Steve Hockensmith's blog

Hot Flashes

As anyone who's seen my office knows, upkeep is not my forte. My motto when it comes to cleaning: "Why do today what you can do tomorrow? In fact, are you really sure you want to do it then? Wouldn't you rather finish watching UHF on Netflix?"

I know. It's a long motto.

I'm almost as slovenly when it comes to digital housekeeping. An example: This blog is updated every Monday morning at 8 a.m. PST, although sometimes it's Monday night, plus approximately every other Monday is skipped, and some Mondays become Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays, depending on how interested I am in whatever it is I'm watching on Netflix at the time.

But today I'm being a good doobie (although it isn't even Monday morning) because there's news to share.

News Flash #1: As announced last week, my 99 cent short story collection My Dog Needs Surgery is going to a new home in the country on March 1. It'll be much happier out there, believe me. It'll have fresh air and all that room to run around and animals to play with and...what's that? Can you go visit it sometime? Uhhhh, no. Farmer Brown...um...has leprosy. Sorry. So say goodbye to your little pal. You'll never see him again. Of course, if you want to buy a copy of your very own, you can still do so here, here or here. For now. UPDATE #1: It's done. My Dog is gone. So now everyone who bought a copy has a collector's item. Assuming a mobi file can be "collected."

News Flash #2: My other e-collections, Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime and Dear Mr. Holmes: Seven Holmes on the Range Mysteries, aren't going anywhere, but they will be getting more expensive. As of March 1, the Amazon price will rise from $2.99 to $3.99, while the print version of Dear Mr. Holmes will go from $9.99 to $11.99. (The prices have already gone up on Smashwords and the Barnes & Noble website.) So if you've got a Kindle and you want some good, cheap reading before it gets slightly less cheap, act now. UPDATE #2: Well, the joke's on me, because as soon as I raised the prices to $3.99 and $11.99, Amazon discounted the titles back to $2.99 and $8.99. Which means that the Dear Mr. Holmes paperback is now cheaper than it was before. Stock up now for Christmas, folks....

News Flash #3: The audiobook for my novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After has been nominated for an Audie Award in the Fantasy category!Thank you, Audio Publishers Association! And thank you, narrator/voice actor/genius Katherine Kellgren! Unfortunately, Katherine's up against Cousin Balki, so I'm not sure if we'll take home the award. Cross your fingers for us, folks. UPDATE #3: We haven't been un-nominated! Yippee! I know that's not much of an "update," but I just couldn't stop at two.

News Flash #4: If you're not already sick of me by this point, maybe you've got the stomach to read a whole interview with me. A lovely one was recently posted here. You do want to learn the secret connection between Holmes on the Range and obsessive lighthouse fetishists, don't you? REAL UPDATE #3: After writing my fake update, I stumbled upon some actual news. (Well, if a newly posted interview with me can be considered "news".) You can click here to go to the Book Equals website, where I answer questions about the future of the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies saga.

News Flash #5: New York singer-songwriter-Paul Robeson impersonator-tuba player Sam Kulik has set one of my old poems to music. You can experience his rendition of "So You Want to Be a Slug" here. I get a big kick out of it, but you should probably keep in mind that one of my favorite movies is Eraserhead.

News Flash #6: I'm all out of News Flashes.

The Book That Wasn't There

It's Old Yeller time, friends. I'm putting a book out of its misery.

At the end of the month, My Dog Needs Surgery is going to the big bookstore in the sky. A collection of stories and essays, it was, in concept, a cheap and easy way to raise money for my dog, who needs expensive knee surgery. In reality, it was neither cheap (thanks to the formatting and cover) nor easy. It was just a big mistake. A series of big mistakes, actually.

Mistake #1: The concept (or lack of same)
"I'll just slap a bunch of stuff together and sell it" does not a cohesive collection make. The book needed a unifying theme beyond You wanna help a cute little doggie, don't you?. In fact, at least one person seems to have been offended by the blatant fundraising angle: The book received an anonymous, reviewless one-star rating on barnesandnoble.com the day after it went on sale. Another irate consumer trashed the book on Goodreads because it wasn't actually about, you know, dog surgery. That this individual had purchased the book without reading the product description or any of the reviews seems to have been my fault.

Mistake #2: The title
I know. I've written about this before. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. I suppose it really was my fault that some poor schmoe with a sick pooch downloaded the book thinking it would include tips on giving a schnauzer a soothing post-operative bath. I was going for so-blunt-it's-funny. I got so-obtuse-it's-useless. Since putting out My Dog Needs Surgery, I've become much, much more aware of the importance of Amazon recommendations. Someone buys one of your old books, you want them to buy your new one, right? But what's a casual reader -- someone who stumbles across my mystery novels because they like Sherlock Holmes, say -- going to make of CUSTOMERS WHO BOUGHT THIS ALSO BOUGHT MY DOG NEEDS SURGERY? Nothing, that's what. Meaning they'll skim right over it and click on Sherlock Holmes and the Flying Zombie Death Monkeys instead.

Mistake #3: The price
I've written about this, too. Not only is 99 cents a good deal for a collection, it's too good a deal. From the author's perspective, anyway. I went with 99 cents because (A) it seemed like what you'd stuff in a collection jar on a feel-good whim and (B) I thought it might attract some of those Amazon bargain lovers who occasionally descend on a title like a great swarm of prose-devouring locusts. Didn't happen. So the book limped along earning pizza money each month when I needed serious vet money.

