The Pineywoods of East Texas have produced a number of successful authors, most of whom have chosen to use the local landscape as the primary backdrop for their stories. But why is East Texas so important as a setting for so many writers?
There are a few possible answers.
The area holds a special allure for because of its unique blend of natural beauty, cultural richness and historical depth. Some authors are attracted to the piney woods, winding rivers and swampy bayous.
Others prefer the area as a setting due to the Southern Gothic traditions and the inherent tension between the picturesque and the sinister, populating their stories with decaying homes, hidden family secrets and morally complex characters. The area also lends itself to a noir setting, reminiscent of old 1940s-style mysteries.
Whatever the reason, the Pineywoods has produced more than its fair share of excellent books.
Probably one of the most well-known East Texas authors is Nacogdoches-based Joe R. Lansdale, author of the best-selling 2013 novel The Thicket, which recently was made into a feature film starring Juliette Lewis, Peter Dinklage and James Hetfield (yes, that James Hetfield, of heavy-metal band Metallica fame).
The Thicket is narrated by 16-year-old Jack Parker and set in turn-of-the-century East Texas. Raised in a religious household, Jack’s ideals are tested as he and a motley crew pursue the bank robbers who killed his grandfather and kidnapped his sister.

From left, Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis and Levon Hawke at the premiere of The Thicket, adapted from Lansdale’s best-selling, East Texas-based book.
Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard series delivers gritty Pineywoods noir with an irresistible twist. The thrillers follow the chaotic misadventures of two unlikely best friends: Leonard Pine, a tough Vietnam vet, and Hap Collins, an ex-con who did time for refusing to fight in the war. Together, this middle-aged odd couple stumbles into one dangerous criminal mystery after another, mixing sharp humor with high-stakes suspense in the heart of East Texas.
So why has Lansdale made this part of Texas the focus of his novels—and his home?
“I love this region,” Lansdale said in a recent interview. “There are negatives and there are positives, but the positives keep me here. One of the things is the geography. I like the way it looks, and I like the way it feels. It’s such an inspiration to my work, which is shadowy and wet.
“Geography has a lot to do with the writer and how they interpret things, and I love Nacogdoches because it’s the oldest continuous settlement in Texas. It’s got the Old Stone Fort, the university, those brick streets and wonderful woods.”
Those same attributes got William Goyen into writing about East Texas. Goyen was born in Trinity and authored several collections of stories, novels and plays.
His first novel, 1950’s The House of Breath, was eventually turned into a play that was produced in New York. The novel and the play take place in a bewitched, dream-haunted town called Charity, although Goyen admitted it was actually Trinity, he just changed the name so as not to upset his local friends.
His last novel, Arcadio, was released posthumously in 1983. Critics compared Goyen to the likes of William Faulkner and Truman Capote.
Goyen was married to actress Doris Roberts, best known as Ray Romano’s mother in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. The couple was married in 1963 and stayed together until Goyen’s death 20 years later.

Prolific East Texas writer William Goyen based many of his novels in and around the Trinity area. Goyen’s final novel, Arcadio, was released after his death in 1983.

