Bloody good ideas: Novelist C.J. Cox shares inspirations for new story collection

C.J. Box

For someone known for writing and publishing an average of two books a year, the prospect of hammering out a short story might seem the literary equivalent of a walk in the park. C.J. Box would heartily disagree with that sentiment. “If anything, short stories are the hardest things in the world,” he said. “In a novel, you can meander a bit, fill in the back story a little more. But in a short story, there’s no room for error. You’ve got to launch in, establish your characters, the location, the motives for what’s to come, and everything has to be there for a reason.” It’s a challenge Box, the Edgar Award-winning author of “Blue Heaven” and the series of thrillers featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, has undergone about 10 times in his writing career. That’s the number of stories collected in his latest book, “Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Pickett Country.” The collection includes three stories featuring Pickett and one that focuses on one of the secondary characters in the series, Nate Romanowski. The others range from a tale set in the 1830s, about two trappers who tax each other’s patience, to a story about people trying to smuggle unique microorganisms from the geysers of Yellowstone National Park, to a darkly twisted tale set in Disneyland Paris. “I believe everything you do helps make you better,” Box said. “Writing these stories, which I did over the past 10 years or so, has made me better as a novelist, just as writing the stand-alone novels like ‘Blue Heaven’ has helped me bring a fresh approach to the Pickett stories."...more