A New Experience for Me

Most of you who know me, or have browsed this page from time to time know I’ve edited my share of books and anthologies with varying degrees of success. Of all the books I’ve done, I’m proudest of one called Desolate Souls, which was the anthology book for the 2008 World Horror Convention. I worked at this one with J. P. Edowards, and a lot of work went into that book, and it nearly didn’t come together.
But it did, finally.
It was the last thing I edited — the last stories I chose for publication.
Until this year, that is.
Late last year, I was asked to be a guest editor for Wily Writers. I elected to do the September issue, and I chose two stories, the first of which is up right now: Loren Rhoades’s “Valentine.”
It’s a stunning story, one of her Alondra DeCourval series, and should not be missed.
Being asked to edit a magazine is a new thing for me. I love editing — it’s something that makes me feel part of something larger, something permanent, and it gives me that feeling in a way that writing doesn’t. I”m not saying it’s better, but it is different.
When someone asks your opinion, it’s a big deal. Wily Writers asked me for my opinion about which stories they should publish in their magazine. It’s a great honor to give it, and a great honor to be asked.
So share my elation, and enjoy the story. There’s another coming soon.

Keeping It Going

Many years ago, many years ago, I was standing in a high school bathroom, the one in the math wing I referred to as my office, and I told a friend of mine my goal was to play guitar like Jimmy Page. His response? I’ve never forgotten it: “Mark, you’ll never play like Jimmy Page.”

Man, that hurt.

I turned towards him and said, “Watch me.” And walked away.

Flash forward several years. I wasn’t able to accomplish it, because my values and goals suffered a reordering process , and I spent a lot of time doing other things, things I needed to accomplish more immediately, and a lot of things I thought were expected of me. But had things been different, I’d like to think I would have become one of the great guitarists  because I have something to offer. I also have a quality (or fault) that some others with ambition don’t have.

Cue the Man Behind the Curtain: what is it? Stubbornness. Good old dogged, determined, in-your-face, kiss-my butt, persistent American stubbornness. Tell me I can’t do something? Get out of the way and bring your camera — you’ll want pictures.

Fast forward several more years. I went back to something I also used to do during high school: Writing. And as the years and stories have gone by, I’ve learned that writers need one thing beyond all others.

Talent? Innate ability? Well, that helps, but nah. Writing can be learned. Education? Well, that’s another topic entirely, isn’t it?

The one, single thing writers need, more than any other tool is stubbornness.

Oh, you can call it something else. In fact, you can call it any damn thing you want. Some say motivation or thick skin. Others, persistence. Others, that je ne sais quois that keeps a writer going when she’s down. But it’s stubbornness. If you don’t have it, get it. I have learned that’s what it takes to be a writer.

You need it because there’s an inherent difficulty involved in any creative activity, and that is rejection. They always tell you, “Remember, we’re rejecting your work, not you personally.” What these feel-good types neglect to remember is most of us are the work, dammit! Where do they think we got our ideas from, outer-freaking-space? Harlan Ellison’s Scranton Idea Factory?

So every time I get a rejection, even after 22 long, hard years of doing this, I die inside just a little bit. Every time I get a rejection, even one that says, “Hey I like your writing, but this ain’t working for me,” I need to have my writer tantrum, as Nick Kaufmann calls them. Sometimes for a ten minutes, sometimes for a full day. The length of my writer tantrum varies directly with the length of the work. When my three-book piece gets rejected the first time, I’ve decided I”m going to spend the day in bed with potato chips watching my Firefly DVDs and have people bring me Big Macs every four hours.

And what will get me going again? That sheer stubbornness of will the Brits call bloody-mindedness.

And still, there are days when I want to quit. There are days when I look at the quantity of computer files, both finished and unfinished, the stacks of paper littering nearly every room I’m associated with. I look at the quantity of rejections as compared with the meager acceptances, and I literally look in the mirror and ask that guy, “What are you doing? Do you realize how much it costs to write? The small, almost hidden costs of printing, copying and mailing? The costs in family time, associations with friends, and yes, sometimes even work status? Look at it. What do you have to show for it?”

We all ask ourselves these questions. Some ask them every day. It’s that reaction I call the “screw-you” reflex that’s going to get you through it. Sure you’ll have days of depression. Sure you’ll have times when you want to quit and do something more upbeat, like shoveling poo underground. Sure you’ll have your writer tantrums.

But here’s the secret to getting through: allow yourself that depression. Get it out. Go off your diet. Watch too much TV.

But that’s only half the secret. The rest of the secret? Let your stubbornness kick in, get the hell over it and go  back to work.

That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about how depressed you get. It’s about going back to work.

Make sure you do. You’ve got books I want to read.

Novel Ways of Doing Things

On March 31^st of t of this year, I finished my third novel.

Okay. That’s not exactly right. To be completely truthful, it’s the third novel I’ve written in my lifetime. But it’s the first one that a) I’ve fully completed, and b) I am allowing others to see because it might not be crap. If we’re sticking to those criteria, it’s the very first ever.

