Storytellersunplugged

David Niall Wilson

We’ve touched on this subject here in a number of different ways, but I thought I’d revisit it because the point has been driven home to me very recently. I’ve just finished re-reading “The Green Mile,” by Stephen King. I listened to the audio book, read by Frank Muller, whose voice I love to share miles and hours with. It’s a familiar story, but every time I go through it I find something new.

What struck me while reading this time was a connection that I hadn’t made before, and this sparked thoughts about the connections are words make with readers. They can be very arbitrary, very powerful, and are almost always different from reader to reader. While the overall reaction to a work can be the same through groups of unrelated readers, the individual connection points will always differ.

I started thinking about this as King described Mr. Jingles the mouse. This is an amazing mouse; he chases thread spools and walks all over arms and legs as if on cue. I have never had the slightest bit of trouble picturing this, but it occurred to me this time through that there’s a reason for this.

When I was young, living with my mom and my step-dad, an abusive, drunken barber, we had no pets. This changed dramatically, and left me with all the surreal baggage most encounters with my stepfather did. What he brought home, for reasons I’ll never understand, was a mouse. The mouse was brown with a sort of square nose. His name was Henry, King Henry VIII actually.

Officially the mouse belonged to my brother and me. We had a hanging rod along one wall for our clothes, and above this we had several shelves – plywood on angle irons screwed into the wall. We cleaned off part of the bottom shelf and put Henry’s cage there. That was the start.

I’d like to blame all that came after this on Bob, my stepfather, and his odd, controlling ways, but I can’t. Henry was no ordinary mouse, nor was those that came after. For one thing, from the start, if you called him, he would come to the door of his cage and get into your hand. When he was joined by a couple of other mice, we found he had figured out how to lift the door of the cage and hold it open for them to escape. He liked ice cream, but if you gave him chocolate, which he hated, he would pick up his dish (an upside down milk carton top) – carry it to the edge of the shelf – and drop it over the side all over our clothes.

Henry was followed by Princess, who grew enormously fat and mostly sat; Agatha (Aggie) who had asthma and used to ride on my mom’s shoulder, even when she went to the store (and once on an airplane flight) tucked up under the collar. I don’t have anywhere near enough space here to detail the oddities of these pets, or the oddities of our treatment of them. My mom worked for a university food service, and she knew veterinary students. We had some of the mice “fixed” which is tricky business for such a small creature, and when some of the mice developed tumors, they were operated on (successfully in most cases, I might add). If my mother could have gotten an inhaler for Aggie, she would cheerfully have done so and would have hovered around worriedly waiting for it to be needed.

So, the point is when I read about the mouse in The Green Mile, I took it all in stride. The other day I thought about this. I wondered if someone who’d never had any real experience with mice except to kill them in traps, or to see them in a pet store, or to feed them to a pet snake, would react as I’d done. I wondered if the mouse would be as important to such a reader, or if they’d be able to suspend their disbelief in the same way. I also noted that I’d gone into a daydream and probably missed a few details of the story as I thought about our mice, King Henry and his progeny, and how the university wanted to bring them in to study because they exhibited such intelligence.

I think all readers have moments like that. The words they are reading find a nerve and when it’s plucked, memory pours in. This changes the course of the act of reading in subtle ways, and becomes a moment that is now part of the reader’s life, and memory. Clive Barker once wrote that “we are all books of blood,” and he’s correct. We are also books of memory, and those memories are attached to nerves that interact with every moment of our lives.

I hope I didn’t miss anything in my brief daydreaming period, but even if I did, I got a few moments to relive things that were formative, and to look at them in a different light. It made me wonder about what I write, about scenes from my own life that I try to imbed with certain emotions with the hope of invoking planned reactions. Do I ever get that just right, or do the memories invade every time and make a new story, a story that is as unique to each reader as it is to me?

It’s all about connections, you see…

David Niall Wilson

I’ll bet few writers around these parts have read things they’ve written in the past and not yelled “PHEW! YUCK!” loud enough to frighten their children (or their neighbors’ children) slap to death. Some of my own exclamations of dismay have brought sheriff’s deputies from two counties over to investigate.

I know some writers who refuse to read their work after it’s been published. I seldom do, except when I go back to re-edit something in hopes of selling it as a reprint. Oftentimes reading my old stuff is painful. Not necessarily because it’s terrible, but because it rarely says things the way I might say them now. Sometimes it’s like reading the work of a stranger, but a stranger who knows too much about what’s in my head.

As with virtually any creative endeavor, no matter how good one becomes as a writer, one can always get better. For me personally, I don’t see the process of growing ever stopping. I may lurch and stumble, or pop off the occasional misfire, or wrack my brain only to come up with crapola, but this is part of the journey, yes? These things mean I’m doing something besides resting on my laurels or contenting myself with whatever meager accomplishments I might be able to claim in my past.

Looking at older work and cringing (or yelling) means that one’s eye has grown sharper, that skills are evolving. Looking at older work and cringing a little (or yelling at a lower volume), but finding that for the most part you nailed it, that’s good too. It means you’ve hit a landmark. However — and I can’t speak for anyone else — almost every time I identify a landmark in my bibliography, I find other works in its wake that miss the mark; sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. This usually means I’ve tried to extend myself to another level, and sometimes it takes some grappling to snag the right ledge.

But snag it one must.

