This week, host Wendy Corr checks in with New York Times Bestselling author Craig Johnson, who is in New Orleans to receive a lifetime achievement award! They chat about social media, his touring schedule, and his next book coming out in May.
Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there folks, welcome to the Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State.
Now, I don't do repeat guests. It's just, I try to get somebody new every week. And we've been doing this for, oh my gosh, almost two years now. But if you're going to do a repeat guest, this gentleman is who I have to do a repeat with, because Craig Johnson has so much going on.
He is, bar none, Wyoming loves Craig Johnson - and Longmire fans around the world love Craig Johnson, and are grateful for Craig Johnson. I am so tickled to be able to catch up with Craig today.
He's actually not even in Wyoming today, he's in New Orleans picking up a really wonderful honor. But first, before we go to Craig, I want to make sure you all know about the Wyoming Business Alliance "Business From the Basement" podcast. If you're a Wyoming business person, this is a podcast you need to tune into.
It has great information. It introduces you to wonderful people in the business world in Wyoming. You definitely want to check out the Wyoming "Business From the Basement" podcast from the Wyoming Business Alliance. But don't go there yet, because first we have to have this really fun conversation with Craig Johnson.
Because every conversation with Craig Johnson is fun. That is just, I think that's a rule - Craig, did you make that rule, that every conversation you have has to be fun?
Craig Johnson:
You’ll have get my wife on here again, she would probably have some different idea.
Wendy Corr:
Okay, well, that's a whole different level there. But , when we're talking about your books, when we're talking about your adventures - because you have your own adventures, you don't just create them for your characters.
You have just brought to life and brought to the world the quintessential Sheriff that everybody wants in their town. Everybody wishes that Walt Longmire was the Sheriff of their town. I'm not so sure that everybody wants Vic as the UnderSheriff, because she's a little much but, but Walt loves her, and so to the rest of us.
Craig Johnson:
Yeah, it's, one of the joys of writing a series is, is that you get the opportunity to, , have an ensemble of characters like that. And so that's kind of one of the fun things like that.
And, , there are two types of emails that I get after every book. One is, ‘You beat up on Walt too much in the last book, you need to take it easy on him.’ Which is very flattering, because evidently they think, well, it's real.
And then the other one was, is always, ‘There was not enough of my favorite character, Insert name here.’ And basically, , I always try and organize the book so that there's a different amount of the different characters.
was, if you had the same amount of the same characters every time, the books are going to become somewhat formulaic like that. But there's always people that complain and say, ‘ what, there wasn't enough Henry in the last book.’ ‘There wasn't enough Vic in the last book.’ ‘There wasn’t enough Lucian in the last book.’
And I knew I'd gotten to a certain point in time whenever people started writing me and saying, , ‘There really wasn't enough Dog in the last book.’ And I was like, okay, all right, okay, so , I'll take that under consideration.
Wendy Corr:
So you've created this really close knit following of people who just feel like your characters are part of their family. And that's one of the things that's so magical about your books.
You care about Saizarbitoria and what his family is doing. You care about Lucian and how, , absolutely grumpy he is. You care about Cady and Lola and Bear and all of these people. And now you've got us caring about Ruth One Heart.
I tell you, I'm really curious. So folks, if you have not read the most recent books of Craig's - I've got my most recents here, but this is just the most recent. I can't pull them all out here - but , First Frost.
I don't know that we've talked since First Frost came out. But I mean, the references to the Japanese internment camps. Really, really important stuff. And I mean, Return to Sender. Can we make the Cowboy State Daily connection here? I love that.
Craig Johnson:
Absolutely.
Wendy Corr:
This book came from one of our stories. Tell us the story of how you got the idea for Return to Sender.
Craig Johnson:
Well, all the books, , I can go back all the way back to The Cold Dish, the very first book in the series, and they all started off with some sort of seminal newspaper article.
Again, generally, it was newspapers and that type of thing, because this was, you got to remember, this was back before the internet, 20 years ago, and so before internet existed like that.
