We writers read a lot of books written by our contemporaries, and often we cringe. So many aren’t very good.
Somehow the story doesn’t take off or the craftmanship is lacking.
Think Dan Brown, a gifted storyteller who apparently didn’t pay attention in high school English.
But then we open that one novel, and we read, and we say, wow.
Think David Morrell, Lee Child, William Kent Krueger, and, for me, Craig Johnson. The storm scene in his book, The Cold Dish, just powerful. So I asked him to read my manuscript . . . and write a blurb for it. And he did.
All this done by email.
Six months later, Craig came to my town on a book tour . . . and we sat and talked.
The book is here for a Wyoming writer
For Wyoming crime writer Craig Johnson, The Dark Horse is it. Or Kathryn Court hopes it will be—will be the breakout novel that shoots Johnson out into the mainstream where crime writers Michael Connelly and Janet Evanovich swim.
Court is Johnson’s editor and president and publisher of Viking Penguin Books.
If The Dark Horse doesn’t put Johnson in the ranks of the bestsellers, perhaps the next book will. He’s finished the manuscript for his sixth Walt Longmire novel, Among the Ruins—it will be out next year—and he’s writing book seven, Hell’s Empty.
Book 4, Another Man’s Moccasins, did elevate Johnson. The Western Writers of America awarded it a Spur this year—their top award for a book—for distinguished writing about the West. That decision by the WWA judges puts Johnson in ranks of Larry McMurtry and Tony Hillerman, highly regarded writers and previous recipients of the Spur.
Longmire is the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County in Wyoming, a county that’s huge in land mass but thin on people, where a deputy may have to drive for hours to answer a call. Johnson knows these counties well. He’s lived and ranched in Wyoming for a decade and a half.
Johnson says just being published by Viking is a gold star in itself.
Here’s where his story crosses with that of John Steinbeck. If one can have a writer hero, for Johnson, it’s this man.
“Steinbeck’s style of writing is very visual, which is why every book he ever wrote was made into a movie,” he says. “Also he had a wonderfully sardonic, amused view of humanity that I think is one of the best since Mark Twain.
“Add to that he didn’t back away from social issues. Steinbeck just tackled them. Anybody who can write The Grapes of Wrath, that’s someone who’s not backing away from anyone, from any issue. My gosh, the same man wrote Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, The Red Pony, Tortilla Flats, the list goes on. The breadth of what he wrote about, it’s amazing stuff.”
Steinbeck’s publisher? Viking.
Johnson remembered that when his agent asked him who he’d like to publish his first book, A Cold Dish.
“I didn’t know I had a choice. Then I remembered that Kent Rockwell Viking boat on the spine of all those Steinbeck novels.”
Viking, to Johnson, seemed to be an ideal match. “I kind of thought of my book being a literary mystery”—A Cold Dish was written as a stand-alone—“a character-driven mystery, that if I could get in with a literary press, it would be a good fit.”
Viking bought the book. Along with the purchase came a one-sentence contract. “There are two conditions in that one-sentence contract, that my books be mysteries and they have Walt Longmire in them.”
Remember Johnson wrote A Cold Dish as a one-off, a stand-alone? At the time he had no intention of writing a series.
“Writing a series, you can get trapped by your own success. You and I’ve read series, and they start out well, and along about book 5 or 6, you say ‘I’ve read this before. It’s remarkably like book 3 or book 2.’”
So writing a series scared Johnson—and it still does—how do you keep each book fresh? “And now here’s where I have to come clean and admit here I am on books 6 and 7, and I’m having more fun writing them than I did 1 and 2 because all the groundwork’s been laid and I’m just able to climb with it now, make the stories more complex. The lives of the characters are more complex. The interactions are more complex. The relationships are more complex. The histories are more complex.
“I think a series survives on the complexities of the characters. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is get to a certain plateau early on with a series and then contain the characters at that point, not allow them to grow, not allow your readers to find out more about them.”
But writing that way carries a risk. “What if your readers don’t like the new directions you take your characters in? I think I’d rather alienate my audience by doing something different with each book than churning out the same stuff book after book after book. Churning out the same stuff, just to have a new book each year, that’s not good.”
To date, Johnson’s readers have not been alienated by the something different, the surprises in each new book. His sales numbers show they are buying his books in increasing numbers.
You can find out more about Johnson and his Walt Longmire series at Johnson’s website.
© Jerry Peterson.
