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Key West book, book on Florida childhoods in the works
This just in: I'll be doing a book for Harmony Books, a Random House imprint, on the moveable feast that was Key West in the Seventies. The working title is Mile Marker Zero. I've already finished a couple of chapters of this non-fiction narrative and I'm having a great time immersing myself in the story. There were a lot of great characters there -- still there, as a matter of fact -- and so I intend on having a lot of fun. Hunter S. Thompson showed up at the end of the decade, so he'll be a character in this book too. That's good. I discovered that after Outlaw Journalist, he was a tough guy to let go.
This summer, I'm finishing up Paradise Recalled, a collection of stories about growing up in Florida. This one is for the University Press of Florida. It will feature stories from Fabiola Santiago, Carl Hiaasen, Michael Connelly, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Mark Lunsford, Tim Dorsey, Anne V. Hull, Jeff Klinkenberg and many others. I'm publishing two of my short stories in the book as well.
The deadline for the Paradise Recalled manuscript in November. It should come out in 2011.
Mile Marker Zero is due next September and should be out in 2012.
Wish me luck.
An Outlaw Journalist multimedia extravaganza
I've been pleased with the reviews of my Hunter S. Thompson biography, but more pleased that his friends have liked the book so much. Some of them have pointed out minor errors here and there -- incorrect job titles, the wrong size of a motorcycle engine, etc. Each error pierces me like a knife to the heart, of course.
So it's good news for the aorta that I was able to make these minor corrections for subsequent editions of the book.
The hardcover published in the United Kingdom (at left) by Aurum Press has a different and extremely colorful cover. In fact, the designer found a photo for the back of the jacket that even some of Hunter's closest friends had never seen. More important, those errors that nag at me have been corrected. Click on the book cover to order the British edition. Remember, I have seven children and all book sales are appreciated.
Here's a bunch of reviews and interrviews:
The Biography Podcast devotes a show to the book here.
Click here for a review from London's Sunday Times by Christopher Hitchens.
Click here for a review from London's Literary Review by Stephen Amidon.
I discuss Hunter S. Thompson the political reporter in this excerpt from National Public Radio's "On the Media," with host Bob Garfield.
I did "The Book Show" on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, with host Ramona Koval and fellow guest Eva Orner, producer of the film "Gonzo." Love those accents. Listen here.
Here is a video of my multimedia presentation to the Society of Professional Journalists meeting at the University of Florida. I was introduced by Mike Foley. I expected him to give me more shit than he did. Lots of good pictures of Hunter in the slide show.
Here is an interview with Florida journalism student David Cumming following the UF multimedia presentation. He asks some awfully good questions.
One of the most masterful interviewers on the book tour was Steve Bertrand of WGN radio in Chicago.
(I grew up listening
to that station, so it was a semi-thrill to be in the studios.) In addition to doing
an interview for the station,
Steve did an interview for Barnes & Noble's "Meet the Writers" program, which you can listen to here.
When I was in Aspen, I did an interview against a beautiful
post-card like backdrop, which
you can see here.
Also in Aspen, I did a call-in show called "The Con Game" with Michael Conniff. Woody Creek resident
Jimmie Ibbotson of the Nitty Ditty Dirt Band calls in near the end. Listen here for the whole show.
Watch here if you're interested in me chatting with
Wayne Garcia, the "Political Whore" columnist for Creative Loafing in Tampa. Notice how hard Wayne
and I are trying to be taken seriously, though we are in
a bar and we've been sampling several of the fine products offered there.
Critic David Gates (the former Newsweek writer, not the former lead singer of Bread) offers his assessment of Outlaw Journalist and Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson by Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson. Click here for the review. If you're a Hunter Thompson fan, you should pick up Conversations. I was very happy that Beef and Kevin included my 1990 interview with Hunter in their book. They contributed to the bibliography of my book. This essay by Gates is excellent -- and I would say that even if he wasn't writing about my book.
We come from the land of the ice and snow
I'm very proud to be part of an excellent rock'n'roll book called Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin. I was invited to write about Led Zeppelin III for this collection. It brought back a lot of fond memories, because for my generation, we really felt that Led Zeppelin was our band. The Beatles and the Stones and Dylan -- that was the music of our big brothers and sisters. Led Zeppelin drew a line in the sand, and we fell on the right side of the line.
This lavishly illustrated book is published by Voyageur Press and the lead author is rock critic Jon Bream. Each album is the subject of an essay by a different rock writer. Some of the other contributors include Greg Kot, Jim Derogatis and David Fricke. For anyone who loves the band, the book is not only a lot of fun but also a great reference (complete discographies for the music geeks among us). You'll love this.
Click on the book cover to order.
Presenting ... American Reports
Sometimes more is less. In this wacky media-overload world, we often miss great journalism we need to see. Either we've overdosed on the Web or can't seem to get around to all the reading we need to do.
American Reports is here to help. I'm editing a new series from the University Press of Florida that will present the strongest, most provocative, most meaningful journalism in America. It's terrific and important storytelling you may have missed. We present this in the most magnificent of formats, the book. The idea is to give a longer shelf life to journalism that might otherwise turn into yesterday's news. We give the country's best journalists the opportunity to study the issues so critical in the early years of the 21st Century: race, poverty, crime, celebrity culture, the environment, fraud. The list of inequalities and inequities, sorry to say, goes on, and it is the sad duty of journalism -- if we may paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr -- to establish justice in a sinful world.
Journalists are often constrained by time and space. The intensity of daily journalism does not always allow for the level of explanation readers need. American Reports allows these writers to revisit and enhance work they have done, or to explore a subject they have been unable to mine in their publications. The point is to be provocative and meaningful and to fulfill the mission of journalism – to be the purest form of public service. By shining a light, journalists open the eyes of society.
Watch for the first volume by Anne V. Hull of the Washington Post.
I want Jeff Klinkenberg's job
Klinkenberg is a roving correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times. He outfits himself in Columbia or L.L. Bean, jumps in his pickup, and hits the road. He writes about whatever catches his fancy.
As a guy who spends too much of his life behind a desk doing department-chairman kind of stuff, I envy Klinkenberg's freedom.
Scores of Klinkenberg's columns have been pulled together in books and his latest collection is Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators, from the University Press of Florida. I was flattered that Klinkenberg asked me to write the introduction. It gave me a chance to pay tribute to him and the kind of journalism he practices. There are not enough Klinkenbergs. "If Jeff Klinkenberg isn't careful," says Carl Hiaasen, "he might give journalism a good name." Read the introduction here.
Click on the book cover to order.