Hot Damn!

Name: Hot Damn!
Author: James W. Hall

James W. Hall is the critically acclaimed author of eleven crime novels, including Body Language and Blackwater Sound. He's also published four books of poetry. And several of his short stories have appeared in magazines like the Georgia Review and Kenyon Review.

Now, writing in the spirit of Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Hall wins a new kind of reader with this collection of essays that run from insightful to opinionated, funny to wise.

Hall ponders subjects as diverse as his own love affair with Florida which began on a trip after college from which he never returned, to his equally passionate romance with books. He ponders the nature of summer heat, the writing of Hemingway and James Dickey, television, teaching, politics, fatherhood and much more. In the vibrant and elegant prose which characterize his fiction and poetry, Hall now proves himself a master of the essay as well.

James W. Hall

Though a native of Kentucky, James W. Hall (b. 1947) has lived most of his life in Florida, where he established himself as one of the foremost authors of crime in the Sunshine State. Originally a poet, he began writing crime fiction in the mid-1980s, publishing his first novel, Under Cover of Daylight, in 1986. A murder mystery starring a Key West fisherman named Thorn, it was a well-received beginning to a series that has, to date, yielded twelve books, most recently Dead Last. Besides the Thorn books, Hall has written stories and novels of life in South Florida, as well Hot Damn!, a collection of essays. He teaches writing at Florida International University, and lives with his wife Evelyn. They divide their time between the Florida Keys and the mountains of North Carolina.