Storytellersunplugged

By David Niall Wilson

One of the oddest sensations I have experienced as a writer is discovering a passage in one of my novels, or a short story that’s been sitting around for a very long time, and discovering it for the first time. That seems unlikely, I know, but it’s something that happens on occasion, and it can be an eye-opening experience.

What I’m describing, for me, is a sort of dislocation, where I find something I wrote a long time ago, in a lifetime far away, that has lost it’s direct connection to my brain. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. I find a file, for instance, on my hard drive, for a story I vaguely remember writing, and open it. I sit, enthralled, reading it from end to end, and I can’t for the life of me remember writing it. I can’t remember where the words came from, what was connecting inside when I structured sentences – it’s eerie, fascinating, and more than once it has steered me back onto a proper track.

This happened recently with the novel that I’m currently working on, and the experience set off some alarm bells in my head - like that sharp slap to the cheek you see the hero get now and then in a movie. The one that brings him back to reality and points out obvious facts he should have been aware of all along. Over this summer I’ve been in a writing funk like I’ve never seen. The events of the past few months have altered a great number of things in my life that I previously considered stable, and my writing has not fully settled into the new world I inhabit. It’s like a dog, circling a soft pillow bed a hundred times to try and find that one little crease that tells it where to finally settle in and get comfortable for the long haul.

Back to the point. I’m writing a novel titled “The Orffyreus Wheel,” which is being serialized on Amazon.com. At first, I found this to be very liberating. The segments being published are about three chapters apiece, between seven thousand and ten thousand words each, and they run for a month or more before the next segment comes due. I finished my basic outline long ago for an agent I no longer work with, and I had written the first few chapters as a partial, so I started out with a safety cushion. Over the next few months (most of 2006) I cranked out the sections, keeping one ahead of the deadline at all times, which gave me a couple of months for a safety net.

The problem is that this has led to some disjointed creative processes. Breaking off on one project, going to others, then coming back for three chapters and moving on proved to be a bigger challenge than I thought it would be. Passions shifted, other projects took over my mind…but still, I was handling it pretty well.

Then came June. I won’t go into the big sob story about losing my job and the summer of stumps – all of that has been chronicled over at The Deep Blue Journal and really, it’s pretty much behind me now (the bad time). The problem is, there was a serious disconnect on the novel during the summer. I still wrote a page or two here and there. I managed to finish part VI and get it turned in, and I’m nearly done with part VII, but here’s what happened.

I opened the file to read it the other night – the last chapter I wrote, plenty of action scenes – fast paced stuff writes quickly for me. I read it, and I really, really enjoyed it. This actually caused physical shock. Part of the depression I’ve had over the last month or so has been associated with this book – with the dislocated way I’ve been writing it, and the lack of passion I felt for what I was doing. This was apparently so prevalent that I literally put it out of my head and wrote on auto-pilot. The writing is good – it’s solid – and after reading it, I found that I had gotten my enthusiasm back. It’s weird, because now it’s like I’m collaborating with some other guy – the guy who wrote that chapter while my brain was away on vacation. It should frighten me, I suppose, but hey – I’ve always been good at collaboration.

The day after I read that chapter I was working on something else…and had an epiphany. The ending, which has eluded me – the way to tie the past segments and present day segments together – fell into place in my mind and winked at me. It was a magical moment, and I have that guy to thank for it – that guy who writes pretty well even when abandoned by his mind, his gut, and his imagination. I remember him from some of my White Wolf novel writing, when the last thing in the world I wanted to do was finish those books, and he did them for me. It’s good to know he’s still around.

Now and then I find things he’s written in the past – words I don’t recognize, but get the honor of being proud of anyway…it’s nice to have an invisible friend who likes the same things.

Yesterday, found that all of the effort hasn’t been wasted. Apparently, “The Orffyreus Wheel” is the number one serialized novel in the Amazon program for the year 2006. In the serials section of the best-seller list at Amazon it’s holding positions 2-7. Not bad for a novel written largely in different times and existences, strung together by magic and collaborated on with some guy I rarely meet.

If you are interested, you can find the book at This link – Part One

I’ll be turning in part VII soon, and writing the conclusion, which I believe will be one of the tightest endings I’ve ever come up with. If you see that guy running around who looks like me, and writes through fire…thank him for me. I hope I don’t need him again, but I’m glad he’s there.

ONWARD!

DNW

by Dick Hill

You can’t have jazz without rhythm. It may be familiar, a 32 bar, repeating sort of thing, or it may be Brubeck telling you to Take Five but do it in four, or creating a seven-sided unsquare dance, but in some form or other it’s there. Same, or so it seems to this non-writing reader, with writing. Now, I’m talkin’ prose, not poetry, so it’s not gonna’ be as readily apparent. In fact, most often, it may not be apparent at all. But I believe it’s there. It’s what guides my delivery as I record, and I think it does the same for your readers who don’t move their lips. I’m not sure writers are always conscious of the rhythms they bring to a piece, it may be something that flows unconsciously from their pens, but it is nonetheless there. A major part of my job is finding that rhythm.

Sometimes the rhythm is something that only plays out over a series of scenes, or even chapters, which I guess you could liken to the rhythm of the seasons, sometimes more immediate, like the beating of a heart. I once recorded Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER, with its customary introductory piece, THE CUSTOM HOUSE. Take a look at just one Hawthorne sentence…

I’m pretty free-wheeling and improvisational, as much as you can be, when I record people’s work. I read every word, of course, and use my voice as best I can to match mood and character, but I often ignore punctuation, stringing sentences together in a breakneck or breathless manner to underscore the author’s intent. It works well in the audio format, and I’ve gotten very positive responses from authors regarding this practice. If the author were to put it on paper the way I deliver it, it’d probably look like stream of consciousness, and might be a bit off putting, yet that is often the truest presentation of what they offer, and they’ve told me as much. It’s not something I’m inventing or imposing, so much as uncovering……simply giving voice to. I have a hunch many of your readers unconsciously pick up on the rhythm of a scene in the same manner, racing through action scenes, lingering and savoring more lyrical, evocative passages. I sometimes pause, as if searching for the perfect word, the capper, to some thought. Of course I don’t need to search, it’s right there on the printed page, but the search enhances the value of what follows.

