Like most authors, the question I get more than any other from non-writers is where do I get my ideas. The answer is the ideas come from everywhere—watching people, reading books, listening to sermons, scouring period newspapers, pranking our grandchildren, and just waking up each morning.
Sometimes, they come in the most unlikely ways, which is how my latest short story “Catfight at the No-Pay Saloon,” which is accessible online in the January 2026 edition of Saddlebag Dispatches.
When I was doing research for a project that resulted in Harriet’s and my YA nonfiction work Pintsized Pioneers at Play: Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger, I ran across a book on one man’s memoirs of growing up in a Colorado mining town. We were doing a juvenile book about the juvenile frontier recreational experience. The memoir told 
the story of two buddies whose wives got crossways, threatening the two husband’s friendship, until the men decided they would have the ladies settle it by a fistfight. Though fistfights were common in the old days, this fight was the one that the young boy remembered into his older years.
So, I let that idea percolate in my mind for a few months, thinking it had potential for a humorous short story. When it finally came together, I was pleased with the outcome as felt it told a good story with an excellent punchline ending that demonstrates the difference between men and women, then and now.
Too, I had to come up with a catchy title. So, I settled on one that paid homage to the most famous dispute in the Old West, the gunfight at O.K. Corral. I’ll leave the reset unsaid in case you want to read “Catfight at the No-Pay Saloon.”
It’s available to read at https://issuu.com/oghmacreative/docs/saddlebag_dispatches-january_2026/s/152278231
Please also visit & follow SADDLEBAG DISPATCHES on Facebook
