Carew Papritz - Award-Winning Author, The Legacy Letters

Carew Papritz

Carew Papritz, also known as The Cowboy Philosopher, is the author of the multi-award winning book The Legacy Letters.

Though fictional, The Legacy Letters has won acclaim as a life lessons book for all generations, gaining the distinction of being the only book in publishing history to win awards in both fiction and non-fiction categories. A Renaissance Man in an age that lauds the specialist, The Huffington Post says Papritz "intrigues and enlightens, charms and catalyzes change for every reader."    

Papritz is one of the most innovative authorpreneurs of the 21st century, having been compared to the likes of Elon Musk in his approach to book marketing. What makes him so successful? With a background in Hollywood filmmaking, Papritz understands the art of drama and showmanship. To promote his book The Legacy Letters, he created numerous dynamic and attention-grabbing publicity stunts which were whimsical, fun, and most importantly...effective.  From his unique series of "First Ever" book signings---on top of volcanoes, on horseback, while river-rafting, in post-Castro Cuba, and on Amtrak-- to his annual literacy-driven charity event, “The Great Book Balloon Launch," Papritz is making waves and making an impact in his industry by being an advocate for literacy and teaching future generations about the importance of legacies.

I’m so excited for you guys to connect with Carew, check out his work and book, and follow along as he continues to provide life lessons about the importance of leaving a footprint for future generations and why identifying key reasons for any goal you set will guide you to success. 

I'd love it if you'd introduce yourself, what you do, and what you're working on.

My name is Carew Papritz.  I’m a father, husband, and an author. My most recent work—The Legacy Letters—has won multiple national awards, also becoming the first book in publishing history to win awards in both fiction and non-fiction categories.  

(A quick synopsis:  A father, who would never live to see his kids, leaves behind for them a series of practical, moral, and spiritual letters on how to live life. )

My love of promoting literacy for kids through books and videos generated my “First-Ever Book Signing Series in which I sign books on top of volcanoes, horses, glaciers, and more . . . This love of literacy continues with my“I Love to Read”Series. These short videos inspiring kids to laugh, think, and even read have generated close to 2 million views.  

Recently, as a way to promote more kindness, civility, and gratitude in the world, I createdNational Thank You Letter Day.  Thinking that we really needed something spectacular to help bring this message to the world, kids from our local elementary school helped to create the world’s largest thank you letter, envelope, and stamp.  The letter and envelope are the size of a gym and the stamp is 15 x 20 feet.  (In the process, we are hoping to break several Guinness World Records too.)

At every step of the day, week, month, and year,  I try to walk and talk the central message of The Legacy Letters—to live life to the fullest!

How did you get started?

A few years ago, I came to the surprising conclusion that my entire life was spent preparing to write, The Legacy Letters.To live my life as a series of great tests of the spirit. To see and explore the world with a fierce and undying curiosity.  To be, at all costs, a Renaissance Man, ever fascinated by the human condition, and chronicling it in all its endless variations.

From being born in Yosemite National Park and living the first year of my life in a tent cabin to appearing on the TV show, Romper Room, at the age of 5; to winning my first national writing contest in 6th grade, writing my first novel at 16, and then publishing two bestselling editorial cartoon anthologies at the ages of 19 and 21; I never stopped being curious about everything.

This curiosity has led me to be a ski patrolman, tour bus driver, river raft guide, and a bartender. Attending school in Norway, I trained and raced with members of the Norwegian Junior Olympic cross-country ski team (in hopes of making the US Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team—I didn’t).  As a freelance journalist, I reported on the war in Lebanon and on the riots in Los Angeles.   

Never one to let the grass grow under my feet, I ended up getting my degree in filmmaking from UCLA film school, worked on music videos (such as Madonna & REM), really low-budget movies, forgettable TV shows, never-seen commercials, and eventually the big league—feature films. (I even got to work with Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp—a name-dropping highpoint in the LA chapter of my life).  I witnessed as OJ Simpson was driven past me on the 405 freeway, chronicled the LA Riots, and watched Rosanne Barr get married, being her bartender.

Fate, and that never-ending curiosity, inspired me to leave behind his career as a filmmaker in Hollywood and, “return” to my ranching roots where I worked as a cowboy on a ranch in the Southwest.  Here, on the back of my pickup, I began writing The Legacy Letters.  Eventually, I “wrangled” the woman who would become my wife.”  We were married on horseback while a bagpiper played (and yes, we did ride off into the sunset . . .)  And then with the finishing of my book, came the birth of my son and another new chapter to begin.

What inspired the work that you're doing?

