Longmire Novels – Craig Johnson

Sarah Harrison  00:24
Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:35
And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison  00:40
… but not a toxin … 

Carolyn Daughters  00:42
And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer. 

Carolyn Daughters  00:47
I know, It’s gonna be really cool. Before we get too deep, I’d love to introduce today’s sponsor. Our sponsor is Grace Sigma, a boutique process engineering consultancy run by our own Sarah Harrison. Grace Sigma works nationally in such industries as finance, telecom and government. Grace Sigma uses lean methods to assist in data dashboarding, storytelling training, process visualization, and project management. Whether you’re a small business looking to scale or a large company whose processes have become tangled Grace Sigma can help. You can learn more at gracesigma.com.

Sarah Harrison  01:42
We are not in our usual location. We are on location.

Carolyn Daughters  01:44
We came from Denver. Which is population, I don’t know, 800 million to you cross, which is population 26.

Sarah Harrison  01:53
We are with Craig Johnson himself in the guest writing cabin.

Craig Johnson  02:01
This is the guest cabin.

Carolyn Daughters  02:04
If you stay at the guest cabin, you are not required to write.

Craig Johnson  02:09
You’re released on your own recognizance. You can do whatever.

Carolyn Daughters  02:11
So they don’t have to submit something to you.

Sarah Harrison  02:18
Consider that for the future.

Craig Johnson  02:20
Okay, I will.

Carolyn Daughters  02:23
We are so excited to be at Longmire Days in 2024 here in in Ucross, Wyoming, and we’re going to talk to Craig Johnson about, not so much about himself, but more about the Longmire novels.

Craig Johnson  02:40
Talking about myself is my least favorite subject.

Carolyn Daughters  02:43
First Frost is the 20th book in the Longmire series. We’re gonna talk about the Longmire novels, Walt Longmire, and a bunch of really interesting characters and the development of these books, in particular, from the cold dish, which I also enjoyed so much. So if you’re coming to First Frost as your entry to the Longmire series, please go back and start with the cold dish. It’s so good. We’re going to do a summary of the book and an intro to Craig. So let me tell you a little bit about the 20th book, First Frost. It’s the summer of 1964, and recent college graduates Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear read the writing on the wall and enlist to its enlist to a serve in the Vietnam War. They catch a few final waves in California before reporting for duty.

A sudden storm assaults the shores and capsizes a nearby cargo boat, Walt and Henry jumped to action, but it’s soon revealed by the police who greet them ashore that the sunken boat carried valuable contraband from underground sources. The boys are in their early 20s and at the peak of their physical prowess from playing college football for the last four years. They head out on Route 66. The question, of course, is how far they’ll get before the consequences of their actions catch up to them. The answer being not very.

Back in the present day, Walt is forced to speak before a judge following the fatal events of The Longmire Defense with powerful enemies lurking behind the scenes, the Sheriff of Absaroka County must consider his options if he wishes to finish the fight he started going back and forth between 1964 and the present day. Craig Johnson brings us a propulsive dual timeline, as Walt Longmire stands between the crossfire of good and evil, law and anarchy and compassion and cruelty at two pivotal stages in his life. New York Times bestseller. First Frost is the 20th novel in the Walt Longmire mystery series. It was released on May 24, 2024. We’re thrilled to be in Buffalo Wyoming and Ucross Wyoming to meet with Craig to discuss the Longmire novels during the annual Longmire Days Festival.

Sarah Harrison  04:57
Thank you. And I get the pleasure of giving you Craig Johnson’s bio. I’ve been warned that there are a number of French awards.

Carolyn Daughters  05:08
The French love the Longmire series, and they like to give awards to series that they enjoy. So there’s a lot of French ones.

Sarah Harrison  05:16
Perfect. Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire novels, which are the basis for Longmire, the hit Netflix original drama. The Longmire novels have won multiple awards. La Prie du Poler, Nouvelle Observator.

Craig Johnson  05:34
Very good, very good. Now Your French is better than you thought.

Sarah Harrison  05:38
You never know. I didn’t read the Wyoming historical Association’s Book of the Year, la prie 813, two time Western Writers of America. Spur award winner, the mountains and plains book of the year, the SNCF prix depolar Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, the Watson award library Journal’s best mystery of the year, the rocky and the Will Rogers Award for Fiction that is such a long sentence of awards. Steamboat was selected by the Wyoming State Library as the inaugural one book. Wyoming Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 26.

Craig Johnson  06:23
It’s 28 today since the two of you are here, right?

Carolyn Daughters  06:27
Because we’ve also moved on to the property. Just squat. That’s what you get for inviting us to the property. We’re not leaving.

Craig Johnson  06:40
A lot less traffic than there is down in Denver.

Sarah Harrison  06:46
It’s gorgeous out here. Well, thank you, beautiful property.

Carolyn Daughters  06:54
So let’s just start with, like, the 20th book that’s incredible, right?

Craig Johnson  07:00
And it’s still even when you said it, I felt like correcting you, because it doesn’t seem like 20 Longmire novels. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. A lot of the interviews that I’ve been doing with this particular book start off with the 20th book and in the series, and it doesn’t seem like I’ve been writing for 20 years. It seems like I’ve been writing for a couple of months.

