A Not-So-Good Morning

I woke up this morning with a tire spike lodged in my throat.  You know what a tire spike is, right?  You should alway keep a few dozen in your car in case, y'know, you are being pursued by Lord Humungus and his horde.  

Just toss a few handfuls out the window and your pursuer's tires go kablam. If Mad Max had carried a sufficient quantity of these babies, the movie would have been over in half an hour. 

I am referring, of course, the "The Road Warrior," aka "Mad Max 2," a film that stands out (along with "The Wizard of Oz" and "When Harry Met Sally") as a masterpiece of pacing.

Anyway, I woke up with a tire spike in my throat.  I am expecting it to migrate into my sinuses soon.  

Colds.  Bah!

I am expecting to be well - or at least non-contagious - by Saturday at 2:00 p.m., when I'll be appearing at The Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul to sign copies of The Big Crunch and Blank Confession.  Please come if you can.  (I promise not to infect you.  I have mastered the Vampire Sneeze.)

Check out these reviews for The Big Crunch in the StarTribune and the Pioneer Press... (Aargh! The link to the Pioneer Press article has expired. Take my word for it, it was a fabulous review!)

A Video Interview from 10/19/10

Here's a link to a rather slow-paced but not-unpleasant interview I did when I visited Ohio last October.  I just watched it for the first time.  I must learn to smile more.

I don't know why the video isn't properly framed--something is screwy with the embed code, and when I try to fix it it just gets worse. To watch it properly framed, you can click here.

A Self-Indulgent Post About Book Shelves

There are many ways to arrange books.  If you are an interior designer, you might arrange them by color and size.  A history buff might order them according to period, or by publication date.  Someone with limited shelf space might stack them every which way, to take up as little room as possible.  You could arrange them by author, by page count, by publisher, or by frequency of use.   You could employ the liquor store technique, arranging them by quality, putting the best books on the top shelf.

Not long ago I was making a promotional video in my basement with Max and Nick, two men in their early twenties.  Max was directing, Nick was operating the camera.  (Click here to view Part One of the movie we were making)

Making a movie—even a very short video—involves a lot of sitting around and waiting.  During one of these periods (waiting for a battery to charge), Nick was looking over my bookshelves.  He became excited when he found my almost-complete collection of Philip K. Dick novels and story collections.  Max was interested in Dick’s writing, too. 

As was I, when I was their age.

My books are arranged, roughly, in alphabetical order by author and by genre—sci-fi against the east wall, crime fiction in the next bookcase, comic books to the west, and so forth. 

It occurred to me, watching Nick and Max flipping through the Phil Dick books, that it might be interesting to arrange my books according to the age at which I first read them.

First would be my tattered copy of Brave Cowboy Bill, a Little Golden Book from the 1950s.  Among the last, as of this writing, would be Explorers of the New Century, by Magnus Mills.

Here’s a list of books that made a big impression on me, roughly arranged by the age at which I read them. (OCD much?) I’ve tried to be honest here, even though a few of the titles make me squirm to think that I bought into them at any age.  I only allowed myself one book per author.  

Age 4-7

The Little Engine that Could —“Watty Piper” and others

Brave Cowboy Bill —Kathryn Jackson

8-12

Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint — R. Abrashkin and J. Williams

Charlotte’s Web —E.B. White

A Wrinkle in Time —Madeleine L'Engle

Tom Sawyer —Mark Twain

Lord of the Flies —William Golding

“The Hardy Boys” —“Franklin W. Dixon”

Wild Trek —Jim Kjelgaard

White Fang —Jack London

12-16

Strangest of All —Frank Edwards

The Source —James Michener

The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) —J.R.R.Tolkien

Cat of Many Tails —Ellery Queen

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

The Human Comedy —William Saroyan

Atlas Shrugged —Ayn Rand

The Pearl —John Steinbeck

Cat’s Cradle —Kurt Vonnegut
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold —John LeCarre

Tai Pan —James Clavell

Brave New World —Aldous Huxley

17-25

The Idiot —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Teachings of Don Juan —Carlos Castenada

