Blind Items: Bay Area Author Edition

Just like the celebrity gossip blogs except mild-mannered and fun, without indiscrete stories of drug dependence and promiscuity.

And all the facts come from totally legit sources, author websites and Twitter.

1) What disciplined, UC Irvine grad, aka August Van Zorn, sometimes seen in Peterborough, New Hampshire or Oakland Burma Superstar, once turned down an offer to appear in "People Magazine"’s “50 Most Beautiful People” issue?

2) What local psychiatrist, a Katherine Dunn and Fredric Brown fan, sometimes compared to Carl Hiaasen, whose first hard-boiled thriller was optioned as a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle, and has a recently published a footnoted sequel that begins “Ishmael—Call me,” -- owns a Boston terrier named Lottie, aka “Sweetiebunch”?

3) This "RuPaul’s Drag Race" fan, former chauffeur, once a student of Robert Coover and Edmund White, whose last novel takes place in the Sunset District, currently teaches in Iowa City, (but he talks live with Roz Chast on City Arts and Lectures in June). His next book is getting spiffed up by Stephen King editor Lee Boudreaux at Ecco Press.

4) This Outer Sunset District-residing scuba diver, and author of 50 books, 30 of them for young adults, dedicated his 2008 novel (in which John Steinbeck friend- Ed “Doc” Ricketts features heavily, to a dive boat operator. One of the tattooed writer’s vampire-themed titles was once listed ninth in "Entertainment Weekly"’s list of best horror books.

5) This Peninsula professor, and former Raymond Carver co-worker, was expelled from prep school. His perennially class-listed memoir was brought to screen starring Robert De Niro as the alcoholic dad. The professor’s mom once led the League of Women Voters.

6) This SoMa-residing clarinetist and former ACT-Uper, reads at Magnet Book Club on March 26.

7) The first chapter of this former newspaper serialist’s beloved Russian Hill-based stories was pub’d in Marin’s Pacific Sun. Upon it’s first "SF Chronicle" appearance, a drunk Rock Hudson read the story aloud to friends (including the author), in his Fairmont Hotel room in (big hint) 1976. True story!