The inspiration behind The Legacy Letters?— I had an early mid-life crisis (best to have them early!).  What I needed was the opportunity to take my soul out for a long, long walk.  While working in Hollywood on feature films in the art department, I realized that the celluloid bright-lights lifestyle I was living was making me materially richer but spiritually depleted.  The long journey back to reclaim my soul began with a series of “drive-abouts” throughout the Western United Sates and ended up in a small bar in Southern Arizona.  I asked an old cowboy if there was any work nearby and he told me about a fencing job “far from the heck and gone.” 

Thirty miles by dirt road and with not a house in sight, I ended up at my job on the open range putting up post holes and barbed wire fence—mostly alone and for days on end.  Twenty-five years had gone by since I had last seriously picked up the pen, and like a God-given divining rod, that pen roared back to life.  For six months, I worked by day, washing in a horse trough, cooking by campfire, and living in a tent. At night, I wrote by lantern light on the back of my pickup.

In a sense, I had come full circle.  When I was growing up, my grandfather had a small ranch in Washington State. And now, here I was, back on a ranch, working as a cowboy in the high mountains of the Great Sonoran Desert.  Imagine a place where the stars are so bright at night that they almost hurt your eyes.  Imagine not seeing a soul for days on end.  Imagine what true quiet is—the noise of wind and rain, coyotes and birds, grass rustling and the chink of the pickaxe against the hard soil.   

I had come back “home” to write this book.  This is where I reclaimed my soul and began the lifeI was always supposed to live—but never knew quite how to find.  Only by giving up the security of everything I knew could I then begin to discover everything I was meant to know.  The Legacy Letters was the genesis of this amazing journey that I am continuing, even to this present day.

What is your biggest passion? Do you feel like you're living your passion and purpose?

To move people with my words--to help them think more openly, love more deeply, live life more fully—and somewhere in between it all, find every reason to laugh, enjoy, and embrace.

But to move people with words, to really be a writer, I live by mymaxim:  “Heart first, hammer second.”

If you write what you love, you then must translate this love into words—and that is the craft of writing.  You can have all the heart in the world but if you don’t have the craft—the ability to translate emotions and ideas into words—then forget being a writer. 

And the craft is tough—the rewriting, rewriting, and more rewriting to discover the perfect balance of words, clarity, and emotion. And craft takes time.  More time than you would ever imagine to really become a good writer.  What do you ultimately owe your audience?  Your mastery of the craft of wielding words that excite, move, and inspire your readers.

And when you write a wisdom-giving book that wisdom better be worth reading.  It better be told in a way that is fresh and fascinating otherwise your wisdom-giving quickly becomes wisdom-garbage.  Only after being neck deep in the thickets of my writing The Legacy Letters did I realize what a wisdom-giving problem I created for myself and consequently had to solve.Every word, sentence, paragraph had to work their magic.  I wanted the reader to crave every single line in The Legacy Letters and make them want to read it again. And every letter had to be believable, beautiful, moving, and most importantly, timeless.

When you look at any great painting, it contains time. When you figure out how to weave time throughout your work, you’ve really begun to learn about timelessness, which is for any artist one of the holy grails of creating.  With the writing of The Legacy Letters, I began to deeply understand how difficult it was to create timelessness with words and how wondrous it was when I could achieve it.

Yet, what was most transformational for me was the response from readers on how the book had changed their lives—and thus changed mine.  I was no longer an author.  Now I was a listener, learning how people were changing because of my words—and being moved because of this change.

I remember . . .  a few years ago, at a bookstore signing, I offered a mother and her son a first-of-a-kind guarantee—that if they read one page of my book, I’d guarantee they would turn to the next page.  Even though the boy was on this cell phone, I asked him to read it too.  They both read and they both turned the pages. The mother was so delighted with what she read she took four books to purchase.  After she left to buy them, her son continued to read.  Now it was my turn to be surprised . . .  I confessed to him that I thought he would never read a page.  I asked him why he kept reading.  He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I don’t have a father.  I wish the guy in this book was my dad.”

I remember receiving a letter from a doctor who confided to me that she had been secretly looking for letters from her father that he might have left behind for her after his suicide twenty years ago.  She was looking for life letters, she said, not a suicide note.  She then wrote to tell me that she had finally found some closure and peace in her life because she had found her father’s letters—and that she had “found” them in The Legacy Letters.

Last year I met this salesman at a local furniture store where we had a wonderful conversation about life, family, and work.  I told him about my book, and he said he’d love to read it.  A year later I received an e-mail from his daughter.  She told how her father, the furniture salesman, had loved The Legacy Letters so much that he had bought copies for all his sons and daughters to read.  She told me how he kept a copy on his nightstand that was underlined with all the passages he loved.  She then informed me that her father had recently passed away in his sleep and was holding a copy of the book in his hands.

What is your joy blueprint? What lights you up, brings you joy, and makes you feel the most alive?

