A Visit With Steve Hockensmith, Part Two
Today we’re continuing our interview with Steve Hockensmith, author of the Holmes on the Range mystery series published by St. Martin’s.
MB: On your blog (www.stevehockensmith.com) you’ve written about taking time to read and research. What’s the process for a HOTR novel?
SH: Step #1: Come up with a basic idea.
Step #2: Begin researching.
Step #3: Jot down ideas as the research continues.
Step #4 (which usually comes along about a month after Step #2): Brew a pot of coffee, tie myself to a chair, and start trying to shape the research and ideas into a plot.
Step #5: Have a nervous breakdown.
Step #6: Start outlining.
Step #7: Break the outline down into chapters, detailing everything that happens in the book.
Step #8: Write a synopsis and shoot it off to my editor and agent.
Step #9: Get the go ahead and start writing.
Step #10: Get 50 pages into the book, then have another nervous breakdown because it sucks sucks SUCKS!
Step #11: Push through and finish the damn thing.
Step #12: Spend a month or two revising.
Step #13: Send the first draft to my editor and agent.
Step #14: Have another nervous breakdown waiting for feedback.
Step #15: Get feedback (usually something along the lines of, “It’s great, but could it be 12,000 words shorter?”), then get back to work.
Step #16: Turn in a second draft a few months later.
Step #17: Move on to the next book.
Step #18: Repeat.
MB: The Black Dove was set in San Francisco and specifically Chinatown. How much research did you need to do? Did you spend time in San Francisco?
SH: I spent weeks reading about San Francisco history, focusing on Chinatown and the Barbary Coast. I also read up as much as I could on the tongs and Chinese immigrant culture in general. And because I live here in the Bay Area, I was able to spend time walking the very streets I was going to be writing about, which was a lot of fun. But even after doing all that, I still didn’t feel ready. So I hooked up with a small grab bag of librarians and historians who were kind enough to answer some questions that I’m sure struck them as very, very odd. Some of the Chinese language stuff was extremely difficult to nail down without help, for instance, and I was really lucky to finally find someone willing to translate words like [SPOILER] and [SPOILER] into Cantonese.
MB: Do you like to travel?
SH: Not really. I’m pretty much a homebody. These days, if I’m on the road somewhere, no matter where, there’s always the same thought in the back of my head: You ought to be working, you ought to be working, you ought to be working….
MB: When did you decide to write professionally?
I was always writing as a kid: making my own newspapers and magazines and comic books and stuff like that. So when I had the chance to take journalism classes in high school, it seemed like a natural path for me. I went from editing the high school newspaper to majoring in journalism in college to getting a gig as an assistant magazine editor right out of school. So you could say I made the decision when I was 16 and signed up for my first j-class.
Trying to write fiction professionally came much later — when I was in my mid-twenties. I think before then I wanted to do it, but I was afraid to try. And, of course, it did turn out to be pretty darned hard. There were lots of false starts, lots of rejections, lots of heartbreaks. I spent three or four painful years trying to write science fiction, but it just never gelled for me: Most of the stuff I was coming up with was, in hindsight, pretty freakin’ awful. It was only around ’98 or ’99 that I decided to give the crime genre a try, and from there things actually moved rather fast (by writing/publishing standards). I sold my first mystery story in 1999, my first mystery novel in 2004, and quit my day job in 2005. I don’t know if I’ll be able to support myself purely through writing forever — it’s a pretty tough racket, y’know — but for the time being I’m one lucky S.O.B.
MB: Do you have a strict writing schedule? Daily word count?
SH: Because of what my life looks like — two young kids, a wife with a slightly kooky work schedule — I can’t set daily goals. Every day’s different! But I do set a weekly target: 5,000 words. I’m not sure if that’s a little or a lot, as other writers would see it. For me, it’s just right. I usually make it, yet it’s always a challenge. So I’ll stick with it until either (A) my kids go to school and I can write a lot more or (B) my writing career collapses and I have to stock groceries for a living.
MB: Two of your Larry Erie stories (“Tricks” and “The Big Road”) were finalists for awards. Will there be more Erie stories? Would you like to write a novel based on any of your cotemporary characters?
