So I heard this dropped in the introduction of Lost Treasures Volume 2...and I'm intrigued of course!

Beau, can you give us some insight into this novel and what the future may hold for it, and for us?

>So I heard this dropped in the
>introduction of Lost Treasures Volume
>2...and I'm intrigued of course!
>
>Beau, can you give us some insight into
>this novel and what the future may hold
>for it, and for us?

Skyring Water is the last "unfinished novel" outside of what has been released in the Lost Treasures Series. It was the first of the novels that Louis wrote early in the period when he was trying to break out of only writing Westerns in the late 1950s. Others in this group were The Walking Drum, Last of the Breed and, later, Haunted Mesa. It was designed to be a Thriller along the lines of the work of Ian Fleming and Robert Ludlum.

There were a number of problems with it and Dad put it aside. He considered publishing it during the time when he was having so much trouble writing Haunted Mesa but ultimately decided its problems were not easily fixed.

Superficially, if you look at the two unpublished L'Amour novels, Skyring Water and No Traveller Returns, it would probably seem like NTR was very difficult to complete and publish and SW was easy. NTR was an artsy work with many points of view, a piece realism with more character and theme than plot. SW is straight up action adventure with a 1950s/60s Techno Thriller aspect. It should have been easier!

Dad thought this, and so did I. We talked extensively about both stories. In reality, however ... once I finally got the "hood open" and looked at the guts of both books, the opposite was true.

NTR had a clear stylistic lineage leading back to the Yondering stories. It had several clear themes that allowed me to keep it on track. It drew its scenes from events, and writings, from Dad's life that I was familiar with. What Dad wanted to do with NTR at the time he wrote it became VERY clear. It was always going to be an artifact from Louis's early career but, after some study, it was pretty easy for me to execute it in a way that FULFILLED HIS GOALS FOR IT AT THE TIME IT WAS WRITTEN. And that's something I always try to do. Matching the intent is more important to me than matching the style.

Doing the same for SW is a much harder task. The first reason for this is that it's a piece of genre fiction, and that genre set clear expectations in 1960, and those have changed very little since. NTR had such no requirements except to be like LL's other work that was similar in style.

Dad's goals for SW evolved a good deal both during and after writing and I would try to live up to those goals to the same extent that I did with NTR if I choose to publish SW. The story started as a simple extension of what Dad had been doing when writing for the Adventure magazines. But even at the time he started writing that was not going to be good enough. It needed to be either a big "bigger" in scope or more intimate. Ian Fleming's James Bond series was already quite successful and there were many other writers doing "International Thrillers" or whatever you'd like to call them. Skyring Water is not exactly like a Bond novel but then neither were a lot of others in the genre.

Dad got stuck part way through and fell back on an old plot he'd worked with many times: a group of nefarious characters go after a treasure and each is plotting against the others to get it all. The PERFECT version of this plot is encapsulated in Off the Mangrove Coast. The thing that makes it perfect is that the treasure is very small, just enough to make one man act anti-socially. It's a great and ironic tale when the guys are scrambling and plotting over a crumb, willing to commit murder over just enough for a halfway decent vacation. The trouble with the plot as enacted by SW is that the "treasure" is huge.

The second problem stemming from that is that the "treasure" is nearly unsellable. What we realized when we discussed it was that the more complex and dangerous story is getting rid of or laundering the treasure, not actually the recovery of it. But that story was not what LL (or I) wanted to write.

Another issue was that the International Thriller genre required too many characters to use the Off the Mangrove Coast type plot. Off the Mangrove Coast uses just four and each is an archetype. Together they create a wonderful mechanism to tell a basic story, each playing a simple role. Thrillers tend to have a biggish cast and move all over the world. The Off the Mangrove Coast type story relies on the characters all being strangers but with a bigger cast of characters that wasn't possible, so relationships became much more important.

So there were some fundamental flaws when it comes to dealing with Dad's goals and the original conception of the story. This is why he abandoned it. The more interesting and productive aspects were found in the ideas I discussed with him as we were trying to figure out how to get it back on its feet.

Those discussions had to do with how to make it fit more into the Thriller genre, especially the Thriller genre of the early Cold War era in which it had been written. Important among these was how to reorient it away from being reliant on a treasure. Dad had done too many "treasure stories" by that time. Also critical was how to get the characters functioning better even though there were a lot of them.

The result was a story that retained the locations, and many of the same sorts of characters, similar goals: the idea of a treasure remains but its role in the story might be changed quite a bit. The plot would be very similar but with different outcomes.

