I was born in the east Texas oil boom town of Kilgore. It just
happened to be where we lived when it was time for me to make my appearance in
this world. My dad worked in the ‘oil patch’ for Shell oil and I guess we lived
in most every boom town of the day…mostly in Texas. However, I did attend
twenty-one grade and middle schools in seven states growing up. That’s an
education in and to itself.
By
the time I hit high school, we had moved to Gainesville, Texas…for the third
time. Guess you could say that was my ‘home town’. Dad didn’t want to move us
since I was playing football and would lose a year of eligibility, so he took a
reduction in job classification from Driller to Pumper—at a substantial cut in
pay although I didn’t know that at the time.
As
soon as I graduated, dad went back to Drilling and pushing tools (a Field
Supervisor) and he and mom moved to the oil play at Liberal, Kansas. I went off
to school at Oklahoma University to play football under Coach Bud Wilkinson. My
best friend from high school called me the following summer while I was working
seismograph for Shell Oil out of McAlister, Oklahoma and said, “Hey, Kenny, I
just joined the Marine Corps…Come go with me.” Well, what the hell.
When
I got out of the Corps, my high school football coach, the venerable Buddy Ryan
(later of NFL fame) called me to come to Lake of the Pines near Marshall, Texas
and be Water Front Director for an exclusive boys camp named for the wonderful
Hollywood actor…Camp Dale Robertson. Buddy was Camp Director.
Toward
the end of the summer, I started thinking maybe I’d better be for getting back
to college somewhere. Coach Ryan was friends with Bill “Red” Conkright, head
coach at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and he got
me a tryout for the football team. Coach Conkright offered me a full
scholarship for my final three years of eligibility. Who knew?
No,
I didn’t major in writing. I got my Bachelor’s degree in Speech and Drama and
also one in Business in 1964. Guess I’ve always been somewhat of a ham.
After
working for IBM and in the insurance business for a while, a cousin of mine,
who was a petroleum engineer, called and said, “Hey, Kenny, let’s start a
drilling company and punch holes in Texas.” Well, what the hell. We formed
Texas Western, Inc. and started drilling oil and gas wells over a goodly
portion of west Texas—I became a genuine Texas wildcatter.
I
had always been a cowboy at heart and decided that instead of living in Dallas,
I’d make my home base at a ranch. I sold my interest in Texas Western, bought
some land outside of Athens, in east Texas, and started raising registered
Beefmaster cattle and Quarter Horses. Who knew.
I
was dating a model with the Kim Dawson agency in Dallas in the early ‘70s and
would go into the agency on occasion with her. The agent, Kim, kept trying to
get me to sign up with her, saying I had a great look, LOL, but I looked around
at the guy models that she had and said, “I don’t think so…Don’t believe I fit
into your program.”
Well,
sometime later, I was in there with my girl friend and Kim came up to me and
asked, “You ride horses, don’t you?” I laughed and replied, “Been thrown off of
one or two, yes, ma’am.” She said, “I don’t have anyone in the agency that can
ride.”—You see, there’s a big difference between someone who can ride and a
‘rider’…I’m a rider.—I looked around at the pictures of her guys she had on the
wall and said, “I can believe that.”
She
asked, “Would you go and represent my agency on a Dairy Queen audition?” Now, I
hadn’t told her I had a degree in Drama and didn’t then. I finally said, “I
don’t have any pictures.” She said, “Doesn’t matter, they’ll take a Polaroid.”
(Tells you how long ago that was.) So, I go in my usual outfit, jeans, boots,
denim shirt and cowboy hat and the director is casting—it was even before the
days of the casting director. He looked up when I came in and says, “Oooh, love
your costume.” I got in his face and said, “Costume, my ass.” Now, I don’t know
if he fell in love or got intimidated, but I got the part and introduced the
Dairy Queen Belt Buster hamburger.
Later,
after we had shot the commercial, I got to thinking, “They’re gonna pay me that
kind of money to sit on a horse and eat a hamburger…Well, what the hell.” That
was forty-five years, some fifteen or so feature films—including Silverado, Uncommon Valor, Newton Boys,
Rocketman, Last of the Warriors, and
Friday Night Lights—fifty plus TV episodes (including six Dallas and six
Walker, Texas Ranger) or MOWs and I quit counting TV commercials at 260,
including eight years as spokesman for Wolf Brand Chili…and only God knows how
many Industrials and VO (voice over) jobs I’ve done.
Well,
somewhere back around ‘84, like most actors, I started writing screenplays.
There was always that thought in the back of your mind, “Hell, I can write
better than some of the crap I’ve had to read for.” That was probably thirty or
forty screen or teleplays ago. Good practice…especially in writing dialogue.
