News That's Not Fit to Print

Remember that cliffhanger from my last post? The one about big news? Well, I'm afraid you'll have to dangle off that cliff a little longer: I've been told not to announce anything yet. Psych!

In the meantime, here's what I can talk about: the Q&A with yours truly on Rich Prosch's Meridian Bridge blog and James Reasoner's kind words about Holmes on the Range over on his blog, Rough Edges. Both are flattering indeed...so of course I want everyone in the world to see them. Starting with you.

So follow those links, true believers, then forward them to all your friends and family and enemies and strangers and pets. They'll be glad you did. Or they'll mark it as spam and never get another e-mail you send them, who knows?

Hey, another cliffhanger! Happy hanging!

Steve Hockensmith
May 19, 2009

Update: No, I still can't talk about The Big News. But part two of my Q&A with Rich Prosch can be found here. If you wanna know how I plan a book, why I haven't been writing any short stories lately and how YOU can become rich rich rich through the magic of real estate, then check it out!

Updated Update: Only don't expect to see anything about real estate.

Updated Updated Update: The links just keep comin'! You can go here to read a short Q&A I did with Publishers Weekly or here to see a lovely review of On the Wrong Track just added to the Western Fiction Review blog.

News on the March

I know it's been a little quiet around here lately, news-wise. So plug your ears, folks. I'm about to strike up the band. There's so much to trumpet I can't even get to it all into one post.

The cavalcade kicked off yesterday when I got a terrifying e-mail from Crafty Keith Kahla, my editor at St. Martin's Minotaur. It was actually good news, but I didn't know that at first. All I saw when I checked my Yahoo account was this subject header: "THE CRACK IN THE LENS/PW."

Context: The Crack in the Lens is the new "Holmes on the Range" mystery, due out July 21; PW is slang for Publishers Weekly, one of the most influential sources for pre-release book reviews.

Inference: Keith had seen the PW review for the new book.

Emotional response (being, as my wife likes to call me, "Mr. Worst Case Scenario"): EAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHHH!

But no "EAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHHH!" was necessary. It was a Best Case Scenario. PW didn't just like the book, they starred it -- the publishing world equivalent of an A++ at the top of your spelling test. Here's what they said, redacted for reasons of national security:

The Crack in the Lens: A 'Holmes on the Range' Mystery by Steve Hockensmith
Set in 1893, a few weeks after the events of 2008's The Black Dove, Hockensmith's excellent fourth mystery to feature Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer and his older brother, Gustav (a.k.a. "Old Red"), takes them to San Marcos, Tex. The laconic Old Red, whose life took an unexpected turn after his brother introduced him to the deductive methods of Sherlock Holmes, reveals that SPOILER. The pair's efforts to investigate put them at odds with SPOILER as well as the law. The brothers discover that SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. The personal stake Old Red has in catching the murderer adds an emotional dimension to the puzzle, which Edgar-finalist Hockensmith nicely leavens with witty prose and cliffhanging chapter endings.

The only downside is it's not super-blurby: All I can pick out of it for BSP purposes is "excellent...witty." But hey -- a star's a star!

And not only is Crack out of the gate with a lovely first review, at long last we know what the thing's going to look like. This morning, Keith's assistant Canny Kathleen Conn sent me a jpg for the final cover art. (An early mock cover has been drifting around the Internet, but that version actually got the heave ho months ago.) Click on it to check it out for yourself.

As fun as all that is, though, Crack has to share the limelight with one of its elder siblings. The Black Dove, you see, comes out in trade paperback tomorrow, and it's being given a warm welcome indeed by Rich Prosch over on his Meridian Bridge blog. Not only does Rich have some very kind things to say about the book, he'll be posting a two-part interview with yours truly in the near future. So stay tuned.

