Frank Roderus wrote his first story—it was a western—when he was five. It was really awful, as might be expected, but his mother kept that typed and spell-checked short story tucked away until the day she died. Later, Frank became a newspaper reporter, thinking that books are written by authors which he most assuredly was not. He kept trying to write though, and eventually did it wrong enough to learn how to get it right. That first sale, a young adult novel published by Independence Press, was more than thirty years and a good many books ago. As a journalist, the Colorado Press Association awarded Frank Roderus their highest award, the Sweepstakes Award, for the best news story of 1980, and the Western Writers of America has twice named Frank recipient of their prestigious Spur Award. Frank passed away at age 73 in December 2015.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. From Wikipedia: "Michael Newton (born 1951) is an American author best known for his work on Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan series. Newton first began work on the Executioner series by co-writing "The Executioner's War Book" with Don Pendleton in 1977. Since then he has been a steady writer for the series with almost 90 entries to his credit, which triples the amount written by creator Don Pendleton. His skills and knowledge of the series have allowed him to be picked by the publishers to write the milestone novels such as #100, #200, and #300. Writing under the pseudonym Lyle Brandt, Michael Newton has also become a popular writer of Western novels. He has written a number of successful non-fiction titles as well, including a book on genre writing (How to Write Action Adventure Novels). His book Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida won the Florida Historical Society's 2002 Rembert Patrick Award for Best Book in Florida History. Newton's "Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" won the American Library Association's award for Outstanding Reference Work in 2006." Pen names: Lyle Brandt, Don Pendleton, Jack Buchanan Bibiliography available here.

Pseudonyms include W. B. Longley, Robert Lake, Spenser Fortune, Joshua Randall, Tom Cutter, J.R. Roberts, Joseph Meek, Cole Weston, Lew Baines, Paul Ledd and Jon Sharpe Robert J. Randisi is the creator and author of The Gunsmith, the popular Western series with more than 250 novels and more than 5 million books in print, which was written under the pen name J.R. Roberts. Under various pseudonyms, he has created and written the series Tracker, Angel Eyes, The Bounty Hunter, Mountain Jack Pike, and Ryder. Western novels that have appeared under his own name are The Ham Reporter, Targett, The Ghost with Blue Eyes, Legend, and Miracle of the Jackal. He has also edited the Western anthologies White Hats, Black Hats, and Boot Hill.