My heroes have always been cowboys. Not the song. Reality. At least, my own personal reality.
I've been obsessed with the American cowboy, gunhands, lawmen, card sharps, cavalry troopers, horses, cattle, and all sorts of peripheral things since I was a child. That may be because my grandfather raised horses, my great-grandfather was either a marshal or a cattle rustler (depending on which family member you talked to), and my great-great-grandfather came West on the Oregon Trail - not to mention having been raised on American TV and film Westerns and my dad's gently discarded Louis L'Amour novels. If there is any such thing as inherited memory, I've got it.
So, all these many years later, I write about my obsession. In most of my short stories, I try to incorporate the things I love best as a reader - characters and dialog - with elements of the Old West and Romance. I try to blend dime-novel and Hollywood myths with reality. Sometimes, that involves the use of cliches, but I tend not to care. I take the cliche and use it in my own way, and hope that, because I did something a little different with it, the reader won't object. I often put Old West men and women together in unlikely situations... because I can.
I do not like revisionist history.
If you read my stories, you should not be surprised if they have no definitive ending. I am fond of slice-of-life stories. Try to think of them as allowing you to choose your own adventure.
-OD
Location
U.S.A.