Wide Open Spaces

Best-selling crime fiction writer Michael McGarrity says he put his heart into “Hard Country,” his first novel of the West.

He also put in a lot of time into conceptualizing, researching and writing the epic Western. It’s in bookstores Thursday, May 10.

“While I was working on the Kevin Kerney series and came up with him as the protagonist, right from the bat I established Kerney’s backstory as one coming from a ranching family on the Tularosa,” McGarrity said in a phone interview.

	“Hard Country” by Michael McGarrity E.P. Dutton, $28.95, 604 pp.

It’s a reference to the Tularosa Basin in south central New Mexico.

“As I thought about him it became clear to me that he had this interesting ancestral past and the time was going to come when I was wanting to tell the story of his ancestors,” he said.

So after finishing “Dead or Alive,” the 12th Kevin Kerney crime novel, he approached his publisher about doing a “prequel,” in other words, a backstory novel of the Kerney ancestors.

The publisher asked for a book proposal. The author sent off two pages about a planned historical novel of those ancestors coming west into the Territory of New Mexico and settling in Tularosa.

They weren’t the only ones moving into new territory. As a writer, so was McGarrity. The publisher gave the proposal a thumbs up. They signed a contract for a one-book deal.

For a long time before the proposal, McGarrity had been researching the backstory. It involved amassing a library of books on the subject of New Mexico and the West for background reading and preparing himself for writing the hoped-for book.

One-third of the way through the manuscript McGarrity realized he couldn’t tell the whole story in one volume. “What I said to the publisher was that I think this really needs to be a trilogy,” McGarrity recalled.

Now he’s under contract for all three books. McGarrity said he doesn’t know of any other author who’s written a three-part backstory of an existing character in a series.

Volume one covers the period from 1875 to the end of World War I and opens with John Kerney giving up his West Texas ranch, leaving a son behind and searching for murderous outlaws and a place to start over.

“Another thing about ‘Hard Country’ is that I was able to include so much of the rich New Mexico history. There are characters out of our past and frontier days, including Pat Garrett, Oliver Milton Lee, Albert Jennings Fountain, Albert Fall. These are all important historical characters here in New Mexico. To be able to write about them is grand fun,” McGarrity said.

He also put in as a character Eugene Manlove Rhodes, one of the author’s favorite writers.

McGarrity said he didn’t plan for the novel’s release in the year of New Mexico’s centennial. But here it is, and the prepublication reviews compare “Hard Country” to Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” and A.B. Guthrie Jr.’s “The Big Sky.”

It’s a long road to meeting all his fans

Santa Fe author Michael McGarrity probably does more book touring in New Mexico than any other author.

McGarrity made many in-person appearances at bookstores and other venues to promote his 12 crime fiction best-sellers. For his new epic novel of the Old West, “Hard Country,” he has 12 events in the state where he will meet and greet old fans and new readers.

“I’m at the point now where I’d get yelled at if I didn’t visit places,” McGarrity said. “They say to me ‘Thank you’ for liking what I do. And it’s a wonderful way for me to say thank you.”

Here is a list of his New Mexico tour stops:
• 6  p.m. Friday, May 11, at Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo, Santa Fe. McGarrity will be in conversation with Valerie Plame Wilson for the book’s launch.
• 3  p.m. May 13 at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW. McGarrity will discuss and sign the book.
• 1  p.m. May 19 at the Michael McCormick Gallery, 106 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos. McGarrity will sign the book at a reception-party.
• 3  p.m. May 20 at Tome on the Range, 158 Bridge St., Las Vegas, N.M.
• Noon May 24 at First National Bank, 414 Tenth St., Alamorgodo. McGarrity will part in a Lunch and Learn Series event about McGarrity’s research on the book.
• Noon May 26 at COAS Books, 317 N. Main St., Las Cruces.
• 3  p.m. May 26 at the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library, 200 E. Picacho Ave., Las Cruces.
• 3  p.m. May 27 at Hastings, 1809 10th St., Alamogordo.
• 6  p.m. May 27 at Books Etc., 2340 Sudderth Drive, Ruidoso.
• Noon June 2 at Costco, 500 Eubank SE, Albuquerque.
• 2  p.m. June 2 at Barnes & Noble, Coronado Shopping Center, Albuquerque.
• 3  p.m. June 3 at New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave., Santa Fe.