And I think there was a reason for that, the main reason for it being that I wanted to have the books based on a reality in Wyoming, like, I didn't want to just make up crazy stories that wouldn't - there have been times when I've watched television shows or see read books or whatever, like that supposedly take place in our state, and I look at them, I'm like, ‘There's no way that would ever happen in a million years like that.’
And so, with the relationship that I've got with a lot of the sheriffs, they're in Wyoming, they say that to me a lot of the times. They're like, ‘Oh my gosh. I read this, I watched that, like, there's no way that could ever possibly happen.’ And I wanted to guard against that as much as I possibly could.
And so after I did that first book, which was based off of a newspaper article, I thought, this might be a good safeguard as far as, like the books are concerned, like that.
And so every single one of the books, all the way from the very beginning, started off with a newspaper article - and Return to Sender was no different, like that. I mean, some of the really interesting stories that come out of the state, Cowboy State Daily does a really amazing job, like, kind of covering with a width and a breadth of the most amazing stories .
And a lot of them are, of course, they're going to be political, they're going to be business, they're going to be a lot of different things. And of course, the ones that really capture my attention, of course, are the personal stories, like at the ones about people within the state with something miraculous happening in their lives.
Or just interesting people like that, which is what I always laugh about, because people will sometimes say, ‘Well, do you worry about running out of ideas?’ And I'm like, ‘No, I live in Wyoming.’
I'm going to die before I get them all written down for goodness sake. And so, it's a wonderful opportunity. And every morning I get online and post something on social media or something like that, I'll check and see what's happening within the state.
And I read this article about this woman that had the longest postal route in the United States, like, over 300 miles a day she was driving. And so I thought, my gosh, with the nefarious mind of the crime fiction writer, the first thing I thought was, if she went missing, where would you look for her?
And so it also happened to be down in that area of the red desert, which I'm familiar with, but not really knowledgeable of, because I just hadn't spent much time down there. So it's a great excuse to run off down there or like that, and head on to Farson and get some ice cream, like, head over to Eden and get a beer, and just take the motorcycle and drive all around like that, within the red desert.
And had a grand time doing that. And so, it just became an opportunity like a lot of the storylines do, just simply because her life was just so amazing. And I did an event down in Green River, and she actually showed up.
Wendy Corr:
She showed up at the event?
Craig Johnson:
It's really kind of wonderful. I was very glad that I put her in the acknowledgements, so I covered my bases.
Wendy Corr:
And of course, you put Walt in mortal peril once again. And I don't know how he manages to survive some of these adventures that you put him through. No water, carrying people on his back through the red desert, even his enemies, the people that tried to kill him - people, if you have not read Return to Sender, you gotta read Return to Sender.
But there's this undercurrent of all of your stories, and that's what I love. There's standalone stories, but there's always some threads that are coming, breaking through, weaving through.
And one of the threads is, Walt has an aunt, that's younger than he is, that he just found out about a few stories ago, and so she's gone missing. So is your next book going to bring us to Ruth, and find out what happened to Ruth?
Craig Johnson:
Well, sometimes the bigger stories, like the more epic story lines, they need a certain amount of momentum for you to get to the point where you're ready to tell that story.
The other thing is, a lot of people don't know it, or maybe not notice, that the books are actually written on, like, a quarterly kind of effect. There's, like, an aspect to them, that they are seasonal. And so it takes me four books to get through, like, one year of Walt's life.
And so, for the rest of us, it may be three years, but for Walt it's only been, like, a couple of months. And so that kind of slows that down just a little bit. And so, we don't completely come to an ending and everything like that.
As far as Ruth's story is concerned, in the next book, okay, but then after that, yeah, we're probably heading into a situation where, well, is going to have to deal with something.
But that's kind of the fun thing about writing a series, is that you have these threads that kind of like work their way through - not some of the books, but just about all of them, like, I mean, there are plot points that I'm dealing with now, they go all the way back to the very first book, 21 years ago.
