"THE STORY REVEALS ITSELF TO ME AS I GO." THE RESTLESS TRAIL TRILOGY'S ROBERT PEECHER

I put Robert Peecher's Restless Trail Series (The Restless Trail, The Restless Trail Home, and Back On The Restless Trail) as one of my five favorite westerns of 2024. It follows Tommy Duvall, a cowhand with a past, who goes down to Mexico with his buddies to rob a gold for guns trade and finds more than he bargained for when he falls for the lovely Marisol (picture Felina from Marty Robbins' El Paso, but a lot less wicked). In the trilogy created an epic adventure with a cowboy ballad feel. Rob was kind enough to take some questions from us.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: Did you always plan Restless Trail for a trilogy?

ROBERT PEECHER: Typically when I write there is not a lot of planning that goes into it. The author Dean Wesley Smith calls it “writing into the dark,” some authors call it “pantsing” as in, writing by the seat of their pants. When I write, I typically start with a scene in my mind. Either it’s the opening scene or a scene that I’m writing toward, even the conclusion, but I never know where I’m going or how I’m going to get there. The story reveals itself to me as I go.

So I didn’t really plan “Restless Trail” as a trilogy. Initially I thought it would be a standalone novel. But the deeper I got into it, I knew it was going to take more than one book to tell the full story. The story needed some passage of time between the second and third book, and it was just natural then to end the second book and then come back with a third.

S..M.: What do you like about working in the three book form?

R.P.: Because of the way I write, I really never know how many books a story might be. But I think a lot of stories that don’t fit in one book work themselves neatly into a trilogy. I’ve written four trilogies, and I think all four of them follow a natural beginning-middle-end story arc. With three of the four, I never

intended at the start to write a trilogy. The story just sort of worked itself into a neat package like that.

But it also suits me to write trilogies. One of the things I enjoy about being an author is the ability to move on to the next thing that interests me. With anything much longer than three or four books, I do

start to get eager for a new story to write. My longest series is a 12-book series, and I wrote books outside of that series between books to help keep my mind fresh as I was writing. So trilogies suit me in that way. For me to write anything much longer than a trilogy, I really need to have created very compelling characters that I enjoy spending that much time with.

S.M.: Did Tommy Duval have to be a different kind of protagonist to support a trilogy?

R.P.: I’m a firm believer that characters in fiction should get what they deserve. Duval started as an outlaw, but to tell the story I wanted to tell, he needed to have some redemption. I’ve described him as a “reluctant” outlaw. His motivation was to go along with his pals to take care of them. Without throwing out spoilers, he struggled to do that. But for him, he brought something out of his ride below the border that was better than what he initially went for. He suffered and paid the price for the wrong he did, but he found redemption. He couldn’t be a wholly bad outlaw. He had to be sympathetic without being squeaky clean. I think what I ended up with was a character with enough depth to make

him relatable.

S.M.: Marisol comes into her own as each book progresses. How did you construct her?

R.P.: I liked Marisol a lot as a character. I liked her backstory. I liked that she was raised by strong and independent women (her mother and aunt) and that she mirrored those values. But she was also a dreamer, unwilling to settle for what was expedient and practical. I like a character (male or female) who is willing to abandon everything for love, and Marisol was definitely that.

S.M.: I’m always interested in a western writer’s choice of weapon for his hero. How did you pick the Yellow Boy rifle for Tommy?

R.P.: When it comes to weapons, they usually pick themselves based on the time period I’m writing in. I always want to be authentic with weapons, so I’m looking for the best available gun at the time. The Winchester Model 1866 (nicknamed the “Yellow Boy” for the color of its bronze/brass receiver) was the best available repeating rifle at the time. It’s also an iconic gun. For the job Duval and the others intended to do, they needed rifles that fired a lot of rounds without needing to be reloaded. The Yellow Boy is it.

S.M.: You had several books come out in 2024. Do you work coming out this year?

R.P.: Like a lot of independent authors, my business model is based largely on volume. So the answer to that question has to always be in the affirmative.

A couple of years ago I wrote a modern crime fiction trilogy set in rural Georgia in the 1990s about the twilight era of the Dixie Mafia (“Under the Dixie Moon” is the first book in that series).

I’m currently working on a second trilogy in that series and plan to release those three books in the next couple of months. After that, I’ll return to Westerns. I’ve got some ideas mulling in my imagination about what that return to Westerns will look like, but I’m thinking about some sort of big collision of personalities in a 6-book or 8-book series more similar to my 12-book Animas Forks series than

anything I’ve written since then. I’ve jotted a few notes for this one, and it will likely take me back to northeastern New Mexico where “Restless Trail” started.