Interview: Chet Cunningham

Read an excerpt of Chet Cunningham's new book, Hell Wouldn't Stop

Chet Cunningham, Mr. Prolific Chet Cunningham sold his first novel in 1968. At last count, he has written and sold 299 more. Chet does not believe in writer's block. Chet also doesn't believe in Santa Claus, yet in 1994 he founded the non-profit organization, San Diego Book Awards Association, to recognize local writers, offering prizes in 18 categories, including a $2,000 grant for a San Diego county novelist who has a novel in progress. Oh, yeah. In his spare time, Chet also created the Read-4-Fun program to encourage 5th graders to read more. Free books are given to students who do 200 pages of non-classroom reading and turn in a book report. Working with 15 schools and over 2,000 students, the organization gave away over 3,000 books in 2001 . Visit Chet's website: ChetCunningham.com Interview by David Boyne ©2003 writersmonthly.com All Rights Reserved

Imagine this scene:

The time: 1968. The place: San Diego.

A slight but energetic man in his early 30’s, his hair already thinning, walks briskly down a busy street. A convertible Mustang passes, its AM radio causing the Doppler crescendo and diminuendo of the Beatles song, Paperback Writer...

The man enters a bookstore. The tinkling of a bell attached to the door alerts several helpful clerks. They approach the man, but he waves them aside, striding past even as they swallow their words, "May I help you?"

The man doesn’t need anyone’s help. He knows what he is doing, where he is going, and why he is there. He walks straight to the fiction section, but ignores the slick new hardcovers on display. He pushes on, deeper, back into the racks where the cheap paperbacks are. Once there, he deftly selects 25 novels, all Westerns.

He pays cash, makes sure he is given a receipt, and leaves the store without speaking a word...

Cut to the interior of a small suburban home. We see a desk, with a large metal typewriter glistening in the spotlight of a desk lamp. The man is sitting in front of the illuminated typewriter, but he is not moving. Through the open door, we hear the sounds of a woman humming tunes from Oklahoma as she washes and stacks dishes. The man rubs his unshaved chin... we notice the 25 paperback Westerns lying about the desk, on the floor, their pages bent and their spines cracked from repeated handling, handwritten notes fill the margins... Beside the big typewriter we see a long narrow box half-filled with 3 x 5 index cards.

The window blinds are down, sealing out distractions. The man lifts one of the dog-eared paperbacks, starts to read, but suddenly throws the book on the floor. He stares hard into the white space of a single sheet of paper loaded into the big typewriter.

He starts typing.

35 years later, I am sitting across from Chet Cunningham and he passes to me a copy of his first book, written in 1968, Bushwackers of the Circle K.

He is a thin man nearing 70, calm and courteous, but with a streak of restless impatience. And it’s not my imagination: he would much rather be writing, working, than talking to me about it.

Still, my job is to ask dumb questions, to find out how this man has managed to write and publish 300 books. And, as we work through my desultory questions, some of the craftsman’s secrets are revealed.

But there’s no magic involved. Chet Cunningham is in the business of writing novels. He has the same drive, discipline, savvy judgement and self-reliance of any successful small businessman. When I ask Chet if he does readings, he scoffs. Like a print shop owner quickly doing "the math", to decide if he should bid on a job, Chet calculates the driving time and sundry costs of a reading. "So maybe I sell three or five books, right?" He calculates the percent of each sale that he gets against his costs and announces disdainfully, "It isn’t worth it."

And when it come to possessing a long memory, small business owners are second only to the Irish. Chet Cunningham is no exception. When he tells me of an agent who owes him money, it sounds as if the event happened last month‰but it happened twenty years ago‰and it becomes clear that, like any owner of a small business, Chet Cunningham carries an invisible and precise balance sheet in his mind. He can tell you how much product he has manufactured ("300 books published; 18,421,704 words published), how much product he has sold ("more than 5,594,204 copies"), and give you a discreet summation of profits made ("I’ve been making my living from my writing for decades. Not even many big name writers can say that.")

Why did you choose to start with Westerns?

They seemed the easiest to write. They paid the least, but that meant there wasn’t as much competition, not as many people trying to write and sell Westerns.

So you researched the market before you started writing, even before you decided what you wanted to write?

I didn’t have a lot of time to waste.

That’s when Chet tells me about going to the local bookstore and buying 25 paperback Westerns. He explains how he was already making his living as a freelance journalist, but he had always wanted to "try fiction".

He stands up from the chair in front of his computer, reaches to a high shelf and takes down a long narrow box. He passes the box to me. It’s filled with browned index cards. I lift out one card, covered in tight handwriting, the blue ink watery and faded, and learn the price of American gold in 1837, 1845 and 1886. On the back of the same card, notes lecture me on the features and quirks of various repeating rifles and the ammunition they use.

That’s what I did. I studied those 25 books. The plots, the characters, how they were written. The guns and other weapons and what food cost. Took them apart, made those notes. And then I wrote my own.