And that's kind of the joy of a series, because you can take your time to do that. I mean, if you have, like a singular novel, if you have like one book that you have to try and like do this with, well then you're limited like that, because you only have so many pages in which to work with.
And so that's one of the joys, like, actually, of writing a series. And I hope that whenever I do reach that lifetime achievement aspect, where I'm not going to be writing the books anymore, my life comes to an end, or my writing career comes to an end, or whatever, I'd like to think that the books are going to be seen as a whole, all of these books together.
I mean, I'd like to think I've got another 20 books in me, looking at only about halfway through my career.
Wendy Corr:
We hope so!
Craig Johnson:
If you take those 40 books and put them together again, that they'll all assemble a singular story - like that's basically the story of Walt Longmire’s life in the literary world, as far as we know it. And I don't know, I mean, I'm not bored with Walt at all. I'm still having a good time.
Wendy Corr:
Well, speaking of lifetime achievements, let's talk about where you are right now. You're not in Wyoming, you're in New Orleans.
Craig Johnson:
Let's see if I can, like you can see a little bit of this from the 29th floor of the French Quarter here.
Wendy Corr:
Fantastic. What a beautiful day too.
Craig Johnson:
It is a good day to be in New Orleans, a little bit hot, as far as I'm concerned. I kind of like the cold weather.
Wendy Corr:
Come on back. We'll have the cooler weather for you by the time you get back.
Well, the event that you're there for is, I've got to say it right - Bouchercon. And this is the mystery writers, this is the world mystery convention. And tell us about this. How did you get invited to this? That is so fun.
Craig Johnson:
Well, it was kind of funny like that, because I'm not a big one for conferences or anything like that. I mean, for me, the enjoyability factor, as far as being a writer is concerned, is just being there in my ranch, and writing.
That, to me, is the joy of it all. So I don't do a lot of these type of things . And so I guess a number of years ago, I think it's been like about maybe five years ago. I think it was 2021, or something like that. But they invited me as a guest of honor for a lifetime achievement award here in 2021.
Well, then, covid happened, and that kind of like, put the brakes on everything. And so they didn't, I don't think they did Bauchercon that year. I think they skipped it or something. And so then they had to reschedule it again.
And so it came up this year. And it's kind of funny, because I had the Will Rogers medallion award, Lariat Award for Lifetime Achievement earlier this year. And then I had the Owen Wister Western writers of America's Life Achievement Award.
And now I'm getting the Bauchercon lifetime - I'm beginning to wonder if they know something that I don't, is this trip coming to an end, and I'm not aware of it, or something like that?
Wendy Corr:
But it's nice. It's very nice to be acknowledged by your fellow writers, by the different writing communities and all that type of thing.
Craig Johnson:
It's kind of nice, I have to admit.
Wendy Corr:
Oh my gosh. And to be still, like you say, you hope you've got 20 more books in you as do the rest of us. So to be honored like this at this point, that's got to give you that boost. Obviously what I'm doing is resonating with a large group of people, not just, not just an audience of my books, but an audience of my peers, fellow writers and people like that.
What sort of adventures do you have when you go to these things? I mean, I know you do book tours and things like that, but you have - New Orleans is kind of, your whole life is an adventure.
Craig Johnson:
Well, New Orleans has its own way of doing things, and so we're actually going to be doing a parade tonight with the pedal cars, getting a brass band and beads and everything, on the street through the French Quarter.
The big reception is actually over at the World War Two Museum that they have here in New Orleans, like so I'm looking forward to that, and hopefully getting a chance to, like, sneak away a little bit, and wander around in the museum just a little bit.
It's interesting, because, I mean, that's one of the things that's nice, is getting out and doing a lot of travel. I mean, the books are translated in 20 some languages. And so I get to go overseas a lot, and then, the domestic touring and all that, which is great.
But it's always going to be about getting back to Ucross, population 26 , it's always going to be about, getting back to where I can sit down and actually do the writing, because that's what I spend the majority of my time doing like that.