Just yesterday I recorded a short story by Tolstoy, YOUTH. It was a beautiful recollection of summer nights, of stepping silently into the dark wonder of the lawn surrounding a house, of listening to the sounds of life retiring inside, awakening in the trees without. It demanded a slow unfolding of memory’s treasures, set off and made sacred by still, hushed caesuras. Like negative space in art, those pauses can be eloquent, allow the listener to join me in that moment of search, before sharing that sense of wonder and awe in discovering ”…both Nature and the moon and I were one.”, which I offered slowly and reverently as…”both Nature (beat) and the moon (beat) and I (lo-o-ng beat) were one.”

There is a rhythmic possibility, if not inevitability, inherent in all writing. I do my best to uncover those possibilities when I read aloud, and I think your readers do the same, if not as consciously and purposefully as I do. But then, I’m offering a performance of sorts, appearing, as a friend and fellow voice talent put it, in the role of Ivana Paychek, and it behooves me to do everything I can to honor and embrace through my craft what the writer has created through his art. What Sinatra, or Ella, or Mel Torme do with their phrasing of a lyric, that’s what I aspire to do when I read. Hey, a guy’s gotta’ dream, right?

Sometimes a writer will very consciously offer a rhythm that is impossible to ignore. One that is purposefully used to drive home a message of importance. One that grabs you by the throat, (or the heart) and demands you listen. One that says, here, pay heed to what I say. Want a great example of that sort of strength? Take a look at my friend Rick Steinberg’s last entry. Librarians.

So I’m gonna’ wind this up now. A commercial catch phrase just horned in on my thoughts. Beef. It’s what for dinner. Rhythm. It makes good writing. Of course, I may be fulla’ shit. Often am.

Gonna’ sign off with my trigger words, to prime the pump for next month’s attempt, same as I did last month. Jazz again. I think there’s something more there.

– Dick Hill

When’s the last time you went into the kitchen; spent most of a day preparing an exquisite dinner, complete with salad, side dishes, a fabulous entrée, and a luscious dessert; arranged it all meticulously on your finest china; and then before serving it, threw three-quarters of it in the trash can?

Maybe the meat was overcooked. Maybe the vegetables had spoiled. Or maybe you just decided that you had a taste for sushi instead.

How often have you labored over a chapter or a short story, felt absolutely confident that it contained some of the best prose you’ve ever written, and then tossed the bulk of it right out the window?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably done the latter more times than you like to think about.

The nice thing about words, unlike the vittles you’ve shoved into the disposal, is that oftentimes, some or even most of them may be retrieved later, retooled, and reintegrated into something other than the project for which they were originally intended.

There have been times, though, particularly in the early days of my career, when excising any appreciable portion of my writing seemed as appealing as yanking off my big toenail with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Or throwing out an expensive slab of filet mignon.

Part of a writer’s job is learning how to edit. To make changes. Sometimes big ones. For many, it’s one of the most difficult aspects of the craft because it frequently involves subtracting from rather adding to the work you’ve labored over so intensely. During the initial creative process, you chose every word carefully; you manipulated, combined, undid, and recombined sentences repeatedly until the flow felt perfect; and the result was a world with people and places as real as the passersby and landscape outside your window. Now you’re going to rip sections out of it without anesthesia?

Yes ma’am. Because that’s part of your job.

I think it’s very easy, particularly for the neophyte, to become so enamored of your prose that it’s painful to think about subtracting any significant portion of it — especially when there’s nothing technically wrong with it. However, it’s vitally important to see the bigger picture, the old forest through the trees. Frequently, for me, a thorough read-through of a first draft reveals that the piece may be overwritten — that it’s full of unwieldy details, or riddled with detours that derail the flow of the plot. If I’m honest with myself, many times, I find that applying a scalpel — and sometimes hacksaw — to my prose is the healthiest thing for it.

Until you become accustomed to the procedure, yes, it can definitely hurt. And yes, sometimes, disturbingly large remnants will end up in the recycle bin.

You may take some consolation in the fact that, as you grow as a writer, the hacksaw treatment will more often give way to the scalpel, and on occasion, to a simple pair of tweezers. Now, you may or may not find that the number of fragments in your recycle bin — those abortions that seemed like a good idea at the time but went nowhere — aren’t as numerous as they once were. But don’t count on ever finding it empty.

Which would be a bad thing.

Not every word is golden, even if it seemed like it in the beginning. Or sometimes, a diamond takes time to form; some of the crude material in your fragment file may actually have a real shine to it. It just needs to be set against a different backdrop.

Don’t be afraid of the pain. It’s part of the growing process. As long as you are a writer — a good writer — you will have growing pains. Hopefully, you’ll welcome them with open arms.

–Mark Rainey

(My sincere apologies to Chet and everyone. I had days mixed up in my head and was waiting all day wondering why no essay was posted…I should have had this up this morning…

DNW)

Change of Scene

by Chet Williamson

I could use one, and not just for the usual reasons, but for literary causes as well.

My lovely and supportive spouse Laurie and I were sitting in the local Subway last evening, in the window booth, which is the spot in town to see and be seen, when I said to her, “We need to get away for a while. We need to go to San Francisco or Bangkok or Amsterdam and chill for two weeks.”

She knew what I meant. Her mother had died just two weeks before, and we were both feeling the brunt. Calamities occur in life, and this one had been far from unexpected. Laurie’s widowed mother had returned to Pennsylvania after having lived many years in Florida, and had taken a tidy apartment at the Masonic Village right outside of town. She moved in on the first of May, and at the beginning of the summer we got the first clues that the blood condition she’d had for many years had progressed to acute leukemia. July was filled with tests and procedures, and she went into the hospital at the end of August and then to a hospice where she died on September 13th.

I won’t discuss the personal aspects of this particular tragedy other than to say that they proved emotionally grueling for both Laurie and me, but what was wearing us down physically was the act of becoming adults. We now had an “estate” that we had to deal with, with Laurie as the executor of her mother’s will, and with me doing most of the grunt work, since she’s back teaching. There are bills to be paid, agencies to be consulted, lawyers to be dealt with, a Florida condo still to be sold, and an apartment to be emptied before the end of the month. Faxes flying, backs aching, eyes propped open by coffee, we soldier on, longing for Friday when the piano will be taken away and the chest of drawers (built, so legend has it, by an ancestor in the Dark Ages before nails) will join the boxes of stuff that now make a maze of our cellar.

It sucks being the daddy and mommy.

In a few months, Laurie’s brother and sister will come in from Canada and California and hopefully thin the piles of amassed goods, removing clocks and photo albums and Christmas ornaments and books and CDs; the estate will get settled, the condo will be sold (terrible time to sell a Florida condo), the final bill will arrive and be paid, and life will slowly return to normal.

