Storytellersunplugged

Quick note - there is no regular “columnist” for the 31st of a month, and since no one was “on deck” for today, I’m posting a day early to cover today and the 1st, my normal day.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I’d like to write something this time out about trends, trend-setting, and originality. This is an issue that rears its ugly head in so many ways that when we get swept up in the currents it creates, we are often unaware that anything has happened. It’s important at such times to keep one’s head above water, so to speak, and the world in perspective.

It has been said that there is nothing new. In many ways, this is true. Originality is rare, and quite often, it isn’t popular. If you do something new, the first thing that is going to happen is that those people doing the old thing will rebel. Others will scoff or look for hidden tricks and motivators. Bandwagons usually travel their first few miles quite empty of passengers, or freight.

Editors and publishers will tell you they are always on the lookout for the next Steinbeck, or Hemingway, or Stephen King, or Toni Morrison. On some level, they probably believe this is a good thing. The problem is that they are literally doing exactly what they say they are. They aren’t looking for something sparkling new and original, they are looking for the next marketable version of something that has already run the gauntlet and proven itself. If they can’t put “The next so-and-so” or “Lovers of whatshisname will love this as well” on the cover, they are stymied. You can push a fad or a trend as far as you like, but the bottom line is that it ceased to be original the moment the second person started doing it. This is the business of writing, as opposed to the art. This is commercial art as opposed to fine art. It is not a bad thing, but it is also not the same thing.

When you pitch to TV or the movies what they want to hear first is your logline. Some of the most popular loglines are merely blends of known products. “Think ‘The Crow’ meets ‘Saturday Night Live’,” is the kind of thing you’ll hear, or “The Temple of Doom with Charlie’s Angels instead of Harrison Ford.” This mentality is ruled by the marketplace, and buzz words are marketable. Fads are marketable. Originality? A much tougher nut to crack, and once you get past the shell you still have to convince the cashew people it’s okay to try something else.

Even if you are original, and you manage to slide your new “thing” past the first couple of road-blocks, don’t be surprised if it ends up presented to the world in a wrapper that resembles that of the previous fad. It’s like giving your pet a pill wrapped in hamburger or cheese. Marketing folks believe if they take a novel and make it look and sound like something familiar, the reader will be sucked in. They have no faith in the new “thing” to take off on its own, but figure if they can sell a good first round of copies on the hype leftover from the OLD thing, then they’ll make their money. Anything beyond that is gravy – despite the fact they may have cut the legs out from under the new thing with their approach. It’s a fad-eat-fad world out there. Be trendy and willing to be bendy, as they say.

This isn’t a thing that is likely to be fixed, or to go away. I’m not suggesting that we fight to change the world, just that we be aware of what we are doing and aware of the place of what we are doing in the greater scheme of things. Religions are a good example of the group mentality of the human race. At the core of most religious belief there are those who study, truly believe in a thing, and present it to the world. The majority of the world will choose among those things presented, latch onto one, and claim it for his/her own without much thought about why they believe it, without much understanding of the concepts behind it, and without even considering putting all the pieces of the world as they know it together into their own spiritual consciousness. This, of course, allows for exploitation. Organized religion is the spiritual marketplace of the world, and it runs on the same principles as publishing and movie making. Give the people something familiar, squash originality if possible and incorporate it as your own if it won’t be squashed. Above all, and push the product.

So, what is the point? It is simply this; if you set out to write a book, or a story, be aware of what you are trying to accomplish. If you are a lover of brain-eating zombies, and are setting out to write a brain-eating zombie epic, more power to you, and to your project. Make it the best brain-eating zombie story it can be, but don’t forget that it is your version of what has come before. If you do as I’ve done in the past with some success, and present a new version of an old story, never lose sight of the fact it’s an old story and that you are adding to it, not creating a new “thing”.

If you want to do something new, realize the fight that you have ahead of you, and grit your teeth for the onslaught. Realize that even when you believe you are doing something new, you may be influenced in ways you aren’t aware of on the surface. Others will see it even if you don’t; don’t be surprised when they point it out. Probably ninety-nine percent of all things touted as new and original are based on some earlier fad or trend in some way if you chase them to their core, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s the way human mind appears to operate. Still, originality of concept can happen. If it does, and it becomes popular, it will become a fad, or a trend. It will become marketable, and runners will be sent to the far corners to find the next person who can do it well enough, and the next, until it’s hard to tell where and when it all started.

You will know, of course, and you can smile when you see your name on the cover of a new book…not as the author, but because the author of that book is the next you. I hope the next me has more hair…

DNW

I’m not exactly writing about writing this time because, recently, it seems that every time I turn around a writer or editor of my acquaintance is suffering from severe computer and/or Internet frustration. That frustration tends to be a part of life these days, especially for those of us who use one or more of the confounded machines for the better share of our waking hours. While the Internet can be one of the most valuable tools there is, using it can potentially devastate the products of your hard work, your finances, your identity, and your patience. So I figured, even though this column isn’t exactly writer-specific, this is a most appropriate place to address some issues that can directly affect our livelihood.

