Interview: Author ‘C.J. Box’ Talks His New Joe Pickett Novel Storm Watch

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction. He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum as well as the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel by the Western Writers of America in 2017. Over seven million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad and they’ve been translated into 27 languages.

Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he owned an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and currently serves on the Wyoming Office of Tourism Board. They have three daughters and two grandchildren. He and his wife Laurie live on their small ranch in Wyoming.

He’s an Executive Producer for BIG SKY on ABC TV which is based on his Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell novels as well as EP for the upcoming Joe Pickett television series for Paramount TV.

Check out his website here, Facebook and Twitter. The book is in stores on Tuesday, February 28th from Putnam. You can listen below to the interview.

When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. First, he finds the professor’s vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then Joe finds the professor’s frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents, extremists, and Governor Colter Allen.

Nate Romanowski is rebuilding his falconry company—and financing this through crypto mining with the assistance of Geronimo Jones. He’s then approached by a shadowy group of local militant activists that is gaining in power and influence, and demanding that Wyoming join other western states and secede from the union—by force, if necessary. They ask Nate to throw in with them, but he’s wary. Should he trust them, or is he being set up?

As a storm of peril gathers around them, Joe and Nate confront it in different ways—and maybe, for the first time, on opposite sides.