I know from a lot of years writing as well as from wearing my editor’s hat and working with other writers how frustrating it can be to reach and reach and crash and burn repeatedly. It makes it hard to have faith in your work, to really believe you’re reaching new levels. Or that you’re even friggin’ competent. But if you’re not reaching, you’re stagnating, and if you’re stagnating, you’re not grabbing the attention of editors, and if you’re not grabbing the attention of editors, you’re going nowhere fast.

Learning from the hard fall is where faith in your work begins.

In my experience, faith in one’s work shows in the writing; faith in one’s voice (see Janet Berliner’s excellent essay from October 26); faith in one’s ability to hook the reader’s attention. Even if the work has rough edges, sometimes an editor will latch onto that certain subtle something that confidence brings to the page. When I was editing DEATHREALM, as well as my subsequent anthologies, I’ve witnessed this elusive trait in writers who may have limited experience but display serious devotion to their craft. Just this week, in a relatively new, well-respected small press magazine, I read a story that, from a technical perspective, simply was not the shit; in fact, on the surface, it seemed fraught with errors. But the writer’s voice was so damned enthusiastic, so strangely, crudely lyrical, that it drew me right into the tale, and in the end, it really made me smile. I suspect the writer will go places — assuming he keeps the faith.

Who knows, maybe he’ll come back one day and read his story and cringe, but at the same time, maybe it was a landmark. It got into a decent-paying publication, so one can’t cringe but so much, right?

So how, you ask, does one pick one’s self up from the hard falls, shake off the dirt, and begin to ooze confidence from every page?

Heed the timeless wisdom: write and submit, write and submit, write and submit. Take seriously constructive criticism offered by perceptive editors. Listen to the voices of experience. Above all, get out and live. Go places, observe, meet people. Verisimilitude begets belief. Not just for the reader but for the writer. If you believe it…well, there it is. Faith. Once you’ve got it, you’re that much closer to snagging the next level.

And the one beyond that and the one beyond that. If down the road you look back and cringe a bit, so what? It only means you’ve been doing your job.

Of course, that’s not always my first thought, and the yell just comes out. Sorry ’bout that.

–Mark Rainey

There’s a t-shirt for sale in the Madison, Wisconsin airport. It
reads, “Sick of cheese, still like beer”, which is probably a fair
assessment of the local generic tourist experience. The woman selling
them and I chatted a bit as I scarfed up some bottled water and a snow
globe (for a coworker – don’t ask). She asked about the fact that I
had books spilling out of my backpack – well, books and cheese, but it
was Madison – and I mentioned I’d been in town for a writers’
conference. World Fantasy, to be specific.
She rang up my purchases, asked if I wanted a coffee mug, and then
asked if I was a writer. In my experience, this question is code for
“Have you written anything I have ever heard of?” or possibly “Are you
famous, should I know you, and is it worth it to ask for your
autograph?” In my case, the answer is “Probably no, unless you’re one
of several flavors of hard-core geek, but thank you for asking.”
It turns out she was a writer, too. Did random bits for some sports
web pages or newspapers, I never quite got the details, and she
wouldn’t say the name she wrote under. I didn’t press. We all have our
secrets, and besides, I needed to get back to the gate lest our puddle
jumper to Chicago depart without me.
But she did ask what I’d written. I mentioned the roleplaying games
(never heard of ‘em), the random bits of fiction (strike two) and the
tie-in novels I’d done (foul tip off the catcher’s glove, barely
staying alive). And then I mentioned the video games, and her face
brightened and she said, “Oh, yeah, my brother (or nephew, or
boyfriend, or somebody – memory fails me at this point) loves those.”
I’d crossed the rubicon from nobody to somebody. I’d written something
she’d heard of.

About an hour into World Fantasy, my standard intro metamorphosed into
“Hi, I’m Richard Dansky. I write video games for Red Storm.” Sure,
I’ve written fiction – it seemed like everybody there had written
fiction – but the video games? It’s an angle, a twist, a different
conversation starter. It’s a way to separate myself, to make the
conversation memorable. Almost everyone there knows more about writing
than I do (or at least it feels like it), but this is something I know
about, something I can discuss from a position of intelligence and
knowledge.
Well, knowledge anyway. Intelligence is in the eye of the beholder.
And surprise, surprise, lots of folks want to talk about video games.
They play them, they want to know how they get made, they want to know
if I worked on Game X or Y or Z (No, yes, and a week’s worth of
dialogue polish, in case you were wondering). Have I met Tom Clancy
(yes), is he consulted on the game stories (no) and do you really have
to come up with forty-nine variations on “I shot that guy!” (depends
on the game) – all things they want to know. Some of the conversations
are more serious than others, about what it takes to get something
made into a game. Others are just fun, sharing stories and
I’ll-bet-you-didn’t-know-this tidbits.
Afterwards, I worry a bit. Have I pigeonholed myself as The Game Guy™?
Did I cut myself off from a chance to talk with folks about my
writing, the parts of it that don’t involve specular mapping and poly
counts? Video games start the conversation, but do they end it as
well?
Naah. It’s all writing. Up to me, really. I’m pigeonholed if I let
myself be. And there are worse things, honestly. I like the writing I
do.