If you’re a well-seasoned Internet geek, you can probably skip today’s episode. Or you might want to read on just so you can marvel at the firmness of my grasp upon the obvious. However, just as I sometimes encounter readers who are actually scared shitless by a fictional horror tale (and being so steeped in the genre, I tend to forget that such people really exist), I sometimes find that there are folks — yes, even writers — who aren’t aware that you don’t have to open an attached file to catch a virus or that the attachment which purports to be a contract from your agent might really be a little smart bomb sent by a total stranger.

Personally, I’m a PC user, though I use a Mac at my office, and I’ll tell you this: if you don’t use a lot of programs that specifically require Windows and you can afford the somewhat more expensive machine, pick up a Mac. Just about every editor under the sun wants MS Word files, yes, but you can get MS Office (which includes Word) for the Mac, and those same files will be just as happy there as on a Windows machine. While not totally bulletproof, Macs are smaller targets when it comes to malicious geeks looking to wreck your life via your computer’s online connection.

If you use Windows, make sure you’re keeping up with the regular updates from Microsoft. These contain important security patches, and there are lots of predators out there keeping a sharp eye out for procrastinators. They often find them. With XP, I recommend setting your computer to get automatic updates (done from Control Panel: Security Center). Or to do it manually, open Internet Explorer and go to Tools: Windows Update.

And speaking of Internet Explorer . . . if you’re using it for browsing the web, you’re best off setting your security settings to high (though that will prevent some pages from working correctly). Even with all of these Microsoft security updates, hackers are daily finding potentially devastating holes in the program. IE offers some bells and whistles for surfing, sure, but there’s nary a one in my book worth the risk for typical browsing. I use IE only for Microsoft-specific applications, such as the occasional update from their site. I strongly recommend Mozilla Firefox (but see the caveat in the following paragraph); get it at www.mozilla.org, and while you’re there, pick up Mozilla Thunderbird for your email client. Both are currently more secure than Internet Explorer/Outlook, and they’re fast and easy to use. You can import your settings, bookmarks, address books, etc. directly from IE and Outlook when you install them. I’ve heard Opera is a decent browser too, though I’ve not used it in a couple of years, and since it’s built on IE technology, it’s liable to suffer the same vulnerabilities.

Here, however, is the rub: Firefox’s success may yet be its undoing. Firefox has now been downloaded some 90 million times, and you just know that the most sophisticated hackers in the world are working diligently to tailor new malware that will start hitting users who’ve migrated away from Microsoft. Mozilla is a relatively small-time operation and lacks the manpower to effectively deal with security on a scale commensurate with its growing user base. Some analysts predict Firefox will be dangerously compromised within the next few months, and it may eventually end up being -less- secure than Internet Explorer. Other experts are far less pessimistic, citing the fact that Mozilla, at best, will probably never claim more than ten percent of the Internet browser market, which, for dedicated hackers, hardly makes their efforts worthwhile. Only time will tell. The downside is that innocent users will likely have been victimized by the time critical security holes are detected.

I just -know- you’re running a good antivirus program, such as Norton or McAfee. Are you keeping it regularly updated? If not . . . you’re a gory accident waiting to happen. How about a Trojan-specific program, such as The Cleaner (www.moosoft.com)? Trojans are very possibly the most damaging to your online health and well-being because they will surreptitiously steal your computer’s secrets and send them back to the last people on earth you’d want to possess such information.

In a related vein, spyware and adware have become terribly prevalent threats, doing anything from swiping your keystrokes and sending them back to identity thieves to resetting your browser settings and putting pornographic pop-ups on your desktop. There are a number of good anti-spyware programs available; I personally recommend Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy; they’re fairly simple to use, and you can get both for free (for Spybot, http://www.spybot.info/en/home/index.html; for Ad-Aware, go to www.cnet.com, scroll down to “downloads” in the left-hand column, and then search for the products; it’s the very dickens to find the free version on the company Web site). Spybot has lots of options for more advanced users too, which can come in quite handy to detect and halt intrusions.

Beware, though; increasingly, many “free” anti-spyware programs actually install malware on your computer, find it, and then expect you to pay to have it removed; one company who does this recently even had an extensive TV advertising campaign. Internet crooks have found it very easy to install their own spyware on your machine by enticing you with convincing-looking ads and claims of how they can protect you.

Highly important: Make sure you’re running a firewall. ZoneAlarm from www.zonelabs.com is the most popular, and is very effective. Not only does the firewall set your communications ports to “stealth” mode and block hostile probes, it gives you control over which programs you want to allow to access the Internet. There’s a free version and a more elaborate Pro version for a reasonable price. The Sygate personal firewall (smb.sygate.com) is also a good one; again, you can choose the free version or the more versatile Pro version for a fair price.

To test your firewall’s effectiveness, visit www.grc.com and go to the “Shields Up!” page. This will give you several options for testing your security without getting too complicated. You may also go to scan.sygate.com for a similar, simple security test.

A few miscellaneous points:

Never follow links in an email, even if the mail looks perfectly authentic. There’s a good chance it’s spoofed. If you haven’t received an email or dozens from Ebay or Paypal or a big-name bank, telling you your account is being suspended unless you click on their link, you’re not living in this century. One of the newest variations I’ve seen is an email informing me that someone has made a payment to my Paypal account; now, I’m sure that most of us would love to rush right over and see who’s paid us a bunch of money, but if you do it from the email link, then woops! Your account information has just been routed to a miscreant. Any official email from Ebay or Paypal or other such institution will address you by your proper name — not your email address or “valued member” — and it will not include any links to sites that require your login information.

