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Daniel Hecht

Goodreads Author

Born

in Mount Kisco, New York, The United States

Website

http://www.danielhecht.com/

Genre

Fiction

Influences

Writers: Bellow, Dickens, Melville, Thoreau, Hemingway, Pesetsky, Carv ...more

Member Since

December 2013

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I was born into an artist's community founded in 1946 by my parents and their friends in the wilds of Westchester County, N.Y. Surrounded by these individualistic yet communalistic bohemians, I saw artists in every discipline working their magic, and could not help but follow in their footsteps.

I've lived all over the U.S. and have worked at every kind of job to make ends meet, and I enjoy the labor of body and hands as much as the effort of the mind. Mailman, logger, carpenter, musician, musical instrument builder, graphic designer, apple picker, farmhand, nonprofit organizational director, college administrator, educator -- the great thing about a checkered past is that you see the world from a lot of perspectives. This is the best educat ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

What are you currently working on?

Daniel Hecht I'm working on a very exciting project that will be published next year but has been fifteen years in the making. The book has taken a number of forms…moreI'm working on a very exciting project that will be published next year but has been fifteen years in the making. The book has taken a number of forms over the years, but it's still, essentially, a magical realist take on the amazing artists' community I was born into. Those astonishing people, in their rare and fabulous historical moment, the degree of their rebellion against convention, the hilarious, tragic, and seemingly unbelievable things they did: This is the book I've wanted to write for 20 years.(less)

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What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Daniel Hecht I have already written about a couple of personal mysteries -- including my first novel, Skull Session, and my most recent, The Body Below.

Skull Sess…moreI have already written about a couple of personal mysteries -- including my first novel, Skull Session, and my most recent, The Body Below.

Skull Session was based on the time I was called by an old family friend to see if I could fix up her hilltop mansion in New York, which she had fled from. Now in California, she had heard it had been vandalized -- could I check on it? I did -- and was appalled at the extreme violence of the vandalism, much of which seemed to have required superhuman strength to accomplish. Also mysterious to me was the fact that she had fled leaving all her possessions -- priceless antiques, mink coats, jewelry, family photos -- there to be stolen or ruined. I puzzled about it for years before writing Skull Session, and my descriptions of the house are entirely true.

The Body Below, published August 29, 2023, is based on a terrifying event that happened to me while swimming. I used to swim long distances in Vermont's mountain lakes, and I was well out on a four-mile swim when I kicked something under the water. It was heavy, with the density and resilience of human flesh. Horrified, I peered underwater to see a large object spinning in slo-mo away from my kick and disappearing into the silty water -- something that had to be a human body, wrapped in a blue-white shroud. At the time, a woman had gone missing from a town 15 miles away, and the police believed she'd been murdered and dumped in a reservoir near her home. They had drained that reservoir, finding nothing, several days before I kicked my mysterious object. All I could think at the time was, "They drained the wrong reservoir!" The event stayed with me for years, until I finally wrote about it in "The Body Below"!
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Combine Editions
Daniel Hecht’s books

Average rating: 3.67 · 6,261 ratings · 773 reviews · 14 distinct works • Similar authors

	City of Masks (Cree Black, #1) 3.68 avg rating — 2,218 ratings — published 2003 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Land of Echoes (Cree Black, #2) 3.78 avg rating — 1,015 ratings — published 2004 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Skull Session 3.58 avg rating — 1,034 ratings — published 1998 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On Brassard's Farm 4.14 avg rating — 568 ratings — published 2018 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black, #3) 3.43 avg rating — 659 ratings — published 2006 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Puppets 3.53 avg rating — 357 ratings — published 2001 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Babel Effect 3.27 avg rating — 224 ratings — published 2000 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Body Below 3.74 avg rating — 188 ratings — published 2023 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	スカル・セッション―殺戮の脳〈下〉 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	スカル・セッション―殺戮の脳〈上〉 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Daniel Hecht…

Series by Daniel Hecht

Cree Black (3 books)
by

Daniel Hecht (Goodreads Author)

3.66 avg rating — 3,892 ratings

Quotes by Daniel Hecht (?)

“Only when you are dangerous are you truly equal to the world.”
― Daniel Hecht, Bones of the Barbary Coast

tags: danger, dangerous, menace, power

10 likes

“I astonish myself with my immaturity. Remind me, when’s that hard-bitten self-sufficiency supposed to kick in?”
― Daniel Hecht, On Brassard’s Farm: A Novel

1 likes

“The sinister is always the unintelligible, the impressive, the numinous. Wherever something divine appears, we begin to experience fear. . . . Everything that has to do with salvation possesses, among other things, a sinister, unfamiliar character; it always includes the superhuman. It is a specifically human trait to find joy in destruction. —ADOLF GUGGENBUHL-CRAIG”
― Daniel Hecht, Skull Session

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