ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PHIL DUNLAP
I am the author of nine published Westerns, with three more in the “chute”. I’ve contributed to three anthologies, and published numerous short stories. I write chiefly in the Western genre, although I confess to harboring a soft spot for mysteries. Most of my Westerns are also mysteries as a number of reviewers have pointed out. Saving Mattie (Treble Heart Books) won the EPPIE Award for the Best Traditional Western 2009. Blood on the Rimrock (Avalon Books, now AmazonEncore) was a finalist in the 2009 Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana State Library and the Library of Congress.
I am a longtime journalist and freelance writer living in Carmel, IN. I was a newspaper correspondent for several years for a large daily newspaper before turning to writing novels full-time.
JERRY GUIN
I was born in Arkansas then migrated to the high country in Idaho and now live on the edge of Big Foot country in Northern California. My wife Ginny proofreads and coaches everything I write. I’ve always lived in or near the woods, so it was no surprise to friends and family when my first book, Matsutake Mushroom, a nature guidebook, was printed in 1997. Since then I have written 28 articles and western short stories for various magazines such as Western Digest, The Shootist, Roundup and others. I have stories in several western anthologies and my novel Drover’s Vendetta was released in 2011.
After I became a member of Western Fictioneers, the organization provided plenty of new opportunities for me to write alongside some of the best western authors in the business. I now have stories in The Traditional West, Six-Guns and Slay Bells, A Creepy Cowboy Christmas and the first chapter of Wolf Creek book 3, Murder in Dogleg City.
MATTHEW P. MAYO
My short stories have been nominated for the Spur Award and Peacemaker Award, and appear in a variety of anthologies, including Six-Guns and Slay Bells, Beat to a Pulp, Out of the Gutter, Moonstone Books anthologies, and the DAW Books anthologies Timeshares and Steampunk’d.
My novels include the Westerns Winters’ War; Wrong Town (Roamer, Book 1); Hot Lead, Cold Heart; Dead Man’s Ranch; and Tucker’s Reckoning, and I write for a popular series of “all-action” Westerns. My critically acclaimed non-fiction books include Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears; Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks; Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers; and Haunted Old West.
My wife, photographer Jennifer Smith-Mayo, and I operate Gritty Press (www.GrittyPress.com), the flying spin-kick of the publishing world, and can frequently be found roving the highways and byways of the West with our wee pup, Nessie. Drop by my e-ranch for a cuppa mud and a chinwag at www.MatthewMayo.com.
CHUCK TYRELL
I was born and raised in Arizona and worked stock and farmed until I ran away to college and never went back. I decided I wanted to make my living as a writer in 1975. Up until that time, I’d been a marketing and advertising person. I took a correspondence course on writing for magazines, and sold my first article in 1976, when I was working at a newspaper and DJ-ing on nighttime radio at the same time. Since that first sale, I’ve had very few articles turned down. Now, of course, I write them only on assignment. Also in 1976, I won the Editor and Publisher Magazine award for the best direct mail campaign for a small newspaper in the United States.By 1977, I earned my entire living with my typewriter, writing ads, annual reports, newsletters, magazine articles, and sometimes a newspaper article.
I’ve read westerns all my life. The first one I remember was Smokey, by Will James. I read everything I could find, living far away from the west in Japan. In 1979, I wrote a western novel for a Louis L’Amour write-alike contest. Didn’t win. Decided I could not write fiction. The typewritten manuscript occupied a bottom desk drawer until 2000. I dusted it off and edited it as I input it into a computer file. Sent it off to a publisher, Robert Hale Ltd., in London. They bought it providing I’d cut it down to 40,000 words. The novel is now known as Vulture Gold, the first of the Havelock novels.
Besides awards in advertising and article writing, a short story won the 2010 Oaxaca International Literature Competition and my novel The Snake Den won the 2011 Global eBook Award for western fiction. Other than that, I just write westerns and fantasy. My home is in Japan, where I live with one wife and one dog and one father-in-law, visited quite often by daughters and grandkids. I write most of my fiction by longhand, usually at Starbucks. Other writing I do on the laptop. My website is www.chucktyrell.com and my blog is www.chucktyrell-outlawjournal.blogspot.com I have a number of short stories lying around in various anthologies.
L. J. (LIVIA J.) WASHBURN
I have been writing award-winning, critically acclaimed mysteries, westerns, romances, and historical novels for thirty years. I began to write in collaboration with my husband, author James Reasoner, and soon branched out into telling my own stories. We have had a long career working together, tweaking and editing each others stories. I live in the Texas countryside with James, one of my two daughters, and my dogs. Even though I have an office, I do most of my writing in our living room sitting in a recliner with a laptop perched on the arm of the chair and two small Chihuahua/ Min Pins in my lap. It’s a great life. My website is www.liviawashburn.com, and my blog is http://liviajwashburn.blogspot.com.
TROY D. SMITH
I am from the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. My work has appeared in many anthologies, and in journals such as Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, Civil War Times, and Wild West. In addition, I’ve written novels in several genres—from mysteries like Cross Road Blues to the Civil War epic Good Rebel Soil. My other Civil War epic, Bound for the Promise-Land, won a Spur Award in 2001 and I was a finalist on two other occasions. Two of my short stories are finalists for this year's Peacemaker Award for western fiction. In a massive lapse of collective judgment, the membership of Western Fictioneers elected me president for 2012. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and teach American Indian history at Tennessee Tech. My motto is: “I don’t write about things that happen to people, I write about people that things happen to.” My website is www.troyduanesmith.com , and my blog is http://tnwordsmith.blogspot.com