SH: Sadly, I don’t have much time for short fiction anymore. It’s the novels that (almost) pay the bills. (Thank God my wife works, too!) Spending time on short stories feels like a luxury these days — a luxury I don’t know if I can afford. So I haven’t written an Erie story in a couple years. I love the character, though, so I can’t imagine he’s dead forever. I just can’t say when I’ll have time to bring him back. But when I do, I can guarantee it won’t be in a novel. My publisher, Andy Martin, once asked me, “What other series characters have you got?” So I told him about this depressed retired cop in Indiana. Andy just laughed and said, “Next!”
I actually wrote a novel about another magazine character — an acerbic college girl named Hannah Fox who popped up in two of my EQMM Christmas stories. It was my first stab at writing a book, and it’s probably a pretty sloppy piece of work. I think about rewriting it from time to time, though. I mean, it’s just sitting there, all the characters in place, good premise, the research done. All I need are five or six spare months, and I could really whip that puppy into shape!
Brother, can you spare five or six spare months?
MB: What do you read for pleasure?
SH: A little bit of everything. I find I can’t stick to one genre too long or I burn out on it. So I’ll read a mystery then a collection of science fiction stories then a biography then a book of humorous essays then a fantasy then another mystery, and round and round she goes. One trend I’ve noticed recently: I gravitate toward older books. I think when I’m reading contemporary stuff — particularly contemporary crime fiction — it’s very, very hard to switch off the editing center of my brain. Instead of enjoying someone else’s approach, I keep thinking, “I wouldn’t have done it that way” or “Holy %$@&, that’s better than anything I could do” or “Good God, how did that get into the final draft?” It’s waaaaaaay distracting. I’ll have to get over that, one of these days….
MB: In The Black Dove, you give us a glimpse into the future when you offer the quotation from “A Scandal in Bohemia”–
“Grit in a sensitive instrument,” “a crack in one of his own high-power lenses”—according to Watson, that’s how Sherlock Holmes viewed love.
I assume amore will play a prominent role in Book Four?
SH: Good catch! That’s exactly what the title of the fourth book, The Crack in the Lens, alludes to. The Amlingmeyers return to Texas to right an old wrong, but Old Red has trouble keeping his emotions out of the mix. The guys always make mistakes — I hope that’s one of the things that keeps them human and endearing — but, man, do they screw up this time.
MB: Readers of HOTR books have been treated to an exceptional ensemble cast of characters: Burl Lockhart, Dr. Chan, Diana Corvus –will we see a similar mix of old and new characters in The Crack in the Lens?
SH: Nope. Change of pace, this time. Nobody carries over from the previous book but the brothers. Well, there is one other hold-over, but he’s entirely an off-screen presence, and he’s only mentioned a couple times. The fifth book might bring back a few old friends, but I’m waffling on it. Seeing as I’m three-quarters of the way done with the first draft, I suppose it’s about time I made up my mind, eh?
MB: Where does the new story take place?
SH: The Crack in the Lens is set in San Marcos, a small city on the edge of Texas’ rolling “Hill Country.” I’d just come off a novel set in an exotic locale (i.e., Chinatown), so I wanted to go someplace a little more mundane. It meant I could spend a lot less time on research, for one thing. And narratively you don’t have to expend as much time and energy on exposition. The tongs and the Barbary Coast and the Anti-Coolie Act you have to explain to people — say “Texas town circa 1893,” and most folks’ll get it right away. Still, there were interesting things to dig into with San Marcos. The town had electricity and telephone service by that time, so modernity was on its way — and not everyone would welcome it.
MB: Old Red was pretty shook up at the news from Reichenbach Falls. As we know, Holmes eventually returns. When he does, will Old Red get to meet his idol?
SH: Well, I hate to sound like a sixth grader, but there’s only one appropriate answer to that.
That’s for me to know, and you to find out!
MB: Thank you, Steve, for a wonderful and informative interview, and all best wishes for the future.
on May 21, 2009 at 7:41 am
Permalink
Great interview, guys.