#134 - The Longmire Legacy: Evolution of a Series w/ Craig Johnson

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The only thing I wanted to do, I swear to God, was like I wanted to sell enough books that
I could continue writing books.

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That's all I really wanted to ever

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That's the story of success though.

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You all were pumped about today.

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Uh, we have Craig Johnson.

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You should know the name.

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You're probably going to know the name that he created that he's associated with, but, the
Longmire series, was, from 2012 to 2017, I believe it was.

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And, uh, then it became, I think we can go out and find it on Netflix now.

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And it seems like it's one of those shows that's becoming ever more popular, not to invoke
somebody else's work before yours.

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But I didn't know what I consider one of the greatest movies of all time is Shawshank
Redemption.

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It was not a hit in the theater, which is wild.

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When I heard that again and somebody spoke about that year ago, went, what?

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They're like, yeah, it didn't do well.

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And it actually was the benefactor of DVDs.

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And everybody started getting these DVDs.

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thing is, like, you sometimes, you know, a piece of art has to find its audience, you
know, and I'm firmly the belief a lot of a lot of the time, like, those are the good ones,

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you know, because if it's all things to all people, you know, it really can't be very good
looking when you get right down to it.

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Did you think when this started, cause you're at your, you're on the book tour right now.

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Like everybody will talk to you about the book.

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We'll hit on it.

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So people go buy them, but I'm really interested in understanding like who Craig, the
person is, who the human is this guy from you cross Wyoming and, this past in this

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journey, we talk about entrepreneurship, but listen, being an author and what you've done,
it's entrepreneurial as hell.

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yeah.

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Right.

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Well, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut, like it and then I
decided, okay, the odds against that are so great.

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Why don't I do something safe, like try and be a professional writer, you know.

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So yeah.

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And that was like, you I really, that was the whole, you know, idea behind it.

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mean, you know, because I thought to myself, because people, I remember when the first
book came out, like that, I was kind of, you know, amazed like that, because all my

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friends and family and everybody

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you they were a little in you wrote a book, they were a little incredulous.

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And my money, they were a little bit too incredulous.

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Like, as a matter of fact, kind of hurt my feelings a little bit.

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Like, I just, know, it's one of those things where you don't talk about it or anything,
because why embarrass yourself like it.

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And so then when I finally wrote that first book, you know, and found the voice that I
needed to find it again, and also decided to do something that was like, maybe a little

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bit different, which I think speaks more to the entrepreneurship part of it like that.

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mean, a lot of times when everybody's running in one direction, you'd think about running
in the other direction.

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And in uh crime fiction at that period in time here about 20 years ago, everything was
like noir.

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Everything was all like gritty, urban, know, alcoholic divorce detectives burying bodies
in their backyards and all this.

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And I thought, well, what if you did like the sheriff of the least populated county in the
least populated state?

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That'd be something different, right?

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So I'm a genius, right?

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Well, of course you are.

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Yeah.

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the problem, well, the problem with that is how many people can you kill in that county
before it really gets kind of ridiculous?

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don't know.

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Walt has killed a lot, right?

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What's going on here?

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You know what?

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twenty-one

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I decided at that point in time that I was going to have to spread his jurisdiction out a
little bit.

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And so, mean, if you got somebody who's really good at these cases and that kind of thing,
you know, got 23 other counties in Wyoming where those sheriffs are going to look for

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somebody to jump in the foxhole with them and help them with these investigations.

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And I've had walled up in Montana, like on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, the Crow
reservation over in Sturgis, like over in South Dakota, like that, you know, and all over

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like that.

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There was one book, the third book takes place in Philadelphia.

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The fourth book takes place in Vietnam in 1968 when Waltz starts out as a Marine
investigator in Tan Sonet Air Force Base during the Tet Offensive.

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I think you just have to make sure that you're not grounded so much that you feel trapped.

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You have to be able to find ways to allow that to expound.

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Just a 21st iteration.

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Return to sender.

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Do they just keep getting better?

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Is this like fine wine?

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You know, but you know what that sounds like is the question I always get every night like
at when I'm doing these book events is which is your favorite one?

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I'm like that's easy.

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You know, again, they said which one is it?

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I'm like the one I'm working on right now.

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Well, the other thing is like, you know, in all honesty, you're not even being a smart
aleck about it.

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Like for God's sakes, I got to be even.

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You know, that's the one you're submerged in right now.

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That's the one you've done all the research, you know, you're in that creative process
with it and everything.

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And so it's obviously going to be the one that you're the most attached to at that point
in time.

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it's not, you got a problem on your hands.

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So, was Walton alter ego for you?

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oh

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I don't know.

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mean, you know, well, okay, my wife has the best quote about that.

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She says that Walt Longmire is who Craig would like to be in 10 years.

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He's just off to an incredibly slow start.

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And I can't argue with that really very much like that.

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But yeah, I mean, you always imbue, you know, a character, especially, you know, one that
you want, you know, to kind of carry, you know, a novel like it or a series like that,

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because the first book, The Cold Dish was just a standalone book.

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What is supposed to be a series?

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And so you imbue them with certain talents and abilities like that.

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But one of the key elements, I think, in these types of characters, maybe in any type of
writing or art, is the old saying that you like people for their virtues, but you love

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them for their faults.

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It's the things that are wrong with people that really draw you into them for numerous
reasons.

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And so Waltz had a lot of tragedy in his life.

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A lot of things happened to him that I have not.

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I wouldn't trade places with him, I have to admit.

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Do you think that I've never been an actor other than when I was a kid, the high school
plays and all that, but you had to really get into the character to do it well.

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Is being a writer the same way being an author?

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yeah, like there's a uh lesser known mystery writer you may have heard of, Tony Hillerman.

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He actually had a really great quote for me one time, like he said, well Craig, you just
got to sit in all the chairs.

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You have to able to sit at the table, like it and be all those characters and give them
all a fair shake.

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You know, whenever you're doing murder mysteries, of course, you you've got a new
antagonist pretty much every book, like it for your protagonist to go up against.

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And the thing I always think about with that is the Northern Cheyenne have a saying, which
is you judge a man by the strength of his enemies.

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And so whenever I'm thinking about Walt in a book, I'm thinking, okay, is this really
going to be a challenge for him?

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Because if it's not, then I'm not going to bother writing that book.

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Yeah, I think the big fans that have gone through the 20 books, they're expecting
something.

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Oh, yeah.

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yeah, yeah.

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And it's nice because I'm with the literary press, so there's no formula involved.

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mean, all the contracts for my books, all they say is just that it must be a mystery and
have Walt Longmire in it.

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So I can get into a lot of trouble.

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When did that start?

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When did they start giving you that freedom?

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know, it was pretty much from the get go like that.

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really started out, know, as Viking Penguin, look at, know, and they're, you know, they're
a big press.

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They're like a hundred years old.

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I think they're having their hundredth anniversary this year like that.

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But they were really great like that.

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And I remember, you know, Catherine Court, who was like the president of Penguin and one
of the senior editors at Viking um when I, when they were, you know, in production, you

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know, with the cold dish, like I was there in New York, like at Times Square.

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Walk me across the street to the Barnes and Noble, this big five story Barnes and Noble
and walk me back into the mystery section.

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And I mean, my gosh, it was huge.

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And she looks at me and she goes, and this is 20 years ago, there are 250 hardback
mysteries published every month.

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And I remember looking around at them and going, you know, how is anybody ever going to
find me?

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And she looked at me and she goes, that's not your job.

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That's our job.

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Your job is to write good books.

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That's all you have to do.

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How many times you think she took people across the street and did

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I don't know.

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I'm hoping it once.

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at that.

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She did.

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She absolutely did.

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do think you can take from that experience?

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Maybe to be an author in your book.

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mean, that's really significant because, you know, I was talking about this book study
that we're doing right now, and it's really about, um, the art of people is listening to

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people uh and, you make them feel like they're the only one.

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And she did that.

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Oh yeah, absolutely.

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I mean, I think that's a question of focus, a lot of it.

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that, mean, we never, like even, okay, like this is a case in point, like last night at a
book signing, like I had never met 200 people there like that.

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And so, every time somebody comes up, like to get their book signed or something, I make
sure that I make eye contact with them, shake their hand, like that, talk to them a little

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bit, sign their book for them, like that, and let them know that I appreciate the fact.

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you know that in this you know world that we live in hustle and bustle that they came and
stop for a minute just to come to this bookstore and meet me and talk with me about this

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book and these these books mean something to them like it and so if you can't give them a
couple of minutes of your time like it with absolute focus like it well then you really

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don't deserve their readership it seems like to me and I think that that's an important
thing for people to learn like that is is that you know you can just skim through your

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life but that's what you're going to do is just skim through your life you know you really
have to live in those moments like that you have to be there.

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you know, for those moments, like to make it all worthwhile.

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Who made the Craig this guy of integrity?

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Oh, I don't know.

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I don't know.

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I mean, my parents were, you know, they were big readers, like that, you know, and, you
know, and they had strong feelings about it.

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mean, and they fell into a lot of those maxims of like, you know, if you remember my
father saying early on, he says, two things you can't ever be afraid of getting your ass

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kicked or a day's work.

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And I took that to heart like that.

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And I thought, okay, like, and so and I think that's a lot of it.

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I mean, you they, they, they, and I still believe in the things that they believed in the
sense that, you know,

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If you really believe in something and you want to work hard enough at it, you'll succeed
at it like that.

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But you really have to go after it.

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You can't do it halfhearted.

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When did this journey start for you?

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Because we're only 20 years into this.

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It's like that guy that worked really hard before that, where'd that start?

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know, a lot of it was like life experience just like traveling around and like trying to,
you know, bring as much, know, to the table as I could, because the writers that I really

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like are the ones who actually did other things.

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You know, they had other, you know, livelihoods like that and other experiences to draw
from.

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They didn't just graduate from some writing school, like and start writing books about
writing students, writing, write books about writing students and all that.

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They had lives like it.

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And so I thought, okay, well, you know, let's try and get as much experience as you can
like it to bring to the table.

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And so I did look at and then of course, you know that the other thing that happened was I
delivered horses down out of Montana like and found that little spot.

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You cross like at population 25 like at right the confluence of clear and piney creeks the
base of bighorn mountains.

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And I thought, boy, if I was to build a ranch, this would be where it is that I want to
build it.

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And then I discovered something really, you know, incredibly disheartening.

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Did you know you have to buy property that they don't just give it away anymore?

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kind of in that business.

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That's what I thought.

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Yeah, I don't think they've ever given it away.

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I'm pretty sure you have do something.

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Oklahoma you had to run out there and stake it off real quick.

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know what I've seen?

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I've learned in life is anything that's given away.

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It's probably not worth it.

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Probably not.

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not.

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uh

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So what makes what makes Wyoming like it's one of the states I haven't been to and what's
funny over the past decade seems like the country's been rushing there.

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Yeah, and you're probably stay away.

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Well, I don't know.

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I'm not one of those guys that wants to just slam the door behind me and say, that's it.

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Nobody else.

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I mean, we have a couple of things like that.

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You know, I think before we were getting started, you were discussing grizzly bears, like
that, you know, and then there's the moose and then there's, you know, the rattlesnakes

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and then there's everything else like that.

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But the biggest thing we've got is we have a winter.

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And so I kind of laugh about it like that because we have this festival that we have every
year called Longmire Days like that, where we have, you know, everybody that's fans of the

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books and the television show and the TV.

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You know, the actors all kind of, call it a FEMA disaster with actors is what I call it
like that, because basically what happened was I remember the first year that we did it,

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um, all the banks and ATM machines and Buffalo ran out of money, all of the restaurants
and you know, grocery stores ran out of food.

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The one little cell tower that we had suddenly had 16,000 extra cell phones on it and
melted to the ground.

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at it.

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so.

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you know, it was a you know, an economic boom like that, you know, for the area like that.

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But nonetheless, it was quite a challenge to try and do it like that.

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But a lot of those people will show up and they'll you know, come there and it's fantastic
because it's in July, it's really warm, it's beautiful.

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The mountains are all gorgeous with snow on them and everything like that.

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And everybody's like, you know, I think I could move here, then they get into your
business and think about buying some property like that and all that.

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And I'm always telling them, you know, you might want to come back in like January or
February just to get a little bit of a taste of what the winter's like.

203
00:12:10,236 --> 00:12:10,830
Tell us about

204
00:12:10,830 --> 00:12:11,180
little bit.

205
00:12:11,180 --> 00:12:12,071
Tell us about it.

206
00:12:12,071 --> 00:12:13,443
Is Buffalo close to you cross?

207
00:12:13,443 --> 00:12:16,566
Why'd you choose there instead of you cross?

208
00:12:16,566 --> 00:12:18,566
It actually had a little bit of something.

209
00:12:18,566 --> 00:12:22,298
You know, I mean, it was it's it's kind of Durant, you know, it's the wall, you know,
city.

210
00:12:22,298 --> 00:12:24,359
It's like, you know, Walt's town is what it is.

211
00:12:24,359 --> 00:12:27,230
I mean, I don't even change the names of the streets or anything.

212
00:12:27,230 --> 00:12:33,703
So it's kind of like, you know, Frank Capra esque when you walk down those streets, like
it, it's almost like walking into one of the books or something.

213
00:12:33,703 --> 00:12:40,036
There's a busy B cafe right there at the Occidental Hotel, I get there's, you know, all
these things like it that are in the books, okay.

214
00:12:40,036 --> 00:12:42,707
And so, you know, it just seemed to kind of fit like that.

215
00:12:42,707 --> 00:12:45,070
And anyway, they had a better infrastructure for

216
00:12:45,070 --> 00:12:48,446
putting up 16,000 people that are at all 25 percent.

