Cat’s Cafe, Author’s Note

Posted on by Ralls Melotte

Updated July, 2022

Okay, so I never will actually enjoy country or country western music. But … here’s a fun intro to cowboy twang my “Dear Editor” found to kick off my Author’s Note about our dialect choices for the Eagle Rock Trilogy. Many of the characters in our created Eagle Rock sound a little something like this, if you add several years of smoking and hard drinking to the vocal chords! Thanks to Mason Ramsey and YouTube.

Although this book is fiction, the story is built upon actual events and real people in the late 1800s during the formation of the new town of Eagle Rock, which is now called Idaho Falls, Idaho. Many of the fictional characters I’ve portrayed would have had strong dialects and little formal education. I have attempted to pick up the flavor of their conversations by using phonetic spellings of the words they might have used. In addition, we have incorporated traditional Western slang of the day. The generally accepted definitions for the slang used come from multiple sources.

  • General Characteristics of Printed Cowboy Dialect
  • Dickheaberlinwrites.com
  • Cowboy Slang, Lingo, and Jargon
  • Ira Koretsky
  • A Writer’s Guide to the Old West
  • compiled by G.M. Atwater, January 2001
  • The Long Riders Guild Academic Foundation
  • Long Rider Douglas Preston
  • The Glossary of Railroad Lingo
  • Railroad Avenue, Freeman Hubbard, 1945

New posts in your inbox