Could someone who's written only seven books in a mystery series get his characters picked up for a television series?
Yes.
It's about to happen for Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire series of contemporary western mysteries . . . well, maybe.
Read about the caveat and Craig's newest book, Hell is Empty, right here.
The magic of A&E
"They've done an amazing job of capturing the look and feel of the books," Craig Johnson tells his audiences at each stop on his current book tour where he's promoting his newest Walt Longmire mystery, Hell is Empty.
They is Warner Horizon which filmed a pilot in February for the series "Longmire."
They also are script writers John Coveny and Hunt Baldwin who've written for "The Closer" and "Trust Me," and executive producers Greer Shephard and Mike Robin. Shephard and Robin produce "The Closer" and shows for several other series. Coveny and Baldwin also serve as executive producers for "Longmire."
They, too, are actors Robert Taylor (Longmire), Lou Diamond Phillips (Henry Standing Bear), Katee Sackhoff (Vic, Walt's deputy), and Cassidy Freeman (Cady, Walt's daughter).
Phillips doubly impressed Craig. He not only looks right for the role, he read all of Craig's books before the filming started and can quote sections of them at length for you.
Craig was afraid the producers would cast a shrimp the size of Tom Cruise as Walt Longmire, the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. In the books, Walt is 6-foot-5 and on the heavy side.
"If you have to drive 40 miles to Powder River to break up a bar fight," Craig says of his sheriff, "you walk in and they're still whaling on one another and all eight turn to look at you, you'd better be able to intimidate them, let them know you can hurt them."
The producers sent Robert Taylor's audition DVD to Craig with a note that said, "He's 6-foot-4. Ha, ha, ha-ha, ha."
"And he looks like Walt, with that deeply tanned, leathery face and the lines," Craig says. "He's obviously an outdoor guy, and he's got a voice that's three octaves lower than John Wayne. I liked him."
So did Craig's wife, Judy. "'He moves like a westerner, like a cowboy,' she said. And he does."
The story in the pilot takes place in the fall, and the company wanted to film it in February. That ruled out Wyoming as a location—too much snow. So the location scouts came up with a place in New Mexico that looked right, in the Bandolier National Forest above Los Alamos.
Somewhere about now, two test audiences are watching the pilot. If they like it, and everybody else along the way in the production company and at A&E does, A&E will plug the series into it 2012 schedule.
That decision should be made next month.
The new book
Hell is Empty is one of the toughest book Craig's ever written because there is an underpinning—Dante's Inferno.
Craig asks his audiences how many have read Dante's book.
A smattering of hands will go up.
How many finished it, he then asks.
Fewer hands will stay up.
"It's a difficult book to read. A lot of our images of hell come from Inferno. What is the lowest ring of hell like in Dante's book, the ninth circle of hell?
"It's cold. It's snowing because it's so far from the sight of God."
It's Wyoming's Cloud Peak Wilderness Area in winter where a critical scene takes place in the first Walt Longmire book, The Cold Dish.
Longmire has to pack two men off an 11,000-foot mountain in a blizzard.
"It's difficult, exhausting work, freezing. Walt has visions. I knew at sometime he would have to go back there."
Six books later, Longmire does . . . to catch three escaped convicts who want to kill him.
Craig uses long story arcs.
To make book 7 really work, he needed a Virgil—Virgil guides Dante as Dante descends into hell—to guide Longmire, so in book 4 he introduced a big Crow Indian, Virgil White Buffalo. White Buffalo returns here to help Longmire.
To heighten it all, Longmire's Basque deputy, Sancho, who's reading all the Great Books to improve himself, slips his paperback copy of Inferno into Walt's backpack as Walt is going into the Wilderness . . . a little something to read while you're in the mountains.
"Hell is Empty is not so much a who dunnit as it is a why dunnit," Craig says. "It's a thriller. We know who the bad guys are right at the beginning. We meet them in chapter 1."
He's now writing book 8, As the Crow Flies. It takes place almost entirely on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
The long view
I asked Craig, when he was here in Wisconsin, signing books at Madison's independent mystery bookstore, Booked for Murder, how long can you ride this horse—the Walt Longmire series?
We're friends.
I can do that.
A long time, he said.
"'Til I die.
"I'm probably enjoying writing the Longmire books more than I did even when I started, so I'm having a blast. Why should I stop?"
And popping out a book a year is easy.
Craig may pick up the pace, writing the equivalent of a book and a half a year, so he can turn out a Longmire mystery every year and a stand-alone novel every other year.
At the moment, he's writing a psychological thriller which, he said, has twists and turns in it that will make it unlike anything you and I have ever read before.
Also out there is a literary novel, about a Wyoming rancher who runs over himself with his truck. And the experience changes his life.
And Craig has several other novels simmering in his writer's pot.
"It's good to stretch your legs and get out an do some other stuff," he said.
© Jerry Peterson.
