BILLY THE KID: THE WAR FOR LINCOLN COUNTY'S RYAN C. COLEMAN

Ryan C Colman's Billy The Kid: The War In LIncoln County looks at the origin of the young outlaw and the political and trade war that molded him. It's great debut for the author who was kind enough to talk about the book and The Kid for us.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What drew you to the subjec t of Billy The Kid?

RYAN C. COLEMAN: My first exposure to Billy the Kid was the movie Young Guns II (I saw that one before Young Guns). But my two favorite characters were Doc Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland) and Jose Chavez y Chavez (the wonderful Lou Diamond Phillips). So I began reading biographies on Billy the Kid and watching documentaries. Looking back I think I’m starting to realize that what I was really looking for was more information about the other Regulators!

S.M.: What was the take you wanted to explore of his story?

R.C.C.: I read so many books and watched so many documentaries about Billy the Kid and the one thing that wasn’t coming through in all the films about him was he really was just a kid. And there was this legend around him, the 21 year old gunslinger who killed 21 men, one for each year of his life (which is not true but makes a great story for dime store novels). And even as I passed the age at which he died, I would think, “Well that’s not like any 16, 17, 18 year old I ever knew.” In the movies about him, he’s normally played by an actor who is much older. Emilio was 26 in the first Young Guns, playing 18. Paul Newman was 33 in The Left Handed Gun. Kris Kristofferson was 37 in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. All fabulously entertaining movies, but all required quite the suspension of disbelief at these grown men playing teenaged Billy. 

S.M.: What did you want to get across about Lincoln County in that time?

R.C.C.: The idea for the book really started as a way to explore the context and climate that created an environment for Billy the Kid’s legend. I am Italian on my grandmother’s side and as a family, we grew up watching The Godfather and Goodfellas and Casino. And then I also became good friends with an incredible screenwriter named Frank Renzulli, who worked on the early seasons of The Sopranos, and knew way more about organized crime than I did. And I would constantly pepper him with questions, just out of my own curiosity (I am an annoyingly curious person) and as I reflected back, I realized that 1870s Lincoln County was just an earlier version of mafia-type organized crime, only with Irish and English instead of Italians. And once I understood the territory in those terms, everything swirling around Billy made complete sense to me. And I wanted there to be a piece of work out there that properly reflected that context.

S.M.: Who was another person involved in the war who you found as interesting as Billy?

R.C.C.: I would say there were two. One was Susan McSween, Alexander McSween’s wife. Her husband was a pie-in-the-sky thinker, always angling on how to make himself rich and powerful. But he didn’t have the street smarts to properly assess his opponents. She was level headed, had been through some harrowing moments earlier in her life. She was born in Pennsylvania and was in Gettyburg, hunkered down at home, during the battle there in 1865. One of her closest friends, Jennie Wade, was the only woman to die in that battle (from a stray bullet, I believe). And she had this uber-strict religious father and Susan rebelled. She ran away, headed west, met and married Alexander McSween. After Alex’s death, Susan would become a prominent businesswoman in the territory, and was given the moniker the “Cattle Queen of New Mexico.” 

The other was the outlaw Jesse Evans, leader of the gang The Boys. They rustled cattle—and killed—on behalf of the Santa Fe Ring. He was a rough man, but smart. And as I was researching him, I found out he had actually graduated from Washington and Lee University. Then after college, he moved back home to Missouri and got into a counterfeiting operation, with his parents no less, and was arrested. Once he served his short sentence, he bolted for New Mexico. But after the Lincoln County War, Texas Rangers caught him and his gang in down in Mexico. He was served a few years in prison then after his release, poof, he disappeared and was never heard from again.

S.M.: This being your first novel, did you draw from any influences or just expand on your script writing talent?

R.C.C.: I am a product of all that I’ve consumed via books, documentaries, television, film, and music. I think we all are. I certainly think structurally like a screenwriter, in three acts. Inciting incident, act one break, midpoint, act two break, conclusion, etc. But what’s more challenging about a book is not only the length—if you know the beats of your tv episode, you can write it in two or three days if you have to—but that each chapter is essentially it’s own mini-commercial break. You want to end the chapters with something so fascinating or poignant that the reader feels compelled to read just one more. There are 36 chapters in my book, so that’s 36 mini-cliff hangers. And I know some authors, like James Patterson and some earlier Don Winslow, will have 100+ chapters in their book. I’m not sure I have that many cliffhangers in me, though. 

And being a screenwriter really helped with the staging of the action. I spent so many years trying to envision where a director would put a camera in a scene I wrote, how the actors would move across the set, it is ingrained in me. So that’s how I at least tried to write the action of the book. I will say, I think it’s easier for a screenwriter to write a novel than a novelist to write a screenplay. The screenplay format is so compressed, it takes a while for novelists to lose all the excess and just convey what is needed for a crew of 100 people to do their jobs well.

S.M.: What did you enjoy the most about working in prose?

R.C.C.: There is a tremendous amount of freedom. A chapter or even just a scene can go anywhere. There are no constraints of what is in the budget to be filmed or how much room there is for this aside when the episode has to be 44 minutes long. But that freedom has a flip side, too. What do you choose to focus on, how do you convey exactly what you want to, when the options on how to do so are limitless? But overall, it was nice to be able to let the mind wander without restriction. It’s probably why my first draft, the one just for me, was 480 pages and the final version is 375. But it’s much easier to have too much and cut down than it is to have to fill out. You can really see the seams when a scene, chapter, or storyline had too little meat and is fluffed out like a bichon.

S.M.: Much of your background as a screenwriter is in horror. Were you able to apply anything from that genre to this?

R.C.C.: The funny thing is I’m not really a “horror” person. I don’t particularly seek out horror books, movies, or shows. I like the same standard ones everyone does but most horror movies do not scare me. And the ones that do really terrify me in a way that almost isn’t even enjoyable. So there’s no middle ground/sweet spot for me. And I tend to like psychological horror like Silence of the Lambs or The Shining more than Nightmare on Elm Street or Saw-type movies. I sort of went where the work was early on in my career, and that’s where the work was. In fact, when I was writing an episode of The Walking Dead, I was sitting at my desk trying to think of the scariest thing I could and my number one fear in life is alligators. So I included some alligator imagery in my episode and was quickly informed by a senior writer that that was not “scary” and was grating (to him, at least). 

But what I did pick up from those experiences was storytelling. And good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of genre. So I was fortunate in that regard.

S.M.: Are you working on another novel?

R.C.C.: I am always kicking around ideas and I currently have four that I am toying with. Two crime thrillers, one more high-concept idea, and one completely fictional western. I scribble notes here and there and will soon have to decide which one is pulling on me the most. The western idea is probably my favorite right now, and it started as a feature film script so I have the whole story done, but I’m a little reluctant to jump back into another western after doing Billy the Kid. I need to figure it out soon though, otherwise it stops becoming an analytical approach to my next project and just becomes procrastination. 

S.M.: Along with your book, there is a cable series featuring Bonney's story and Emilio Estevez is planning to return to him. What do you think makes Billy The Kid such an enduring character?

R.C.C.: I think it’s just that he was singularly fascinating individual. There was no one else like him. Jesse James was in his 20s. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickock were all grown men too. He was the only one who truly was a kid, at least at the beginning of his notoriety. And he was a little shorter and had a slighter frame, which prolonged the perception he was an adolescent. And when you yourself are a child first reading these books and watching these movies, who are you going to relate to? Who do you see yourself in? Probably the character closest to your age. And like a lot of us and music, you sort of stick on what you were most into earlier in your life.