Sarah Harrison  07:20
Is it a book a year?

Craig Johnson  07:22
There’s been one novel a year, and then there are, there’s two novellas, and another novella coming out, actually, in November, and then a collection of short stories. And then there’s enough short stories that there’s going to be absolute I think next year there will be another collection of short stories that will be coming out too. So I guess 20 Longmire novels, three novellas, and two collections of short stories, all concerning Walt Longmire, the sheriff of the least populated county and the least populated state. Who knew that he would be this busy looking after 20 years?

Carolyn Daughters  07:50
With quite the number of officer involved shootings.

Craig Johnson  07:53
Absolutely, absolutely. Now there is a couple of let’s see. There’s a problem here.

Sarah Harrison  08:01
What happened to the internet? Hmm, thanks for saying that. The astute listener is going to notice a change in audio quality. It’s actually at this juncture

Carolyn Daughters  08:16
The astute viewer.

Sarah Harrison  08:18
They don’t have to be too astute. You. Too, if they’re viewing we’ve lost our charming backdrop, but we still have our charming guest, Craig Johnson.

Craig Johnson  08:29
Spanning the globe as we are.

Carolyn Daughters  08:32
We moved from a cabin to a civic center.

Sarah Harrison  08:35
Yes, thank you, civic center.

Craig Johnson  08:36
That happened.

Sarah Harrison  08:38
He had a unfortunate power outage.

Craig Johnson  08:44
We did. We had a thunderstorm, look at it, which we don’t normally have in the UCLA area, and it knocked out one of the transformers, and so our electricity went south. So we had to go out in search of electricity. So here we are.

Sarah Harrison  08:56
You’ve been wondering, is Craig Johnson really as nice as he seems? The answer is absolutely. He’s like, Well, we could do it tomorrow.

Carolyn Daughters  09:07
Yes, this is part 12 of our 14-part series with Craig Johnson to discuss the Longmire novels. We thought we would have you read a little bit from your newest book, First Frost.

Craig Johnson  09:20
Absolutely. I’ll be delighted to look. It’s interesting. This is Walt having a little talk with the priest in a local town who may know some information about what it is that happened in Bone Valley, but isn’t being very forthcoming with that information. “Father Pietro was transferred and spent the rest of his life in penance at a monastery in Idaho, where he slowly lost his mind. It was there, in the moment of lucidity that he asked for me to come to him and to minister last rites. So it was there that he told you about what happened. Yes, and you’re not going to tell me. Oh, you don’t understand. I walked back over to the table and drank down the rest of my glass of water. Thanks for lunch. May I ask where it is that you’re going back to Bone Valley? I walked into the sanctuary and passed the rows of pews as he came after me, grabbing my shoulder and partially turning me. What good would that do?”

“I turned the rest of the way and looked down at him, witnesses, witnesses to what happened all those years ago. At least. Father Pietro tried to do something. Tried to report it. You haven’t even got the guts for that. Looking at me sadly, he shook his head, hearsay evidence, the dying statements of an old man who has lost his faculties during the administrations of his faith. That’s what you would have me report to and to whom anybody you say you have a higher responsibility to the church, but I say you have a greater responsibility to your fellow man. I gestured behind me what they did back there was gruesome, an affront to all of us, and no one believes that their singular, small voice can bring justice to the situation. I looked around the sanctuary at all the empty seats back when this church meant something, when these pews were full and all these people were singing, all those voices combined to make something. Well, the same thing goes for the truth. If enough people tell it, then it becomes something, something important, something honest.”

Sarah Harrison  11:34
Thank you. I really like that quote. It’s one of my favorites from the Longmire novels.

Craig Johnson  11:36
Thank you.

Sarah Harrison  11:39
It struck me as very Walt Longmire, thank you. One of those nutshell comments, that encapsulated character. Do you agree? Or is that just my interpretation?

Craig Johnson  11:52
No, no. I agree with you 100%. I mean, the moral implications of the book. This is a major pivot point, where Walt actually has somebody that he can at least say is partially responsible for coming forth with what it is that happened and what a horrible situation it was. I mean, everything up until then, no one’s taking any responsibility. Or anyone you can talk to, for goodness sake, actually saw what happened, or knows what happened there, or even someone who knew someone. And so it’s a powerful moment for him. And they’re also approaching it from obviously, two different constructs. One’s approaching it from the construct of religion, and one is approaching it from the construct of justice. And those two don’t always meet.

Sarah Harrison  12:42
Yeah, I really liked that. They were having a conceptual battle there. Of, do you talk about this? Do you not talk about it? Which is more important? And he makes this argument. He didn’t win the priest over.

