One thing that might surprise visitors to the Wyoming cabin loft where New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson spends a lot of time writing his popular “Longmire" mystery series is not what’s in the loft, but what isn’t.
Johnson has a small writing desk in the log cabin loft that he built himself as a writing space. It faces a window that looks out on his self-built UCross Ranch in northeastern Wyoming.
The handmade pine desk is small as desks go, with barely enough room for a computer.
A row of mementos sits on the windowsill beyond the computer, and there’s a prominent stack of reference books to his left — typically the ones he's using for whatever is his latest work in progress.
A small reading lamp with jewel-green tones stands out on the small desk, as well as a number of multi-colored ribbons and mementos, which crowd — but also personalize — the space.
What isn’t in that small loft space are a lot of the writing awards Johnson has won over the years.
That’s not because Johnson is trying to avoid creating pressure or any kind of mental block, and it’s not that he isn’t proud of these awards.
Mostly, it’s because the loft is just too small.
Banner Year
And there’s definitely no room left for all the statuary that Johnson has been bringing home of late.
The past year has been quite an award-winning time for Johnson, who was recognized with one lifetime achievement award after another in 2025.
“It’s been kind of unexpected,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
First in the string of awards was the Founders Award from the Tucson Festival of Books, which is a lifetime achievement award.
“I was just laughing about that because I thought, ‘Well, I think I’m only about halfway through my career here,’” Johnson said. “So, I think I have another lifetime to go.”
After the Founders Award came the Golden Lariat, a Will Rogers Medallion Award given for lifetime dedication to furthering the legacy of the West.
Then there was the Western Writers of America’s Owen Wister Award, recognizing lifetime contributions to Western literature.
Last, but not at all least, was world mystery convention Bouchercon’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which salutes a legendary career and is always given to a prestigious and prominent mystery writer.
“Just for fun, I looked up all of the mystery and Western authors who were at about my same place with about 25 or so novels out, you know, a certain level of achievement,” Johnson said. “And I discovered I’m the youngest one out of all of them, for goodness' sake.”
The stream of awards is not yet over, either.
Johnson has just learned he’ll be getting another lifetime achievement award in 2027 from the annual mystery convention Left Coast Crime.
The Search Is On
Getting so many awards has been fun, and Johnson is tickled to get each one — even if it means a bit of a search for where to put it.
"The majority end up in the dining room,” Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. “Because we’ve got some flat spaces there, like with a couple of sideboards and counters and things like that. And it’s a nice room.”
But it can also be humbling to look at all those awards he’s won and think about the company he’s now keeping.
There is a certain pressure to live up to them as he continues to build Sheriff Walt Longmire’s universe, Johnson said.
“You don’t want to let this stuff go to your head either,” he said. “You got to where you are, you’re doing what you do because of something, so you want to kind of stay the course to a certain extent.”
At the same time, Johnson believes it is important to keep taking chances and pushing the envelope to keep growing as a writer.
“You’re being awarded for all this stuff that you’ve done, so you don’t maybe want to go off in a completely different direction and do something completely different than what it is that you’ve done before,” Johnson said. “But you want to stay creatively active.”
There’s A Playlist For That
Johnson has a trick for staying creatively active.
It’s found in all the rows of CDs that Johnson keeps at hand in his writing loft. It is an arsenal of writing creativity for Johnson, who says he listens to music all the time, even when he’s trying to concentrate and write.
“I have playlists for, like, every piece that I’m doing, every book I’ve ever written,” Johnson said. “(They) all have a playlist that I use to bring back ideas of what a particular story is about.”
One of Johnson’s favorites in this collection of CDs is Philip Aaberg, a pianist from Montana.
“Whenever I’m in doubt, I can dig him up and throw his CDs on there, and he’s just an absolutely marvelous musician and composer,” Johnson said.
“And since Walt plays piano, I really needed to find somebody who was a signature type of artist that Walt’s stylings would be somewhat similar to and the first person I thought of was Philip Albert right off the bat,” he added.
Johnson also happens to have a good friend who is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures who will often send him soundtrack CDs for upcoming movies.
Those are particularly great for setting the right mood for writing a given scene, he said.
“I don’t know anything about the movies that they were made for,” Johnson said. “So what it does is, it’s like this wonderfully evocative music that summons up all these emotions and actions and all these things like that.
"And I don’t have any kind of visuals to connect it with because I don’t know any of these movies. So, I use them as just, music for my imagination.”
Not To Worry, Fans, More Mysteries Are Coming
Johnson knows he could convert his CDs over to digital formats so they would take up less room in his tiny writing loft.
But in this increasingly digital world, Johnson intentionally prefers the physical CD to a ghostly digital form.
“I’m old school like that,” he said. “I like to own the music. I like to have it in my hands and not have to rely on clouds and paying services and all that.”
Having a physical CD also ensures Johnson can play the music on demand whenever he needs it for his writing. He doesn’t have to worry about connectivity issues.
Johnson has even been known to show up at libraries with hardcopy DVDs when he’s giving a book talk, because he wants to play an episode from the Netflix television series “Longmire” for his audience.
“Anymore, whenever I show up with a set of DVDs, these young librarians look at me as if I’m carrying a phonograph in under my arm,” Johnson said, chuckling a little bit.
Then they tell him, “We can just get that off the internet, Mr. Johnson.”
“I’m like, ‘All right, fine,'” Johnson said. “Technology seems to be changing at a much more rapid pace than I am.”
But that’s OK, too.
In some ways, that’s how Johnson figures the fictional sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire, would look at things too.
And though Johnson’s lifetime awards may have him wondering about his age a little bit, he’s not too worried.
In Johnson's mind, he’s just getting started. There are still so many new adventures to put poor old Walt through.
Like his 22nd Longmire mystery due out May 26.
It will be “Brothers McKay,” a nod to Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” except set in Wyoming not Russia.
When it comes to lifetime achievement, Johnson believes there are many more chapters left to write.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
