Twelve Days of Bookmas: Craig Johnson

 

Starting today through the end of the year, I'll be featuring the Twelve (Plus Two) Days of Bookmas. Authors will be stopping by with a holiday bon-bon plus a link to their favorite charity. I'm grateful to each of these folks for participating during what is already a very hectic season. I'll hope you'll support them and their books and remember that donations to charities make great gifts.

Craig Johnson grew up in a rural West Virginia area which he says was perfect for nurturing a storyteller because it "gives you two options, finding a way to entertain yourself or having adults find something to occupy your time, like bailing hay. You'd be surprised how far your imagination will go to keep you away from honest labor." He currently lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25, on a ranch adjacent to both the Crow and Cheyenne reservations, a region that plays a starring role in his writing.

Craig has received high praise for his Sheriff Walt Longmire novels, with The Dark Horse receiving a "superfecta" of starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was also named one of Publisher's Weekly's best books of 2009. That success spilled over into television with the new A&E program Longmire, which is based on Craig's popular protagonist. The latest installment in the novel series is this year's Hell Is Empty, which sees Wyoming's favorite sheriff braving a frozen "Inferno" (with nods to Dante and Indian mysticism) as he races to capture an escaped murderer.

Craig's holiday offering finds the author very much hat in hand (click on the photo to see it larger)…

"My wife, Judy, really likes my old work hats; I guess it's a genuine piece of cowboy Americana. I had this Stetson that I'd worn while building our log home, and decided I'd give it to her for Christmas. I got it cleaned and re-lined and it was about then that I saw a photo of an old Charlie Russell hat that he'd drawn on for a friend. Here I had this beautiful old hat and bought a special felt-tip for the job…Now, there’s that point in your life when you realize you're about to do something stupid, and that there are numerous ways you can mess something like this up…I called up my good friend and renowned western artist Joel Ostlind and asked him if he'd be kind enough to draw on Judy's Christmas hat.

      “Is there something specific you’d like?”

      I’ve dealt with enough artists to know you don’t dictate to them, you just turn them loose. “Nope, whatever.”

      Joel did a beautiful rendering of two of the characters from my Walt Longmire books with Cady on one side, Henry Standing Bear on the other and a panorama of the Bighorn Mountains in the back. It’s now one of Judy’s most prized possessions, and I’m so glad I didn’t mess it up."

Craig's favorite charity is the U.S. Marine Corp's Toys for Tots, which not only provides toys for Christmas to underprivileged children, it also sponsors a Toys for Tots Native American Program and a Literacy Program helping to deliver more than one million books to children across the country.