Craig Johnson  12:56
And then the question becomes, where is the morality in this? These questions are important in the Longmire novels. Are you more interested in the construct? Are you interested in the actual pursuit of justice and morality? Both of those, I’ve had their triumphs and their failures looking so it’s interesting to see both of them coming at this, I mean, Walt’s a young man, obviously, the priest as a young man, Walt is a very young man at this point in time, and it’s interesting to see where we get those little inclinations of, who it is that he is and who he’s going to become. One of my favorites, I think, is at the beginning, after they do this heroic act in the first chapter where they save these guys here from the ship that’s going down off Point Doom and Malibu, and they go jump in the water with their surfboards, and they’re able to haul these guys out, and since there’s contraband also on board this boat, but that then the sheriff’s department is waiting for them when they get back to the beach, like getting the sheriff rep of Los Angeles County basically looks at Walt and says, Did you guys have anything to do with this boat? And Walt’s like, no. He said, Did you know any of these men? And Walt says, no, no, sir. And he’s like, Well, if you don’t mind me asking, Why in the world would you risk your lives to go out there and try and save these guys that you don’t know, that you don’t have anything to do with? And Walt just looks at him as very matter of fact. His response is, because it was the right thing to do. And it’s just an indicator, he might not be fully formed just yet. I mean, especially when they’re facing the first frost of their lives, this is the first time that they’re really getting that indication as to whether they really are 10 feet tall and, and then life has a way of teaching you that, no, you are not. And with them getting ready to go off to war. It’s just, it’s implied in with an even stronger case.

Carolyn Daughters  14:48
It seems Walt has got a strong moral foundation, but he also wants to right wrongs. He wants to make amends. So when he comes to find out the history of. This internment camp, and that the history didn’t stop 20 years prior, but in fact, has extended in particular ways. We don’t want to give it all away, but has extended to the present day. He has trouble walking away from that. That’s who he is at his core. And so we’re learning this because you’ve gone back in time, and now we have very young Walt. Can you talk a little bit about the progression of Walt Longmire in the Longmire novels? He goes from just graduated, about to go into the military, about to go to Vietnam, to the present day. Walt, an older man, maybe wiser. How has he changed over the years?

Craig Johnson  15:48
Well, that was one of the major points of the book, it was to discover who he was and what he was at that period in time, I’d already dropped back in the past, with this character, which is, I have to admit, a joy for me to discover that there is no chronology, with crime fiction, you don’t, you aren’t stuck with the first moment that you meet this character. And moving forward, you can jump back, different periods in history, in their lives and in their development, and that was, I think, the fourth book, another man’s moccasins, where I first started doing that. And it just was interesting to find those key moments where that were pivotal, to who it was that he was. That does change over a period of time, I guess. I mean, one of the advantages, of course, that they’re 22 years old, my goodness, if they’ve been playing college football for the last four years, they’re probably the best physical shape of their entire lives. But they’re also 22 years old, so they’re not that smart.

I mean, one of my favorite scenes is when Walt starts seeing the magnitude of this thing that happened here in Bone Valley, like and he turns to Henry and says, We should report this to the authorities. And Henry’s response and with all the knowledge, all the innocents in the world, we should report this to the authorities. And Henry’s response is, When has that ever worked out for us? At that point in time, they were still a little bit of an owl. Bit of an outlaw quality to them in their youth. You’re still pushing the envelope a little bit to see who it was that they were, but, no, I think that’s a key element. And a biggest mistake I think you can make whenever you attempt to do a book like this is that the characters turn out to be exactly the same as they are.

Nobody’s the same when they’re 22 and when they’re 62 it just doesn’t happen that way. Hopefully you’ve learned a few things along the trail. And I think that with the characters, I mean, the first time that I came to that conclusion, I think probably was, which I would consider the sister book to this one, in the fourth of the Longmire novels that I wrote, Another Man’s Moccasins. I remember getting to the point where wall is reporting for duty at this Air Force Base, and he’s, he’s a marine investigator, so he’s about as welcome as feces in the swinging pool, they’re not happy to have him there and I remember him standing there and introducing himself to this captain in this Air Force Base in Tanzanite in Vietnam. And it was a start moment where I said to myself, crap. I have not written about this guy. I don’t even know this guy. I’m gonna have to go back and see who he is and what he is and why he is like that. And how did that trajectory change, the effects of wartime service and all of this. And that was, that was a wakeup call.

I get to utilize that and to know that it was gonna be a little bit different. And then, even in The Longmire Defense, the book before First Frost, we actually get to see, like a six-year-old Walt, as his grandfather is attempting to try and teach him how to play chess, and that’s a moment, too, and I guess the way I look at it is, is that we think we you think people. You don’t know people, especially you don’t know people in different times in their lives they change, they evolve. And certainly with some generations, you are a little more forthcoming with that information. Some aren’t. And so it’s been interesting for me and the books like it to see how much of that information comes out, how easily it comes out, and who it comes from.

Carolyn Daughters  19:46
One of the things that definitely hasn’t changed in the Longmire novels from The Cold Dish to First Frost is Walt Longmire will jump into the sea to save someone. Or if. So there are a couple … I don’t want to spoil either, but there are a couple people who need to be saved, and it is deadly cold outside and you are alone, he will figure out how to get those people to safety, if at all possible, absolutely. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t run away from the sorts of things that I would think many of us would run away from. He runs toward them.

