I have a conundrum now. Clayborn Press is going to resurrect the Nick Kepler novels. We haven’t decided on a release date for Northcoast Shakedown, but we did decide they will be released with the byline “TS Hottle writing as Jim Winter.” Only…
If you’re reading this directly on the web site, you can see it’s science fiction-oriented. An old scifi movie every Friday. kvetching about fandom. And book reviews done every Thursday, though granted some of them are most decidedly not science fiction. (Heads up: Hunter S. Thompson is on deck this week.) I have a space theme for the site, and the books page is dedicated to the Compact Universe. So what’s a poor boy to do?
In the before time, in the long, long ago, I pretty much blogged about whatever I wanted. Crime, when done well, is borderline literary fiction. Those who complain its not tend to be those who wasted years in creative writing programs to write irrelevant crap no one likes and pretty much is 800 pages of navel gazing. (And yet Jonathan Franzen sells, despite an obvious over-inflated ego he can’t keep off the page.)
So when I only showed the world my Jim Winter face, I could blog about anything, write about anything. I blogged about music. I blogged about politics (but less so these days. Too angry for anyone wanting to spend a few minutes with). I blogged about my personal life. Pretty much anything. I thought science fiction would free that up. Instead, it’s been limiting. Most science fiction fans don’t want to hear about why I think Van Halen III is actually a good album. And when it comes to politics, they tend to pick an ideology and stick to it rigidly the way they stick to their favorite franchises. Might explain why Star Wars fandom is so toxic now. I expected science fiction to be fun, talking about things that would send most other readers headed elsewhere.
And it has been fun. I missed getting all nerdy with fans of BSG, Star Trek, or Firefly. The Whovians are the most fun despite some whining about the new Doctor being a woman. Even that died down eventually. But it’s probably two thirds of what I talk about here. With most of what remains about writing. It’s not that I’m sick of science fiction. It’s that I miss the rock and roll. I miss Elmore Leonard and what George Pelecanos was up to. And beer. Well, OK, I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to.
But now crime is back. Can I do both? I don’t see where I have a choice. But it’s not like I have to give up anything.
Except politics. God created Twitter for me to vent my spleen about that.