In the meantime, however, I haven’t written a goddamned word.

The suspense novel that I’d started years ago and had decided to finally finish lies there supine and unstirred, its literary loins cool to my exploring touch. Will I ever be able to arouse it again, I wonder, or is our lengthy but intermittent affair over for good?

The play I’ve been revising over and over since getting involved with a playwrights’ workshop two years ago declines to be further revised. Sod off, it says. I’m through with you.

And with the novel and theatre dead (aren’t they always?), I turn to the film projects that I’ve been tentatively working on, alone and with other writers, to find that the sprocket holes are torn and the reel is making that flippety-flappety sound that used to mean the stupid movie about “Our South American Neighbors” was over and we could finally go out for recess.

Shit. I need a change of scene.

I’ll get it eventually. I’ll go somewhere I’ve never been before and a landscape or a building or a street will whisper to me and ask me what the hell do I think could happen here? When I look back on it, that’s the genesis of most of what I’ve written. It casts a new light on the old “Where do you get your ideas?” query. Where, indeed?

For me, ideas come from a sense of place. Though my fiction is basically character driven, the seed sprouts not with a character, but a visceral and emotional reaction to a location. I’d never have written Dreamthorp were it not for my wanderings through the old Chautauqua village of Mount Gretna. Reign came out of the aura of mystery I always found in the old theatres in which I’d worked as an actor. The books in my three-volume series, The Searchers, were set respectively in New York City, the high desert of Arizona, and Scotland, all locations I found fascinating on my visits there.

Both the stories in my upcoming chapbook, Kaikon, were inspired by my visits to Japan, as was my novel, Nothing Man, which is still seeking a home. Another homeless novel (do I detect an alarming trend?) is a love story set in Ireland, another country that set my imagination astir.

I’m convinced, however, that it’s not only different looking environs that jump start the idea engine, but that it’s also the change of pace, the just getting away from the same old house, same old room, same old town. Writing is stultifying enough as it is – one person, one tool (be it computer or legal pad). Can’t we at least occasionally change the view from the window we look out of every single day? Sameness dulls the senses and muddies the sensibilities. Get the hell out of town! See something new! Fill the well! Pull the string! A story must be told!

Uh, right…thanks, Bela. But seriously, if you want a story to tell, just change the scene and open your mind, and that well will fill. It always has before. And I intend to take my own advice.

Just as soon as I call that real estate guy and probate that will and arrange for that truck…

Jeez, I hate being the adult.

– Chet Williamson

A humble confession – I used to want to be an academic. I even published a couple of papers in accredited journals, back when I was still in hot pursuit of the magical sheepskin and tassel. It was long ago and in another athletic conference, and besides that ambition is dead, but bear with me here, and take a trip back. It’s sort of pertinent. I promise.

***

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. It’s a beautiful fall day in 1992, and, like the swallows coming back to Capistrano or the boobirds to South Philadelphia, the freshly minted M.A. in Literature students have gathered for their initial briefing at Boston College. There’s one room, and in it, one massive, heavy wooden table. The students are packed in tightly around it, putatively to receive the first dollops of wisdom from the head of the program, but in reality there to start the frenzied, savage competition for favored status, teaching fellowships and letters of recommendation. Academia, red in tooth and claw, is being born anew, and each of the students at that long table has brought with them a weapon.

A book.

But it’s not just any book, mind you. It’s the first book, the one that will be forever associated with its bearer, the one that will help crystallize others’ opinions (hopefully favorable) of them and cement a place in the pecking order. A glance around the table goes from face to spine to face again, as everybody’s book is on the table in front of them. The cool, trendy, with-it types are toting Toni Morrison. The grinds and self-proclaimed serious types have Derrida and other manifestations of litcrit. Old-schoolers have yellow-bordered Penguin editions. The arms race is on, as each set of eyes flicks around the table assessing, checking for evidence that the book has actually been read, analyzing.

Down near the end, on the right side, there’s a guy whose apartment is nowhere near campus. Due to the vagaries of the Boston public transit system, he’s a good 45 minutes away, with a switchover at Downtown Crossing and another one at Government Center. On a bad day, he estimates, it will take him an hour and a half to get to school. The book he chose to bring with him was selected with this in mind, chosen for length and readability rather than status. It is the proverbial knife at the gunfight, a big, thick, meaty slab of prose with, in the reader’s humble opinion, some pretty rockin’ characterization, mood, and plotting, and who gives a hoot that it’s got no literary cachet. It’s for the damn train, isn’t it?

Also, it’s got a big honking skeleton on the cover. Instantly, irrevocably, he’s doomed, ‘cause nobody in that room knows what the hell to do with him.

***

A humble ellipsis.

Time passes. The guy reading Dan Simmons takes some slings and arrows. He gets his paper, with honors, and wanders off into the semi-real world. He writes a few things, gets some of them published, and falls into game writing. All the while, though, the memory of that day sticks with him, and so do the questions.

It wasn’t “That’s bad” that puzzled him (alright, me – are you happy now?), because there never was “That’s bad” or “Why are you reading that garbage” or even “Shouldn’t you be reading Proust instead?” The response to that, or to the Zelazny or Brin or Blackwood or whatever else I toted with me down the rickety Green Line tracks, was always confusion. Incomprehension. A question of why was I reading that stuff, and how could it be quantified, assessed, and critiqued.

It was outside the lines. Not in the way I’d thought, mind you, after the scrapping I’d done to defend my precious Lovecraft and write my thesis, but there clearly was a boundary of comprehension, and the stuff I was reading was on the other side of it.

More time passes.

A writer I know joins a writers’ workshop, taught by a well-regarded novelist. She brings to class a section of her novel-in-progress, an urban fantasy. The protagonist starts out competent, urbane, professional, and sharp, and through the introductory “stinger” sequence she demonstrates her competence even while stumbling onto the first inklings of a mystery that will require growth, change, family dynamics, and all that other good literary stuff, in addition to some kick-butt action.

The critique is…confused. There’s a little “Hey, this is just like Harry Potter” and some “Is housebrownie a racist term?” and a whole bunch of trying to cram the well-rounded scene into a hole that can only be described as extremely square. It’s as if there’s no context for the critique, no sense that there’s other work or tradition being drawn on here, no understanding of where the story might go outside the character’s feelings and inner life.

And a light bulb fourteen years dead flicks on.