So you deconstructed those 25 novels. And you were able to sell the first Western you wrote?

Three hundred dollars. Those books were all for a specific market that doesn’t exist any more, the penny-a-day rental libraries.

But you kept writing Westerns?

I wrote a second Western. Sold it. Then I proposed to the publisher, Tower Books, that I write an ongoing series called "The Gold Wagon Series". I wrote the first one and the publisher calls me up and says, ¨This is not the greatest Western I’ve ever read. We’ve decided to publish it.’

And I’ve been trying to sell fiction, especially series, since then. I’ve written sexy westerns, like The Penetrator series. I’ve written under my own name and other names. I’ve done a lot of The Executioner series, with the hero Mack Bolan; Seal Team Seven; adult Westerns, men’s action stuff. I kill a lot of bad guys.

One book I wrote in a week, when the original author didn’t make deadline. The publisher called me, asked if I could do the book that fast. I sat down, figured out how many pages I had to write, how many days I had, and how many pages per day I would need to write. I told him, "Yeah. I can do it." And I did.

Do you use a literary agent?

I’ve probably used a dozen agents in my time. Some are good, some not. One in Los Angeles still owes me money for a book of mine her sold...

I’m with Jake Elwell now and he’s good. He’s the best, in fact. A woman from my writing group referred me to Jake. He’s in New York, but we do almost all our business by email. I go to New York once a year, maybe. We work extremely well together. Jake has originated maybe 6 or 8 book ideas for me. He got the Seal Team Seven series, because he knew a publisher who could use my work. Jake could know that so and so is looking for a book on Chief Crazy Horse, and he’ll ask me, "Can you do that?" "Sure," I tell him. "So knock out a three page outline and I’ll try to sell it."
And he does sell it.

Agent contracts are ridiculous. I don’t have a contract with Jake. Been with him over 6 years now, too.

You own the copyright on a lot of books you’ve written that aren’t in print. Do you explore alternative forms of re-publishing your work, or self-publishing, or maybe e-books?

E-books will be the 8 track cassettes of the book business! I put 5 of my Pony Soldiers novels in ebook form and they’ve made a grand total of 37 bucks in royalties.

Self-publishing is for people who can’t get published.

I write. I don’t like to sell. Some kinds of re-publishing have been profitable for me, like the large print library market. Several of my books are put out by Thorndike Press. Been doing this for 15 years now.

You’ve had a small acting career. How’d that come about?

I wanted to try writing screenplays so I figured I learn from the inside. Got some work as an extra as a way to research the business. Never had a speaking part. It was really just to figure out how screenplays work. The way you figured out how Westerns worked, by deconstructing 25 of them. Have any of your 300 books been sold to Hollywood, optioned?

There’re these two young guys on the East Coast who took an option on one of my sexy westerns. I wrote this series called The Penetrator, and they’ve been trying to do a satire movie of it or something. We’re not talking a lot of money‰like $400‰ and I doubt they’re ever going to get their act together and make a film. But they’ve just renewed the option for another year. Who knows.

Do you ever write on spec?

Almost never, except for a month I’m giving myself to write a screen adaptation of Hell Wouldn't Stop for a producer in Hollywood who may have some interest. Doesn't mean it's sold.

With your success, your track record and reputation, could you take the time to write a big novel, a potential best seller?

Sure, it’d be great to write one book a year, instead of six or eight. It’d be great to make a lot of money in royalties, but you have to understand: You’re competing with the best writers in the world when you’re trying to write for that market, to write a best seller. Maybe I’m not that good.

Do you ever decide to do a project just because it’s something that pulls at you to be written, even if it may not sell?

I’m writing a novel now, finishing it. It’s in first person present tense, and I’ve always written in third person past tense. It’s the only literary novel I’ve ever done. It’s working title is The Frulic Standard. It’s about an uptight recovering alcoholic, family relationships. Character driven. It’s been fun to write.

You’ve got a lot of projects going on.

Always. You know, it’s been about maybe 8 years since I’ve written a Western.

Thinking of getting back into the saddle?

Maybe I am.

The phone rings, and Chet excuses himself from the interview talks softly on the phone for a minute, giving directions to his house... I ask him if he has another interviewer on the way.

No. That was a guy who read my new book, Hell Wouldn’t Stop. He wants me to sign it.

It’s clear that Chet isn’t thrilled, and seems a bit restless. I take that as my cue, and ask a final question: Do people often call you, ask you to sign copies of your books?

Sometimes. The funny thing about it is, you don’t get much fan mail until you ask for it. The past four or five years I’ve been putting a short paragraph into my books letting people know that they can contact me, send me letters. And I’ve got a website, so I get all this email that I have to deal with. I’m thinking of not doing it anymore.

As Chet walks me to the door, I understand his restlessness. If Chet Cunningham had a bumper sticker on his car, it would read: I’d Rather Be Writing.

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