Craig Johnson  20:26
Well, that’s the old statement, is everybody’s running in one direction, you probably need to be running in the other. And I think there’s, is probably, probably in one of the little novellas, like in Spirit of Steamboat, Walt is talking to this helicopter pilot. Look at it. It’s Christmas Eve. Look at and there’s this blizzard that comes in. They’re trying to transport this girl. That’s this young woman that’s been in an automobile accident in Montana, and they’re trying to get her children’s hospital in Denver, and she’s a burn victim, and she only has a certain amount of time.

But if you know anything about helicopters, the one thing they can’t do is fly in bad weather. It’s bad. They do not fly. So he’s trying to talk the helicopter pilot into the possibility of maybe flying this plane, this forest service plane down to Denver, and the guy’s telling him, he says, this is a suicide mission. This is death. What you’re attempting to do, you’re going to die if you do this. It’s as simple as that. He says, Let us don’t understand why it is that you would put yourself in that position. That’s this crazy kind of bravery. Walt’s like, it’s not brave. Brave doesn’t have anything to do with it. He said, What has to do with he says, If I get up tomorrow morning and I walk in the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, am I going to be able to look at myself if I don’t know that I did everything that I could have possibly done to save this young girl?

So much of it comes down to looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing, okay, did you do the right thing? Could you have done more? You know? And for some people, they can’t, you can’t live with it. It’s not possible to continue putting up with that person in the mirror. You’d rather just be dead rather than realize that you failed that monumentally in a moral and obligational sense.

Sarah Harrison  22:11
I want to compare that quote, and that topic, to a quote that came at the end of the book that I think I can say without giving away any plot. But to me, I was like, does this contradict the first quote that you read? Or I want you to talk us through how Walt’s thinking about it, but towards the end, he’s he said it wasn’t honest, but it served a common good. I was like, well, that we just had a whole speech about honesty. So this feels more pragmatic, yet he knows the truth. Is it that honesty exists on its own, in its own sense in the Longmire novels? Is it that he just knows it, as does pragmatism? How do you read it?

Craig Johnson  23:01
Well, I think that the interesting thing too also is that when you’re I guess the phrase that comes to mind immediately is callow youth. Where you are at an early age, and you think you really know all the answers you know, and you can answer everything you know very clearly and concisely. And then as life takes a hand, you discover that there might be a few more complications that are involved in this. The other thing is that Walt has a certain amount of responsibility simply with the job that he does, and this point in time he has no job, he’s not enforcing any laws. I mean, he’s not even supposed to be there. It’s not even his it’s not his town, it’s not his state. It was a wrong turn or something. And so, that’s our repair. And so the big question becomes, where does this obligation come from? What do you learn over a period of time as to what is the greater good? And who is going to be hurt by this information coming forth and who was going to be an advantage by having this information come forth.

I think that you really got to weigh the pros and cons in that situation, and he’s come up against, exactly in this particular instance, some really ferociously evident evils that took place, and which is why it is like that whole history of the chemical usage, like a Japanese had, and all those things to just give them an indication of the scale of how bad the evil is, and how much, as you say, is, is it going to be placated, simply by saying, Okay, well, this is for the common good, and as much of a good as we can have. I mean, that’s, that’s the big argument that he has with the Sado. That is where you can turn us loose and we go out into the world and we can go tell people what’s going on. And he’s like, you can do that. And there’s a veiled threat that, of course, because he’s telling him, you’re going to Southeast Asia, where people are dying by the thousands every day. One more won’t be a big deal.

But Walt doesn’t back away from it in that sense either. He still stands his ground and says, this has to be made right. And I guess with satos, more worldly view, it has an effect on Walt, where he says, okay, because the key element for Walt, obviously, is what appears to be a child running around in that town with a mask on. And that’s the focal point for him, and someone who is so damaged from this that she may never recover from it, but why make that person suffer even more than they already have? So that’s his focal point, because that’s, to him, the greatest victim of the whole thing, like, it’s certainly the most, the greatest living victim of the whole thing. So, and I’m trying to dance around this a little bit. I’m trying to do the same thing and not give away too much. I don’t like to spoil the Longmire novels.

Sarah Harrison  26:15
I want to dive in there. But this book, First Frost, just came out.

Craig Johnson  26:23
Has everybody read The Cold Dish? There’s always two or three people have not read The Cold Dish. I’m like, it’s 20 years old.

Sarah Harrison  26:34
You should make it required reading to come to Longmire Days. Or maybe all the Longmire novels.

Carolyn Daughters  26:42
Something that really interests me in both books and, coming back again to The Cold Dish, but this friendship between Walt and Bear in particular in the cold dish we see Walt at one of the lower places in his life, and the things that his dear friend does to help pull him out of that, I just thought we all need a friend like this. Yes, it’s incredible. But also, we see in First Frost, the way they stick together through thick and thin. One is gonna run into the ocean. The other one’s like, I’m behind. One is gonna stay in town, and it’s gonna figure out what’s going on in this very strange town.

