I could get a job of work, or I could step into a saloon I’d been running Red, my big sorrel gelding, for I don’t know how long, glancing over my shoulder every minute, expecting to see somebody. I glanced again and didn’t see nobody. So, I slowed Red to…

An old baker looks at his life and tries to find some value in it Theophilus Jones leaned forward, peered into an oven in his bakery, and saw a loaf of bread. “A minute more,” he said. He closed the oven and straightened, then grimaced and grabbed his back. …

Why does anyone speak and write in terms of something else? — In Modern American Usage, Wilson Follett says that the construction “in terms of” has become extremely popular: “The rage for expressing everything in terms of something else is a disease traceable to college-catalogue English. From 1900 on a college course was hardly respectable if it did not offer to present…

After a wildfire devastates a farmer, a storekeeper, and an undertaker, a mysterious stranger tempts them to become outlaws — (I’ve taken the following excerpt from the title story in my collection Your Typical Outlaw and Other Western Stories, published by Two Gun Publishing.) In the early morning, Nathan Evans stood beside his cabin in the Texas countryside and looked at his field of grain. …

More great benefits — If you’ve ever heard, read, imagined, or remembered something you wanted to write (say, in a story or an article), and if you’ve failed to do so, you might agree with James P. Degnan, a professor of English at Santa Clara University, who once said in his nonfiction class, “When…

What can you do if you disagree with someone? — You’ve had the same conversation a thousand times before. Perhaps conversation, which to me implies civility, isn’t the right word. Argument in the sense of “raised voices, sarcastic comments, and incessant interruptions” comes closer. But whatever it is, you find yourself in the middle of it again. You know you’re…

A young cowboy tries to make up his mind — I’m riding uphill through brush and scrubby oaks on a cold, gray, damp afternoon. I’m looking for the strays that Mr. Parker sent me after, and I feel like hell. But I’d feel like hell if I was riding downhill through green grass on a warm and sunny morning on…

The constructions can be difficult — According to The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the word there functions as an adverb in “He is there now,” as a noun in “I’ll introduce you to her, but you’re on your own from there on,” and as an interjection in “There! It’s done.” …

A young Hungarian prostitute does bad things for a good reason — Wearing a fancy dress, Soffya sat on the foot of a bed, leaning forward, and picking up a high-heeled shoe. “You’re a good girl, Soffya,” Miklos said, standing beside the bed and buttoning his shirt. Soffya put on the shoe. “A very good girl,” he said, reaching into his pocket…