Around
’90, I decided I’d had enough of Hollywood and moved back to Gainesville,
Texas—for the fourth time. Bought a small ranch and figured if I had a movie or
TV show to do, I was only about an hour from DFW airport.
In,
2009, a local friend, Buck Stienke, asked to read some of my screenplays. So, I
gave him some and he took a shine to Rockabilly
Baby...a fictional account of the birth of rock and roll in the ‘50s…With
Buck producing and me directing, we shot it in Gainesville, with some students
from my acting class I had been teaching. It won a few awards.
In
2011, an old buddy from the Marine Corp, John Eastman, called and said, “Kenny,
I wrote a novel.” “Hell, good for you John.” He asked, “Can you make a
screenplay out of it?” I said, “Sure, send it down.” He sent a seven hundred
page novel to me. “Damn, John, why didn’t you just send War and Peace…” Well,
anyway, Buck and I adapted it to a 123 page screenplay in about three months,
that is still making the rounds at Disney.
Buck
and I looked at each other after that and simultaneously said, “Shoot, we can
write a novel.” Thirteen weeks later we finished our first, Black Eagle Force: Eye of the Storm. It
was released in Feb. of 2012—that was fifteen novels ago. Seven military/action
novels in the Black Eagle Force series; Two in the Aurora SyFy series and six
in The Nation historical western fiction series, featuring the first black
Deputy US Marshal, west of the Mississippi, Bass Reeves (Winners of two
national Laramie awards). Two of the westerns, I wrote alone…HELL HOLE and the just released LADY LAW and my WIP in the same series
is, BLUE WATER WOMAN.
Just
after we had released the second western,
Haunted Falls (winner of the
Laramie Best Action Western, 2013) a fan asked why I hadn’t written about
Delaware Bend up on the Red River between the Indian Nations and Texas. I said,
“Didn’t know anything about it.” Well the reason was that it was mostly under
Lake Texoma today. But, back in the 1800s, Delaware Bend (and Dexter, Texas),
in Cooke County, was one of the three most notorious places in North America,
along with Leadville, Colorado and Tombstone, Arizona—in addition to being the
the winter camp for the likes of the notorious guerrillas, William Clarke
Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and later, the James Gang.
Wow,
what a treasure-trove of history to weave a story around—and ACROSS the RED was born. Following that
was BASS and the LADY, where I
introduced Deputy US Marshal Fiona Mae Miller, the only female deputy marshal
to serve in the Indian Nations under Judge Isaac Parker—the Hanging Judge.
Gainesville became the home base for Deputy US Marshals Fiona Miller and Brushy
Bill Roberts—Brushy Bill is said by many to actually be Billy the Kid after he
faked his death by his close friend, Pat Garrett in 1881. Brushy Bill died in
1950 in Hico, Texas.
Texas
has offered me an unlimited source of material for my historical fiction
westerns. My current WIP, I mentioned earlier, is BLUE WATER WOMAN an Indian Shamaness for the Caddos of the mound
building Atakapan Tejas Indian tribes back in the 1500s. Fiona Mae and her
partner, Deputy US Marshal Brushy Bill Roberts go on a suspense filled
encounter peppered with old west Indian mysticism, therianthropy, also know as
shapeshifting and outlaws on the scout in BLUE
WATER WOMAN.
In a
country and lifestyle normally reserved for men, Fiona Mae Miller is a special
breed of woman. She’s lightening fast, an expert shot…with either hand…can ride
anything with hair on it and doesn’t tolerate injustice or rudeness
anywhere...or from anyone.
Ken
Farmer didn’t write his first full novel until he was sixty-nine years of age.
He often wonders what the hell took him so long. At age seventy-five…he’s
currently working on novel number sixteen—In addition to E and Print, eight of
the novels, so far, are available in Audio…narrated by Ken.
Ken
spent thirty years raising cattle and quarter horses in Texas and forty-five
years as a professional actor (after a stint in the Marine Corps). Those years
gave him a background for storytelling…or as he has been known to say, “I’ve
always been a bit of a bull---t artist, so writing novels kind of came
naturally once it occurred to me I could put my stories down on paper.”
In
addition to his love for writing fiction, he likes to teach acting, voice-over
and writing workshops. His favorite expression is: “Just tell the damn story.”
All commenters will be submitted for a random drawing for five (5)
Mobi files of LADY LAW.
Ken's
VO Demo:
(Info provided by author)
When people hear the name Texas, many different things come to mind.
The truth is, Texas is such a large state, that what a person can expect to
find depends on what part of Texas they're referring to. Sure, there are areas
full of small towns; rodeos, festivals and the like, but there are also some of
America's largest cities; Austin, Houston, Dallas, etc. So, put aside any
preconceived notions regarding this proud state, and come to see what Texas has
to offer.
Jan’s been experiencing a time these last few weeks but let’s show
support for this author from Texas. 
