David Fuller

David Fuller's first novel, Sweetsmoke, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author, as well as being shortlisted for a John Creasy "New Blood" Dagger Award in Great Britain. It was a Discover Great New Writers pick for Barnes & Noble, and an Original Voices pick for Borders.

Fuller's new novel is Sundance.

From the author's Q & A at Maurice on Books:

Q:David, have you always been fascinated with the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
...
My high school age son, Mark, asked me a question this past weekend for his history class that put me back in 1969. To brush up on the events of the day, I looked up 1969 and discovered, to my delight, that BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID came out that year. When it came out, I went to see it at the old Edens Theater in Northbrook, Illinois. It made one hell of an impression on me, this very cool film with the coolest movie stars of the day, full of humor and gun battles, more humor, and an ending that wasn’t like anything Big Hollywood Movies had been delivering up to that point. I mean, you don’t kill off Paul Newman and Robert Redford! So yes, from an early age I was fascinated if not with the legend of Butch and the Kid, certainly with the movie, which most of us didn’t question in terms of veracity. We knew movies stretched the truth, and we weren’t concerned if it was real or not, because it was so cool. It wasn’t until I did research for my novel that I learned that the great William Goldman, screenwriter of BUTCH AND THE KID, had done his homework, and what he wrote was structurally true to history. My friends and I quoted lines from the movie ad infinitum, ad nauseum, and, at key life moments, you can still hear me crack wise with “I can’t help you, Sundance.”

The movie is the reason the world knows about Butch and Sundance. There was no coverage of their supposed deaths, as it happened far away, in South America. The letters and documents from Bolivia in 1908 about the deaths of the Yankee robbers did not name them. Also, I read somewhere that their deaths were not reported in the United States until the mid 1930s, so it makes sense that...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at David Fuller's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Sweetsmoke.

The Page 69 Test: Sundance.

Writers Read: David Fuller.

--Marshal Zeringue