Episode Details

EP 2-8 SAM LIGHTNER

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup. I'm your host, Wendy Corr. And our job here at Cowboy State Daily, and particularly at The Roundup, is to highlight and focus on really interesting people in the Cowboy State.

I am so remiss in the fact that I have not read our guest today, I have not read his books, but I vow to remedy that as soon as we are off of this recording, because Sam Lightner has written and experienced more in his lifetime than most of us could even dream of.

And I am so pleased to have Sam Lightner as the guest on The Roundup today. He's been suggested by several people to say, Hey, have you gotten Sam Lightner on the podcast yet? We're making sure that we get Sam on the podcast right now.

So Sam Lightner, direct from Lander Wyoming, it is so good to have you on the podcast today, Sam! Welcome.

Sam Lightner:

That's really good to be here. That was, that was quite a, quite an opening for me there. So a lot to live up to already.

Wendy Corr:

Well, you already have, oh my gosh! Again, I feel so bad because I've not read your work, but I have read enough about your work to know that the experiences that you've had are experiences that are very rare for somebody who grew up in Wyoming, a Wyoming native who grew up here.

But you have gone out and you've experienced the world, one mountain at a time. And I really think that that's a perfect way to say that, because that's how you began your career and your professional journey. Is that valid?

Sam Lightner:

Yeah, I went on a climbing trip with my friend Mark Newcomb. He's actually a county commissioner over in Jackson now, and he and I had started climbing together when we were kids, we went to elementary, junior high and high school together.

And he was in Asia on a school program, and we decided to meet and go to southern Thailand to climb some rocks we'd seen pictures of, and that's what we went and did.

And I had such an amazing trip, that I got on the airplane, and this was at the start of the first Gulf War, and this is pretty much pre computers, pre laptop computers, for the most part. I sat down with a notebook and just wrote the story of what had just happened on this three week trip, and sure enough, a magazine wanted to pick it up.

And I that's how I became a writer. But if I hadn't been on this climbing trip first, I wouldn't have been inspired to pick up the pen and paper.

Wendy Corr:

And so you, you did you deliberately market your story then to magazines? Is that what you started out doing?

Sam Lightner:

Yeah, I sent it to the climbing magazines, and they liked it. They wanted better photos, so I went back the next year and got more photography done and everything. But yeah, that was basically the launch, and then the rest is history.

Wendy Corr:

And between 9 and 13 books later, here you are, depending on how you count them, here you are. You are a successful author. You've published. You've gone now to self publishing, is that correct?

Sam Lightner:

Yeah, my agent passed away in 2013 and I am trying to get a new agent. The industry's difficult. I'm still, I'm open to it, but it's difficult to. They want you to have 20,000 Instagram followers and stuff like that. Stuff I don't do.

I write, I don't do a lot of promo stuff, and I'm not real good with the new media stuff, and they all kind of expect that, probably because they're not real good at it either.

And thus, yeah, I haven't gotten another agent. So