Peter Brandvold

       I was born and raised in North Dakota and somehow I got it into my head early that I wanted to be a writer.  I can’t ever remember not wanting to be a writer, so I’m very fortunate that I’m able to make a living doing what I feel I was born to do.

      My interest in the Wild West sprang from my early years on the wide open prairie, kicking around farms, ranches, and riding horses in the hot summer sun with my cousins or my old pal Jacques Rice, with the sharp tang of skunkweed and plantain in the air, mixed with the smell of the horses and the saddle leather. 

       It also came from a general love of history and from the western movies and television shows that were made during my childhood in the sixties and seventies.  Shows like Gunsmoke, The Lancers, and High Chaparral held me rivited.  I also read the novels of Luke Short, Max Brand, Zane Grey, and Louis Lamour, though the writers I admired were John Steinbeck, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, and Jack London.

     I attended the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and came away with a B.A. in English.  From there I entered the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, and dabbled at writing “literary” fiction.  But while I wrote a collection of short stories (one was published in North Dakota Quarterly and reprinted in the anthology, Prairie Volcano), literary fiction -- at least in today’s style -- turned out to be too dull for me.  It seemed more about style and venting the writer’s personal angst than about entertaining readers.

     So I shelved my writing career for a while, and moved to Montana, where my wife, Gena, and I lived in a hired hand’s shack on a working ranch and taught English on the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, south of Havre.  In Montana, I started writing nonfiction for local newspapers and for Montana Magazine, and went on to publish articles on nature and history for such nation magazines as Country Journal and True West.

     In 1995, my wife and I moved to the hills and lakes of western Minnesota.  It was there, while raising chickens, turkeys, and water fowl on our turn-of-the-century farmstead near Battle Lake, that I decided to go back to what made me want to start writing in the first place -- action-packed adventure stories.  I wrote my first western novel, Once a Marshal in eight months.  Berkley bought it nearly a year later.

     Since then, I have published many paperback novels with Berkley and two hardcovers with Forge.  Many more are due out from Berkley in the next couple of years, and I’m also writing under the pen name “Frank Leslie” for Signet.  In addition, I’m working on a screenplay for my novel, THE ROMANTICS, and I’m reviving the old pulp comic book hero, BAT LASH, for DC comics.

     Currently, my life is in flux, as I’m in the process of divorcing and selling my house in the canyons west of Fort Collins, Colorado.  Soon, I intend to load myself, my laptop computer, and my three beloved mutts into a travel trailer, and head off “cowboyin’ around the mountains and plains of the Great West, camping and hiking in the outback, and penning more stories of Cuno Massey, Lou Prophet, Ben Stillman, Gideon Hawk, and Yakima Henry as I go.

       I hope you like this new website designed by the talented Texan, Robert Smith, and outfitted with the evocative art of western illustrator and painter, Ken Laager.  Please check back often for updated news about me, my books, and whatever other trouble I’ve managed to get into!