I always laugh whenever students are like, Well, what's it like to go out and have a beer with Lou Diamond Phillips? What's it like to be overseas? And I'm like, that's only like 5% of what I do, I get about 95% is me sitting in a room by myself typing about my imaginary friends.
Wendy Corr:
That live in your head and have their own life. I mean, you just start writing, but then something pops in your head, they need to do this, and something pops in your head and they need to do that.
Craig Johnson:
I'm a big one for like, outlining. I always like to have everything all outlined out so that I know exactly what's going to happen in a storyline. But then again, you always want to have that improvisational aspect of what happens.
Whenever you're telling a story, you may think about what that book is about, but then as you go along, you discover, oh, well, what about this? What about did this happen?
And then you have to be open to those type of things. And I think the more you write, the more you're open to, , the improvisational aspects of the writing process, which is a joy, to see what happens, to surprise yourself.
Because if you have at least some kind of a chance of surprising yourself, then it's possible that you may still surprise the reader too.
Wendy Corr:
And some of your stories, some of Walt's adventures, have become very mystical. And did you anticipate that when you first got started with the Longmire books, that there'd be an element of mysticism?
Craig Johnson:
I knew that there would be some mysticism and some spirituality that was in the books, but I wasn't quite sure where it would come from, or what it would be. And, within, like, with the first book, it had so much to do with the Northern Cheyenne reservation, and a lot of my friends up there, I knew immediately, okay, well, that's where the spirituality is going to come from.
Because we've been around in that part of the world for a couple of 100 years, and my friends up there, they've been up there for a couple thousand years. And so they might know a little bit more about what's going on around us than perhaps we do.
And it actually turned out, I think, to be a strong asset to the books.
There are layers, which is kind of - the joy of writing, what you hope is, a worthwhile series, is that there are a lot of different layers to it, you don't just get out there and just tell, like, one story with a couple of plot twists or something like that.
You have different aspects and different layers of Walt's life that need to be addressed. And so that's part of the fun, that ebb and flow of, what becomes important in one book, maybe is not quite so important in the next book, but then we'll come roaring back in the next book. And so, that's the joy of writing, I think.
Wendy Corr:
Well, and the interactions between your characters, to me, is what keeps me coming back. I'm like, Oh my gosh, who is going to save what? And I literally, I cannot count the times that I have absolutely laughed out loud while I'm reading one of your books, and I have to explain to my partner, Dan, ‘Sorry, Craig just wrote something that was really funny.’
And so those are the things, but the books really are alive in that way.
Craig Johnson:
Thank you.
Wendy Corr:
Because they bring a light. They bring a light. Even though you deal with dark subjects, there's a light in all of the books. But you also veer from your books in your social media presence. If you are a follower of Craig on social media, you will find that he brings light in some other ways too.
Like this year, there was the mystery utensils? Tell us how that got started and how, what kind of reaction you got on social media?
Craig Johnson:
Well, whenever, because I get a lot of younger authors that'll like, ask me for advice. Like, what it is you should do - a lot of that has to do with social media nowadays, because any kind of business that you're in, you have to have some presence, as far as that's concerned.
And I'm always telling them, well, don't just get on social media and say, buy my books. Buy my books. Buy my books. I mean, think about, like what's entertaining you, what's interesting to you? Like, what would you like?
And also, you can utilize it as a tool, which I did look at with that particular instance, because my wife inherited an entire sideboard of all of her family's silverware. And, my gosh, just there, you could melt it down and basically, build a car, I think, with all this.
And I didn't really know, I mean, I didn't come from that kind of a background. And so I really didn't know what a lot of these utensils were, and, and she wasn't much help. And so I decided, I'm gonna jump on social media and ask some people and see what they say.
So I would take one of these utensils and I would put it on there. And it was amazing, because hundreds of people would come back, and some of them were very inventive, as far as their responses and what they thought that these things were.
