"THE WEST IS A STRANGE AND WONDERFUL PLACE"; AN INTERVIEW WITH SILVERADO PRESS PRESENTS VOLUME 1'S JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE

Jeffrey J. Mariotte recently co-founded a new press focusing on westerns, Silverado. One of the first books is an anthology, Silverado Press Presents Volume 1, with old and new hands of the genre writing stories connected to a historical part of the wild west. Mr. Mariotte was kind enough to take some questions about the book and his imprint.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What made you take on the anthology?

JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE: As a brand-new publisher, putting out novels is a bit of a chore (although one that we're excited by). An anthology of short stories allowed us to get our name out in front of the public, and ideally to excite western fans by offering new work by authors they already know and trust. It also allowed us to introduce new writers--people known in other genres, but who love westerns and jumped at the chance to write one. We hope to be able to continue putting out the occasional anthology along with novels and single-author short-story collections.

S.M.: All of the stories are fresh takes on the genre but deliver the goods. What instructions did you give the authors?

J.J.M.: The only specific instruction I gave them was that each story had to be centered on a specific real event in western history. That would ground the story in a time and place, and would be an overall concept that readers could easily grasp. Western readers in general are often scholars of western history as well, so I wanted them to be excited by the prospect of discovering new events they might not be familiar with.

S.M.: Did any of the authors surprise you by the western subject they chose or how they dealt with it?

J.J.M.: The Schoolhouse Blizzard, which appeared in the story "Midnight at Noon" by Lisa Majewski, was something I'd never heard of. When she told me what her story would be about, I did some research and was amazed at how sudden and destructive it was. There are photographs of snow drifts caused by the blizzard far taller than the tallest human. Another story, Vonn McKee's "Point of Impact," is about the destruction caused by a publicity stunt when two trains were run headlong into one another. I'd heard vaguely of that but never knew the details, which were horrific. All the authors turned up aspects of their historical events that I was unfamiliar with, which was part of the joy of editing the book and reading the stories.

S.M.: You have several writers new to the genre. What gave you confidence they would deliver?

J.J.M.: I knew that they were all professionals, capable of writing a good story. What I couldn't know was how well they knew and understood the conventions of the western genre. I was a little afraid that some might go overboard, for example, with characters who sound like cartoons overusing western phrases. To my delight, nobody did that. Everybody showed that they were familiar with the genre and wrote accordingly.

S.M.: This is a part of Silverado Press which you co-founded. What are the goals of the press?

J.J.M: When Howard Weinstein and I founded Silverado Press, things looked grim for western fiction. One of the biggest markets, Five Star Publishing, was shutting down its western line. At Kensington Books, the last mass-market publisher putting out western paperbacks, the longtime editor was retiring and nobody knew what would happen next. Wolfpack Publishing and Dusty Saddle Publishing were dominating the field, and they're putting out some great books, but their models depend on people writing fast and publishing series books, one right after the other. We wanted to take a more traditional approach--finding good books and putting them out when they were ready. We have some additional plans--for examples, we've announced a line of Silverado Classics, and we'll be releasing more details about that effort soon.

S.M.: What do you love about the western?

J.J.M.: I grew up on westerns, on TV, at the movies, and in comics, then novels. They made me want to move to the American west, which I did as soon as I was able. For more than a decade I lived on a 40-acre ranchette about equidistant from Tombstone in one direction, and Skeleton Canyon--where Geronimo's surrender finally ended the Apache wars--in another. I'm enthralled by the history, and I love the geography, the plant and animal life, and the ways in which westerners are different from other people. The west is a strange and wonderful place, and the stories about it never fail to entertain and inspire.