Different influences at different times in my career, and some have stayed with me more, some less. Chester Himes. Ralph Dennis, who wrote a series called Hardman which is a big influence on the Hap and Leonard novels. Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, Fredrick Brown, Robert Bloch, and I'm just getting started. I read constantly. As for the epic Western, that's Paradise Sky.

Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are just great in that, and Don's direction is sublime. Love it, and I was glad to be a part of it, if just in spirit and Don's desire for it to be a good film and for me to be happy with it. When I first saw it I was very impressed, and it gets better with repeat viewings.

I have always felt validated and it shouldn't take film to do that for writer, but I'm glad it has. My plan has always been to be read more widely by doing just what I've always done. I wanted to break into the mainstream without becoming mainstream.

They might have been all-right people doing the best they could, but I got to tell you, you got a dead cat lying in your yard you ought to bury it. That’s my motto.

As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.

I wrote for television some, animation. Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, Son of Batman, things of that nature were made and I'm happy about that, but now the recent film and TV stuff have validated me, as if that makes any sense.

I was very familiar with both actors, as well as Christina Hendricks and Bill Sage, Jimmi Simpson, Polly McIntosh, but the other main actors were new to me. And they were all terrific. Just amazing. Actually, Lowell Northrop optioned Savage Season from me, first book in the series, and I wrote a screenplay.