70 books like Chasing Billy the Kid

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime televisions. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really happened in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is much more interesting than the myth. But that truth carries some heavy weight, which informs us of our national foibles, crimes, and embarrassments. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward historical fiction as a writer.

Because I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, my supply of heroes was liberally doled out by the 130+ Western series that dominated nighttime television in those decades. My parents allowed me one program per week. It was a Western. I was soon interested in history, to know what really did happen in the American West, and so I came to understand the great discrepancies between fact and TV. The truth, for me, is so much more interesting than the myth. As a Western historian, I've done my share of historical research, but I still gravitate toward fiction as a writer. I love the freedom to engage my characters’ thoughts and emotions.

After publishing five books of poems, I found myself writing a long work I had no way of classifying. It involved the extensive use of facts but was also fiction. It read in part like a novel but was also lyrical. I decided to just write it and not worry about what genre it belonged to. It became A Monster’s Notes. I suspect in our internet age, the emergence of unclassifiable work is going to become more and more common. You can already see it happening. The web isn’t divided into sections the way a bookstore is; instead, it’s more like a spider’s web—you can follow this thread or that, but somehow they’re all connected. 

I wrote my first cover story on climate change circa 1996, when the computer modeling made clear what would happen. Then I began to see clear physical evidence that the planet was warming, and not much was being written about it outside academic circles. That led to the book Feeling the Heat. I recruited a bunch of experienced environmental journalists, sent them around the world, and they came back with very detailed and important reporting based on what they’d seen—melting glaciers, rising seas, changing ecosystems.

I love inventing inventions and experimenting with experiments–all in aid of blending science and story to inspire innovation and positive change. My career covers six countries, 15+ novels for primary-aged children, and jobs that include science journalism at CERN (home of the Large Hadron Collider), exploding things at Questacon (as part of a science circus), and collecting bins in the back of a ute (as a garbage analyst). I write for children because I believe (and it’s scientifically proven) that our children are the future. 

As an only child of a working mother, I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons with John Wayne. I graduated to movie nights at the theater with Clint Eastwood. My hero-worshipping crush on tough guys combined with my passion for romance novels and my fascination with the history of the American West made me the perfect candidate to write gritty, romantic westerns. My very first book, written over 30 years ago, was a western.

Growing up, I've always been attracted to the fantasy genre; I've been obsessed ever since my teacher introduced me to it in the first grade. What started as innocent fairy books evolved to dark, spicy fantasy romance/romantasy. Now, in addition to staying up way past my bedtime reading, I'm a teenage author of my own YA fantasy romance book, Masks of Faded Dreams. This genre has truly changed my life. As cliche as that sounds, it's true; it's both my form of escapism and an eye-opening experience into worlds I'd never known existed.