***

A humble thought:

Literary fiction (at least in its modern, trade-paperbacked incarnation) is, in large part, about damaged people. Throughout the course of the narrative, the characters explore, express, and potentially rectify that damage to arrive at a state of functional integration. They may also affect and change their environment in the process, but the chief action – and the chief demonstrable result – is internal.

Speculative fiction (at least in its classic incarnation) is, in large part, about highly functional people dealing with damaged situations. Throughout the course of the narrative, the characters explore and potentially rectify that situation in order to arrive at a functional environment. The characters may grow and develop throughout the course of the narrative, but the chief action and the chief and ultimate demonstrable result is external.

This, then, is why there is such a collision of perspectives between those two worlds, particularly in the minds of A)reviewers and B)young writers. These folks, when attempting to critique or review speculative fiction, are stunned to learn that the characters they meet at the start of the action are where they expect characters to be at the end of the action - i.e. fully functional and no longer inclined to put a salmon down their pants to express their basic unhappiness. As such, that sort of reader can only wonder where the heck the story can possibly go, since the characters are already where they should end up.

This is not to say, of course, that all literary fiction is exclusively about damaged people undamaging themselves, that all speculative fiction is about Campbellian (John W., not Joseph) heroes sallying forth against a hostile universe, or that there is an intrinsic difference in quality between the two forms, based solely on whether the action is internal or external.

What I am picking at here, I think, is more the question of how speculative fiction – and really, all genre stuff, because detective fiction fits in there neatly with room for the proverbial caraway seeds and movie producer’s innards – gets approached by those who don’t read it, whether from a critical or a reading perspective. Because of the nature of speculative fiction – archetypal in the case of fantasy, paradigmatic for science fiction, or transformative in the case of horror, it’s almost imperative for there to be external action, a big screen upon which the bits of life that drive genre can be taken out and held up to the light. That makes it different, and my growing suspicion is that because it’s different, there are those who don’t know what the heck to do with it.

Now, before the angry emails fly, let me take a minute to re-iterate that this is not a case of waving the banner for poor, persecuted genre fiction, or of shaking my tiny fist at those heartless philosopher-kings in the mist-shrouded ivory towers of academe. Rather, it’s an attempt to provide an explanation for the sheer confusion that seems to reign when the partisans of literature run into genre fiction in a place it ought not to be, such as, say, a writing workshop, or a reading list, or in somebody’s hand at a Very Serious Orientation Meeting. Why? Because I don’t think they necessarily know what to do with it, or how to approach it or critique it or, God help us, discuss it on something like an even field.

Is this worth making a federal case over? Probably not, and even my fourteen-years-ago-self would probably agree. But I do think there’s some potential damage there, to readers who miss out on books that exist outside of their expectations and writers whose creations suffer well-meaning attempts to drag them into the charmed circle. For my part, I think competent-veering-toward-kickass is a perfectly sensible starting point for character development, but then again, what do I know? I read books with skeletons on the cover.

by Janet Berliner

Which stands for “Most Frequently asked question.”

In 1993, while working on the infamously unpublished Crichton-on-Crichton, I wrote a chapter called FAQ–Frequently Asked Questions. At the time, I thought I’d made up the acronym, but I guess I was reinventing the wheel. Today, twelve years later, with the book as yet unseen and before Dr. C’s 64th birthday, I’m adding the M for ‘Most.’

In my case, that inevitably means questions about collaboration: 1) Why do you do it?
2) How do you do it?
3) What sparked the project?

I could easily write three blogs about each project answering those questions, but I’ll try instead to be succinct.

1) Why? There’s a different answer attached to each collaboration, yet each one has a single thing in common–the belief that the whole will be better than its parts.

2) How? No two projects have had the same M.O.

3) Spark? Each one is a tale unto itself.

Hrrmph, you say. That’s a fat lot of help.

All right, I answer. Let me try a different route, one that tackles some of my actual collaborations.

As every marriage in unique, so is every collaboration. I’ll do this somewhat chronologically (a bit complex, as I had six books come out in 1995 and 1996).

The Execution Exchange:

An Oregon mountain man came to me with a wonderful concept for a thriller. He’d written the book. I tried to teach him how to make it saleable. When I gave up, he said “You rewrite it” and I did. It sold extremely well, considering the publisher put out the uncorrected proof that had been typeset by an alcoholic.

Madagascar Manifesto:

You’re going to get the shortened version. George wrote a wonderful story about Africans on the moon. It was up for a Nebula. He had read RITE OF THE DRAGON, my African novel, and liked it. A lot, he said. I was writing a novel based on my mother’s escape from Berlin in 1935 and her return there on the day before the Wall went up. George sent me a paragraph about cannibal dogs and asked if it sparked anything.

It sparked a correspondence, then a novella, which we sold. The novella sparked a novel (Child of the Light) for which I cannibalized the book I had been writing. Then came Child of the Journey, followed by Children of the Dusk. The novella that started it all would appear in longer form at the end of the fourth book, should there be one. There’s also a fifth book and one George wants to write about Madagascar.

Maybe George should write the Madagascar book, I should write the Deborah book, and readers will get a twofer.

We started Child more than twenty years ago. George was then, as he is now, a teacher. He had written many short stories and a YA-For-Hire. He was an expert researcher, something he loved to do, while I was much more involved with writing from experience, from family and other verbal histories and from observation. He is a high-speed typist. He wrote draughts faster than you could drink them. I was slow and, for the most part, a stylist. He is Catholic; I am Jewish. Our philosophies are oftentimes poles apart. My family came from Berlin. Few of them survived.

There was no such thing as e-mail when we began. We used the telephone a lot and got together during Summers to plot and fight things out.

It’s for good reason that we were known as the fire and ice team. I’m a gypsy, he’s an Eskimo, at least at heart. We went back and forth with the storyline, called each other about epiphanies, and worked together daily for at least a month of the summer. I write a lot more tightly than George who tends to fall in love with his research and would like it all to show. I’m a merciless cutter and I specialize in structure.

One thing that helped keep us (relatively) sane was that we designated certain areas where each of us had absolute power. George, for example, had the final word about the dogs, the Hempel story arc and the military. I speak fluent German. I travelled back and forth to Berlin. Read Mein Kampf in its original.

Are we still friends? Absolutely.

Crichton-on-Crichton:

It hadn’t been done. I sensed that he was growing weary of having to repeatedly answer the same questions.
I was told no interviewer could make it past twenty minutes; I needed a week of interviews. I can’t resist that kind of challenge. After he said yes, I had visions of sugarplums dressed in dollar bills.