I've been reluctant to dig into SW because, unlike NTR, it has become much more "mine" than Dad's. If NTR was sort of a Louis L'Amour and Beau L'Amour effort, SW would be a Beau L'Amour inspired by Louis L'Amour effort. Co-authors often trade off different roles with one generating an idea and another doing more to complete it but Dad's fans expect a very LOUIS L'AMOUR approach out of me because he is what they show up for. That is the way it should be. Some were bent out of shape by NTR, accusing me of all sorts of stuff, just because it's not like the LL books (Westerns) that they would like to see more of. I'm pretty confident about my approach to NTR, regardless of what they say. They may not like the style, but it is pretty damn accurate to the way LL wrote the Yondering stories. In the case of SW it would need to be a style LL never wrote in, to a certain extent it was never completed because the style he was locked into wasn't really open to this story or genre.

He finally did do a Thriller, Last of the Breed, but he bent the genre to match his style rather than bending his style to match the genre! A very good call!

Beau, thanks so much for the in-depth back story. I'm a sucker for all this stuff and I really enjoyed all the comments in the Lost Treasures books as well as all the post scripts for the special editions. As I mentioned before you're on the forum, YONDERING has always been y very favorite LL book, and I appreciate it in all of its various incarnations. I was even fortunate to obtain one of those special limited hardcovers that I saw advertised in the back of the original paperback if memory serves. This book, along with EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN, and NO TRAVELER RETURNS give us a glimpse into LL's life in a more personal way than many biographies would offer. They're all treasures.

I'm a little embarrassed that I got the title wrong, but I heard it in the audiobook so that's just how it sounded to me.

No telling exactly how it should be written. The place is identified as Seno de Skyring on most maps of Chile. I'm not sure what will happen to the title or the justification of it should I press ahead with this. In reality the action set there could probably not happen. I think Dad was basing his research on a book called The Uttermost Place on Earth (or something close to that). By the mid 20th century that area, while still remote was far from unpopulated, which is somewhat of a requirement for this story. You can get a ship into Seno de Skyring, but I don't think you can do it unnoticed!

LAST EDITED ON 11-11-21 AT 03:08 PM (Pacific Time)
 
Writing it as a distinct period piece would do away with some of those problems...?

You mentioned you got flack for NO TRAVELER RETURNS from some fans. What was the nature of it? I would have thought LL fans would have been prepared for such things, given the range of the type of books he was publishing before his passing. Very few traditional westerns in those last years...PASSIN' THROUGH is the last one I remember, and I recall having a hard time getting through it. Didn't the main character speak in formal English initially and then drawled through the latter half? I'm I imagining this? I'll have to pick up the LT edition and read the postscript...

I didn't do any analysis of PT in my LLLT postscript, I'm not there to critique unless it's important to the story behind the story ... so I don't know if your memory is correct.

There are a group of crabby fans who seem very unhappy with me for publishing anything that is not what they want out of a LL novel, meaning a Western. It's ridiculous because I KNOW THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT and that is why I pretty much gave them all the LL Westerns in existence in the 1990s! Now when they see a new LL book that is not a Western they complain ... some seem to buy the book without looking and then carp about that it wasn't what they expected.

So I get mail from people acting like I've ripped them off for daring to publish NTR. They bought it, ship on the cover and all, hallucinating it was a Western because LL's name is on it. I got some angry letters about the Law of the Desert Born Graphic Novel saying that they bought it then discovered it "was just a comic book" ... well it SAYS "a Graphic Novel" on the cover. There's also the people who blame me for writing the LL novels they simply didn't like, sometimes books that were published years before I was born or believe I wrote more than I did on, say, the Hopalong Cassidy novels.

In my opinion there is, so far, are only stories where I put in elements that were sort of out of style.

1) The character development of the female protagonist in By the Waters of San Tadeo. The ending needed some work and the best way to resolve the story was to have her transform herself into a bit more of a "shoot first" bad ass than Dad probably would have done.

2) The resolution of With These Hands where the protagonist returns from the wilds and is still haunted by his experience ... he's sort of not yet over it, not ready to return to his normal life. It created something more poignant than simply surviving. I think that Dad intended an ending like that but didn't figure out how to write it at the time.

There are PLENTY of times I've cut and written and added and subtracted but truly I couldn't tell where my voice started and his stopped, or where his resumed ... except for those two because, like I was saying about Skyring Water, it is my opinion that his STYLE was getting in the way of his INTENTION, and I went with what I hope was his intention. On the big moves (note that the two examples above were both endings) intention is the more important factor.