Let me elaborate.

In the relatively mild summer of 2005, I got to page three-hundred and change of a horror novel set during the American Revolution. It really excited me, because for months, I got up at five-thirty in the morning and wrote three pages or so on the thing every day. But July neared, my life got busy. I made it to within about fifty pages of the end and stopped. To this day, I’m unsure whether I really didn’t have time to work on it or whether I utterly chickened out. It’s been taking up space on the flash drive I carry around with me since then. Four years now.

Now, to address the other novel, a flashback (or a slide, as S.P. Somtow calls them):

On New Year’s Day of 1979, I kissed a girl. She was not my first, but she was certainly among the memorable. Her name was Marla name-not-to-be-repeated-on-the-internet, and she wore a pretty black and whilte floral dress, low-cut to show off her long neck. As one might guess, the kiss occurred as the clock struck midnight, and it happened at a place called Tyson’s Corner Mall. They later rechristened it Tyson’s Corner I because the builders of Tyson’s Corner II apparently could not think of a more original name. Our church rented the whole place for the evening, putting a jazz band at one end, a rock band at the other, and a chamber orchestra in the middle. Pretty cool.

The bands stopped playing shortly after midnight, and Marla and I sat down to decide if the kiss meant anything or if it was just laughs. We decided to see where it led us. We took it slow, and we lasted for quite a while, by high school standards. After it ended, formally, we stayed friends. She married another guy a few years later, and I lost track of her about halfway through college.

When I got home that first night, the early morning of that initial day of the new year, I was far too excited to sleep. The clock read one and change, and I thought about a lot of different things, including the plot twist my life just passed through. So I hung up my suit and tie and pulled on a pair of pj pants, and sat down at my little desk and started to write by the light of my desklamp the beginnings of a novel idea I’d been turning over for a few weeks. I wrote quickly, using a ballpoint pen on wide-ruled notebook paper.

Some of you might compare that to Abraham Lincoln, studying books by candlelight after dark. I suppose longhand was a hard way to do things. Apple had just released their computer a year or two before, and I couldn’t afford one. My only alternative sat in the closet: a noisy electric typewriter that hummed and clacked and sounded like a shock and awe attack on Baghdad. My folks slept in the next room, after all. And I would not learn to touch type for another fifteen years or so.

So pen and paper it was.

After about two-and-a-half hours, I stopped because I could no longer stay awake. But each evening, after I said good night to my parents, I’d go and write until I felt too sleepy to continue. I worked at this story for weeks, and the weeks became months. I don’t remember how long it took, but it seems that I wrote THE END at the bottom sometime around July of that year. The manuscript totaled about 100 written pages, and I titled it City of Death. I guess I was into horror designations even then, though the novel was supposed to be science fiction.

Of course I felt very proud of myself and still do that I wrote for consistently almost every night until it was finished.

So what did I do with it?

I was a kid of seventeen when I finished. I had no idea what to do with it, so it sat in the bottom drawer. It belonged there, actually, because the thing was terrible, on the order of The Eye of Argon kind of terrible. So I’m embarrassed to show it in public. And I lost track of it many, many years ago, thank God.

Though I suspect it’s in a file cabinet in my storage unit.

So, zipping back to the modern era, given that City of Death in its current state, is not something for the public, and the unfinished state of the American Revolution story, I have, I suppose, more properly finished my first novel. The title is still up in the air right now. It is a Nick and Lysette story. More properly, the Nick and Lysette story. There are five short stories and novellas that precede the book, but you need none of those to read and enjoy and understand the book. It will be the first in the series of books, assuming the publisher I’ve been talking to actually wants it and then asks for more.

As a side note for those of you who have been following Nick and Lysette’s adventures, this book documents some self-discovery on Nick’s part. As you may have suspected, there’s more to Nick than meets the eye. And for those of you who have been asking me to have Lys let loose on some bad guys, you get a very small taste of what she’s capable of in this book. It’s not pretty.

I finished the rough draft on March 31^st and ignored it until towards the end of May, letting it grow cold. Then I revised it as deep and hard as I could and gave it to my agent. Agent recommended changes, and made a few of her own. The completed manuscript goes to the editor this week.

And I couldn’t be more energized.

She has also challenged me to a next project. In the mornings I’m to continue two pages a day on the next Nick project.  I’m outlining it now, and have a draft of chapter one, both of which accompany the full manuscript of book one to the editor. But for the rest of the summer, I’ll be writing in the morning and editing the Revolutionary War project in the evening. Since I learned I’mm one of those who can compartmentalize, I’ll put those skills to work so I can work on these two projects at once.

The goal? I have committed to have them both done by New Year’s Day 2010, the 32^nd anniversary of my beginning. I’d like to finish the historical piece long before that, because I have an editor (a different one) interested. I’d like to get that done by the end of the summer. Then I can do a screenplay or two in the fall while finishing up the sophomore Nick and Lysette effort.

Can I do it? I’d like to think so. I’ve got lots of book-length stories crying to get out.

So watch this space. I’ll keep you updated.