Craig johnson wife

Prolific Longmire author Craig Johnson dishes on the past, present, and future of the Walt Longmire series.

I’ve been lucky enough to have an intimate seat watching Craig Johnson’s 20-year writing career. His literary growth parallels the emotional development of his likable yet put-upon her, Walt Longmire, sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming.

Craig and Walt have walked hand-in-fictitious-hand from respectable debut to New York Times bestseller. The world of Longmire has nearly outpaced Craig’s pen (twenty books and counting), having spawned a television series with a cult following and “Longmire Days,” an annual fanfest where Craig, the indomintable Robert Taylor (who plays Walt and is a multi-time C&I cover star), and fans gather to celebrate the world of Longmire in scenic Buffalo, Wyoming, the real-life basis for Craig’s fictional Durant.

My first year as a bookseller at LA’s The Mystery Bookstore in 2004, I read an advance copy of The Cold Dish. It grabbed me like few books do: its unique take on the stereotypical cop hero, Craig’s humor, the book’s humanity, and the way it brought the Wyoming world to life.  So, I made it my mission to get the novel in the hands of my customers. 

I finally met Craig when he came out to do a signing for The Cold Dish. Having made summer sojourns through Wyoming, I told Craig I had visited Buffalo, the adjacent town to Craig’s home base in Ucross (population 25). He said, “You have to stop at our place” the next time I came through. What was supposed to be a day stop turned into a weeklong jaunt through Northern Wyoming with Craig. And so, our friendship began. 

We once figured I have interviewed him the most and written more about his work than any other writer. I learned that much like Walt, Craig is funny, likable, decent, and, as success brings demands, often put-upon. I was very honored when he recommended me to Cowboys & Indians to interview him and chronicle his work for this project.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: How did you construct a hero like Walt?
CRAIG JOHNSON: When I started writing The Cold Dish, first novel in the Longmire series that wasn’t really supposed to be a series, everything in crime fiction was noir with alcoholic, divorced detectives burying bodies in their backyards—and I thought, what if you did something different? How about the sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state? I didn’t want him to be a Navy SEAL or CIA Operative, but just a very capable and smart guy. I made him physically big just because most sheriffs in rural areas are and thought it might help him to survive what I was going to do to him. The other thing I gave him, which is sadly missing in a lot of contemporary fiction, was a sense of humor which can be a tricky thing because not everybody has the same idea of what’s funny.  

Montgomery: Other than familiarity, what does the Wyoming setting allow for you as a writer? 
Johnson: There’s a cinematic sparsity to the West, and especially Wyoming that lends itself to a morality of good and evil that I like. It’s been said that if France is an oil painting, then Wyoming is a charcoal sketch, and I can live with that. I can enjoy the beauty and richness of a painting, but I also like the simplicity and honesty of a sketch.

Montgomery: Your friend, Marcus Red Thunder, has had an influence in some of the Native aspects of the books. Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways he helped you?
Johnson: I’ve known Marcus for the majority of my life, and he’s had a large-scale effect on my life and work. He’s a remarkably spiritual person and has even made a dent in me, the most pragmatic, empirically driven person in the world. He’s helped me to see the world in a new light and as an introduction to both the Northern Cheyenne and Crow worlds, he’s been indispensable. Besides, he’s the model for Henry.

Montgomery: Every book follows the other in a season. Other than slowing down Walt's aging  within  the series, what else has this approach allowed you to do? 
Johnson: Besides providing completely different environs for each of the novels (January in Wyoming being nothing like July), it’s provided a continuity to the stories in that each novel is only a month or three after the previous one. I remember reading some of my favorite crime-fiction series and when they’d skip to the next year in their chronology, I’d always say to myself, “What happened to the characters in that year?” I can fully understand how when you get attached to characters you want to know everything and be with them all the time.

Montgomery: It's been twenty years since The Cold Dish (five in Walt years). How has he changed in that  time?
Johnson: Well, when I wrote The Cold Dish, I basically began a first-person novel with a chronically depressed protagonist which is a dicey proposition in that you could end up with a chronically depressing book. Luckily Walt and all the other characters had a sense of humor and stumbling onto that saved me. I think he’s a little less sad than when we first meet him and maybe a little wiser. I was talking with Lee Child one time, and he said, “You know what the genius of your books is—you started Walt out at the very nadir of his existence.” I’d say that’s pretty true, except I’d tone down the genius part.

