For the next Novel I’m Not Writing, we move on to something I whipped up for my father a few years back. After reading Robert B. Parker’s GUNMAN’s RHAPSODY, I really wanted to write a western. But I had too much on my plate at the time, both in acting and writing, to really research one. I was working on FALCONER, which has turned into three books, it was so massive. But still, I felt the need for a diversion, and wanted to write something my father would actually read (that he read THE MASTER OF VERONA is still stunning to me).
So I cheated. Being a huge fan of the Golden Age of Radio, I took four of my favorite early Gunsmoke episiodes, transcribed them, then merged them together into a single story, covering a week in Dodge City. Really it was more as an exercise, to see how I liked writing in the staccato first-person style of Parker, which he of course adopted from Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
There’s a lot of original matieral, and one major plot twist. But because I was using the scripts of Norman MacDonnell and John Meston, I can’t really imagine publishing these, or making money off them. So, more in the realm of fan-fiction, tomorrow I will present the first of several chapters in the voice of Matt Dillon, United States Marshall.
Remember, though – these are based on the radio show, not the TV show, which was a little different.
