Wyoming author CJ Box rides the wave of success

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By Wendy Corr, Cowboy State Daily

When “Open Season” debuted in 2001, Chuck Box had no idea his life was about to change.

Box then owned/operated an international tourism marketing company, Rocky Mountain International, which he and his wife ran for 24 years – 10 of which he balanced with his time writing novels.

“It takes a while to really build momentum in the publishing world,” Box told Cowboy State Daily. “And, you know, I wasn’t just going to quit my job and devote it all to this when it wasn’t bringing in the kind of income that my ‘real’ job was.”

Then he did – and then some.

Several years ago, Box was able to leave the double life behind and now devotes his full-time energies to creating characters loved by millions of readers and viewers around the world.

Balancing law

Box has written 31 novels since he started writing them 23 years ago — and when you do the math, that’s a lot of hours of writing.

“The Joe Picketts (books), they took five to nine months to write,” Box said.

By 2009, Box had already written nine books around the character of Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden. But he was inspired to write a stand-alone book outside of that story, titled “Blue Heaven,” which won Box the coveted Edgar Prize and significant literary attention. Box said the standalone books took a bit longer to write than those in the Joe Pickett series.

“Books outside of this series sometimes take a lot longer because I have to do them in stages,” he said. “I can’t write two books simultaneously. I can’t read two books simultaneously.

TV shows

No one was happier than Box when he found out that his two book series – the Joe Pickett novels and the Cassie Dewell books – had been chosen to become TV shows.

“It’s a bit otherworldly,” Box said.

He said that since the debut of Joe Pickett’s first book, almost all of his books were on the movie option, but he’s glad they became TV shows instead.

“I’ve always wanted more TV than movies because TV can be done in a long way,” Box said. “It’s way better for me than just one movie out there.”

David E. Kelley (creator of iconic television shows such as “Doogie Howser, MD”, “Picket Fences”, “Chicago Hope”, “The Practice” and “Ally McBeal”) was the producer who adapted the novel from Box “The Highway” in the series “Big Sky”.

“He wrote the first five episodes of this and is still involved with it,” Box said. “And that show did very well on ABC. It’s kind of weird to see it on a broadcast network.

The Joe Pickett series debuted last December as an original show on the Spectrum cable system and went No. 1 for that service.

“Now it’s moved to Paramount+, where it’s the #3 show,” Box said, “So it’s doing really well too. I’m really excited about the Joe Pickett series.

As a bonus, Box said that because of TV shows, more people have been introduced to books.

“Sales of all the books have really gone up since the TV shows have aired,” he said. “The way my wife and I like to see it, it’s like hour-long commercials for the books every week.”

A highlight for many viewers of ABC’s “Big Sky” series is the appearance this season of country star Reba McIntire as a recurring character.

“I think there are four episodes,” Box said. “She actually represents the outfitter that (readers were introduced to) in ‘Back of Beyond’.”

“Treasure State”

Last week, Box returned home after a two-week whirlwind book tour that took him from Scottsdale, Arizona, to the East Coast and then back to Wyoming. He was promoting his latest novel “Treasure State” – the sixth book in a series featuring investigator Cassie Dewell, a character who has become more popular than Box could have imagined.

“I never really wanted to do two sets (of books),” Box said. “And I kept denying it for years and years, even though I would do another Cassie Dewell book every couple of years. And then finally I kind of succumbed to that and said, ‘ Yeah, I’m doing a Cassie Dewell series.’

Even though Box is a writer from Wyoming, Cassie Dewell’s books are set in other states, primarily North Dakota and Montana. But because of his background in the tourism industry, Box felt confident he could write authentically about these neighboring states.

“We worked for the State of Wyoming, the State of Montana, the State of Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota for over 24 years, so I was able to spend a lot of time in these states,” he said. “Because to me, the worst thing in the world would be for readers to say, ‘Hey, you know, this isn’t authentic Montana,’ or whatever.”

Wyoming Places and Names

Readers in Wyoming quickly pick up on the familiar places depicted in Box’s books. He said the town of “Saddlestring, Wyoming” depicted in Joe Pickett’s books is based on a combination of the communities of Buffalo, Sheridan, and Saratoga.

“But whenever I write about a specific location in Wyoming, I try to keep it as specific as possible,” he said.

And Box often uses the names of real Wyoming residents in his books.

“When I started, most of the names in the first three or four books came from the PRCA Rodeo Handbook because I used cowboy names,” he said. “Because they’re just big names.”

As he became more established, Box said he would donate to local fundraisers and charities offering to use the raffle winners’ names in an upcoming book.

“And people would bid on it,” he said. “Some of them went as high as $25,000 to get their names in a book.”

Wyoming Stories

Box said he tended to stay away from TV because it just wasn’t his thing. Where producing a TV show is very collaborative, Box said when he creates new stories and new adventures, it’s a lonely job.

“We own a small ranch near Saratoga,” he said. “I have an office above our barn and I go to work every day.”

And in his years of using the issues facing Wyoming as storylines in his novels, Box said he received a unique perspective on his beloved home state.

“I think sometimes people think that by living in Wyoming they’re backward or out of the mainstream,” he said. “But when it comes to issues like energy development, wilderness, endangered species, wildlife, we’re actually way ahead. I mean, we had wind energy talks, oil and gas talks, and endangered species talks long before they spread to the rest of the United States. And I think if they’re just careful, there’s a lot going on here.

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