Today I have the honor of shining my
spotlight on an outstanding author on Western themes, Jean Henry-Mead, and her
new novel, Escape.
Jean is a novelist and award-winning photojournalist. She began her
writing career as a news reporter and photographer in California. She
later worked for the statewide newspaper in Wyoming where she also
served as a magazine editor, freelance photojournalist and editor. Her
magazine articles have been published domestically as well as abroad and
have earned a number of regional and national writing awards. Her novels
have been published under the name Jean Henry; her nonfiction books and
magazine articles as Jean Mead, S. Jean Mead and Jean Henry-Mead. She
makes her home in Wyoming. I'm delighted to call her my friend.
Welcome Jean. How
long have you been writing? What made you start?
I began writing professionally in 1968 while editor of my college newspaper and working as a cub reporter for a local California daily newspaper. I was a journalism/English major and the divorced mother of four young daughters. I didn’t like secretarial work but loved writing so the newspaper job was a God send.
When did you sell your first book?
My first book was published in 1981. It was more or less a Who’s Who of Wyoming. I moved here following my second marriage and was interested in everything about the area. I interviewed Governor Herschler, U.S. senators (who were much more accessible then), as well as writers, artists, craftsmen, educators, and media personalities. I traveled all over the state and had some pretty interesting experiences, including getting trapped behind a road stripper all the way through Yellowstone Park during tourist season, and in the middle of a mortician’s convention in Jackson.
What type of writer are you? Do you plan ahead/plot or do you simply fly by the seat of your pants?
I’m definitely a seat of the pants writer when it comes to fiction. I sit down with a vague idea of the plot and who my characters are. I then give them free rein. By that I mean I envision them in my mind’s eye, then type as fast as I can to keep up with their dialogue, and dialogue is my forte. I’ve lived in eight states and have an ear for regional vernacular, which comes in handy because you don’t want your characters to all sound alike.
How do you choose your characters' names?
I select names that I like, then look them up on the internet in the “Find People” sections to make sure that no one else has that name, particularly my villains or antagonists. So I’ve come up with some creative last names.
What is your daily schedule like?
I’m up by 7 a.m., sometimes earlier, feed my two rambunctious dogs, water plants in my greenhouse, eat breakfast and am at my computer by 8:00. I then work until noon, have lunch, and am back to work until 3:00, when I feed the dogs again and do my housework, etc.
How do you handle life interruptions?
The phone rings all day. If I’m in a muse I let the answering machine pick up. It’s something I expect and try not to let bother me. Fortunately, we live in the country, so there are few people knocking on the door during the week.
Do you write with music playing? If so, is the music likely to be songs with lyrics or only instrumentals?
I love music and it was a major part of my life when I was younger. I love 60s rock and roll and rhythm and blues, but can’t write when there are lyrics playing. I like to have a good instrumental playing or a soft rendition of Mozart in the background, especially if the writing isn’t going well that day.
What food or snack keeps the words flowing?
It used to be chocolate but I ate so much of it that I’m now allergic to anything faintly resembling chocolate. Usually I have a couple of cups of green tea and a small muffin or a couple of cookies while I’m writing. Sometimes grapes and other fruit.
What one thing do you like most about writing? Least?
The freedom to express myself through my characters, and the ability to solve problems that will hopefully help my readers in some way. I enjoy rewriting even more. Polishing the original draft is pure pleasure. Marketing my work is something I’m usually not comfortable with, but now that internet marketing is available, I enjoy writing advertising copy from home, sometimes in my pajamas. Basically, I’m a shy person and would rather be sitting at my computer.
Tell
us about your new novel, Escape.
I spent nearly four years researching a Wyoming centennial book by reading and scanning 97 years’ worth of microfilmed newspapers. The result was a 202-page coffee table book titled, Casper Country: Wyoming’s Heartland. I literally had an 18-inch stack of typed research material left over and I decided to put it to good use by writing a historical novel. I was always interested in Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch and I came across some surprising and little known research about Cassidy and his gang members. So I set the plot in 1896 when the Four-State Governor’s Pact to exterminate outlaws began, and closely followed the actual historical events that ensued for the story’s background. I began the book with a 17-year-old orphaned heiress who is living with her grandparents on a sheep ranch in central Wyoming, when a group of men claiming to be possemen arrive in the midst of a blizzard.