Saturday night in Madison, 9 PM. Next door, the panel on sex in
fantasy writing is getting warmed up, so to speak. Downstairs, the bar
is open. On the sixth floor, the parties are in full swing.
On the podium, four of us, writers of video games and RPGs and board
games and ARGs, sit there counting the seats as they fill. We’re
there, Walter Jon Williams and Matt Forbeck and Lucien Soulban with
me, to do a panel on alternate writing forms. Matt’s thrown himself on
the grenade labeled “Moderator”, cleverly seating himself on the far
left so he could get to the exit in a hurry in case things went
horribly wrong.
Out there, in the audience, people. More people than I would have
expected, honestly. Not at that time slot, not with that level of
competition, not with that topic.
It didn’t fill up, not that any of us were expecting it to. But there
were people in there, lots of people. Friends, of course, and fans of
one panelist’s work or another. Folks who were curious about what game
writing was actually like. Game players either excited or disappointed
by the level of writing in games so far. Writers interested in
exploring another medium, or just wanting to learn what it was all
about.
So where do you start with a topic like that? Anywhere you can, I
suppose – just try to find a way in, to link it to writing to give
everyone in the audience something to hang onto, a hook they can
relate to. Matt did a masterful job of generating and propelling the
conversation, asking how we compared novel writing to game writing,
where the similarities and necessary skills might be. After that, it
was off to the races, and the audience went with us. Good questions,
good debate, no instances where one panelist went after another one
with the half-empty water pitcher – what more could you ask for? And
the fact that people were talking about what we’d said as they filed
out made all of us feel damn good.
Maybe someone’s getting it. Maybe someone’s thinking about it. Maybe
more people will want to talk next year. It’ll be interesting finding
out.

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

by Janet Berliner

I was going to write about collaboration: two authors; a composer and a lyricist; an architect and a contractor. People with a vision working together to make the whole better than its parts. Then the first paperback copy of ARTIFACT arrived and I started to think about how it all came together . . .

Back in 1995, while I was waiting for the first of my two anthologies with illusionist David Copperfield to hit the shelves, I was having dinner in the coffee shop at the old Maxim Hotel here in Vegas. On my way to the bathroom, I passed by an area where they were shooting a commercial with Evel Knievel (who was part owner of the hotel), so I stopped to talk to him. He reminded me that he had started out his adult life as an English teacher and suggested that I do a book with him like the ones I was doing with David. I said I’d have my people call his people and went back to dinner.

About a month later, I was in New York, at the Fashion Café, for the official launch of the Copperfield book and spoke to some of the authors who had done stories for me. Kevin Anderson, Matt Costello, and Paul Wilson were there, and agreed that an adventure book with Knievel-like daredeviltry sounded like fun. Eric Lustbader, S.P. Somtow and, later, Mickey Spillane were also interested in taking part.

“My people” and “Knievel’s people” never managed to get together on the project, so Kevin, Matt, Paul, and I decided to do the book as a novel, each contributing part of the story, then working together to make it a cohesive whole. Mickey, Somtow, and Eric were all off to other projects, and seven authors would have been really unwieldy for a novel anyway. Besides, even with four authors, New York was skeptical at best. “You’re proposing a novel with a single voice? Authored by four name authors?” Think raucous laughter. “It’s been tried and it can’t be done, Berliner.”

I’m here to tell you it can be done. My friends and I did it in ARTIFACT.

To start things off, I grabbed a few elements from my life and tossed them into the pot. Before I moved to Las Vegas, I had lived in Grenada for a year. I decided that some of the book should be set there. It’s an amazingly beautiful island, with wonderful people, and a really great old prison for the prison break scene. Better yet, I could steal from the lives of my friends there, one of whom spent an entire four years of Communist rule in a cell in that prison, and another who was a fellow ex-pat South African.

Kevin wanted to do a story with a deep-sea drilling rig and eco-terrorists, and Matt and Paul had ideas about diving deep-sea caves and finding a strange, otherworldly device. All of the elements went into the pot and the four of us stirred them around until an outline popped out and peopled itself with the various characters that we created from the fabric of odd folks we had met during our travels to places around the Caribbean and South America.

Now about the M.O., or maybe I shouldn’t give away all of my secrets.

Eh, what the heck. Here’s he recipe we used.

Take four authors who like each other and care about the caliber of their work. Tell them certain parts of their anatomy are in serious jeopardy if they don’t deliver what they’ve promised, when they’ve promised it. Take the three novellas they produce, write a framework, cut the novellas into pieces and knit those pieces into one garment, writing transitions and making certain that the ultimate voice is a singular one. Polish. Send it to everyone for input. Discuss, fix, edit, polish again. Let it simmer. Then do it again.

We were looking for that Clive Cussler adventure feel, which is why I was so proud when Clive praised the book as “Full of action with terrific characters and a fast moving plot.”

Of course, it helps that Kevin, Matt, Paul, and I have a lot of years of experience working with other writers, so we don’t fall into the potholes that often wreck the axel of a collaborative vehicle, like getting our individual egos too wrapped up in a particular scene or character. More than anything, it helped that we were determined that the book would be fun, and we would stay friends, or we’d just chuck the whole thing. Our hope is that readers enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing it.