And as if taking over someone else's blog for a few days wasn't enough, I recently learned that I've taken over an entire site, permanently...without even trying! "Holmes on the Range" supporter extraordinaire Matthew Szewczyk has taken it upon himself to create his very own Big Red Amlingmeyer fan site. And he's done a bang-up job, I must say: Not only is his website easier to navigate than mine, Matthew's a heck of a lot better about posting news and such than I am. With me you get mega info-dumps like this every once in a blue moon, whereas Matthew's site looks like it's being updated at a nice, steady, orderly pace.

Kudos, Matthew -- you've beat me at my own game. But I hope to scoop you soon, dude. Seems there's one more update I didn't have room for this time around, and it's a doozy. Stick around, kids, and you just might learn what it is by the end of the week.

Heh heh. Doncha just love those cliffhanging endings?

Steve Hockensmith
May 11, 2009

The First Picture Show

I didn't get an Atari 2600 until two years after the 5200 came out. The only reason I finally threw out my Brother word processor and bought a PC was so I could play Star Trek: Judgement Rites. I was still a dial-up AOL subscriber after my parents switched to DSL, and I still wouldn't have a cell phone if my mom hadn't bought me one. And I haven't started Tweeting yet, either, but the day I do...? That's the day Twitter officially moves from Hot to Not.

Early adopting just isn't my thing. I'm the guy who was still looking for bargains on a nice surrey with the fringe on top when everyone else was whizzing around in their new Model Ts. Which is why it was February of this year before I finally got off my butt and bought a scanner...and why three months went by before I hooked the thing up.

But hooked up it was, as of last night. Whether I could get it to work was another matter entirely.

So when it came time for my maiden scan, what did I slap onto the...uhhhh...glass-covered scanning thingamajig? A picture of Big Red and Old Red, that's what! And I'm not talking about the cover of one of my books.

A few weeks back, Rich Prosch dropped by the site (follow the link and scroll down -- you'll see it) to ask if I had anyone in mind when I described the Amlingmeyer brothers. My answer was yes -- but it wasn't actors or acquaintances I was thinking of. It was a couple pictures I'd seen years before, photographs of obscure, forgotten men who just happened to fit my image of the guys to a T. And lo and behold, today I was able to find them again.

My friends, meet Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer. (Click the pic for an in-your-face close-up.) Apparently, these young gents were Wells Fargo guards, once upon a time. (That's why they're carrying enough artillery to blow away the entire Wild Bunch.) Now, the guy with the mustache doesn't quite have Old Red's face (more on that in a moment), and the slick-looking dandified dude is about 5% more handsome and 10% slimmer and trimmer than Big Red. But the two of them sitting there side by side? When I saw them, I knew they were a team -- one it'd be fun to write about or read about, either or. And since no one else was going to write about them, so far as I knew, that left it to me.

The more I got to know the Amlingmeyers, however, the more it became obvious that first picture didn't quite capture their essence. "Big Red" looked suitably smug, but where was his wink? And "Old Red" didn't have nearly enough...character, I guess you could call it.

This guy, on the other hand, has got character up the yingyang. Never mind that he's wearing a suit and tie, never mind that he actually looks kind of happy. Those elephant ears, that sharp nose, that forehead jutting up like the Rock of Gibraltar? That's Old Red Amlingmeyer. (Who the man really is, I have no idea. I simply saw his picture in a book and copied it.)

Of course, just because this is what Big Red and Old Red look like to me doesn't mean it's what they have to look like to you. Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade had blond hair, but the rest of us picture Humphrey Bogart. Ian Fleming thought James Bond looked like Hoagy Carmichael, of all people, but as far as I'm concerned 007 will always be Sean Connery. Heck, I just read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I don't know what Jane Austen had in mind (other than no zombies), but Darcy was Colin Firth to me even when he was decapitating "manky dreadfuls."

So hey -- if you picture Andy Warhol as Old Red and Magilla Gorilla as Big Red, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. As long as anyone's picturing the guys at all, I'm happy....

Steve Hockensmith
May 4, 2009

P.S.: On second thought, I'm taking back the Andy Warhol part. Man, that's just plain creepy.