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Originally Posted by semperfi71
Congratulations on an excellent purchase and thank you for sharing.
It is primarily Skeeter Skelton as to why I became a "handgunner". And it is his fault alone that I have .357s and .44 Specials.
When he left Shooting Times so did I.
His writings were, to me, more in line with "story-telling" than the minutae of handgun collecting or the deeper technicalities of reloading. But everything he wrote was interesting, informative, and colorful. He wasn't trying to sell you a product he was selling you a life-time passion. As such his became mine.
I think I actually missed meeting him a few years before he passed away. I was in the shopping mall in Albuquerque and a man who looked exactly like him, all the way down to the boots, was standing inside the door of a toy store as what appeared to be the wife was shopping. I stood a distance away and intently scrutinized this man trying to decide if he was Skeeter and if I should dare walk up and ask if he was. At the same time he noticed me and was "scrutinizing" me as a retired lawman would probably do. I still think it was him and was too intimidated to ask.
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If he was watching you, too, it was probably him.
I once asked if Sheriff Jim Wilson was at the Shooting Times booth at the SHOT show. Someone said that he was around and to hang out awhile and he'd be back.
A few minutes later, he walked over and greeted me. He had been studying me from a distance. People like that are cautious. They tend to have enemies who don't wish them well.
Most writers are willing to meet fans. One exception may have been Robert B. Parker. A fan wrote soon after his death a couple of years ago that he'd seen Parker in a store, but the man glared at him, as if daring him to approach. He didn't. But Robert B. Parker had a huge following for his crime novels. No gun writer has that large a fan base, although some have thought they did.
And who the fans are determines whether an author wants to meet them. Good Lord, John Wootters, Jr. had readers who couldn't even spell his name correctly. Look how some on this board spell and the way they use language. It plays right into the gun owner stereotype the anti-gunners treasure and promote. Most of these good folks are nice people, but they lack polish and refinement and often aren't too easy to have a stimulating conversation with. And writers are real people, with the usual priorities and limited time as anyone else has. But I think that most gun writers I've met would be willing to talk briefly with a reader if they didn't stay overlong or sic anyone else on them when they were shopping with their wives.
I've met a couple who seemed elitist and one who preferred privacy, perhaps because he didn't seek the limelight and probably wrote mainly because he needed the money. He was also dying with cancer. Two who left Africa when living there became intolerable seemed unhappy with the need to promote products and the glamor image that some writers cultivate. Both struck me as very deep men who had vast experience, but who shunned self promotion. I think they were uncomfortable around the peacocks among their peers. I never saw them interact wih fans; just in the Press room or hospitality suites at shows.
If you approach an author respectfully and don't bluster or seem a bore, many will talk to you. David Lindsey and Suzanne Arruda both spent considerable time with me answering questions after I mentioned aspiring to write mysteries. Mrs. Arruda even asked me about suitable rifles for her heroine and was kind enough to credit me for that advice in her most recent books. I was proud to show that acknowledgement to my children.
Skeeter impressed me as being pretty down to earth and relatively approchable. You should probably have asked if the man you saw was him and mentioned that you were a reader. He might have been relieved that you weren't watching him for a more sinister purpose!