This is even true with The Diamond of Jeru where Most of the words (like 95%) are mine. Even though I changed the style of how the original story's plot was told (to something less campy) I was still able to keep it in a style that was very similar to LL and was able to stick with his intention for the story as a whole pretty well. I don't consider that one to have gone off the style reservation like the two short stories I mentioned did.

With NTR it was a different situation. Dad and I were co-authors. My name is on it. That said I did everything I could to stay consistent with his style and with his intention for the book. It was easy because in that case, as in many others, the two did not conflict. There's a LOT more LL detail in that book than LL put into it.

An extreme example (that no one but my mom or sister would catch) is the lights of the car coming up the hill on the ceiling of the Hollywood Hills bedroom on Dennis McGuire's last night in LA. That image is directly from my parents bedroom when we lived in West Hollywood. The lights of cars crawling up the steep hill would shine through the foliage outside and the shutters inside the house and make these great arcing patterns on the ceiling as they moved past. There are other bits but that's the most personal to me and to our lives. It's actually a very Los Angeles detail but I'm not sure why but that's why it's in the story, Dennis McGuire is leaving a life he could have had in LA ... a life Louis and my mother DID have.

Some people will complain about anything. I enjoyed NTL and I think you did a great job with it. I also liked the graphic novel. You also mentioned The Diamond of Jeru. I finally watched the movie a couple of weekends ago. I enjoyed it. I'd love to see another LL story made into a film though I'm not sure how likely that is to happen now.
Skyring Water sounds interesting. I'll definitely buy it and read it if you ever decide to finish it. Just because you're not your dad it doesn't mean you're just some kid writing fan fiction. You're a good writer in your own right.

peter

LAST EDITED ON 12-18-21 AT 02:39 PM (Pacific Time)
 
>Some people will complain about
>anything. I enjoyed NTL and I think you
>did a great job with it. I also liked
>the graphic novel. You also mentioned
>The Diamond of Jeru. I finally watched
>the movie a couple of weekends ago. I
>enjoyed it. I'd love to see another LL
>story made into a film though I'm not
>sure how likely that is to happen now.
>Skyring Water sounds interesting. I'll
>definitely buy it and read it if you
>ever decide to finish it. Just because
>you're not your dad it doesn't mean
>you're just some kid writing fan
>fiction. You're a good writer in your
>own right.

Thanks! I'm sure people would have fewer complaints if I was simply writing my own stuff ... but then the complainers probably wouldn't be reading it!

Those were all very different projects with different goals

- NTR was the missing story in the Yondering Series and the goal was to make it fit in that style.

- TDOJ is super complicated because I rewrote Dad's kind of campy (aimed at the 1950s "Men's Adventure" type of magazine) short story into the sort of thing that he might have written for the more sophisticated Saturday Evening Post or Colliers in the same era. Then we turned it into a movie and I expanded it a good deal to cover the story of the Lacklans more completely AND many others had various sorts of input. There's no "one writer" on a movie once you've included everyone who has the power to have input on the script. Then the audio expanded it once again, adding in the story of the Borneo natives (which explains how Jeru became JERU) and I tried to solve some of the problems that came up in the film as well as including many things I'd learned making the film.

- LOTDB was also complicated. We had originally intended to do Son of a Wanted Man, since I had a script ready to go. It was actually TOO ready to go because I was in discussions with a producer about making it into a movie. The producer was concerned that if a film company discovered the Graphic Novel rights were being exploited by someone else then they would no longer be interested in the film ... so we shifted to Law of the Desert Born. SOAWM ended up not being optioned as a film but it took many months to get to that point.

Now SOAWM (you can listen to the audio to hear the movie script) is a MUCH more traditionally written script. It's a Classic Western similar to Red River. LOTDB was intentionally turned into something very different a neo Western or Noir Western or something. The sort of "film" (because it was also a film script) that had a deeply "independent" and kind of edgy sensibility.

I had wanted to have several film scripts ready to go in differing styles. That sort of edgy Western seemed to be a good fit for the world of comics. Traditional westerns aren't accepted in comics at ALL in the USA (they, oddly, have more of a tradition in Europe) but Westerns with zombies and aliens and stuff like that does sell in the American market. So we weren't really bothered when we shifted to LOTDB. But some L'Amour readers were FREAKED out. We got a lot of blow back in social media even before the book came out and then when it did there was even more ... but it was sort of like "how dare you make a comic book."