They’re actually members of the Wild Bunch. When the grandmother recognizes a gang member from his wanted poster, she disguises the girl as a 12-year-old boy. The outlaws kidnap Andrea--Andy, as she calls herself--and take her to the infamous Hole in the Wall hideout in the Big Horn Mountains. She manages to hide her gender while listening to the outlaws plan their ill-fated Belle Fourche bank robbery. Tom “Peep” O’Day, an alcoholic horsethief, bungles the robbery and was my favorite character to write about. He provides a lot of humor and nearly stole the book from the other characters.
What is your next project?
I just finished my third mystery novel which is under consideration at a major publisher, and started work on a children’s novel titled The Mystery of Spider Mountain. It’s a dramatized story of my childhood. I also have another mystery coming out in a few months from epress-online and Amazon.com.
What is your advice for other writers?
Read as much as possible, study other writers’ techniques and write what interests you, not what is currently selling in the marketplace. If you feel strongly about a subject, your readers probably will too. I published several nonfiction books before I wrote my first novel, and I studied the works of Dean R. Koontz because I love the way he strings his words together. He taught me the language of fiction. I was also fortunate that Fred Grove encouraged me by reading my first primitive chapters and offering advice. Richard S. Wheeler than read the completed manuscript, offered advice and a nice blurb for the published book. Not every fledgling writer is that fortunate.
Website: JeanHenryMead.com
Blog: A Western Historical Happening
Talk About Writing a Book the Hard Way
by Jean Henry-Mead
Ever hear of anyone sitting at a microfilm machine to read 97-years’ worth of old newspapers? I’m afraid I did just that, not realizing that the job would be so monumental. Once I signed the publishing contract, I had to see it through to the end.
The book I was researching was a hundred-year history of central Wyoming for the state’s centennial. Three years later, when my notes were typed, the interviews over, the writing finally finished, and over 200 old photographs collected, I heaved a mighty sigh of relief and looked at the eighteen-inch stack of leftover research notes.
I couldn’t let them go to waste, so I thought about writing a novel. That’s how Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, was conceived. I had always been fascinated with Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch and heard so many conflicting stories that back to researching I went. I also traveled to the outlaw hideout in the Big Horn Mountains known as The Hole in the Wall.
Among other inhabitants of the valley, I talked to an old-timer who claimed to have been an outlaw during his youth, and who knew some of the aging Wild Bunch members. He had also been interviewed in 1976 by Robert Redford for his nonfiction book, The Outlaw Trail. Garvin Taylor claimed that Butch Cassidy had fathered a daughter with his Arapaho companion, Mary Boyd Rhodes, but no one knew who she was. He also said that Elzy Lay, not the Sundance Kid, was Butch’s best friend and companion in crime. Further research bore that out. Butch hired Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, after Elzy Lay was captured following the Rio Grande train robbery in 1899, a couple of years before Butch and Sundance escaped to South America, separately, not together.
Along the way, I learned that Longabaugh was not the happy-go-lucky guy portrayed in the film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” In fact, he was a surly, well-educated young man from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania , who served time in the Sundance, Wyoming jail shortly after his eighteenth birthday for the theft of a saddle, bridle and gun from the Triple V Ranch. Thus, his nickname, the Sundance Kid.
I was intrigued by one of the Wild Bunch members, Tom “Peep” O’Day, a bungling, alcoholic horsethief, but apparently a very likeable guy. He was my favorite outlaw to write about and provided a great deal of humor for the book. Although he was only a brief member of the gang, he nearly stole the novel from the protagonist, and was fun to write about. I made every attempt to portray all the outlaws true to character as well as accurately reporting the historical events of the late 1890s, which came straight from the pages of all those newspapers as well as historical texts.
I had plenty of actual historical events to write about and lots of real outlaws, but the plot was missing something. A woman, of course. My imagination turned up a 17-year-old orphaned heiress, Andrea Bordeaux, who is living with her grandparents on a sheep ranch when outlaws arrive during a Wyoming ground blizzard. Recognizing one of the outlaws, her grandmother snips off Andrea’s braids and dresses her in her grandfather’s overalls to disguise her. The outlaws subsequently kidnap her, believing she’s a 12-year-old boy. They take her to the Hole in the Wall where she listens to them plan the bank robbery. There she manages to hide her gender while attempting to reform the youngest outlaw.
I had my characters but what about the plot? I settled on the Four-State Governor’s Pact to exterminate outlaws as well as the badly botched Belle Fouche bank robbery in South Dakota during the “Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Reunion.” Tom O’Day spent his time drinking in saloons instead of reconnoitering the bank, and was subsequently arrested, as were the Sundance Kid and his cohorts. You’ll have to read the book to learn what happens next and whether Butch and Sundance were killed in South America, or whether they returned to this country to live out the rest of their lives.