David Copperfield anthologies:

When I came back to Las Vegas after finishing work with Michael Crichton, I thought it would be fun to put together an anthology about magic, and this being the land of illusion, I got in touch with the biggest illusionist of all. David loved the idea and we set to work, putting together two fabulous anthologies of original fiction. David and I went back and forth on every story, especially his two contributions. Plus, it was great to be able to take friends and idols to see David perform. My favorite times were in smaller meetings, however, when his boyish side would come out and he’d play tricks on me.

Immortal Unicorn:

I’ll keep this one short. I’d known Peter Beagle for twenty years. When I was putting together the Copperfield anthologies, I invited him to contribute a story. As usual, he needed money–more than the story for the Copperfield book would pay–but refused to write about unicorns. So I came up with the concept of collecting stories about immortality–not about unicorns–but each one had to use a unicorn as a catalyst or a symbol. I took care of everything except the final story selection. When I liked one enough to want to buy it, I sent it to Peter first for his input. Also, he contributed an original story, as did I, and we both wrote introductions to each one. They are beautiful books with no problems attached.

The Unicorn Sonata:

Marty Greenberg was working with me on the various anthologies. He said to me one day that Turner Books had published DINOTOPIA and, “Why don’t we get Peter to do a similar book about unicorns?” I instantly called Turner. When the first idea did not appeal to them, I turned to my own unfinished Libretto (I dream of writing a Broadway Show) and sold it, with unicorns added, to Turner Books, with the provision that Mr. Unicorn himself would write it. I would whop him into writing fast, talk to him about the book along the way, play trouble-shooter and editor. I did. It’s a beautiful book, designed for readers from 8 to 80. Thus, I created it, he wrote it. I could not have written it the way he did. The experience was extremely positive until just before publication. Then things changed, but that’s another (much longer) story.

Snapshots: (coedited with Joyce Carol Oates)

I am an ardent fan of Joyce’s work.
I needed to feel good about myself.
I rejected the first story she sent me for the Copperfield anthologies on the grounds that it didn’t fit the theme, and added that if I ever did a Mothers and Daughters anthology, her story would be the cornerstone. Later, I asked if she would consider such an anthology and away we went. We treated each other with enormous respect and made every decision as a team. The book is wonderful. It has sold in several languages, is used in more than one college course, and is my pride and joy.

Secrets:

I met Melanie Tem in ‘77. I was agenting and fell in love with her voice. She and I recently completed Secrets, which we wrote purely because we thought we could write a good book and have a pleasant experience. We wrote alternate chapters, found a singular voice, and had a delightfully positive experience. The book is, for lack of a better word, mainstream. I like to say it’s our Annie book: Annie Dillard meets Anne Tyler.

Artifact:

I wrote in a previous blog about this adventure-thriller starring Kevin J. Anderson, Matt Costello, F. Paul Wilson, and yours truly. We wrote it for two reasons. The first was to have fun, the second was to prove that what New York declared impossible was not impossible in the right hands.

I hope you enjoyed that. Feel free to ask me about some of the other collaborations, like my work with Jack Kirby’s unpublished novel.

by Jeffrey Thomas

(First of all, an apology for missing my turn the last several months, something I swore I’d never do. I had my July essay written but I was in Viet Nam at the time, and the eleven hour time difference and my dependence on internet cafes meant I missed the deadline anyway. I ended up posting it at my own blog site, at www.jeffreyethomas.com. And the next month, well, I guess I just got too busy with other projects. Huh, like you missed me, right? Anyway, I’m back, so here we go!)

I’m certain there are many writers, and even readers, who feel that a story’s author should be an invisible entity, who leaves not so much as a fingerprint on the scene he or she creates. An absent God, if you will; Oz behind the curtain. I can understand this line of thinking. It may be akin to the notion that if a movie’s director were to come in front of the camera, it might jar the viewer out of the plot, remind them that they’re watching a movie. Hey, wait a minute, didn’t Martin Scorcese do that in no less a classy movie than TAXI DRIVER, playing the scary passenger who sparks Travis Bickle’s obsession with the .44 Magnum? And didn’t Hitchcock do that, again and again?

Of course, there are countless novels and short stories that are so inspired by the authors’ own personal experiences as to blur the line between fiction and autobiography. So it isn’t really an issue of drawing upon one’s own life. I think it’s an issue of style that I have in mind. Critics of film-maker David Lynch might argue that his style is so strong and bizarre, so self conscious, that it overwhelms and obscures whatever story he might be trying to tell. Of course, Lynch’s quirkier-than-thou approach is what endears him to ardent fans like myself. But this kind of self conscious or “artsy-fartsy” style in the writing of fiction can alienate certain readers. Case in point is Mark Z. Danielewski’s new book, ONLY REVOLUTIONS.

I call it a “book” instead of a novel because I guess it’s hard for some people to classify it, due to its unconventional approach. My local bookstore has it listed in their computer as an anthology, of all things (because the story is narrated by two characters whom the cataloger mistook as co-authors?). And the store couldn’t even locate the copies they had received only days earlier so that I might buy one of them, said copies perhaps having vanished into the strange void between the terra firma of clear-cut genre and traditional approach. In any case, I have not read ONLY REVOLUTIONS, but I’ve been supporting and defending it based on the fact that Danielewski’s first novel, HOUSE OF LEAVES, is one of my favorite books. Even if I am disappointed with ONLY REVOLUTIONS, I feel compelled to champion it against a surprisingly hostile reception from some readers (who have not read it yet, either, and seem disinclined to even give it a chance). Words such as “arrogance” and “pretentious” have been slung in its direction. First of all, I think a writer has to be arrogant in the first place, to believe their book is worthy of trees sacrificing their lives, arrogant to think a reader should sacrifice their time and hard-earned cash. As for pretentious, well, one man’s pretentious is another man’s ambitious, challenging, thoughtful. To again use film as an example (hey, I’m a child of my times), one could say REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is pretentious and that one should still to watching purely entertaining stuff like AUSTIN POWERS. Me, I have no problem loving both those films, baby. In a comment responding to an earlier essay I posted here, in which I talked about how the names I choose for my characters often have hidden symbolic meaning, it was suggested that such efforts were “artsy-fartsy” and meaningless. Maybe that’s the case. Or maybe I’m having fun, and sharing that sense of fun with the one or dozen or hundred people who might catch on to what I’m doing, and maybe it doesn’t hurt anybody if I have hidden meanings in my characters’ names even if not a single soul catches on to them. But there is ever this animosity toward the dreaded “A” word…Art. Artsy is a bad thing, to some. It implies flatulence. Well, to each their own. As I say, my diet is pretty diverse. But you want to talk arrogance? One could say it is more arrogant to mass produce another bland, unoriginal paint-by-numbers book or movie that apes last year’s (or last decade’s) bestseller or smash hit again, and again, ad nauseam, with no real personality behind it, no sense that someone put their own soul into the proceedings.

