This is Why You Sign a Contract

I've "lost" a few publications in the past, mostly to venues that disappeared before my story could see the light (Grim Graffiti, Our Shadows Speak II, Arkham Tales*). Grim Graffiti vanished without a trace, the editor of OSS II dropped a note on his blog, and Arkham Tales is back.

Last summer, I blogged about an acceptance, and the magazine's TOC is now listed at their website. Behold: my name is not on the list.

So am I angry? Yeah, a little. With myself, too.

This is why you sign a contract, folks. I guess I assumed the line "This one is a yes from us. Payment would be £10. How does that sound?" meant they would print my story. I guess I was wrong. (At least no one's proven I'm not...I queried the mag two weeks ago and they have yet to respond).

So I'm bummed. But smarter. I don't expect every little FTL mag to have contracts. I don't feel so bad about losing a FTL publication.

But this particular magazine (I don't want to be a sour-puss and toss their name around, get it?) is cool. I was stoked. Now I'm just sour.

Where'd I leave that sugar...

*And the resurrected Arkham Tales accepted a story yesterday, more later. So, whoot!

#fridayflash Bad Poetry

A young officer drops a plastic evidence bag on Detective Talbot’s desk. The detective flinches and scoots back.

“Jeezus, Pendergast. What’s that?”

“Vegetable peeler.”

Talbot nods. “I can see that, but the dark stuff—is that blood?”

“Yes.”

“Found this at the Gardner house, didn’t they?”

“Yes. Looks like this sicko used it to scrape the skin off her body.”

“Her name was Rose, wasn’t it?” Talbot pulls at his lip. “Roses are red…” He jumps up from the desk. “Get a phonebook.”

“What?”

“I need to know the location of all the women named Violet in town. Find out which one’s have freezers big enough for to hold a body. I think I know where he's going next...”

How Do You Feel About...

Works of art being used as book covers. For example:

(which, if you don't know, is a painting by Van Gogh)

See, I'm kind of partial to this painting by Théodore Géricault (Head of a Drowned Man)

Not that I'm thinking about book covers or anything...

Is it "cheap" to use the work of a long-dead artist on a modern book? Copyright (at least the modern, legal version) isn't an issue, but is it unethical? Thoughts?

WIP Wednesday: Fixing My Social Networking Bone

Maybe it's just an offshoot of the Februaries, but I feel like my social networking bone is broken. Maybe I never had one to begin with.

I've joined a half-dozen message boards/forums, but don't comment on any of them. I try to read and comment on a number of blogs. Twitter? I still haven't figured out how to be an all-star twit. I have a Facebook page, but I usually let it languish.

This blog is my most successful, consistent bit of "social networking". Does it even count?

So I'm asking you, dear readers, how do you stay connected to other writers and expand your audience? Which forums do you find the most lively and engaging? Should I even worry about this?

As for my real WIP...I've added precious few words to the new YA book, so I'm keeping those secret (not really; they just suck). But I did write a drabble that involved a vegetable peeler and the line "roses are red". I'll let you fill in the blanks.

*hint: blood was involved*

What is Art? What Do You Call What I Do?

To ponder: What is Art?

(the first video was my snow-day project yesterday)

So what is art (to you)? Can I call myself an artist because I've written a few stories? Are writers even artists? If I write "popular" fiction (genre or otherwise), am I still an artist?

Jeremy D. Brooks started the wheels turning on this with his post last Thursday. Thanks, Jeremy. I like it when my wheels turn.

The Sub-Basement Podcast

Today, for your listening pleasure:

Tomorrow: What is art?

#fridayflash Luck

"There's a couple of things you're going to have to understand about this job."

Jerry nods.

"First of all," Franz speaks slowly, like he's explaining the why the sky's blue to a five-year-old, "the job has some drawbacks."

"Drawbacks. Check." A pen wiggles against a notebad in Jerry's hand.

"The temperature in here for one. Get yourself a nice coat. A jacket. Light and flexible but enough to keep the chill off."

"Jacket, check."

Franz grips a handle and walks the drawer out to full extension. A body lays bewteen them, covered with a sheet. "Second of all, these poor sons-of-bitches smell pretty bad."

"Bad smell, check."