217
00:12:48,446 --> 00:12:50,894
The do they have the statue of you yet?

218
00:12:50,894 --> 00:12:56,174
not our needs that use me and they might someday my deal stature wall but they will
stature here's the

219
00:12:56,596 --> 00:13:00,102
Maybe they can do a statue of Walt with you like polishing his boot or something.

220
00:13:00,612 --> 00:13:03,336
Like me standing to the side, you know, with a pen, you

221
00:13:03,692 --> 00:13:05,806
What about these Wyoming winners?

222
00:13:05,806 --> 00:13:06,986
Uh, they're a little rough.

223
00:13:06,986 --> 00:13:15,766
Like, and I mean, we just got through one like that here, uh, where we had about a two
week period where, know, it dropped down to about 40 below and just kind of hung 41.

224
00:13:15,766 --> 00:13:15,966
Yeah.

225
00:13:15,966 --> 00:13:16,706
40 below.

226
00:13:16,706 --> 00:13:17,166
Look at it.

227
00:13:17,166 --> 00:13:18,846
And stayed there for like about man.

228
00:13:18,846 --> 00:13:19,926
Oh gosh.

229
00:13:19,926 --> 00:13:20,986
Like about two weeks.

230
00:13:20,986 --> 00:13:23,366
Look at, and so it was kind of brutal.

231
00:13:24,087 --> 00:13:28,940
What did what's old sheriff Longmire what's he do with a below 40 degree winter?

232
00:13:28,940 --> 00:13:34,199
You know, he does all the things he normally does, but with a lot more effort, I think is
what boils down to.

233
00:13:34,199 --> 00:13:38,702
So did you, uh, did you know this guy when you were young and his name was just something
else, a real human.

234
00:13:38,702 --> 00:13:42,122
No, I think I just basically it was kind of a Dr.

235
00:13:42,122 --> 00:13:43,202
Frankenstein kind of thing.

236
00:13:43,202 --> 00:13:51,562
I mean, you one of my favorite quotes about writing is the one from Wallace Stegner, who
wrote, was the teacher of the Stanford Writers Project.

237
00:13:51,562 --> 00:13:59,462
One of the things he said in a little book that he wrote called Writing and Teaching
Fiction, the greatest piece of fiction ever written is the disclaimer at the beginning of

238
00:13:59,462 --> 00:14:02,642
every book that says nobody in this book is based off anybody alive or dead.

239
00:14:02,642 --> 00:14:05,142
And what a crock that is like that because that's what you do.

240
00:14:05,142 --> 00:14:07,462
You take people and you put them in your books.

241
00:14:08,586 --> 00:14:10,269
Walter was a little bit different.

242
00:14:10,269 --> 00:14:12,112
He had a little bit of a Dr.

243
00:14:12,112 --> 00:14:13,785
Frankenstein kind of quality to him.

244
00:14:13,785 --> 00:14:20,745
I wanted bits and pieces to make the guy that I wanted to make so that I could tell the
stories that I wanted to tell.

245
00:14:21,400 --> 00:14:26,157
So when all these young authors come to you and say, how do you do it?

246
00:14:26,619 --> 00:14:28,290
Get that question a few times.

247
00:14:28,290 --> 00:14:29,363
Tell me what to do.

248
00:14:29,363 --> 00:14:31,537
I have a better question.

249
00:14:31,537 --> 00:14:35,433
I What would you go back and tell the Craig, tell Craig to do better?

250
00:14:35,433 --> 00:14:35,928
m

251
00:14:35,928 --> 00:14:37,059
calm down.

252
00:14:37,518 --> 00:14:39,812
I think we were talking about that a little bit for the show.

253
00:14:39,812 --> 00:14:51,413
Look at I think you know that there is something I mean, it's always a balance like that
because that edginess and uh unease like that and uh nervousness and all that electricity

254
00:14:51,413 --> 00:14:59,520
and energy that you have when you're young, you know, you don't want to lose that like
that because that's a magnificent catalyst for making you you know, make some of those

255
00:14:59,520 --> 00:15:01,602
like headlong leaps into something that

256
00:15:01,602 --> 00:15:05,157
your more older and saner person would say, that are you crazy?

257
00:15:05,157 --> 00:15:07,136
Don't even think about doing that for goodness sake.

258
00:15:07,136 --> 00:15:11,507
it's so, you know, it's, gotta be careful when you say, you know, what would I trade and
what would I change like that?

259
00:15:11,507 --> 00:15:15,002
Because some of the things you would change that you look back and say, yeah, I don't know
if I want to do that.

260
00:15:15,002 --> 00:15:17,906
Like that might've been the reason why it is that you ended up where you are.

261
00:15:19,843 --> 00:15:29,058
the what do you think the next after these 21 because everybody's how many more are there
I'm you might you don't even know well you know

262
00:15:29,058 --> 00:15:38,386
well, I mean, the thing is, is like all of the books are based off newspaper articles,
which is kind of nice, because what it does is it kind of grounds walled in a reality of

263
00:15:38,386 --> 00:15:45,611
what's really going on, you know, in the contemporary Rocky Mountain West, you know, I I
sometimes read books that take place in my part of the world, not to say to myself,

264
00:15:45,611 --> 00:15:47,562
there's no way that would ever possibly happen.

265
00:15:47,562 --> 00:15:48,353
It's ridiculous.

266
00:15:48,353 --> 00:15:48,523
it.

267
00:15:48,523 --> 00:15:50,002
And so I don't ever want to

268
00:15:50,002 --> 00:15:50,793
challenge that.

269
00:15:50,793 --> 00:15:53,942
want to have things that real sheriffs deal with.

270
00:15:53,942 --> 00:15:55,706
So that's kind of important to me too.

271
00:15:55,706 --> 00:16:00,440
And then the other thing is, if anybody has a problem with it, I can always say, well,
here, meet Sheriff Goody Pickering from Big Horn County.

272
00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:01,926
He can tell you how that actually happened.

273
00:16:01,926 --> 00:16:08,156
And so I've gone around for 20 years collecting newspaper articles.

274
00:16:08,156 --> 00:16:14,910
Mark, I've got a um file folder that's like 10 inches thick of newspaper articles that are
going to foment another Walt Long.

275
00:16:14,910 --> 00:16:17,542
I'm going to die before I get them all written, so what's going to happen?

276
00:16:17,932 --> 00:16:22,510
Is it okay that these characters in these series of books, die with the authors?

277
00:16:22,510 --> 00:16:32,010
You know, I think it is like it I mean, there are there all of these estates now, you
know, that that go out and find other authors, you know, to ghostwrite and do these type

278
00:16:32,010 --> 00:16:32,290
of things.

279
00:16:32,290 --> 00:16:33,950
And, you know, I don't know.

280
00:16:33,950 --> 00:16:42,370
I mean, I suppose, you know, I guess if if if they say that's okay, but you know, before
they pass, like, and I would imagine like that, but I can't imagine that most of these

281
00:16:42,370 --> 00:16:44,570
authors would really go along with that.

282
00:16:44,570 --> 00:16:48,046
I think that, know, you kind of take them to the grave with you to a certain extent.

283
00:16:48,046 --> 00:16:50,572
This is like basically the Egyptians, like everybody's coming with me.

284
00:16:50,572 --> 00:16:52,807
Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid so.

285
00:16:53,799 --> 00:16:56,220
But James Bond lives beyond Sean Connery.

286
00:16:56,220 --> 00:16:57,402
know, know.

287
00:16:57,402 --> 00:17:04,139
And the other question I get all the time is, like, well, you know, is there any
possibility that you'll ever have the same response like that Arthur Conan Doyle had with

288
00:17:04,139 --> 00:17:08,964
Sherlock Holmes where he got so sick of him after a while he threw him off the Rhine's Bec
Falls.

289
00:17:08,964 --> 00:17:13,509
can always look at him and go, well, first of all, Walt's not a sociopathic coke addict.

290
00:17:13,509 --> 00:17:15,511
So that gives me a little bit of an opportunity.

291
00:17:15,511 --> 00:17:18,425
get to hang on to him for a little bit longer.

292
00:17:18,425 --> 00:17:21,825
you, um, how much, what's your level of enjoyment?

293
00:17:21,825 --> 00:17:28,366
If we can rate this from a zero to 10 of being the creator and still the author of this
series.

294
00:17:28,366 --> 00:17:29,746
Oh, full 10.

295
00:17:29,786 --> 00:17:30,906
Full 10.

296
00:17:30,926 --> 00:17:38,086
I mean, that's the thing that's, you know, the I mean, it's funny because you were asking,
you know, like, you know, what, what is it that younger authors, you know, sometimes

297
00:17:38,086 --> 00:17:39,726
Alaska students or something like that.

298
00:17:39,726 --> 00:17:41,706
And a lot of times they, kind of miss the point.

299
00:17:41,706 --> 00:17:44,686
They'll come in, they'll say, well, what's it like to have a beer with Lou Diamond
Phillips?

300
00:17:44,686 --> 00:17:50,106
You know, what's it like to go on these, you know, European tours where your books have
been translated into all these languages and everything.

301
00:17:50,106 --> 00:17:50,846
And I always look at them.

302
00:17:50,846 --> 00:17:57,754
I'm always thinking, you do know that that's only like 5 % of what my life is that the
other 95 %

303
00:17:57,754 --> 00:18:07,251
is locked in a room by myself typing about my imaginary friends look at okay so if that's
not what you want to do I mean if you want to have the paparazzi chasing you around and

304
00:18:07,251 --> 00:18:15,347
you want to be a celebrity and all that kind of stuff maybe being an author is not what it
is that you want to do like that I mean if you really enjoy you know that contemplative

305
00:18:15,347 --> 00:18:23,943
aspect of sitting down at the beginning of every day and enjoying you know being in that
kind of introverted you know kind of world like that where you can escape into your

306
00:18:23,943 --> 00:18:26,200
imagination like and create all of that

307
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:27,280
Well, then that's the world for you.

308
00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:28,901
But if it's not, then you shouldn't do it at all.

309
00:18:28,901 --> 00:18:31,572
One of my favorite quotes about that is Picasso.

310
00:18:31,572 --> 00:18:36,815
Look at, know, somebody asked him one time and said, Are you ever intimidated by that
blank canvas?

311
00:18:36,815 --> 00:18:41,817
Look at me turn around, look at him and said, that blank canvas ought to be afraid of me
first thing in the morning.

312
00:18:42,216 --> 00:18:43,398
Exactly.

313
00:18:43,694 --> 00:18:47,914
I recently heard the news and different things.

314
00:18:47,914 --> 00:18:53,454
fall in stuff, but think Ben Affleck recently said, Hey, I hear so many people say they
want to be wealthy and famous.

315
00:18:53,454 --> 00:18:55,314
He's like, take the wealth.

316
00:18:56,534 --> 00:18:57,074
Right.

317
00:18:57,074 --> 00:18:59,250
I think that we have no idea.

318
00:18:59,250 --> 00:18:59,628
yeah.

319
00:18:59,628 --> 00:19:00,381
What it's gonna be.

320
00:19:00,381 --> 00:19:01,532
No, not at all.

321
00:19:01,532 --> 00:19:02,622
Not at all.

322
00:19:02,622 --> 00:19:09,278
I mean, you know, it might sound like it's fun there for a while like that, but then after
a while, I would imagine that would get very, very, very tiring.

323
00:19:09,278 --> 00:19:16,494
I mean, I see it a little bit, you know, with the actors that come in, you know, for
Longmire days like that, you know, I mean, they, they, you know, they put in a 40 and

324
00:19:16,494 --> 00:19:19,534
found like that by the time we get to the end of that long weekend, because

325
00:19:19,534 --> 00:19:26,394
people were just tugging at him with their sleeves like that and you know, and trying to
get a picture with them and you know, trying to get them to sign body parts, you know, and

326
00:19:26,394 --> 00:19:32,634
all this kind of stuff like that on a full time basis like that and you know, I just kind
of stepped back and every once in a while somebody will say, know, well, do you get a

327
00:19:32,634 --> 00:19:36,654
little, you know, upset by how much attention the actors get and you don't get quite that
much.

328
00:19:36,654 --> 00:19:38,294
I'm like, no, I'm happy.

329
00:19:38,294 --> 00:19:42,654
If I had my way, I'd have them around me 24 seven so they could take care of all that
themselves.

330
00:19:42,654 --> 00:19:44,078
I wouldn't have any of it.

331
00:19:44,078 --> 00:19:47,178
said, you still get to have the benefits of being the guy that's done all this.

332
00:19:47,178 --> 00:19:52,838
But I mean, I think if you talk about how much do people what's the town now?

333
00:19:52,838 --> 00:20:00,258
So if it could only if it was overloaded at sixteen thousand cell phones, could hold a
hundred thousand now like is it has the infrastructure built up?

334
00:20:00,258 --> 00:20:01,098
no.

335
00:20:01,098 --> 00:20:02,158
So they like that.

336
00:20:02,158 --> 00:20:05,038
They like to like, hey, we're just going to deal with this for a weekend.

337
00:20:05,122 --> 00:20:08,062
it's, you know, it's, a 4,000 person town like that.

338
00:20:08,062 --> 00:20:11,282
You know, it's got like basically one block is what it's got like that.

339
00:20:11,282 --> 00:20:19,282
And, I still remember like that, you know, the first time that we did anything like that,
I, it was me sitting on front of the busy B cafe, you know, at a card table with a number

340
00:20:19,282 --> 00:20:21,282
all over top of me, signing books for people.

