Ask the Author: Bob Calhoun
Answered Questions (4)
Bob Calhoun
Believe it or not, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Sure, Murders That Made Us is true crime and Bradbury's is a science fiction classic, but stay with me here. I'd been writing my true crime column for SF Weekly for months and people at my work kept asking if I was going to publish a collection of these stories. "Why would you buy a book when you can read all the stories for free?" I said. "I mean, all the weed dispensary ads are a little annoying but still." So, I bought this beat up paperback of Martian Chron at Half Price Books in Berkeley. It was some high school kid's copy with note scribbled in margins that said things like, "life on Mars sad." But reading it I realized that--while it's thought of and taught as a novel--it's really a collection of short stories that Bradbury published separately in sci-fi magazines over several years that he combined into this narrative of the history of human colonies on Mars. "What if I took all my crime stories and lined them up into a history of San Francisco?" I thought, and that's what I did. The value add, to use a terrible business term, is probably what helped it get published.
Bob Calhoun
I have a day job so right now I'm just working on promoting my upcoming book, The Murders That Made Us, coming May 4, 2021 from ECW Press. I'm still trying to launch the book website, trying to line up zoom readings and so many other things. It's a lot of work.
Bob Calhoun
The careerists tell you to write every day, but that's not quite true. Don't make it a total endurance test all the time. But you should read every day. It doesn't matter what you're reading but you should always be reading something.
Bob Calhoun
Short answer: crossword puzzles
Long version: I had this tremendous case of writer's block while trying to finish Beer, Blood & Cornmeal. People get writer's block mixed up with procrastination but it's not. I was really trying to write these last two chapters but the paragraphs were eluding me. I'd write something and know it just wasn't lining up. I tried writing with the keyboard and writing on paper and nothing was working. All of a sudden, I got this strange mental craving to do crossword puzzles. I did the ones in the newspaper--SF Chronicle, NY Times, whatever but those weren't enough so I bought those crossword puzzle magazines they have in the supermarket and just kept doing those. Something about looking at words and language in a different way really helped me snap out of my writer's block. I was able to get back to writing again and finish the book after a couple of weeks of doing crossword puzzles.
Long version: I had this tremendous case of writer's block while trying to finish Beer, Blood & Cornmeal. People get writer's block mixed up with procrastination but it's not. I was really trying to write these last two chapters but the paragraphs were eluding me. I'd write something and know it just wasn't lining up. I tried writing with the keyboard and writing on paper and nothing was working. All of a sudden, I got this strange mental craving to do crossword puzzles. I did the ones in the newspaper--SF Chronicle, NY Times, whatever but those weren't enough so I bought those crossword puzzle magazines they have in the supermarket and just kept doing those. Something about looking at words and language in a different way really helped me snap out of my writer's block. I was able to get back to writing again and finish the book after a couple of weeks of doing crossword puzzles.
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