12 Questions for a Writer: Tom Reed

Tom Reed is a rancher, farmer, hunter, angler, and writer. He's an advocate for finding soul in the outdoors. His new anthology, Mouthful of Feathers, does just that.

1.     Who are you, what have you written, and why?

I’m a lifelong Westerner, a third-generation Colorado native now living in Montana, where my wife and I own and operate a horse ranch and organic farm outside the historic mining town of Pony. We’re raising two great kids under the western skies and doing our best to balance the demands of the modern world with the call of the wild, natural, old world. Our kids run around shooting arrows they’ve made out of willow branches and chicken feathers and we wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve been a hunter and an angler and a writer almost since the moment I could walk. Writing, and reading, were a core part of my upbringing as much as hunting and fishing have been. I was raised in a very rural area and turned loose with a BB gun, a butterfly net, and a fishing rod, not to mention a bicycle.

I’ve written four nonfiction books, hundreds of newspaper and magazine columns, and several short stories in my career. Most recently, I helped edit an anthology of the best upland hunting writing in America because I felt that really quality outdoor literature was not being produced at all, let alone on the scale that it was during the 1960s and 1970s (not to mention early outdoor literature from the first half of the 1900s). I felt that there was a good pool of talent out there, but they just weren’t getting published and this anthology project was a course correction on that. There’s plenty of hunting promotion out there and many would say too much (I’m one of them) but there is very little about the genetic core of the hunter’s soul told in words that move you.

2.     What is it that draws you to writing?

Everything. The process of actually scribbling away on the words and how it sweeps your mind and heart up into the creation, to the germination of the idea itself. The walking and thinking. The sitting down and doing. Less fun is the pitching to publishers and least fun of all is the self-promotion and marketing; probably because my mother told me that bragging was piss-poor manners.

3.     Tell us about the process you undertook to write/edit “Mouthful of Feathers, Upland in America”. 

I had two roles. First, to write an original piece for the book as well as contribute a couple of “best of” pieces from the Mouthful of Feathers blog that I helped start many years ago. The second task was identifying and encouraging other writers whose work I respected into the fold. Both were fun as heck. I enjoyed writing a long piece on a mentor I had who was incredibly important in my life. I also enjoyed enticing such great writers as Dave Zoby and Chris Dombrowski, among others, to join our cause.

4.     What did you learn in the process and what surprised you?

Writing is hard for some people and easy for others. Not necessarily surprising, but this project brought that home. Some folks really chewed hard on what they contributed, with several drafts, while others were able to churn out something in short order. Everyone is different when it comes to the writing process and when you are a writer yourself, you tend to think everyone is like you because this is a very personal, internally-focused game we play and we often don’t look up to see the world around us when we are embroiled in it.

5.     Would you do it again?

Yes. Words matter. Especially good words. The talent we helped shine a light upon is worthy of many readers.

6.     What do you want people to take away from this book?

Hunting stories are often not about hunting and the best of them are about something else with hunting only as the medium through which a story is told.

7.     What advice do you have for aspiring authors/editors?

I heard an interview with the author John Sandford, who wrote the Prey series, among others. His advice is perfect: Finish the book.

8.     What is your favorite book and why?

I have a book going all the time so this one is not an easy question to answer. Plus, I think your tastes change over time, as we change and grow. But if pressed, I’d have to say No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. The reason would be his ability to move the narrative forward with different voices and points of view without for a second losing me in the process. That’s a gift, to pivot from personal point of view to third person and keep it all together. McCarthy will be missed, but he left a mark.

9.     You’re a self-described member of the “old school”? What does that mean for you and what do you think that means more broadly against the backdrop of modern society?  

I like frank conversation and no sugarcoating. I like to sleep on the ground. I like manual transmissions in my pickup trucks. I like books I can hold in my hands that aren’t battery-operated. I like bolt-action rifles. I like to learn from different people and hear different points of view. All of this, particularly the latter, makes me old school, I guess. And on the latter point, I think it’s a damned shame that we can’t sit down and listen to different points of view, even if we disagree with them, without disliking the person. I happen to like a lot of people whose politics I find disagreeable, but I don’t find the person disagreeable. Hell, I genuinely like them. I’d rather have a conversation with someone sitting on a porch somewhere than spend a single second listening to some jerkoff on the television telling me what to think.

10.  “Mouthful of Feathers” brings together things of heart and soul; old shotguns, good dogs, and long walks with good friends. Why do these kinds of things matter to you? Why should the broader population care?

They matter to me because they are real, tangible. They bank the coals that make my soul continue to give off heat. I think the broader population can learn about how a passion is fed, nurtured, cared for in stories about long walks, friends, old shotguns, bird dogs good and bad, wild country, and wild birds. It’s about the passion. Find it. Feed it. Don’t have to shoot a gun at a bird to do that.

11.  Why should a non-hunter read “Mouthful of Feathers, Upland in America”?

Fresh air, good friends, a loyal dog, wild country. These are things that non-hunters need just as much as hunters.

12.  What have I not asked that I should have?

My next project. It’s too early to talk about yet, but it is going to be very different from anything I’ve done before. I’ve had a long career and I feel as if I’m just getting started.

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We appreciate our wide variety of writers for sharing their time and their work. You can buy a copy of Mouthful of Feathers, Upland in America here.