341
00:20:21,282 --> 00:20:23,742
And amazingly enough, a couple hundred people showed up like it.

342
00:20:23,742 --> 00:20:29,218
And then the office of tourism for the state of Wyoming, um, took me aside and said, Hey,
you know, do you think, you know,

343
00:20:29,218 --> 00:20:31,839
We could do this again next year and maybe get some of the actors to come.

344
00:20:31,839 --> 00:20:32,599
And I said, yeah, sure.

345
00:20:32,599 --> 00:20:34,200
How many, which, which ones do you want?

346
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:35,201
They go all of them.

347
00:20:35,201 --> 00:20:37,602
And I was like, okay, well we'll see what they can do.

348
00:20:37,602 --> 00:20:39,342
Like, and they did, they all showed up.

349
00:20:39,342 --> 00:20:45,745
And I remember going and picking up Robert Taylor who plays Walt, you know, in the TV show
and picking him up and driving him into town.

350
00:20:45,825 --> 00:20:54,129
And when you go into Buffalo, there's a, flat spot here, like, and then there's a slight
hill that drops down into that main street where the city hall is like in the county seat.

351
00:20:54,129 --> 00:20:58,030
And I remember pulling up there like that and the sheriff.

352
00:20:58,030 --> 00:21:05,830
of county who I know extraordinarily well, like it, cause I have to look at, and his
deputies all had blocked off the main street of Buffalo.

353
00:21:05,830 --> 00:21:12,110
And he turned around and gave me the, you know, the horse eye look at, and you know, and
Robert had asked me, he said, how many people do think are going to show up?

354
00:21:12,110 --> 00:21:13,390
And I said, I don't know, maybe a thousand or two.

355
00:21:13,390 --> 00:21:13,970
I don't know.

356
00:21:13,970 --> 00:21:17,810
And then we looked down there and then suddenly they were like 15, 16,000 people.

357
00:21:18,230 --> 00:21:19,470
He's yeah, exactly.

358
00:21:19,470 --> 00:21:19,630
Yeah.

359
00:21:19,630 --> 00:21:21,410
He really appreciated my efforts.

360
00:21:21,710 --> 00:21:26,690
So you strike me as a as a Dodge Ram three quarter ton guy.

361
00:21:28,070 --> 00:21:29,550
But 250 not 350.

362
00:21:29,550 --> 00:21:31,460
It's unnecessary if you're not pulling all the stuff.

363
00:21:31,460 --> 00:21:31,941
all that.

364
00:21:31,941 --> 00:21:32,602
No, no.

365
00:21:32,602 --> 00:21:36,889
And that big, you know, 7.0 diesel, it'll do the job with either four wheels or two.

366
00:21:37,026 --> 00:21:38,843
You guys don't have the speed limits out there, do you?

367
00:21:38,843 --> 00:21:40,254
Can't you get on some open road?

368
00:21:40,254 --> 00:21:41,275
have the speed limits.

369
00:21:41,275 --> 00:21:46,039
at, know, the difficulty is that I'm kind of well known within the law enforcement
community.

370
00:21:46,039 --> 00:21:47,730
And so now I don't get tickets.

371
00:21:47,730 --> 00:21:48,630
I get lectures.

372
00:21:48,630 --> 00:21:49,821
Look at, I'll be honest with you.

373
00:21:49,821 --> 00:21:52,984
Look at, and so I get pulled over by these guys and they're like, Craig, really?

374
00:21:52,984 --> 00:21:54,535
Look at, I'm like, can you just give me the ticket?

375
00:21:54,535 --> 00:21:55,445
I don't want the lecture.

376
00:21:55,445 --> 00:21:55,800
Really?

377
00:21:55,800 --> 00:22:00,529
Look at, but no, they make me take the lecture.

378
00:22:00,529 --> 00:22:03,271
Oh, I think they're just, you know, they're, on, you know what this is like.

379
00:22:03,271 --> 00:22:04,052
You write about it.

380
00:22:04,052 --> 00:22:06,453
Like, come on, you're not supposed to be one of the law breakers.

381
00:22:06,453 --> 00:22:07,018
Okay.

382
00:22:07,018 --> 00:22:07,848
Write me that ticket.

383
00:22:07,848 --> 00:22:08,881
See if you'll be in the next book.

384
00:22:08,881 --> 00:22:09,332
Let's go.

385
00:22:09,332 --> 00:22:10,273
What's your name?

386
00:22:10,273 --> 00:22:17,824
The, can you see your professional wife beyond this series?

387
00:22:17,902 --> 00:22:18,962
Oh yeah.

388
00:22:18,962 --> 00:22:23,722
mean, there's like, you know, there are standalone books I've got like about three or four
that I've already started.

389
00:22:23,862 --> 00:22:33,002
And, uh, you know, and you do, you do get quicker, you know, according to the book, of
course, like how much research you have to do for it and things, but you know, you'd get a

390
00:22:33,002 --> 00:22:38,362
little bit more time each year, like I had to actually step out like that and maybe do
something like it's going to be a standalone.

391
00:22:38,362 --> 00:22:43,182
And so I've got about three or four other pieces that I've already started looking at and
I just need the time to work on them.

392
00:22:43,182 --> 00:22:46,084
uh Could we go through your book series here?

393
00:22:46,084 --> 00:22:51,026
And if we, could we really get the experience of Wyoming or do we got to come put our
boots on the ground and actually do it?

394
00:22:51,026 --> 00:22:53,848
Cause I'm sitting here wondering like, I grew up in Kentucky.

395
00:22:53,848 --> 00:22:55,109
It was a one stoplight town.

396
00:22:55,109 --> 00:23:02,232
It's not that anymore, but like, you know, there were all the, the, the herds of cows and
all, but you know, it wasn't the, it wasn't the Wyoming experience.

397
00:23:02,232 --> 00:23:05,302
I'm assuming I'll go out there and I'd feel like what is going on here.

398
00:23:05,302 --> 00:23:07,942
that's kind of essential to the whole process.

399
00:23:07,942 --> 00:23:11,562
I just, you know, had a bunch of reviews came out like that about the book.

400
00:23:11,562 --> 00:23:12,062
Five Store, right?

401
00:23:12,062 --> 00:23:12,602
Yeah.

402
00:23:12,602 --> 00:23:14,062
And then, oh yeah, absolutely.

403
00:23:14,062 --> 00:23:15,502
They just came out like that.

404
00:23:15,502 --> 00:23:20,742
And it was nice because one of the things that they really complimented across the board
was the descriptive passages.

405
00:23:21,202 --> 00:23:26,762
Just, you know, the description of like, you know, what exactly, you know, Wyoming looked
like and the feel of it, the smell of it and all of that.

406
00:23:26,762 --> 00:23:34,572
And so that's kind of essential for me because I think that when you love a place, you
know, the only thing that it asks of you is some honesty.

407
00:23:34,572 --> 00:23:41,655
you know, and so I mean, I'm not going to just like give you a documentary of Wyoming that
makes it look, you know, like a travel log, you know, on, you know, cable TV or something

408
00:23:41,655 --> 00:23:41,865
like that.

409
00:23:41,865 --> 00:23:43,606
I'm going to tell you the bad parts.

410
00:23:43,606 --> 00:23:45,627
No, I mean, it's got some bad parts like it.

411
00:23:45,627 --> 00:23:50,579
And so it's essential to me like that, that I get all those details in there, like it and
make it as honest as I can be.

412
00:23:50,579 --> 00:23:56,632
Cause the most horrible thing that would happen be like if you flew in and stepped off the
plane and looked around and said, this is nothing at all.

413
00:23:56,632 --> 00:23:58,553
Like what's in Craig Johnson's book.

414
00:23:58,553 --> 00:23:59,894
That'd be horrible.

415
00:24:00,044 --> 00:24:01,417
So all right, so we can experience it.

416
00:24:01,417 --> 00:24:02,229
We can really feel it.

417
00:24:02,229 --> 00:24:07,442
um What makes you excited other than being an author?

418
00:24:07,662 --> 00:24:12,942
Oh, well, I mean, are you talking about like other than the writing itself?

419
00:24:14,242 --> 00:24:15,314
Oh, oh, oh.

420
00:24:15,314 --> 00:24:16,534
well, you're wearing the cowboy hat.

421
00:24:16,534 --> 00:24:17,610
like, is he really a cowboy?

422
00:24:17,610 --> 00:24:19,072
yeah, yeah, I did that.

423
00:24:19,072 --> 00:24:20,013
Like that for goodness sake.

424
00:24:20,013 --> 00:24:25,018
Like I hardly know any Cowboys didn't walk away from cows and we're pretty happy about it
by the time that happened.

425
00:24:25,018 --> 00:24:30,162
Especially when you get to a certain age, you know, you've been stepped on like that and
shit on and everything else.

426
00:24:30,162 --> 00:24:32,945
I get after a while you're like, okay, there's gotta be something better to do.

427
00:24:32,945 --> 00:24:33,906
little bit.

428
00:24:33,906 --> 00:24:34,427
Yeah.

429
00:24:34,427 --> 00:24:34,757
gosh.

430
00:24:34,757 --> 00:24:35,037
Yeah.

431
00:24:35,037 --> 00:24:35,377
Yeah.

432
00:24:35,377 --> 00:24:41,443
That's, know, like I was saying, like I was delivering horses and it's how I found you
cross was to come down out of delivering horses out of Dylan, Montana.

433
00:24:41,443 --> 00:24:42,446
Like that, you know, and

434
00:24:42,446 --> 00:24:49,486
I got down there and I was supposed to meet some guy from Oklahoma City like it and trade
the horses off with him, which kind of gives you an indication what you cross is like.

435
00:24:49,486 --> 00:24:52,106
We don't have a pay phone, but we have a public corral.

436
00:24:52,106 --> 00:24:55,226
And so, you know, I get down there like it he wasn't there like it.

437
00:24:55,226 --> 00:24:59,546
And so there was a little bar across the street at that point in time called the U turn
in.

438
00:24:59,646 --> 00:25:00,154
so I.

439
00:25:00,154 --> 00:25:00,836
so creative.

440
00:25:00,836 --> 00:25:01,317
so novel.

441
00:25:01,317 --> 00:25:02,580
The things you come up with.

442
00:25:02,580 --> 00:25:05,806
You turn in and you cross.

443
00:25:07,038 --> 00:25:13,798
I went over there and I gave him a quarter, I made a quick long distance phone call up to
the rancher was working for and I said, he's not here.

444
00:25:13,798 --> 00:25:14,878
And I said, what do want me to do?

445
00:25:14,878 --> 00:25:16,858
And he says, oh, he'll come along for too long.

446
00:25:16,858 --> 00:25:17,538
He hadn't left yet.

447
00:25:17,538 --> 00:25:19,838
And I was like, he hadn't left from Oklahoma city.

448
00:25:19,838 --> 00:25:21,458
And he's like, well, yeah.

449
00:25:21,478 --> 00:25:23,538
I said, what do you want me to do?

450
00:25:23,538 --> 00:25:31,818
And he said, well, just unload the horses in the public corral and just buck it up from
Clear Creek, you know, and go get some idiot cubes, which are those 75, 80 pound bales.

451
00:25:31,818 --> 00:25:34,200
I said, go get some idiot cubes, it's bailing season.

452
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:35,361
You know, the horses will be fine.

453
00:25:35,361 --> 00:25:37,112
said, well, that's all fine and well for the horses.

454
00:25:37,112 --> 00:25:38,233
But what about me?

455
00:25:38,233 --> 00:25:40,555
And he said, well, Craig, like I said, it's bailing season.

456
00:25:40,555 --> 00:25:43,538
I'm sure up and down that Valley, they're looking for somebody to throw bales like it.

457
00:25:43,538 --> 00:25:46,110
And so I threw bales for like three days.

458
00:25:46,110 --> 00:25:48,912
Like it, no, I never bought a meal, never bought a beer.

459
00:25:48,912 --> 00:25:50,824
Like it slept on top of the horse trailer.

460
00:25:50,824 --> 00:25:53,926
Like it fell in love with that place and never left.

461
00:25:54,328 --> 00:25:54,998
sounds great.

462
00:25:54,998 --> 00:25:57,060
Really rustic, but it sounds great.

463
00:25:57,661 --> 00:26:03,115
The does it feel like when you're home is the pace of life we perceive.

464
00:26:03,115 --> 00:26:04,406
We're not from there.

465
00:26:04,406 --> 00:26:09,249
It feels like it's a more balanced and an average pace of life.

466
00:26:09,249 --> 00:26:10,508
Are we wrong about that?

467
00:26:10,508 --> 00:26:12,839
No, no, you're right.

468
00:26:12,839 --> 00:26:19,992
I mean, so much of like, you know, what, you know, what the modern world is, is like to
rush ahead, you know, to speed ahead like that.

469
00:26:19,992 --> 00:26:27,285
And all the technology and all of that, you know, with the phones, with the computers,
with all of this stuff, like it, everything's faster, faster, faster, faster.

470
00:26:27,285 --> 00:26:33,373
And, you know, the Northern Cheyenne have a belief like that, that that's not really what
it is that you're supposed to be doing with your life.

471
00:26:33,373 --> 00:26:34,978
You're supposed to be slowing down.

472
00:26:34,978 --> 00:26:39,352
You're supposed to be seeing everything, feeling everything, living in those moments like
that.

473
00:26:39,352 --> 00:26:48,877
you the past is a ghost like that you know in the future you know is uncertain like and so
you don't really have anything than just this moment right here right now and so it goes

474
00:26:48,877 --> 00:26:55,821
back a little bit to that like you know when someone comes up to you to sign their book
look at if you're not living in that moment if you're not living in the now you're being

475
00:26:55,821 --> 00:27:04,857
robbed of your life in many ways like it and so I think that that kind of a uh rural kind
of environment you know where you're not really battling traffic you're not really in a

476
00:27:04,857 --> 00:27:07,458
rush you know everything going all at once.

