Remember When Brooks and Dunn Wrote a Book?

Brooks and Dunn are one of the most successful country music duos of all time, but did you know they're also published authors?

As improbable as it might seem, the chart-topping duo took a detour from their music in 2008, when they released a book titled The Adventures of Slim and Howdy.

The idea went all the way back to the beginning of their career.

"When Ronnie and I were first getting together and really having fun with that first album, Brand New Man, we were sitting around talking about what we liked about albums growing up," Kix Brooks tells Billboard. "And we both had the whole liner notes deal in common. So we thought, 'Let's get a little adventure story going here and give people something to read.'"

Over the course of the next few albums, the pair created alter egos named Slim (Ronnie Dunn) and Howdy (Brooks). They talked about the possibility of doing a Christmas book, but the idea didn't quite come together until William Morris approached them about doing a book.

The musicians came up with the characters, and worked with writer Bill Fitzhugh on the manuscript. According to Amazon, the book "follows lanky, laconic Slim and romantic, goofy Howdy as the two troubadours ramble around the Texas honky-tonk circuit ... The boys land a steady gig at a roadhouse in Del Rio until its owner is kidnapped and ransomed. With no shortage of suspects, the boys follow the trail into the Mexican desert, where a zany cast of bad guys gathers for the boffo final shootout."

"We didn't want them to be Dukes of Hazzard silly," Brooks says of the characters. "We wanted them to be that kind of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid smile -- [not] too heavy, but at the same time [with] a good sense of humor."

Though the book is mostly an interesting footnote to Brooks and Dunn's stellar recording and touring career, the fans who have read it evidently loved it; readers gave it a perfect five out of five stars on Amazon.