http://hatsoffblog.com Enthusiasms and Disturbances Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:43:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The fictive governor of Minnesota in my new novel, The Man in the Blizzard, is named Jim instead of Tim.  In a scene late in the novel, Jim (his last name his Holsom), makes an appearance at a huge anti-abortion rally on the state capitol grounds. Pregnant women from around ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=124 My new novel, The Man in the Blizzard, is about poetry-spouting detectives who get mixed up in next week's Republican convention.  When I realized that my detectives spoke poetry, part of my research involved raiding poetry collections in bookstores and libraries to find the perfect quotables for my dudes. My neighborhood ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=123  It's odd publishing a book that's set in the present moment, or what will soon be. Labor Day, with the Republican convention kicking off in St. Paul. (My first three novels were each anchored to public events, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights demonstrations in San Francisco, the Patty Hearst ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=120 http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=119 Twenty-five years ago, almost to the day, my former wife Patricia and I packed everything we owned in a Ryder truck and left San Francisco for a new life in Minnesota. I'd tired of San Francisco, hard as that was for anyone to imagine. Patricia was more reluctant to give ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=116  Last Saturday I picked up one of the last tickets for the Metropolitan Opera's live simulcast of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. The preferred local theater, for both its sound quality and stadium seating, was a cineplex in a god-forsaken suburb of Minneapolis, where the folks are really into god. ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=113   On my way out of San Francisco the other day, I spent an hour going through "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005," at the Legion of Honor. The show, originally organized by the Brooklyn Museum, ends its cross-country run in San Francisco on May 25. As I stood in front of ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=111 I've added a new category--self promotion. It was inevitable. I'm curious why the prospect of writing about myself or on behalf of myself is still difficult at this ripe age. I experience a little bloom of cowardice about exposing myself. Is it some sort of false modesty? The word "shameless" has ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=109  Last week HarperCollins introduced an imprint, as yet unnamed, which will neither pay author's their traditional advance nor accept returns from bookstores. The publisher plans to compensate writers with some form of profit-sharing. What profit? I suppose that's the point. As I read about the new imprint, I could hear ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=106 I've been cleaning out the closets in preparation for moving back to California after twenty-five years in Minnesota. It's a kind of madness wading through boxes of photos, and acres of letters, the kind from an earlier age with envelopes and stamps and crisp postmarks. The experience has been very ... http://hatsoffblog.com/?p=104