477
00:27:07,624 --> 00:27:11,496
It allows you to slow down and be maybe a little bit more examining of the world around.

478
00:27:11,768 --> 00:27:13,044
Grizzly sneaks

479
00:27:13,770 --> 00:27:17,064
And then you just got to make sure you got a slow friend with you.

480
00:27:17,550 --> 00:27:18,911
They're all faster than them.

481
00:27:18,911 --> 00:27:20,472
Hey, thanks for tuning in.

482
00:27:20,533 --> 00:27:28,260
If you like these types of conversations, be sure to follow the necessary entrepreneur on
your favorite platform so you never miss out on future content.

483
00:27:28,260 --> 00:27:29,501
I'm thinking about this signing.

484
00:27:29,501 --> 00:27:33,084
I mean, you really spoke to it to try to be intentional with every person.

485
00:27:33,245 --> 00:27:41,432
We always kind of wonder that the people that aren't, you know, the people aren't waiting
in lines for us and wanting us to sign a book and stuff, but what makes any of those

486
00:27:41,432 --> 00:27:43,530
people memorable and stand out to you?

487
00:27:43,530 --> 00:27:46,673
Oh, I think just the return volley.

488
00:27:46,673 --> 00:27:52,738
think that like, you you're always going to have some people a little starstruck, you
know, you're going to have some people like they want to get a picture taken with you.

489
00:27:52,738 --> 00:27:57,653
You put your arm around their shoulder and they start shaking, you know, and I'm like,
look, relax, you know, I'm not a movie star here.

490
00:27:57,653 --> 00:27:59,644
I'm just a writer for goodness sake.

491
00:27:59,644 --> 00:28:08,522
oh But I think that like, you know, somebody that comes up to you and tells you, you know,
obviously the instances are like, you know, like last night I had a guy he was, you he

492
00:28:08,522 --> 00:28:09,753
said older gentlemen like it.

493
00:28:09,753 --> 00:28:10,830
And he said, you know, I

494
00:28:10,830 --> 00:28:13,050
I haven't read fiction in 30 years.

495
00:28:13,050 --> 00:28:16,630
at, he said, you know, and I, you know, my daughter bought me one of your books and I read
it.

496
00:28:16,630 --> 00:28:18,630
And he said, I've read every single one of your books now.

497
00:28:18,630 --> 00:28:20,990
Look at, and he says, I'm going back and I'm rereading them again.

498
00:28:20,990 --> 00:28:23,710
Like at finding stuff that I didn't see the first time.

499
00:28:23,710 --> 00:28:26,090
I mean, how do you not, you know, be tickled with that?

500
00:28:26,090 --> 00:28:34,450
You know, COVID was huge like that in the sense that there were so many people that
discovered the TV show, you know, cause they were, you know, in, and then they discovered

501
00:28:34,450 --> 00:28:36,010
the books, you know, following that.

502
00:28:36,010 --> 00:28:36,770
at, uh,

503
00:28:36,770 --> 00:28:40,594
have people come up to you and say, know, boy, you know, this really kind of saved me.

504
00:28:40,594 --> 00:28:45,130
really, you know, found me a place to go when there really wasn't any place to go.

505
00:28:45,130 --> 00:28:48,062
Look at and, you know, how can you not respond to that?

506
00:28:48,142 --> 00:28:50,846
Yeah, those are probably good moments.

507
00:28:50,846 --> 00:28:57,473
Did you think, you probably get this question a lot, but I really want to dig into it on
the entrepreneurial side of things.

508
00:28:58,876 --> 00:29:02,921
Did you think when you were writing it, like maybe this will be a big hit?

509
00:29:02,921 --> 00:29:03,351
No.

510
00:29:03,351 --> 00:29:04,663
If you didn't, was there any hope?

511
00:29:04,663 --> 00:29:05,554
Was there any thought?

512
00:29:05,554 --> 00:29:06,745
Cause a lot of people have a dream.

513
00:29:06,745 --> 00:29:07,686
uh

514
00:29:07,779 --> 00:29:08,599
yeah, I know.

515
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:12,733
think what I was just trying to do is just write the very best book that I could like
that.

516
00:29:12,733 --> 00:29:20,108
And then also, you know, in many ways, I tried to write a book that I wanted to read, you
know, I wanted something like that.

517
00:29:20,189 --> 00:29:25,814
The books like it's funny like that, because I keep getting asked the question, you know,
like, well, what's the genre, you know, that you work in?

518
00:29:25,814 --> 00:29:26,854
You know, is it Western?

519
00:29:26,854 --> 00:29:27,775
You know, and I'm like, yes.

520
00:29:27,775 --> 00:29:28,426
Is it mystery?

521
00:29:28,426 --> 00:29:29,136
Yeah.

522
00:29:29,136 --> 00:29:29,947
Is comedy?

523
00:29:29,947 --> 00:29:30,427
Yes.

524
00:29:30,427 --> 00:29:31,318
Look at is it history?

525
00:29:31,318 --> 00:29:31,798
Yes.

526
00:29:31,798 --> 00:29:33,400
Look at, know, all of these things like that.

527
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,174
But, you know, I like books that are kind of

528
00:29:36,174 --> 00:29:45,014
cross genre, you know, because genre is a word I think that basically it's it's what
publishers use to sell a book like that they can pigeonhole it and put it into a specific,

529
00:29:45,014 --> 00:29:47,914
you know, type of book and then it makes it easier to sell.

530
00:29:48,254 --> 00:29:48,750
you know,

531
00:29:48,750 --> 00:29:51,648
I hate being pigeonholed.

532
00:29:51,648 --> 00:29:52,218
yeah.

533
00:29:52,218 --> 00:29:56,760
And to be honest, I mean, there's only two genres, there's good writing and bad writing,
like it.

534
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:59,801
And so you try and not be the bad writing and try and be the good writing like that.

535
00:29:59,801 --> 00:30:06,803
And so, but you you go around and you try and pick up all these different things and put
them in the book as much as you possibly can, because you want as many layers in there as

536
00:30:06,803 --> 00:30:14,666
you can possibly make, because you want to create, you know, a life you want to create a
world, you know, that people can invest in, and, and enjoy like it when they're in part of

537
00:30:14,666 --> 00:30:15,138
it.

538
00:30:15,138 --> 00:30:15,739
Hmm.

539
00:30:15,739 --> 00:30:17,250
Yeah, because you weren't the first book.

540
00:30:17,250 --> 00:30:18,482
wasn't a series.

541
00:30:18,482 --> 00:30:19,703
It was just a book.

542
00:30:20,004 --> 00:30:21,125
Why do you think it was a hit?

543
00:30:21,125 --> 00:30:22,566
uh

544
00:30:22,801 --> 00:30:24,602
I think, well, it was different.

545
00:30:24,602 --> 00:30:27,762
You know, it was different than a lot of the stuff that was out there, I think, from one.

546
00:30:27,762 --> 00:30:31,662
And then obviously Walt, you because the books are written in first person.

547
00:30:31,662 --> 00:30:36,082
And so you're pretty much in Walt's head, you know, for 350 some pages.

548
00:30:36,082 --> 00:30:38,121
And so that better be a nice place to be.

549
00:30:38,121 --> 00:30:40,182
It better be a funny place to be.

550
00:30:40,182 --> 00:30:49,422
You know, I always laugh about that because, you know, students will ask, they'll say, you
know, well, you know, how do you create characters, you know, that readers want to spend

551
00:30:49,422 --> 00:30:50,022
time with?

552
00:30:50,022 --> 00:30:51,602
And I'm like, make them funny.

553
00:30:51,606 --> 00:30:52,516
make them funny like it.

554
00:30:52,516 --> 00:30:53,437
Who do you like hanging out with?

555
00:30:53,437 --> 00:30:56,088
You like hanging out with people that make you laugh, you know, for goodness sake.

556
00:30:56,088 --> 00:30:59,530
Inevitably, the next thing out of their mouth is, yeah, but what if I'm not funny?

557
00:30:59,530 --> 00:31:02,371
And then you have to look at them and go, well, you got a real problem on your hands.

558
00:31:02,371 --> 00:31:02,661
right.

559
00:31:02,661 --> 00:31:10,514
It sounds like, uh, no, I was the one quietly in the back of my head making the jokes
growing up.

560
00:31:10,514 --> 00:31:12,025
Yeah.

561
00:31:12,025 --> 00:31:17,807
And, know, and then, you know, it came time like it, you know, I thought, okay, well, if I
can't tell these things, then maybe I can write them.

562
00:31:17,807 --> 00:31:18,538
So

563
00:31:19,256 --> 00:31:20,965
the what makes a great cowboy hat?

564
00:31:20,965 --> 00:31:21,654
ah

565
00:31:21,654 --> 00:31:24,218
Oh, it's different for everybody.

566
00:31:24,218 --> 00:31:25,139
That's the big thing.

567
00:31:25,139 --> 00:31:26,901
It's not all the same hat for everybody.

568
00:31:26,901 --> 00:31:28,052
Look at you got a

569
00:31:28,106 --> 00:31:30,837
I didn't know if I have a Craig one or a Tim McGraw

570
00:31:30,958 --> 00:31:36,621
oh You gotta look at the shape of your face, like at the size of your head, you know, all
those type of things.

571
00:31:36,621 --> 00:31:39,842
And, you know, heck, even like, you know, the age you are or anything like that.

572
00:31:39,842 --> 00:31:41,633
Like, I mean, I'm wearing a palm leaf now.

573
00:31:41,633 --> 00:31:46,998
It's an Atwood look at, and, uh, you know, it's, it's very low key, you look at, know, but
it's just, suits me.

574
00:31:46,998 --> 00:31:48,016
and I like it, like it.

575
00:31:48,016 --> 00:31:56,430
And, and then the big thing is of course, like it, I discovered, you know, I was doing the
Texas Sheriff's Association, which was a little bit of an eye opener like that because I,

576
00:31:56,462 --> 00:31:58,962
prompts, come down there and talk with them like that.

577
00:31:58,962 --> 00:32:01,602
And, you know, and Wyoming's got 23 counties in it.

578
00:32:01,602 --> 00:32:01,642
Okay.

579
00:32:01,642 --> 00:32:08,202
And so I figured, okay, well, you know, what Texas, you know, maybe twice the size of
Wyoming, it's having like 50, I'll be talking about 50 guys.

580
00:32:08,202 --> 00:32:10,862
They had 255 counties in Texas for guys sake.

581
00:32:10,862 --> 00:32:12,142
They're small counties.

582
00:32:12,142 --> 00:32:17,882
So I get down there like it, and there was a, this one old guy like it, and I was wearing
my wool hat, you know, where am I?

583
00:32:17,882 --> 00:32:19,322
One of my wool hats like it.

584
00:32:19,322 --> 00:32:22,222
And, uh, he looked at me and he goes, Oh, must've got cool up there in Wyoming.

585
00:32:22,222 --> 00:32:23,362
Like, and I said, how come?

586
00:32:23,362 --> 00:32:24,238
it, and he goes, right.

587
00:32:24,238 --> 00:32:26,858
when you change your hat, son's first frost.

588
00:32:26,858 --> 00:32:29,218
And I was like, Ooh, that's a good title.

589
00:32:30,818 --> 00:32:36,278
That is it was it was the last book for last year.

590
00:32:36,278 --> 00:32:36,638
Really?

591
00:32:36,638 --> 00:32:36,936
Yeah.

592
00:32:36,936 --> 00:32:37,597
First frost.

593
00:32:37,597 --> 00:32:38,048
Yep.

594
00:32:38,048 --> 00:32:38,518
Watch out.

595
00:32:38,518 --> 00:32:41,032
We're going to say to Craig, he's going to steal your great statements.

596
00:32:41,032 --> 00:32:45,888
Um, the, what do you, uh, when you go back.

597
00:32:48,462 --> 00:32:56,642
When did you really have, when did you really think like this, maybe this can be as an
author, as this, like, were you going to keep writing regardless?

598
00:32:56,642 --> 00:33:00,962
Would it have come to an end with if they were just for you and the people around you,
would you have just kept writing?

599
00:33:00,962 --> 00:33:09,046
like to think that I would have like it I like to think that I would have like that and
you know, I guess you know, at that point in time like that, I mean, the big thing for me

600
00:33:09,046 --> 00:33:17,322
was is like an absolute disbelief that this was happening like it and so mean, I don't
think it really kind of, you know, worked for me until I like walked into the bookstores

601
00:33:17,322 --> 00:33:24,887
and like suddenly there were these like stacks of you know, stacks of your books, you
know, I kept thinking I'm gonna wake up any minute and this just won't be real like that,

602
00:33:24,887 --> 00:33:27,574
you know, but then when you walk in there and see those books,

603
00:33:27,574 --> 00:33:31,337
stacked up there and ready to go and people lined up like that to get them signed and
everything.

604
00:33:31,337 --> 00:33:33,218
Then it's, it becomes very, very real.

605
00:33:33,218 --> 00:33:37,784
How long did it take before you thought I'm going to write a book until that happened?

606
00:33:38,350 --> 00:33:40,470
Well, that's a long story.

607
00:33:40,470 --> 00:33:41,690
Are you ready for that?

608
00:33:41,690 --> 00:33:45,330
Okay, like, well, I sit down like it and I built the ranch myself.

