Steve Hockensmith's blog

How I Spent My Summer "Vacation"

Michael Connelly, I'm guessing, has a summer home in Baja. Stephen King, I'll bet, has a summer home in the Catskills. And James Patterson, should he so choose, could have summer homes on Cape Cod, the Gulf Coast, the Riviera, the top of the Empire State Building, and Mars. 

Not me. If you want to see my summer home -- which is to say, the place I spent this summer -- click the picture to the right. I'll be spending the first three weeks of September there, too, because I've got a book due September 20, and it's not done yet. You can't see the leg irons under my desk, but trust me: They're there.

I would tell you what book I'm working on, but then I'd have to kill you. Ha ha! Only I'm not joking. The publisher sent me a garrote and a copy of Assassination for Dummies. They are serious. Even if I told you the genre...well, I wouldn't have to kill you, but I'd probably have to maim you pretty badly. So let's just drop the subject now for everyone's sake. 

Here's what I can tell you: It's not just The Novel Which Dare Not Speak Its Name that's been keeping me chained to my PC lately. There's also The Novel Which Shouts Its Name from the Rooftops...which is to say the fifth "Holmes on the Range" mystery, World's Greatest Sleuth!. I just spent the last few days going over the "first-pass pages" (that's publisher lingo for a typeset version of the book), so we're totally on track for a January 18 fadooley ("fadooley" is the word I just made up for "release date"). I've also been trying to set up a few chances to escape this office of mine -- by gnawing through my own leg, if I have to -- and venture out into the real world to meet some of you fine folks. Check out the (still not particularly specific) Steve's Schedule page, and you'll see what I mean.

And then there's the other super-secret project I've got cooking. I haven't had time to make much progress on it yet, but hopefully I'll be able to put up a vague, taunting tease of a post about it one of these days. I'm not sure when I'll have time, though. If I'm going to get the thing done, I'll have to convert my summer home into my autumn home....

My New Mewse

I've never wanted a writing partner. I'm just not the collaborating type. I'm too particular about word choice, too persnickety about style, too stick-up-the-whooha in general.

Today, though, I have a new co-creator, and I love her. It's my birthday, you see, and I just received my second gift. (I got the first -- a bottle of Jim Beam big enough to ensure that my liver won't see another birthday -- last night.) Here's a picture of her.

This is Izzy, named after the much-beloved cat I wrote about a few weeks ago. Izzy II was made by my 7-year-old daughter yesterday at a Build-a-Bear Workshop. She'd gone there to make a birthday bear for herself and was inspired to bring home something for Dad, who was still missing his own furry friend.

And now Izzy II is sitting on the chair in my office that Izzy I used to curl up in when I was working. It's not the same, of course. Izzy I never wore high-tops and glasses, for instance. But that's O.K. It's a birthday -- the day we look back on all we've had, all we've been, all we've lost and can never get back. And, hopefully, we smile.

And if not, at least there's cake. Or Jim Beam.

The Big Izzy

When I started this blog, I wasn't really sure what it was going to be about. One of my characters would pop up to do guest columns from time to time, that much I knew. And I wouldn't be the kind of blogger who posts cute pictures of his cat. No offense to cute-cat-picture posters, but that just wasn't my style.

Well, here we are four and a half years later, and I still don't know what this blog is about, so what the hell? Here's a picture of my cat. Her name was Izzy, and she died last week. I will not subject you to a long appreciation of her. I appreciate her enough without trying to force strangers to join in. Suffice it to say, I thought she was swell, she seemed to think the same of me, and it wasn't easy to say goodbye.

When Izzy first came into my life 17 years ago, a sweet little street cat sauntering into my Chicago apartment like she owned the place, I'd just started down the road that brought me to this very blog -- the blog of a writer who doesn't know what he wants to blog about. At the time, I was a wannabe writer who didn't know what he wanted to write. Funny how some things never change, eh?

My favorite novels back then were Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, but I had a problem if I wanted to emulate them: I was not a psychologically scarred World War II veteran. Damn! Growing up, I'd read a lot of science fiction, so not long after Izzy moved in, I decided to give SF a try. By the time she was four or so, I'd figured out I wasn't any good at it...and, worse, I had nothing to say about technology or the future or big-M Mankind or any of the other things science fiction reflects on best. I don't give Izzy any of the credit for this insight -- she never took much of an interest in my literary aspirations -- but at least she was always up for a consoling cuddle when the latest rejection from Asimov's arrived.

Fortunately, as my SF phase was winding down, I had a stroke of luck. There I was asking myself "What the hell should I be writing about?" and I finally, finally got around to reading Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. And there was the answer to my question. Just write about people. Just write about their flaws and their problems and their personalities. And, sure, make up some dark, mysterious who-ha to make those flaws and problems extra interesting. Throw those personalities into wild, unpredictable situations. But people -- that's all it really takes. And if you want to, you even can be funny while you're at it!

So I started writing mysteries. And they sucked...for about six months. Then I wrote a story called "Erie's Last Day," and everything finally clicked into place. It was about this guy. Not a super-extraordinary guy. Just a lonely widower going through the motions on his last day as a cop. And he meets some interesting, sad people and tries to figure out what he's feeling and, oh yeah, he solves a mystery.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine bought the story. It won an award, I'm proud to say. Years later, it turned up in a couple anthologies. It was my first published mystery, and I still think it's one of the best things I've ever written. It's just about people, you see. Their lives.

And their cats. Because cats can be an important part of a person's world, and Erie meets a cat in my story. A stray he thinks about taking in. A teeny black furball he finds himself worrying about when he should be thinking about other, supposedly more important things.

That was Izzy. When it came time to connect myself to the everyday world of an everyday guy -- the things that might make him stop for a moment and think and care -- I turned to her. She was my little furry muse. And in that way, I hope, she'll live on.