John Wayne.com: WRITTEN IN WYOMING, An Interview with C.J. Box
C.J., before we get to your new book Three-Inch Teeth, tell me about what formed you as a writer?
Now that I look back at it, everything I’ve done over the years helped form me as a writer, although I didn’t have a strategy at the time.
As a youngster, I was a voracious reader of every kind of book. My favorite authors were—and are—Joseph Heller, Raymond Chandler, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas McGuane, and so many others. I used to bring along books in my backpack and saddlebags while camping or riding into the mountains. I went into journalism out of college and got a job at a small Wyoming weekly, which taught me to make deadlines and be prepared to interview people of all walks of life.
Later, I was involved in the tourism industry and hosted scores of international journalists on trips and adventures across the Mountain West. That not only exposed me to all kinds of outdoor activities, but I could witness the uniqueness of where I lived through the eyes of people not familiar with the territory. When I sat down to write a fiction novel in the mid 1990s, I found I could draw on all these experiences.