A week or so ago, I finally got some galley copies of my first novel, The Unwelcome Child, which is to be released this December 5th. My husband’s best friend, whom I’ll call James but whose name is really Peter, asked if he could read it. I saw no harm in letting him. After all, if he didn’t like it, I wasn’t going to be offended. James and I often disagree on a variety of subjects, and this disparity in viewpoint has provided some lively and entertaining debates, usually fueled by pasta and plenty of red wine. Moreover, he’s an accountant. Although I might take a critique of how I balance my checkbook to heart (unlikely, considering I see no big deal in being off within fifty bucks or so) I didn’t think I’d be hurt if he didn’t like my book. In that case, it would simply be a matter of personal taste. Or that he was just stupid.

Actually, James is extraordinarily bright. And not just because he came back saying he liked my book. His words were something to the tune of, ‘I don’t want to say I’m surprised, but it was good.’ A rave from James. What I think pleased me most, however, was that he’d started it on Saturday and finished it on Sunday. If he were only just being polite, I don’t think he would have read it so quickly. As writers, we all know the tell-tale excuses when someone’s having a hard time getting through our work: I’m just so busy. Haven’t been able to get to it. I really wanted to get to it, but I’ve just gone blind, and my personal favorite, ‘I found it so distasteful I stopped reading after the first thirty pages.’ Anyway, I was glad James liked it. He’s not a writer, or part of the literary community, he’s just a guy who likes to read books, be told a good story. In short, he’s one of those people we write for. Or so I thought.

You see, it turns out that James was a much deeper reader than I’d given him credit. The day after his rave review, my husband, myself and he all met for lunch, and we hadn’t even finished our Matzo ball soup when the truth came out: James in fact did have a number of problems with the book. He even had the page numbers memorized where he’d found these problems. On pg. 27 Massachusetts was missing an s, he insisted hors d’oeuvre on pg. 139 was misspelled although when I checked in the dictionary I found it wasn’t, there was a reference to the Immaculate Conception that he thought was used incorrectly, and he took issue with the amount of travel time it would take to drive from Fall River, Massachusetts to the Woods Hole Ferry. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘Especially with peak-season traffic.’ Well, I’ve driven it and know it is possible in the time frame used in my book, and my husband, who did the actual driving, backed me up. But in spite of this a long and hard debate ensued. Unfortunately, the only consensus reached was that James was a nitpicking nitwit. This, even James admitted. Especially after he confessed he’d kept a dictionary by his side the whole time he was reading the book. He must have had an atlas, too, because he questioned the veracity of having my protagonist, of Polish descent, growing up in Fall River, which everyone knows has always had a predominantly Portugese demographic.

The reason I’ve brought such a non-event to this blog isn’t to illustrate what it’s like to have an ego as fragile as the skin of a ten-day-old corpse. It’s to show that no matter how hard you try to check and re-check your facts — everything from the spelling of your words to the affect peak-season traffic has on ferry schedules — someone will always be willing, dare I say even eager, to find something wrong. James is an extreme and amusing example of one of those people, but in the end I have to remember that he read the book, and in this day and age where people are more likely to turn on the t.v. than pick up a novel, what greater compliment is there than that?

– Jeffrey Thomas

It may have seemed like an ongoing act of love, but I think Vladimir Nabokov actually took the easy way out: he dedicated all his books to his wife, Vera.

I’m not going to complain too strenuously about the politics or difficulties of deciding who I should dedicate a book to; I’m lucky to have books to dedicate to anybody! There are more critical areas of concern in the writing, and publishing, of one’s work. But the issue does come up, and sometimes I struggle with it. Well, I don’t lose sleep over it…but it’s still a consideration. The way I figure it, as you read this essay on Thanksgiving day you may be too doped up on tryptophan to digest a weightier topic.

Well, how I’ve approached it thus far is like this. My first book, TERROR INCOGNITA, was dedicated to my Dad because he had recently passed away…and as a poet and painter, he’d been generous enough to pass along his creative genetic material. PUNKTOWN was dedicated to my first wife Rose, who retyped a lot of the book, and also to my brother Scott and my friend Tom Hughes, since I invited them to write Punktown stories as well from its inception, and thus they’ve always had a connection to that world. MONSTROCITY I dedicated to writer/publisher Joseph S. Pulver, because he encouraged me to finish this novel so that he could publish it through his Hive Press (which sadly folded before that could take place). Which reminds me, I still need to get him a copy! It’s been a few years now, and for all I know he might not even be aware that it was later published by Prime Books. (Note to self: track down Joe Pulver!) LETTERS FROM HADES was dedicated to publisher David G. Barnett with damn good reason. Dave wanted me to do a book for his new imprint, Bedlam Press. He gave me a very specific idea, too; could I set an entire novel in the version of Hell I depicted in a short story of mine he liked, called “Coffee Break”? So that novel wouldn’t exist at all were it not for Dave’s exciting spark of inspiration. Author Jeff VanderMeer receives a dedication in PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY for publishing the first Punktown book through his Ministry of Whimsy Press. Brother Scott shares half of the SHADES OF GREY collection, and he returns my earlier nod by dedicating his stories therein to me.

Sometimes, dedications can read like Academy Award acceptance speeches. I did a little of that with EVERYBODY SCREAM!, in which I thanked publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press for typing the entire novel up from a handwritten manuscript. I also thanked brother Scott again, since he gave me a lot of feedback on ES! and wrote a poem that appears at the start of the book.