When you leave the everyday world to become the lone cowboy on a desolate ranch in the high mountains of the Sonoran Desert, you begin to realize what it means to really live life to its fullest.  The solitude, the “aloneness,” teaches you about yourself in the most fundamental way imaginable.  And when you write about the most essential practical, moral, and spiritual issues in one’s life, with words that must contain the deepest of emotions and wisdom and humility, you cannot help but be changed by the experience.   And when you write about these thoughts and feelings and meditations—for years—you have to be passionate and driven, and even fated to finish what you started.

I remember when I was fourteen years old, I made a decision that I wanted to lead the most adventurous life I could.  Every decision I made in my life since then was based upon that decision.  But as I grew older, I found that the adventure was more a passion.  That what I really wanted, and could only understand as an adult, was that living life to the fullest every day of my life was my truest calling to myself.   And that the writing of The Legacy Letters was to eventually be my calling card to the world to live that life.

How do you live intentionally? Are there tools/resources/practices that you rely on to help you stay mindful and grounded?

I’ve really thought long and hard these last years about the meaning of legacy.  I’ve never been satisfied with just the “leaving behind” philosophy of it.  That’s why I choose to think of legacy as how you live now.

Sometimes I will talk to groups about “the regret” test.  Imagine that you are now 95 years old and are looking back at your life.  What regrets would you have?  And now imagine being your age at this moment and watching the beginning of these-regrets-to-be.  That’s a wake-up call to change your life.  To get living now!  At the end of this game called life, you better have more delights than you do regrets.  

So, live your legacy now.  It’s not just capturing the moments in your life but creating the moments. Creating “Legacy Moments.”  Moments that contain the deepest of meaning, happiness, and thoughtfulness.  And by creating these moments, we once again become true to ourselves.  These moments can be as small as smelling a flower after a summer rainstorm or as amazing as holding hands with your lover atop the Eiffel Tower.We forget how easy it is to create meaning in our lives.  It’s so easy and doesn’t cost a thing except to make a decision. And that decision is to live your life to the fullest.  

And when you stack up enough of these “legacy moments,” you will have created a legacy life.  A life truly worth living and a life truly remembered as well lived. 

My greatest personal legacy is to “walk my talk” for my son, my wife, and for those that read my words.  I do try, every day and every moment to live my book—and my life—to the fullest.

What would your younger self think about what you're doing now?

I would give him a big pat on the back and an even bigger thank you for staying true to himself for all these years.”

Do you have a go-to mantra or affirmation?

“You can’t hit the bullseye until you shoot the arrow.”

What is your biggest dream?

I live it right now!  To try and fully live every moment as if it were my last.  What dream could be bigger?

One of my favorite letters from the book is one of the last.  It’s called “Dream like your old man.”  I just re-read a few passages that reminded me of what it means to dream . . .

Dream bravely.  Forget the gods and face your fears.  Don't let little terrors hobble you like a bunch of gremlins manacled to your ankles, constantly nipping and biting at you.  Find fearlessness inside of you. Dare, and fear will falter.  Challenge, and fear will flee.  This is the beginning to your dream-making.      

Become the dream-farer.  You are only here now, and then you are gone.  So be hungry.  Hunger toward beauty.  Hunger toward love.  Hunger toward the unimaginable and unthinkable.  Be bulldogged and tigerish toward your dream.  Bite off  Jupiter and then ask for Saturn.  And fall.  Fall hard.  Tumble to the ground earth-headfirst.  Pick yourself up again and again, brush off the dirt and the dirt roads, and push yourself through walls and walk through fires just for the hell of it, and all reasons and none.

So begin now.  Move fast and furiously toward your destiny.  All galloping body and heaving lungs, all aching to break free. Dash yourself forward into the arms of destiny, laden with dreams and drunk with hope.  For destiny needs you to dream.  It has no other purpose.

Dream with intention.  Like the poet-king and song-queen who must both create and protect their dreams.  Pour yourself into the molten metal of your own forge.  Become solid and strong.  Then be like a juggernaut that has no brakes.

Dream young.  Don't settle for old—for to be old is to be superstitious and without curiosity and always questioning faith.  And be ferocious in your dreaming—run like a sun's explosion, and skip across bluing waves, and dance upon tips of swan feathers.

Dream to the stars and to more stars and to all and every damn star in the whole Big Banging, grandiloquential, damn-fool mass and maze of desire and never-ending chance and fate that operates under the guise known as the universe.  It's all yours, my darlings.

Now Dream.  

To learn more about Carew and his work check out his website www.thelegacyletters.com and https://nationalthankyouletterday.com/ on Facebook @carewpapritzofficialpage Instagram @carewpapritz Twitter @carewpapritz YouTube @CarewTube and you can find his book on Amazon here

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