Sarah Harrison  27:39
But not without a fist fight, which was one of my favorite parts, honestly.

Craig Johnson  27:43
That was the first ever fist fight between Walt and Bear. I did want to ask, which is a very 22-year-old thing to do look at.

Carolyn Daughters  27:53
From the start, because I don’t think you planned Longmire novels as a series, as we’ve learned that you wrote The Cold Dish. How did this friendship come to you? And then how, how quickly did you decide this is actually a mainstay of the series that I’m going to keep evolving these two people in the way that they are there for each other. This is key to the story. How did that come to you and how did that evolve?

Craig Johnson  28:24
I’d like to take a lot more credit for at least I recognized it in hindsight, after the fact. But I think what it was, was, to a certain extent, was a plot device for the cold dish, because as that book progresses, there’s a young woman with fetal alcohol syndrome has been abused by these young men, and after they basically released, with suspended sentences they want, they start turning up dead one by one, shot by 4570 sharps, Buffalo rifle. And the interesting thing is, is that as the book develops and you get to know this world and these people around Walt and everything.

It’s looking more and more like Henry might be the one who did this, and I literally had people that I knew, that were pre-readers, before the book had publication, who literally, like it, were reading the first draft and would call me up on the phone and say, If Henry did it, I am not finishing this. I’m gonna throw it in the fire. I was like, Well, you gotta keep reading to find out. And that was the major components of that particular book, because you had two basic cultures, two mainstream cultures like it. You had the white mainstream culture and then the native culture. You had to have two individuals who were going to be emblematic of those two cultures, like Kevin. You see this friendship between these two individuals, and it had to be real. It had to be an honest friendship, not just a buddy movie. Friendship, and, honest to goodness, friendship that these guys through the trenches of their entire lives bonded together.

And then the tragedy of it, of course, is, are we headed for this train wreck that looks really imminent, as we’re going along, and how horrible is that going to be to both of them? For goodness sake. Was the key element, I think, for that particular book. And then what I discovered was I really enjoyed writing those scenes. I really enjoyed where they could do those combative scenes between the two cultures, and it gave them a chance to voice their opinions and to voice for themselves. And the humor, that was a major element in the Longmire novels. I think like that, but in that component of their friendship. And so when it came time to write the second book, that literally just had to be there, that humor and that friendship had to be there, because it was already a mainstay, I think, in the construction of the Longmire novels already. But I’ve had so many people tell me, where do I find a Henry? I need a friend. I need a Henry.

Sarah Harrison  31:02
Those relationships are inspiring, and I think, very rare. I don’t know if you’re okay with this question, but outside of the Longmire novels do you have a Henry, or is he just fictional.

Craig Johnson  31:11
No, actually, I’ve got a couple.

Sarah Harrison  31:12
Oh, wow, do you loan them out?

Craig Johnson  31:17
Yeah, I don’t know if they’d appreciate but that’s one of my favorite quotes about writing is the one from Wallace Stegner about writing and teaching fiction, where he says the greatest piece of fiction ever written, a disclaimer that says nobody in this book is based off anybody alive. And so we know the difficulty with that, of course, is I live in a state that only has 500,000 people, and there are only 3,000 enrolled members of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. But everybody knows what I’m talking about whenever I put them in my book. There is a good friend of mine, Marcus Red Thunder, who’s a very good, close friend of mine now for many, many, many years. So that friendship for me does exist.

Sarah Harrison  32:01
Have you guys fist fought each other?

Craig Johnson  32:05
No. So luckily, we didn’t meet each other when we were 22.

Sarah Harrison  32:11
That’s a standout scene for me, and it speaks to the level of friendship that we’re going to punch each other in the face and move on.

Craig Johnson  32:19
Well, they just have annoyed each other to such a point that, and Henry’s the one, of course, where he’s like, Well, would it make you feel better if you hit me? I don’t know. You can go ahead and hit me. Well, does immediately, if there’s no question about it, he doesn’t immediately, that testosterone of a 22-year-old male. And so, but Henry’s actually very calm and straightforward about the whole thing vaults the one that’s having an emotional response. So he gives him an opportunity to use that, and he does.

Sarah Harrison  32:53
I love that. Well, for our listeners, if you haven’t read the book, what we’re referring to is the way that Craig jumps back and forth between Longmire’s post-college road trip, and present-day Longmire, who’s embroiled in a court case. And one of the things I really liked about that as I was reading along, is that the mystery was actually in the past. And I think that’s less common.

Craig Johnson  33:26
A lot of times you flash back to the past, and it’s helpful for the present-day mystery trajectory to get to the modern-day case.

Sarah Harrison  33:28
First Frost is the newest of the Longmire novels. Can you talk about making the mystery in the past?

Craig Johnson  33:33
Well, I knew there were so many threads still left hanging in The Longmire Defense. It wasn’t like I could just take a vacation and write a book about 1964, I had to have those threads continue to go on. And so to allow that to happen, I needed to have the modern day sequences. And it seemed to me that with as violent as the situation was at the end of The Longmire Defense, that there would have been an officer shooting hearing, they would have done a pre hearing to see if they wanted to do it to a grand jury and see and like these individuals that what was up against doing The Longmire Defense. These were not unconnected people. These were not like individuals that could be brushed under the rug and be gone. These were from prominent people, from prominent families, and so that made for a difficult situation for him to have to contend with.

