A Conversation With Matthew Mayo, Part Two
MB: How did you get involved with Globe Pequot Press, the publisher of Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears?
MM: Globe Pequot Press’s Western imprint, TwoDot Books, is based in Helena, Montana, and one of the editors asked a mutual friend if she knew of someone who had a strong background in action-oriented fiction to write a narrative-based book of Wild West history. My name came up and the editor told me generally what he was looking for. I worked up a few ideas, and we hammered out the basic shape of the thing.
As the research went forward and the writing took shape, certain elements presented themselves until the book became what it is now, what I hope is a very reader-friendly book with a welcoming introduction and fifty riveting chapters that read like pulpy page-turners, and each is followed with a brief section that gives further detail about that particular “gritty moment.” Plus there’s an extensive bibliography that I thought readers would find of potential use, and an index for fast flippin’.
MB: Your next book with them is a sequel of sorts, set in your old stomping grounds (Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Hardscrabble New England [1620-1950]). What’s the difference between western grit and New England grit?
MM: There’s not much difference between Western grit and New England grit, on the human level. People in old New England were just doing what they needed to do to make a living, carve out lives. The frontier, at one time, wasn’t West of the Mississippi. It was the wilds of what’s now Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, etc. No matter if it’s a freak blizzard in Maine’s North Woods, with loggers caught miles from camp and forced to kill their beloved horse team, or a blizzard in Wyoming killing thousands of head of cattle—and a few cowboys, too—you have a gritty moment. It’s how people deal with their adversities that makes the moments fascinating, at least to me.
Judging from the response I’ve received about the first book, lots of folks feel the same way. And now that it’s also available as an e-book, I hope to hear from Kindle and iPhone readers who might not otherwise have bought the book as a print version. The New England book, Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks, will be out in late September/early October of this year (2010). We’re pushing production on it to get it into stores before Christmas. Nothing says Happy Holidays like Mayo’s Gritty Moments!
MB: If there are more books in the series do you anticipate returning to the west or striking out to other parts of the country? For example, I can imagine scores of gritty Southern stories.
MM: There are plans for other books that will take me, yes, down South, back out West (I unearthed far more than I could include in the first book), up North, all over the world and in various topics, in fact. It’s an exciting series and I’m tickled to be the one to write it.
MB: You have written three Black Horse Westerns. Which is your favorite, and why?
MM: I love Winters’ War, because it’s my first published novel. And it’s brought in more fan mail than I could have hoped for. People still write to tell me how they think it should be a movie, wanting to know what happens next to the characters. I have plans for a prequel to it, in fact. And I also dig my second, Wrong Town, and it, too, has generated lots of mail. People love the opening scene—a grizzly mauling a la Hugh Glass. My poor protagonist’s day just gets worse from there. So fun to write.
And the third, Hot Lead, Cold Heart, has all the elements a fun Western needs, I think—a lashing thunderstorm, a good/bad guy, a greedy businessman, a humble sheriff caught in the middle, a comical side-kick, crazy she-twins with guns, a donkey, and bullets and revenge aplenty. My complaint with it is that it could have used another 100 pages to breathe. I wrote it long and had to edit the hell out of it. I didn’t answer your question, did I….
MB: In your first BHW, Winters’ War, I was especially taken with the Basque couple. Do we too often forget that the West wasn’t just cowboys and Indians?
MM: I’m glad you like the Basque couple. They are some of my favorite characters. Yes, it’s forgotten far too much that the West wasn’t settled by an army of tall, sandy-haired men, wide of shoulder and with squinty eyes who never shot unless they were shot at first. Hollywood took Wister’s Virginian ball and ran with it.
And the stereotypical bad guys … oy. For every quick-draw goober with a handgun, there were towns full of hard-working citizens from all over the world who wouldn’t put up with such foolishness—and they did something about it. The American West in the 19th century was loaded with people from all over the world, wearing all manner of clothes and engaging in all sorts of fascinating customs. Once people begin to explore that aspect of the Old West, digging deeper into history, they realize it’s so much richer than anything Hollywood has conjured. That said, I absolutely love a good “traditional” Western, be it novel or movie.
MB: Your wife is a professional photographer. Tell us about your work together.
MM: My wife, Jennifer Smith-Mayo (www.jennifersmithmayo.com), is an award-winning photographer whose credits include National Geographic, Wine Spectator, Down East, and a pile of other books, magazines, and showings in galleries in the US and Europe. Plus she teaches college courses in multimedia and photography. It’s great fun for me to work with her on our latest co-project, a coffee-table book about the state of Maine, called Maine Icons, for Globe Pequot. Should be out in the Spring of 2011. If all goes well, we’ll be doing more of the same. In addition to the book work, she’s my first reader, and she’s brutally honest. Tells me when something’s crap (frequent) and when it’s acceptable, but could use more work. And I try to do the same with her work.
MB: Finally, with many irons in the fire, what do you do to relax?
MM: When we moved back to Maine, we bought a fixer-upper on the coast, so we like to get out in our rowing skiff, plus we like to walk with our dogs. We’ve spent a fair amount of time working on our houses over the years, we do most of the work ourselves, and this latest place is no different. We keep saying, “Never again,” but we always find another deal…. We’ll be scraping and painting this year. If anybody’s up for a bit of painting, we pay in lobster….
We also like to garden, and grow as much of our vegetable supply as we can. Given the state of bad foods nowadays inundated with GMOs and all manner of funky stuff, it’s more important than ever to eat well, but that’s another topic entirely….
MB: Thanks again, Matt for your terrific answers, and for taking the time to visit. All my best in the future!
on March 25, 2010 at 7:47 am
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Nice interview, guys.
on April 1, 2010 at 4:45 am
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Excellent job – will direct archive readers over later today.
on April 2, 2010 at 8:23 am
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Just hope Matt still finds time to write more westerns!