Franz grips the sheet at one end and pulls back enough to reveal a pair of bluish feet. A toe tag dangles on the left big toe. He bends forward, squinting at the tag. "92 years old, well..."

Jerry's pencil is motionless. "I don't get it."

Franz produces a pair of snips and slides one of the dead man's toes between its blades. He squeezes the handles together. A click echoes through the morgue, and the toe drops into Franz's waiting palm. "There's some benefits, too."

Jerry scribbles. "Benefits..."

"For one, nobody ever checks too closely after we're done with them."

"Right." Jerry pauses for a moment and frowns. "I don't get it."

"Toes, man." Franz draws the sheet over the corpse's feet and slides the drawer home with a resonate thunk. "I figure they're better than rabbits' feet, especially on some SOB that lives this long. Lot of luck in making it to 92, Jerry."

My Most Humbling Experience to Date

The Table of Contents (TOC) for Blood Lite II: Overbite...

Death and Taxes—Heather Graham
Table for Two—Jeff Ryan
Treatment—J.A. Konrath
Dead Clown Séance—Christopher Welch
The Day the Devil Swallowed a Heapin’ Helpin’ of Pride at the Beaulahville Gospel Jubilee—Scott Nicholson
Piecemaker—Don d’Ammassa
Good Breeding—Lucien Soulban
Tails—John R. Little
Dog Tired (of the Drama!)—L.A. Banks
A Sweet Girl for Todd—Mark Onspaugh
Dark Carbuncle—Kevin J. Anderson & Janis Ian
Tastes Like Chicken—Jordan Summers
Presumptuous Beast Throws Sumptuous Feast—Mike Baron
Bad German—Edward Bryant
The Halloween War—Brian J. Hatcher
Oh, the Ho-Ho Horror—Joel A. Sutherland
The Unfortunate Persistence of Harold Francis Beamish—Aaron Polson
Dick and Larry—D.L. Snell
Son of…a Bitch!—Sam W. Anderson
Her Lucky Day—Allison Brennan
A Wing and a Prayer—Sharyn McCrumb
Barewolf—Daniel Pyle
American Banshee—Eric James Stone
The Epicurean—Amy Sterling Casil
The Ghoul Next Door—Nancy Kilpatrick
Daycare of the Damned—Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Season’s Tickets—Derek Clendening
The Close Shave—Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn
Shaggy Dog Story—Steve Rasnic Tem
Eight-Legged Vengeance—Jeff Strand
Lucifer’s Daughter—Kelley Armstrong

The book is slated for an October 2010 release.

(Who the hell is this "Polson" character, and why'd they let him in?)

WIP Wednesday: Oscillation Edition

Over the weekend, I received a rejection for Rock Gods & Scary Monsters that kind of inspired me. I've been kicking around a new YA idea (well, vamping some of my old ideas into something new, anyway), and said rejecting agent suggested he/she might be interested in seeing my next "thing".

But my problem: plot development...namely development of subplots.

This, I believe, is where short story writing hurts. My longer work is too focused (at least too focused to be commercial, I guess). My WIP is character development for the new novel. I've written a few thousand words, too.

And then I had another "must write" short story idea.

Ack!

(but...it's a winner...really)

So, from the as yet unnamed YA novel (in which there are ghosts, sort of):

After he describes the other "weirdos" in his senior seminar...

And who was left? The lone ranger in the circle of the damned? The only sane member of LeClaire’s inner cabal?

“Andy?”

Me. Six feet nothing, piggy-tail corkscrew hair in brown, like some uber-happy six-year-old found the acrylic and went Van Gogh on my head. If you straightened my hair, it might have been half a foot long. Curled up, it poked out about three-quarters of an inch. I wore a pair of fat-rimmed glasses with lenses wide enough to ignite an ant hill on a cloudy day, a baggy, black t-shirt, and jeans. The hole-free variety.

And then "Shovel Man" (the dastardly short story):

“The others are coming, and I want to be ready. I’ll need your help.”

The word others stoked the sliver of fear lodged in the boy’s chest, but he moved to the ladder, dropped his pail and started to climb. He climbed because the stranger’s voice, like the exotic smell, carried a sweetness to it, benevolent and intoxicating. The wood rungs groaned as the boy’s weight shifted and fell on one after the other, step by step.

