SPRINGDALE — Who needs video games when one can read a printed book with stories of blood, hell and Texas?
Especially one that tips the balance of good and evil back to the good side by the end?
The books by Dusty Richards of Springdale promise just as many bad guys and good guys and just as much action. In fact, his 2011 release, “Between Hell and Texas” from Pinnacle Books, was the third highest-selling book at Walmart stores across the country, Richards said.
“My publisher told me that’s normally a spot for romance,” Richards said with a laugh. “It’s been neat,” he continued. “The readers have been very, very nice to me.”
Richards writes stories of the West - each one better than the last. Always has. Always will.
He grew up in Arizona, where he could watch his heroes — the cowboys at work from the proverbial bedroom window. Richards would read dime-store Westerns and write fictional book reports for his friends because “everybody knew teachers read romance novels and not Westerns,” he said.
Those reports set Richards on the trail to a writing career. His November release, “Brothers in Blood,” is his 138th published work (including some under pen names).
“I guess I’ll go ’til I can’t write,” he said. “I thought three books would do it on Chet Byrnes, but apparently, I’m gathering an anthology,” he said with a laugh.
Chet Byrnes plays the central character of the “Byrnes Family Ranch” novels, with that most recent release the fifth in the series. Richards currently works to finish the sixth. But because of a publishing mistake, what was written as the third book, “Ambush Valley,” will be released in March, with the sixth to come this summer. “It doesn’t matter because each books stands on its own,” he said.
Richards watched the series develop into the “Chet Byrnes diary,” the author said. “It’s his observations about his way of life.”
The six-part story starts in the summer of 1872 with a teenage Byrnes in the Western hill country of Texas, 60 to 70 miles west of San Antonio, Richards said. The Byrneses had come to Texas from Madison County, Ark., Richards wrote with a nod to the region where he lives today.
“There were tragic things to happen,” Richards said, “but Byrnes had to run the ranch. He starts a feud with the Reynolds, who had been butchering his mares and shot his brother on a trail drive.”
To put the feud behind him, Byrnes moves on to Arizona. Indian problems and stage robbers — somebody Byrnes knew from Texas — lead readers to the opening chapter of “Brothers in Blood.”
“It starts out on Christmas morning at his house,” Richards said. “We get to meet the family again. And, in the Chet Byrnes diary, things get along and then something happens.”
Throughout his lifetime, Richards has embraced the Western life and has done his best to represent it fairly. This he does through miles of traveling and hours of researching.
The next stop on Richards’ trail is March, with the publication of “Once a Ranger” from Berkley Publishing Group, the second in a series about a former Texas Ranger in a range war. Another project, “Brackeen’s Laws,” comes from a small publisher. Then, possibly, a new series about the Franks, identical twin brothers in Texas.
In addition to books Richards penned, he’s helped edit many, many more. And he promotes the genre of “Western” as he continues in 2014 his two-year term as president of the Western Writers of America, an organization in which he has been involved since his days green broke in writing.
Richards received two Spur awards from the organization in 2007, and his work earned three more nominations since. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City bestowed on him in 2009 the Western Heritage Award, which honors those whose work reflects the significant stories of the American West.
He earned a Will Rogers Medallion Award for honoring the heritage with his book, “Texas Blood Feud.” in 2010. He continues his longtime service on the boards of directors of the Rodeo of the Ozarks and Ozarks Electric Cooperative.
LAURINDA JOENKS IS A FEATURES REPORTER AT THE MORNING NEWS AND HAS LIVED IN SPRINGDALE SINCE 1990.