The Sun Also Rises —Ernest Hemingway

The Puppet Masters —Robert Heinlein

Triton —Samuel R. Delany

Nausea —Jean Paul Sartre

Martian Time-Slip —Philip K. Dick

The Immoralist —Andre Gide

Madame Bovary —Gustave Flaubert

The Savage Mind —Claude Levi-Strauss

The Structure of Art —Jack Burnham
Rogue Moon —Algis Budrys

Junky —William Burroughs

Mushrooms of North America —Orson K. Miller

Dune —Frank Herbert

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test —Tom Woolf

The Stranger —Albert Camus

25-30

Rebecca —Daphne du Maurier

In Cold Blood —Truman Capote

The Big Sleep —Raymond Chandler

“Solid Objects” —Virginia Woolf

The Elements of Style —William Strunk and E. B. White

Dubliners —James Joyce

The Left Hand of Darkness —Ursula LeGuin

The Adventures of Alyx —Joanna Russ

Baby is Three —Theodore Sturgeon

A Sweet, Sweet Summer —Jane Gaskell

The French Lieutenant’s Woman —John Fowles

The Great Gatsby —F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stars My Destination —Alfred Bester

The Postman Always Rings Twice —James Cain

30s

Deliverance —James Dickey

Dog Soldiers —Robert Stone

The Book of the New Sun (tetralogy) —Gene Wolfe

The Cream of the Jest —James Branch Cabell

Unknown Man No. 89 —Elmore Leonard

Leaving Cheyenne —Larry McMurtry

Wild Seed —Octavia Butler

Falconer —John Cheever

The Talented Mr. Ripley —Patricia Highsmith

40s and 50s

The Remains of the Day —Kazuo Ishiguro

Lyonesse (trilogy) —Jack Vance

The Silence of the Lambs —Thomas Harris

Expendable —James Alan Gardner

The Ice House —Minette Walters

Maus —Art Spiegleman

The Fourth Durango —Ross Thomas

Duchamp —Calvin Tomkins

Spin —Robert Charles Wilson

Explorers of the New Century —Magnus Mills

Stats

Total Books: 72

Books by men: 60

Books by women: 12

Books by Americans: 45+

Books by British and Irish authors: 10+

Books by authors of other nationalities: 10+

Books by African-Americans: 2+

Books written before I was born: 25

Books written by authors who are deceased: 40+

Books by gay authors: 10+

Sci-Fi/Fantasy books: 20+

Crime/Mystery books: 10+

Listed authors I’ve read more than one book by: 61

Listed books I’ve read more than once: 33

True Love

I just got my first look at the paperback edition of How to Steal a Car (available January 1), and I love love love the cover, oh yes I do. 

The Free, Full-Fat, No-Exercise Lady Gaga Diet

Sorry.  I put that headline up in a desperate attempt to lure more traffic to my blog.

Ahem.

In a wholly successful attempt to avoid writing this morning, I ran across this clever little graphic online.  

I smiled, even though it offends my sense of rightness.  It is not a "correct" Venn diagram - "music I used to like" is not a proper subset of "music I like." But never mind, it's still funny.
Naturally, I spent the next half hour looking at other Venn diagrams.  

And then another half hour making my own diagram.  (I tried to use some of the online Venn diagramming tools, but they were too confusing for five o'clock in the morning, so I just hacked this together with the crappy little drawing program that came with my scanner.)

I'll be reading selections from both books at the Second Story Reading Series this Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m.  If you're in the Twin Cities, please stop by!

CRUNCH VIDEO - the Redactor's Cut

Okay, so I made a book trailer for THE BIG CRUNCH and posted it on YouTube, and put it here on my blog and on Facebook. And I spammed everybody in my address book, and a whole bunch of you watched the video. Thank you!

But then I got a kind note from a middle school teacher (my BFF Dana), who said nice things about the video, but said that she would not be able to share the trailer with her students because it contained the acronym "WTF."

I was embarrassed, to say the least. In an effort to blame my own lack of judgment on Mary Logue, I said, “How come when I showed you the video you didn’t tell me to take out the WTF?” 

