Western Writers

An Interview with David E. Hilton

By Jenny Shank, 1-10-11

David E. Hilton‘s debut novel Kings of Colorado (Simon & Schuster, $24) begins, “In the summer of 1963, when I was thirteen, I stabbed my father in the chest with a Davy Crockett Explorers pocketknife.” The narrator, the sensitive William Sheppard, attacked his father because he was beating his mother, and is sentenced to two years at the Swope Ranch Boys Reformatory in Colorado.  Will bands together with three other boys to try to endure the cruelties and violence of life at the reformatory, where one solace is the opportunity to help break mustangs.  Hilton lives near Austin with his family.  I interviewed him via email about the swayback horse named Bullet he briefly owned as a child, why he had to write part of this novel in the bathroom, and whether his experience as a middle school teacher inspired the violence in Kings of Colorado.  Hilton will discuss his book at BookPeople in Austin on January 13 (7 p.m.)

New West: How did the idea for Kings of Colorado come to you?  Did you begin with the plot or the characters?

David E. Hilton: Oddly enough, the characters did begin to crawl into my mind ahead of the plot, especially the one who became Benny Fritch.  I initially decided to break him up into two separate characters, but later realized it would be far more interesting to combine those traits into one person.  I set out to create a story that, at the core, was about friends finding each other while in a dark, controlled environment, a place where hope was hard to come by.  I’ve always been a sucker for prison stories, but in this instance, I had to incorporate that lost innocence of youth.  What blossomed was the juvenile reformatory ranch.

NW: Did you do any research on reformatories?  There’s one I know of in Colorado, called the Lookout Mountain School for Boys, and I wondered if it might have inspired you.

DH: I did read up on several reformatories in Colorado and other states, but the largest inspiration drew solely upon a memory from my youth.  Each year my family would drive into New Mexico, and along the way was a plain, worn looking sign along the highway, which simply read: Boys Reformatory Ranch.  I always wondered what lay down that dirt road next to the sign, about the boys that were there, and why they were there.  That always stuck with me, I guess.  My imagination filled in the blanks. 

NW: Why did you decide to have the boys at the reformatory work at breaking mustangs?  Do you have much experience with horses?

DH: Just a few reasons, really.  I wanted to bring something different to the table aside from just telling a prison (or in this case, reformatory) story.  That’s why I also tried to establish the setting itself as almost characteristic.  Bringing the mustangs into the equation also met that desire, but more so, they provided a reason for the main characters to be distracted from the cruelty of their surroundings.  They gave them something to they could control, and care for.  I also needed a way to get the kids up into the mountains at the end of the novel.

Funny thing – I actually had a horse once as a kid in West Texas.  Briefly.  He was as old and swayback as they come, but I was 10, and aptly named him Bullet.  That lasted maybe seven or eight weeks, until one day, my parents told me he had jumped the fence and run off.  Like I said, I was 10.

NW: Why did you structure your novel as though the main character, William Sheppard, wrote it as he looked back on his youth?

DH: I knew from the start that significant things were in store for the main character after he completed the meat of the story.  After all the tragedies that unfolded on the ranch, and the friends lost, I knew I’d have a tough time ending William Sheppard’s tale without giving him (and us) at least a glimmer of a promise that peace can indeed be found after all is said and done.  Plus, I’ve always enjoyed book-ended plots myself, so I suppose I just threw a lot of my favorite elements into the recipe when writing it.

NW: John Church is an interesting character—he’s one of the only boys who can stand up to the sadistic Silas Green, and he’s the only real loner at the reformatory.  He doesn’t seem to feel any guilt about his crime, unlike the four main friends in the story, and he tells Benny at one point, “I never tried to pretend I was good.” Each of your characters seems to have a distinct moral code—there are things they will do and won’t do, and some feel guilt, while others don’t.  How did you work out these moral codes?

DH: Their moralities naturally came about as I penned the characters on the page, particularly as I wrote their dialogue.  This, along with their mannerisms seemed to just go hand in hand with what they’d do in a certain situation.  I really felt like I got to know these guys while developing them, and I did wonder about what their limits might be, because given the right situation, I believe all of us have lines we’d cross.  This difference with John Church was—we never see him as either on one side or the other, he walks his own line, and cares only for himself.  The boys are drawn to him mainly because he shows no fear of his surroundings, and also because he expresses no guilt.  He is what they each secretly wish they could be like, with the exception of Benny, of course.

NW: None of the four main boys—William and his friends—are truly culpable for their crimes—they either made a terrible mistake, or were covering for or defending someone else. (In Mickey’s case, it was an act of vengeance, but a justifiable one.) Did you decide they needed to all have good excuses to be sentenced to Swope Ranch Boys Reformatory in order for them to be likeable characters?