I'm playing around with not naming the characters in this one, giving them a "fairy tale" quality. Rest assured, it's a Grimm's fairy tale. The truth is...I think I'm more of a short story writer.

Whew. I said it.

Have a lovely Wednesday.

In the Mix

Welcome to the 21st Century:

Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism (via NY Times)

Eureka! I've been waiting for something to replace postmodernism, and it looks like it's found me. Remember all that mish-mash about who owns a story? Evidently everybody does!

Whoot!

Huzzah!

Hurray!

We live in a looped, remixed, reality-altered world, don't we? Reality TV? Sure...ever notice how, even though a "character" on a reality show sounds like they are saying a sentence, the film is obviously cut and pasted together? (One of my best buddies has a little brother who edits video in Orlando--he calls this "frankenlooping")

Same thing as the book, right? Ms. Hegemann was only "rearranging" someone else's art...mixing it...repackaging. Kind of the long hand version of a literary allusion, right?

Right.

How about a collaboration with a musician dead for forty years? Same principle?

New Louis Armstrong, by Way of Preservation Hall (via NPR)

Creepy, really.

Great power + great responsibility (evidently) = sweet remixes

So how do you feel about Ms. Hegemann? The Louis Armstrong "collaboration"? Are they the same thing? Is ownership an outmoded concept, especially with regard to art? The younger generation seems to lean this way, IMHO.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to toddle off and make a collage out of paintings from my encyclopedic copy of HW Janson's A History of Art. Do you think MoMA will be interested?

#fridayflash Barrel 2

Today's podcast, "Barrel 2", is dedicated to Jarron, Ken, and Mike. Where the hell are you guys, anyway?

This one's "not quite horror" but received a handwritten note on the rejection from Cemetery Dance (that and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks).

Listen to "Barrel 2" or download for later.

Yes, this wasn't what I had "scheduled".

Patience.

Have a great weekend.

Vook: You're Kidding Me, Right?

First of all, thanks for the positive vibes yesterday. I'm suffering a worse-than-usual case of the Februaries. Spring is around the corner, and it has promised me some sunshine.

If you haven't heard about the "Vook", here's a sales pitch:

My response: lame.

If you can't view it, try this link. Or this one.

At first, I thought maybe for non-fiction...the cookbooks or exercise manuals where you really want to see how to do a certain technique. Then I realized YouTube already offers the same for free. Okay...

But for fiction? Please.

A Vook ignores the best parts of print and video. Reading allows one's imagination to work, creating the look and feel of a world, characters, situations, etc. in collaboration with the author. The best movies bring together visual artists, writers, musicians, etc. to create a multimedia piece with a consistent experience. Do I really need a snippet of video to show me the "most important" part of the book? Hell no.

I do believe in new media and stretching the boundaries of storytelling. IMHO, this ain't it.

WIP Wednesday: The Black Hole of Suck

That's where I'm at right now.

My ideas suck. My writing sucks. The weather, while sunny, is cold as a well-digger's ass (or as my brother used to say: "a witches *** in an iron bra"--couldn't bring myself to type that three letter word for some reason).

My kids have been sick. I've been sick. My wife has been sick.

I've had a deluge of short-listed "no thanks" rejections this week. Ouch. Ouch! OUCH, already!

One would think I could channel this suck into a good story, right? My brain it seems, has decided to switch into "stop writing" mode. I had a number of delicious ideas for the pending novel last weekend...then *poof*

Okay, enough whining. This is the plan: write chapter one of The New Book^TM; share the first part of "The Hustle" on Friday (A rather pulpy story which was orphaned when From the Asylum went belly-up.I don't have the desire to seek a new home for it...my loss = your gain).

I can do this.

Thanks for listening.

Edit This

Does anyone edit anymore? By anyone I mean editors, and by editors, I mean those ladies and gents at the big houses.

I'm reading lost boy, lost girl by Peter Straub, and bammo, right in the middle of the book, he slips out of the 3rd person omniscient narration for a paragraph of 1st person confessional. I read and reread the section: did I miss a piece of dialogue? Was I confused? No?

