[Forward]

I became a writer by way of being a reader. In my family everyone read as time allowed. This meant my father, an Idaho wheat rancher who also raised several head of beef cattle, confined most of his reading to the winter months. Mom read whenever she had a minute, and sisters and brother were known to while away a spare hour. Reading was just done at our house, when we weren’t busy with outside or inside chores. There wasn’t anything odd about it.

My folks were great aficionados of western lore. Live the life and you become fond of characters who manage to make everything and everyone live larger, I guess. Ernest Haycox, Luke Shot, Louis LaAmour were a few favorites. As soon as a new book came out from the publisher, it found a place on a shelf at home. It wasn’t long before the tack room was stuffed with boxes of already read books. And the funny thing is, they passed through the members of our family, and often through other families as well. (No nearby libraries, you see.)

Every Christmas my brother and I traded Zane Grey books. I don’t know if I still have all of them, and my brother isn’t either, but we still have a good representation of the his work. On my self is The Border Legion, The Lost Wagon Train, The Last of the Plainsmen, and of course, Riders of the Purple Sage, among others. I suppose my brother is at least as well represented.

Alongside the Zane Greys are my so precious Black Stallion books, and the Magnificent Barb. Not to be too much of a one-shot pony, Heidi, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Women and Rose in Bloom and Kidnapped are also there. By the time I was out of grade school, I’d read Anna Karenina and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I see my copy of the book dates from 1958 and cost a whopping ninty-five cents. Then came Exodus and Mila 18, by Leon Uris, followed by all the Agatha Christies and Helen McInnes’ and Mary Stewarts I could find.

I’ve found in the years since, that this early variety of reading material has given me, as a writer, a lot of ways in which to spread my writing wings. I’m interested in many things; I read all kinds of genres, and so I write in different genres. Westerns, mysteries, action/adventure. They’re all good to me. Later, as I discovered Science Fiction and Fantasy, those genres got put on my list as well. And just a little woo-woo doesn’t come amiss either.

Behind all determined writers there is beginning that grows from your early years and experiences. Really, isn’t all of life the wildest adventure? The strangest mystery?
More on the nuts and bolts of writing tomorrow.

C.K.Crigger