tonyhealey.com

Berkley (Penguin Random House) signed me to write three novels in the Ralph Compton Western series. This was smack-bang in the middle of lockdown, too, so I had plenty of time on my hands. It would be a write-for-hire job. I’d get a single payment for each novel and none of the royalties. I was okay with that — I looked it more as an opportunity to exercise my writing muscle and see if I could pull it off. However there was one catch. I only had a few months to get them done. They had to be written quickly and to a high-standard.

I made short work of studying that period in America’s history, making pages of notes I though might assist me in the writing of these books. I made the decision early on that I’d only set the stories in fictional towns and locals, negating the need to go heavy on accuracy. I only needed to be true to the time — and for the stories to be true to their own internal logic. The books weren’t allowed to link to one another, although those links are there. I wove those details in, secretly, knowing readers would get a kick out of seeing certain characters reoccur here and there.

‘The Devil’s Snare’ was published June 2021, ‘Blood on the Prairie’ (my favourite of the westerns I wrote for Berkley) came out September that same year, followed by ‘Die Trying’ in December. I was then asked by my editor at Berkley to write a fourth book. So I pitched a few more ideas and subsequently wrote ‘The Guns of Wrath’, released September 2022.

‘The Devil’s Snare’, ‘Die Trying’, and ‘The Guns of Wrath’ were all Walmart exclusives and apparently were very successful.

‘The Guns of Wrath’ was actually released the day our son was born. I took about a year off from actively writing, and began working on my latest novel at the end of 2023. I sent the finished manuscript of that novel to my agent this Easter. Counting traditionally-published novels only, it constitutes my seventh novel.

Now I wait for my agent to read book seven. Then I’ll (hopefully) wait as editors at publishers decide its fate. In the meantime, I am ploughing ahead with more writing. As I said to my wife just yesterday, ‘I’m like a shark. I need to keep writing or I’ll drown.’

It’s been a busy twelve years in publishing, that’s for sure. Now I am looking ahead to the next decade and wondering what that will bring.