Tom Rizzo’s West

Tom Rizzo

By Kathleen Rice Adams

Tom Rizzo writes westerns — good ones, with traditional action aplenty and, so far, romantic elements that play significant roles in the story. He writes westerns so well, in fact, that his debut novel, Last Stand at Bitter Creek, was among the nominees for the 2013 Peacemaker Awards, in the Best Western First Novel category.

The man bears watching, not only because he’s a rising voice in the genre, but also because of the level of historical detail he incorporates into his work. Rizzo loosely based Last Stand at Bitter Creek on a little-known theft of valuable documents during the Civil War. The resulting action-adventure tale reads a bit like Louis L’Amour dressed National Treasure and Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels in six guns and denim.

Though Rizzo presents his tales from the male point of view, his female characters clearly are more than stereotypical damsels in need of rescue by a hard-bitten cowboy. Rizzo’s women think, they act, and they help drive the plot.

Like many other former journalists, Rizzo arrived on fiction’s doorstep later in life. His interests are broad, from mystery and crime to thriller and science fiction. He could have attacked any of those genres; yet, he chose to write historical westerns despite conventional wisdom saying “the western is dead.”

According to Rizzo, it’s only wounded.

Why westerns?

Tom Rizzo: Westerns represent such a rich legacy of American history. I grew up in the Midwest, small-town America. Like others, my introduction to westerns came from black-and-white movies. The plots were basic, simple, and straightforward in most cases, but it was the sense of adventure that attracted me.

Then, I began to read various authors and became impressed with their realistic visions and interpretations of the frontier. As much as anything, however, it was the physical beauty of the West that captured my attention and fired my imagination. The language of the West is its landscape — a visual poetry of mountains, rivers, streams, and deserts, rolling hills, and the sky.

Most authors who write in the genre grit their teeth every time they hear “westerns don’t sell” or “the western is dead.” Judging by the number of authors who continue to write westerns, though, a funeral may be just a tad premature. What would you like people who insist on consigning westerns to Boot Hill to know?

I think, at times, there’s sort of a Neanderthal mindset about westerns. Not from the readers’ viewpoint, but from that of literary agents and publishers. It’s as if they’re standing wild-eyed, brandishing a garlic ring and crucifix in an attempt to ward off the evil western writer who wants to foster the traditional shoot-’em-up, cowboy-and-Indian story.

As you know, this type of thinking is downwind of reality. This genre accommodates a number of sub-genres. Westerns, in fact, represent historical adventures, historical mysteries, historical thrillers, historical romances, and even historical horror and fantasy.

Perhaps there’s a marketing disconnect. We have to do a better job of attracting readers who haven’t yet tested the waters.

One of the common laments we hear within the admittedly aging community of western historical writers is that the traditional market for westerns is aging, too. Some see attracting younger readers as the key to keeping the genre alive, but no one seems quite sure how to go about that. Got any ideas?

Why don’t you just put me on the spot? A great question with no easy answer.

Some writers — Dale B. Jackson , JR Sanders, and Cheryl Pierson come to mind — have written novels aimed at the young adult and have done very well with those books. That could be a way to lure younger readers into sticking with the genre as they age.

At the same time, I think it comes down to an old-fashioned sales and marketing strategy in developing a message aimed at convincing younger readers to at least try the product. Westerns are not only great tales of adventures, but also wonderful resources of American history.

Traditional westerns often include a conspicuous romantic component, although many traditional western writers — especially men — are hesitant to call their stories “romances.” Your short story “A Fire in Brimstone” uses a romance between the sheriff and a café owner to propel the plot, and a case could be made for the story’s conclusion meeting the happily-ever-after-ending requirement of the romance genre. Where do you draw the line between “western” and “western romance”?

I don’t know that I could draw a line between the two — at least consciously. When I wrote “A Fire in Brimstone,” the term “western romance” wasn’t top-of-mind — or any other term, for that matter. The romantic attraction between the two characters seemed, at least to me, a natural component of the story.

Sometimes labels get in the way of good storytelling. I think most writers have of an umbrella goal in mind when they write. For example, no matter what the plot, I try to present characters in conflict — either with one another or with their own emotions — who face adversity and are striving for some level of justice or redemption.

You’re fond of a variety of genres from western to science fiction, noir, mystery, and political thriller. Do you find your eclectic tastes coming together in your work, intentionally or otherwise? How difficult is it to make all those influences work together?

What I find remarkable about the structure of the western is the ability to weave in varied sub-genres without sacrificing the concept of a true western. The difficulty, of course, depends on the intricacy of the plot or storyline.

The western can easily accommodate mystery, noir, and political thrillers. Science fiction, as well, but that would be a bit of stretch for me.

