In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.
The hero used to be the one in white. Now he is harder to spot.
Gone are the days when heroes are emotionally locked away from the world until the end of the book, and thank goodness for that. Modern romance heroes are more complex than ever.
We see the worst versions of ourselves - things we did or could have done - in the characters who inspire us.
An adult western is where the hero still kisses his horse at the end, only now he worries about it.
Good guys need to be a little dirty otherwise they're just boring.
Both villains and heroes are a bit boring, really, unless they're flawed and broken somehow. If they're not flawed and broken, then clearly they need to be broken and made flawed. That's what an author does if he or she has any dignity.
I wanted to write an adventure in the old-fashioned way, something to which I could apply the adjective 'rollicking' and not feel embarrassed. But I've never liked my heroes to be too heroic, so they ended up being a bunch of criminals instead.
