Steve Hockensmith's blog

Geek Like Me

Some people dream big. They want to be rich. They want to be famous. They want to have sex with the rich and famous. They want to be rich and famous and have sex with the equally rich and famous.

You get the idea.

Me, I dream small: I want to stop feeling like a schmuck.

I've felt like a schmuck pretty much continuously since 1987 -- which was the year I first encountered the term "schmuck." (Hey, I grew up in the Midwest, alright?) Before that, I felt like a "geek." Before that, a "weenie." And before that, I was convinced that I was a complete "poo-poo head."

When one feels like a schmuck, geek, weenie or poo-poo head, much of one's life revolves around efforts not to confirm one's schmuckitude (or geekiness, weeniedom or poo-poo-headocity.) And the best way to avoid all that? Easy. Avoid people.

Real people, anyway. Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Capt. Kirk, Batman, the Simpsons, Chewbacca, Super Mario -- they're all safe. Sure, they have their limitations. They're not going to offer words of comfort when your dog dies. But they're not going to make fun of you because your new haircut looks like a mullet, either. Which goes a long way toward explaining my experience in high school.

James Patterson was probably named "Most Likely to Succeed" in his high school yearbook. Joe Konrath, I'm guessing, was either "Mr. Congeniality" or "Class Clown." Me, I was voted "Class Quietest," an "honor" so dubious you won't even find it in most yearbooks. I may as well have been dubbed "Most Likely to Consume the Flesh of Murdered Prostitutes."

I stayed pretty quiet (and abstained from the eating of hookers) through the end of the 20th century. But with the new millennium came a new era for me. It was the dawning of the Age of Gregarious. I was going to be a professional mystery writer, dammit. And that meant it was time to face my greatest fear.

You.

Well, not you personally. I'm talking about everyone else. The world. Those dreaded people again.

But I swallowed my fear. I swallowed my pride. I swallowed my Xanax. And I went to a Bouchercon and did my first panel.

Unfortunately, I soon learned a hard lesson -- something the outgoing never mention to the inward-escaping when they're browbeating them with lines like "Don't hide your light under a bushel."

That light you're going to shine? Some people are going to hate it. They're going to say, "Turn that damn thing off!" They're going to wish you'd stayed under your bushel -- and they're going to let you know it.

Plots with Guns was the first to let me know. (Click here and scroll down to see what I mean. I'm the "bearded wonder" the columnist flogs near the end. Sigh.) And it hasn't stopped there. In the past few months, I've managed to unintentionally irritate/infuriate/alienate...well, let's just say several people and leave it at that.

The bushel beckons.

Yet as a wise man once said, "Wherever you go, there you are." (O.K., it wasn't a real wise man. It was just Buckaroo Banzai. Still, wise is wise.) Under the bushel or out of it, I'll feel the same. Like a schmuck, yes, but better to feel like a schmuck who's trying (and hopefully building some kind of viable writing career), right? So perhaps it's time I dreamed a new dream.

From now on, I want to be a schmuck who paid off his mortgage.

Steve Hockensmith
November 14, 2006

Yeah, you read the line above right. I originally posted this more than five years ago. Ha! Got you! You just read a rerun! But the joke's on me, really, because so little has changed in all that time. If anything, I was more brimming with brio and self confidence back then than I am now. The long war against schmuckitude remains unwon. Which is why you won't see me at many Bouchercons or the like anymore. My schedule says it all.

Fortunately, two things have changed for the better. First, I figured out that I'm a textbook introvert. (One who can accidentally dominate the occasional convention panel, yes, but an introvert all the same.) So now at least it makes sense that I always left those mystery cons of yore feeling like I'd just retraced the Bataan Death March in a sumo wrestler fat suit. I'd go, I'd hang out with great people, I'd have a ton of fun, and it would nearly kill me and I'd come home an emotional wreck. Maybe not worth it....

Second, a couple little Interweb thingies called Facebook and Twitter really took off. Now I can connect with thousands of people at a time without feeling like my soul's being sucked out through my eye sockets. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg (and everyone who's sued you for supposedly stealing their great idea)! Thank you, Twitter Founder Dudes I'm Too Lazy to Look Up on Google! You've allowed me to form and maintain new friendships (and, in the process, gain a little ground in the Foreverschmuck War) in a way we introverts can truly appreciate.

At home. At a desk. Alone. Without pants.

Well, the pants thing doesn't have anything to do with being an introvert. But it is a fringe benefit.

¡Viva la Web!

Board Games

I'm not one of those writers you're going to see in Starbucks hammering out the great American novel between slurps of caramel macchiato. I'm too easily distracted by...hey, what was that thump? The dog jumping off someone's bed, maybe? Wow, she hasn't been walked in hours. I hope she can hold it till I'm done with this post.

Wait...where was I?

Oh, yeah. I'm easily distracted. No way could I write a novel in public. I couldn't write a grocery list in public. Well, I could, but I'd forget all the important stuff, like chocolate chips and beer.

Since I don't own a sensory deprivation tank or a bomb shelter, I have to muddle along with a desk. It's where I do all my writing, and I love it. Unfortunately, it also happens to be where I do most of my accumulating. And I'm not talking about wealth and power.

(I'm a writer, remember? We're in it for love, not money, right?)

(Although, then again, we wouldn't actually say no to more cash, would we...?)

It's not checks that are piling up on my desk, alas -- unless you count the ones waiting to go in the mail to Visa and the phone company and the IRS, etc. etc. And piling up beside all that are books, contracts, royalty statements, fan letters (well, O.K. -- there's one), pens, pencils, notebooks, CDs, DVDs, stuffed animals (I try to keep my kids away from the computer, but it just can't be done) and a depressingly long To Do list from which nothing ever seems to Get Done.

