W. C. Tuttle Collection
W. C. Tuttle is one of the names that quickly defines the scale and character of BookCove. With more than a hundred stories already on the site, he is not simply present in the catalog; he is one of the authors who helps explain why the catalog exists in the first place.
Tuttle matters here because he combines range-country action with humor, rhythm, and a dependable sense of narrative momentum. Even when the premises are comic or exaggerated, the stories know how to move. That makes Tuttle especially well suited to a site built for browsing, where a reader may arrive without much context and still want to be hooked in the first few paragraphs.
Tuttle wrote for many magazines, but much of his early work—and I think his best work—was in the Magazine Adventure. The magazine was a "pulp" magazine, not a "slick". This meant Tuttle was paid very little and was paid by the word. Being prolific was profitable. Yet his stories weren't formula pieces like some others. He had a creative imagination mixed with living the life he wrote about from his home in Montana.
He invented two main characters early on: "Sleepy" and "Hashknife". They appear in many stories, and though Tuttle was somewhat of an illustrator, we've never found an illustration by Tuttle of either character. That said, after reading dozens of stories about the main character, "Hashknife," a story was printed and the BookCove team agreed: "That is Hashknife!" It fit so well.
