Unpublished Works of Louis L'Amour Available Online

Posted on August 31, 2001

The Louis L'Amour Estate is making Louis L'Amour's ``papers'' available to readers according to Beau L'Amour, son of the legendary western writer. Louis L'Amour's books have sold over 280 million copies worldwide since 1955. Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures contains a variety of never before seen documents, including unfinished novels, story fragments and treatments, travel articles, professional notes and personal reflections on writing.

The documents can be accessed at louislamour.com. Lost Treasures is a subscriber supported service. A monthly subscription is $3.95 with discounts for six and 12 month enrollments.

``More than half of the documents we are posting on Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures are incomplete and the reader who enters the site will discover their imagination challenged in many different ways,'' says Beau L'Amour, who oversees Louislamour.com. ``It takes a certain kind of approach to appreciate this sort of material, a fascination with the possibilities, with the potential, that the unfulfilled work might have had.''

The inspiration of Lost Treasures stems from the mystery of L'Amour's unparalleled productivity. The site attempts to answer questions regarding his volumes of work, research techniques and writing motivation. He pursued certain ideas until they became the novels and short stories that he completed and published; yet others fell by the wayside. Those decisions ultimately provide insight into his creative process.

``He often went through various stages where he would have ideas for stories, usually not the full plot, just a situation or a beginning. He would then write these down in a sentence or maybe just a word or two on an unlined sheet of paper,'' says L'Amour.

``When the time came to write the story, he would sit at the typewriter and knock out the first chapter. If he knew where it was taking him or the situation was intriguing enough to get him reacting to it in a creative manner he would keep writing. But if he wasn't sure what he was going to do or the idea for another story got him sidetracked, then that beginning went into a pile. Occasionally, they were resurrected but, more often than not, they remained unfinished.''