That sort of response doesn't bother me that much because those people are just saying, "I am not ever going to be part of the market for this product." They didn't want it to exist in the first place ... which is odd because all they have to do is not buy it!

Then there were those who were horrified at the language. There are cuss words in it. I've gone into this before but, quickly: the first paragraph of the short story actually describes one of the characters cussing, but doesn't say the horrible offending words. We kept it pretty PG (and mostly in Spanish) in the Graphic Novel but as soon as you move away from the purely imaginary prose text and into pictures and dialog you have to get more "real." Same with a movie or audio. Sometimes you can do that without "realistic" language and sometimes you can't. It depends on the style you are setting ... again, SOAWM was much more traditional.

On the comics (meaning non LL fans) side the reaction was a mixed bag too. The younger and really out there comics fans were never going to be interested in a Western. The older and more sophisticated aficionados seemed to really get into it. We got a LOT of good press, "One of the Years Best" at the Village Voice, a nomination for an Eisner Award (like an Oscar in comics!) and some really good reviews. It did what we wanted to do, it moved LL's work out of its comfort zone and in to a very different realm.

In the end adaptations and the like are like "covers" in the music business. A "cover band" may end up playing at weddings but the covers that are interesting and get all the airplay are the new take on an old favorite. Think of the instrumental version vs the rock version of Clapton's Layla! Listen to the album version of Concrete Blonde's Ghost Riders in the Sky, it probably horrifies traditional audiences but it REALLY communicates the damned, Sisyphean, fate of the riders, and the moral of the song. Different mediums and different interpretations explore different aspects of a work of art.

Check out the Jamestown Revival Louis L'Amour album in the link at the top of this page. THOSE guys really get it. Every song is a different perspective yet still something a traditional fan would enjoy.

I think you did a great job with NTR. If you had just sold it without mentioning that you'd finished it I don't think anyone would have known the difference.
I have the TDOJ audio somewhere, but I haven't listened to it in a couple of years. I'll have to dig it out and listen again to see the differences from the movie.
I don't remember that you had too many cuss words in SOAWM. It's not as if it was Eddie Murphy "Raw" or something. A few cuss words are OK when they fit with the story. Makes me think of the movie Bad Santa. It's a funny movie, but Billy Bob Thornton must have said G-- d--- 30 times, and there is no reason for that. You mentioned the older people liking the comic version. I guess I am in that camp at 51, though it seems I'm one of the youngest members of the LL discussion forum. Anyway, I'm probably going to enjoy whatever you do with the stories as long as it isn't something totally bizarre like a Broadway musical. LOL Maybe an anime version of one of the stories would be popular.

Peter

Actually, I'd love to do a Broadway musical. Had plans at one time but I pissed someone off and it fell apart. It was going to be based on Elijah Comes to Red Horse.

There was pretty much no cussing in SOAWM, we designed it to be "traditional," but there was in LOTDB. It was intended to be a bit more radical with its fractured flashback structure and race fluid protagonist ... who you don't even realize is the protagonist at first. LOTDB was a much more experimental concept.

Through the bulk of Dad's career, the late '50s to the early '70s, the approach that both he and his publishers followed was, "if you liked one you'll like them all." That's good marketing and it's most obvious in all those titles that are the name of the character. For awhile it was present in the cover art and for a shorter time in the actual stories.

But no writer wants to keep doing the exact same thing. A lot of the LLLT postscripts document LL's attempts to both break the mold yet keep his audience. In keeping with that concept when I started putting together movie projects I did one traditional, SOAWM, one radical (or semi radical) LOTDB, and one from the Adventure genre, TDOJ. Those were made as audios, one got made as a film, the another as a Comic.

I also put together a TV Series from Haunted Mesa and The Californios, so SciFi and "Weird West" genres, that have yet to be exploited. I also have the first of a four episode Last of the Breed Graphic Novel written (set in the early 1960s rather than the 1980s), as well as a super brief but comprehensive plan for The Walking Drum and the first step, an exploration of themes and story elements, for Reilly's Luck (a version that stays in Europe longer). The idea behind all of this was to have a bit of everything but also to point out all the extremes of Dad's creativity.

It's all sort of a plan, the original idea was to do movies, but there is no controlling what happens of doesn't happen in that world, so I branch out whenever I get the opportunity.