She replied, completely serious, “What does WTF mean?”

Huh. 

Anyway, I guess I'd been thinking that “WTF” fell into the same category as “LMAO,” or “Jeez." I was wrong, and should have known.  The last thing I want is to make a video that teachers are not comfortable sharing with teens. So what to do?

MAKE A NEW WTF-FREE VERSION OF THE VIDEO!

That’s right. Here it is, the “Middle School Approved” version of the THE BIG CRUNCH book trailer. I think it’s actually a little better.

(Some of you might be wondering if this is a "censorship issue."  It is not.  It's about creating an invitation - an advertisement, really - that works.  My use of the WTF acronym had nothing to do with the book.  It was just me trying to be amusing.)

YARN Interview

The Young Adult Review Network (YARN) recently posted an interview with me. They had some good questions. You can read it here.

Like Hate Love

The new trade edition of Sweetblood went on sale last week, triggering conflicting pleasure/pain receptors in my hippocampus which, you should know, has nothing to do with higher education for semiaquatic ungulates. The cover of the new edition features candy-colored lips and pointy teeth against a deep purple background. It looks delicious. I like it. I hate it. I like it. I hate it. I like it. Somebody stop me, please!

Thank you!

Some history: The first edition of Sweetblood,

way back in 2003 when there were only a gajillion vampire novels (as opposed to today's kahunkabazillion), was a graphic designy image of a twenty-something woman with tasteful blood spatters across the cover and the tagline "A Vampire Novel." It was an okay cover, although I thought the tagline to be slightly deceptive inasmuch as there are no "real" vampires to be found in the book. Still, it was about vampires. Sort of.

Anyway, I figured as long as the cover encouraged more people to look at the book, it was okay. I liked it. I sort of didn't like it. It was a book cover. Whatever.

A couple of years later, the book was issued in small format paperback, and the designers took a different tack: this time, they used a photograph of a young model who perfectly represented the character I had in mind when I wrote the book. It suggested a goth-like, vampire-ish story about a character, and I loved it, I loved it, I loved it, despite the clunky typography. How often does that happen? Hardly ever.

Back to the new cover and the love/hate thing. From an author's point of view, there are three things a book cover should do:

1. It should look good.

2. It should sell the book.

3. It should be true to the book.

The new Sweetblood cover, IMHO, easily meets condition #1. It looks stupendously lickable. I think it will accomplish #2 as well - at least I hope so. As for #3...I dunno. I think most people who buy the book based on the cover will be expecting fangs and blood. Some of them will be disappointed.

I think the neck-biting promise made by the cover takes away from the story. Imagine yourself sitting down to watch, say, "Eat Pray Love" after being told it was a movie about carnivorous alien invaders. The whole time, you'd be looking for flying saucers and waiting for Javier Bardem's lips to peel back and reveal an extra set of jaws. Kind of distracting.

On the other hand, being told that "Eat Pray Love" was about an alien invasion is probably the only way I'd ever pay to see it.

Like. Hate. Love.

Titles

Usually I know the title of a book long before I finish it, but sometimes my publisher thinks my original title sucks, and asks me to change it. This is somewhat like if you raised a kid and, the day before he is supposed to go to kindergarten, the school calls and says, "What were you thinking when you named your kid 'Irving?' We think if he were named 'Tyler' he would have a better chance of making it into the first grade." And you say to yourself, "Hmm. Irving is a sucky name, but me and Irving...well, we've kinda gotten used to it..."

Okay, so I wrote this book. It's a love story, and as I've mentioned before, it's a love story in which nothing happens - meaning there are no vampires, ghosts, deaths, guns, dragons, etc. I'm not going to reveal the rejected (sucky) title, but if you happen to have a Really Great Title laying around that you have no use for, please let me know. If I use it, I will send you either $10,000 or a free copy of the book and a mention in the acknowledgements (my choice). To get you started, here's a word cloud from the first two chapters:

(word cloud made at http://www.wordle.net/)

Cover Art

Just got the cover design for Blank Confession! The book will be released this November.

