A Little Foolishness

(The following appeared on a website promoting a novel I wrote a few years ago. At the time, I was determined not to put up the same old bio.)

Hammett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was an aristocratic anarchist; his mother was a pearl diver for the Ceylon Import and Export Company. He contracted yellow fever when he was four, and after a long period of recuperation, he was arrested many times for shoplifting garden supplies from Woolworth’s. Accordingly, he was placed in Miss Clara Pottinger’s School for Suspect Children. His teen years were uneventful, discounting numerous accusations by debutantes and their fathers. Nothing was ever proven in a court of law, this being long before reliable DNA testing.

When only nineteen, Hammett was kidnapped and brought to Ireland, where he was forced to hand out political leaflets advocating celibacy for local politicians whose progeny was consistently disappointing the local electorate. He escaped to Dublin, where he eventually married Molly Dwyer O'Grady, who later starred in Irish Spring soap commercials in America.

The marriage was ill-fated, and Hammett worked his way back to the States on a merchant marine vessel after his divorce from O’Grady, who had insisted that her husband join The Sons of Irish Liberty Pleasure Club. Back in Louisiana, he purchased his law degree from Tulane University. Failing the bar exam three times running, he played the banjo at night in local jazz clubs in the French Quarter. By day, he was a writer, publishing the now-famous juvenile series The Muffin Twins, mysteries starring Judy and Julie Muffin, Siamese twins who could really put their heads together to solve high crimes and misdemeanors.

Hammett married the beautiful and exotic Baroness Maria del Mariposa and moved to a posh Garden District mansion haunted by the Rotomandino family—seven brothers who died in a tragic trapeze accident. He began writing adult fiction, and has received such honors as The Best New Writer to Emerge in Years Award and The Azalea Society’s Annual Award for Lengthy Prose. His wife died in 1996 in an accident involving a barbecue pit and the family’s beloved terrier, Noodles. He now writes as food critic for Wine and Trout Weekly, Amazing Hushpuppies, and Crabs. He is also author of several volumes of poetry, which have been labeled by one critic as “undeniable verse.”

Copyright, 2001, William Hammett