Prolific Might Be an Understatement by Velda Brotherton

ROBERT RANDISI TOLD me the one thing I didn’t ask was why he writes. Not why he writes what he writes but simply why he chose to write as his life’s work. His reply is as simple as the question. His answer is, “I never had a choice. Writing was all I ever wanted to do, which is probably why I never allowed for failure.”

If you’ve ever read a Western novel or a Western pulp novel, you probably read at least one or six or ten written by Robert Randisi. The same can be said for mysteries as well. Often you might not have known it. That’s because of the over 650 books he’s written in his long career, many did not have his name on the cover. That’s the way things often went for writers early on in the publishing business. For a while he wrote many of his books under his own name. He also wrote under a large collection of pseudonyms.

While very young he spent a lot of time writing stories in his head, long before he put pen to paper.

He explains how having the opportunity to join a book club in school was fascinating for a kid who’d only read comic books up to the sixth grade. He had never heard of the idea of ordering books every month and having them delivered.

“Soon reading shifted my TV watching from cartoons to live action shows. Sky King and Roy Rogers, then The Hardy Boys soon began an interest that would one day lead to my earliest published books. Still, I wasn’t quite finished following a path to the various series I write today.”

But how does an ordinary kid, raised in Brooklyn, grow up to be a popular writer of so many books? Well, first he does what Robert did.

“After joining the book club in school, I became fascinated with writers, the first being Edgar Allen Poe.

“Then along came a growing interest in TV series like 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye.” But what turned the corner and put him on the path to writing his own stories? Lots of kids watch television shows, but they don’t become writers.

“It was 1966,” Randisi continues, “I saw the movie Harper with Paul Newman . From then on everything that happened continued to lead me to a writing career.

“My older sister’s boyfriend left a typewriter at my house. That turned the trick. It called to me, so I put a piece of paper in it and started typing. I began with a Hardy Boys story, then moved on to A Man from UNCLE novel. Then my own private eye book.

“No, it wasn’t reading the highly popular Mickey Spillane or Carter Brown of the day that influenced my writing. Here’s what I really credit. In the front of the book from which the Harper movie was taken, I read that the movie was based on a Ross MacDonald book called The Moving Target.

“I was fifteen and hooked by the combination of character, film, and author. So, I made a vow. I would write private eye books for a living when I turned 30. By the time I graduated from high school at sixteen, I had been writing in earnest for a year.”

Robert spent the first 40 years of his life in Brooklyn, New York. But as far as he is concerned, where or how he grew up has nothing to do with his desire to become a writer, or for that matter, where he sets his stories. While many writers place a lot of their tales where they live, it never occurred to him to do that.

When asked how enjoying mysteries like Harper led him to write so many westerns, he tells the story of the birth of his first popular Western series, The Gunsmith.

“In 1981 I was contacted by Charter Books and asked if I could write westerns—specifically Adult westerns. At that time, I had spent years watching Westerns, television shows and movies. Up to that point I had never considered writing in the genre. My first love was writing mysteries. But in those days when asked if I could write something, I NEVER said no, so my answer was, yes, of course. I was asked to create a series, and The Gunsmith was born.

“From that point on I became interested in writing all kinds of westerns as well as mysteries. In 1999 I wrote a Death in Dodge City #4, a giant in the Gunsmith series.

“I’ve written about gunmen, lawmen, mountain men, outlaws. In 2007 I decided to do the series, The Gambler, because I hadn’t yet featured a gambler. Butler the Gambler the first in the series— opens in Wichita, then moves on to Dodge City which seemed the natural location for a gambler.

“As for using historical characters, I enjoy writing westerns both ways, completely fiction where I create all my characters and mixing fiction with factual characters. I enjoy the research almost as much as the writing.

“In reading about Bat Masterson, I became convinced that I am a reincarnation of Bat, as I enjoyed everything he did—boxing, poker, writing—probably the only thing I didn’t do that he did was hunt buffalo. I even worked in law enforcement.

“Living for so long in Brooklyn, New York, meant a lot of traveling and reading for research. Since then, I’ve lived in Florida and Missouri and now can be found in Nevada, anywhere there’s a casino.”

When asked if he weren’t a writer what career would he choose, this was his instant reply:

“This is easy. I’d be a singer. Before I was a writer, I was a musician—guitar, piano, and cello—but realized I’d have to pick one and give it my all to succeed. I never had another career, only jobs, since I knew I’d be writing for a living by the time I was 30. No career, no retirement plan, no IRAs. No fallback plan. I painted myself into a corner and HAD to succeed. But I just as easily could have put my all into music.”

—VELDA BROTHERTON was an award-winning nonfiction author, novelist, and a founding partner of Saddlebag Dispatches. She passed away in March of 2023, leaving behind not only a legion of fans of her writing, but scores of writers she mentored over the course of her three decade writing career.