A partial chapter from the book may be read at http://tinyurl.com/5zqr6f.
The book is available in print from Amazon.com and from Fictionwise-ePress-online in multi format.
Advice to fledgling writers.
I began writing professionally in 1968 while editor of my college newspaper and working as a cub reporter for a local California daily newspaper. I was a journalism/English major and the divorced mother of four young daughters. I didn’t like secretarial work but loved writing so the newspaper job was a God send.
When did you sell your first book?
My first book was published in 1981. It was more or less a Who’s Who of Wyoming. I moved here following my second marriage and was interested in everything about the area. I interviewed Governor Herschler, U.S. senators (who were much more accessible then), as well as writers, artists, craftsmen, educators, and media personalities. I traveled all over the state and had some pretty interesting experiences, including getting trapped behind a road stripper all the way through Yellowstone Park during tourist season, and in the middle of a mortician’s convention in Jackson.
What type of writer are you? Do you plan ahead/plot or do you simply fly by the seat of your pants?
I’m definitely a seat of the pants writer when it comes to fiction. I sit down with a vague idea of the plot and who my characters are. I then give them free rein. By that I mean I envision them in my mind’s eye, then type as fast as I can to keep up with their dialogue, and dialogue is my forte. I’ve lived in eight states and have an ear for regional vernacular, which comes in handy because you don’t want your characters to all sound alike.
How do you choose your characters' names?
I select names that I like, then look them up on the internet in the “Find People” sections to make sure that no one else has that name, particularly my villains or antagonists. So I’ve come up with some creative last names.
What is your daily schedule like?
I’m up by 7 a.m., sometimes earlier, feed my two rambunctious dogs, water plants in my greenhouse, eat breakfast and am at my computer by 8:00. I then work until noon, have lunch, and am back to work until 3:00, when I feed the dogs again and do my housework, etc.
How do you handle life interruptions?
The phone rings all day. If I’m in a muse I let the answering machine pick up. It’s something I expect and try not to let bother me. Fortunately, we live in the country, so there are few people knocking on the door during the week.
Do you write with music playing? If so, is the music likely to be songs with lyrics or only instrumentals?
I love music and it was a major part of my life when I was younger. I love 60s rock and roll and rhythm and blues, but can’t write when there are lyrics playing. I like to have a good instrumental playing or a soft rendition of Mozart in the background, especially if the writing isn’t going well that day.
What food or snack keeps the words flowing?
It used to be chocolate but I ate so much of it that I’m now allergic to anything faintly resembling chocolate. Usually I have a couple of cups of green tea and a small muffin or a couple of cookies while I’m writing. Sometimes grapes and other fruit.
What one thing do you like most about writing? Least?
The freedom to express myself through my characters, and the ability to solve problems that will hopefully help my readers in some way. I enjoy rewriting even more. Polishing the original draft is pure pleasure. Marketing my work is something I’m usually not comfortable with, but now that internet marketing is available, I enjoy writing advertising copy from home, sometimes in my pajamas. Basically, I’m a shy person and would rather be sitting at my computer.
Tell
us about your new novel, Escape.I spent nearly four years researching a Wyoming centennial book by reading and scanning 97 years’ worth of microfilmed newspapers. The result was a 202-page coffee table book titled, Casper Country: Wyoming’s Heartland. I literally had an 18-inch stack of typed research material left over and I decided to put it to good use by writing a historical novel. I was always interested in Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch and I came across some surprising and little known research about Cassidy and his gang members. So I set the plot in 1896 when the Four-State Governor’s Pact to exterminate outlaws began, and closely followed the actual historical events that ensued for the story’s background. I began the book with a 17-year-old orphaned heiress who is living with her grandparents on a sheep ranch in central Wyoming, when a group of men claiming to be possemen arrive in the midst of a blizzard.
They’re actually members of the Wild Bunch. When the grandmother recognizes a gang member from his wanted poster, she disguises the girl as a 12-year-old boy. The outlaws kidnap Andrea--Andy, as she calls herself--and take her to the infamous Hole in the Wall hideout in the Big Horn Mountains. She manages to hide her gender while listening to the outlaws plan their ill-fated Belle Fourche bank robbery. Tom “Peep” O’Day, an alcoholic horsethief, bungles the robbery and was my favorite character to write about. He provides a lot of humor and nearly stole the book from the other characters.
What is your next project?