If you’re sending sensitive information over the Web, -never- do it with more than one browser window open (or even with additional tabbed windows open, in programs like Firefox that offer tabbed browsing). Let’s say you’ve done a search on Google for Brian Keene’s favorite porn site; having been there and done your business, you leave that window open, and then decide to go do some banking or take care of a Paypal transaction. If that left-open window has the right coding, it can capture your keystrokes -from the other open browser window-. And that could be fine how-do-you-do next time you look at your bank statement.

Remember, these days, just being online opens you up to being compromised. You don’t have to open an infected attachment or follow a bad link. Worms are out there looking for open ports on your computer, and they -will- get in if you don’t have your doors locked and painted over. And there aren’t a whole lot of ways you can piss off an editor more than by sending him a file with a little bomb that piggybacked on your manuscript. With all the work we put into our craft, there’s not much more horrifying than having the fruits of it gobbled up by some fucking piece of shit asshole hacker whose fingers I would happily smash with a sledgehammer.

Woops, scuse me . . . I think my feelings might be showing a little here. Anyway, using the Internet doesn’t have to be a dangerous experience. With a bit of preparedness and use of good judgment while working online, you can take advantage of all it has to offer without being victimized by unscrupulous predators. Just be careful out there.

–Mark Rainey

I’m currently awash in writers. Game writers, that is – published game writers, new game writers, people who want to be game writers, you name it. It’s the first Game Writers’ Conference (the location of the apostrophe is still apparently a matter of some debate), an adjunct conference to the Austin Games Conference and I’m smack-dab in the middle of this.

Big deal, I hear you saying. A bunch of writers getting together is no surprise; the only question is which bar they’re landing in at the end of the day. Ah, but not so fast. This is a big deal, at least to those of us toiling in the virtual trenches, the first time there’s been a conference devoted to the trials, tribulations, techniques and torments of game writing. Game writing has always gotten the poor relation treatment at other conferences – a few panels here and there at granddaddy Game Developers Conference – a reflection of the role it is often perceived as playing in the development process itself.  To have a conference dedicated to the discipline is a sign that things are changing, that there’s a slow emergence toward understanding and respect and, God forbid, recognition that the words are important for things other than telling you how many hit points you have left.

It’s always scary the first time out. Nobody knew how many writers would show up; nobody knew how many people we’d draw from the neighboring conferences. After all, this was a gamble that the show’s sponsors were taking, a bet that there was enough professional interest in game writing to support conference fees and airline tickets and hotel rooms. In other words, that it mattered enough for people to put down cold hard cash for it.

A lot of us were worrying, heading into the first session. Those of us who’d been in on brainstorming or “What if” sessions, who’d kicked around conference stuff on the IGDA’s Writers’ Group mailing list, had that fear that, well, we’d know everyone who was in attendance. That it would be a face-to-face version of the mailing list, only with an hour and a half for lunch each day.

And lo and behold, the first session was standing room only. Marc Laidlaw kicked things off with a superb talk documenting his migration into games and illustrating useful techniques. The veritable ball was rolling, and it rolled right through Flint Dille bringing down the house with his closing address.

It’s going to keep rolling now, I think. There’s a need to address game writing on a professional level, to network and talk techniques and theory and professional etiquette. As Hal Barwood suggested in his talk, there’s a need to develop the language of game writing, something that’s happening only in fits and starts. (Don’t believe me? Ask folks from three different companies what the word “script” means. It’ll take a while.) More importantly, though, there was a recognition that we’re out there. Lots of us. We’re not alone, not isolated, and most likely not the first ones to deal with whatever slice of tsuris is being slung our way. Look down the hallways and you’d see writers talking, swapping war stories and comparing projects. You’d see students who wanted to be game writers – little do they know what they’re in for – asking advice and throwing out suggestions that us old crusty types had never thought of because, well, we’d always done it the other way. There’s a critical mass for a professional community here, something that’s in its infancy but has the potential to grow up into something special.

It’s a little frightening to be standing here at the beginning of that, to have a vision of where this is going to go and how I might be a part of it. We’re already talking about next year, of course. It’s going to be something else. I’m sure of it.

——–
Richard E. Dansky
Writer, Game Designer, and Cad
(Not necessarily in that order)

by Janet Berliner

During one of many hungry periods of my writing life, I descended reluctantly into the relatively well-paid abyss of Porn. Not erotica. I write that with few reservations. I’m talking down and dirty. Did I enjoy writing it? No. Did I enjoy cashing the checks and buying food? Absolutely.

Did I use a pseudonym? You betcha.

As soon as I could, I stopped writing those things, not because I Have a moral objection, but because it’s boring. The publishers liked having a story but, basically, it was a question of working a tale around (ahem) tail.

So I was done with it. Or so I thought, until I registered on an Internet Poker site using “that” name. The very first night I played, Someone asked me if I was a writer. Yes, he had recognized the name.