And so we had to get past all of that. And I knew that was going to be, I mean, I could do a courtroom drama case book, but that doesn’t interest me that much, I have to admit. I mean, there are plenty of wonderful lawyers turned authors out there who write that type of book, and God bless them, they should write that book, but not for me, not for the Longmire novels. And so I thought, okay, if there’s going to be a moment, where we’re going to go back and do a morality check and do these things like it, then maybe this is the way to do it. So the bulk of this book is going to end up being in 1964 and I thought, Okay, well, then the case would definitely be in 1964, too.

I’ve always had a desperate interest in Heart Mountain, which is over the Bighorn Mountains over here, like it’s the internment camp in Wyoming. And now there’s I can’t remember how many millions of dollars they put into it, but it’s, I’m very proud of the state that they did that, because that was a very dark period in American history. And they went in and put, I don’t know what it was, like $10 to $14 million into a visitation center over there. There’s an interpretive center, there’s a theater, there’s a library. And then they’ve got the gun towers. They rebuilt them just to give people. And they built the whole buildings all as if they were the barracks from that period. And so they did a magnificent job on it. And it’s an amazing, amazing place, but it’s not quite as impacting as it used to be.

Like 30 years ago, I would drive over to Cody, and you would literally drive by Powell and look up on the hillside up there, and some of those gun towers would be like leaning at about a 30 degree angle, and the windows are all blown out of those barracks, and the doors are hanging off of, like, one hinge or something like that. And it was impacting. I mean, you literally could just drive right up and park your truck, get out and walk through the buildings and still see like tables and chairs and paperback books in Japanese lying on a table or something like this, where it had been abandoned, that was it.

For me, that was so impacting to think of it because, I mean, you go up there in the wintertime and think those poor people that were picked up off the street, brought out of their houses all of their worldly goods, put out on the street to just either be sold or picked off by anybody who wanted it. They were able to carry what they had. And they were hauled from the temperate climbs of, say, Southern California to northern Wyoming in the middle of winter, and they didn’t even have winter coats or anything like that. And so I knew, in the long term, someday I was going to write a book that was going to deal with that, some way or another, and of course, the big trick was, of course, I mean, nowadays, that’s a long time ago, that’s not exactly the Crimean War, but it’s quite a ways back.

And so I thought, how and what implications is this going to have? Is this something going to be with Lucian, since he fought in World War II, it would be something that Lucian knew or had contact with over there? And then I thought, but then Walt wouldn’t be immediately involved. And since the Longmire novels are written in first person, that would be a certain turn of a major corner to try and attempt to write. So I thought about it for a while, and then I started thinking about this particular book and this road trip, which was a major factor within the construction of the book, but also that it was 1964 and this was only 20 years,19 years after the war. And so there were a lot of people that were still alive, that were still aware, and still, the things that had happened during the course of that wartime, people that were still surviving that. And so I thought this might be where it is.

I finally did end up being able to use all the information and all and the political aspects of it, where there’s the Heart Mountain was kind of famous, because it was one of the ones where, the armed forces, people, basically went to all of the encampments and said hey to all the young men there, if you’ll go and you’ll fight, we’ll let you out of these camps, and their argument was okay, so you want us to go fight for a democracy that we’re not allowed to be a party to? That really struck me very, very hard, and I thought, okay, if I can combine the two, if I can this road trip is something that they run on to. It’s nothing they really want to have to deal with. But they do, and then once they become defined themselves embroiled, then they really don’t have a choice. I think there’s a statement that goes back to some of the statements that you guys have used beer before, too, in the sense that when Walt’s, I think it’s when he’s talking to the priest. Look at him when he’s telling him, what business is this of yours? Again, he says, You know what? I got a funny feeling that truth. I got this thing about truth, and I got a funny feeling that it’s running low in this valley. And so, once again, just can’t quite let it go.

Sarah Harrison  39:25
I really liked how you solved the puzzle. I learned about the internment camps, probably in junior high. But it wasn’t just one-sided to the tragedy. You brought in a lot of tragedy from many angles. You brought in the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, and you brought in the tragedy that I feel like I’ve heard a lot less about of the Chinese logs and the biological warfare experimentation, which I’ve only learned about recently.

Craig Johnson  39:54
Another opportunity for Walt and Henry to get their feet wet too, because they’re young, and they think that. Going off to war is going to be something romantic, or something that Henry, not so much. Henry thinks more of a bully, an idea of what this is going to be like. Walt, on the other hand is a little bit romantic about it, and the idea that this is the right thing to do, and we need to do this, and for them to hear about the experiences from the Japanese, what they did during the course of the war. And that’s always the case whenever you’re writing morality. Work about wartime, there’s very little morality involved. This is just a rough, tough situation. And to think that you’re the good guys, and what’s the battle cry? God’s on our side. And so to see that were there a lot of facets to this, and some of it ain’t too clean either, right?

