The Red Balloon Bookshop

We had a great turnout at The Red Balloon Bookshop on Saturday - several other authors showed up to support one of their own, which I appreciate more than I can possibly express.  There was no cake, but we had chocolate eclairs and Nestle Crunch bars - just as good!  I didn't get any pictures, but I saw some cameras in action, so if you were one of the shooters picture takers, send me a pic or two and I'll post.

I signed several books for the store while I was there, so if you want a signed copy, swing on by the Red Balloon.

My next public appearance will be in Minneapolis at Wild Rumpus, 1:00 p.m., Saturday February 12th.

Hey! Fellow blogger Daughter Number Three came through with an image. Note the balloons. They are red, and this is at the "Red Balloon." Spooooooky!

It Comes; It Goes

Nineteen degrees below zero in the Twin Cities this morning.  That's nothing to my cousin John, who is dealing with -38 up in Fairbanks.  He's planning a trip to Minnesota to warm up.  Really.

The good news is that while the cold may have come to Minnesota, my own virus-type cold is gone, and I'm looking forward to my book signing at The Red Balloon Bookshop tomorrow afternoon, when the temperature is supposed to rise to a balmy ten degrees ABOVE zero.  People will be wearing shorts and flip-flops.  Pack your sunscreen, John!

The event at Red Balloon will be at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 22.  That's tomorrow, if you're reading this today.  I mean, "today" as in the day I'm posting this.  If you're reading this tomorrow, then the event is today.

EVENT: Book discussion and signing: The Big Crunch and Blank Confession.

PLACE: The Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105 

PHONE: (651) 224-8320

TIME: 2:00 p.m., Saturday, January 22, 2011

(If you can't get there, but still would like a book, call them and they'll have me inscribe a book for you.)

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.

Perfect Boiled Water

Everybody thinks they know how to boil water.  Many - if not most of them - are deluded.  Boiling water is not as easy as it appears to be.  However, by following a few simple guidelines, it is within anyone’s reach.

1. Use a metal pot.  Wooden and plastic pots will not work! 

2. Fill the metal pot with a quantity of water that is less than the total volume of the pan.

3. Use real water!  Gasoline, alcohol, and lacquer thinner will boil, but you will not get boiling water from them.

4. Put the pot on the stove.  This is important.  You must use a stove!  Refrigerators, dishwashers, and KitchenAid stand mixers will not boil water, no matter how long you leave it on.

5. Turn on the burner directly beneath the pot.  Turning on the wrong burner will not boil water!

6. Give the water time to come to a boil.  On most stoves, you can adjust the amount of time required by changing the burner setting (consult the manual that came with your stove).

7. Do not watch the pot!  Watching the pot of water will increase the time it takes to come to a boil!  Simply glance at the water from time to time until you observe large numbers of “bubbles” rising to the surface.

8. Once the water is boiling, you can let it boil for a while, or you can turn off the burner – it’s up to you!

Coming soon: How to Make Ice Cubes.

Remember the Penguin?

It's snowing again.

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. 

And now...

Our Christmas Card

This year, in honor of the beached economy, Mary and I ordered a very small quantity of holiday cards.  You probably didn't get one.  Don't feel bad.  Neither did my mom.  Anyway, here's the card.

The poem is by Mary Logue, of course.  Photo and design by me.  The Adelie penguin is by Rowbike inventor Scott Olson.  (You can buy your own penguin.)


I'll post a new picture of the penguin tomorrow - after we get the 18 inches of snow we've been promised.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Thirty years ago, as a Christmas gift for a friend, I wrote a novella based upon the characters and world created by Kenneth Grahame in his classic book The Wind in the Willows. I called it "Beneath the Wild Wood."

"Beneath the Wild Wood" is not an attempt to “channel” Grahame.  I took considerable liberties with character, setting, and language—though no more than did Grahame himself. It was never intended as a commercial venture, and has since been seen by only a handful of readers. I thought that some of you—after cursing me roundly for messing with a Sacred Classic—might enjoy reading a sample from this unpublished work.

You can find the first few (unedited) chapters posted here, on the NCTE's "National Gallery of Writing."

Cognitive Dissonsance

Three of my brothers are wildlife artists.  Every now and then, one of them gets bored painting the usual idyllic wildlife scenes and starts messing around in Photoshop.  I just received this somewhat disturbing image in an email from Bob. It has a bit of that "a tarantula on an angel food cake" feel to it.

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!

Suddenly, December

Yet another commercial message from our sponsor, the publishing entity known near and narrow as “Pete Hautman.”  Pete wants you to know that Saturday will be your last opportunity to acquire a personalized copy of Blank Confession before the solstice. 