I am an avid listener of old time radio, so I enjoyed all the audio dramatizations of the books you've done.
Sounds like you have a lot of plans. Hopefully more of them will work out. Last of the Breed graphic novel sounds good. Are you saying THM and Californios together, or separate series?

peter

Separate. Though they DO both have similar elements. In the TV series version there's less weirdness than in the book, it mostly deals with the "civil war" aspects of the Mexican War tearing apart Anglos and Latinos. The Series only uses the events in the novel as the bare beginnings of the Series. Season one would cover the year before the war, season two the war, season three the year after up to the discovery of gold and the beginnings of the road to statehood. The introductory page (out of 40 or so) of these is in the Lost Treasures site ... along with a TON of other odd bits and pieces. https://www.louislamourslosttreasures.com/LLLT2015WebExclusivesBeyondBonus.htm

That sounds great. I hope it works out.

peter

Just read all the stuff on that page. Seems like a lot of good stuff. I haven't read The Walking Drum yet, but that synopsis for a miniseries sounds like it has a heck of a lot of stuff in it. I know it's a much longer book than what he usually wrote. I just didn't realize that there was so much to the story.

I had missed the part about Reilly's Luck so I've been reading it. Got to the part where Anatomy of Melancholy stopped the two bullets. I looked it up and it's 1382 pages. No wonder the bullets didn't go all the way through. LOL I agree with the Louise and Pavel relationship. It's definitely weird. I haven't read the book in a few years so I don't really remember that part of the story. Is there even any reason for her to continue to be in the story? You could just have Pavel come alone, unless his hope is to hook her up with some rich American guy and thus manage to get money that way. Anyway, that's a very detailed investigation of Reilly's Luck. Makes me want to dig it out of wherever I have it and read it again.

peter

When I "take everything seriously" as I mention doing the stories get deeper and deeper. Taking each detail seriously doesn't mean that I feel obligated to use it, or to use it in its original form, but it does mean that I have to stop and really think about it carefully.

As I mention in the beginning of my Reilly's Luck Notes, these aren't plans, though they may become plans someday, they are thoughts. It's what taking all the details seriously made me think. That said, casually reading the book about 20 times, prior to getting serious and taking these notes, didn't lead me to having those realizations. Reading for fun you just get what you want to get out of it and then you move on. What's in that breakdown is the first step of a professional disassembly. It's done to study what the raw material really is, says, whatever.

If Louise does stick with Pavel and comes to the US with him it really says something about her, she's really stuck in a role. That's okay if that's what an adaptation of a story needs to say. In a story where you are examining the roles available for women at the time it gives you an interesting range:

Louise will "sell herself" for the family (hopefully just once) even though it's a lousy family, she's traditional in an ancient European tradition and men probably including her father exist at a distance.

Myra will "sell herself" often, for herself, to get ahead. Men are to be used, possibly an aggressive or self loathing response to an abusive father. She has more autonomy, but she's evil and damaged.

Boston has a positive father and brothers, she has grown up in a world of close relationships with good men, but men who value (because their wife and mother is dead) a woman for being a woman. She sits at the healthy end of the spectrum, a balance of male and female energy. She never has to "sell herself" it probably has never occurred to her as an option.

As the child of a prostitute who abandons him to death, Val (Valentine!) needs someone like her to complete his story in a positive way.

Val also has 3 "fathers." There's Durrant, who leaves him a legacy that becomes valuable (copper in my interpretation) that is the key to a future full of electricity and telecommunications. We never know him but his gift is sort of objective and scientific. There is Van, who is emotional and caring, but weak, dominated by Myra. And there is Will, perhaps too much of a man's man, the teacher, but Val opens him up to the world.

You don't always get this much when you dig, but it this case it's kind of amazing!

You should take a look at the Lost Treasures edition. It dives into the original unfinished short story in which Will is a cold hearted cheat and Val the crippled boy he manipulates for profit. In a COMPLETELY different way it is also a fascinating character study.

You've really broken down the story. It sounds like something you'd do for a college class. Like you said, just casually reading you don't really think about that stuff so in depth. I like how you described the three women.
You mentioning electricity in relation to the copper made me think of a documentary I watched last night on Prime about George Westinghouse. Pretty interesting. Of course it goes into the rivalry with Edison over the AC vs DC electricity. His ideas won out when he got the contract to light the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. But of course that's an entirely different subject. But we can pretend that Val sold his copper to Westinghouse.
The LT version definitely sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

Strong agreement. "Last of the Breed" turned out to be a really good read. It was a character out of the Wild West let loose in the 20th century.