Carolyn Daughters  40:50
Well, I know we don’t have tons more time, but we’re here at Longmire Days to discuss the Longmire novels.

Craig Johnson  40:59
Our FEMA disaster of Longmire Days.

Sarah Harrison  41:02
I’m actually so excited. We’ve got to go to a couple of the events before we talk to you, because you started talking about Longmire hour. I did want to hear how it got started. That’s very cool.

Carolyn Daughters  41:16
I think Longmire Days was initially described as a couple hundred people wanted their Longmire novels signed. So you hung out here for an hour and sign some Longmire novels.

Craig Johnson  41:27
It was that event, I guess it was the office of tourism for the state of Wyoming. They came up and filmed, a little documentary about it, kind of tongue in cheek, I think. But then they said, in that point in time, the TV show had started, and they said, well, do you think we’d like to invite all the actors to come to Longmire Days. And I was like, okay, which ones? And they go, all of them. And I was like, okay, all right again.

So we did, and the majority of them did come. Like wow, it was an opportunity, I think, for the actors, to a certain extent. I mean, they’re in Los Angeles, they’re filming a television show that’s supposed to be taking place in Wyoming, but they’re in New Mexico. Some of them had never been to Wyoming in their lives, I get, which is not unique, because a lot of people haven’t been to Wyoming, which I think for them was really a fun opportunity to finally see the place that they were portraying for the last couple of years. Anyway, they came look at and the story that I guess probably explains this at best, was that I go to pick up Robert Taylor, who plays Walt Longmire, out of town and I’m driving him in, and he said, Well, how many people do you think are going to show up for this? And I said, I really don’t know. I said I don’t know. We’ve got an estimate. Some people are saying two, three thousand people, or something like that. And he goes, Oh, okay, all right.

And we get a little closer, and the way that, of course, Buffalo is constructed, which you guys know, because you’re here, there’s a hill that flattens up before you make the turn to go up the turn to go up the mountains and the bighorns. And then there’s the City Hall, or rather the county seat, like they’re the top hill, and then it drops down. There’s a small hill. And then there’s the one block basically of downtown Buffalo. As we pull up, I look and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department has put blockades across the main street, and the sheriff, Larry Kirkpatrick, who I knew, it turns around and looks at me like this. And I’m like, I’m in trouble, we look and we both, Robert and I both raise up in our seat to look over the hill. And as we’re looking over the hill, it’s a wall of people there to get their Longmire novels signed and meet the actors. I mean, everywhere, as far as you can see, and Robert looks at me and goes, I’m no math major, but that looks like more than 3,000 people, and it turned out like that. I mean, the town did its best to be prepared for it, but it really didn’t. Wasn’t too new, for goodness sake. So I tend to refer to it as a FEMA disaster. This is what I tend to refer to it, because the first year that we did it, I mean, the grocery stores and the restaurants ran out of food, the banks and the ATM machines ran out of money, and people would wander around with their cell phones and look at them and try and get service. From the one little tower that we had here in Buffalo, forgot 15,000 extra cell phones suddenly, and so they’re all walking around, looking at the little blue circle of death, and I’m looking, I’m walking up to them and going, now you know why Walt doesn’t have a cell phone. But, yeah, that was and then, and then buffalo geared, girded its loins, really got prepared that next year, and so from then on, they solved a lot of the problems. It’s been really something to see the amount of people that you know come from, not all over the country, but all over the world, to come and be a party to it.

Sarah Harrison  44:54
I met another celebrity who’s showing, remain nameless, because it. It was a poor interaction. But then, just now, we were down here in the store collecting our press passes, and Robert Taylor behind the counter. I’m working this afternoon. He was just peeking behind the necklaces.

Craig Johnson  45:20
So charming. My favorite part of the whole thing is it’s very hands on. And I think a lot of that has to do with the personalities of the actors that we have. They are not like, I’m up here on the stage behind the velvet rope, and you can come up here with my eight by 10, I will sign it, look at you and slide it back across the table to you. There was one moment there was this mad as a wet hand, and she wrote me and said, I did not get in the Thursday signature portion of the event. And I have this, I have this one thing that I really want Robert Taylor to sign. And I wrote her back, and I was like, You do know that? If you just stand out in front of the occidental hotel saloon and hold Robert’s beer, he’ll sign whatever you want. That’s not that big of a deal. But, I mean, there are obviously there are a lot of personalities like it and performers that don’t do that, they’re not comfortable with that, and that’s, that’s fine. But we are fortunate enough that ours are very hands on. They don’t mind it at all.

Sarah Harrison  46:20
It was so sweet. I was like, Carolyn, go get my book. Nice.

Carolyn Daughters  46:30
We had someone post on our Facebook page earlier today. Steve Culham. He wrote, “My wife and I did Longmire Days two years ago. Traveling from Ohio was a 5,000-mile adventure, and I don’t regret one mile.”