Second Story Reading Series

When: Saturday, December 4, 2:00 p.m.

Where: The Loft Literary Center

Who: Pete Hautman and Steve Brezenoff

Pete will read short sections from BOTH of his “BC” books: Blank Confession and his January, 2011 novel, The Big Crunch.  

Steve will be reading from The Absolute Value of -1, and maybe something from his next book, too.  

There will be snacks.  It will be fun.  Please come - you will be glad you are there and not at the Mall of America.

The Second Story Reading Series is curated by Swati Avasthi and Heather (H.M.) Bouwman, two talented YA/MG authors who recently published their own excellent first novels.  Check ‘em out here and here.

"Was that a dodo?" he said flightlessly!

Once a year, on Thanksgiving, I revisit the Turkey City Lexicon.

Never heard of the Turkey City Lexicon?  Then you are probably not an SFF (sci-fi/fantasy) writer.  The TCL was collected and published by the Turkey City Workshop, a sci-fi writers' workshop out of Austin, Texas.  It's a collection of terms describing Things That SF Writers Do that, probably, they shouldn't.  I'm not talking about drinking and driving and eating too much (like many SF writers may have done yesterday), but about writerly things like overusing adverbs and revisiting tired plot devices.  You can find it here on the SFWA website.

A couple of my favorite items include:

Fuzz  An element of motivation the author was too lazy to supply. The word “somehow” is a useful tip-off to fuzzy areas of a story. “Somehow she had forgotten to bring her gun.

You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit  An attempt to defuse the reader’s incredulity with a pre-emptive strike — as if by anticipating the reader’s objections, the author had somehow answered them. “I would never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it myself!” “It was one of those amazing coincidences that can only take place in real life!” “It’s a one-in-a-million chance, but it’s so crazy it just might work!” Surprisingly common, especially in SF. (Attr. John Kessel)

As you can see, these errors are not exclusive to SFF writing.  

Recently I have been watching the first season of "24" on Netflix, which provides many examples of this little TCL gem:

Idiot Plot  A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the author’s convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own. (Attr. James Blish)

Because I've seen so many TCL items represented in crime fiction, I've decided to add a few of my own crime-fiction-related items to the Lexicon.  Although I've never been to Austin and I don't know any of the TCL creators, I call my addendum "Turkey City Noir."

Ross Thomas  A character who drinks enough to put an elephant under the table twice over—but remains competent and functional.

Mike Shayne  Any character who get knocked unconscious three or more times in one book, and who suffers no ill effects that cannot be treated with a stiff drink.

Kinsey Milhone  Any female sleuth who drives a cute car.

Perry Mason  A mystery in which the killer can reliably be guessed by simply choosing the most unlikely suspect.

Burkism  Ending a chapter or scene with a bizarre metaphor or image, as, “…my knuckles were round and white as quarters on the steering wheel.”  Or “…her calves clicking with light in the bright air.”  (examples from Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke)

Bottoms Up  A book that opens from the point of view of a dying person.

Jesus Plot  A character presumed to be dead near the beginning of a book turns up alive.

Thin Man  A character who does not exist.

Hailey Mary  A book with six or more viewpoint characters, all of whom are rushing headlong toward the same disaster. (after Arthur Hailey, author of Hotel and Airport.

Effing Cozy  A cozy that contains the F word.

One Bad Thing After Another  A novel in which each chapter brings a new personal disaster (loss of child, loss of limb, loss of husband, public humiliation, sudden weight gain, loss of job, etc.) until, at the end, one good thing happens that makes it possible for the protagonist to go on with his or her miserable life.

DoG PileD  A mystery in which the protagonist represents a small minority, every member of which will buy the book.  (from Disabled Gay Portuguese Detective.)

Slippery Witness  A plot that hinges on the detective putting off, for various and trivial reasons, interviewing the one witness who holds the key to the mystery.

My Thanksgiving Post

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Most of us will be having dinner with family and/or friends.  I hope you are looking forward to it.  I am.

Everybody’s Thanksgiving expectations and experiences are different—yet the same.  I was looking at this Norman Rockwell painting and wondering how many of us have ever had such a Thanksgiving.  Thinking about how odd it was that even though that painting does not resemble any of my Thanksgivings, it still produced a twinge of nostalgia in me. 

At the same time, it made me feel like a voyeur peering in at some vaguely alien scene: Who are these people?  What are they thinking?  Is that really a turkey, or the last dodo?

It got me to wondering what other people’s Thanksgivings are like, which made me think that you might be wondering the same thing.  If so, here’s a preview of what my tomorrow will look like. 

