Books like Billy the Kid — picked by fans

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

I’m an amalgam of all of my varied interests and varied employments from actress and singer to corporate paralegal at a movie studio. Since my teenage years, I’ve loved to research. That joy leads into writing factually-accurate historical fiction set in the West. Delving into the private lives of both the fictional and the real people gives the reader a better understanding of the characters’ designated paths leading to the events upon which my novel is based. My recommendations for the best books set in the West with in-depth characters have qualities I’ve employed in my novel. Some of these books also delve into characters from differing races, reflecting most towns in the Old West.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime television in those decades. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really did happen in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is so much more interesting than the myth. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward fiction as a writer. I love the freedom to engage my characters’ thoughts and emotions.

After publishing five books of poems, I found myself writing a long work I had no way of classifying. It involved the extensive use of facts but was also fiction. It read in part like a novel but was also lyrical. I decided to just write it and not worry about what genre it belonged to. It became A Monster’s Notes. I suspect in our internet age, the emergence of unclassifiable work is going to become more and more common. You can already see it happening. The web isn’t divided into sections the way a bookstore is; instead, it’s more like a spider’s web—you can follow this thread or that, but somehow they’re all connected. 

I was an English major in college and my dream was to write the Great American Novel. My literary heroes were writers like Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Jean Rhys, Margaret Drabble, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer. They “taught” me how to write. About a dozen years ago, I concentrated on writing crime novels, like Swann’s Last Song and Second Story Man, both of which were nominated for Shamus Awards (Second Story Man won the Beverly Hills Book Award.) I'm a magazine journalist and write nonfiction books, screenplays, plays, and book reviews. I teach writing here in New York City, and I’m on the Board of PrisonWrites and the New York Writers Workshop.

I’ve found kids to be interested in difficult topics - like stealing, racism, inequality, environmental catastrophe to name a few! But I don’t want to lecture or frighten them about their future. I believe picture books can tell a story about things going awry but coming right again through a good idea, or act of kindness or a magic wand or the intervention of fate. When the story unfolds in the comfort and security of a carer’s lap or a safe classroom and there are accompanying pictures of absorbing detail that communicate the artist’s emotion and humor I think you provide universal foundation blocks for a good life.

Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.