The fashion now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising to high heaven.

The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and kidnappings of beautiful maidens-bah!" "Follow the fashion then--if you must write.

Get out of your pink tea and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West--away out, beyond the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped.

Or New Mexico would do." "New Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe," Thurston hinted.
"Perhaps it is.

What I mean is, write what the public wants, since you don't relish failure.