609
00:33:45,330 --> 00:33:50,510
Okay, you know, I did it all myself because it's out in the middle of nowhere and nobody
wanted to come out there to, you know, do construction work.

610
00:33:50,510 --> 00:33:52,430
And so I pretty much built the whole place myself.

611
00:33:52,430 --> 00:33:59,950
And I got a little cabin built about 24 by 32 log, at and got the windows and doors and
the heat in like it because my wife demanded heat.

612
00:33:59,950 --> 00:34:01,430
Women are funny that way.

613
00:34:01,430 --> 00:34:06,414
And so I got the heat all up and going like it and that's when I decided, all right, I'm
gonna sit down and I'm gonna, I'm gonna write.

614
00:34:06,414 --> 00:34:10,274
I'm gonna get started on this book I've always wanted to write, okay, because I had an
idea.

615
00:34:10,274 --> 00:34:13,714
And so I sat down, I wrote the first two chapters of the Cold Dish, and they were
horrible.

616
00:34:13,714 --> 00:34:14,794
They were really, really bad.

617
00:34:14,794 --> 00:34:15,534
Trust me on this.

618
00:34:15,534 --> 00:34:17,354
I know I wrote them, they were bad.

619
00:34:17,354 --> 00:34:24,034
And so I thought, well, you know, the big thing is I need to go in and find out, you know,
don't know what the problem is, is like, you don't know enough about sheriffing, you need

620
00:34:24,034 --> 00:34:27,534
to go out and find a sheriff and talk to him and see how he does what he does.

621
00:34:27,534 --> 00:34:30,554
I drove, you know, the 20 miles into Buffalo, like that, and I get in there.

622
00:34:30,554 --> 00:34:32,154
And of course, this is before 9-11.

623
00:34:32,154 --> 00:34:34,190
So there's no, you know,

624
00:34:34,190 --> 00:34:37,770
Bulletproof glass or know, computer rooms or anything like this.

625
00:34:37,770 --> 00:34:45,510
can, so I go in and there's a wooden counter and then down the hallway, there's a door
propped open and the guy's got his cowboy boots up on his desk.

626
00:34:45,510 --> 00:34:49,050
it, and I knocked on the, on the counter and he goes, what?

627
00:34:49,050 --> 00:34:51,130
And I said, Hey sheriff, can I talk to you for a minute?

628
00:34:51,130 --> 00:34:53,710
Like, and he comes out and this is fella Larry Kirkpatrick.

629
00:34:53,710 --> 00:34:57,250
he'd been the sheriff there in Johnson County for like, I don't know, quarter of a
century.

630
00:34:57,250 --> 00:35:00,410
He had pigeon shit on his shoulders from being a statue there for so long.

631
00:35:00,410 --> 00:35:00,950
I said,

632
00:35:00,950 --> 00:35:02,260
He's a comedian, you all.

633
00:35:02,260 --> 00:35:03,200
comes in like that.

634
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:04,321
He's talking to me like that.

635
00:35:04,321 --> 00:35:05,301
And he said, how can I help you?

636
00:35:05,301 --> 00:35:07,091
Like I said, I shook hands with him.

637
00:35:07,091 --> 00:35:08,552
I said, my name is Craig Johnson.

638
00:35:08,552 --> 00:35:13,113
I got a little ranch out near you cross and I'm writing a murder mystery about a Wyoming
sheriff like that.

639
00:35:13,113 --> 00:35:18,895
And I was wondering if you'd be willing to, you know, kind of help me out with this, like
that, you know, and he said, well, I've never done anything like that before.

640
00:35:18,895 --> 00:35:21,342
And I was like, well, I'm not looking for literary criticism here.

641
00:35:21,342 --> 00:35:29,194
I'm looking for like how it is that a rural sheriff, you know, would process a homicide
investigation with, you know, limited sources, like at limited resources, limited, you

642
00:35:29,194 --> 00:35:30,988
know, staff and all this.

643
00:35:30,998 --> 00:35:37,453
And so, you know, we talked for a while, like, you know, and I guess at the end he said,
well, yeah, I can at least take a look at it see what I can come up with.

644
00:35:37,453 --> 00:35:37,693
Okay.

645
00:35:37,693 --> 00:35:44,227
And so I walked out of there and I was so sure that I'd solved my problem that I went home
and added onto my house.

646
00:35:45,228 --> 00:35:54,115
And then I had, and then I like built a shop and I built a bar and corrals and loading
shoots and got the ranch all up and going.

647
00:35:54,115 --> 00:35:56,456
My wife had a store she wanted to open like that.

648
00:35:56,456 --> 00:35:58,858
And so I went into town and tore out an old,

649
00:35:58,956 --> 00:36:02,918
an old opera house like that and redid it for her so she could get her store all up and
going.

650
00:36:02,918 --> 00:36:10,791
I was back at the ranch there and I was looking around for something back in the office
like it and I yanked open the third drawer down on the right hand side and those two

651
00:36:10,791 --> 00:36:17,374
little lonely chapters of the cold dish were looking up at me and 10 years had gone by.

652
00:36:17,374 --> 00:36:25,557
And I pull those two chapters out and I set them on the desk there and I start reading
them and they were just as bad as I remembered them being 10 years previous.

653
00:36:25,557 --> 00:36:27,438
And I thought, you know, wow.

654
00:36:27,438 --> 00:36:29,098
You know, your life's all in order.

655
00:36:29,098 --> 00:36:32,478
Now's the time when you can sit down and write this book like it, and this is horrible.

656
00:36:32,478 --> 00:36:38,898
What you've got started, you're going to have to go back in there and you're going to have
to reintroduce yourself to this sheriff all over again because Larry was still the

657
00:36:38,898 --> 00:36:39,478
sheriff.

658
00:36:39,478 --> 00:36:42,098
And so I thought, ah, this is going to be embarrassing.

659
00:36:42,098 --> 00:36:44,558
it didn't have enough nerve to do it.

660
00:36:44,558 --> 00:36:47,038
So I didn't, you know, and there was one instance like that.

661
00:36:47,038 --> 00:36:54,358
think maybe like, you know, a couple of weeks later, like at where I was in town and I was
putting gas in the, uh, in the ranch truck, like I'm standing there at the pump Island and

662
00:36:54,358 --> 00:36:57,254
all of sudden this sheriff's cruiser pulls up.

663
00:36:57,452 --> 00:36:58,983
And Larry gets out.

664
00:36:58,983 --> 00:37:02,766
Now I hadn't spoken a word to him in 10 years.

665
00:37:02,766 --> 00:37:07,979
I'd voted for him, you know, but I hadn't spoken a word to him and he gets out, starts
fueling his vehicle.

666
00:37:07,979 --> 00:37:08,490
He turns around.

667
00:37:08,490 --> 00:37:13,472
He looks at me like that and he pops his hat back, drops his Ray-Bans down on his nose and
he's looking at me.

668
00:37:13,472 --> 00:37:15,735
He's giving me this look that says, what did I arrest you for?

669
00:37:15,735 --> 00:37:16,895
And when was it?

670
00:37:16,895 --> 00:37:21,112
And I look at him and I thought, boy, this is going to be even more embarrassing because
it's going to be in public.

671
00:37:21,112 --> 00:37:24,494
So I stuck my hand out and I said, Sheriff Kirkpatrick, you're probably not going to
remember me.

672
00:37:24,494 --> 00:37:26,145
And he goes, your name is Craig Johnson.

673
00:37:26,145 --> 00:37:28,256
You're the one that's got the little ranch out near Ucross.

674
00:37:28,256 --> 00:37:31,467
You're the one writing a murder mystery about a Wyoming sheriff.

675
00:37:32,008 --> 00:37:32,835
And I looked at him.

676
00:37:32,835 --> 00:37:36,851
This is from a 10 minute conversation from 10 years previous.

677
00:37:36,851 --> 00:37:37,301
I looked at him.

678
00:37:37,301 --> 00:37:40,653
said, that is absolutely amazing.

679
00:37:40,653 --> 00:37:42,834
And he nods his head and he goes, yeah.

680
00:37:43,034 --> 00:37:43,324
Yeah.

681
00:37:43,324 --> 00:37:46,936
If you don't mind me saying so, this book is going kind of slow.

682
00:37:50,499 --> 00:37:55,833
You know what they say to be a great politician what you have to do is you remember
people's names

683
00:37:55,910 --> 00:37:56,970
it hurt.

684
00:37:57,290 --> 00:37:58,270
doesn't hurt.

685
00:37:58,850 --> 00:38:00,830
Yeah, yeah, it really did.

686
00:38:00,830 --> 00:38:01,390
that.

687
00:38:01,390 --> 00:38:09,310
And then that lit a fire under me and I was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm not
going to die thinking, you know, that I wishing that I had done this, you know, we've all

688
00:38:09,310 --> 00:38:13,870
heard that, you know, the old adage of like, you know, it's not the things that people do
that they regret at the end of their lives.

689
00:38:13,870 --> 00:38:14,870
things they didn't do.

690
00:38:14,870 --> 00:38:15,184
Yeah.

691
00:38:15,184 --> 00:38:17,127
that around here for two years to people.

692
00:38:17,127 --> 00:38:20,421
said, you all, only two or three things in my life that I look back on.

693
00:38:20,421 --> 00:38:26,969
And the only things I have regret on, not the tough things, not the bad decisions you
make, it's the things that I know that I wanted to do that I didn't.

694
00:38:26,969 --> 00:38:31,214
And it was always about the perceived judgment of someone else.

695
00:38:32,214 --> 00:38:33,294
That's what it feels like.

696
00:38:33,294 --> 00:38:34,438
Why wouldn't you do

697
00:38:34,934 --> 00:38:35,534
Oh, yeah.

698
00:38:35,534 --> 00:38:35,874
Yeah.

699
00:38:35,874 --> 00:38:40,754
I mean, to be robbed of like the opportunities in your life, just because other people's
opinions.

700
00:38:40,754 --> 00:38:42,374
Look at I mean, come on now.

701
00:38:43,414 --> 00:38:44,674
There you go.

702
00:38:44,674 --> 00:38:45,353
There you go.

703
00:38:45,353 --> 00:38:48,066
when was this when that happened when the sheriff and pumping the gas, what year?

704
00:38:48,066 --> 00:38:54,268
That was like, well, that was, and then what happened was I sat down and I wrote the rest
of the cold dish in about six months.

705
00:38:54,268 --> 00:38:58,669
And then what I did was I had a couple of connections like that to a couple of agencies
there in New York.

706
00:38:58,669 --> 00:39:04,090
it, and I called, like it made a few, you know, query letters, like it and told them,
look, I'm going to be in New York, you know, for this week.

707
00:39:04,090 --> 00:39:09,052
Like, and I want to stop by and drop this manuscript off and have you guys take a look at
it see what you think about it.

708
00:39:09,052 --> 00:39:15,414
And, uh, you know, the majority of them, you know, never heard anything.

709
00:39:15,414 --> 00:39:17,414
uh

710
00:39:18,175 --> 00:39:20,070
We see these things all day long

711
00:39:20,070 --> 00:39:23,523
then there was one, there was one like that that I went into like that.

712
00:39:23,523 --> 00:39:26,321
And she sat down and she said she had 10 minutes for me like that.

713
00:39:26,321 --> 00:39:28,586
I said, well, that's 10 minutes more than anybody else has given me.

714
00:39:28,586 --> 00:39:33,019
And I sat down and I talked with her and I discovered later, she was like one of the most
powerful agents in New York.

715
00:39:33,019 --> 00:39:34,160
You know, she was huge.

716
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:38,053
Like she was the president of the agents union in New York for goodness sake.

717
00:39:38,053 --> 00:39:42,406
And, and you know, she, they said they had 10 minutes for me we talked through the 10
minutes.

718
00:39:42,406 --> 00:39:43,417
said, tell me about your book.

719
00:39:43,417 --> 00:39:44,938
Tell me about yourself.

720
00:39:45,310 --> 00:39:47,572
I know we're going longer than 10 minutes.

721
00:39:47,572 --> 00:39:51,015
We're going into like a half an hour or 40 minutes or something like that.

722
00:39:51,015 --> 00:39:58,020
And so we finish up like that and I said, well, thanks so much and I appreciate your time.

723
00:39:58,020 --> 00:40:05,766
I went downstairs where my wife, Judy, had been sitting in a coffee shop because she was
so beat up from all the rejections that we'd gotten the rest of the week.

724
00:40:05,766 --> 00:40:06,286
uh

725
00:40:06,286 --> 00:40:08,486
She was down there and had about five expresso's.

726
00:40:08,486 --> 00:40:11,086
And so we knew I'd get back down there she's like, you were up there for a long time.

727
00:40:11,086 --> 00:40:12,046
She's like, you'd be there for a long time.

728
00:40:12,046 --> 00:40:12,826
Might've gone well, right?

729
00:40:12,826 --> 00:40:13,946
Cause you were there for a long time.

730
00:40:13,946 --> 00:40:15,826
And so I said, I don't know.

731
00:40:15,826 --> 00:40:17,166
I can't read this stuff.

732
00:40:17,166 --> 00:40:18,226
I don't have any idea.

733
00:40:18,226 --> 00:40:19,106
Maybe it worked.

734
00:40:19,106 --> 00:40:19,886
Maybe it didn't.

735
00:40:19,886 --> 00:40:20,346
don't know.

736
00:40:20,346 --> 00:40:22,966
I said, we'll just go home and see what happens.

737
00:40:22,966 --> 00:40:28,866
And we flew home and the answering machine at the ranch there was blinking when I got
home.

738
00:40:28,866 --> 00:40:31,066
And it was Gail Hockman, a Brandt Hockman Associates.