Tim Bryant, a Nacogdoches neighbor of Lansdale, got interested in writing by reading Lansdale’s books as a youngster. Bryant is best known for his series of noir detective books featuring Texas detective Dutch Curridge.
Tim Bryant is another Nacogdoches-based author who focuses on the detective genre. Bryant has written several books in his Dutch Curridge series, which follows the exploits of a Fort Worth detective in the 1950s.
Clad in his familiar hat and trench coat, a staple within the genre, Curridge works around the social and racial changes of the time, as well as the thriving live music scene that was so much a part of the town during that era.
“I’m a writer and a musician, living in Nacogdoches, which is between my two favorite places: Austin and New Orleans,” Bryant said. “I love to focus on the small riverboat towns, which flourished around East Texas in the early part of the 20th century and then disappeared when the railroad came. Slave narratives and Civil War histories.
“My enduring fascination with early blues music and Southern music of the early 20th century in general helps me when I am developing a theme for my novels.” Bryant dives deep into the period and environment of East Texas as he writes.
“When I’m working on a specific project, I try to create an environment that I can submerge myself in,” he said. “I do a great deal of research because most of my books are period pieces. By the time I’m actually writing, I probably have a corresponding music playlist that I’m listening to, and if I’m reading or watching anything, that probably ties into it as well.”
When asked which authors have influenced him the most, Bryant mentioned Flannery O’Connor and his Nacogdoches neighbor Joe Lansdale.
“My dad gave me one or two of Joe’s books when I was a young adult, and when I found out he lived in the same town as me, it focused my attention really quick that someone in Nacogdoches could not only write but write well and make a good living at it,” he said.
“Now, all these years later, I’m good friends with Joe, and he continues to write, continues to inspire me and just keeps getting better at what he does. I can only hope I’m doing the same.”
May Cobb is another East Texas writer who sets most of her novels in the Pineywoods. Her upbringing in this area significantly influenced the settings and atmospheres of her novels. One of her most popular thrillers is The Hunting Wives, which just received an order for an eight-episode series on Starz.
An earlier novel, A Likeable Woman, was so loaded with sultry crime that Oprah Winfrey reviewed it by saying, “Bring on the backyard chardonnay and the rich, nasty housewives of East Texas. It’s gossipy, glamorous and hair-raising.”
While the writers mentioned above have had long, illustrious careers, one up-and-coming East Texas writer who is making waves nationally is M.E. Proctor.
Belgian by birth but Texan by choice, Proctor worked in the corporate arena for most of her career before retiring to the Lake Livingston area to focus on writing.
“I’m a European transplant, born in Brussels, who’s been living in Texas for 27 years,” Proctor said. “Looking back, everything I’ve done involved writing. I worked at the university in Brussels where I wrote economic policy research reports, spent years in advertising doing all kinds of pitches and marketing presentations, then communications and public affairs for a big corporation. Some of that stuff is painfully dry.
“Writing fiction was my release valve. I started with short stories and veered into books.”
Proctor specializes in the crime and detective genre after publishing four books in her science-fiction series, Savage Crown.
“Crime is my favorite genre,” she said. “I’ve inhaled crime novels since I was a kid. It’s weird, it took me so long to jump into writing any of it. My first short stories were quiet horror: a girl who realizes her employer is some kind of monster that feeds on her childhood memories, a young couple moving into an old house that possesses the woman and pushes her to kill her husband.
“After the science fiction books were published, I needed a change of pace and decided to do something different, contemporary and realistic. Crime was a natural choice. The main character popped into my head and I made him a private detective, because it gave me more flexibility in the choice of cases he would investigate.”

May Cobb was raised in East Texas before moving to California, but she still based many of her books in the region. Cobb’s A Likeable Woman takes place in East Texas and won rave reviews from Oprah Winfrey.

M.E. Proctor’s latest novel, Love You Till Tuesday, is the first in a series of Declan Shaw mysteries. Proctor lives in Livingston and bases many of her crime novels in Texas. Family and Other Ailments is a collection of Proctor’s short stories and was published last year.
Proctor is referring to her latest novel—her most successful to date—Love You Till Tuesday.
“I borrowed the title of a David Bowie song from 1967,” Proctor said. “In the song, a boy meets a girl on Sunday, and he says that he might love her till Tuesday, or Wednesday, if they’re lucky. It’s sweet-sad; maybe they’ll drift apart, maybe not. It fits the book’s plot, in a way.
“The main character, Declan Shaw, meets April, the jazz singer, on Saturday, and on Tuesday the police come to arrest him. She’s been murdered and he’ll never know if their love affair might have lasted.”
Proctor likes to echo classic detective stories like Farewell, My Lovely and Kiss Me, Deadly.
Proctor is also the author of the short story collection Family and Other Ailments. Her fiction has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Vautrin, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review and Black Cat Weekly.
Proctor has some advice for East Texas writers who have not yet taken the plunge into writing their version of the great American novel.
“Read. Read a lot,” she said. “Writers are sponges, they absorb stuff. It doesn’t mean copying a favorite author’s style but getting exposed to storytelling and figuring out why you like some things and dislike others.
“People should write what they love to read. When you spend so much time on a short story or a book, you better be in love with it. There will be rejections, lots of them, so you have to believe in your work.
“And finish that first draft. It will need revisions and rewriting but typing ‘The end.’ is an enormous boost in confidence. Many give up before they get to that point.”