Steve Pratt speaks to a North-East author who finds inspiration in strange places.

TEACHER and prison lecturer Peter Taylor saw and liked a lot of western films when he was younger. So when he decided to switch from writing poetry to writing fiction, going way out west seemed the obvious answer.

His first western was accepted and triggered a run of cowboy stories published on the Black Horse Western label.

That Sedgefield-born Taylor, 63, should write westerns is an odd thought. Even stranger is where some of the inspiration for his novels came – his teaching days in the Midlands.

“I worked in Smethwick during the Seventies as a teacher in a multiracial society so, in some of my westerns, I’ve used themes from those countries and translated them into the west,” he explains.

“Racial problems were one of those themes and I’ve written stories about half-breeds. Another story was about two brothers of different colour.

And I’ve taken an incident where negros were slaughtered – a true battle when, under a white flag, they were wiped out by the Southern gentlemen.”

Another of his novels features the frontiersman nicknamed Blessed McGill. He fought with the indians, something Taylor has used in one of his novels.

“I’ve tried to get some truth behind the stories I write. I think the story is more important than anything else, if people get into the story they’ll read on rather than where it’s set or anything else.

“The other thing about westerns is that you can describe the scenery in a poetic fashion if you like, much more so than in a crime novel.”

The first novel he wrote – a western – was accepted by a publisher and so he carried on. He’s never had a book rejected and never used an agent.

Taylor, who still lives in the North- East, didn’t set out to be a writer. He did a history and physical education degree at university, although football was his first love. He played semiprofessionally and has only recently hung up his boots after playing in a local over-40s league for 20 years.

He sees football as an obvious subject for a book, but thinks it’s very difficult to write a football novel because the drama is in the game itself and not so much on the periphery.

He recalls as a student footballer playing in the reserves in a game against Hartlepool United. Their relatively- unknown manager Brian Clough impressed him. “I went back to university and told everybody he would be the best manager in the world. And they all laughed at me.

But there was something so positive about him and within two seasons I’d been proved right,” he says.

Taylor worked for 12 years as a civilian lecturer in the Army, followed by time in prison – as a lecturer in education. Both areas provided him with background for his writing.

Now he’s abandoned westerns and turned to crime. His third thriller, Stone Cold, was published this month.

“I felt like a change because I was in a groove and working in a prison after lecturing in the Army,” he says of switching from the western to thriller genre.

Stone Cold is centred on a former gipsy prizefighter jailed for killing a fellow bare knuckle brawler. He wants to go straight but a criminal family tries to entice him back into crime.

“There’s a subtext in my novels,”

says Taylor.” They show what happens if you slip, if you give into temptation – how it can escalate and ruin your life. That’s the message behind what I’m doing. In my crime books, I’m trying to point something out which is hidden and I’d like to think that comes over.

“You like to think you’re getting a truth into your work. If I was writing about things I didn’t know about I wouldn’t be convinced I was hitting the right note as far as the truth is concerned.

“Up to a point with the crime books, my characters are based on something I’ve seen at close hand, although the books aren’t documentaries.

With the prisoners I taught, most had done one thing wrong and that had led to trouble. Very rarely do you meet an evil one.”

His work in the Army gave him another aspect of life for his writing. “I lived in the officers’ mess so I saw people who were aristocratically related and had money. So with that and working in a prison, I can flip between the two. Again it’s writing about what you know.

“With crime, I’m not into Agatha Christie type puzzles. I’ve not got that kind of mind and I don’t do much research.

You can say prison is the research.”

Many of his main characters are outsiders. “In Stone Cold I’m trying to show that if someone takes advantage of education in prison it can really change their lives,” he says.

“Some are capable but don’t do anything.

The hero in the book has become educated, but returns to his old area and finds problems but tries to pass on what he’s learnt to a younger guy going the same way.”

The prison setting is something Taylor has experienced first hand, but westerns from another time and place are a different matter. “When you’ve seen the films they’re in your head anyway,” he says.

“I took a trip across America, five weeks on my own. But I get more from films. I did American history as a subsidiary subject and got a lot out of that.”

You’ll find his western books in libraries in the US, but they aren’t published over there. “An agent from America wanted to look at what I was writing, so I sent him the westerns.

He thought they were good enough to send to Los Angeles to a publisher but the reply was it would be like sending coals to Newcastle.”

■ Stone Cold by Peter Taylor (Robert Hale, £18.99)