Interview: John Shirley on his new historical western!

John Shirley is the author of several of my favorite novels and Collections, including Demons; Crawlers; City Come A-Walkin’; Really, Really, Really, Really, Weird Stories; and the classic cyberpunk trilogy A Song Called Youth: Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona. He is the recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award and won the International Horror Guild Award for his collection Black Butterflies. Shirley has fronted punk bands and written lyrics for his own music, as well as for Blue Oyster Cult and other groups. A principal screenwriter for The Crow, Shirley now devotes most of his time to writing for television and film.

This interview done 9/29/14 over e-mail.

David Agranoff: John, can you give us the idea behind this novel?

John Shirley: Besides being a novel intending to capture something of what the frontier, the Wild West, might really have been like, it's also about providing a balanced view of Wyatt Earp.

People tend to vilify or deify him. He's either a villain or a hero. Recently Larry McMurtry published a novel that vilified him, based on very 1960s style prejudices. I am setting the record as straight as fiction can set it. I did a lot of research. He was a man with a dark side but he was always trying to work for the community--in his way. Except when he lost his way. We all lose our way. He was brave as any man in the old west, and as Bat Masterson said, "If you want to know the true story of the West, ask Wyatt Earp. But he's not telling."

DA: Have you always wanted to write a western? What was it about this real life historical figure that inspired you to tell his story? JS: I grew up with westerns. They are romances for males, in a sense. They tend to depict idealized maleness. I wanted to be more ideal than I was! But also Earp's steely eyed determination has its own strange poetry to it. And that drew me...And the people around him! Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, the Earp Brothers. And others I reveal in this novel--colorful characters few know had connections with Earp...

DA: How did your ideas of the man change from doing the research?

JS: Earp lost whatever sainthood I might have cherished for him, but I also saw him as courageous, resourceful, always willing to start anew, never giving up, a true frontiersman who, as he matured, learned that *community* was worth fighting for. But he was a man who was, to cold fury and the desire for a reckoning, as a lightning rod is for lightning. And that is something that drew me. For there is little justice in the world.

DA: Did getting into the head of the man in writing further influence your thinking on the man?

JS: Of course. I thought of him as a human being, with a need for love, and acceptance, and with a desire for success, and a love of family--and above all, a man who knew regret. He regretted his early association with the prostitution industry. He also had issues with addiction--to drink and gambling. So he gave up drink. But never quite gambling.

DA: “The Land didn’t need Laws but the people did.” A line from the novel I liked can you tell me what this statement says about the period?

JS: It would have seemed obvious to people in the East but in the west, where laws were weakly enforced, it mattered more. It came galloping up in relevance! People are unaware of their true selves, barely in control of themselves--they need laws until they have an inner compass. Few do.

DA: The western style action is well done and adds to the tone can you tell us about how you approached it?

JS: I researched it --read a good many books about the wild west, joined the Wild West history association, researched guns at the time, read accounts by Bat Masterson--who was there!--and then used my imagination to try to sense how it would be in real life. DA: I remember You saying when you wrote your Batman novel it was like dressing up and playing batman as kids do. Did this feel similar despite the serious tone of a lot of the novel?

JS: No this is more serious than the Batman novel. I was more serious with the Batman novel than you imply really, but Wyatt in Wichita is trying to capture something real. The sweat, blood, determination, heat, cold, the fall of the cards, the staggering of the drunks--the wild west. Serious stuff to me.

DA: There is a lot of elements of weather and environment – something I think is important to Westerns what did you achieve the feeling of the old west?

JS: I live in the new west, have traveled through the midwest, have been to Tombstone, but most of all--research. Reading accounts of pioneers, newspaper descriptions, biographies of Earp and many others. Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok and many others. You get a feel for it. Also remember--they did not have air conditioning, or electric fans, or central heating or cars, or trucks. They had a few planks and a potbellied stove at best, on a winter's night; they had little shade and intemperate weather. But they felt the exhilaration of freedom...

DA: This is a less famous moment in the man’s life, what was it that inspired you to work on this period of his life?

JS: Because it hadn't been done before! And because it was the making of Earp the man, as opposed to Earp the reluctant gunfighter of Tombstone...Wyatt in Wichita is in a period that's closer to the origins of his character.

DA: Any chance you’ll write a purely fictional Western?

JS: This one is partly fictional--the murder mystery is fiction. I would love to write a western straight out of my imagination. If this one sells--that'll make it possible.

DA: What is up next for you?

JS: I'm planning a near future science fiction novel called STORMLAND. I've written part of it--an early version of which appeared in Interzone magazine late last year. But I'd love to write another historical fiction. I'm at least as interested in historical drama as I am in the future.