On your blog, you devote significant virtual ink to exposing some of the lesser-known scoundrels of the Old West — outlaws and wannabes alike. In fact, you’ve published a non-fiction book, Heroes & Rogues, containing profiles of some of the not-quite-notorious baddies and their not-quite-famous adversaries. To what do you attribute this fascination with villainy?

I think it goes back to my childhood. When my brothers and the neighborhood kids played so-called cowboys and outlaws, I was the first to volunteer to play the outlaw. They couldn’t understand why. But, I always felt an incredible amount of freedom in such a role. No rules to follow. No warning anyone what you were about to do. No decorum to maintain. The freedom to be devious, sneaky, and hide anywhere you could — as long as you stayed in the neighborhood and didn’t climb into Mr. Quinn’s Bing cherry tree to hide, because Mr. Quinn would shoot you.

It’s fascinating to me how many men wore a badge and then turned outlaw. Or kept the badge and played outlaw anyway. It amazes me how many of them would switch back and forth. Many — or most — of those who did ride the outlaw trail led very short lives, on average.

If you had lived in the Old West, when and where would you have taken up residence, and what line of work would you have pursued?

Wyoming, I think, would be a great place to live. Spacious. Beautiful. I would have been happy to live in a small-but-growing town and run the local newspaper. Newspaper editors, as you know, weren’t worth their salt unless they raised a little hell. And that would be fun, as long as you didn’t have to be fast with a gun.


Find Tom Rizzo online at TomRizzo.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. His Amazon author page offers a listing of his books.

Setting the Scene: The Black Hills

So much of fiction set throughout the American West is setting – so this month I thought I’d focus on one of my favorite western regions, the Black Hills.

The Black Hills is one of the most storied mountain ranges in the American West. The range reaches across the border of South Dakota into Wyoming. In contrast to other western mountain ranges, it is small (Harney Peak, the highest summit, is only 7,244 feet) and remote – removed from the Rocky Mountains. Known as an “island of trees in a sea of grass,” the Black Hills is still home to the tallest peaks of continental North America east of the Rockies. Because they are covered in trees, the mountains appear dark in the distance. Therefore, the Lakota named the region HeSapa, or “Black Mountains.”

The Black Hills were first inhabited by Native Americans around 7000 BC. Among the tribes that called the range home were the Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Pawnee. Finally, in the eighteenth century the Lakota made the Black Hills their home by driving out the other tribes. Much of Lakota culture is central to the Black Hills. Both the Cheyenne and the Lakota believed that the Black Hills region was the axis mundi, or "sacred center of the world." However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the discovery of gold in French Creek caused many European Americans to flock to the Black Hills. Soon after, the last major Indian War on the Great Plains, known as the Black Hills War, unleashed. In violation of a treaty with the Native Americans, the United States seized control of the land. As late as 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been taken illegally from the tribes. The Lakota refused a settlement of one-hundred-and-six million dollars, citing that they wanted the return of the Black Hills to their people. To this day, they persist in their quest to reclaim their land.

In the late nineteenth century, thousands of gold miners descended on the mountain range. In 1880, there was no part of the Dakota Territory more densely populated than the Black Hills. The cities of Deadwood, Central City, and Lead formed amidst the great surge of pioneers. Railroads also began to crop up. Since 1880, the gold mines of the Black Hills have earned four million dollars a year with an additional three million dollars in silver.

The Black Hills are covered mostly in fragrant Ponderosa Pine and Black Hills Spruce. Though scattered throughout the range are picturesque grasslands in lieu of forests, home to mountain meadows or “open parks.” The wildlife of the Black Hills is very diverse. It is actually known as a “mixing and meeting place” where species from all parts of the north, south, east, and west go to mingle. For example, both the forest and grasslands create great habitats for American bison, a variety of deer, mountain lions, prairie dogs, marmots and fox squirrels in particular. The creeks of the Black Hills are known for their trout. The creeks that run through the area are known for their trout fishing.

Tourism is a large part of the Black Hills economy. The range is home to Custer State Park, South Dakota’s largest state park. Custer State Park is also one of the largest in the United States. In August, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally takes place in the miles of scenic roadways throughout the Black Hills. In 2005, more than five-hundred-and-fifty-thousand bikers took part in the rally, which has become a key part of the region’s economy. Tourists are also drawn to the following Black Hills destinations:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Wind Cave National Park
Jewel Cave National Monument
Harney Peak
Bear Butte State Park
Devils Tower National Monument
The Crazy Horse Memorial (largest sculpture in the world)
George S. Mickelson Trail

Sheep and cattle ranching is also a large part of the Black Hills economy. And yes, here we find our cowboys! With a setting like that, it's hard not to imagine western fiction with the "Black Mountains" on the horizon.

Readers, your turn to sound off. What would you say your ideal western setting is - and why? It can be a state, a region, even a large formation like the Black Hills.


Amber Leigh Williams
"Williams has brought the romantic back to romance!" - Long & Short Reviews
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