Success in writing depends on developing realistic char-acters and letting them tell their own stories.At least, that's Craig John-son's take. The author of the Sheriff…
Success in writing depends on developing realistic char-acters and letting them tell their own stories.
At least, that’s Craig John-son’s take.
The author of the Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery series — which is the basis of the popular “Longmire”?TV show on A&E — spoke at Notre Dame Cathedra Latin Cultural Center in Munson Township Saturday about his career and signed books as part of the Geauga County Public Lib-rary’s Distinguished Speaker series.
Dressed in jeans, boots, a rugged shirt, silver belt buckle and Stetson, Johnson looked comfortable talking to crowds and appeared to be enjoying the fame his books have attained over the last decade.
“The best thing about all of this, was the time that a young woman came up to me at a book signing and told me, ‘My Dad and I read your books together. It’s hard to find something that we both can enjoy,'” Johnson told a crowd of fans during a reception before the lecture.
The author and his wife live in a rustic cabin he built on a 260-acre ranch in a small town of 25 people near Buffalo (population 4,000) — the county seat of rural Johnson County, Wyoming.
The area is the inspiration for Johnson’s fictitious Absaroka County, where middle-aged Sheriff Walt Longmire and his deputies solve a variety of crimes that occur near or on an adjacent Cheyenne Indian reservation.
Longmire’s best friend is Henry Standing Bear, a Cheyenne who owns the Red Pony Bar and helps Walt when needed.
“I say ‘Indians’ instead of ‘Native Americans’ because my Indian friends would laugh when I’d use ‘Native Americans’ to be politically correct,” Johnson said. “They’d say, ‘You were born here. Aren’t you a native too?'”
Johnson said his Indian friends, mostly members of the Cheyenne or Crow tribes, think all the uproar lately about team names such as Redskins or mascots such as Chief Wahoo is trivial and ridiculous in light of all the other problems in the world.
The character of Henry Standing Bear is played in the TV series by Lou Diamond Phillips, who is part Cherokee, and is based on the author’s close friend, Marcus Red Thunder, who helped him name Absaroka County.
“Indians have a great sense of humor and 17 shades of irony,” he said. “My friend Marcus has a T-shirt that reads, ‘I’m 1/64th white, but I can’t prove it.'”
Johnson, 52, said he came from a family of storytellers and always wanted to be a writer, but his first novel, “The Cold Dish,” took more than 10 years to develop because he couldn’t get the sheriff character to ring true.
He decided to study a local sheriff by riding along with him and Walt Longmire was born.
He found a literary agent who helped him gets his first novel published. To Johnson’s surprise, the publisher demanded more manuscripts using the same characters.
“That’s how I got started with the Longmire series,” he said.
His books found their way to the New York Times Best Seller list for fiction, which he attributes to his characters and to giving readers what they want.
“Mystery readers are a different breed of cat now,” he told the audience. “They send a message that they want not just a solved mystery, but social commentary, a little history, a little humor and fully developed characters.”
To Johnson’s delight, the popularity of his books led Hollywood to his door two years ago, with a proposal to turn his mysteries into a TV series, which he said has become the highest rated scripted series in A&E network’s history.
“It’s been a hoot,” he said.
Johnson serves as an “executive creative consultant” to the show’s producers, and gives input on casting and plots.
“They had difficulty finding Walt Longmire, who is 6’5″ and 260 lbs. of ‘country big,'” Johnson said. “He had been an offensive lineman for USC, a Vietnam veteran and a rural sheriff. Everybody in Hollywood is 5’4″.”
When the producers asked him for his recommendations for which actor to play the sheriff, Johnson said he was at a loss.
“All I could think of was Gary Cooper, Joel McRae, and Ben Johnson, and they said that was no help at all,” he said. “So they sent me a pile of DVDs of the auditions and said they could go with a big name or someone who was relatively unknown. I was kind of rooting for the unknown guy, but if you’re an unknown actor by the time you’re in your 50s or 60s, you might suck at it. Hollywood was sort of worried about that.”
Johnson and his wife watched recording after recording, but found a high degree of what he termed “the suck factor” until he reached the last DVD on the pile — with an Australian actor named Robert Taylor, who had been best known for playing a priest in an Irish soap opera.
“He really kind of clicked,” the author said. “His face had weathering, like he had been outdoors, and my wife said he moves like a Westerner.”
During the auditions, the actors played a scene in which they break the news to a woman that her husband had just died.
“He quietly took off his hat and none of the others had done that,” Johnson said. “We knew we had our Walt and he’s been wonderful.”
The series is filmed in New Mexico, but Johnson keeps in touch by phone when the producers have questions about continuity or other details.
“I’ve gotten to know everybody pretty well,” he said of the cast and crew.
Johnson said he was surprised when most of the cast members, including Taylor, volunteered to appear at Buffalo’s Longmire Days and was astonished when it attracted 14,000 fans.
He said the town officials had expected 2,000.
“Robert sat there for four and a half hours and signed autographs on everything — books, programs, shirts and various body parts,” Johnson recalled. “The organizers finally went to get him away from there, but came back without him. Robert said all these people have been waiting all that time. He stayed until everyone had gotten his signature.”
Johnson said he has two more books in the works and no plans to stop anytime soon.
“Your imagination — that’s the field I toil in,” he told the audience. “Each reader forms a visual image and it’s never the same as anyone else’s. That’s where a book is and it’s all pretty wonderful.”
