Steve's Web Place

A Pocket Full of Poesy

Steve Hockensmith's accomplished many things over the last couple years. He's enraged me, for instance. Humiliated me on occasion. Shamed me now and again. And confused the heck out of me more times than I can count.

But now he's gone and done something new. He's inspired me.

He's been pulling "poems" out of his "dusty old memory bin," you see. And though at first I would've said he was really pulling said poesy out of his oh-so-kickable ass, I've since changed my mind. Why, in fact, I ended up rooting around in my own memory bin to see if I could produce anything as noteworthy as Hockensmith's verse. And I think succeeded.

To wit:

Pocatello Sundries, June '93

1 pound salt
2 pounds sugar
3 pounds tobacco
4 pounds Arbuckle
5 pounds beans
6 pounds pemmican
7 cans tomatoes
8 red apples
1 box matches
2 boxes .44/.40
New soogan
New Stetson
New Harper's
Any other Holmes we can find

Oh, and yes -- that is a grocery list. But art is where you find it, right?

And I haven't seen any around this here blog in quite a spell.

Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer
July 31, 1893

Pirates of the Appalachias

Did my last post strike any of you as pretentious? I mean, I try to keep things pretty light around here, and then I go and wax high-falutin' and publish an old poem...about downtrodden coal miners?!?

So let's lighten up a bit -- with another "poem" pulled from my dusty old memory bin. But fear not, friends! This one's just a goofy lark from my teen years, when I was reading nothing but Kurt Vonnegut and DC Comics. The falutin' is decidedly low.

Oh, and a quick bit of trivia you'll need to understand the "poem": When I wrote it, I was a junior at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, W.V.

Enjoy!

Or Tolerate!, at least.

Well, whatever you can manage....

Doughnuts of the Gods: An Anthem

I am a pirate
Arrrrrr Arrrrrr
This is pirate talk
"Arrrrr Arrrrr, Cap'n Hook!" we say
"Hoist the main-sails and other sea-manly jargon
Arrrrrr Arrrrrr!"
I am called Bahama Bob
I obey no laws
I answer to
Snowman (Frosty)
My brother is called Bermuda Schwartz
He does not say
Arrrrrr Arrrrrr
He says Awwwww Awwwww
He has a speech impediment
He cannot say Arrrrr for this reason:
My brother has no tongue
He has no tongue for this reason:
When my brother was very small, his tongue was taken
By the Tongue Fairy
There was a quarter under his pillow in the morning
I would call that a fair trade
My brother would not
He would call it a "faiw twade"
Arrrrrr Arrrrrr
As a pirate, I know many tales of the sea
I have seen the edges of the Earth
Where the oceans flow into nothingness
Here is where the end of the world is located:
Bridgeport, West Virginia
No, there is no ocean there
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Steve Hockensmith
July 24, 2007
(By way of March 2, 1985)

The "Poet" Who Didn't Know It

It's not just your stuff you have to pack and unpack when you move into a new house. It's not just your things you bring with you. It's your past, too. Because if you're like me, you've got a lifetime of memories boxed up in the closet, and some of them only get dusted off and remembered again -- lived again -- when you have to figure out which new closet they'll go in next.

So it is that I recently stumbled upon the "poem" below. I throw on those quotes because it's not really a poem at all: It's just a short monologue broken up to look like a poem. But I wrote it for a college poetry class in the long lost year of nineteen and eighty-eight, and the teacher didn't tear it up and throw the bits in my face. I think I even got an A. So I don't know...maybe it is a poem.

Anyway, what I do know is this: The voice sure reminds me of a certain character I wouldn't work with until more than a dozen years later. It's funny to think that, in a way, he was with me back when I was just a confused kid with no earthly idea I'd ever write mysteries, let alone make a living at it.

Maybe the best characters are like that: inside you already, moving with you from place to place. Just waiting for the day you open that box and take them out and let them live.

Moses Paine Stands Up to Speak His Piece
(A Poem to Be Read Aloud in the Voice of Walter Brennan)

You say they've got Reds over in Mingo
Stirrin' up trouble?
Well, they can stir me up like a pot of stew.
I've been on the fire long enough
And I'm fit to boil over.
I've been goin' down into hole after hole
All my life,
Walkin' into a mine white as a cloud
And comin' out black as some old colored slave --
Some days tunnelin' so deep into the earth
I figured we were diggin' our way to Hell.
All of us thinkin' at one time or another,
"This is the day I'm gonna die down here.
This is the day I get to see if Hell is half as bad
As Greenup County."
You folks know how I lost Matthew in The Hole
And how Luke got killed in France
Fightin' in the Great War.
Well, I tell you, they both died for the same thing --
So some fat bastard down in Charleston
Could wipe his ass with silk hankies.
Now that ain't a thing worth livin' or dyin' for
And you all know it.
The next time we fight our way through the blackness
Of some damn dark hole
We oughta be doin' it for ourselves.
So I'm not afraid to walk into this union hole
Whether we got Reds or Greens or Purples
Handin' out the pickaxes.
Cuz this time I know
If I make it out alive
I'll never have to go back down that hole again.

Steve Hockensmith
July 20, 2007

Indecision '07

I've been thinking a lot about my next next book lately.

No, that's not a typo. My next next book -- the book after my next one.

I know what my next book's going to be. My next next next book, too (as in the book after the book after my next one). But my next next I'm not so sure about.

Confused? Let me try to clear things up.

Today, I officially finished the third Big Red/Old Red mystery. (So why I'm sitting here updating the blog instead of hurrying over to Safeway to buy a celebratory four-buck bottle of champagne I couldn't tell you.) And sitting on my desk is a freshly signed contract for the fourth and fifth Big Red/Old Red mysteries. I already know what the plots of these will be, in a broad brush stroke kind of way. What I'm not so sure about is the novel I'm hoping to start between #4 and #5.

After I turn #4 in to my editor, you see, I'll probably have a nice stretch of down-time before I get his notes. I'd like to get something rolling while I'm waiting -- something I can write quickly because (hopefully) I'll have been planning it months in advance. It should be completely different, completely new. Not Big Red and Old Red. Not historical (or set in the 19th century West, anyway). Heck, maybe not even a mystery.

And that's all I know about it. I mean, I've got ideas. Whoa, baby -- do I ever have ideas. Too many, in fact. That's part of the problem. If I only had one...well, there you go. But I've got five or six, and I can't decide which one to commit to.

Should it be the wacky-ass comedy/crime caper? The satirical post-modern thriller? The romantic comedy/whodunit? The radical re-imagining of a crime fiction icon? The noirish coming-of-age story? The gay erotica fantasy epic?

I like all these ideas. (Well, some more than others. Gay erotica fantasy epics have become such a cliché, don't you think?) But which one should I commit to? I can't decide.

Which is where you come in. "Give the people what they want," The Kinks once said. And who am I to argue with the guys who gave the world "Lola"?

So I'm asking: What do you want from me? And please don't say "money." That I can't give the people. I've barely got enough for me.

I'm talking book-wise. You've read Holmes on the Range and On the Wrong Track...I hope. (If you haven't, shame on you! Get thee to a bookstore and purchase those puppies pronto!) What would you like to see me tackle next?

A comedy? A thriller? A chiller? A Phyllis Diller? A cat mystery? A dog mystery? A wombat mystery? A Harlequin romance?

Tell me. Please.

Because a mind is a terrible thing to waste...and when it comes to what I should do next next, mine's just about shot.

Steve Hockensmith
July 9, 2007