PrintAuthor Peter Brandvold
EnlargeSearch Amazon.com for western novelist Peter Brandvold and you'll be scrolling for a while. The guy is nothing if not a writing machine. Best known for The Romantics and for chronicling the adventures of his popular characters Sheriff Ben Stillman and bounty hunter Lou Prophet, the North Dakota-born Brandvold has more than 30 books under his own name with another 20 or so under pseudonyms, including 10 as Frank Leslie. His next Lou Prophet book, Helldorado, comes out this August, followed by The Devil's Winchester in January 2011. The latest novel under the pen name Frank Leslie, The Killers of Cimarron, came out in June; it will be followed in January 2011 by the next Yakima Henry novel, Bullet for a Half-Breed. All this on the heels of two .45-Caliber novels--.45-Caliber Firebrand and .45-Caliber Widow Maker--that came out in 2009; two more .45-Caliber titles are due to be released in 2011. And who knows what might be on tap for Brandvold's Bat Lash miniseries (now out in paperback) about DC Comics' "Gentleman of the West."
"I'm a compulsive writer," Brandvold admits. "I'd rather write than eat." To get it all done, he sometimes takes to the desert and the mountains for months at a time. We talked to the prolific author about writing westerns, living in the West, and being a loner.
Cowboys & Indians: How did a guy who writes one western novel after another get involved doing a comic series?
Peter Brandvold: Several years ago, I got it into my head that I wanted to write a comic book. I sent DC some of my westerns, called up then-editor Michael Wright, and asked if I could pitch him something. He talked to a few folks then called back and told me to pitch the old western pulp hero, Bat Lash. So I did, and they tumbled for it. I wrote it alongside the character's creator, artist Sergio Aragones, who is probably the most honored cartoonist in the world. When the original eight issues of Bat Lash came out in the '60s, I was barely out of swaddling clothes. And since I didn't grow up reading comics, I never had a chance to read him. I didn't read much of anything--I was always out kicking around the countryside, riding horses or riding my bike out to train bridges or pretending I was Matt Dillon or The Man With No Name.
C&I: Your six-part Bat Lash series came out in trade paperback in 2008. Your story was about...
Brandvold: It's an origin tale about how Bat's family is murdered by a corrupt sheriff in cahoots with an evil land baron. Bat's in love with the land baron's daughter. It's six issues of good old-fashioned western adventure, with cowboys and galloping broncs and pretty girls and buxom whores. It's got it all.
C&I: How is writing comics different from writing novels?
Brandvold: Writing a comic book that moves and gets an entire story into 22 pages is no easy task. It's sort of like writing a screenplay in sonnet form, remembering to keep minicliffhangers at the end of every page. I've never been this challenged since I wrote my first novel. It's been a lot of fun. Painful at times, but fun.
C&I: You've also written some screenplays.
Brandvold: I started writing a screenplay of my novel The Romantics a while back. But after you wrote about The Romantics in your Cowboys & Indians article a few years ago [C&I June 2007], I decided, What the hell, I'll dust that sucker off and give it another shot. The screenplay for The Romantics is in preproduction, but it's on hold until .45-Caliber Revenge starts filming. That's in production by Echo Lake; the director is as yet unnamed and I'm still working on some script changes.
C&I: Have you already cast The Romantics in your head?
Brandvold: Actually, I thought your casting suggestions for the main characters were right on the money. Penelope Cruz for Marina, the smoky-eyed Latina beauty. Hugh Jackman for our world-weary Indian-fighting hero Jack Cameron. Dwight Yoakam as Marina's ne'er-do-well Southern husband and Willem Dafoe as the sadistic Confederate cavalry officer and fortune hunter Gaston Bachelard. We need to get the legendary L.Q. Jones in there, too. I couldn't write a western movie without a part for the great L.Q. Jones.
C&I: Where do you go to get into a western-writing mood?
Brandvold: Living right where I live--just west of Fort Collins, Colorado, in a rough-hewn neighborhood on the side of a canyon--puts me in the Western mood. Hell, I can look out any window and the landscape is virtually the same as that in The Naked Spur. But my favorite place in the West is the Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana--a forlorn, lovely, isolated place and the home of the Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation. There's a half a person for every square mile.
EnlargeC&I: That lovely isolation's in your blood. When did your Norwegian forebears head for North Dakota?
