Most say they read that seminal page three or four times to make sure it actually happened. Over the years, I’ve heard many, many comments from readers about that twist. I thought, no one will be prepared for what happens next. When I came back to it the twist you mention came to me.
I started writing The Highway and I had to set it aside for over six months while I completed a Joe Pickett book.
SHOWS ON ABC BOX SERIES
It was a bold move on your part… But what kind of feedback did you get from your readers? Most of them must have been deeply surprised at the series sudden change in direction… I know I was!ĬJB: It wasn’t planned out. MB: Cassie Dewell, one of the main characters in The Highway, would soon take over what had begun as a series starring Cody. Most readers say the Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell books are darker than the Joe Pickett novels. None of them are set in Wyoming, where Joe Pickett lives. As you know, the stand-alones take place in Colorado, Montana, and North Dakota. They *have* to stand alone from the Joe Pickett series. Suffice it to say that some ideas and locations I want to write about simply won’t work as Joe Pickett books. Now, though, it’s hard to claim it isn’t a series. I looked at each of those books-followed by Badlands, Paradise Valley, and The Bitterroots-that feature Cassie Dewell as stand-alones with overlapping characters, as if it were a relay race with one character handing the baton to another from book to book.
I never intended to write a second series, and I still like to think that I haven’t. As you say, he stepped to the forefront in Back of Beyond, followed by The Highway. Box: Actually, Cody Hoyt was introduced in a stand-alone thriller called Three Weeks To Say Goodbye in 2009, but he was a fairly minor character. What was your thinking in launching another crime series at that point in 2011?Ĭ.J. Michael Barson: You were already a successful author with your Joe Pickett series, which was being published by Putnam on an annual basis, when you decided to write Back of Beyond, the first book to feature Cody Holt as your new protagonist.
His erstwhile publicist at Putnam, Michael Barson, caught Box between fishing expeditions to ask him about the advent of the Big Sky series on television. “Chuck” Box now lives in Saratoga, Wyoming with his wife Laurie and their horses. His first stand-alone thriller, Blue Heaven, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 2008.īorn in Casper, C.J. The Cassie Dewell books appear biannually.īetween them the two series have won Box such accolades as the Western Heritage Award for Literature from the National Cowboy Museum, the Barry, Anthony, Gumshoe and Macavity Awards, and the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for Best Contemporary Novel. The ten-episode series features Kylie Bunbury and Ryan Phillipe as Box’s protagonists Cassie Dewell and Cody Hoyt, with Katheryn Winnick playing a character invented for Big Sky.īox is best known for his long-running, best-selling series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, which debuted in 2001 with Open Season and has continued to appear each year, with Long Range being 2020’s entry. Big Sky, an adaptation (mostly) of Box’s 2013 thriller The Highway, is set to air on ABC on November 17, developed and written by the much-decorated producer David E. Box, but at long last there is a filmed version of one of his best-selling crime novels.
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