Sitting in the pilot house of a towboat guiding barges on the wide rivers coursing through America and sitting on a horseback looking out over cattle grazing are perhaps two of the most iconic American images. We have Mark Twain to thank for opening our minds to the Huck Finn lifestyle of exploring the rivers, and Western novels, TV shows, and movies for our romantic appreciation of the American West.
It is unique to find one person who has lived both those lifestyles.
I first became acquainted with Sam Schropp over Facebook years ago. Although we did not know each other from high school—he graduated two years behind me—we quickly bonded over our shared feelings about current events. Along the way, he would post about his towboat work life as well as his cowboy adventures. After a while of seeing the ruggedness and uniqueness of his brief Facebook posts and occasional photos, many of us who followed him would comment, “Sam, you need to write a book about all your stories some time.”
Sam’s posts were of a nature that people looked forward to seeing what he was up to next. Clearly, he lived a life that some of us could only dream about.
Personally, I have been fascinated by things Western for a number of years. As a journalist and technical writer by profession, I long held the notion of writing a book some day. As a subscriber to Writer’s Digest, Esquire, and The New Yorker magazines, I was always on the lookout for how writers write in literary fashion and how writers write books that are compelling. In addition, I focused my book reading on books that won awards. I wanted to see how they did it; what kinds of books win awards.
From Writer’s Digest I learned that to be successful, I needed to figure out a genre to write for. The best way to become published, I surmised, was to write within an established genre that would naturally hook readers. And editors and publishers. For me that was Westerns.
That’s how I wound up being a follower of a whole bunch of Western novels, Western writers, and ultimately, the Western Writers of America.