DH: More or less.  I knew I didn’t want to sugarcoat their crimes by any means, but simultaneously knew I’d have to play upon the reader’s sympathies to at least some degree.  It’s hard to have a payoff at the end of a story if the character isn’t the least bit likeable, and I always kept that in the back of my mind: to make these kids as wild as I could while at the same time holding on to a hidden innocence somewhere still within each of them.

NW: Kings of Colorado opens in 1963.  What about this era appealed to you for the setting?  Did you research the slang terms that kids were using in 1963 to make the dialogue sound accurate?

DH: You’ll laugh, but the thing that appealed to me the most was the music.  And I knew I’d really enjoy incorporating some of that into the story.  Plus, I knew ahead of time it was going to have a reflective, memoir feel to it, so it was really just a matter of making the dates work.  I actually did research some of the slang terms, as well as going back and watching some of my favorite films that centered on those years.

NW: Some critics and readers have compared some of the elements of your book to Lord of the Flies, others to Stand By Me, and I thought of Cool Hand Luke as I was reading about the pecking order among the boys and the wardens and the time some boys spend in solitary confinement.  Did any of these books or movies influence you?

DH: Absolutely.  Stand By Me was definitely an influence—also in part because that was one of the first R-rated movies that I snuck into with my own gang of friends—but I was more a fan of Stephen King’s The Body, on which the movie was based.  Lord of the Flies and John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany were favorites of mine as well.  And to be honest, I began reading a lot of Dennis Lehane around the time I wrote Kings—and in my opinion, Lehane is a master at creating local, flavorful dialogue that’s as real and gritty as it gets.

NW: You’ve mentioned that you wrote most of Kings of Colorado in your “apartment’s stairwell.” Were you short on office space?

DH: I’m laughing, thinking about that even now.  Yes, I was indeed short of office space, but more importantly, I was short on a quiet space in general.  I’d become a father not long before beginning Kings of Colorado, and the baby had colic and was therefore extremely fussy at times.  After singing him to sleep at night, I’d creep out to the stairwell while his mother stayed close.  I made good use out of several unique writing locations, such as that stairwell, the narrow garage, and even on a few occasions, the bathroom.

NW:  In your interview with Texas Monthly, you said that your agent required you to do some extensive revisions the manuscript.  What sorts of things did she have you change?

DH: My agent, Laney Katz Becker, turned out to be a godsend because, not only is she great at the meat and bones on the agent side of things, but she’s pretty darn good at editing as well.  For the most part, my revisions centered around moving around a few scenes, picking up the pace here, adding a few scenes there, strengthening a character or two, and that’s not including some minor page-by-page grammaticals.  You have to have a tough skin to go through the revision process, and be willing to work with an agent or an editor, especially if you’re new at the game.  I was never asked to alter the heart of the story, or the characters either, so I was more than happy to listen to some seasoned advice in order to strengthen the book.

NW: How has being a westerner influenced your writing?  Do you set most of your work in the West?

DH: It’s easy to employ the memories of my youth when it comes to painting scenes with mountains, sunsets, and isolated plains.  Growing up in West Texas, and exploring the countryside as part of the Scouts, it just feels natural.  Besides Kings of Colorado, a few of my early short stories are set in the West, but now I enjoy running the gamut of places I’ve been at one point or another in my past.  I’m excited about my next project, of which I’m elbows-deep, because it will run throughout many locales across the country. 

NW: The boys and men in your book get into some nasty, violent fights.  In your bio, you mention that you are a former middle school teacher—did any of your teaching experiences inspire these portrayals of violence?

DH: That’s a great question!  I suppose it would be interesting to say they did, but teaching middle school—as chaotic as that seemed at times—didn’t provide the inspiration for the gritty scenes in the book.  I will say, though, that the camaraderie and the peer pressure employed on the ranch and in the bunkhouse scenes were certainly there amongst the students I taught.  Some things never change, as they probably shouldn’t.

NW: Speaking of violence, your website notes that one of your short stories was included in the horror anthology “Nights of Blood 2.” Did you try to work in elements of the horror genre into Kings of Colorado?

DH: I think on some level, I did.  I grew up reading horror, so naturally, that’s what I set out to write.  And it was great fun, especially in the short stories.  But I just couldn’t get it to quite work with in a novel.  Still, it was only natural to include dark tones into Kings of Colorado—the evilness of Silas Green, or even Frank Kroft for example, or the subtle suggestions that Will Sheppard (and Mickey) actually do see the ghosts of Coop and Benny toward the end of the story.

NW:  What are you working on next?

DH: I’m working on a new story that, like Kings, is a character-centered tale that revolves around some dark elements, but works towards salvation in the end (I hope).  The central character is a man who has regained the use of his body after spending a decade as a quadriplegic.  It’s not a follow-up to Kings, though it’s set in the same universe, and does include one familiar boy from Swope Ranch, who as an older man plays a prominent role in the story.

David E. Hilton will discuss his novel at BookPeople in Austin on January 13 (7 p.m.).

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