No problem, you say. Right. Until he wrote in the chat column: “Do you write other stories under the name Janet Berliner?” Before I could stop myself, I said: “Yes, how did you know.”

His answer: “It sounded like the same person wrote them.”

So I guess I can safely say that I have a voice that is distinctively my own.

What exactly is “Voice?”

If you can define it, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.

That’s question #1, for if, indeed, it can be defined, then it can be taught. I’ve taught writing at every level, in multi languages. I’ve read–and keep reading–every new book that purports to teach how to find your voice. In my opinion, which I guess many of you know by now is modest but not always humble, it can’t be done. It can, however, be approached.

The first thing to do is to track down all the books you can find that have to do with the writing voice and read the summaries and reviews. From doing that alone, there comes some basis of understanding the complexity of the task at hand.

The little Bible, Strunk and White’s THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, should be on everybody’s desk, not just writers’. Section Five deals with Style, a close relative of Voice. It won’t make you yell Eureka! but it does make sense, as does almost everything in that trusty book.

For training in “listening,” I recommend the paperback, The Sound on the Page : Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing by Ben Yagoda. This book, which came out in mid 2005, is also not a how-to. But it sure is fun. And for your ultimate enjoyment and edification, please–I beg of you–read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

So what have I said? Not much except to define what I see as the ultimate challenge in teaching writing.

A final anecdote to show the value of Voice.

Some years ago, the inimitable Nadine Gordimer, whose roots, like mine, are in South Africa, grew angry at the way unknown writers sans agents were being given short shrift. She had recently finished a new novel and decided to conduct an experiment to prove her point. She printed up the manuscript using a pseudonym, packaged it up, began doing the rounds of publishing houses.

She received a pile of those wonderful rejections with which we’re all familiar.

Finally, an editor at a small house wrote to her saying that he was interested in publishing her book because she sounded so much like Nadine Gordimer. She accepted his small offer, then told him who she was.

It all makes sense to me. After all, who sounds like Streisand, other than Streisand? Like Faulkner, other than Faulker?

Like you, other than you?

That’s what Voice is all about–the interpretation of a song and a melody in a way that stamps it “Unique.”

While I’m waiting for my first novel, THE UNWELCOME CHILD, to be published this December, I have begun writing a second novel that has a somewhat autobiographical plot line. It’s about an ex-professional dancer who teaches Pilates in New York, and returns to the Midwest to take care of her critically-ill mother. Stranded in her childhood home, she makes a discovery that compels her to find out whatever happened to an older sister who, ostracized from the family at nineteen, was never heard from again.

As you can guess, it’s a mystery. There will be plenty of plot twists, interesting characters, (including a turtle with OCD), entertaining dialogue (I wrote plays before I wrote prose), but most importantly my heroine, in attempting to find out whatever happened to her sister, will end up finding herself as well.

I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to stick my finger down my throat while writing that last sentence. After all, I’m writing fiction not fantasy, and what happens in my story has to be believable, it has to ring somewhat emotionally true. However, because the story has autobiographical elements, I’m having a hard time allowing my heroine to solve the mystery behind her sister’s disappearance. Because if I’m never going to be at peace with what happened to my sister, then why should my fictitious alter ego?

Like my heroine, I was once a professional dancer. I now teach Pilates in New York and at one time my mother had bladder cancer. I also had an older sister, Julie Ann, but as to her fate, there’s no mystery there. If anything, it’s actually pretty banal. I was eight years old when Julie Ann fell in love while at college. She didn’t want to come home, but when she did all her belongings were packed up and put out in the garage. The last time I saw her was when she and her ‘hippie’ boyfriend, as my mother referred to him, had picked me up from school to say goodbye. She was crying and I was upset, mainly because I’d been forbidden to speak to her. When I told Julie Ann we weren’t allowed to be sisters anymore, she assured me that no matter what, we’d always be sisters. Unfortunately, over the years instead of softening the bitterness between my sister and mother solidified, and we never did get to see or speak to each other again. Just before her twenty-ninth birthday Julie Ann, while trying to get rust stains out of a toilet bowl, mixed a fatal concoction of Ammonia and Clorox. She died instantly.

Although it is a sad story, the events in themselves are hardly mysterious. For me, the real mystery lies in how does a parent cut a child out of the family as easily as pruning a branch from a tree? Furthermore, how does the rest of the family allow her to do it? To this day, there’s never been a satisfactory explanation and I don’t believe there ever will be one, so I guess that’s why I’ve decided to come up with my own. That’s what’s so great about writing fiction. Not only do we get to edit lives, cut and paste truth and delete whatever’s not to our liking, we also get to bring our loved ones back from the dead. Given that, I probably will give my heroine the answers she needs to find resolution. After all, it’s a novel, not an autobiography. And who knows? Maybe in its writing, in some small measure I too will be able to come to peace with the past.

– Jeffrey Thomas

The first signs of Halloween manifest themselves long before the last day of October, even before autumn has actually begun. Candy and costumes, decorations and other paraphernalia prematurely line the shelves of stores, more out of anticipation of money to be made than of the holiday’s mystical pleasures. But as the days shuffle on and the nights grow progressively cooler, the atmosphere thickens like a gathering fog. It’s a fog still imbued with magic, these many years since I was a trick-or-treater. Now I’m a father, and through the holes of my son’s mask I experience the night vicariously. My son Colin has of course been growing increasingly excited as the days tick by, now with only seven left to go. A final week. I can hear Colin in the bathroom as I write this; it sounds like he’s filled the sink as he likes to do, splashing in it with his toys, giggling away. His love of monsters must be genetic. Perhaps his Creature from the Black Lagoon figurine has drowned another unwary victim.

