My Friend, The Cowboy

MY FRIEND, THE COWBOY

Dusty’s longtime friend and fellow author, Jodi Thomas, reminisces about the big man with the even bigger heart.

JODI THOMAS New York Times Bestselling Author

I MET DUSTY RICHARDS at the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation (OWFI) conference in the early 90s. As we all know, Dusty never met a stranger. Dusty was always willing to help beginning writers. He had the biggest critique group I’ve ever seen. But we decided we would have a retreat for writers at Red River, New Mexico. So, the weekend before Halloween, people just showed up with no agenda whatsoever. They simply showed up to read to each other and talk.

Usually, Dusty would call me in September and say, “When are we meeting on the Red, Kid?” We picked a date and showed up, and so did thirty or forty other writers. Some days when the conference was over, Dusty and I would critique each other’s book, and our spouses would take off to Taos and gamble all day.

Dusty didn’t know much about writing romance, and I didn’t know much about writing Westerns, but we were always each other’s biggest cheerleader.

I never saw Dusty angry, and he gave great big bear hugs. From having bar-b-que dinners for all the writers in town to telling the worst jokes ever heard, he was a real pleasure to be around.

One summer he called me and said he was up for two Spurs from WWA, and I said, “Where is the convention, and I’ll be there.” Linda Broday and I drove to Kansas City, Missouri and had a great time watching him accept a Spur Award—his third—for his 150th novel, The Mustanger and the Lady. My friend Dusty Richards was a big man with an even bigger heart.

JODI THOMAS is the legendary New York Times bestsellng romance and mainstream author with over sixty novels to her credit. She has won three Romance Writers of American RITA Awards (in 1992, 1995, and 2006) and was inducted into the Romance Writers Hall of Fame in 2006. Jodi and Dusty were close friends for nearly thirty years.