Friday Factoid is a blog feature where I’ll be sharing a little bit of background behind something from one of my books: ideas, characters, environments, pieces of research, you name it, it’s all fair game for the Friday Factoids! If you have a specific question, feel free to leave it in the comments or email me at jrfrontera@gmail.com! What will be featured this week? Read on to find out…
about the rather boring names of gangs in the old west, and how that influenced my writing!
Well, it turns out I’m not just writing one thing for this NaNoWriMo. I’m actually writing two things.
I’m not sure which one I’ll work on first. And honestly, I’ll probably flip back and forth between them all November long. So, aside from working on Bastard of Blessing, Book 2 of The Legacy of Lucky series, I will also be working on a short story that takes place long before Book 1.
Yes, it’s a prequel.
And it revolves around Lucky Logan himself. Before he died, obviously. This short story will delve into Logan’s past, and shed some light on whether or not those stories about him and Nine-Fingered Nan (who is the big baddie in the Legacy of Lucky Logan series) are true.
Here is the fake cover I made for this one:
As you can see, this short story involves a train job. And a gang. A large gang.
Yes, Lucky Logan was an outlaw. A rather nasty one, in his prime. He ran with a large gang for most of that time, a gang led by an even nastier guy even his own crew called “Kill ‘Em All” Paul Johnson.
I had all this backstory vaguely in my head when I wrote Bargain at Bravebank, of course.
However, now that I’ve decided to write a short story about one of Lucky Logan’s adventures, I needed more specifics. Specifics like…
What is Paul’s gang called?
Because all gangs have cool, intimidating names, right?
That’s what I thought. So I did some research.
And… uh, well… gangs in the Old West, turns out, actually had really boring names.
Like, none of them struck fear into my heart, to be honest. Some of them even made me laugh. Which I’m sure is not what their members would have wanted. But there you have it.
Don’t believe me? Read this list for yourself and tell me what you think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Old_West_gangs
A great majority of those gangs were simply named after the last name of their leader, or leaders. Sigh. Oh well.
So, since my research proved to be very UNinspiring, I decided to go ahead and stick with the historic norm. I would name Paul’s gang after him. His last name being Johnson, I toyed around with a few different variations (Johnson’s Gang? Johnson’s Group? Johnson’s Bunch?) before finally landing on Johnson’s Boys. (Or Johnson Boys or The Johnson Boys, depending on who’s talking about them.)
And thus, Paul’s gang was officially born!
“Johnson’s Boys” isn’t exactly fear-inducing, sure, but it is functional. And accurate. (And par for the course, apparently.) Most of the members of his gang are young men, ranging in age from 12 – 30. And most of them are male.
(They do have two women in the gang, though, I’ve been told. But on account of there being only two, the term Boys has stuck.)
So, there you have it! Now you, too, can be witness to the mundane, un-creative names of gangs in the Old West!
And you know how the Johnson Boys were born, to boot!
Stay tuned for more! And in the meantime, let me know in the comments… if you had to name a gang in the Old West… what would you call it?
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