It’s late, but let him play, just so long as he doesn’t awaken my new wife Hong. I looked in on her a few minutes ago and she has turned in early, her long blue-black hair spread across our pillows. Halloween is a new concept to her, a bit mystifying, a little morbid and uncomfortably scary. Good. That is how it should be. I wish it were so new to me…but again, I can experience that newness vicariously through her.

This is the time of year that I break out my cassettes of old radio plays, programs such as BLACK MASS (a reading of Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”) and SUSPENSE (Orson Welles starring in “Donovan’s Brain” and Robert Taylor in the nightmarish “The House in Cypress Canyon”). I savor the warmth of my coffee and the warm smell of a pumpkin spice candle as the chilly air scrapes loose leaves across the outside of my house like brittle ghostly claws. During these final nights, I plan to sit and watch horror movies, hopefully “Night of the Living Dead”, drinking mulled cider, alternating between salty fist-fulls of popcorn and sweet candy corn. I am a horror writer, and Halloween is my holy day. I will renew my vows to my nighted profession. I will commune with the collective imagination of humankind, the wonderfully irrational anxieties we dread but embrace. I will immerse myself anew in the wonders and delicious terrors I was baptized in as a child younger than Colin is now.

I hear Colin giggling in the livingroom. As involved as I am in my writing, a process that always transports me, I didn’t even see him pass by. Unfortunately, he must have woken Hong, after all, because I can hear her moving about in the kitchen. My dog Tia just growled at her, but I call out for her to stop it. The big Akita does that sometimes, when she wakes up from her own nap and sees someone near her unexpectedly. Well, I can’t get angry at the chaos to be expected in my home. It’s something I’ve had to learn to work around. Though I work best when I am alone and the house is quiet, I can’t always have it that way. And like I said, once I really get into the alchemical process of fiction writing, I feel transported…the real world melts away around me.

Halloween achieves a similar effect for me. On that transcendent night, the clinical cold edge of reality becomes as frayed as the hem of a specter’s burial shroud. We can adopt new personalities, formed from plastic or greasepaint, that might reflect or liberate hidden fantasies about ourselves, aspects of ourselves that remain submerged from view on the mundane 364 other nights. And our neighbors, our fellow townspeople, become unrecognizable to us in turn. We become more distrusting of them than we already are. Who knows what sort of face will greet us, the next time we are summoned by the rapping of bony knuckles to open our front door. Oh, it’s all about anticipation, isn’t it? Anticipating what demons will come to haunt our doorstep. What treasures we will amass in the plastic pumpkins we tote like severed heads. The anticipation of these final seven days…

Will this week inspire me to new heights of writing? I don’t know. Even if it doesn’t milk an extra quantity of nectar from my muse, every Halloween I have experienced has nourished that muse, has cumulatively brought forth its many midnight blooms. They are not flowers that open only on that one enchanted night – but they will lift themselves eagerly higher on their stems for the breadth of those precious hours.

No doubt wondering what I’m writing about, Colin is standing behind me now and resting a hand on my shoulder. It is very cold, from his playing in the sink water. I see his reflection in the computer screen and he is wearing the skeletal zombie mask he will don for trick-or-treating this year. Nice try, Colin. A chip off the old block, this kid.

From my stereo speakers, the doomed Robert Taylor says, “My arm is horribly swollen and turning black…”

I hear Hong whispering in the kitchen. Maybe she is talking to the dog. She steps into the threshold to my study. In an attempt to frighten me, she wears the skeletal zombie mask Colin plans to wear this year, her long hair framing its ghastly features. Oh…wait…so there are two masks, then. Very clever, my family, but they are trying to scare a man whose head is filled with scares every night of the year.

Well, my writing spell has been broken, but again, I can’t resent these people whom I love. These distractions are to be expected. But as I smile up at Hong, and come back to the here and now, I recall that Colin is spending the night with his Mom at her boyfriend David’s house. It can not be his cold hand resting upon my shoulder. And my wife Hong…Hong is in Vietnam right now, staying at her father’s house, not in my house tonight, not even in this country.

The thickening fog has closed on my house, churning outside my windows. Those claw-like leaves scrape more insistently. The icy grip tightens on my shoulder, and the figure in the doorway wavers slightly as its black skull sockets gaze at me through its curtains of hair – not sleek and blue-black, but gray and matted, with brittle autumn leaves snagged in its cobweb-like strands.

Halloween has come early this year.

By Michael Laimo

Okay, I write horror, some pretty nasty, sick, vile, stuff too. I like my horror that way. The wetter, the better. But it’s all MAKE BELIEVE folks, I’m not really like that. I don’t go around with pickaxes gouging out the eyes of puppy dogs. I don’t have a demon throne in my cellar. I don’t eat entrails for dinner.

I don’t do anything I write about in my books…except argue with my wife, perhaps. But that’s something else altogether.