Montgomery: How have you evolved as a writer in that time? 
Johnson: Oh, I’ve become a little more secure in the process. I mean after twenty novels, three novellas and two collections of short stories, I’ve had to have gotten better, right? I mean anything you do for twenty years, you better get better at—except drywall; if you’re no good at drywall hire somebody to do it. I think as you gain confidence, it allows you to take more chances, which broadens your writing style, which is a survival technique as an author. You can either write twenty different novels or write the same novel twenty times which is pretty much an artistic death. I like to think I’m still alive as a writer, still tinkering, still taking chances with my work.

Montgomery: Outside the western and mystery, Walt has been involved in action/adventure, noir,  and political  thrillers, as well as brushed up against sports and supernatural stories. Is there something  about the character, the setting, or the meeting of the two main genres that open up the storytelling to play in these other genres?
Johnson: I’m always looking to stretch the genre, whether it be with elements of crime-fiction to affect the western or vice versa. I’m also kind of a crow in that I fly around in literature, reading everything and then bringing home whatever shiny items I find and putting them in the nest of my latest novel. Life’s too short to be restrained by genre; there are really only two types of writing, good and bad. Read the good, not the bad.

Montgomery: What supporting character is the most fun for you to write?
Johnson: It varies from book to book. Writing a novel is kind of like conducting a choral group. You have to pick out the voices you need to tell the story you want to write and that makes for a great opportunity in populating your novels with characters that otherwise wouldn’t be there. I’m a big one for humor and that means the supporting characters are usually foils for Walt, whether it be Vic, Henry, or even Dog. Then there are the support characters that are only going to appear in one novel, and they’re fun to write, too. Enough so that I sometimes try and circle around and bring them back.

Montgomery: Which book was the most challenging?
Johnson: Well, since it took me ten years to write, I suppose I’d have to say the first one, The Cold Dish,. But there have been others, usually the period pieces whether it’s Walt in Vietnam, Walt as a young deputy, a college graduate,, and the like. There are geographical challenges, too, with Walt in Philadelphia, Mexico and Malibu… Hell Is Empty was tough in that it was an allegorical retelling of Dante’sInferno, and I had to not only be highly knowledgeable of that book, but the construction was not my own.

Montgomery: What do you hope to get across to the reader about life in the West?
Johnson: Well, it’s no great secret that all the books are based off of newspaper articles I pick up from all over the West. I guess I see a lot of stuff that’s supposed to take place in our part of the world, and I find it offensive—those things don’t happen here, and we don’t act like that. I like to think that the newspaper articles keep the stories grounded in a reality, keeping them honest. I think that if you call a place home, then you owe it the responsibility of being honest about it when you share it with people all over the world.

Montgomery: What do you enjoy about the novellas and short stories?
Johnson: Oh, just because a story isn’t a 350-page tale doesn’t mean it’s not a good story. I think there was a certain amount of trepidation with Viking/Penguin when I wrote the first novella, Spirit of Steamboat, but it sold well and opened up the opportunity for others like The Highwayman and the upcoming Tooth and Claw. The short stories started, strangely enough, right here with Cowboys & Indians Magazine when I won the Tony Hillerman Award with my first short story, “Old Indian Trick.” That got me started writing a short story a year usually with a holiday theme and after there were enough of them Viking/Penguin approached me about doing an anthology. I like them because they give us these little 12-page glimpses into Walt’s life, moments that might not fit into a novel, but are revealing unto themselves.

Montgomery: Your latest, Tooth and Claw, is a grand pulp yarn in the Alistair MacLean and Michael Crichton style, that is very different from what we expect from you. Besides working other muscles, what made it fun for you?
Johnson: Once again, it’s a very different Walt, post-Vietnam, world-weary and working security on an oil rig up on the North Slope of Alaska and drinking way too much. In all honesty it could’ve probably been a full-length novel, but I wanted the pace to be kind of break-neck with elements I hadn’t worked with before. I started it about five years ago but put it away because I wasn’t satisfied with it until I found the tone I was looking for, now I think it’s pretty much what I was shooting for—it’ll be interesting to see what the readers think. 

Watch this space in the coming weeks for C&I’s complete guide to Craig Johnson’s Longmire books and stories.