Which is why as of March 1, My Dog Needs Surgery is turning back into a pumpkin. Or a file on my hard drive, anyway. I'm going to remove it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. People talk a lot about how easy it is to put out a book these days, but the opposite is true, too. Click click click, and you can make a book go poof.

The stories I'll rearrange and repackage and repromote. Stay tuned. The essays...aww, screw the essays. Who buys essays?

I want to thank all the fine folks who gave the book a boost with online reviews. (Well, except you, anonymous one-star schmuck and "Why isn't there a chapter on pre-surgery shaving?" lady.) Your efforts weren't in vain. Amy still hasn't had her surgery, but you helped pay for many a bag of Beneful. If you come back to help out when I try this again, that dog'll surely have her day after all.

The Sound of Music

Sometimes, I think I'd give it all up -- the books, the short stories, the contract, the nominations, everything I've accomplished as a writer -- if I could only write one "Tempted." Or a "Once in a Lifetime." Or even half of a "Back on the Chain Gang." Hell, even one-eighth of a slab of gouda like "Viva Las Vegas." Crank that sucker up, man -- it rocks!

I believe in the power of the written word to reach out and touch people. I have to. It's my job. And I've been touched so many ways by so many different writers.

No, no -- not like that! I don't mean groped! (Though there was that time Mary Higgins Clark got a little frisky after a few too many Bouchercon "pick me ups"....)

But here's the thing about short stories and books: For them to touch you, move you, make you feel something, you've gotta read the damn things. Usually all the way through to the end! Geez!

A song, on the other hand, can grab you anwhere, anytime, instantly. One chorus, one bar, one note of "Sex Machine" and you're grinning and shaking your money maker...even if you're French!

And a song can mess with your head and heart without even using words. Just listen to anything off "Kind of Blue" if you don't believe me. Or give "Gymnopedies" a try. Or "The Hustle."

(Just kidding there, folks. Please, don't try "The Hustle." It only messes with you in a "Dear God...why is it still in my head? Make it stooooooooop!" sort of way. Kinda makes you wonder if they play it every morning for the prisoners down in Gitmo.)

I got to thinking about all this -- not "The Hustle," necessarily, but the power of music -- a while back when I thought of a blog post (now lost to the ever-shifting sands of the Interwebs) by the lovely and talented Louise Ure. Louise was writing about great story-songs, and I certainly have my faves. (To name but a few, because I can't resist: Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree," Madness' "Shut Up" and "Cardiac Arrest," " The Sugarcubes' "Motorcrash" and that great love story for the ages, The Kinks' "Lola").

But darn those musicians. They get all the chicks and they can stir your soul WHILE MAKING NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. I mean "Brilliant Mistake" is a beautiful piece of poetry with some very clever lines indeed, but it doesn't exactly hang together as a narrative. The mood of the music and Elvis Costello's delivery -- that's what makes it work.

(Man, I'm really dating myself with these examples, aren't I? Please, someone, drag us into the 21st century with some analysis of a Lady Gaga song, would you?)

For me, writing is such a struggle I can't even listen to music while I'm working. My brain can't multi-task like that: one half humming along to Neko Case (Hey! I did it! I referenced a musician who isn't eligible to join AARP!) while the other agonizes over the best way to describe a horse or a guy picking up a gun or an elf eating ice cream or whatever the hell it is I'm trying to get on paper. I do sometimes have to put on earphones and crank the mp3 player up to 11 -- I have a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old, you know. But it's always the same track: a 45-minute-long collection of soothing, tuneless New Age noodlings with no vocals or melody or hooks to mess with my head. I may as well be listening to 45 minutes of static.

I tried to change that once. Fitzgerald liked to write drunk. Hunter S. Thompson liked to write (and everything else) buzzed on booze and goofballs and Drano and I don't even know what. And me, I wrote much of The Crack in the Lens, the fourth "Holmes on the Range" mystery, under the influence of Bernard Herrmann.

I was going for something darker and moodier than previous entries in the series, so I listened obsessively to Herrmann's scores for North by Northwest and Cape Fear and Psycho. I wanted to capture in words the obsession and madness Herrmann brought to life with his music for Vertigo. I wanted to steal a little of the sweaty panic of On Dangerous Ground. Hell, even Herrmann's score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is beautifully wistful and sad, and I tried to soak up that vibe and get it on the page.

Did I succeed? Probably not. The Crack in the Lens might be the grittiest "Holmes on the Range" novel, but it's still a "Holmes on the Range" novel. I wanted Herrmann, but my narrator was more at home with "Yakety Sax."

Still, I'm hoping one day a reader tells me that when he or she got to the part where [SPOILER ALERT!] Big Red watches the bad guy's private library of books burn up and fly into the sky as swirling embers and ash [END SPOILER ALERT!] the picture it brought to mind was [SUPER SPOILER ALERT!] the last three shots of Citizen Kane. Because that's what I was aiming for.

Sure, I'll never whip up a "Viva Las Vegas." But if I've created something that's worthy of music -- worthy of a Bernard Herrmann score, for instance -- truly that would be sweet music to my ears.