Steve Hockensmith's blog: That Hockensmith Feller

When Slick Ben Sevier, the editor at my publishing house, first told me Holmes on the Range would be published with somebody else’s name on the cover, he assured me it was nothing to worry about.

“It’s gonna help us sell a lot more books, Otto,” he said. “Market research indicates that ‘Steve Hockensmith’ is the perfect pseudonym. It’s warm. It’s memorable. It’s easy to pronounce. It’s unfamiliar but not off-puttingly foreign. People love it.”

“Are you sayin’ there’s something wrong with my name?” I asked.

Slick Ben looked uncomfortable for a moment.

“Not at all,” he said, though that queasy little pause spoke a lot louder than his words. “It’s just...well, ‘Otto Amlingmeyer’ won’t fit on the cover.”

“And ‘Steve Hockensmith’ will?”

Slick Ben paused again. In fact, it was a damned long pause -- he stopped talking altogether. He just picked up a pile of papers (I’m not sure if Slick Ben’s office has walls behind all the paper he’s got stacked up everywhere) and started pretending to read through it. Eventually, I left.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered today that “Steve Hockensmith” isn’t just a name Slick Ben settled on thanks to “market research” (whatever that is). He’s a real fellow -- a writer, like me. Why he’s getting credit for Holmes on the Range I don’t know, but I aim to find out.

You’ll find Hockensmith’s biography below. I hope to make one little addition to it myself: “Hockensmith recently came face to face with Otto ‘Big Red’ Amlingmeyer, who asked him why his name is on Otto’s book. As Hockensmith was able to offer no satisfying explanation, Otto immediately and con mucho gusto kicked the s.o.b.’s book-stealing ass.’”

Otto Amlingmeyer
Miles City, Montana
January 31, 1893

Though the town elders of Louisville, Ky., have yet to acknowledge it with so much as a single commemorative plaque, Steve Hockensmith was born in the Derby City on August 17, 1968. The first two decades of his life passed uneventfully, the only notable highlight being a short stint as an intern at People magazine, an experience that allowed Hockensmith to realize his lifelong dream -- crank calling Crispin Glover.

Despite (or perhaps because of) such lapses in his professionalism, Hockensmith eventually found work as an entertainment journalist: He's covered pop culture and the film industry for The Hollywood Reporter, The Chicago Tribune, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Newsday, Total Movie and other publications. He spent a year as editor of The X-Files Official Magazine (thus explaining his morbid fear of David Duchovny) and more than three years as editor of Cinescape, a nationally distributed bimonthly magazine devoted to movies in which things explode (i.e., science fiction or action films or anything produced by Jerry Bruckheimer).

In 1999, traumatized by multiple viewings of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Hockensmith set out to write something that would under no circumstances require the use of the phrase "Jar Jar Binks." He settled on mysteries, soon becoming a regular contributor to both Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. His first published mystery story, "Erie's Last Day," won the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Derringer Award and appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2001. More recently, Hockensmith's story "Tricks" (a sequel to "Erie's Last Day") was a finalist for the Shamus award, while his story "The Big Road" (yet another "Erie" follow-up) was a finalist for the Shamus, Macavity and Barry awards.

Hockensmith is also the creator of mystery-solving cowboys Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer. The Amlingmeyer brothers first appeared in Ellery Queen in the story "Dear Mr. Holmes," and the Sherlock Holmes-worshipping drovers have returned to Ellery Queen's pages five times since then. In addition, Hockensmith has completed four novels about their adventures. Thanks to the first, Holmes on the Range, Hockensmith was a finalist for the 2007 Edgar, Anthony and Shamus Awards in the Best First Novel category. On the Wrong Track, The Black Dove and The Crack in the Lens followed. Hockensmith is currently at work on a fifth Big Red/Old Red novel.

Though he considers himself a Midwesterner at heart, Hockensmith currently lives in California's Bay Area. He says he's adjusted to life on the West Coast, but confesses that he still misses thunderstorms, snow and Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppes. He shares his home with the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect son and a slightly imperfect cat.