Stone Wallace is now publishing with Berkley and I had the privilege of reading an early draft of his forthcoming novel, Black Ransom. This interview was published on Avalon Authors June 15, 2011.
When the call went out for interviewers, I leapt on the opportunity to have a chat with Stone Wallace. Although we had just 'met' in an online writer's forum, I had an inkling I wanted to know more about him and his new western, The Last Outlaw, for Avalon Books. I'm glad I went with my inkling – I would not have wanted to miss talking to him as we have over the past few weeks.
You say in your interview with Quinten Mills-Fenn for Style Manitoba, you had a fascination for gangster movies and television series. You've also written non-fiction and horror. Where does your western fiction find its inspiration?
Before I decided upon writing Denim Ryder as a Western, I was actually playing around with the idea of creating a series featuring a female secret agent simply called "Denim". What I think happened was one night I was interviewing actor John Agar and we got to talking about the Westerns he'd made and something in our conversation got me to thinking that possibly I could develop Denim into a frontier female. Had never written a Western before, so that offered another challenge. Plus it gave me the privilege to honor John Agar, who was simply the sweetest, greatest guy, by basing a character on him.
John Agar's films are legendary, including the horror films and I remember them well. Denim was transformed into a frontierswoman as a tribute to Agar. You went on to write another female character in Montana Dawn. Is there a reason you chose to write these books from a female point of view?