In fact, if you were to visit my home office, you might not believe I have a desk at all. You'd just walk into the bedroom that's been designated Daddy's Place and assume you'd stumbled into one of those old houses where 90-year-old twin sisters with 200 cats stockpile every issue of The Cleveland Plain Dealer dating back to 1949. Then you'd run out screaming before the stack of Life magazines -- or, in my case, the complete Time Life "Old West" collection -- can fall over and crush you.

Which isn't to say my desk isn't organized. It's just organized in piles, heaps and mounds. (I like the heaps best because you don't have to lift anything to search through them. You just stick a hand in and start sifting.)

But though I'm a slob, I do have my anal side. It's just not things I care about organizing. It's my work. And here's how I do it.

Some writers motivate themselves with dreams of success. Some do it with the simple joy of creation. Me, I'm a guilt and fear man. Hence, the Big Board and the Calendar.

The Big Board is...well, a big board. A big dry-erase board, to be a bit more precise. On it is a grid tracking word count and chapters completed week by week leading up to the deadline for my next book. Its purpose: allowing me to size up, at a glance, whether or not I'm on schedule.

And then have a nervous breakdown when I see I'm not.

And then whip myself into a writing frenzy to get back on track.

And then have another nervous breakdown when I see I'm still behind.

Masochistic? You bet! But it works.

The Calendar is...well, a calendar. (Do you sense a theme developing with the names I give to things?) It hangs next to my desk, and I turn to it at the end of every work day and write down the number of words I’ve managed to produce.

Why? Because sometimes the Big Board doesn't make me feel badly enough.

"Just 942 words today? But last Wednesday I wrote 949 words! I'm slipping! I shouldn't have stayed up so late last night watching Doctor Who. I'm such a loser! Or maybe I'm developing Alzheimer's. Wait...what was that thump?"

Obviously, I need panic the way other writers need coffee, and if I don't get it I have to create it.

Oh, and I need coffee, too. Pot after pot of it. That's why so many of my piles, heaps and mounds are stained brown.

I could say a lot more about the patented Steve Hockensmith Feel Bad/Write Good Novel Generation System. But I see on the Calendar that I only added 933 words to my new novel today, and the Big Board tells me I'm two weeks behind schedule, so what the heck am I doing working on something else? ARGH!!!

Now where was that cup of coffee? I know it's on this desk somewhere....

More Hock, Less Talk #1: ME!!!

Every now and then here at stevehockensmith.com, I'll profile a fellow writer as part of a feature I call "More Talk, Less Hock." (Regular visitors to this blog call it "Steve Didn't Have Anything to Write About Again This Week.") Today, I offer a variation. Instead of giving you less Hock, I'm serving up twice the Daily Recommended Allowance. I hope you don't O.D., Hockaholics. It's an interview with me.

A little background: Several months ago, I was asked to answer a few questions for a Q&A tied to the release of the e-anthology West Coast Crime Wave. I've got a story in the book, you see -- an old chestnut called "Fred Menace, Commie for Hire." You can pick up the antho here or here (but not here) if you wanna check it out.

The Q&A never ran, however, and I'm not the type to waste 13.4 minutes of hard work. So I'm posting my answers here.

Maybe after reading them, you'll understand why they were never used in the first place....

Interviewer X: Give us a bit of background on you as an author. When were you bitten with the writing bug? Is mystery your usual genre, or do you float between several?

Me: I've been writing since the age of 4. My first big project was the letter O. I later moved on to other letters of the alphabet and, after mastering them, words. Then came sentences. Eventually, I produced my first paragraph. After that, there was no stopping me! Except for all the things stopping me. Like being 7 and having no idea I wanted to be a writer. By 11, I had everything figured out, though. I wrote my first bit of serious genre fiction -- a Star Trek story called "A Space-Age Hitler!" -- and a mere 27 years later my first novel was published. That novel (the historical mystery Holmes on the Range) was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Shamus and Dilys awards. So obviously it was terrible. Fortunately, the publishing industry is known far and wide for its magnanimity, and I was allowed to keep publishing books until I eventually produced a bestseller (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls). Now that I'm an overnight success, my goal is to stretch the inevitable failure to follow over the course of several decades, if not centuries.

X: What makes the setting of your story a unique and interesting one for crime fiction?

Me: After reading the collected works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, I came to the conclusion that no one had ever written a mystery set in post-World War II Los Angeles. To make my story even more unique, I decided to throw in a private investigator. And as if that weren't enough, I made him a tough guy with a fondness for colorful metaphors. Crazy, I know! But that's just the kind of cutting edge, experimental writer I am. 

X: Tell us a little bit about the story’s main character.

Me: Fred Menace is a tough guy with a fondness for colorful metaphors. Oh, and he's a private investigator! Also: His name is "Fred Menace," and he's the main character of my story. As if that weren't interesting enough, his initials are F and...whoops. Got carried away with the details there. I know you didn't ask me to write the guy's biography, but I just love him so much I couldn't help myself!

X: This anthology is an e-book from a new publisher.  In general, how do you as an author see the opportunities in publishing changing with the growth of e-books?

Me: Oh, man -- I've been calling them "e-books" for the last few years, but I'd just decided to switch to "ebooks" when I read your question. Now I don't know what to do. I tell you what, though: Once we figure out whether they're hyphenated or not, these damn things are going to be a gold mine.

X: Tell us what's in store for you over the next six to 12 months.

Me: Barring a breakdown in negotiations or the complete collapse of the publishing industry, I should be able to announce my next project very, very soon. My money's on the complete collapse of the publishing industry.