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September 2020

With A Little Help From My Friends

Craig Johnson

Next To Last Stand hits the stands this Tuesday, September 22nd! One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer’s Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over a million prints a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946… Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart-attack at the Sailor’s & Soldier’s Home of Wyoming, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a hauntingly familiar, partial painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars both found in the veteran’s footlocker. Encountering some nefarious characters along the way, Longmire strives to make sure the investigation doesn’t become his own Next To Last Stand. Next To Last Stand is released this Tuesday, and the 2020 tour should be interesting, to say the least... Due to COVID, we’re doing a virtual tour with multiple daily events the week of release. Normally I’d be a little worried about the technical logistics of doing this kind of thing, but after the success of Virtual Longmire Days, we’re feeling pretty capable… Well, I’m not, personally, but our posse of tech guru Paul Birkholz at Mountain West Group and the power and weight of Penguin/Random House appear to have everything under control. The big question in doing more than a handful of events without them getting stale was a challenge, so we decided to include a few extras in the tour this year starting with the actor readings, excerpts from the new book read by the actors from the TV show, Longmire. I pulled in a number of favors and asked them to do this and I was met with varied responses, some jumped in immediately while others were a bit reticent, having never done audiobook readings before… To be honest, they’re marvelous, and anybody who had any doubts about the quality of our performers needs to give a listen. We could’ve just had the tracks be audible, but I got together with my friend and partner in crime, Marcus Red Thunder, and we traveled the globe… Well, we traveled the high plains, getting footage of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, the Bighorn Mountains, Fort McKinney, the Buffalo Bill Center For The West and others for your viewing pleasure. We’ll be showing a new reading video with each book event, so you should tune in more than once as the week progresses. Finally, after the wonderful time we had at Virtual Longmire Days, I decided to pull out all the stops and ask the actors to jump in and do the events live with me, which, believe it or not, they are. The response was so positive that we had to double and triple up a few times! I can’t tell you how much fun this tour is going to be, and how indebted I am to these wonderful performers and friends, but in many ways, it exemplifies the philosophy of Walt Longmire, the show and the books. Next To Last Stand is a fun novel and a bit of a departure from my previous books -- it’s Walt’s first art-heist and bit of a softer touch with hopefully a strong streak of humor. There’s a lot of history, which you might expect from a novel that delves into one of the most controversial battles in the annals of Western storytelling, some of it a bit eye- opening. I had a really good time producing the sixteenth Walt Longmire novel, Next To Last Stand, and I hope you’ll enjoy the reading of it as much as I did the writing of it. Because of the nature of the title, readers have expressed concern that this might be the last or next to last Walt Longmire novel, but I can assure you that such is not the case. I’m not sure what I’d do if I didn’t have the good sheriff to write about, and from where I sit, Walt has a lengthy and interesting road still ahead of him… See you on the trail, Craig Next To Last Stand Virtual Tour Schedule Gear from Virtual Longmire Days Return to Post-Its

Sign up for Craig’s Post-It Newsletter using this link. If you need help, please see the Contact page.

September 2020

With A Little Help From My Friends

Craig Johnson

Next To Last Stand hits the stands this Tuesday, September 22nd! One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer’s Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over a million prints a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946… Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart-attack at the Sailor’s & Soldier’s Home of Wyoming, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a hauntingly familiar, partial painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars both found in the veteran’s footlocker. Encountering some nefarious characters along the way, Longmire strives to make sure the investigation doesn’t become his own Next To Last Stand. Next To Last Stand is released this Tuesday, and the 2020 tour should be interesting, to say the least... Due to COVID, we’re doing a virtual tour with multiple daily events the week of release. Normally I’d be a little worried about the technical logistics of doing this kind of thing, but after the success of Virtual Longmire Days, we’re feeling pretty capable… Well, I’m not, personally, but our posse of tech guru Paul Birkholz at Mountain West Group and the power and weight of Penguin/Random House appear to have everything under control. The big question in doing more than a handful of events without them getting stale was a challenge, so we decided to include a few extras in the tour this year starting with the actor readings, excerpts from the new book read by the actors from the TV show, Longmire. I pulled in a number of favors and asked them to do this and I was met with varied responses, some jumped in immediately while others were a bit reticent, having never done audiobook readings before… To be honest, they’re marvelous, and anybody who had any doubts about the quality of our performers needs to give a listen. We could’ve just had the tracks be audible, but I got together with my friend and partner in crime, Marcus Red Thunder, and we traveled the globe… Well, we traveled the high plains, getting footage of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, the Bighorn Mountains, Fort McKinney, the Buffalo Bill Center For The West and others for your viewing pleasure. We’ll be showing a new reading video with each book event, so you should tune in more than once as the week progresses. Finally, after the wonderful time we had at Virtual Longmire Days, I decided to pull out all the stops and ask the actors to jump in and do the events live with me, which, believe it or not, they are. The response was so positive that we had to double and triple up a few times! I can’t tell you how much fun this tour is going to be, and how indebted I am to these wonderful performers and friends, but in many ways, it exemplifies the philosophy of Walt Longmire, the show and the books. Next To Last Stand is a fun novel and a bit of a departure from my previous books -- it’s Walt’s first art-heist and bit of a softer touch with hopefully a strong streak of humor. There’s a lot of history, which you might expect from a novel that delves into one of the most controversial battles in the annals of Western storytelling, some of it a bit eye-opening. I had a really good time producing the sixteenth Walt Longmire novel, Next To Last Stand, and I hope you’ll enjoy the reading of it as much as I did the writing of it. Because of the nature of the title, readers have expressed concern that this might be the last or next to last Walt Longmire novel, but I can assure you that such is not the case. I’m not sure what I’d do if I didn’t have the good sheriff to write about, and from where I sit, Walt has a lengthy and interesting road still ahead of him… See you on the trail, Craig Next To Last Stand Virtual Tour Schedule Gear from Virtual Longmire Days Return to Post-Its