LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You were born in Amarillo, Mike, but were raised in Austin. How do you suppose those two factors influenced your writing?

MIKE COX: Though born in Amarillo, I have spent most of my life in Austin. (However, last April I fled the city for Wimberley, which I love.) But Amarillo is important to me because that’s where my dad spent most of his newspaper career. He helped me get my first assignment for a story published by one of the long-defunct fact detective magazines — since replaced by TV shows like Dateline. I spent time in Amarillo during the summers and holidays and consider it my co-hometown along with Austin.

You’re a third-generation journalist, but when did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I think by the time I was in the fourth grade, I knew I wanted to be a newspaperman like my granddad, who was vastly influential in my life and career. A year later, in the fifth grade, I decided to write a history of Austin. I still have that one or two handwritten pages of Austin history, which reads suspiciously like the history of Austin that used to be published in the old Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. directories. My granddad went from newspapering to PR, but through all his careers, he was always a freelance writer. And both my parents were newspaper types who graduated to freelance writing. I sold my first magazine article when I was in the eighth grade for $35 to The Cattleman magazine. I thought I was rich and that fame would soon follow. Alas, I'm still waiting on both.

You’ve published three dozen books. What was your first big break as a book author like?

My first big break came because of a murder case I covered for the Austin American-Statesman. The killer was one Henry Lee Lucas, who despite his later crazy claims, absolutely killed his mother and years later, an elderly woman in North Texas. Oh, and his young “girlfriend.” I broke the story nationally that he claimed to have killed more than a hundred women, and his story eventually became my third book, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). It sold around 125,000 copies, and I still get small royalty checks from it. That established me nationally.

Your “day jobs” before you retired involved communications and public relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Highway Department, and Texas Parks & Wildlife. In many ways you told Texas’s story of the present and future. But your authorly work has largely involved telling Texas’s history. What attracted you to writing books about the past?

I’ve always liked history. And yes, of my thirty-plus books, only three were non-history (a biography of writer Fred Gipson, who wrote the classic Old Yeller, the Lucas book, and Cowboy Stuntman, a book about a Hollywood stuntman from Texas who was in ten John Wayne movies. Despite all the history-related books, I still consider myself a general writer. I’ll write about pretty much anything that (a) holds my interest and (b) is likely to sell.

You “retired” in 2015 to focus entirely on your books. What’s retirement been like?

Retirement is great. Before, I had to do my writing early in the morning before work, or on weekends, vacation, or holidays. Well, there’s also night, but I’m a morning person. I’ve always traveled a lot, but now I can travel more. Not to mention hunting, fishing, and antiquing. Also, it’s pretty luxurious to be able to get up in the morning and work all day on one project if I need to. In fact, since retiring, I have written or revised five books.

You have a new book about the Texas capitol coming out in 2017. Can you describe it for us?

I think this book, Legend and Lore of the Texas Capitol, is one of my best books. My connection to that building goes all the way back to when it was being built, since my great-grandfather was one of the laborers on the project. (I always hasten to had he was part of the paid help, not one of the convicts who cut stone for the building.) I used to go there as a little boy with my granddad (and got lost inside one Sunday evening in the early 1950s when my granddad took me with him when he went to check his mail at the Capitol Station) and later as an assistant sergeant-at-arms in the Texas Senate. Finally, I spent time there as a reporter for the Austin newspaper and later, as a state employee. I like to call it “my capitol,” but it belongs to all Texans. And there are some great legends connected to it as well as interesting true stories. I have, I think, told the history of the capitol through storytelling, which is my favorite style of writing.

What can you tell our readers about your creative process?

I’m a bit behind Larry McMurtry and Elmer Kelton in book production, but I enjoy the process of writing and have written a LOT over the years. In fact, I’m working on a book tentatively titled “Ten Million Words Later,” a book on writing techniques that have worked for me, as well as philosophical ruminations on the craft. I have never had trouble coming up with ideas, and my nearly twenty years as a newspaper reporter gave me discipline that has served me well over the years. I am an early riser, even in retirement. I get up around 5:30 on most days and start working as soon as I have a glass of OJ and my first cup of coffee down. I take breaks, of course, but work pretty steadily until noon. After lunch, I often take a nap and then work again until the TV news comes on. After that, I pretty much take it easy and read or watch TV. The only time I work after supper is if I am in a deadline crunch.

How has book publishing changed since you started in the business — since you are an author and a bookseller — perhaps you can tell us from both perspectives?

Wow! Book publishing is still book publishing (excepting digital books), but sometimes it’s hard for me to believe how much writing has changed. As a Baby Boomer (I am a BB sophomore, born two years after the boom officially began in 1946), I have gone from manual typewriter to electric typewriter to a clunky Kaypro word processor using a floppy disc, to a new laptop about every three to four years. Throw in the Internet and smartphones, and it’s an entirely different world from what I experienced when I first started writing and working for newspapers. I came to be fairly concerned about the future of book publishing, but I am more relaxed about it now. I still believe that someday all books will be digital, but last year the New York Times reported that ebooks seem to have stabilized in market share. Even when paper-based books are nothing but cultural artifacts, I still [figure] people will always want both story and information (nonfiction). One change I have seen is that it is harder to get published now, unless you do it yourself. Speaking of that, I think the stigma once associated with self-publishing is gone. I have never done that, but I eventually plan to try it, especially for books with a limited range of interest.

What advice would you give an aspiring author?

Hard to say something here that doesn’t sound like a cliche. First I’d say you can’t just say you’re gonna be a writer or write a book. You have to actually sit down and WRITE. Talking doesn’t count except in politics and love. I think it’s important to write every day. I think it’s important to revise your work. As a newspaper reporter, I learned to write acceptable first drafts. But now, and ever since I started freelance writing, letting something you have written marinate and then revising it makes it much better. I kept revising (to the sometimes dismay of my editors) even on page proofs of books about to go to press. Also, it takes a tough hide. Comanches used to steal books from the cabins they burned down after killing and scalping the occupants. Not because they wanted to read literature or the Bible, but because they stuffed them under their buckskin shirts and used them as body armor. If you’re going to be a writer, better stuff some figurative books under your shirt. Why? Publishers sometimes say no. And reviewers sometimes say things a writer does not like to see in print, at least not about something he's written.

If you could have dinner (and drinks) with any four figures from Texas history, who would they be, and why?

I sure have some questions I would like to ask Sam Houston, so he would be No. 1. My big two questions would be (a) was he stalling after the Alamo and before San Jacinto with the intention of fleeing to Louisiana and getting the U.S. Army involved in the fight against Mexico? and (b) did Abraham Lincoln really offer him an army if he would fight to keep Texas in the Union?

Dinner guest No. 2 would be J. Frank Dobie. I have read all his work, but never got to meet him. He lived well into my lifetime, and my granddad knew him, but Granddad later admitted to me that he stalled on my request to meet Dobie because he feared Dobie might convert me to liberalism. Heck, I was already a liberal.

No. 3 would be famed Texas Ranger Jack Hays He was a little guy with a gigantic reputation. I would want to see if he was really that tough, or just got good press.

No. 4 would be O. Henry. I used to be on the board of the O. Henry Museum in Austin and have always been fascinated by him. Shoot, in high school, he even helped get me a date. I had been reading about O. Henry in the honors English class I was taking at Lanier High in Austin and asked a girl out by writing her a note in an O. Henry style. She said yes, so thanks, Will Porter! What I would want to ask him is if he really dipped into the till at Austin National Bank. Since he was both poor and a boozer, I believe he probably was guilty as charged. Still, I'd like to hear what he had to say about it.