Contest Update, and a New Book

It’s cracking cold outside today—the sort of cold where the snow squeaks when you walk on it—but my “How to Steal a Car Video Contest” is really heating up! Although I have no evidence to support this, I’m expecting the first entry to be posted on YouTube any day now. I’m sure there are dozens—possibly billions—of nascent filmmakers slaving over their short videos, trying to make them Academy Award worthy. In fact, I have heard from an impeccable source (my fervid imagination), that James Cameron’s grandchildren (if he has any) may be partnering with Pixar to develop a ninety-second tour de force involving CGI versions of Kelleigh and her friends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In my dreams. Hey, why don’t you make a video! It’s easy! It doesn’t even have to be good. You could win a bunch of signed books, or maybe fifty bucks! Check out the contest rules here.

In other news, I’ve just shipped my latest novel off to my publisher. The original title was “Shayne,” a nod to Jack Schaefer’s classic western novel, Shane. But because almost no one born after 1970 remembers that book, my wise editor suggested an alternate title: Blank Confession. Look for it next November.

I’m now deep into revising my next project—a novel in which nothing happens. Oddly enough, it is shaping up to be my longest YA novel yet. Writing about nothing takes a lot more words than writing about something. Just ask Marcel Proust. Or Thomas Disch, who called Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past the “dullest and best of all books.”

How to Write a Book Review

Like most writers, I am constantly seeking affirmation, therefore I read reviews of my own work. It can be a perilous undertaking. Even “good” reviews can be maddening when the writer fails to “get” the book. Or rather, when my book has failed to have the desired impact.

Responses to How to Steal a Car have been particularly interesting. Yesterday I came across a review—more of a commentary and analysis, really—that I thought was quite remarkable. The reviewer was a woman who blogs under the name “Daughter Number Three.” I don’t know who she is, but it’s possible I have met her under her “real” name, as she lives in the Twin Cities area, and seems to be deeply involved in the kidlit business.

What makes her review remarkable is…well, you should read it. Also, check out her thoughts on other authors and book artists. Blogs like hers give me renewed faith in the paperless future of book criticism.

Raking Through Books

If you have not been to Kieran's Irish Pub (in Minneapolis) for one of their Raking Through Books literary events, your literary coolness coefficient is deficient. Check it out this Tuesday, November 10, at 5:30 p.m., when I will be appearing with John Nielson who, I am told, produces garphic (I'm letting that typo stand) novels about toe jam and other earthy delights. It will be fun.

For more info, go here.

And don't forget about my fabulous How to Steal a Car Video Contest!

Pete's Video Contest!!!!!

Here’s how you can become a YouTube sensation, earn extra credit at school, get experience making videos, and maybe even win a fabulous prize!

Make a short video based on Pete Hautman’s novel How to Steal a Car.

Contest is open to individuals or groups, the crazy and the sane. It could be a class project with a cast of hundreds, or just one person looking into a cell phone camera while talking about the book.

Here are some ideas:

Act out a scene from the book.

Offer a commentary about the book.

Do a spoof, like on Saturday Night Live

A photo montage with voiceover

An interview with a character from the book

A puppet show or animation

…it’s up to you!

First Prize: Full set (all ten) of Pete Hautman’s YA books, signed and with illustrations (okay, doodles) by the author

Second Prize: $50.00 gift card to your favorite bookstore

Contest Rules

- Video must be at least 60 seconds long, but not more than ten minutes.

- It must be posted on YouTube on or before March 15, 2010.

- It must be about the novel How to Steal a Car (not just a video about car theft).

- It must not contain anything that will get you or me in trouble (no porn, no slander, no bomb-making instructions, etc.)

- The title (How to Steal a Car) and author (Pete Hautman) of the book must be mentioned, and an image of the book cover must appear at some point in the video. This can be at the beginning, the end, or anywhere else in the video (for example, you could show a character reading the book).

When your video has been posted let Pete know via a comment on this blog, or by email: pete@petehautman.com

Links to all qualifying entries will be posted on Pete’s blog. Winner(s) will be announced on April 1, 2010.

First Prize will go to the video that Pete likes best.