I’m not saying I don’t feel some works – some creative people – aren’t artsy-fartsy, to put it that way. I’m not part of any crowd or camp; I take what I like or dislike one book or movie or artist at a time. For instance, I can see what Andy Warhol was doing with his soup cans, with his silk screened reproductions of other people’s photos (of Marilyn, Brando, etc.), but when I recently heard someone in a documentary say how terribly “important” those cans were, how “powerful,” I just sort of groaned inside, especially when they went on to suggest that the full collection of can paintings (bought for $1,000 at the time of their creation) might be worth $100,000,000 today, well…pass me a Norman Rockwell calendar instead, please. And let’s not even get into Jackson Pollock’s…messes. But that’s just me. That’s my tastes. If you’re into these guys, good on ya! See, though? I can scoff and sneer at what I’m not into, with the best of them.

Some writers, artists, singers and so on end up looming bigger than their art; I think Warhol is like that. I think Yukio Mishima is like that, but Mishima I love; one of my very favorite authors. Mishima was a brilliant writer who became a bodybuilder, a modern day samurai, started his own fanatical paramilitary group (which ended up storming and taking over a military school), a movie director, a movie star, and whatever else I’m forgetting at the moment. This week I watched Mishima as the star of the 1960 Yakuza film AFRAID TO DIE, directed by respected film-maker Yasuzo Masumura. Mishima does a great job as a sleazy, bitch-slapping, leather-clad antihero scratching himself and slouching around enough to make James Dean and Marlon Brando proud. *Spoiler alert!* The end has the shot and dying Mishima (like DeNiro in HEAT, trying to change his ways – with the help of a good woman – too late in the game) running in place against the flow of an escalator, a great symbol for how it is too late for him to run away from his dark past (regardless of having traded in his black leather for a sacrificial-white sports jacket). It’s a cool little flick, but most of its appeal for me is that it’s Mishima there, hamming it up tough-guy style to self consciously compensate for his homosexuality, the same Mishima who ended up disemboweling himself a decade later. An incredible writer, playing a gangster! Should his work be treated any less seriously for such antics? Was he overstepping the boundaries, becoming far from the invisible writer, wearing Oz’s curtain as a cape instead of hiding behind it? Well, that’s for you to decide. Me, I was eating up AFRAID TO DIE’s nasty grittiness and jazzy dialogue. Mishima’s ex-girlfriend: “You call yourself a man?” Mishima: “Me? Nah, I’m a Yakuza.” Coool! Bring it on, Yukio! The thing is, beyond his egotism and narcissism, it would be hard to dispute that Mishima had the talent to back it all up.

On Mark Z. Danielewski’s web site www.onlyrevolutions.com there’s a video clip from the Conan O’Brien Show of the singer Poe performing her song “Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix),” which starts out with Poe’s brother Danielewski reciting an excerpt from HOUSE OF LEAVES, wearing a purple silk shirt and gripping the mike like a rock star. This is sure to be a turn-off for many a book reader, sure to further alienate them from this artsy-fartsy author*, but again, I thought it was, well, pretty cool. Why the hell not? Don’t hate the guy because he’s flamboyant, because he likes attention; a writer is all about getting attention, isn’t it? Whenever I get tired of hearing the words HARRY POTTER or DA VINCI CODE, I remind myself that these are books! Books, that people are getting so excited about in this age of movies and TV and X-Box. Let’s hear it for books, and authors getting themselves seen and heard, and strutting and showing us what they got. Hell, if Jewel can put out a book of poetry, I think Mark Z. Danielewski can have his moment on stage, and Mishima can have his drawn-out death dance on an escalator (oops, the spoiler slipped past me that time!).

Author know thy place? And stick to your “traditional” storytelling – so you won’t rile or offend or intimidate the opponents of ONLY REVOLUTIONS, who sadly seem afraid or at least unwilling to be challenged by it? Nay, I say. Be big, flashy, noisy, full of eccentric personality, if that’s your gig. I’m not knocking the legions of stolid and solid storytellers who puts it out there in the tried and true approach. I read it all. More than being disappointed, I might end up disliking ONLY REVOLUTIONS very much, in fact (if my bookstore can ever find the damn thing)! But no matter how I feel about the book itself, I defend Danielewski’s right to be brave, and idiosyncratic, and experimental, and…a celebrity.

(* I saw one message board thread where people expressed their hostility toward the word “author,” seeing even this as pretentious. That any reader or, worse, writer would reject this term depresses me. It suggests an aversion to the outrageous notion that literature might be literary. Or called literature, for that matter. Well, you know what I’ll do if anyone ever asks me, “You call yourself a writer?” I’ll scratch myself, slouch a bit, and retort, “Me? Nah, I’m an author!”)

By
Richard Steinberg

No cute, pithy, or intriguing quote to kick off this month’s entry. Just some names and numbers.

Nelson Alberto Aguiar Ramírez, 58
Sentence: 13 years

Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés, 38
Sentence: 18 years

Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos, 55
Sentence: 25 years.

Pedro Argüelles Morán, 56
Sentence: 20 years

Antonio Augusto Villareal Acosta, age not known
Sentence: 15 years

It’s good we discuss our craft here. It’s even better that through original entries and well thought out comments we engage in a spirited dialogue about what it means to be a writer, about how the industry works, about the definitions of genre, and the (relative) mental health of writers as a whole. Personally, I particularly enjoy it – and learn from it – when we kick around our personal processes and discover we’re not as alone (or weird) as we thought we were.

But this column is not about us, or publishing, or process.

Mijail Barzaga Lugo, 36
Sentence: 15 years

Oscar Elías Biscet González, 43
Sentence: 25 years

Margarito Broche Espinosa, 45
Sentence: 25 years

Marcelo Cano Rodríguez, 39
Sentence: 18 years

Manuel Vázquez Portal, 52,
Sentence: 18 years

What this column is about, is the people who believe in us; the people who go to great lengths to see that our private, often tortured, visions that we translate into words are then transported into the hands of eager readers. Not the buyers for Borders or Amazon or Barnes & Noble – although I fear one day we might be talking about them in a similar light – and not the librarians who fight sometimes successfully (and sometimes not) against narrow minds that don’t trust their neighbors to reach their own conclusions.

