Annie's Book Stop of Worcester

Photo Credit: Judith Johnson

Annie’s Book Stop of Worcester is excited to shine our Friday Spotlight on Craig Johnson, who is the New York Times Best Selling author of the Walt Longmire Series, the basis for the Netflix drama Longmire.

Where can people find your work? (Besides Annie’s Book Stop of Worcester ;)–though they should totally check here first!)

Pretty much anywhere fine books are sold.

How can we follow your work, share your awesomeness?

craigallenjohnson.com is my website and I’m on Facebook as Craig Johnson with a blue checkmark to indicate it’s really me and Twitter at Ucrosspop25 and Instagram at ucrosspop25

For readers unfamiliar with your work, how would you describe what you write?  What can readers expect from [newest release/spotlighted release]?

 I write a series of books about the sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state in America–Wyoming. The books are contemporary westerns as well as mysteries with a lot of character, place, and hopefully humor. There are fourteen novels in the series so far, along with two novellas and a collection of short stories. I’ve been fortunate enough to be translated into fourteen languages and there are six seasons of the television show streaming on Netflix at this time. People sometimes ask me if they should start the series at the beginning with the first novel, The Cold Dish, and I tell them that if they think they’re going to enjoy them—yes.

 

 

What character did you love or hate the most while writing? And why?

Oh, I like Walt. He’s a little different from the majority of protagonists you see in crime fiction in that he’s what I call ‘over’–he’s over-age, over-weight, overly-depressed, but he still gets up in the morning and tries to do the job and to me that’s true heroism. Walt is something of a throwback–he’s got a code that he lives by and to keep him alive I gave him two superpowers; a sense of humor and he reads. He reads everything, and he remembers it. Only those of us who do read know what a marvelous addition it is to our lives and what an advantage it gives us… I like to think that people read the books for the same reason I enjoy writing them, because I just like Walt’s company.

Things we might not know about you?

My wife is from Connecticut and went to school in Boston and its not unusual for me to write while listening to my wife’s daily addiction to the Red Sox. I am a New York Times Best Seller, there is a successful TV show based on my books, and I’ve been translated into fourteen languages, but the real coup of my life was getting the red-headed New Englander to move to Ucross, Wyoming, population 25. By the way, she’s the one who coached me on how to pronounce Worcester…