It seems this slip of perspective was purely accidental. Ouch. I haven't mentioned the unnecessary insertions of exposition. Talk about show vs. tell.

It's a good book, all in all. I won't run out to snatch A Dark Matter off the new releases table, though. I'm not sure Straub is my style. Too dense and forced at times...maybe that's an editing issue, too.

I've heard rumblings that editors (at the big houses) don't edit anymore. Usually, a writer and agent make this happen (once a writer has an agent); unagented writers edit themselves until landing said agent, and then...

So is this gossip or truth, sour grapes or reality?

The Act of Creation is an Expression of Madness

Les vielles (The Old Ladies)

Francisco de Goya

I'm crazy. Bonafide.

If writing is a business, I failed a long time ago. Think of the simple cost/benefits analysis: how much time have I spent writing, revising, reading...only to produce a few stories which truly work. And the money? (Go ahead, point and laugh)

Art is not business. Oh yes, it can be, but it isn't just by its nature alone. You can buy a print (technically a poster if you're in the "know") of Goya's painting. Someone will make a profit, but it won't be Goya. Someday, we might read J.D. Salinger's works from the vault, but he won't make a cent. (If you have never read Catcher in the Rye, do it. Just because.)

I don't grudge anyone making money with creative endeavors. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with being paid for art. But art is not business.

Art is basic.

Creation is primal.

It strikes at the core of being human.

I write to create. I may never have an agent, a major publishing deal, a bestseller...but if I keep creating, I win. It's the only game in which I get to make up the rules.

(click on the painting above for a big, scary version)

#fridayflash Poe's Basement

"Damn, Jack. I told you we should have rolled him up in the carpet first."

"We still can. You have no imagination."

I step away from the spreading pool of blood. "No, dumbass. If you wrap him first and shoot through the rug, it doesn't splatter so much. Easier clean up."

Jack runs a hand through his hair."Oh. Right. Sorry."

"Look, we gotta do something with this mess." I wave the gun toward the kitchen. "What's in there?"

A smile crawls across his lips. "Oh, I get it. Stairway to the basement." Jack nods. "Like that Poe story, right?"

"Not Poe again."

"The basement...we can hide the body down there. Poe used that one, too. 'The Black Cat' I think." Jack grabs Mr. Body's feet and pulls him across the hardwood, leaving a thick streak in his path.

"For fuck's sake, you're making it worse."

Jack pauses. "What?"

"The blood, dumbass. We gotta clean up."

His stare shifts from the blood to the body to me. "That's what the fire is for."

"Fire? Jeeee-sus."

Jack shakes his head. "Don't you read anything?"

__________

Remember, remember why they used the blender?

Sunshine This, Mr. Delany

Here I am, your big, cloudy ray of sunshine. Thanks to the magnificent Cate Gardner for the bestowment of the award. And yes, I know "bestowment" is not a word (thank you, Firefox, for pointing that out).

Now comes the part where I bestow the award on two deserving visitors to this blog. Quite frankly, you all rock. Each time one of these awards floats my way, I feel like the dude on stage at the Oscars, yammering away all the names I can while they start to play music and drag me off stage. So there. If you have ever commented on this blog, I award you with a little sunshine. 'cause you are. I wouldn't have continued writing so long without any of you. I know I cheat. I know it's no fun. But I did it anyway.

Maybe because I'm this dude:

I am: Samuel R. "Chip" Delany Few have had such broad commercial success with aggressively experimental prose techniques.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Yeah, I'd never heard of Samuel R. "Chip" Delany, which isn't saying much, but I'm evidently a black science fiction writer with a great bushy beard. Take that, experimental prose and all.

One of the questions on the quiz made me think about the nature of art, and I'm building up a good head of steam to discuss that in depth on Monday. Stay tuned, dear friends.

WIP Wednesday: I Can't Handle the Truth

Why do I get so worked up about the cost of books? (see the previous two posts) It's not like I have some major book deal and stand to gain/lose.

But I do love stories. I've written about that before, right?

Stories have life which stretches beyond the now. Stories can have life which stretches far beyond an author's. Stories are often the casualties of money grabs, even though words don't really belong to anyone or any business entity. Go ahead and fleece writers and readers. I have to believe they will find a way without you.

