When did authors go from being faceless loners to indefatigable self-promoting public figures with state-of-the-art websites, publicists, booking agents, multi-media presentations, blogs, billboards, and (coming soon, no doubt) skywriting?   Maybe it all started with Mark Twain, but Pete thinks things have gotten a lot more intense in recent years, and this may well be the source of his identity crisis.  Anyway, I’m trying to keep up. 

The problem is that website-building + blogging +facebooking = less writing. It’s been two years since All-In was published.  Not that I haven’t been writing—I write every day—but the mysterious and not altogether rational ins-and-outs of the book business conspired (Ins-and-outs can conspire?) to delay publication of my next book until this coming September, when How to Steal A Car will be released, to be followed a mere nine months later by another book (title to be determined) and then, and then, and then, OMG, a veritable flood of Pete Hautman titles will be tsunamiing the bookstores and libraries and no one, not ever, will have cause to complain about my lack of prolificacy, although they may complain about my use of the term “tsunamiing,” which is probably not a word, and for which I beg your forgiveness.

Anyhow, I think How to Steal a Car is pretty good, although if you expect it to be remotely like anything else I have ever written you might be disappointed.  Okay, maybe it could be considered second cousin once removed to Sweetblood, inasmuch (a real though silly word) as the main character is seriously pissed-off, fifteen, female, and human—but the resemblance stops there. 

—June, 2009

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