Dave Stamey - Shopworn Advice

The shopworn advice to young authors: write what you know. Dave Stamey has taken that advice to heart, but it was a rocky beginning, one typical of the ranching and cowboy life. He was born in Montana, east of Billings, where the prairie meets the mountains.

"My dad was a rancher, but when the cattle market went bust, he lost the ranch," Dave says. "So when I was 12, we moved to the central coast of California and he opened a feeder operation. Then Nixon got into a fight with the Russians and enacted a grain embargo that made the cattle cost more to keep alive than to kill.

"I got interested in music and started playing the guitar around that time, but I was also interested in writing. No one in my family did either one of those things, so they were a little confused. They were supportive, but they didn't understand."

Dave started out working in feedlots and as a packer up in the Sierras ("I still host a pack trip up there with my partner every summer.") but then he decided to make the switch from packer to full-time musician.

"I played every bar up and down the Central Coast 10 times, but there was no way to keep it up professionally," he says. "No one listens to your music and you get insulted in some men's room once too often. So I quit music and set out to write the great American novel."