What happens when a freshly minted film studies graduate heads out into the world with no particular plan? How A&S alum Patrick Hoffman went from taxi driver to private investigator to successful author

Back in 1998, Patrick Hoffman had just finished his degree in film studies at the University of Colorado Boulder when he decided to head back to his hometown of San Francisco with no real plan in mind for a career.

“I was very green when I came out of college,” says Hoffman. “I didn’t have much street smarts. I’d lived a pretty sheltered life.”

 

Author Patrick Hoffman, a 1998 CU Boulder film studies graduate, located his newest novel, Friends Helping Friends, in Colorado.

He ended up landing a job as a taxi driver at night and working as a private investigator during the day. “Driving cabs at night in San Francisco and investigating murder cases are very quick ways to learn about the seamier side of life.”

Those lessons in the seamy side of life informed his recently released novel Friends Helping Friends, a thriller set in Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado, that sees its main character infiltrating a white-supremacist compound on the Western Slope.

Before writing his newest novel—or any of his previous and acclaimed ones—Hoffman realized that what he was seeing in his jobs as a private investigator and cab driver might make good grist for fiction.

Easier said than done, though. Hoffman would get started, but after a day or two, his motivation would melt away.

The best writing advice Hoffman ever got came from a friend who asked him what he wanted to do with his life. “I told him I wanted to write thrillers. He asked what was stopping me. I told him that whenever I started something I felt great at first … but then on the second or third day, the inspiration would go away, and I’d feel like a complete fraud.”

Hoffman’s friend then told him that the bad feelings were actually a good sign, and that the secret was to just embrace those feelings and keep going. “I literally started my first book the very next day and everything that has followed can be traced directly back to that conversation.”

It all started in film classes

Hoffman adds that his film classes were “where it all started.” Those days, he was thinking about very basic things like story and plot. “But those were important questions, and you really get to wrestle with them when you’re studying something like film. I had great teachers, too: Jerry Aronson, Marian Keane and, of course, the legend Stan Brakhage. I also had wonderful philosophy teachers. Gary Stahl, may he rest in peace, comes to mind. The English and Humanities Departments were wonderful, too.”

Following his friend’s advice, and armed with the basics from his CU Boulder classes, Hoffman turned out his first novel, The White Van, set in San Francisco and about a troubled young woman wanted for bank robbery and hunted by a corrupt cop who wants the money more than justice.

 

CU Boulder alumnus Patrick Hoffman drew on his experience as a private investigator to write his new novel, Friends Helping Friends.

Hoffman is adapting that book into a movie. “Hopefully that happens,” he says.

His second novel, Every Man A Menace, was also set in San Francisco. Clean Hands, his third novel, was set in New York City, where he lives now.

And his latest novel, Friends Helping Friends, takes place in Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado. “For this one, it was time to come back home to Colorado,” he says. “There is a certain comfort in it. Also, Denver makes a great setting for a neo-western noir.”

He admits that before his last novel, he was kind of blocked for about eight months, having a hard time coming up with ideas. “One day I literally just started typing. I thought, ‘OK, there’s a woman in Denver, she’s a lawyer and she’s using steroids, and that was the start of the book. I went blindly from there. That’s how I do it, though. The tricky part is getting started.

“For me, writing fiction is 100% about overcoming self-doubt, being able to see something through to the end. The hard part is always starting the book. But then the middle and ends, of course, are hard, too.”

Part of Friends Helping Friends takes place in a white-supremacist compound. To understand that arena, Hoffman says his 20 years working as a private investigator (he still does it) and handling many murder cases helped.

“So, all of that, of course, informs the fiction. But also, I’ll just Google around and look for federal cases.” And he searches public records for indictments. “I love talking to journalists, too. My wife is a journalist, so she gives me introductions to her friends and colleagues, and I force them to answer all my questions.”

Up next for Hoffman is another book—this one set in Boulder, a place he’s now reminded of regularly when riding the subway in New York. 

“It’s been amazing to see Coach Prime make CU trendy. I see people wearing CU Buffalo jerseys and jackets. I’m just like wow! It’s amazing. Go Buffs!” 

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