So far, all of this has sounded pretty straightforward, but now it gets a little more complicated. Sometimes a book just doesn’t seem to attach itself to any one person in your life. Sure, I’d like to dedicate a book to my Mom, my sister Wendy, my brother Craig, or my son Colin (well, I’ve dedicated two short stories to him), but if a person really doesn’t have a connection to a certain book, I just can’t force it. This is when you might see a writer list a group of influential/inspirational authors, and as a result the line can blur between a Dedication page and an Acknowledgments page. I’ve seen the authors of Black Flame’s series of original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET novels dedicate them to Wes Craven or, in the case of Tim Waggoner, “Dr. Creep, host of Shock Theater, with thanks for so many fright-filled hours of fun.” My own forthcoming NOES novel, THE DREAM DEALERS, I dedicated to my second wife, Hong (whose name also translates to Rose…confused yet? I know I am). There is no character inspired by Hong in that book, and if I ever write a novel set in her native Vietnam, that might seem like a better project to save her dedication for. (Though I can always pull a Nabokov.) But sometimes a person connects to a book simply in a chronological manner. I associate Hong with THE DREAM DEALERS because we had just been married, and the writing of the book coincided with that heady period, which may have made it easier for me to write that novel as quickly and efficiently as I did. I swear, I didn’t dedicate it to Hong in order to placate her for dedicating an earlier book to first wife Rose! But maybe I should dedicate more books to Hong in the future, to offset the fact that I have two forthcoming books dedicated to a past lover of mine who inspired important characters in both stories (though I use two different, secret pet name for both dedications to protect her identity somewhat from people like her husband). Uh, you see the politics that can become involved? And ego gets involved, too. I was going to thank assistant editor Mark Newton in the dedication of THE DREAM DEALERS for giving me several great suggestions, such as a very specific idea for the prologue in that book…but later I decided not to make mention of his input, for fear that readers might assume my creativity was directed by other hands. Heh. Ahh, vanity.

Then there are books of mine that I just couldn’t think of anyone at all to dedicate them to. Maybe, since they’re short story collections, it has to do with the variety of the stories, a diffusion of effect that discourages a solid connection with any particular individual. Thus, my collections AAAIIIEEE!!!, HONEY IS SWEETER THAN BLOOD and THIRTEEN SPECIMENS contain no dedication. Then again, my novel BONELAND features no dedication, either. And I had no hesitation in dedicating the collections I’ve listed earlier. I guess a book either calls out for its dedication, or it doesn’t…just as one book might beg to have a quote from someone like Dante or Shakespeare start it out, while another wants to jump right into the action.

It might be fun to dedicate a book to some imaginary person, to keep readers – and maybe even wives, past and present – guessing. Writing dedications can become as boring and predictable as writing the same bio page over and over. For one anthology I was in (DARK TESTAMENT), I essentially gave Marlon Brando’s bio and substituted my name for his. Something to break up the monotony.

And why not just thank myself? Hey, I write the damn things. Usually, the wife is just bitching at me to get off the computer so she can use the phone. Yeah. Myself, and coffee. We do all the REAL work.

Anyway, it’s time to zonk out in an armchair someplace in my annual tryptophan-induced coma. I appreciate it if you’ve taken time from your holiday to read my lightweight essay.

Here’s to you.

by Michael Laimo

This month’s entry is going to be short. I apologize in advance. I won’t make any excuses other than to say I’m filled to my brim. I was in Florida last week for business. You know, that day job that I work at 9 hours a day? There’s my commute in and out of Manhattan, and that’s two hours a day. Thank God for that. Those two hours are spent writing. No excuses there. I don’t read, socialize, nap, eat, or simply stare out the window. I write, whether I’m tired, have a migraine, feel sick, or am simply not in the mood. This is my time, and I use it to write. It’s this tenacity in me that enables me to write about a novel a year.

A lot of people have been asking me when the new book’s coming out. Well, unfortunately the space of time between Demonologist and my new one, Dead Souls, will be about 18 months. That’s the longest amount of space I’ve had between books. Why? Well, after writing Demonologist, I’d needed a break. I was burnt to a crisp. I did those things I’ve always wanted to do on my commute (see above). After a couple of months, I was asked to write a novella. I’d never written anything in that length, so I took two months to write that. After completing it, I started researching for Dead Souls, which took another few weeks. Next thing I know, Demonologist is about to be released, and I’m just getting started on my next book. I’m still working on it, and although I am not pleased that it’s taken so long, I am VERY pleased with this book. The unfortunate thing is that due to scheduling, the book won’t be out until 2007. Yup, that’s right. At least now I’ll have time to get cracking on the next one.

I write to please myself, yes, but I do write to please my readers, which I’m only recently discovering, are out there, waiting for my next book. I want nothing more that to give them something too. But, I have to work the day job. I have to take care of my family, and my house. Damn, I want to be like Keene and write full time. But, what are the odds? I make a good salary from the day job. Even if I got a six-figure advance for a book, could I really quit my day job? I’d piss away that money on the bills in a year’s time. Then what? I’d have maybe two books to offer…is someone going to offer me $100,000 for each of them? Nah. I don’t think so…not unless I get lucky. And you know what? In the back of my mind I keep telling myself that I made it this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop now. Just in case…just in case I DO get lucky.

Well, whether I get lucky or not, I’ll keep writing, for myself, and for those who’ve added tired Mike Laimo to their must read list—and even for those who haven’t yet discovered me yet. I figure that with each new book I publish, I’ll gain a few more readers. And that’s all right by me.