Craig Johnson  46:46
Oh, sweet. It’s been amazing to see. I mean, really that of all the things that the wonderful things that have happened with the success of the Longmire novels and the TV show and all that, the one that’s the largest is just knowing that it’s had an effect on people’s lives, that they feel so strongly, that this is a character in a world that gives hope, I mean, that’s a big thing for me, I mean, there are dark things that happen in the Longmire novels and issues that we’re contending with and all of those things. But nonetheless, I don’t ever, I don’t ever want to leave the characters, and don’t ever leave the readers in that dark place, I always want to have a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, so that they can, they can feel like it’s all going to be okay. That’s the whole idea behind Walt, that it’s all going to be okay.

Carolyn Daughters  47:33
It feels so rare to have so much accessibility to you, to the various cast members, to people who are helping to influence the Longmire novels, and people you know within your inner circle, to this town. It’s so fresh. And I think people are amazed that this opportunity exists they get here and they think this is exactly what I would have wanted it to be. There’s probably some hesitation, okay, this could be really cool. But when I get there, what am I going to really say? You get here, and the accessibility, it’s real.

Craig Johnson  48:19
Once again, I think it goes back to the fact that we I just finished up, what was it, a 28-city tour? And we had a grand time doing it and talking about the Longmire novels. But that’s the thing. If you enjoy doing it, if it’s something that you enjoy, then that’s fine. But there are, just the way I didn’t refer to it, is just, just because we sit in a room by ourselves and type about our imaginary friends doesn’t necessarily mean we have good social skills. It has to be with a certain in cheek, I’ll get that. If you enjoy it, do it. If you don’t, don’t. I mean, we’ve all been to events where there’s an author reading from their book, and that you can tell they are not happy. They don’t want to be there like that. And I’m always sitting in the audience going, oh, you should not do this. Don’t torture yourself. Because you’re only torturing yourself. And stop making something that I think is going to be worthwhile.

Sarah Harrison  49:18
That’s a perfect place to end, and I know we’re about out of time, but could I impose one and a half more questions? The first is just a point of clarification. Is the phrase you used a moment ago, mad as a wet hinge, and I’m going to start using that. Yes, it is. And we’ve just got our chickens in the mail on this trip, so I’m gonna see how that goes. That’s perfect.

And then I wanted to touch on something you were talking about just in our conversation yesterday, which really touched me. You were talking about how you were writing the first book for about 10 years, and you were your wife. For you were talking about, and you’re like, Well, maybe it just wasn’t ready 10 years earlier. I love that, because that’s how my husband and I talked about our relationship. So we got married later, and we’re like, Well, it’d be nice if we met 10 years earlier, but I don’t know if we would have liked each other 10 years ago, so it’s just the right timing, but it raised a thought in my mind, what was your day job? Who were you before?

Craig Johnson  50:27
In Wyoming, because the economy here in Wyoming is tough, I did everything. I poured concrete, I drove trucks, I cowboyed, you name it, I did it.

Sarah Harrison  50:38
And all the time you were writing?

Craig Johnson  50:42
Yeah, it was one of those things where you have faith that this is worthwhile, and you just keep going at it. I was laughing because you were talking about your relationship, because I get it. Judy’s my first reader in the Longmire novels, and it’s an awful lot of the female characters have different facets of Judy, because she’s right there, very easy. To have that model in the house like it. But I laugh about it because people will ask me, they’ll say, Well, should I have my significant other involved with my writing? And I’m always like, as long as you’re aware that’s a reach, okay?

Because they may have the tools and the wherewithal look at to be able to do that, or they may not, and you shouldn’t hold it against them if they don’t, because not everybody does. It’s like asking the guy that paints your house to rebuild the engine in your car, like, sometimes it’s just not what they do. And so as long as you’re okay with that, and can come to terms with that, you should be fine. Because I say, it can be the most rewarding working relationship that you’ll ever have in your entire life, or you can be divorced.

Carolyn Daughters  51:56
That’s another opportunity, because they may possess the skill set, but there is a communication bridge that needs to be crossed. When you’re very close with someone you know.

Craig Johnson  52:10
Sometimes you don’t want to hear it like that, right?

Carolyn Daughters  52:13
So it needs to be communicated in a way that you can actually hear it.

Craig Johnson  52:18
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s why I was just laughing like that. Because I remember it, but it really is when it works, it works extraordinarily well. Because the editors that I have, the copywriters that I have, and everybody back in New York, they’re wonderful. They’re really spectacular people, very, very intelligent, very capable, but they don’t know me as well as Judy does. And so when Judy says, when you say, this, is this what you mean, I can listen and I know she’s probably right about that. I’m glad that is something to think about. But, yeah, I think it’s one of the joys of doing what it is that I do.

Sarah Harrison  53:02
That’s awesome. Okay, we so much appreciate your time today and your generosity. We could go on and just make the Longmire novels and Longmire Days our whole podcast.

Carolyn Daughters  53:15
I can’t wait for parts 13 and 14.

Sarah Harrison  53:18
You are back to back events for the next like four days. Thank you so much for joining.

Craig Johnson  53:24
My pleasure guys, I’m glad we finally got electricity.

Sarah Harrison  1:01:42
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