But rather, this column is about those stalwart, often terrified souls who risk EVERYTHING from their status to their possessions to their very life, just so their neighbors have something to read that hasn’t been sanitized, shrink-wrapped, cleansed of all meaning beyond that which their government would like to be read.

They are called the Independent Library Movement.

Ariel Miguel Sigler Amalla, 38; General Pedro Betancourt Library (Matanzas)
Sentence: 20 years

Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez, 46; 20th of May Library (Sancti Spiritus)
Sentence: 25 years

Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez, 40
Sentence: 20 years

Alfredo Rodolfo Domínguez Batista, age not known
Sentence: 14 years

Oscar Manuel Espinosa Chepe, 63
Sentence: 20 years

The independent library movement began in Havana with a simple statement:

“Our goal is not revolution, or even the civil toppling of any political forces. All we seek is for the people to be allowed to choose what they want to read, and to be allowed to draw their own conclusions from that reading. Many great things have come from the Cuban Revolution; most exceptional among them is the rise in literacy of all Cubans from 18% to 98%. We now simply ask for the right for Cubans everywhere to use that gift of literacy from the Revolution to read what they want. And we ask the Revolution to trust its children to draw the right conclusions from that reading.”

Omar Pernet Hernández, 57; 20th of May Library II (Villa Clara)
Sentence: 25 years

Raúl Rivero Castañeda, 58; Dulce María Loynaz Library Branch II (Havana)
Sentence: 20 years

Juan Adolfo Fernández Sainz, 55
Sentence: 14 years

José Daniel Ferrer García, 33
Sentence: 25 years

Luis Enrique Ferrer García, 27
Sentence: 28 years

And at first, the Cuban government did allow that trust. What possible threat could there be from 15 paperbacks on a shelf in someone’s backroom? Castro himself is an admitted fanatical fan of Ernest Hemingway. So, as a sign that the Revolution wasn’t the harsh, overbearing, tyranny that the United States claimed it was, the Independent Library Movement was allowed to grow. Helped by the Cuban expatriate community, writer’s organizations from around the world, and individual writers, more small shelves in back rooms began to pop-up.

The Gastón Baquero Independent Library in the city of Banes.

The Félix Varela Independent Library in Las Tunas.

The José Antonio García Tablada Independent Library . . .

The Benjamin Franklin Independent Library . . .

The Martin Luther King Jr. Independent library . . .

None of them magnificent edifices of brick and mortar with sculpted lions out front and high-end cocktail fundraising parties on the weekends.

ALL OF THEM in a room in someone’s house . . . someone who had taken a tremendous risk only so their neighbors would have the right to select for themselves what they want to read.

Which of us writers has taken such a risk as these representatives of our work have?

Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, 52; Reyes Magos Library (Pinar del Río)
Sentence: 26 years

Juan Roberto de Miranda Hernández, 57; Father Félix Varela Library (Havana)
Sentence: 20 years

Miguel Galván Gutiérrez, 39
Sentence: 26 years.

Julio César Gálvez Rodríguez, 59
Sentence: 15 years

Edel José García Díaz, 58
Sentence: 15 years

Well, sure enough, the Cuban government decided the good press they were getting wasn’t worth the freethinking they were getting, and things changed.

During four days in early 2003, the Cuban Secret Police (DGSE) made a series of raids, arresting 93 individuals that contributed to, whose works were carried in, or who ran Independent Libraries throughout the island. They claimed that these “malcontents” were in violation of Revolutionary Law #88 which promises harsh sentences for anyone guilty of, among other outrages:

“owning, distributing or reproducing subversive materials.”

Typical of these raids, were the confiscation from one man’s house of 130 books – which made up the collection of the José Antonio García Tablada Independent Library. At the Félix Várela Independent Library (set up in the kitchen of an ILM volunteer) they confiscated 162 books, 46 magazines, a box of uncataloged newspapers and paperbacks, a photo album and a package of loose photographs. They also took 25 issues of Vitral magazine (edited by the Catholic Church) and a number of issues of Pasos magazine, also edited by the church. Some of these “dangerous” books that were taken had been bought at the Havana Book Fair, sponsored by the Cuban government.

In both cases, the occupants of the house were arrested under Law 88.

José Luis García Paneque, 38; Carlos J. Finlay Library (Las Tunas)
Sentence: 24 years

Ricardo Severino González Alfonso, 53; Jorge Mañach Library (Havana)
Sentence: 20 years

Diosdado González Marrero, age not known
Sentence: 20 years

Léster González Pentón, 26
Sentence: 20 years

Alejandro González Raga, 45
Sentence: 14 years

Each received a trial . . . lasting one day, including the appellate process.

75 of the 93 were convicted . . . of wanting their neighbors to be able to choose what to read. The things endorsed by the government, or . . . Hemingway, Faulkner, Conroy, King, Stoker, Stevenson, Bombeck, or even Steinberg; since I sent copies of the Spanish Language versions of The Gemini Man to various independent libraries over the years.

75 of the 93 . . . because 18 of the detainees simply disappeared before their trials and were never seen again.

For two and a half years now, these 75 librarians and contributors to libraries have been held in the harshest of prison conditions: not being allowed to communicate with the outside world, often not being allowed to see their families, usually denied basic medical care, often tortured or harassed by prison authorities. All for the crime of making books freely available to the public.

And what happened to the roughly six thousand books that were taken in the raids?

They were burned . . . by Judicial Orders.

Library Associations from Sweden, England, Germany, Spain, Israel, most of the countries of Eastern Europe, many of the countries of South America, Africa and Asia all specifically and in detail decried this trampling of the right of free expression. It was a near universal outcry: LET THESE PEOPLE GO AND LET YOUR PEOPLE READ!

Almost, because the American Library Association remained silent on the issue; even after I contacted them for comment on this column.

Iván Hernández Carrillo, 32; Juan Gualberto Gómez Library II (Matanzas)
Sentence: 25 years

Jorge Luis González Tanquero, 32
Sentence: 20 years

Leonel Grave de Peralta Almenares, age not known
Sentence: 20 years

Normando Hernández González, 33
Sentence: 25 years

Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, 37
Sentence: 20 years

The American Library Association’s official position (www.ala.org/ala/iro/iroactivities/alacubanlibraries.htm) amounts to this:

They take no specific position other than saying they support the IFLA’s (International Federation of Library Associations) general goals . . . despite the fact that the IFLA specifically and dramatically begged Castro to free these librarians and writers, and the ALA has not.

