About this project

There Will Be Butch

Taos, New Mexico, 1918, or thereabouts, space and time being a continuum and all.

Butch McShane could shoot, sit a horse, spin a yarn, track a varmint or villain, and pleasure a woman better than anyone alive. Butch’s particular talents held little value for the new folks pouring into the Southwest like locusts to a barbecue, but the old-timers still appreciated and tolerated the likes of Butch McShane.

On that late night in April no one fussed much when Butch kicked open the door to Angel’s Heaven on Earth, while holding a pistol in each hand, and called, “I am here to rescue Miss Angel. Everyone out now or I will be forced to shoot you.”

The five or so men still in the saloon left quickly, backs to the wall, watching Butch as they scurried out. Butch had been known to take potshots at more than just rabbits. Thirty-seconds later, the room was clear, except for the smoke, and Angel came from around the bar, hands on her cinched waist, blond curls framing her face and tickling the top of her bosom.

Butch walked toward Angel, guns still in the air, and leaned over and kissed her pearly white neck, and then her breasts—one at a time.

“Don’t be doin’ that unless you mean it,” Angel said.

“Darlin’,” Butch said. “I always mean it. I don’t have an insincere bone in my entire body.”

“Dammit, Butch,” Angel said. “Those were paying customers. Someday I’m gonna really be in trouble and nobody will believe it!”

“Just call me the cowboy who cried wolf,” Butch said.

“Cowgirl,” Angel said. 

“Aww, Angie,” Butch said as she dropped the pistols onto the bar. “I was just trying to have some fun.”

Who Is Butch?

I had more fun writing the first chapter of Butch than I had writing the first chapter of any of my novels. I loved this unconventional woman, loved the motley group of characters that made up her community. And she was so far from being a perfect human being. She drank too much. She wasn't true to her lovers. She mostly loved women, but sometimes a man would catch her fancy. She worked too much—keeping the Wayward Ranch safe and secure for her boss and friend TomA who had taken her into his home moments after she almost burned it to the ground. She lived on the ranch with her best friend George who knew all of her secrets: She had stumbled onto his place when she was 15 years old after the nuns at St. Anne's Home for Wayward Boys had kicked her out and left her in the desert. When that happened, Butch could have hung herself like her mother had when Butch was an infant, or she could decide to survive. 

Butch survived. She thrived. And she grew into adulthood as a problem-solver for her community whether she liked it or not—and she often did not like it.

Butch's mother was an Irish prostitute—at least that's what the old Taos pueblo woman who raised her told her. And her father was a customer, she presumed, a Mexican or Indian customer, because Butch was dark-skinned. Sometimes the people in town thought Butch had the charm of the Irish on her; other times they thought she was cursed. Butch kept a small tattered box full of keepsakes her mother had left behind. One day, she swore, she would track down her mother's life using the keepsakes as clues. 

I wrote the first chapter of Butch and then stopped. I wanted to return to Taos to finish the book. I wanted to be in the place where Butch had most of her adventures. Sense of place is so important in storytelling. I like to put the reader right into the story. I haven't been to all the places I've written about. (I've never been to Pakistan, but I wrote about it in Broken Moon.) But I felt it was necessary to be in Taos for an extended period of time, so I could get the book right.

I create community with my stories. All of my books are about finding home, about finding community, usually with people who are not family members. I write about marginalized people who become the heroes and heras of their own lives no matter what the rest of the world thinks. 

The first part of the twentieth century was a transformative time in the West. Butch takes place in 1918, when New Mexico is becoming a mecca for artists and other disillusioned Easterners. Butch's Taos is still wild and wooly, but it is changing. Although the Taos in the Butch novels is essentially imaginary, I want to return to Taos to get the details right. 

I've written about Taos before (Mercy, Unbound), but I got a few things wrong. I want to do better this time. I want to soak up the atmosphere, do research at area historical societies and libraries, and get to know the natural cycles a bit better. I want to feel the rhythm of the place. This only happens, at least in my experience, when I've been in a place for a while. Once you're still and quiet in a place, it begins to talk to you and spill its secrets.

There Will Be Food

Anyone who knows my writing knows there is always food. Butch is no exception. Maria is the cook at Wayward Ranch, and she knows a thing or two about food, healing, and magic.

There Will Be Weirdness

Anyone who knows my writing also knows strangeness abounds in my stories. Butch is no exception. A jaguar named Jezebel may or may not be stalking Butch. A coyote and rabbit may or may not speak to Butch. And something strange may or may not fall from the sky. (After all, Butch does imbibe a little too much sometimes.) But it is Taos, so anything is possible. 

There Will Be Funds

The kickstarter funds will pay to get me to Taos (and back home) and to help me live and travel in the area for nearly a month while I research and write the book. I will be traveling around New Mexico and maybe south of the New Mexican border since part of the story takes place in Mexico. (I will be traveling by car and/or train.) 

Butch is one of the coolest people I know, in real life or unreal life. I can't wait to get her story out into the world. I love the idea of creating a community around Butch with the kickstarter funds. I'm hoping it will last through Butch's other novels and beyond.