739
00:40:31,066 --> 00:40:32,946
And she said, don't give this to anybody else.

740
00:40:32,946 --> 00:40:33,894
I want it.

741
00:40:34,304 --> 00:40:37,791
When did you leave that message versus when you had met her in the office?

742
00:40:38,204 --> 00:40:39,617
How long was the time?

743
00:40:39,617 --> 00:40:40,911
yeah, yeah, it was like a day.

744
00:40:40,911 --> 00:40:42,200
m

745
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:45,490
Do think she knew in that half hour she'd made up her mind?

746
00:40:45,490 --> 00:40:46,206
No.

747
00:40:46,206 --> 00:40:50,248
I mean, you you can talk a good game, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can write it,
you know.

748
00:40:50,248 --> 00:40:54,990
And so I think she sat down and started reading the book like, and felt like, huh, this is
something different.

749
00:40:54,990 --> 00:40:57,291
You know, this might, this might just work.

750
00:40:57,291 --> 00:41:01,832
Uh, not until I saw them stacked up in the bookstores.

751
00:41:01,832 --> 00:41:05,454
I kept thinking I'm going to wake up and it's all going to be gone.

752
00:41:05,898 --> 00:41:16,728
Um, I always wait to invoke the spouse until the guest does, that you have somebody that's
gone on this ride with you from the beginning.

753
00:41:17,149 --> 00:41:18,470
It's theirs too.

754
00:41:18,947 --> 00:41:19,907
absolutely.

755
00:41:19,907 --> 00:41:30,911
Well, then, know, I mean, Judy's a big part of all of this, like that simply because, she
grew up in Hartford, uh Connecticut, and her parents were editors of the Hartford Courant.

756
00:41:30,911 --> 00:41:34,659
And so, you know, she came from an editorial background, like that.

757
00:41:34,659 --> 00:41:37,194
And then she went to Wellesley, like in Boston.

758
00:41:37,442 --> 00:41:39,681
She's one of those sophisticated ladies.

759
00:41:39,681 --> 00:41:40,302
Wow.

760
00:41:40,302 --> 00:41:41,782
What'd you do?

761
00:41:42,462 --> 00:41:48,362
And then she was down in Philadelphia and that's where I met her when we were doing grads,
doing graduate studies like getting people always ask that question.

762
00:41:48,362 --> 00:41:54,982
It's always like, okay, well my gosh, New York Times bestseller, like a TV show, then
translated into a couple dozen languages and all this.

763
00:41:54,982 --> 00:41:56,902
What's the greatest, you know, accomplishment of your life?

764
00:41:56,902 --> 00:42:02,622
I'm like getting that New England girl on my shoulder and carrying her off to you cross
Wyoming and getting her to stay.

765
00:42:02,622 --> 00:42:05,654
That was probably the biggest goal of my life for goodness sake.

766
00:42:05,654 --> 00:42:06,397
No

767
00:42:06,572 --> 00:42:07,272
I don't think so.

768
00:42:07,272 --> 00:42:11,143
She was really, you know, into the idea of like, you know, out and away like that.

769
00:42:11,143 --> 00:42:14,084
And, uh, but yeah, she, you she's my first reader.

770
00:42:14,084 --> 00:42:20,356
that, you know, I, you know, when I finished, you know, up a chapter, like that, set it
down there on the kitchen table, like that, you know, and read it to her while she's

771
00:42:20,356 --> 00:42:21,246
cooking dinner like that.

772
00:42:21,246 --> 00:42:22,424
And we talk about it, like that.

773
00:42:22,424 --> 00:42:29,678
And she goes through, like that and edits the whole book, but excuse me, before I send it
off, like at the Viking penguin, like it, as a matter of fact, there was one instance

774
00:42:29,678 --> 00:42:32,389
where we forgot to, you know, accept all changes like that.

775
00:42:32,389 --> 00:42:35,934
And so I sent it back to Brian Tartt, like at the president of Viking.

776
00:42:35,934 --> 00:42:39,382
And it had all the corrections that Judy had put on there as we read through it.

777
00:42:39,382 --> 00:42:42,468
and he called me up on the phone and said, would Judy like a job?

778
00:42:42,700 --> 00:42:45,379
Good, we'll ever do this on all of them.

779
00:42:45,379 --> 00:42:48,188
So you had your, you got your masters, you got your graduate degree, huh?

780
00:42:48,188 --> 00:42:49,290
From where?

781
00:42:49,344 --> 00:42:51,054
have Temple University in Philadelphia.

782
00:42:51,054 --> 00:42:52,034
temple.

783
00:42:52,314 --> 00:42:53,434
How'd that happen?

784
00:42:53,434 --> 00:42:54,014
You grew up in Wyoming.

785
00:42:54,014 --> 00:42:54,912
How'd you go to temple?

786
00:42:54,912 --> 00:43:02,229
You know, I was looking for writing programs like it and they had a really good writing
program like it and I thought, okay, you know, this is you know, what it is you want to do

787
00:43:02,229 --> 00:43:09,676
like it, you better get serious about it, you know, and try and find out you know, like
how it is that they do the things that they do look at and so it helped like that.

788
00:43:09,676 --> 00:43:18,665
But I think you know, a lot of it so much as you know, finding the story, finding the
voice that's going to tell that story, and then combining those two and making it work.

789
00:43:18,665 --> 00:43:19,756
um

790
00:43:19,756 --> 00:43:26,991
And then it's, you know, then it's going to be always a question, you know, in any type of
art, like that, you know, you're to have a balance between, know, what you think is going

791
00:43:26,991 --> 00:43:32,114
to be a commercial success and what, you know, what is going to be an artistic success,
like in trying to blend those two together.

792
00:43:33,475 --> 00:43:34,596
I really did like that.

793
00:43:34,596 --> 00:43:36,107
That was all I was concerned with.

794
00:43:36,107 --> 00:43:40,850
I figured that was their business, like at the business part of it, like it, cause they'd
been doing it for a hundred years, like it.

795
00:43:40,850 --> 00:43:43,200
So they probably knew a little bit more about it than I did.

796
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:45,789
You knew at 18, you want to be a writer.

797
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:47,755
I I did, but like I said...

798
00:43:47,755 --> 00:43:48,518
uh

799
00:43:49,274 --> 00:43:53,496
However that happened, ah that wasn't my experience.

800
00:43:53,496 --> 00:44:01,698
But there's so many other people too that you just need to decide and go all in with
something and make a great life out of the thing you find or make a decision on.

801
00:44:01,698 --> 00:44:07,279
um I don't have any envy in my life, but two people.

802
00:44:08,500 --> 00:44:12,400
One, that 18 year old kid that knows what they want their life to be.

803
00:44:12,661 --> 00:44:17,762
And because you can get really busy because the earlier you start, the more you can do.

804
00:44:17,762 --> 00:44:18,283
Yep.

805
00:44:18,283 --> 00:44:18,693
Right.

806
00:44:18,693 --> 00:44:19,324
Yeah.

807
00:44:19,324 --> 00:44:32,256
Um, and then the other second one is the old couple at 80 or 90 years old sitting on a
that, you're full of contentment that you just know, they don't need to say a word.

808
00:44:32,256 --> 00:44:33,690
Yep, that's a life shared.

809
00:44:33,690 --> 00:44:37,344
eh That makes the biggest difference in the world, really does.

810
00:44:37,344 --> 00:44:41,150
How do you think, when did that 18 year old, at what age did you know?

811
00:44:41,390 --> 00:44:43,935
Oh, I mean, knowing and doing are two different things.

812
00:44:43,935 --> 00:44:45,503
you know, and I desperately wanted.

813
00:44:45,503 --> 00:44:48,742
give you.

814
00:44:48,803 --> 00:44:50,455
so many people have an idea, right?

815
00:44:50,455 --> 00:44:51,016
Right.

816
00:44:51,016 --> 00:44:53,300
Yeah, they just go to die because nobody does anything with

817
00:44:53,300 --> 00:45:00,415
Well, the thing is, like, you know, because it's, know, you hear a lot of like, you know,
a lot of people talking about things like anything about what it is that, you know, people

818
00:45:00,415 --> 00:45:02,043
should do or, or that.

819
00:45:02,043 --> 00:45:07,800
And I think one of the biggest mistakes that you can make, like is telling people or to
believe like that, you know, like, where's your passion?

820
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:08,821
Where's your heart?

821
00:45:08,821 --> 00:45:16,166
And all that like that, because, you know, there are a lot of things you can be passionate
about, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's any opportunity at all.

822
00:45:16,166 --> 00:45:22,710
You know, heck, I would have liked to have been, you know, like, you know, the catcher for
the Cincinnati Reds, like, but that job was already

823
00:45:22,710 --> 00:45:23,730
we wouldn't want you to that.

824
00:45:23,730 --> 00:45:25,870
The big rep machine back in the day.

825
00:45:25,870 --> 00:45:27,474
I don't think Johnny was giving up that.

826
00:45:27,474 --> 00:45:28,134
at all.

827
00:45:28,134 --> 00:45:29,714
I grew up a fan too.

828
00:45:29,714 --> 00:45:33,554
My biggest thing was I heard he was six foot even and 200 pounds.

829
00:45:33,974 --> 00:45:36,654
All I wanted to do was be six foot even and 200 pounds.

830
00:45:36,654 --> 00:45:40,274
I got to the six foot and I've been trying to get back to 200 pounds ever since.

831
00:45:40,762 --> 00:45:43,083
And Judy's accepted for every pound.

832
00:45:43,505 --> 00:45:45,407
So when do you think, I mean, when did it occur to you?

833
00:45:45,407 --> 00:45:46,398
You wanted to be a writer.

834
00:45:46,398 --> 00:45:49,771
Were you inspired by anybody else or did you just, did you read something?

835
00:45:49,771 --> 00:45:55,877
What are you, are you saying you, let me guess you wrote, um you read, um, what is it?

836
00:45:55,877 --> 00:45:56,367
Dang it.

837
00:45:56,367 --> 00:45:59,020
That everybody says all the great writers.

838
00:45:59,020 --> 00:46:03,473
Who's the guy who's one of the writers, the book is there one I'm going to come up with
it.

839
00:46:03,473 --> 00:46:05,382
It's I'm losing in my head.

840
00:46:07,682 --> 00:46:08,864
in the raw.

841
00:46:10,132 --> 00:46:11,376
Is this where this coming from?

842
00:46:11,376 --> 00:46:14,356
Do you have that moment though?

843
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:14,920
I don't know.

844
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:23,042
think, what it was is just the effect that writing can have and reading, you know, the
effect that reading more importantly, like it can have on your life.

845
00:46:23,042 --> 00:46:30,084
mean, you know, only those of us who actually do read, like it know just what an
enhancement that is to our lives on a daily basis.

846
00:46:30,084 --> 00:46:38,266
Like it, and I just was like stunned, you know, by some of these incredible writers, like,
know, people like John Steinbeck, you know, Charles Dickens, like it, you know,

847
00:46:38,334 --> 00:46:44,862
Harper Lee, like at all these writers that had written, you know, such incredible works
like it and I mean, they're life altering when you read them.

848
00:46:44,862 --> 00:46:53,541
And you just can't help but think, you know, boy, if I could in some small way, you know,
be a part of that, you know, that would be a worthy cause like it to get involved with

849
00:46:53,541 --> 00:46:53,902
like that.

850
00:46:53,902 --> 00:46:56,223
But boy, it's a dicey proposition, it really

851
00:46:56,223 --> 00:47:02,037
so many books written now, are there going to be a few standout Huckleberry Fins and
Catcher on the Ride?

852
00:47:02,037 --> 00:47:02,860
Are there going to be?

853
00:47:02,860 --> 00:47:04,198
There's so many.

854
00:47:04,198 --> 00:47:11,318
the big question like that, you know, and there's a lot of these, you know, programs that
are like dropping a lot of like classic literature and picking up more modern pieces and

855
00:47:11,318 --> 00:47:11,858
all of this.

856
00:47:11,858 --> 00:47:15,558
And that's all right, because I think it shows, you know, diversity and all of that.

857
00:47:15,558 --> 00:47:20,298
But nonetheless, like, there's an awful lot of stuff that I read nowadays that people say,
Oh, this is a great book.

858
00:47:20,298 --> 00:47:29,254
And I'm sitting here thinking to myself, boy, I don't know if anybody's gonna be reading
this in 50 or 100 years, you know, like it and that does come from like that plethora.

859
00:47:29,254 --> 00:47:32,781
of produced, written and published material that there is now.

860
00:47:32,781 --> 00:47:35,688
There's this maw of...

861
00:47:35,688 --> 00:47:37,217
an opportunity, It is.

862
00:47:37,217 --> 00:47:38,161
Write a great book.

863
00:47:38,161 --> 00:47:38,674
It is.

864
00:47:38,674 --> 00:47:40,572
And it will stand out in the crowd.

865
00:47:40,635 --> 00:47:41,075
Like that.

866
00:47:41,075 --> 00:47:44,117
know, and it does make for more opportunities for more writers like that.

867
00:47:44,117 --> 00:47:48,181
But then again, it also makes for an awful lot of mediocrity out there too.

868
00:47:48,470 --> 00:47:51,091
a lot of noise in marketing around books now.

869
00:47:51,191 --> 00:47:58,123
And, um you know, I have my team pushing me to write a book and I'm in the midst.

870
00:47:58,123 --> 00:48:06,315
But it's not, it's not with the same balance, the same integrity and the right, the same
intention that you wrote your books.

871
00:48:06,315 --> 00:48:10,616
It's not, I think it's um what here's where I'm at this crossroads.

