Reflections On A Recent Fan Letter

If you want to be a successful (fiction) writer in this modern age, it is simply not enough to have a vibrant imagination and a talent with words. This is a truism. It has been repeated over and over, by the people who pay the bills (commercial publishers), by the people who serve the people who pay the bills (editors), and by the people who allegedly connect the writer to the people previously indicated (agents and Famous Friends of the Author). Even those people who pay their own bills will affirm that this is true, and any writer with an internet connection and a passing familiarity with this foolish business can clearly see it.

To this I say, So what?

In writing, there are greater truths (believe it or not) than those written in a publishing contract for a 5 to 50k copy print run, greater than Amazon sales rankings and long tail earnings, and much greater than the platform that many writers feel needlessly compelled to climb atop and do a silly market dance. I don't know what these truths are (Well, I know a few) but you do. So get them out of your head and into the world and share them, however you can. I swear, touching even one reader with the personal power of your hard work will make it all worthwhile.

I'm Sorry For Not Being Sorry

This blog was going to begin with my love of Robert Graves and segue into Siegfried Sassoon, whose The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston I'm currently reading. Then I was going to mention an article in the Surfer's Journal regarding Felipe Pomar and a tsunami (!) and an excellent editorial by Ed Lin in The Believer that eviscerates the practice of putting human bodies on display for commercial entertainment. I would still encourage you to follow the links because they're well worth checking out, but, to be quite honest, my heart just isn't into producing a long post for its own sake. And that's all right, because as a doggedly amateur writer I am under no obligation to perform for anyone but myself. So enjoy the links and I'll be back whenever I have something I think is worth reading. And speaking of something worth reading, here's a link to a post from Levi Montgomery's excellent blog: The Write Rants that encapsulates perfectly the way I've been feeling lately. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a(nother) novella I need to be working on.

DIY Horrorshow: A Self-Pubbed Writer's Halloween Bestiary (abridged)

Let's start our scary tour with:

ISBNs- I have some. I've even used them on three of my books. Still, they're ugly, unwieldy, and mostly unnecessary at my level of publishing. If this were a horror movie, my ISBNs would be named Renfield, or Igor (It's pronounced eye-gor. And one other thing- They're ISBNs, not ISBN numbers. International Standard Book Number numbers? Automatic Teller Machine machines? They're acronyms for Christ's sake; you're not supposed to add redundancies to them. It makes them go crazy and eat flies.)

Barcodes- Hey, do you think that guy in the jackass costume- No, not Kanye. The other guy, the one who referred to Kindle books as "crematoria lit"- do you think that guy realizes that his book and nearly every other carries the most widely accepted fascist tattoo in the history of modern civilization? After all, we gotta move that product. Arbeit macht frei, and all that. Oh, c'mon, lighten up. What's a horror list without Nazis?

The Em Dash- Seriously? Em dash? Why can't I just use hyphens? Ctrl what? I don't see it. Where? OK, this is getting creepy. No, I'm telling you it's not there. Wait, who turned out the lights? Hello? Oh crap, it's behind me, isn't it?-

Word Count- Just like being buried alive, without the mercy of suffocation.

Agents and Editors: Known best by the bloody limbs (occasionally a head), severed with sharp knives, that they leave littered on the ground. As in any entertaining horror movie almost everyone runs towards them, even when they should know better.

Money- The lure, like sex, fame, and rockstar status, that leads us back to Camp Crystal Lake every time. Like survival, it is largely illusory.

The Devil- If you write, and you don't know him (I'm looking at you, Nicholas Sparks), there will come at least one time that you wish you did.

A Platform- That place where you dangle from the noose, for the amusement of:

The Audience- That's you. I mean, what's the point of this whole little Danse Macabre without you? I hate you all.

Why I Skipped September: A Short Photo Essay

This was the smallest day. 'Nuff said. Thanks to Nola Moosman for the photos. If they're lacking, it's entirely the fault of the rider, not the photographer.

The Writer's Toybox 4: Severian of the Guild, or, Yes I'm that big of a geek and, no, I won't make one for you

As often happens when my creativity is running particularly high, it tends to spill over into strange places. There's been a lot of spillage lately, so much that a Playmobil Severian is little more than an afterthought, which, if you've read The Book of the New Sun, you'll understand is a bald-faced compliment to myself- so sue me, this is my blog. If you haven't read it then you're missing out on one of the three must-read doorstops of fantastic fiction, the other two being The Lord of the Rings and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. As far as I'm concerned they're all three essential reading, and I don't even like the majority of science fiction and fantasy (It's true, I'm a firm believer in Sturgeon's Law). That said, this is a book nerd toy of epic magnitude, and a perfect companion for my- I mean my son's- Playmobil Elric and Conan.

A Message From The Anti-Vivisectionist Book Club

Would you like to know the best way to ruin the aesthetic integrity of a book? It's pretty easy. Just pick your favorite literary obsession- The Lord of the Rings, Finnegan's Wake, The Trial, The Iliad, The New Testament, hell, even the Twilight series- then find a fan group (online or off) and start picking away at the narrative until there's nothing left but bone, break the bone and suck the marrow. Don't spend too much time thinking about the fact that the story (which you claim to love) was alive when you started gnawing away at its flesh.

Now I'm not saying that there's nothing to be found beneath the painted surface of an author's work, and I'm not denying that many writers welcome, even crave, a closer reading of the pages they took so much effort to craft. But a writer also understands (or ought to understand) that the act of creating a story for others often involves ruining much of its beauty within themselves. I can't imagine that any author who truly loves the work they've given life to would wish to see it pulled to pieces upon the altar of fandom, that "deplorable cultus" as Tolkien so aptly put it, and I can't see why some readers can't be satisfied with the pulse and rhythm of a story's heart, that they have to dig it out and eat it, too.

It Must Be In The Genes

As a boy I never had much interest in my family history, partly (mostly) because my parents didn't express any interest in it, and partly because I just assumed there wasn't anything interesting to be found. But it turns out I was wrong.

It seems that my earliest knowable direct ancestor dates from the time of Henry VIII, from Suffolk, England, where he was a member of the minor gentry and where his house still stands. His grandson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, Marlowe, et al., and a citizen (if not a resident) of London, was one of 205 investors in the third voyage of the East India Company. My first direct ancestor in America came over in 1669 and founded a church that I think is still standing. To my knowledge, none of my family fought in the Revolution, but several of them took part in the Civil War and, according to an excruciatingly vague anecdote, one was poisoned by his slaves. Yikes. A mixed bag, to be sure, but hardly boring. It amazes me to think that I'm one of these people.

And I know without a doubt that they're a part of me. See, sometime before 1665 members of my family began using a Coat of Arms: two greyhounds, standing on their hind legs and fighting, in various forms. The thing is, the family had never been granted a Right to Arms and therefore they weren't entitled to use a Coat of Arms. They just decided they wanted one and made one up without permission. My people, cutting around and generally ignoring the gatekeepers. I'm thinking very seriously about using that family emblem as the publishing icon for my future books.