Brandvold: My great-grandfather came over here when he was a wee little Viking. He settled in North Dakota, near Bottineau, way up on the Canadian line, and drove a milk wagon drawn by mules. He was killed when the milk wagon was hit by a train one snowy winter morning. I have all kinds of "North Dakota stories" I'd love to write someday. In fact, I wrote several when I was in grad school--published a couple in small magazines. My favorite book is one set in that area: Giants in the Earth, by O.E Rolvagg. And I love the work of Frederick Manfred, who lived around there, too, and wrote Lord Grizzly. I feel very tied to the place where I grew up, and I intend to live back there someday when my wanderlust has ebbed--all year long, even in winter. I miss the cold and the snow!
C&I: Western movies made a big impression on you as a child... .
Brandvold: The list is way too long, but of course the spaghettis and John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. More recently, I've watched the movies of Budd Boetticher, my favorites being Seven Men from Now and Comanche Station. Also recently I watched The Grand Silence [Il grande silenzio], directed by the "other Sergio"--Sergio Corbucci. Absolutely enthralling! My favorite of all time, though, is probably Ride the High Country.
C&I: You grew up riding. Do you still ride?
Brandvold: I haven't been around horses since I left Montana about 10 years ago. I did quite a bit of riding out there, but when I moved to Minnesota I became a chicken farmer--actually, chickens, geese, ducks, and turkeys. These days I like to walk. I walk a lot. It's a great time to daydream, and you don't have to do any unsaddling or hay-forking when you're done!
C&I: Your books are headed to the big and small screens...
Brandvold: My two screenplays are based on my novels The Romantics and .45-Caliber Revenge, both of which have been optioned by a Hollywood production company. The Romantics and .45-Caliber Revenge are both in preproduction now. The same production company that acquired the option on The Romantics and .45-Caliber Revenge also acquired the options for two complete series--my Lou Prophet series and Cuno Massey series--to possibly develop as television series. I think it would be a lot of fun to have a series on again--a good one that doesn't take itself too serious but that's also very well done--fast-moving but as much about character as pistol-works. Like the great western shows I grew up on, like Gunsmoke, Lancer, and The High Chaparral.
C&I: You've been doing your writing out of a trailer lately?
Brandvold: In the wake of an unraveled 20-year marriage, I recently traveled around the Southwest, living and writing out of a travel trailer. I figured on spending the summers in the mountains and the winters in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico state parks. I've always got a lot of writing to do, and I'm basically a recluse, so I get along fine. I'm spending the summer in my fifth wheel in the Sawatch Mountains in Colorado, near the ghost town of Tincup. I'm writing a book that's set in the area. It's just me and my dogs Stella, Buck, and Thor.
C&I: What is it about an uninhabited landscape and solitary time in nature that suits your creativity?
Brandvold: I'm by nature a loner. And I guess because I grew up in a remote place, I continue to like remote places. It's the old saw--it's not that I don't like people, I just like 'em better when they're not around. I hate cities. I don't think I could ever live in town again, even a small one. I'm living year-round in my RV trailer now, out as far as I can get, and I like the simplicity of that, and the rawness of it--getting power from solar panels and hauling my own water. Living like that, you feel lighter, unconstrained, less bound. Days tend to float by gradually, naturally. In the summer, when I'm camping up here in the western Rockies, I don't even have Internet service or phone service. It's nice not having anything except the wind and water to listen to, and the coyotes, elk, and, occasionally, a moose or two. Living alone is good for daydreaming, thus writing.
C&I: What's a day of work like? Coffee first thing? Then what?
Brandvold: I get up real early--5 or 5:30. I take the dogs out while it's still dark for a short walk, then come back, boil cowboy coffee, and write by the light of my Coleman lantern, as the solar panels don't usually get my batteries charged until 10. I write 500 words just as fast as I can think, take the dogs out, then come back, and write until I have 2,000 words. I take breaks and do chores, cook, keep the cabin in trim, wash out some socks, haul water, etc. At night I'll make supper--I love cooking--drink a few beers, and watch a little TV if I have my satellite dish hooked up--mostly old movies or westerns--then read for a couple of hours.
C&I: Any good adventures from your itinerant-writer period that might make it into novels?
Brandvold: As a matter of fact, I've been thinking about writing a semiautobiographical novel, a humorous one, called The Western Writer, the details of which I'll save for later.
Issue: September 2010