I know that some had no basis in reality. And then there were other people that actually did have a background and understood this type of lifestyle, and would explain, oh, well, that's an asparagus fork, is what that is. And I would be like, okay, all right. So I got a pretty good education out of that. I was kind of happy to have that happen.
Wendy Corr:
There were a few of those things that I knew what they were.
Craig Johnson:
But on the other side, yeah, looking to see myself what this ends up being. So I learned a lot. It was important, I think, okay, to expand my horizons. And then there's, like, a thing that I do on a weekly basis. This is called the 30 seconds of Zen.
And, what happened was, is, like, I can't remember how it started up. I think I was on my way up to my cabin up in the big horns. And there was a beautiful, idyllic little section of Hunter Creek.
And I just thought boy, 30 seconds of that might be nice and restful, kind of a Zen moment, for some people that, don't really get the opportunity that we do in Wyoming, or get to be in those kind of environments , and how fortunate we are to have that. And maybe I can share a little bit of that.
30 seconds of it a week seems like that's not too much to hand out. And so I did like a 30 second video of that creek, and set it out there, and it got like 30,000 responses, for goodness sake.
And so I think there's a longing for a lot of people that are sitting in traffic, or that work in a cubicle all day, or something along those lines, or live in suburbia, where they don't really get to see that kind of wild nature.
And so I've continued doing it over the years, and it's kind of peaceful and restful for me to be able to share that type of thing. But I don't know. I mean, it's just, it's like anything else. I mean, it's a form obviously, technologically like that, but it's also in a form of an ability to be able to go out and to communicate with people and and not everything has to be about the books.
Like that's one of the joys of that type of work, that you can just spread it out and do something a little bit different each time.
Wendy Corr:
Well, it's the joys of living here in Wyoming and being able to share that. That's something, like you say, people just don't, if they don't live here, they don't get it. And there's something special about living here in Wyoming, and so glad that you've got such a great, huge audience to share those with and to share those moments with.
Which is why Longmire days in July or August, depending on what year it is, why that ends up bringing so many people to Wyoming, because they've read your books, they follow you on social media, they're obviously fans of the of the television show.
And they want to say, well, what is this magic of Wyoming? And I want to check it out - because Longmire days is still going. And how many years since it's been on the new episode?
Craig Johnson:
We're creeping over 14 or 15 years or something like that. Gosh, doing it look at. And, yeah, it's amazing to me. And it even goes all the way back to the actors. I mean, because they spent, like, what was it, about six years, down in New Mexico, pretending that they were in Wyoming, right?
And so, this gave them an opportunity to actually come and see the actual place that they were portraying. And so for a lot of them, it's really become a must do every year.
I mean, they love coming here, like, they love staying at the Occidental Hotel. They love going over and having breakfast at the Busy Bee Cafe, they love talking about the show and the details that go along with it and everything.
And so, we'll see what happens. I mean, right now, we're hearing rumblings from, the possibility that Warner Brothers is putting together a streaming service just like Paramount has basically done.
And they own everything, it makes perfect sense for these studios to do this stuff. Because, I mean, they own all the movies. They're their product, and they own them and all the television shows and everything.
But they're always going to need new content, and so one of the - it'd be kind of foolish of them to not think about taking one of the highest rated scripted dramas that they ever had, and not redoing it, maybe, doing some more episodes of Longmire.
So we'll see what happens. The difficulty we're having is, I think, you got the schedule that a lot of our actors have, we're kind of victims of our own success, because a lot of our actors and actresses at the moment have moved on to do some really wonderful stuff.
And they're very, very busy right now, and so trying to get them back in for a four or five month shooting schedule will be a little bit difficult. But from what I understand, they're talking more along the lines of, like, television movies, where they would do a seasonal, like, three, four of them a year, or something like that.
So we'll see what happens. I mean, this is all pretty much in Warner Brothers’ ballpark, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens with them.
