Texas Short Stories

Published with permission from the author, who holds all rights.

Cliff Caldwell
How I Got Started

My interests in Western History really began when I was a boy. At age 13 I had a shoeshine stand at a local barbershop, and poured every penny I made into books and cowboy collectibles. Writing books never occurred to me until many many years later, when I began to do research on a couple of old firearms that I had purchased for my collection.The information I uncovered was fascinating, but more than anything I enjoyed the process of doing the research and writing down the stories.

When you truly have a love of history, and the old west, it's easy to imagine yourself involved in the stories and become the characters. I have been fortunate enough to have traveled over practically every square inch of each and every location where the stories in Old West Tales - Good Men, Bad Men, Lawmen take place. This enabled me to project myself into the stories. Sometimes I can nearly smell the faint aroma of sagebrush in the air, or feel the drops of a cool afternoon rain falling on a dusty prairie as I daydream and slip off into my writing.

In Old West Tales - Good Men, Bad Men, Lawmen I developed characters that are not from the "most popular" list. I chose to write about some of the more ordinary folks who made up the real old west. The town marshals, sheriffs and outlaws who were not noteworthy enough to make it to the silver screen. The inspiration for most of the stories came from the true history of these characters. Many of the events in the book actually happened. The ones that didn't, well they should have!

Clifford Caldwell is a collector of western and cowboy memorabilia. He writes from the Hill Country of Texas near San Antonio. Contact him via e-mail