adoration for
a man trying to save himself from his own evil. Like the works of Dorothy M.
Johnson, Shane is a Western, but it eclipses the genre in a way few other
novels can accomplish.
These strong
influences led Boggs to create a West based on reality, but interwoven with a
mythical consciousness. Rooted in truth,
his Westerns connect to genre readers on an emotional level—speaking loudly to
those who are fascinated with the real West, but sill love the traditional
tropes of Western fiction. Of his approach, Boggs maintains, “Facts can be
confining. In fiction, my imagination can take over…I try to make my novels
fairly truthful, but I always say, don’t quote me in your term paper.”
Boggs is the
arch-enemy of editors who put try to force physical and cultural restrictions
on Westerns. “What draws me into writing a novel or short story are the
characters and the land…I don’t like fences and I don’t like boundaries. I like
to write about what I want to write about.”
One of Boggs
most accomplished novels is Northfield. In it, Boggs skillfully weaves
twenty-three first-person viewpoints telling the tale of the James-Younger
gang’s attempt to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, and the disastrous
consequences of the aftermath. Juggling the multiple viewpoints in Northfield
proved a major challenge, but one Boggs gladly accepted... ”I’d read and seen
so much hogwash about what happened in Northfield, I wanted to tell the story
as accurately as possible.”
To fill in
historical gaps, Boggs gives voice not only to the major outlaws, but also to
the often overlooked minor characters. The words of these real people—ordinary
farmers, business owners, members of the James and Younger families, and the
forces of the law—complete the story as accurately as it can be portrayed while
still telling a rousing saga of the West.
Boggs has a
great appreciation for the history of the West. This extends far beyond Main
Street showdowns, crooked poker games, and land disputes. He looks for the
uncommon and the overlooked. In his novel Camp Ford, Boggs interwines the Civil
War, the West, and baseball. With its theme of Union soldiers introducing
baseball to various parts of the country during the Civil War, Camp Ford is
based on historical fact. Chronicling the amazing changes America underwent
during the span of one man's life, Camp Ford starts with the 1946 World Series
as 99-year-old Win MacNaughton recalls the greatest baseball game of his entire
life, and the events leading to that 1865 contest between a ragtag collection
of Union prisoners of war against a squad of Confederate prison guards. Camp
Ford is a Western, but it is filled with pathos, friendship, honor, betrayal,
and a sly humor, which make it so much more than a simple six-gun shoot ‘em up.
While both
Northfield and Camp Ford show Boggs’ penchant for historically based
storytelling, he also writes excellent straight ahead action/adventure style
Westerns. The historical research is still there in the fine details, but the
action is front and center.
In the
opening scene of Valley of Fire, a nun and an outlaw walk into a jail...Okay,
the outlaw walked in before the nun got there, but they definitely leave
together in a blaze of violence. Their actions upset a large contingent of
unsavory characters, ensuring the relentless action never flags. While not
exactly a sister of mercy, the nun is really a nun and she makes sure there is
hell to pay before the gold hidden in the Valley of Fire can be recovered.
Boggs and
other modern Western wordslingers are ensuring the genre continues to thrive as
a vibrant style of storytelling. As Boggs himself puts it, “I think Westerns
have always been the ugly stepchild when it comes to genre fiction, but it’s
still there despite countless epithets and death songs over the past several
decades. People still like those stories...Writing Westerns is keeping me
busier than ever...”
CONTRIBUTOR~PAUL BISHOP
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