So, why do people judge me because I write horror?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Most people who read my work expect some nasty escapist ride into previously untrodden territories. They want their prose thick and dark and dripping with yucky things. They want spiders. They want guts. They want monsters and demons and sacrilegious happenings. And they get them. But, there’s some people who, well, they just don’t get it. Case in point: in DEEP IN THE DARKNESS, a dog is sacrificed on a stone. He is killed by his master, choked to death. Yep, that’s a pretty cruel thing to do to a puppy…but it didn’t really happen, folks, you know? I’ve received dozens of e-mails from animal lovers condemning me to hell for penning this little tidbit. My answer to them was: uh, hello, what about ALL THE HUMANS THAT WERE MASSACRED? Ohhhhh…that type of stuff is supposed to happen in horror novels. It’s okay for humans to get killed, but not little innocent puppy dogs. And, for those few readers who actually think I actually enjoyed killing the dog on paper…guess what? I DID! I enjoyed writing every line in that book, in all my books for that matter. I love to write horror, simple as that.

But wait, it gets worse. Much worse. I’ve been disowned by some people I know, because I write horror. Here are the two most glaring instances of being judged because I write horror:

I work for a swimwear company in Manhattan’s garment district. It’s a large office building, and on my floor, there are a few other companies. There’s a number of people that work at these companies that I’ve become friendly with. One gal, a 24 year-old from Long Island, had lunch with me a couple of months ago. I’d told her I was a writer, that I’d had a couple of novels published. She, like most people, showed an interest (feigned or not), so I gave her a copy of DEEP IN THE DARKNESS. She said thanks, asked a bit about it, then said she’d give it a read. Well, a few days went by, then a week. Not only did I not see this girl anymore, but I did not hear from her either. My e-mails went unanswered. Finally, after two weeks, I bumped into her in the hall (it was inevitable, really). She’d said, “We need to talk.” Hrmmm, serious stuff. I’m thinking, what did I do? What did I say?

We meet for coffee an hour later and she hands me an envelope—mind you now, she’s holding the envelope like it’s been dipped in ka-ka. She says, “This is for you.” I open the envelope and inside is my book. She then adds, “I can’t keep it.”

“Why? Did you read it?” I ask.

She nods, then says, “I started it.”

“Oh, you didn’t like it…” I say, then add, “Well, you don’t have to give it back to me. Give it to a friend.”

She smiles thinly, and then I get blown away: “I can’t associate myself with this matter…I’m a Christian, and it’s against my beliefs.”

I think she’s kidding, so naturally I ask, “You’re kidding, right?”

She shakes her head, then blows me away again: “And I can’t associate myself with you. This is strongly against my beliefs.”

Now, I’m flabbergasted. I say, “Hold on…this is solely creative exploration. No different than someone who writes romance, plays Jazz, or carves ice sculptures.” I feel like a turd defending myself, but see no choice but standing up for my beliefs.

She says, “Anyone who writes about this kind of matter must have some personal association or attraction with it, and I don’t feel right being around someone like that.”

And with that, I stand up and say, “This is the reason why we have wars and terrorism. Because of extreme, narrowminded, religious beliefs.” I take my book and walk away. It was a hard thing to do, as I’m not one to make enemies, but damn if that didn’t hurt.

I will tell you that I had a great writing session that afternoon.

But wait, it gets better—you think this gal was bad, wait until you hear this:

I moved into my neighborhood about 8 years ago. Everyone was very friendly, welcomed us, blah blah. My next door neighbors, a family, were enthusiastic to have us there. Baked us pies, always went out of their way to make us feel comfortable. At the time, their little girl was 8. My wife and I had our first daughter, and their little girl was over all the time to help out with the baby. She became a mother’s helper to my wife in the afternoon after school, and we even started paying her for her time.

Time passed. I’d had two novels published. I’d never mentioned to my neighbor (now I feel the need to add in the fact that they are also Christians, and quite devout in their ways; not a bad thing, unless you are judgmental of others who’ve nothing against you) that I was a writer. I’d had a local booksigning planned. One day, while the father was over chatting with my wife, I came home from work, and finally mentioned to him that I was a novelist and had a signing at the local Barnes & Noble. I thought he’d be impressed.

Little did I know.

I can’t even properly put into words the look on his face when I showed him a copy of DEEP IN THE DARKNESS. It was like The Devil showed up on his doorstep and threatened to haul his children away in a cauldron. He handed the book back to me. He stuttered. He feigned a grin, and went home.

After that, they stopped visiting. The stopped waving hello. The little girl stopped coming over. They didn’t return calls. We didn’t think anything of it until our daughter, at the time three, started asking for the little girl. I told my wife, “You know, ever since I told him about my horror writing, we’ve been cut off.”

We’ve confronted them since then, asked what we did wrong, but were pretty much cold-shouldered.

Eh…fuck ‘em.