By Jeff Mariotte

Reading over Brian Keene’s essay from yesterday–although I had already written this last Friday so it’d be ready to go–I realize that the two pieces are very complimentary. Brian outlines a strategy for making a living, but he glosses over the part that I’m going into with greater detail in a line or two. Keene works on two books at a time. How does he do it? I publish 6 books a year, most years. How do I do it?

Read on…

Before I wrote professionally, I used to hear a lot about writers waiting around for inspiration. I even used to think it was a good idea. After all, how could one write a masterpiece if not touched by the muse? Wasn’t that magical spark required to set everything in motion?

Here’s what I’m using for inspiration this week. Our big TV died—this in a household where a significant portion of our income is derived from writing books and comics based on TV shows, a household with multiple parties of different ages, with videogame systems, DVD players, VCRs, etc. My desktop computer is in the shop, and my wife’s is rapidly fading. A relatively new tire on my main vehicle suffered a puncture this week. All the tires on the little truck we just use around the ranch have been sliced by mesquite thorns and need replacing; at the same time, its new battery has died, causing me to suspect alternator problems. My wife’s man vehicle needs a service call, too.

That’s just the unusual stuff. Of course, there are everyday needs as well. Food, gas, health insurance, satellite bills, phone bills…all the daily expenses that pile up in twenty-first century America. Fortunately for us, there’s no mortgage, because we bought the Flying M Ranch with cash, but mortgage or rent is still a major expense for most households.

Ray Bradbury used to advice people who wanted to write not to get married, because they’d just want to spend time with their spouses, and if they had families then the demands on their time would only get worse. Which is true, as far as it goes. But where I beg to differ—much as I love Ray—is that if you get married and have a family, then the bills pile up that much faster, and unless your spouse is wealthy those bills are going to spur you to the keyboard.

Because if you make your living at this uneven, inconsistent game, the more you write, the better. Waiting for inspiration is fine for amateurs who never desire to turn pro, for dilettantes convinced that the Great American Novel lurks inside them, maybe even for those with pro ambitions but little available time to work at it right now.

But if you’re a pro, or you want to be a pro, then waiting for inspiration is pointless. What you need is motivation, and that’s what we’re talking about here. I used to work for a comic book artist who is now, and has been for more than a decade, one of the most popular and successful comic artists in the business. But before he was that, he was a student and a would-be comic artist. He spent eight hours a day working at the drawing board, honing his craft, turning out page after page—acting, in other words, as if he was already a professional, even though no one was paying him for the work he was doing. He’s since been repaid for his efforts, many times over.

If you can get paid, so much the better. But if you want to be a writer, what you’ve gotta do is write. Your butt needs to be in a chair and your hands need to be on a keyboard, a pencil, or some other instrument that makes marks on paper. Kevin J. Anderson dictates his books while hiking and climbing mountains, and Barbara Cartland used to lay on a settee, petting her poodle, and dictate to a secretary, but you can bet that neither of them began their careers that way, and they are the rare exceptions, not the rule.

Inspiration happens when you make it happen. The act of writing stirs emotion and idea into a mix that flows onto the page. If you’re really a writer you don’t lack for things to write about, and the effort you’re putting in—at the desk, in the shower, behind the wheel, churning over in your mind what you’ve already put down and what’s to come—enables you to twist and combine and re-imagine the elements at your disposal into the story you need to tell.

The more you write, the more you write. Maybe it sounds redundant, but it’s also true. Instead of sniffing roses and watching clouds and waiting for the Muse to favor you with one of her little arrows, or however she does it, take a look at that stack of bills. A good, long look. Then sit your ass down in the chair.

And write.

by Brian Keene

(Note: Regular readers of Storytellers Unplugged keep asking us for a “How To Make A Living Writing Full-Time” column. What they fail to understand is that there is no patented answer. Instead, I shall offer “How I Make A Living Writing Full-Time.” And yes, just to get it out of the way, there are many people who will tell you I’m wrong, and will tell you that I don’t know what I’m talking about. There really is no right or wrong way to go about it. What works for one person might not work for another. This is how I do it…)

You want to write full-time, do you?

You sad, silly bastard. Are you sure I can’t talk you out of this? You do realize that people are making wonderful livings as plumbers, software engineers, HVAC technicians, and oil company C.E.O.’s?

Sigh. Okay, okay. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

To write full-time like me, you will need the following things:

1. A spouse or partner who is willing to continue working (if you do not have this, substitute a trust fund, wealthy benefactor, or windfall at Vegas).
2. Reliable health insurance.
3. The ability to work a minimum of five days a week, eight hours a day. (More will be helpful).
4. The clarity to separate art from profession and business from pleasure, because we are not having fun with a hobby—we are paying the fucking bills on time.
5. The ability to take honest criticism, because when you’re writing four books a year, not all of them are going to be your best work.

Now already, we have somebody in the back row, shouting, “Neil Gaiman creates art! Stephen King’s wife doesn’t work a day job! Danielle Steel only writes an hour a day!”

Yes, this is all true. But they are all residents of a plateau that I will probably never reach. They write books that are “lead titles.” I write books that are “midlist titles.”

Let’s visualize all the books a publishing company puts out in a month as a big, long list. At the top of the list are the lead titles; folks like Mr. Gaiman, Mr. King, and Ms. Steel. The lead titles are the moneymakers. They get the 90% of the promotional budget, 99.9% of the advertising, the largest print run, and the most editorial attention. As a result, the lead titles make money, just as they were expected to do.