Wendy Corr:
Well, I love that. Rob Taylor still wants to come back every year, and that's because he is, he is the face of Longmire. I don't know who you had in your mind when you first created Walt on paper, but Robert Taylor has become the visual representation of Walt Longmire, as much as George Guidall is the the audio version of it, the
voice of Longmire.
Folks, another thing is, if you don't, even if you've read the books, get on your favorite audio book platform and listen to any of the Longmire books. George Guidall is the voice of Walt Longmire.
Craig Johnson:
Marvelous. He's pretty marvelous. He's, I think it was like last year sometime, there were a couple of, like, really big name series that he drops stopped doing. He just was getting overworked, I think, he just had so much going on.
And I immediately wrote him an email and said, ‘Hey, look, you're not thinking about dropping Walt Longmire, are you?’ And he wrote me back almost maybe five minutes later and said, ‘Yeah, I'm going to stop doing Walt Longmire when I'm dead.’
Look at the two of us. Okay, so I don't know, watch out, they're going to start giving you life achievement awards here, George, be careful, I guess.
Wendy Corr:
Oh, that's too funny. I love that. I love that he loves it as much as the rest of us, because he really is. He adds that flavor to that, that real attitude.
Craig Johnson:
And you get to the humor - like, that's, that's a really big aspect. I mean, you kind of touched on that a little bit earlier. And it's always a double edged sword when you do humor, because what some people think is funny, other people don't think is funny.
And of course, the way that you guard against that is not by having the same sense of humor for all the different characters. I mean, Henry's very dry, philosophical sense of humor is very different from, like, say, Vic’s very profane, Eastern, sarcastic sense of humor, which balances with Walt's more of, like, a homespun philosopher’s understated sense of humor.
But some people get the humor. Some people don't. I mean, they're going to be, some people are going to read the books, and they're not going to think that they're very funny at all. They don't like that sense of humor.
And there are going to be other people that absolutely, the whole reason they come back and read every single book is because of the humor that's in those books. And George does a magnificent job in his timing, like getting his deliveries and everything, are just custom fit for my books.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely. So, yes, it's like the two of you are just meant to collaborate on these. There's so much that's still yet, like we talked earlier, about the threads that are still undone. Talk about your schedule. What's, what's your next plan for releasing the next book? What do you have going on?
Craig Johnson:
I thought that I was going to have a really easy year. Like, it didn't look like I had that much going on. And then I looked at my calendar and was like, Oh my gosh. I'm out doing something every other week, for goodness sake.
But I have a problem turning down opportunities, especially when it's involving certain organizations like the Wyoming Library Association. I don't charge any kind of honorarium to Wyoming libraries simply because I consider them to be such an important source for our state.
With our communities, weere spread so thin, here we are the ninth largest state, , with, just barely over a half a million people. And so those libraries provide so much more than people really think.
They're just such wonderful social organizations, like whenever people will be able to get together, to go places, to do things , and only those of us that live in the smaller communities in Wyoming understand.
I was kind of heartbroken to hear that Big Horn County had actually closed two of their smaller branch libraries. And it's coming into times where we're having difficulty like that, where some people, an awful lot of the politicians and everybody, don't seem to understand just how important those organizations are.
So for 20 years, I've never, I've never taken an honoraria from a library like that. Doesn't matter. It can be Teton County. It can be Sweetwater County. It doesn't matter to me. It's an opportunity to go and do those organizations, and to do those events.
And then I've got other things going on pretty much all the way through the year, at different festivals and overseas travel and all that kind of stuff. And then, of course, once Christmas rolls around, that's when I do the Walt Longmire Christmas stories.
I think next that we're going to have another anthology of all the short stories. We've already had the one anthology that came out that was called ‘Wait for Signs.’ And then we're gonna have another anthology coming out next year, I think it is.
Wendy Corr:
Oh good.
Craig Johnson:
It's looking forward to that. And then the next book will be out in the spring. And the title for that one is ‘The Brothers McKay’ is the title for that one. And I don't want to give away too much information about it until they get the promotion rolling there at Viking Penguin. But at least we do have a title.