So, they do their thing, like go to church on Sundays and continue to ignore us, and I continue to write horror (amongst some other vices I’m sure the neighbors wouldn’t approve of). I’ve learned my lesson: no matter what the issue at hand, whether it be horror writing or religion, people will pass judgment. Just as the religious folk (at least the ones mentioned above) will judge me because I write horror, I will judge them for their closemindedness. But one thing is for certain: I would never shun them for their beliefs.

by Jeff Mariotte

We sit at home, or on airplanes, at work, God forbid at Starbuck’s—if we’re Ernest Hemingway, we stand naked at a podium, but how many of us, really, are Hemingway, and if you are then lock up the damn shotgun. We clack away at keyboards or we scribble in wirebound notebooks or we pierce our veins with penpoints and scrawl on scraps of human flesh. However we go about the process, we write.

And the purpose of writing is communication. By definition, we haven’t communicated unless we have reached an audience—it is the act of reading what we have written that makes our words something more than oddly shaped little figures against a contrasting background.

If we write books, as I most often do, that means getting through the publishing process and the retail process and into the hands of people who will pay money for them and then read them.

That, most often, involves booksellers.

I’m distressed whenever I see how many of my fellow authors have websites that link to Amazon.com. It’s because of their affiliate program, I’m told when I ask. They pay a few cents for every book purchased by someone who links from the site to Amazon’s site.

To which I can only say, if you’re Stephen King except you’re selling most of your books via your website instead of in bookstores, maybe you’re making some real money that way. If you’re not—and really, there is only one more Steve King among us than Hemingway—then what you’re doing benefits Amazon just fine, but it does nothing for you.

If it’s about the affiliate program money, then link to booksense.com, which also pays those few pennies per copy sold. The difference is that booksense.com drives readers to independent bookstores in your neighborhood, not to Amazon, and that is a fundamental difference. Check out my booksense.com links at www.jeffmariotte.com (and while you’re at it drop by my blog)!

If you’re serious about writing books, you should make every effort to “adopt” a local bookstore. As a horror writer, if you happen to live in the vicinity of a good specialty store like Dark Delicacies or Dark Carnival or or Dreamhaven or Mysterious Galaxy, so much the better. But it doesn’t have to be a specialty store, and it doesn’t absolutely have to be an independent.

You’re better off, though, if it is, and I’m here to tell you why. I’m speaking here not just as the author of thirty-some books, but as an bookseller of twenty-five years.

An independent bookseller, if he or she likes your work, can push you in a way that a chain can’t. Chain store display space is bought by publishers, so if your books aren’t high on their list of priorities—and except for the really big names, horror isn’t, except briefly around Halloween—you can’t count on much, if any. Independents decide for themselves what goes in the window, what goes on endcaps, what goes on the front display table. If you’d like your book to end up in any of those places, you’ve got to get yourself known to independent bookstores.

I’ve known chain store employees who were disciplined for spending too much time talking about books with customers. I’ve also encountered chain store employees who knew next to nothing about the books they’re supposed to be selling. Not every chain store employee fits into these categories, of course. But these tend not to be problems at independent bookstores. The people are there because they love books, and love the process of putting books into the hands of people who will appreciate them. It ain’t for the money, I can assure you. At independent specialty stores, in particular, the chances that the people selling your books will have actually read your books increases geometrically over chain stores.

If you can adopt an indy store where you and your work are appreciated, the benefits to your career become immediately apparent. They’re likely to keep your books on hand as long as possible, even if they go out of print. They’ll order more to begin with, and they’ll restock when they run low. They will probably have a website, to which you can link from yours, thereby generating sales that will be appreciated (which, if you think Amazon appreciates the 10 orders a year they’re getting from your site, you’re kidding yourself). They may do events for you, signings, reading, launch parties. And booksellers talk to other booksellers, so if you generate good business at one store, others will hear about it.

At the first store I managed, I was one of the couple dozen or so booksellers in the U.S. selling Clive Barker, back when we had to buy his work through an importer. I’m claiming no responsibility for making him the superstar multimillionaire that he is today—but when his stuff became available in the U.S. and he started touring for it, we had a ready-made customer base already aware of and interested in his work.

Likewise, early in James Ellroy’s career, he toured frequently, often appearing at independent bookstores like mine. Ellroy developed a persona, the “demon dog of American crime literature,” and a shtick, and in the earliest days, before he was well known, he thought nothing of buttonholing people who happened to be in the store and not paying attention to him. It wasn’t just his bookstore appearances that built him into a major bestselling author—his brilliant writing had a lot to do with it—but it didn’t hurt.

Bookstores are there to sell books. If you, as an author, can help them sell your books, they will appreciate that. They will show that appreciation by increasing orders, recommending your work, writing it up in newsletters and on websites, telling other booksellers. In this way, word about your books can spread.

Alternatively, you can link to Amazon and think you’ve done all you need to do.

Amazon sells a ton of books. Not a ton of any single book, with the very few exceptions of the Harry Potters and a few others, but small quantities of lots of different things. That’s fine, and it doesn’t hurt you to be there. But are they, as a bookstore, recommending you to readers? Are they helping you develop the personal relationship with your readers that builds lifelong fans? Are they making efforts to raise awareness of your books? Of course not. You, to Amazon, are virtually meaningless. A number, a few bucks from customers who clicked over from your site.