872
00:48:11,136 --> 00:48:14,637
I said, so much I've learned and educated my mind is from books.

873
00:48:15,217 --> 00:48:18,458
And if everyone would just go read those books.

874
00:48:18,690 --> 00:48:20,774
They can educate their mind the same way.

875
00:48:20,774 --> 00:48:23,946
Another one of my books and my perspective doesn't need to be written.

876
00:48:23,946 --> 00:48:30,661
Well, but see, but you're doing an accumulative of that, like that you're taking it from
your perspective, like it and drawn all those like threads together, you know, to make

877
00:48:30,661 --> 00:48:37,686
what it is you want to do sounds like what you're doing exactly what I do like that, which
is like, we're more like crows, you know, we go out and fly around out there in that

878
00:48:37,686 --> 00:48:41,539
world, like it and pick up what we want, like it and bring it back to the nest and put
that in your book.

879
00:48:41,539 --> 00:48:41,899
Yeah.

880
00:48:41,899 --> 00:48:49,064
And so, you know, a lot of people don't have the time to read like 70 different books that
you've read in a lifetime, but they can take that synthesis of information that you can

881
00:48:49,064 --> 00:48:51,650
bring to it like that and read that one book.

882
00:48:51,650 --> 00:48:54,001
When you, what catches your eye?

883
00:48:54,710 --> 00:48:55,944
To pick up a book.

884
00:48:56,169 --> 00:48:57,646
Oh, ha.

885
00:48:57,646 --> 00:49:02,040
Is it the author or is it something that you just didn't know was going to catch your eye?

886
00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:03,372
it's more the subject matter.

887
00:49:03,372 --> 00:49:10,691
mean, obviously, you know, I mean, there lot of authors that I read every book that they
write, you know, but then again, that's a small list like it and, know, a lot of times if

888
00:49:10,691 --> 00:49:16,709
I'm just browsing like it through a bookstore or something like that, I'll pick it up like
it look and see what the book is about and to say, Okay, yeah, that's interesting.

889
00:49:16,709 --> 00:49:17,400
And it looks

890
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:18,295
forward, what is it?

891
00:49:18,295 --> 00:49:20,012
What's what makes you keep turning?

892
00:49:20,012 --> 00:49:20,612
I do that.

893
00:49:20,612 --> 00:49:29,135
I look at the flap folder, look at it I'll toss it open, you know, about midway, look at
it and read a couple of paragraphs just to see, am I going to be able to tolerate this

894
00:49:29,135 --> 00:49:29,885
writing style?

895
00:49:29,885 --> 00:49:33,096
Like, is this somebody I'm going to be able to put up with for 300 pages?

896
00:49:33,096 --> 00:49:36,562
Because that's a dicey proposition too.

897
00:49:36,562 --> 00:49:38,517
A lot of people ask about the audiobooks.

898
00:49:38,517 --> 00:49:49,006
We've had a lot of awards for the audiobooks and I've got a really fantastic reader,
George Guadel, who does a lot of incredible books and he's done all of mine.

899
00:49:49,006 --> 00:49:53,065
He's all done all 21 novels, three novellas and collection of short stories.

900
00:49:53,065 --> 00:49:56,186
It's been fantastic because I've never had look back.

901
00:49:56,186 --> 00:50:04,146
But that's a dicey proposition because for an audiobook, you need a good book and then you
need a good reader, okay?

902
00:50:04,146 --> 00:50:06,846
Because otherwise, you can go right into the toilet really quick.

903
00:50:06,846 --> 00:50:15,786
I remember driving across country one time, was the middle of the night, I was going into
a Flying J truck stop and there in the Flying J truck stop, this is a while back, they had

904
00:50:15,786 --> 00:50:18,146
an entire unabridged cassette.

905
00:50:18,478 --> 00:50:20,698
set of Moby Dick.

906
00:50:20,698 --> 00:50:26,438
And I thought, Oh yeah, I can throw this in the cassette player and I can drive like that
for the next 12 hours.

907
00:50:26,438 --> 00:50:27,678
No problem at all.

908
00:50:27,678 --> 00:50:31,978
in discount 499, like that, you know, well, you get what you paid for, you know?

909
00:50:31,978 --> 00:50:39,916
And so I got out there and I put that first cassette in and I don't know who this
community theater actor was that they picked out to play this thing like that, but boy.

910
00:50:39,916 --> 00:50:43,457
He was like John Gilgud on steroids is what he was.

911
00:50:43,457 --> 00:50:46,161
was like, oh, call me Ishmael.

912
00:50:46,161 --> 00:50:47,181
And I was like, boy.

913
00:50:47,181 --> 00:50:47,502
yeah.

914
00:50:47,502 --> 00:50:48,452
Here we go.

915
00:50:48,452 --> 00:50:50,592
No, I didn't even make it through one half of one cassette.

916
00:50:50,592 --> 00:50:55,380
So you think a good book the way you see it, a couple of paragraphs, know.

917
00:50:55,958 --> 00:51:04,949
You certainly get a feel, you you get a taste, you know, for what it is that the writer
style, you know, is like it and, know, sometimes you can be surprised like that,

918
00:51:04,949 --> 00:51:10,235
obviously, like it, because that's just a whim, like it where you're just plucking out a
couple of paragraphs from an entire novel.

919
00:51:10,235 --> 00:51:12,007
You know, yeah, maybe, maybe not like it.

920
00:51:12,007 --> 00:51:12,888
You can also get fooled.

921
00:51:12,888 --> 00:51:16,056
might have, you know, you might hit a really good spot, you know, and read that and think
it's.

922
00:51:16,056 --> 00:51:27,439
Ways to put it, if you're an author, say human to human, we have such a micro moment to
gain trust, gain credibility, to have someone like us.

923
00:51:27,439 --> 00:51:30,420
That's what I'm wondering, like in writing, how long do we have?

924
00:51:30,420 --> 00:51:30,890
I know.

925
00:51:30,890 --> 00:51:31,910
That's a good question.

926
00:51:31,910 --> 00:51:32,891
That's a good question.

927
00:51:32,891 --> 00:51:41,684
I do know that most, you know, uh editors like acquisition editors, like at an agents in
New York, basically what they tell me is, is about 12, 15 pages.

928
00:51:41,684 --> 00:51:44,845
You know, they'll start a manuscript and they'll go about 12 or 15 pages.

929
00:51:44,845 --> 00:51:49,296
And by the time they get through with those, they know whether this thing is worth doing
or not, or worth reading.

930
00:51:49,296 --> 00:51:54,574
And so, you know, boy, focus on that first 12, 15 pages, make sure they're sharp.

931
00:51:54,574 --> 00:51:57,014
did, um, what'd you like more?

932
00:51:57,014 --> 00:52:05,894
Did you like the series, um, and making the movies, making the shows or writing the book?

933
00:52:06,014 --> 00:52:09,594
I knew you were going to say that, but I'm like, where, where's it.

934
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:11,592
I did enjoy the television show.

935
00:52:11,592 --> 00:52:20,459
I was very fortunate that I had the show runners and producers that had done a bunch of
all of these very, very successful shows.

936
00:52:20,459 --> 00:52:27,625
They were wonderful about including me in a lot of the decision making process.

937
00:52:27,625 --> 00:52:33,110
One of the things they did was, I remember talking to Lee Child, Michael Connelly and a
couple other guys like who did

938
00:52:33,110 --> 00:52:35,321
movies or TV shows done to their stuff like that.

939
00:52:35,321 --> 00:52:38,673
And I asked him, said, you know, well, what do I have to expect here?

940
00:52:38,673 --> 00:52:44,987
And they said that they will slide a check across the table and then you will probably
never hear from them again.

941
00:52:44,987 --> 00:52:50,780
And then here in a year or two, you might recognize what it is, you know, when you see it
on television or you might not look at it.

942
00:52:50,780 --> 00:52:51,960
And I was like, well, that's all right.

943
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:53,415
I can understand that.

944
00:52:53,415 --> 00:52:54,102
at it.

945
00:52:54,102 --> 00:52:55,702
I prefer something else like that.

946
00:52:55,702 --> 00:53:00,275
But, you I understand is like, you know, you know, an eight book author from a town of 25
like that.

947
00:53:00,275 --> 00:53:01,816
I better take what I can get like it.

948
00:53:01,816 --> 00:53:02,380
Well,

949
00:53:02,380 --> 00:53:13,143
These were some really wonderful producers like it and I was surprised by it, know, and
they actually to the point where they actually even sent me boxes of DVDs of the auditions

950
00:53:13,143 --> 00:53:18,135
for the actors that they were considering for the roles in the TV show.

951
00:53:19,655 --> 00:53:20,315
Yeah.

952
00:53:20,315 --> 00:53:22,246
they, mean, Hollywood doesn't do that.

953
00:53:22,246 --> 00:53:23,386
They just don't like it.

954
00:53:23,386 --> 00:53:25,197
They don't care what the author has to say.

955
00:53:25,197 --> 00:53:28,478
mean, this is like singing about painting as far as that's concerned.

956
00:53:28,478 --> 00:53:29,474
Look at, and so

957
00:53:29,474 --> 00:53:30,965
You know, it was very interesting to see.

958
00:53:30,965 --> 00:53:38,999
then, know, like whenever they would make changes or, you know, deviate, you know, from,
know, the narrative line of the novels, they would explain to me, you know, why it was

959
00:53:38,999 --> 00:53:45,692
that they were doing this, why this was going to be a little bit different from what it
was, what was in the books and, know, why it works on television this way.

960
00:53:45,692 --> 00:53:49,625
And, you know, with a 42 minute teleplay, you know, this is the breakdown we can't do.

961
00:53:49,625 --> 00:53:55,398
You one of the first meetings I had with them, they said, you know, your books don't break
down into a 42 page teleplay.

962
00:53:55,398 --> 00:53:58,950
And I was like, thank goodness if they did, you shouldn't be reading them for goodness
sake.

963
00:53:59,362 --> 00:54:04,545
You know, they said, we're going to do is we're going to like, you cherry pick, you know,
bits and pieces, you know, from all the different books like that.

964
00:54:04,545 --> 00:54:10,434
And then utilize those to like, you know, create shorter versions, you know, of the arc
that you've got for the stores.

965
00:54:11,776 --> 00:54:17,882
No, think, you know, the best thing you can do, as you well know, in any kind of business.

966
00:54:17,918 --> 00:54:25,576
is get the very best people that you can to work with and what do you do at that point is
leave them the hell alone.

967
00:54:25,576 --> 00:54:29,389
I'll get let them do the thing that you've hired them to do for gosh sake.

968
00:54:29,396 --> 00:54:30,496
I'm you're right into that one.

969
00:54:30,496 --> 00:54:33,049
don't know if I tried to or not.

970
00:54:33,049 --> 00:54:38,894
is how much of this has been intentional selection or was it the people that were just
willing to?

971
00:54:38,894 --> 00:54:40,976
Because you went to New York, right?

972
00:54:40,976 --> 00:54:42,637
And you heard a lot of nos.

973
00:54:42,698 --> 00:54:44,639
It's just the lady that said yes.

974
00:54:45,660 --> 00:54:48,182
I mean, was there any chance you were going to say no?

975
00:54:48,382 --> 00:54:51,054
you know, but she was too wonderful.

976
00:54:51,054 --> 00:54:52,644
She was fantastic.

977
00:54:52,645 --> 00:54:58,568
And then the whole relationship that I've had with the publisher now here for 20 years has
been just a dream come true.

978
00:54:58,568 --> 00:55:06,413
I mean, so many authors, change agents, they change publishers, they change all these
different kinds of things.

979
00:55:06,413 --> 00:55:09,174
I've had absolutely no reason to try and do that for 20 years.

980
00:55:09,174 --> 00:55:15,558
I pretty much started with the A list and landed at the A list and stayed on the A list.

981
00:55:15,672 --> 00:55:17,536
more about you and more about them.

982
00:55:17,536 --> 00:55:19,810
you don't think so?

983
00:55:19,810 --> 00:55:20,741
it was them.

984
00:55:20,741 --> 00:55:29,476
it was just a quality, you know, that I stepped into like that, that just because I'm
talking about the business aspect of it, obviously, um you know, I because that is really

985
00:55:29,476 --> 00:55:32,617
the success of that's all just been a side effect in many ways.

986
00:55:32,617 --> 00:55:39,781
Like, and I never the only thing I wanted to do, I swear to God was like, I wanted to sell
enough books that I could continue writing books.

987
00:55:39,781 --> 00:55:42,030
That's all I really wanted to ever do.

988
00:55:42,030 --> 00:55:47,155
That's the story of success though, because everybody that wants to make it about about
money.

989
00:55:48,677 --> 00:55:51,350
It just it gets interrupted along the way before it becomes great.

990
00:55:51,350 --> 00:55:52,641
Something happened.

991
00:55:53,482 --> 00:56:00,229
And when you hear that you just care about making the thing great, a book, a business,
building.

992
00:56:00,790 --> 00:56:04,466
That's the story that is consistent through the theme of success in life.

993
00:56:04,466 --> 00:56:12,331
you know, with the writing, like it's a little bit easier like that, because I mean, you
are in that room alone by yourself, you know, conceiving this stuff like that.

994
00:56:12,331 --> 00:56:19,986
And so, you know, boy, you're, you're, you know, your focus better be on that work is
whether it be like, you know, and so I think if you're out there hustling around and doing

995
00:56:19,986 --> 00:56:22,538
all this stuff, maybe it's a little bit different, but I don't think so.

996
00:56:22,538 --> 00:56:28,802
I think you have to have that idea like that, that this is what you want to do like that,
and you're going to do it the very best that you can possibly do it.