Second Prize will go to the video that gets the most YouTube views by March 31, 2010. (Posting your video early and getting your friends to watch it will give you a huge advantage!)

Note: It is possible that one video could be awarded both prizes.

How to Steal a Car Video

Here's a video of some guy who looks a lot like me reading from How to Steal a Car.

What was I thinking? And why is the right side of the screen cut off? If anyone knows, please tell me. In the meantime, you can go to YouTube and watch it in all its full screen glory.

Unrepentant

I've just received the first pre-publication review of How to Steal a Car, this one from Kirkus:

"Hautman channels the cynically smart voice of a teenage sometime car thief in this sly cross between Blake Nelson’s The New Rules of High School (2003) and Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (2007). Fifteen-year-old Kelleigh is bored. Her staid parents politely leave her alone, her two best friends talk about the same old things and she’s stuck with Moby-Dick for her summer-reading selection. So she begins stealing cars, quickly escalating from joy riding in her elderly neighbors’ Caddy to plotting the theft of a stranger’s Mercedes. Teens will identify with Kelleigh’s challenges to boundaries and attempts to see how many rules she can break before anyone in authority can be bothered to notice. Kelleigh soon decides that while “I stole a couple cars…It’s not who I am.” However, the illegal thrill causes her to realize she has outgrown her suburban–Twin Cities world, and an unrepentant ending behind stolen wheels suggests she is destined to leave it behind. A sharply observed, subversive coming-of-age tale."

Nice, huh? I love "unrepentant" and "subversive." That's what I want for the paperback jacket blurb.

Several appearances are scheduled for the coming months. Check out my website for details.

Another One Bites the Dust

J.G. Ballard, one of my early and most profound influences, has died in London at the age of 78. I read most of his books. His first novel, and still one of my favorites, is The Drowned World.

Instruction Manual

I finally got the cover art for How to Steal a Car. I like it! Little toy cars. The publication date is set for September, so be sure to get your LoJack installed before then.

New York

I'm heading to New York next week for school visits in Scarsdale, then down to Wall Street for the National Book Awards banquet on Wednesday evening. I've been to the NBA banquet twice before--once as a finalist, and once as a judge. This year I'm going as a spectator, and I'm hoping for a very relaxed evening--if things go wrong, I bear no responsibility. Also, it will help reduce the per-use cost of the tuxedo I bought four years ago. This years finalists for the NBA are, as always, a fascinating group of books. You can check them out at the National Book Foundation website, along with interviews with the authors and other fun stuff. This will be my last trip for 2008, after which I plan to settle in for some serious uninterrupted writing time...except for Thanksgiving...and all those other holidays...and blizzards. My next school visit won't be until February, when I travel to Granville, Ohio. Book news: It is now official: How to Steal a Car will be published next fall. This years finalists for the NBA are, as always, a fascinating group of books. You can check them out at the National Book Foundation website, along with interviews with the authors and other fun stuff. Here's a photo of me with fellow authors Heather Bouwman, Mary Logue, and Lynne Jonell after a reading at the Loft Literary Center.

"Let the Wild Rumpus Start!"

That's a quote from Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are.  But I have always thought that "Let the wild rumpus begin!" has a more natural sound.  And while I'm at it, don't you think that "Call me Ishy, or call me whatever, just so long as you call me," would be a more powerful opening for Moby Dick?  And don't you think the whale should be lemon yellow, not white?  And don't you think....

Easy, Pete--calm down.  Okay.  Now, where was I?  

Oh yeah, Wild Rumpus.  Last Monday I was at Wild Rumpus talking

about my books and meeting readers.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Wild Rumpus is a fantastical bookstore in the Linden Hills area of Minneapolis with a huge selection of children's books, a knowledgeable and dedicated staff of former children (adults), and a free-ranging menagerie of chickens, cats, and assorted other beasts.*  A wild rumpus indeed.  You should check it out next time you're in Minneapolis, unless you are allergic to fur and feathers.

Here's as pic of me scrawling something on a copy of Godless.

*Including rats, at least one iguana, and probably a unicorn (though he's tough to spot).