Okay, enough of that esoteric BS for now. I'm still stuck in short story mode despite the YA novel idea that has been knocking around in my skull like a marble in a metal can for the past few months. I hope to use short story mode to my advantage, buidling background for the novel by writing a flash story for each of the first tier characters. We shall see how that works. Maybe I can shift in March and make this novel happen.

For now, I give you a moment from "The Ghosts of Old Milford":

The others backed away—McHenry back to his loader to carry away the debris, but Nathan moved closer to the hole, remembering. His boots cracked fragments of glass and shards of wood as he stepped on the old floorboards. He counted back in his memory. Thirteen years. He was seven then, when they found the hole for the first time. Seven. He was seven when the men came back, looking for the opening under the floor, and they couldn’t find it. He wanted to look away, but the memory held him: the last time he saw Bobby Talbot’s face, white like a plastic mask at the craft shop, slipping into the black square as his fingers burned and ached and dropped the rope.

I also have a post up at Flash Fiction Chronicles today, more of me rambling about publishing ideas: Self-Publishing in the Era of Self-Publishing.

If Print is Dead, Who Owns the Stories?

Well, Anasi the Spider owns the stories of course. He won them from Nyame, the Sky-God.

Last Saturday morning, I took the boys to a puppet show featuring Anansi , and they both belly-laughed throughout.

But really, who "owns" a story?

As a writer of a certain stripe, I'd love to say I own my stories (which I do, kind of), but as any good writer I hope some of them outlive me. Life is pretty transient. It's far too easy to die.

I've learned a few things from studying literature for the past seventeen years and teaching for eleven of those: telling stories is part of what it means to be human. People have done it since before the cave artists rendered "the big hunt" on the walls of their subterranean homes. In light of that history, who am I to be brazen enough to say I own anything?

There's a big bout o' digital fisticuffs between Amazon and Macmillan right now...some argument over ebook prices...basically how much do they charge folks for the ability to read stories. This is important, I'm sure, to many authors. (I'd be right pissed at both a store and my publisher if they were so juvenile as to prevent folks from having access to my work because they were disagreeing on how much money each would make from my work...whew. As if anyone is being denied access to my work. Have I mentioned free stuff at my website? Huh?) I'm glad I'm not trying to make a living on writing any time soon (if ever). And I think this particular deal isn't going to help foster the ebook revolution. I'm just not going to pay 15 bucks for a digital document...not until the author sees at least 75% of the profit.

Can we really take a step backwards?

All I want right now, truthfully, is to share my work. And, if it isn't too selfish, I'd like readers to know I had something to do with it. Pretty narcissistic, sure, but nobody said I was a nice guy.

Except Alan W. Davidson. He kind of implied it with this:














(thanks, man)

Print is Dead

So I don't really believe print is dead, but is it dying? I dunno. The iPad won't kill it, that's for sure.

I was at Borders this weekend, browsing with no intent to buy (my favorite bookstore mode), and just felt the general sticker shock of a $25 hardback novel. I love stories...I love writing...I love reading...

I just can't see shelling out $25 for a book that I'll probably only read one time.

Before you throw your cuppa coffee at the screen, let me explain. I read a book: great. Then what happens? I put it on a shelf. If the book was amazing, I'll read it again. If not, it collects dust. A lot of dust. Then I move it to dust the shelf. Repeat or donate to the library/Goodwill/Salvation Army where it gets marked for a quarter and moves down the chain.

I love the feel of a hardback book. I love the ragged edges on nicer models, the grain of the paper under my fingertips. Don't start me on the smell. And stories? Yes, I love them, too. Being frustrated about a $25 price point is not disrespect for an author. How much do you think he/she makes out of that $25? It's disrespect for a broken system...a system that is too big with too many hungry parts...parts that force the price.

Maybe I'm cheap. I don't grudge dropping 10-15 bucks on a trade paperback, so what's with $25 on a hardback? (I don't buy mass market. It kills my eyes.)

Do books cost too much? Is this how we've arrived at publishing consolidation and layoffs? Will authors ever get a fair shake? Am I a whiny putz?

In the age of multimedia choose your own adventure, can the $25 book compete?

Thoughts, witticisms, perspective please?