(Warning:  This might be one of my most boring posts ever!)

Mary and I will be driving through a (probable) snowstorm to my cousin Bill’s house.  He and his wife, Sherrie, have volunteered to host the Hautman Thanksgiving celebration this year.  There will be about forty of us—three or four survivors from the eldest generation, maybe two dozen of us baby boomers, a few younger adults, a few teens.  No babies or toddlers this year—my parents' generation was notoriously fecund, we baby boomers have been more circumspect, and the young ones have yet to breed.

There will be nearly as many dishes as there are people.  Our Thanksgiving is a loosely organized potluck.  There will be turkey, of course.  Possibly two.  There will be venison and ham and maybe a few ducks (we have several hunters in the family).  There will be sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and “dressing.”  There will be cranberry something, assorted salads (including Charlie's broccoli salad), appetizers, at least one green bean dish, a mystery dish (Put some on your plate, taste it, turn to the person next to you and ask, “What am I eating?”), and plenty of beverages—cousin Tom will bring his award-winning home-vinted apple wine, and there will be a dozen or more assorted bottles of commercial wines—everything from proseco to reisling to pinot to cabernet—some plonky, some divine, depending on who brought it.  There will be beer and soft drinks.  There will be coffee.

The food will be excellent.  Some dishes will be fantastic.  There are several talented, adventuresome cooks in the family, and the quality of the viands improves every year.  But our Thanksgiving is not really about the food. 

It’s not about saying thank you, either.  There will be no invocations, no toasts, no prayers.  That practice disappeared when my generation reached adulthood back in the 1970s, and my parents and aunts and uncles realized that ninety percent of their offspring had no interest whatsoever in organized religion.  It might be more like ninety-five percent—I’m not sure.

With so many people involved, there is no way this can be a “traditional” sit-down dinner—no carefully planned courses, no wine pairings, and no beautiful table setting.  It will be a scattered and disorganized buffet, with people sitting wherever they can find a space—a card table, the sofa, the floor.

Although the food will be good, most of it will hardly be tasted, because everybody will be talking between (and during) mouthfuls.  Our Thanksgiving is about seeing each other, catching up, making contact.  I will see relatives I haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving, and I might meet an "orphan" or two—cousins' friends who happen to be in town.

What do we talk about?  It would be easier to say what we don’t talk about.  We don’t talk about politics much.  Or religion.  Not because we actively avoid those topics, but because most of us simply aren't that interested.  In all the Hautman Thanksgivings I’ve been to, I don’t recall any serious arguments.  No shouting, no fistfights, no shocking revelations.  When I hear stories about other peoples' pyrotechnic Thanksgiving dinners I feel somewhat drama-deprived.  Perhaps we have a dark, seething, river of decay running just beneath the surface, and our apparent civility is a desperate form of denial.  There are indications of such pestilence, certainly—we have our share of family secrets, feuds, and embarrassments—but for some reason these things do not, thankfully, come up at Thanksgiving.

There will be a few serious conversations fitted between the jokes and laughter, but most interactions will be brief and superficial.  That’s a good thing.  I have just as many flat-out irritating relatives as anybody else.  I may be one of the more irritating ones.  Still I enjoy seeing them all.

Do I love Thanksgiving?  As much as I look forward to it, I’m always relieved when it’s over.  We’ll get there mid-afternoon, talk and drink a bit, start eating around five, and by six I’ll have talked to everybody for a moment or two, at least, and I’ll be working on my exit plan.

That’s it.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Blank Confession: In Stores This Week

On Saturday, November 20, at 1:00 p.m. I'll be signing books at Once Upon a Crime in Minneapolis. If you can't make it, give them a call (612-870-3785) and have them set aside a signed and personalized copy for you. Once Upon a Crime is one of the Midwest's premier booksellers - they'll be here long after the last B&N has closed its doors.  Especially if you give them your business.

Saturday, December 4th, at 2:00 p.m. I will be at The Loft Literary Center for a reading from the new book.  It's free, and there will be snacks.  This is part of the fabulous Second Story Reading Series curated by Swati Avasthi and Heather Bouwman.  Each reading features two readers, one "established" YA or MG author (that would be me), and one "rising star."  In this case, the rising star is Steve Brezenoff, who has written a YA novel with the excellent title The Absolute Value of -1. Last chance to get signed copies for the holidays!

One more thing - on Saturday, January 22, at 2:00 p.m., I'll be at The Red Balloon in St. Paul to talk and sign copies of both Blank Confession and The Big Crunch.  

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.)

Hey! I Made Another Video!

This one is to promote THE BIG CRUNCH.  I promise, this time there will be no singing.

YARN Interview

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