Wendy Corr:
So that is an unusual title. I mean, that like doesn't track what the rest of your titles.
Craig Johnson:
Something a little bit different, but I can't get into the details of it, Wendy, because we would be here for another three hours.
Wendy Corr:
Okay, understood, we'll have to wait until May. But then, but then, folks, go to your local bookstore, and especially if you're in Wyoming, like I go to Legends bookstore in Cody and I get my autographed copy, because you can get one.
Craig Johnson:
It is a great bookstore.
Wendy Corr:
So I have my autographed copy of my book. I've got to find your autographing here someplace. See there it is. Yep, autograph.
Craig Johnson:
It's me. I did that. I did that.
Wendy Corr:
You did that. Because you do, you take the time to do that, because, once again, just like the libraries, you're supporting the local bookstores, because those are, I mean, they're almost endangered.
Craig Johnson:
Oh gosh, and I just did a, let's see, speaking of endangered, I think I did an interview with the PBS, like the PBS out of Detroit, I think it was, one of the questions they asked me, they said, Well, tell us about your favorite bookstores in Wyoming.
And I was like, ‘Oh, you guys are trying to get me into trouble, is what you're trying to do here. You're gonna be somebody I'm gonna forget, and then I'm gonna be in big trouble.’
But I think I rattled off pretty much all of the bookstores in Wyoming. That's one of the advantages, at least there aren't so many that it would blow me out of the water. But, we have some fantastic bookstores in Wyoming. I mean, we have City Books in Casper, Legends over there in Cody.
I still remember, I think, when the first book came out, when ‘The Cold Dish’ came out, and I was in New York at Viking Penguin’s offices and they had a representative from Barnes and Noble and Borders. That was back when Borders was in existence. And they were talking about Wyoming. And the Borders guy looks at me, and he goes, ‘I don't think we have any stores in Wyoming.’ And then the Barnes and Noble guy goes, ‘We do.’
Of course, we're still happy that we still have our one little Barnes and Noble down there in Cheyenne. But there's so many other wonderful little bookstores. I mean, Valley books over in Jackson, and Storytellers down in Thermopolis, Stationery over in Sheridan.
And then there are the lesser served areas. I mean, I always go over and do the library events over in Gillette or in Campbell County, and there's no actual retail bookstore over there. And so we bring the books with us.
And it's an opportunity, I think, to be in areas that maybe don't have the bookstores, don't have the lovely luxury of being able to go down to the local bookstore and pick a book up.
Wendy Corr:
Well, we are blessed to have the ones that we do, and to have them all carry Craig Johnson books - and the next Walt Longmire adventure. Craig, I am just so grateful that we were able to have this time today and that you were able to take time out of your busy schedule there in New Orleans, and for us here at home.
Craig Johnson:
I’ll have a bowl of gumbo for you, I promise.
Wendy Corr:
Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that. We feel it already. The heat, the heat's rising. Very good. Craig, thank you so much. Congratulations on just an amazing, successful not just career, but it is such a successful year.
Craig Johnson:
No thank you.
Wendy Corr:
We're grateful to be able to share in your adventures, either through your books, through your social media, through Cowboy State Daily, and the stories that we do here, and it's a great connection. Craig, say hi to Judy, say thanks for sharing you with us today.
Craig Johnson:
Oh, she's happy to get rid of me. No problem at all there.
Wendy Corr:
Well, you have a fantastic time there in New Orleans. And folks, thank you for tuning in today to this great conversation and catching up with Longmire author Craig Johnson.
And the gratitude that we have for how you have presented our state to the rest of the world, we just can't thank you enough, you've been the most incredible ambassador for Wyoming.
Craig Johnson:
Thank you.
Wendy Corr:
It's very true. Thank you for tuning in, folks. Thank you, Craig. Have a fantastic week.
Craig Johnson:
You bet.
Wendy Corr:
Thanks, everybody.
Craig Johnson:
Bye.