They “remain committed to intellectual freedom,” and they have “deep concern,” for the 75 prisoners.

But believe the United States must share some of the blame in that: “the U.S. embargo . . . restricts access to information in Cuba . . .” Although what that has to do with the Independent Library Movement leaders’ and contributors’ arrests remains a mystery to me.

Maybe I’m dumb.

Privately, several of the ALA leaders have said that because these people ran these operations informally from their homes, they were not really librarians and therefore not worthy of the ALA’s support. And because they were technically charged with “aiding U.S. interests” and not – technically – with illegally distributing books, this falls outside of the Association’s purview.

Yeah, right.

Again, every significant library association around the world has specifically called for the release of these librarians and writers, and for the Cuban Government to allow the Independent Library Movement to operate freely . . . to allow the Cuban people to make their own decisions about what to read.

To stop burning books.

Which, in my childlike view of the world, makes the American Library Association either stupid, or insignificant.

Now, not everyone within the ALA is unwilling to stand up for the concept of free expression. Karen Schneider of the Governing Council of the ALA offered a statement to be adopted by the ALA:

“ALA joins the IFLA in its deep concern over the arrest and long prison terms of political dissidents in Cuba in spring 2003, and calls for their immediate release.”

The statement was rejected, almost unanimously, by the Governing Council.

Ray Bradbury, after addressing the ALA last year, after reading court transcripts of the so-called “trials” of the librarians, said this:

“I stand against any library or any librarian anywhere in the world being imprisoned or punished in any way for the books they circulate. I plead with Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off the independent librarians and release all those librarians in prison, and to send them back into Cuban culture to inform the people.”

Favoring a statement that generally blames BOTH Cuba and the United States for the atmosphere that led to the arrests, the ALA has rejected appeals like these.

As, oddly enough, the Cuban Government has rejected the appeals of the surviving arrestees.

The same Cuban government which has applauded the ALA for their non-actions.

In July of this year, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright called on the American Library Association to harden its position on the imprisoned librarians. And when they didn’t react beyond giving her a polite hearing, Eliades Acosta, Director of The Cuban National Library (whose book collection consists of only approved titles) issued a statement on behalf of the Cuban Government:

“Ms. Albright failed to achieve her objective to poison relations between Cuban and American librarians, despite having employed all of her histrionic skills in the New Orleans theater. There was no change whatsoever made in the traditional positive position of the ALA toward Cuba.”

When a man’s right, he’s right . . . there’s been no change.

The ALA still refuses to specifically condemn the arrests or call for freedom for the writers, poets, playwrights, essayists, and the librarians who loaned their work to the public . . . but ALA leaders say they’re thinking about it.

No new arrests have been made in Cuba of the remaining leaders of the Independent Library Movement . . . but they say they’re thinking about it.

José Miguel Martínez Hernández, 39; General Juan Bruno Zayas Library (Havana Province)
Sentence: 13 years

Regis Iglesias Ramírez, 33
Sentence: 18 years

José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández, age not known
Sentence: 16 years

Reinaldo Miguel Labrada Peña, 40
Sentence: 6 years

Librado Ricardo Linares García, 42
Sentence: 20 years

Tomorrow, begins the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. There will be events at most every library, many bookstores, some schools around the country. I’ve been invited to participate in several.

I’ll participate in none of them.

Instead, I’ll spend the week shouting into the wind. In promotion of Banned Librarians Week.

For while the ALA takes the hypocritical stance of opposing the library and bookstore provisions of the Patriot Act and does nothing about these forty people named above and their compatriots named below, I’ll have nothing to do with them or their works.

Mario Enrique Mayo Hernández, 38
Sentence: 20 years

Luis Milán Fernández, 34
Sentence: 13 years

Nelson Moliné Espino, 39
Sentence: 21 years

Angel Juan Moya Acosta, 39
Sentence: 20 years

Héctor Fernando Maseda Gutiérrez, 61
Sentence: 20 years

But let me leave the last word on the atrocity of these acts against the human spirit to a most remarkable spokesman on the importance of universal free access to books.

“In prison, there were no rifles for training, no stone fortresses from which to shoot. Behind those walls, our rifles were books. And through study, stone by stone we built our fortress, the only one that is invincible: the fortress of ideas,” Fidel Castro

Shame he doesn’t want to share that invincibility.

Believe – in those writers, poets, essayists, novelists, journalists and most especially those noble, brave librarians that I’ve named above, along with:
Jesús Miguel Mustafá Felipe, 58, Sentence: 25 years; Félix Navarro Rodríguez, 49, Sentence: 25 years; Jorge Olivera Castillo, 41, Sentence: 18 years; Pablo Pacheco Avila, 33, Sentence: 20 years; Héctor Palacios Ruiz, 62, Sentence: 25 years; Arturo Pérez de Alejo Rodríguez, age not known, Sentence: 20 years; Horacio Julio Piña Borrego, 36, Sentence: 20 years; Fabio Prieto Llorente, age not known, Sentence: 20 years; Alfredo Manuel Pulido López, 42, Sentence: 14 years; José Gabriel Ramón Castillo, age not known, Sentence: 20 years; Arnaldo Ramos Lauzerique, 61, Sentence: 18 years;; Alexis Rodríguez Fernández, 33, Sentence: 15 years; Omar Rodríguez Saludes, 38, Sentence: 27 years; Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, 58, Sentence: 20 years; Omar Moisés Ruiz Hernández, 56, Sentence: 18 years ; Claro Sánchez Altarriba, 50, Sentence: 15 years;; Guido Sigler Amaya, 46, Sentence: 20 years; Ricardo Silva Gual, age not known, Sentence: 10 years; Fidel Suárez Cruz, 33, Sentence: 20 years; Manuel Ubals González, 34, Sentence: 20 years; Julio Antonio Valdés Guevara, 52, Sentence: 20 years; Miguel Valdés Tamayo, 47, Sentence: 15 years; Héctor Raúl Valle Hernández, 35, Sentence: 12 years; Orlando Fundora Alvarez, 48, Sentence: 18 years; Próspero Gaínza Agüero, age not known, Sentence: 25 years; Carmelo Agustín Díaz Fernández, 65, Sentence: 16 years; Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, 51, Sentence: 21 years; Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, age not known, Sentence: 26 years; Efrén Fernández Fernández, 54, Sentence: 12 years