Now, at the bottom of our big, long list is something called “the backlist”. These are books that have been reissued or reprinted. Everything from Mark Twain to H.P. Lovecraft to Zane Grey. These books first saw publication three months to ten years to a century ago. They went out of print, and are now back again.

Everything in the middle, the books between the “lead titles” and “the backlist” is the midlist. Learn the term now, because if you want to write mass-market horror novels (i.e. paperbacks that get their covers stripped off and returned when they don’t sell) and you want to write them for a living, chances are you will be a midlist writer.

Yes, one or two of you may be as good as Michael Marshall Smith or Chuck Palahniuk and may indeed get a six-figure advance and a metric fuck-ton of promotion and advertising dollars. But the cold, hard fact is that 98% of you will be automatically relegated to the midlist no matter how good your book is. This is called “market demand”. This is called business. This is called capitalism. This how the machine works—and there is nothing wrong with it, because the moment you decided you wanted to make a living writing full-time, you agreed to become a part of this machine.

Don’t run. Get the hell back here. I warned you and you didn’t want to listen. Well, it’s too late now. You will sit down and make a living writing, and what you are writing is product.

Here is what you need to know about being a midlist author. The advances are lower. The promotional budget is non-existent. The print run is smaller. And your story doesn’t matter as much. Why? Because the midlist is all about margins and slots.

Lets say Publisher Y produces 36 horror novels per year (three per month). That means they have 36 “slots.” Chances are that 12 of those slots will be taken up by backlist titles. Authors who are already in that publisher’s stable will take up another 12 to 20 slots. Then your manuscript hits their desk. It’s cohesive. Double-spaced. Competent. Publisher Y then does the math. If they print 10,000 copies of your novel, ship them out to grocery stores, drugstores, and bookstores, and think your book will sell 55% or higher of those 10,000 copies, you get one of those remaining, coveted slots—meaning, they buy your book.

Yayyyyy!

While you’re out partying and logging onto the message boards to tell the rest of the genre that Publisher Y bought your book, they are already moving on to the next slot.
That’s because they are conducting business. They are looking for product. The next manuscript might not be as brilliant as yours, but they’ll snatch it up, too, because they have slots to fill. Their business model is to maximize their profit by fulfilling a market niche—in this case, horror (though it could also be SF, romance, westerns, etc). Their average customer will buy these books on impulse while standing in line at the grocery store, and therefore, your skill as a writer doesn’t matter as much as whether or not they think they can sell 55% of those 10,000 copies.

Now understand, I’m not saying that you should just write a paint-by-numbers novel, where all you do is insert the character names. You should still try. You should still have fun. Your number one goal is—and should always be—to entertain your readers. That’s our job. That’s what we’re here for. But while you’re trying our best to write an entertaining read, you need to understand what your publisher’s job is, and what they are here for.

So…you’ve celebrated your big sale. You’re on your way to writing full-time, right?

You sad, silly bastard.

The average advance for a midlist novel, regardless of genre, in 2004 was between $2,000 and $5,000 dollars. That’s your paycheck. The year you spent working on that novel? The blood, sweat and tears you poured into it? The time you spent away from family and friends? It’s worth somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000.

You made more than that working in the call center, didn’t you?

And I bet the call center gave you health insurance.

Well, it gets worse. That check for $2,000. You’ll get it about two months after you’ve signed the contract. It will be a year later before your book even comes out. And it will be a year after that before you even begin to see any royalties–if, indeed, you earn royalties.

I really hope you didn’t tell that fat fucking foreman at the foundry to stick that grinder where the sun don’t shine because you’re on your way to being the next Stephen King. You did?

You sad, silly bastard.

Better fucking pray that your spouse kept their job.

Shhhh… Stop crying. It’s okay. Everything is cool. Uncle Brian’s gonna make things better.

Remember, the title of this rather longwinded essay on shock economics is called “How I Make A Living Writing Full-Time.”

Here’s how. I’m not saying it’s the right way. I’m not saying it’s the only way. I’m not saying that everybody else is wrong. I’m just saying this is what works for me.

The first step is becoming comfortable with what you are, while constantly striving to do better. I am a midlist writer. I choose to be, simply because of what I choose to write. If I wanted to, I could probably write a touching story about a mother and daughter reuniting on Thanksgiving Day, and sell it for six-figures and go on Oprah and The Today Show and make a shitload of money. But writing such a novel doesn’t appeal to me. I like writing about zombies and giant worms and yo-boys robbing banks and serial killers with homicidal pet tapeworms. However, I’m also realistic enough to know exactly where books of that type fall on the food chain. If Thomas Ligotti is a $200 meal at a five-star restaurant with a French-sounding name, then I am fucking White Castle.

And I’m cool with that. Doesn’t mean I can’t strive to do better, but I’m realistic with my expectations. I’m realistic with what the market will let me do. Terminal may very well be the best thing I’ve ever done, but at the end of the day, it’s still a midlist book.