And when they do sell your books, the money from that purchase doesn’t even stay in your neighborhood. When someone buys your book from your local bookstore, the portion of that money that doesn’t go to pay the publisher is spent locally. It pays the bookseller, who uses it at the grocery store or for rent or mortgage, or whatever. We may stay home and write, but we still live where we do, and the more of our money that goes to support our neighbors and add to our local tax base, the better.

I’ve met authors who tell me their book is carried on Amazon, as if that gives it some legitimacy it wouldn’t otherwise have. I’ve even met at least one author I can think of who has that fact on the business card that he hands to booksellers. Frankly, as a bookseller, I don’t care if your book is on Amazon, except that if you put that on your business card I’m going to think twice about even carrying your book.

So if you have that Amazon link and only that, give it some more thought. You aren’t helping your career with it. Making friends with the bookstore in town, however, will.

Get away from the keyboard for a while and find out how.

by Brian Keene

(Note: This month, by popular request from you, the readers, I’d intended to write an essay about how to write full-time. However, since I write full-time, deadlines got in the way. So look for that next month. Meanwhile, the following reprint was originally published earlier this year at Hail Saten and also appears in Running With The Devil. If you haven’t read it before, I hope that you enjoy it.)

The publisher is the pimp.

The bookstore is the corner.

The reader is the john.

And the writer is the ho.

There are different kinds of hoes. You’ve got the top-dollar, Las Vegas style hoes—–except you don’t call them hoes. You call them escorts. In the wonderful world of publishing, escorts are your best selling authors.

Then you’ve got the crack hoes, those who dole out blowjobs for five bucks a pop. In the wonderful world of publishing, crack hoes are your self-published authors.

You’ve also got your regular hoes, those who are out there working the corner, but don’t command $10,000 a night from the Vegas high rollers, and aren’t giving their wares away just to score some crack. No, these regular, working class, mid-list hoes are price pointed at $6.99, and once they leave the corner, their cover is stripped off and returned for credit.

This week, a regional marketing director for a major chain bookstore told me that they don’t sell books, they sell product. And the key to moving that product, was price pointing. What this means, in non-corporate speak, is that your mass-market paperback is only as good as the cover price. Apparently, consumers don’t care about trivial things like plot and story and characters. They only care about the price on the cover. And your novel, the project that you worked on for a year, the thing that you spilled blood and sweat and tears for, put your life on hold for, is not a book at all. It’s a product. Just like a microwave or a television or a roll of toilet paper.

I recently suggested that the reason many mid-list horror writers were signing with both mainstream and small press publishers, was just to make ends meet. I also suggested, based on my own personal experience and those of friends, that a newer horror author—–especially a mid-list author—–could make just as much from a good small press publisher as they could from a mass-market deal, and that by combining the two, you could make a decent living and keep your head above water.

Of course, Robert W. Weinberg had to comment on what a fool I was, and as an example, offered up the fact that his book, The Louis L’Amour Companion, had earned him $120,000 and that no small press publisher would give him that for a signed, limited edition. Well good for you, Bob. Of course, The Louis L’Amour Companion isn’t exactly mid-list, nor a horror novel, nor did Louis L’Amour write horror (unless you count The Haunted Mesa). So you really don’t have an argument—-or a point.

But I digress.

If I’m lucky enough to be around as long as Bob Whineberg, then I damn sure hope that my books are pulling in $120,000. That would be nice. Lovely, in fact. But I’m not, and they aren’t. And I don’t know anybody currently breaking through in this genre that is pulling down that kind of scratch, genre or not. Fact: the typical mid-list, mass-market advance for a first horror, fantasy or science fiction novel is between $2,500 and $5,000, regardless of the publisher. If you sell enough copies to earn some royalties, you’ll get more money a year later. But you can’t count on that, so we’ll say you made $2,500 to $5,000. Guess what? I fall into that range, and what’s more, I average about the same thing from my small press publishers. So let’s pretend I write just four books a year (which I’m capable of)–two small press and two mass-market, with advances of $5,000 each—I pull in $20,000. Add in a movie option and some short story sales, and my tax return for last year says I made $35,000.

$35,000—about the same thing a mid-level hoe makes.

($120,000? That’s Vegas call girl money…)

I like to think about the future. I like to imagine that, twenty years from now, me and Scott Nicholson and Nick Mamatas and Joe Nassise and Tim Lebbon and Michael Laimo and everybody else that is currently breaking through will be pulling down $120,000 per novel. That would be nice.

But I don’t know it will happen, because we are mid-list hoes, displaying our price pointed product on the street corner, while our pimps collect from the johns.

This is not the fault of the pimps. They are businessmen, looking to make a profit from the product. So you can’t fault them.

This is not the fault of the corners. They simply provide a place for the product to be sold. If the product ceased to exist, the corners would find another product to sell. So you can’t fault them.

This is not the fault of the johns. They’re just looking for a good time. They require the product, like it or not, and they’re willing to pay for it, as long as it’s price pointed. So you can’t fault them.

And it’s not the fault of the hoes, because they’re just working the corner, satisfying their johns and keeping their pimps happy, striving towards the lofty goal of becoming a high-priced Vegas escort.

In the end, that’s all any of us can achieve.

And those Vegas call girls seem pretty happy with their lot in life.

Except for those who burn out, get used up, and are eventually spit out the bottom of the porn industry, usually by appearing in a snuff film.