L’Amour Legacy Shines like a ‘Diamond’

Louis L’Amour’s western novels and stories have made him a popular author, even 27 years after his death. But early in his career, L’Amour was inspired by his extensive travels and focused on other settings in his writing, especially when working on short stories.

One of those tales—“The Diamond of Jeru,” an action-adventure set in 1950s Borneo—is now a full-cast audio drama produced by L’Amour’s son, Beau, out from Random House Audio on May 12.

For the younger L’Amour, “Diamond” is “sort of like the story that wouldn’t go away,” he jokes. “We were discussing the stories that would go into the [print] collection Off the Mangrove Coast [2000], and I had discovered two after Dad’s death that were in fairly rough shape; one of them was ‘The Diamond of Jeru,’ ” he says. “I didn’t think either of them was ready to publish, but when we subtracted those stories from the book, it was going to be way too short. I decided I would tune it up.” During that process of tinkering with the story and eventually expanding it into a novella, L’Amour says he learned all about Borneo and was “able to revisit some of my dad’s life, what he had done at that time.” “Diamond” did appear in Mangrove Coast, and soon afterward, L’Amour was presented with an opportunity to turn it into a film for USA Networks, which aired in 2001.

Following the TV project, L’Amour continued working on audio adaptations of his dad’s stories, which he had done since Random House’s [then Bantam] launch of an audio imprint in the 1980s, under Jenny Frost, who encouraged L’Amour’s involvement. One of his more recent audio projects was Son of a Wanted Man (Random House Audio, 2005), the first Louis L’Amour novel adapted as a full-cast drama, which L’Amour and his coproducer, Paul O’Dell, created over several years while working around their day-job schedules. The title was well received, and “at the [Random House] sales conference, they asked me if I wanted to do another, and I said absolutely,” L’Amour recalls. “But I knew I didn’t want to do a western at that point. I was kind of over the horses and all that stuff.” It was then that L’Amour settled on his next audio drama idea. “The characters from ‘Diamond’ were still talking to me,” he says. “I knew there were things I could do in greater detail than the movie.” He worked on the audio script for a few years, and in 2007 he began recording with O’Dell as editor and producer.

L’Amour and O’Dell, friends for 40 years, as well as longtime collaborators, took on every detail of the production. Even as they considered doing the project, they had locations and objects in mind for the perfect sound effects. “We used an old Case bulldozer from our family ranch in southwest Colorado, and the winch in my jeep for the sound of a tank,” L’Amour notes. “Most of the rainforest stuff was recorded in Washington state [where O’Dell lives], and most of the interior stuff at our old barn on the Colorado ranch, which stood in for a Borneo longhouse. We were able to capture these great creaks and squeaks in the timber of the floors, doors, and staircases of the ranch’s outbuildings. We couldn’t have done the show without the barn!” L’Amour says that the funniest reaction he gets when explaining his sound-effect work on the audio program comes from his description of how he achieved the sound of flapping bat wings. “I do this crazy hand-flipping thing where my fingers kind of flap against my wrist, and it always gets a big laugh when I demonstrate.”

Though nailing all the individual sound effects was a creative challenge, the toughest part of the entire production, according to L’Amour, was the casting. “We used a Web-based casting service for the first time, and within a few days we had 2,400 submissions,” he says. After whittling that down to roughly 400 actors, they set about building a 21-person cast. “We needed actors who could speak Malay and Korean. And there are lots of background voices in Dutch, Chinese, Indian, British, and Australian accents. We saw so many talented people. But in the end you have find the right combination of actors that really lets the story out.”

With a cast and script in place, recording for the program took place over a nine-day stretch in October 2007. L’Amour estimates that he and O’Dell worked on Diamond seven to 10 days per month, eight or nine months per year, in and around other projects. “During recording, Paul was in the control room; I was with the actors. We worked with some people that we’ve worked with for 30 years,” he says. “We had it better than ever, and it was a joy to be able to do that.”

As for the finished product, L’Amour notes, “I’m very happy with it—and I’m really happy to move on from the story now.” But the work of getting the word out about Diamond has only just begun. Last month, L’Amour, O’Dell, and Joel Bryant, an actor involved with the project, gave a presentation about the making of the audio program at the Austin Public Library during the Texas Library Association annual conference. The trio, joined by fellow cast member Tim Winters, will do a similar program, including a live reading, on May 31 in Mission Viejo, Calif.