Thomas W. Knowles
Thomas W. Knowles has worked as a reporter, photographer, columnist, and news editor, as a program coordinator and instructor at Texas A&M University, and as a technical editor and engineering designer in industry and for consulting firms. His short fiction, technical articles and non-fiction articles, photo-interviews, essays, columns and reviews have appeared in Mystery Scene, New Destinies, Persimmon Hill, Southwest Art, Starlog, The Texas Aggie, Texas Books In Review, Texas Sportsman, Past Lives-Present Tense, and many other newspapers, anthologies, journals, and magazines. As a freelance interviewer for national and regional magazines, he published a series of photo-interviews with many Texas celebrities, including Lyle Lovett, Kinky Friedman, Linda Ellerbee and John Henry Faulk.
Along with fellow Texan Joe R. Lansdale, he edited a critically-acclaimed series of anthologies published by Random House—the first detailed the history of the American West in The West That Was (1993); the second examined the genesis of the myth of the Wild West inWild West Show! (1994). Contributors to the series included most of the best-known fiction and non-fiction authors in the genre--Max Evans, Don Coldsmith, Dee Brown, Elmer Kelton, among many others. In 1996 the American Library Association picked Wild West Show! for their special recommended reading list of the 30 all-time best non-fiction books on the American West, a list that included Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, Mark Twain’s Roughing It, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and John Nieheardt’s Black Elk Speaks. In conjunction with the ALA, PBS, and the NEA, the Newbery Library includedWild West Show! in their two year, 44-library exhibition of the listed books and relevant artifacts, “The Frontier in American Culture.”
The first book in his acclaimed multi-volume history of the Texas Rangers, They Rode for the Lone Star (Taylor Publishing, 1998), was chosen by the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Rangers by Stephen F. Austin. Subsequent to the appearance of this first volume, he introduced and narrated part of the Discovery Channel documentary, “Texas Rangers, Legendary Lawmen,” which first aired in 2000. He is presently working to complete the series, to relate the history of the Texas Rangers up to the present day, as well as other projects.
His interest in the American West stems from his heritage as a fourth generation Texan—he can claim ancestors from both sides of the long and bloody conflict between the Comanche and the Texas Rangers, as well as from both sides in the American Civil War. When he’s not writing, he hunts, fishes, engages in period re-enactments, and camps out with his son. He occasionally teaches the creative writing course he originally designed while working for Texas A&M University, but he’s more likely to be found wandering the back roads of his native state, photographing ruins, old farmhouses, antique churches, abandoned cemeteries, and small town streets, stopping occasionally to sample the local beer or to pass the time with farmers, ranchers, and oil-field workers.
Tom is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Western Writers of America, and is an honorary life member (along with Chuck Norris and Clayton Moore) of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, his old home town. He lives with his wife, Barbara,and his son, James in Bryan-College Station, Texas.
Tom is also the founder and managing editor for Event Horizon Publishing Group (eventhorizonpg.com).
“Death threats from the ignorant, the criminal, the dishonest, and the ideologue, not the plagiarisms of the envious, is the sincerest form of flattery for an opinionated author.”
“In the person of Quanah Parker, an extraordinary man in whom the blood of two strong peoples flowed, the Lone Star and the Comanche Moon at last found common ground.”
“Charged with the mission of operating beyond the boundaries of civilization with minimal support and no communication from higher authority, they lived and often died by the motto, 'Order first, then law will follow.”
“When the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the solution ... unless you're mistaken as to just what is and what isn't impossible.”