Laramie County author Steven Horn discusses 'Yesterday Calling' following award recognition
Oct. 27—While the rest of the region is asleep, Steven Horn is writing.
These early hours bring him his only guaranteed peace during the day, before any birds or people are around to distract him.
From 4-6 a.m., Horn's mind is on Sam Dawson — the protagonist in his past four southeast Wyoming-set mystery novels. The series that began with "The Pumpkin Eater" in 2013 and continued in 2022 with "Yesterday Calling," which recently received the NYC Big Book Award as a Distinguished Favorite in the thriller genre.
It seems unlikely that Horn, who spent years as Commissioner of Agriculture in Colorado and later the dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Wyoming, would have ever found interest in writing an award-winning mystery series, but there are some similarities between his lifelong profession and his passion.
"I'm a researcher. I'm an academic. I spent a lot of years doing research," Horn told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on Wednesday afternoon. "This is totally different. My field was in biological science, zoology, and I was an animal behaviorist and a wildlife biologist."
His favorite aspect of writing is the research that goes into each story he tells.
"When you're in academia and in publishing, peer-reviewed publishing is not for the faint of heart," Horn continued. "Your audiences are skeptical and extremely critical, and what I found was that, in fiction, you could educate people if you kept them entertained.
"They let down their guard, and they become part of the story. When they do that, they are receptive to being educated."
Perhaps the best example of this comes from "The Pumpkin Eater," a story in which he had to research and interview experts on the United States eugenics movement of the 1920s-30s.
The character of Sam Dawson has found himself in a bizarre series of mysteries throughout his career as a photographer. In "Yesterday Calling," Dawson is faced with a more traditional antagonist than in previous entries — a nefarious serial killer.
Thank Horn's wife for the change — she's the one who told him that his antagonists are too "wishy-washy." If a plot revolving around the twisted concept of eugenics wasn't enough, the villain that Horn managed to craft in this latest book forced him into some of the darker reaches of his imagination to carefully craft a deranged murderer.
"I wrote this book with an antagonist that I just kind of fell in love with," he said. "This antagonist is mean, evil and nasty, but he's very articulate. What I think is a little different with this book is that the conversations that occur between the antagonist and the protagonist really stand out. The antagonist is a bit of a poet, interesting in his philosophy. But he's also deranged; he's a psychopathic killer."
However, the heart of the story lies in Dawson's personal reconciliation with past mistakes as they return to haunt him.
"There are things that you think about when you're older that you would have done differently," the 78-year-old author said. "Maybe you left some some things in your wake that you wish you hadn't done, that you wish that you would have done, wish you would have had a different relationship with.
"Those people in the past that made you what you are today, maybe you didn't thank them. Maybe you treated them badly. ... Make those reparations, get on the phone or write that letter."
Originally, Horn never considered the opportunity to write different "villains" for Dawson to encounter. "The Pumpkin Eater" was intended to be a stand-alone novel, but it was Wyoming's Craig Johnson, author of the hit "Longmire" series, who planted the idea with an unexpected blurb on the back cover of the series' first entry.
In the short quote, Johnson refers to Dawson as "one of the more likable characters to debut this year."
Prior to "The Pumpkin Eater," Horn had written the stand-alone novel "Another Man's Life," into which he channeled his experiences as a veteran of the Vietnam War. Taking his career in this direction was unexpected, but so far, it's paid off.
Publishing through the small, independent Granite Peak Press, which his wife owns and operates, allows him more creative freedom than if he published through a larger firm, but he is still bound by the rules of modern literature. He writes with his target audience in mind — older, college-educated women who often belong to local book clubs — while also assessing what personally interests him.
What interests him are mysteries.
There's truth in fiction, and there's always a piece of Horn in everything he writes. As a resident of Laramie County, he knows southeast Wyoming, its wildlife and its people, but unlike many other writers, he also knows how to solve a real mystery.
"I did research on wild coyotes off and on for 30 years," Horn said. "The last several years of my career, I was doing research on reproduction and reproductive endocrinology and trying to come up with a way of controlling coyotes from a non-lethal standard. The reason being they take millions of dollars worth of domestic livestock every year.
"Research is always trying to solve a mystery, and that's what I attempted to do in writing fiction. I would think of mysteries that fascinated me and then try to solve those mysteries."
Will Carpenter is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's Arts and Entertainment/Features Reporter. He can be reached by email at wcarpenter@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3135. Follow him on Twitter @will_carp_.