I just finished my third mystery novel which is under consideration at a major publisher, and started work on a children’s novel titled The Mystery of Spider Mountain. It’s a dramatized story of my childhood. I also have another mystery coming out in a few months from epress-online and Amazon.com.
What is your advice for other writers?
Read as much as possible, study other writers’ techniques and write what interests you, not what is currently selling in the marketplace. If you feel strongly about a subject, your readers probably will too. I published several nonfiction books before I wrote my first novel, and I studied the works of Dean R. Koontz because I love the way he strings his words together. He taught me the language of fiction. I was also fortunate that Fred Grove encouraged me by reading my first primitive chapters and offering advice. Richard S. Wheeler than read the completed manuscript, offered advice and a nice blurb for the published book. Not every fledgling writer is that fortunate.
Escape’s first chapter may be read at:
escapewyomingnovel.blogspot.com. I hope everyone will
leave a comment.
Website: JeanHenryMead.com
Blog: A Western Historical Happening
Hosting Jean Henry Mead by Velda Brotherton
Talk About Writing a Book the Hard Way
by Jean Henry-Mead
Ever hear of anyone sitting at a microfilm machine to read 97-years’ worth of old newspapers? I’m afraid I did just that, not realizing that the job would be so monumental. Once I signed the publishing contract, I had to see it through to the end.
The book I was researching was a hundred-year history of central Wyoming for the state’s centennial. Three years later, when my notes were typed, the interviews over, the writing finally finished, and over 200 old photographs collected, I heaved a mighty sigh of relief and looked at the eighteen-inch stack of leftover research notes.
I couldn’t let them go to waste, so I thought about writing a novel. That’s how Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, was conceived. I had always been fascinated with Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch and heard so many conflicting stories that back to researching I went. I also traveled to the outlaw hideout in the Big Horn Mountains known as The Hole in the Wall.
Among other inhabitants of the valley, I talked to an old-timer who claimed to have been an outlaw during his youth, and who knew some of the aging Wild Bunch members. He had also been interviewed in 1976 by Robert Redford for his nonfiction book, The Outlaw Trail. Garvin Taylor claimed that Butch Cassidy had fathered a daughter with his Arapaho companion, Mary Boyd Rhodes, but no one knew who she was. He also said that Elzy Lay, not the Sundance Kid, was Butch’s best friend and companion in crime. Further research bore that out. Butch hired Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, after Elzy Lay was captured following the Rio Grande train robbery in 1899, a couple of years before Butch and Sundance escaped to South America, separately, not together.
Along the way, I learned that Longabaugh was not the happy-go-lucky guy portrayed in the film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” In fact, he was a surly, well-educated young man from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania , who served time in the Sundance, Wyoming jail shortly after his eighteenth birthday for the theft of a saddle, bridle and gun from the Triple V Ranch. Thus, his nickname, the Sundance Kid.
I was intrigued by one of the Wild Bunch members, Tom “Peep” O’Day, a bungling, alcoholic horsethief, but apparently a very likeable guy. He was my favorite outlaw to write about and provided a great deal of humor for the book. Although he was only a brief member of the gang, he nearly stole the novel from the protagonist, and was fun to write about. I made every attempt to portray all the outlaws true to character as well as accurately reporting the historical events of the late 1890s, which came straight from the pages of all those newspapers as well as historical texts.
I had plenty of actual historical events to write about and lots of real outlaws, but the plot was missing something. A woman, of course. My imagination turned up a 17-year-old orphaned heiress, Andrea Bordeaux, who is living with her grandparents on a sheep ranch when outlaws arrive during a Wyoming ground blizzard. Recognizing one of the outlaws, her grandmother snips off Andrea’s braids and dresses her in her grandfather’s overalls to disguise her. The outlaws subsequently kidnap her, believing she’s a 12-year-old boy. They take her to the Hole in the Wall where she listens to them plan the bank robbery. There she manages to hide her gender while attempting to reform the youngest outlaw.
I had my characters but what about the plot? I settled on the Four-State Governor’s Pact to exterminate outlaws as well as the badly botched Belle Fouche bank robbery in South Dakota during the “Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Reunion.” Tom O’Day spent his time drinking in saloons instead of reconnoitering the bank, and was subsequently arrested, as were the Sundance Kid and his cohorts. You’ll have to read the book to learn what happens next and whether Butch and Sundance were killed in South America, or whether they returned to this country to live out the rest of their lives.
A partial chapter from the book may be read at http://tinyurl.com/5zqr6f.
The book is available in print from Amazon.com and from Fictionwise-ePress-online in multi format.
Advice to fledgling writers.