1. One of the things that shines through both of your Red Adept books is your interest in and love of horses. Was that always true for you, or did you find that love later in life?
I grew up until I was fifteen in rural Arkansas, yet I never had a horse of my own back then. However, some of my friends did (And our neighbor raised Shetland ponies.) so I got to ride a lot with them. I think I always wanted to be a cowboy. I finally got some acreage and bought my first horse at age thirty-nine. Supposedly it was for the kids, but I was the one actually riding all the time. I’m on my third horse now, a solid black Tennessee Walker. He has a registered name, but I call him Eddie Raven after a Louisiana Cajun singer that I like. Eddie and I have been together for eighteen years now, and he’s been a great horse. He’s gotten a few red ribbons at horse shows, but his real talent is on the trail. We’ve been in the Beartooth Mountains that I write about in Dust We Raised, out in sagebrush and prairie, in rivers, and on bridle paths. We encountered bears, deer—lots of deer—turkeys, and elk. The only thing that ever spooked him was a herd of sheep. He’d never seen anything like that before.
This is bittersweet for me because now Eddie is lame in his front feet with severe arthritis. The vet has been treating him for a year and says to ride him to try to work out the stiffness. It’s not working. On my last ride with him, he got stuck in the mud, trying to cross a really small ditch. Then he just laid over and gave up. I actually had to put a piece of wood under his head to keep him from drowning in about four inches of water. I finally got him up with the help of some kind horse people driving by. He hasn’t been the same since. Just a few years ago he wouldn’t have gotten stuck there, and he never would have given up trying to get out. He’s getting elderly–twenty-two this month, which isn’t all that old for a horse. However, I think I know what needs to be done, but I’m putting off that inevitable action. First, I’m going to have a serious talk with the vet. Soon but not yet. It can wait. When Eddie is down, I won’t get another.
Whew. I didn’t mean to get so personal about this. It just all came busting out.
2. You had the unique job of managing the 2010 census for your state. What did that involve? Where there any challenges or things that you didn’t expect?
Managing the census was, hands down, the most interesting job I’ve ever had. I started as a QC manager, thinking it would be mostly part-time work making up charts and graphs. Nope. When I became the overall manager, it turned into a consuming full-time commitment for two years. We had to hire about twelve hundred field personnel, team leaders, field supervisors, and assistant managers. I did a lot of interviewing for the higher positions. Since these weren’t intended to be permanent positions, people quit, and we were constantly hiring more to counter the turnover. Unfortunately, there was some firing too. I traveled all over Montana, giving presentations and such, talking to civic leaders and sheriffs, always trying to get people to let themselves be counted. It must be something like trying to convince reluctant folks nowadays to get their Covid vaccination. I learned that the US Census Bureau is very serious about getting the count right and will go to extremes to do so. For instance, once we used two Crow Native American sisters riding their own horses to go about four miles up an impassable mud road to count one isolated family on their reservation. I believe the government paid $250 to lease those ponies.
That brings up one of the challenges I didn’t expect: working with the tribes. If I recall correctly, Montana has seven different tribal reservations, each with its own government, and for some pretty good reasons, none of them trust the US government. That was a bit of an eye opener for me. I talked with tribal councils and chairmen about cooperation with the census and about hiring tribal members to do the counting. There was some blunt talk going both ways. In the end, I believe we got everyone counted.
3. You’ve lived in several US states, from the South to the West Coast. What are your favorite things about each place?
As far as favorite things go, the South has it all over the rest of the country for good eating. Cajun and creole cooking with shrimp and crawfish. Soul food. Fried chicken and catfish. Collard greens, turnip greens. Tex-Mex. Barbecue. Pecans. Even grits. I’ve eaten all over the nation, and nothing beats the food from Texas to Florida with a side trip up through the Carolinas.
I also like Cajun music with accordions, fiddles, and washboard. Tex-Mex with horns. I love classic rock and country music, too, but that’s everywhere. It’s not really unique to a region.
Montana is simply flat-out beautiful. The mountains are gorgeous, and the prairie has its appeal too. Now I have found that Washington State is a good place to live. It has four very distinct seasons. There are mountains here, as well, though not as high, wide, and handsome as Montana’s. Cowboys live here. More importantly, one set of kids and grandkids live here. That makes all the difference in the world.
4. In your time working as a biologist, what was your day-to-day like? What kinds of things did you analyze?
Working as a biologist was about forty-five years ago. Let’s see what I remember. I studied marine biology at LSU after I returned from the army. My specialty was estuarine zooplankton. Zooplankton are tiny little creatures floating in the water column. The naked eye can barely see them. They’re caught In fine mesh, silk-like nets towed behind the boat. I went to work for the great state of Texas’s Department of Parks & Wildlife at a small facility in Seadrift, Texas. About every two weeks, we would go out to collect samples and suntans in bays from Corpus Christi to near Galveston. There were about five of us crewing a 28-30 foot workboat, each with his own specialty to collect. Once collected, samples were brought back to Seadrift to be counted and identified according to their taxonomy. In my case, that meant using a dissecting scope and microscope. The whole project was meant to determine what effect Texas’s nine coastal rivers (count ’em) had on the estuarine environment. It was interesting work, and I would probably still be doing that if the governor hadn’t decided in an election year to cut the state budget by 10 percent. About 8 percent came from the Parks and Wildlife budget, and the lab was shut down.
5. What can readers look forward to seeing from you soon?
I’m currently writing a sequel to Jonathan’s Shield where the central character is Beral’s son, Reuven. There have been some health issues for me over the last year and a half. No gory details, but it had me down and out for prolonged stretches at a time. I’m doing better now, so I believe I can crank something out this year. I would say the WIP is about 20-25 percent done for the first draft.
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