Sometimes when authors tell the stories they want to tell, they can't find a publisher brave enought to publish it. I was wondering if this was the case with Dark Rider? How did you come to write it? Did you attempt to get your western publisher or any other publisher to publish it?
Yes, most definitely. Many publishers and agents told me "Don't cross genres" or "this is too different" or "write to formula". Well, all well and good but that wasn't the story that came from inside and honestly I had no idea what their "formula" was. I write the story as it wants to be written, if that makes sense. My characters tell me, I don't tell them. The other problem was my hardcover publsiher does not allow me to go over 45,000 words, which has become nearly impossible and I typcially do two versions of my books now, one the way it is meant and one about 8-10,000 words shorter. Dark Riders, however, was 90,000 and there was no way I was going to get it down--it would have ruined the story. Another point was that while I slip hints of the supernatural into a number of my westerns, vampires would have been "over the top" for them.
Is the legend of the Great Cannibal Owl and He Who Drinks Life based on a real Indian legend or did you just make it up?
Regarding Indian vampire legends: this caused me no end of searching when I was researching for the book and I could not come up with any vampire type legends, so I made up my own basically. The Great Cannibal Owl, however, is a real legend, Comanche, I believe, though not a vampire one. I went through much the same thing with my upcoming western, The West Wolf, when trying to find a werewolf legend. Here one has to be very careful because there can be a big variance from even closely related bands, i.e. some worship the coyote while others fear it, some Indians won't raid at night because of fearsome spirits while others have no trouble. I drew from Apache for The West Wolf because they had what they call an Apache Moon, meaning the full moon. They would raid only at that time, fearing if they were killed on a moonless or dark night, they would be forced to roam the darkness in the afterworld forever. So that fit nicely but these things can be tough to find! With my vampires, I wanted to go back to the more traditional vampires, with a twist, because I am not real big on the Lost Boys or Anne Rice types (good in their own right but I am just a fan of the old style monsters).