997
00:56:29,310 --> 00:56:36,904
If, um, if you had one of these ranches where teenagers and youth would come, I'm not
saying trouble, just in general, I went to camps.

998
00:56:36,904 --> 00:56:38,694
went to Northern Minnesota as a kid.

999
00:56:38,694 --> 00:56:43,376
I went to the boundary waters and we would be canoeing and we do these.

1000
00:56:43,957 --> 00:56:48,459
All they did, you know, we go over to Canadian trading posts and stuff, but we sprayed
ourselves down.

1001
00:56:48,459 --> 00:56:49,880
I learned a lot on those.

1002
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:52,040
Um, I'd go to these camps for three weeks.

1003
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:55,694
It was in or Minnesota, north of Duluth and Pelican Lake.

1004
00:56:55,694 --> 00:57:02,332
Um, know, these moments when you're 12, 13, 14, 15, some of these experiences, I'm sure
you had some, maybe yours on ranches and stuff.

1005
00:57:02,332 --> 00:57:03,718
uh

1006
00:57:05,708 --> 00:57:10,995
What would you teach 12 and 14 and 16 and 18 year old kids if you designed a program to
bring them to your ranch?

1007
00:57:10,995 --> 00:57:12,310
What's the thing you teach them?

1008
00:57:12,310 --> 00:57:14,452
started them off with what my dad said.

1009
00:57:14,452 --> 00:57:16,783
Don't be afraid of a hard day's work or an ass kicking.

1010
00:57:16,783 --> 00:57:19,275
Like, you know, just jump right in and do it.

1011
00:57:19,275 --> 00:57:21,377
You know, you don't know until you try.

1012
00:57:21,377 --> 00:57:23,108
So that would be the big thing.

1013
00:57:23,108 --> 00:57:27,661
I just think that, you know, lot of people are intimidated.

1014
00:57:27,661 --> 00:57:31,744
they start off thinking about these dreams that they have and everything, but they get
talked out of it.

1015
00:57:31,744 --> 00:57:38,799
Like, it's almost like what you said, as far as like, you know, the opinions of other
people, like that, you know, that, you know, other people talk you right out of your life

1016
00:57:38,799 --> 00:57:40,270
if you give them a chance.

1017
00:57:41,930 --> 00:57:43,890
Boy, we can see her talk forever.

1018
00:57:44,590 --> 00:57:46,030
Craig Johnson.

1019
00:57:46,190 --> 00:57:46,870
Wow.

1020
00:57:46,870 --> 00:57:48,530
Sheriff Longmore.

1021
00:57:48,730 --> 00:57:49,970
What a pleasure to have a conversation.

1022
00:57:49,970 --> 00:57:53,190
A guy, a cowboy all the way from Wyoming to here.

1023
00:57:53,190 --> 00:57:58,539
And see, even though you came to Cincinnati, you're sitting on the good side of the river
with the folks of Kentucky right now, right?

1024
00:57:58,539 --> 00:58:02,510
I can tell because all the bourbon on these on these these kegs over here.

1025
00:58:02,510 --> 00:58:03,130
Yeah.

1026
00:58:03,130 --> 00:58:10,330
You know, that's the, I'm sure that if we go to Wyoming, it's probably inspires us about
ranches and we're going to see horns up on the wall and some moose and right.

1027
00:58:10,330 --> 00:58:11,150
All that stuff.

1028
00:58:11,150 --> 00:58:12,170
So we're indicative.

1029
00:58:12,170 --> 00:58:13,990
We're bluegrass and we're bourbon.

1030
00:58:14,070 --> 00:58:19,389
Um, I think as long you don't drink too much of it, it's something pretty cool to be, um,
thanks.

1031
00:58:20,430 --> 00:58:23,330
You know, I had an uncle who was a horse trader.

1032
00:58:23,330 --> 00:58:25,050
He used to go to a California.

1033
00:58:25,050 --> 00:58:29,630
They had a lot down there and then he was in La Grange, Kentucky, just north of Wolville.

1034
00:58:29,670 --> 00:58:32,280
And, cause my grandpa, um,

1035
00:58:32,280 --> 00:58:44,116
George Stahl came over from Germany in early 1900s and he was the guy in Northern Kentucky
that took everyone's cattle down Dixie highway, down to Louisville to the slaughterhouse.

1036
00:58:44,116 --> 00:58:44,846
took everyone's.

1037
00:58:44,846 --> 00:58:45,396
Wow.

1038
00:58:45,396 --> 00:58:47,427
So I don't know if it would have been called a broker.

1039
00:58:47,427 --> 00:58:47,853
don't know.

1040
00:58:47,853 --> 00:58:51,859
I don't know what his fee was, but he was the guy that took everybody's cattle down there
to do it.

1041
00:58:51,859 --> 00:58:52,640
So he was the guy.

1042
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:53,170
Wow.

1043
00:58:53,170 --> 00:58:53,520
Yeah.

1044
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:55,570
And I didn't do any of that stuff.

1045
00:58:56,081 --> 00:58:56,621
I could have.

1046
00:58:56,621 --> 00:58:56,892
Yeah.

1047
00:58:56,892 --> 00:58:57,052
Yeah.

1048
00:58:57,052 --> 00:58:57,286
Yeah.

1049
00:58:57,286 --> 00:58:58,004
I think.

1050
00:58:58,004 --> 00:58:58,798
and you know

1051
00:58:58,798 --> 00:58:59,538
You know what's funny?

1052
00:58:59,538 --> 00:59:01,238
My mom grew up riding horses and stuff.

1053
00:59:01,238 --> 00:59:09,638
grew up on motorcycles, but about, uh, when I was 23 or 24, I had never been on a horse,
which is wild, right?

1054
00:59:09,638 --> 00:59:14,738
And so I had some friends, uh, and I might've been, no, maybe it was 25, 26.

1055
00:59:14,738 --> 00:59:18,658
was, I had just had a breakup updating somebody for seven years before I met Jenna.

1056
00:59:18,658 --> 00:59:20,838
We've been together 17 years now.

1057
00:59:21,838 --> 00:59:22,858
I was in fun mode.

1058
00:59:22,858 --> 00:59:23,478
Yeah.

1059
00:59:23,478 --> 00:59:23,578
Okay.

1060
00:59:23,578 --> 00:59:27,694
My fun mode was experiencing life, not just going out chasing the girls, but it was,

1061
00:59:27,694 --> 00:59:28,994
Let's get out and do some different things.

1062
00:59:28,994 --> 00:59:32,834
So had some friends call me and they're like, Hey man, we're going to jump on some horses
at my farm.

1063
00:59:32,834 --> 00:59:34,074
Why don't you come by?

1064
00:59:34,074 --> 00:59:36,294
And I'm that guy and wife was like, okay.

1065
00:59:36,354 --> 00:59:37,994
And I'm like, can somebody give me a lesson?

1066
00:59:37,994 --> 00:59:40,134
Like, no, man, we're gonna put the saddle on here.

1067
00:59:40,134 --> 00:59:43,834
And you know, they made me tie and hook my own saddle.

1068
00:59:44,314 --> 00:59:46,054
Not the best idea.

1069
00:59:46,314 --> 00:59:48,194
And they gave me the biggest horse.

1070
00:59:48,194 --> 00:59:49,594
His name was Gus.

1071
00:59:50,254 --> 00:59:52,054
Um, he knew I was intimidating.

1072
00:59:53,002 --> 00:59:53,776
They have a way.

1073
00:59:53,776 --> 00:59:55,595
They have a way of knowing these things.

1074
00:59:55,729 --> 01:00:00,910
Uh, they put me on that horse and we were 11 PM at night.

1075
01:00:00,910 --> 01:00:01,990
Oh gosh.

1076
01:00:02,210 --> 01:00:04,570
Riding the Hills of power lines.

1077
01:00:05,030 --> 01:00:07,130
And I got to the top of one.

1078
01:00:08,510 --> 01:00:09,570
And there was rocks everywhere.

1079
01:00:09,570 --> 01:00:10,310
was very scared.

1080
01:00:10,310 --> 01:00:11,070
was scared for my life.

1081
01:00:11,070 --> 01:00:11,650
Not gonna lie.

1082
01:00:11,650 --> 01:00:16,170
I was riding motorcycles, but these things were fast and branches are hitting me in the
face.

1083
01:00:16,270 --> 01:00:21,970
But, uh, the saddle halfway up one of these we call mountains here ended up on the side of
the horse.

1084
01:00:22,570 --> 01:00:24,370
I made it to the top.

1085
01:00:24,918 --> 01:00:26,958
I just had a guy text me the other day.

1086
01:00:26,958 --> 01:00:34,571
I hadn't seen him for 20 years and he's like, dude, I still think about you riding up that
Hill in that power line with the saddle side.

1087
01:00:34,571 --> 01:00:38,402
He said, how in the world did you stay on top of that thing?

1088
01:00:38,402 --> 01:00:39,832
I was like, I was scared to break my neck.

1089
01:00:39,832 --> 01:00:49,265
So, I think I need to come to Wyoming to really see how it's The, where, where does the
person, uh, if we want to experience Wyoming, we're going to end this.

1090
01:00:49,265 --> 01:00:51,286
This is our first cow.

1091
01:00:51,286 --> 01:00:53,164
Where do we start our Wyoming adventure?

1092
01:00:53,164 --> 01:01:00,919
Well, I did a, there's actually like, I did a, uh, like a travel log piece, like it for
Cowboys and Indians magazine called the Longmire loop.

1093
01:01:00,919 --> 01:01:01,239
Okay.

1094
01:01:01,239 --> 01:01:05,141
And so all you gotta do is just jump on the internet and put in Longmire loop and it'll
come up.

1095
01:01:05,141 --> 01:01:08,203
Um, I mean, there's, there are a lot of really wonderful parts.

1096
01:01:08,203 --> 01:01:11,405
I mean, there's like, you know, the granddaddy of them all, the big Cheyenne rodeo.

1097
01:01:11,405 --> 01:01:19,094
Look at there's, know, Jackson hole, like at Yellowstone and all that, but my favorite
part of Wyoming and probably my favorite part of the whole world.

1098
01:01:19,094 --> 01:01:26,917
is that bighorn mountain region like that because it's still, you know, a wilderness area
surrounded by a national forest.

1099
01:01:26,917 --> 01:01:32,919
So what that means is like, you know, in a wilderness area, there's no roads, there's no
electricity, there's no, there's nothing.

1100
01:01:32,919 --> 01:01:37,920
I mean, when you go in, you go in with leather, either, you know, boot leather or saddle
leather.

1101
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:42,862
And it's just, there's no million dollar, you know, condos, there's no

1102
01:01:42,862 --> 01:01:46,042
billion dollar ski resorts or any of that stuff.

1103
01:01:46,042 --> 01:01:50,502
It's all like old lodges from the 40s, know, and 30s and things like that, you know.

1104
01:01:50,502 --> 01:02:01,662
And so it's more like going back in time, you know, which I really kind of appreciate, you
know, the more and faster pace, you know, the world gets, you know, it means more to me

1105
01:02:01,662 --> 01:02:03,539
like I had to be able to escape back into that period.

1106
01:02:03,539 --> 01:02:06,245
All these wealthy people do this glamping now.

1107
01:02:07,029 --> 01:02:08,182
Do ever see that popping up?

1108
01:02:08,182 --> 01:02:08,962
You're like, what's

1109
01:02:08,962 --> 01:02:09,102
on?

1110
01:02:09,102 --> 01:02:11,096
No, not around where we are now.

1111
01:02:11,096 --> 01:02:13,990
They don't make it to the U-turn at U-turn.

1112
01:02:15,074 --> 01:02:16,376
Well, thanks for coming in.

1113
01:02:16,376 --> 01:02:18,049
oh Much success with this final book.

1114
01:02:18,049 --> 01:02:19,762
I don't think you need anybody to wish it for you.

1115
01:02:19,762 --> 01:02:21,699
You've set this thing on a heck of a path.

1116
01:02:21,699 --> 01:02:22,229
you.

1117
01:02:22,229 --> 01:02:22,450
Yeah.

1118
01:02:22,450 --> 01:02:26,677
We just landed actually yesterday at number 12 on the New York times best sellers list.

1119
01:02:26,677 --> 01:02:30,995
So, know, no, it's how many you sell.

1120
01:02:30,995 --> 01:02:33,939
I got how many books you sell across country.

1121
01:02:34,198 --> 01:02:35,038
Yeah.

1122
01:02:35,038 --> 01:02:37,172
What's the top that any of these landed?

1123
01:02:37,243 --> 01:02:37,613
Let's see.

1124
01:02:37,613 --> 01:02:39,217
think I had one that was number four.

1125
01:02:39,217 --> 01:02:41,572
I believe like I don't know.

1126
01:02:41,572 --> 01:02:42,573
We'll see.

1127
01:02:42,962 --> 01:02:43,546
Okay

1128
01:02:43,546 --> 01:02:44,666
guy.

1129
01:02:44,666 --> 01:02:46,226
Thanks for stopping in much success.

1130
01:02:46,226 --> 01:02:56,765
And, uh, through all your travels, uh, go back to that, uh, nice crazy winter and, uh,
Hey, listen, we'll be, uh, wall Meijer days in Buffalo, Wyoming in July.

1131
01:02:57,066 --> 01:02:57,426
Wow.

1132
01:02:57,426 --> 01:02:58,546
They don't need any more people.

1133
01:02:58,546 --> 01:02:59,526
The sheriff might throw us out.

1134
01:02:59,526 --> 01:03:00,625
Thank you for coming in.