When you become comfortable with your place in the machine, and you’re still striving to do better, a wonderful thing happens. That lady who bought your book on impulse at the local CVS while waiting in line to get her prescription filled? She enjoys it much more than the other two midlist horror novels she picked up that month, because even though you could have, you didn’t just phone it in. You tried to entertain them. Tried to tell a good story. Tried to give her what she wanted. Yes, even if the title of your book should have been Contractually Obligated Sequel, if you gave it an honest effort, and entertained your reader, she’ll enjoy it enough to remember your name. She’ll pick up the next one based on your name, or maybe even take five minutes to pop your name in Google. This is how you build a fan base; one reader at a time. And that fan base improves your margins. Instead of counting on you to sell 55%, Publisher Y knows you can deliver 60% or maybe even 65%. Publisher Y is then inclined to give you more money because you are good for business.

I’m not going to get into specifics, but let me break down an average year for you:

Advance on midlist novel to Publisher Y: $6,000
Advance on midlist novel to Publisher X: $3,500

That’s $9,500. How do I live off $9,500 a year?

I don’t. However, let’s say that last year’s midlist book sold 55% or better. I earned out my advance and can expect some royalties this quarter. So let’s add another $1,000 (give or take).

Now we’re at $10,500. I’d be making more if I was still working on the docks.

That’s where the small press and collectible market comes in. If you have a fan base that is willing to plunk down fifty bucks for a hardcover book that you’ve written your name in, you can do well in the small press. The small press has changed over the years. These days, reputable outfits like Cemetery Dance, Night Shade, and Delirium, often pay advances that are equal to, if not more than, the advance you’d get for your midlist paperback.

However, if you thought competition was tough for those midlist slots, it’s fucking Thunderdome competing for a small press slot. They key to successfully selling a small press title is, in fact, sales. You have to be able to sell out that print run, be it 250 or 500 or 1,500 copies. If you can do that time and time again, small press publishers will fall over themselves to sign you. Not trying to sound cocky or arrogant. Just telling you how the business works.

So, let’s take our $10,500 and put it on the table. Let’s add four small press publishers: A, B, C, and D. Publishers A and B buy the rights to do limited edition hardcovers of the two midlist paperbacks you just sold to Publishers Y and X.

$10,500 + $5,000 from Publisher A and $3,000 from Publisher B = $18,500.

Publisher C buys a novella from you and Publisher D is doing a collection of your short stories.

$18,500 + $2,500 from Publisher C and $3,500 from Publisher D = $24,500.

Not bad. If your partner or spouse is still working that day job, and you’re willing to do the house cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc.–you can probably get by on that and what they earn, right? But we should strive to do better. Thus, we increase our workload. Instead of writing five days a week, we go to seven. Instead of eight hours a day, we put in twelve. Is our work quality going to suffer as a result? Possibly. But remember, you told me your goal was to write full-time. So suck it up when the critics lambaste your next book, saying it was below par when compared to your usual work. With the extra hours, we can bang out two more novellas and sell them to two more small press publishers, netting us an additional $5,000, which puts us up to $29,500.

Add in some short story sales–that nets us another $300. We’re at $29,800. Sell the rights for one of your midlist paperbacks to a comic book publisher and maybe net another $3,000 = $32,800. Convince a small press publisher that a collection of your Blog entries will sell, and add another $2,500. A producer in Hollywood options it, and add another _____.

(See why it’s important to hold onto those rights, rather than signing them away just so you can sell the book?)

This is how I do it. The figure above are not exact because, in truth, I’m not comfortable with you knowing exactly how much I made last year. But they are pretty accurate, based on my experience.

The key, the way I see it, is just to keep writing and keep producing. I used to work in a foundry. My job was to make power steering gear molds all day long. If I wanted to get a paycheck, I had to make a minimum of 500 molds per day. I achieved that goal, and made sure my molds were good ones, so that quality control wouldn’t get on my ass. I apply the same rule to writing full-time. I write X amount of books per year to ensure I get a paycheck. I try my best to make sure they are good ones, so that quality control (the readers) doesn’t get on my ass.

I enjoy my job. I am very, very, very lucky. I get to stay home and make up stories about monsters and entertain people with the same things I like to be entertained with. I get to give something back to the genre that has given me so much. And I get paid for it. But I’m realistic. In order to earn that pay, I can’t get romantic about things. This isn’t a hobby. It’s not art. This is a business—and I approach it as such. If I don’t, I’ll be back in the foundry tomorrow.

A sad, silly bastard.

Hi. I’m Brian Keene, the White Castle of the horror genre. My burgers may not be duck almandine under glass, but they taste good and go down easy, and people buy them. My philosophy is simple. Call it the Tao of Keene, if you like.

I work on two books a day, one in the morning and one at night. On average, it takes me four months to write the first draft of a novel. For every novel I’m currently working on, I have two more contracted. If the time ever comes where I don’t have that two to one ratio, I will go get a regular job. (I won’t write the first sentence until I have a contract and an advance check, and neither should you. Why? If you spend four months on the book and the publisher goes bankrupt, you’re out four months of wages).

Writing full-time? That means that my income (along with my wife’s income) keeps the power on and the creditors off my back and allows us to buy groceries and clothing and go on vacation once a year.

And in the end, that’s all that matters. I’m happy. My wife’s happy. We do okay.

That’s how I write full-time.

Your mileage may vary.

PS: You asked to hear this. What else do you want to know about? I’m fresh out of topics and wouldn’t mind a little guidance from out regular readers. If you have a suggestion for a future topic, please take a moment to post it at the following LINK.