Your story in this week’s issue, “The Hanging of the Schoolmarm,” is one in a series of short pieces you’ve been writing that draw on cinema tropes. Was there a particular inspiration for this one?
"I do hate learnin', but oh! you schoolmarm!" is what the boys at the gulch said when Mary came to town; and, from "Big Bill" down to Hop Lee, the Chink, they all took to study, and to courtship. The ...