Storytellersunplugged

Here at Storytellers Unplugged we started a semi-traditional practice last year of posting fiction during October to celebrate Halloween. When we started out, there was a predominance of horror writers in the group - we are much more diverse now. Some of us will still be posting fiction this month, and for my own entry I’ve chosen a very old story of mine. It was written for and published in a fanzine titled “Norfolk by Night,” and it’s a vampire story. It’s not extreme horror - it’s almost philosophical in nature. I still smiled when I read it, though I wrote it back in the 1990s. I will probably be reading this for a podcast version in the next day or so…and if so I’ll get the link added to the post…for now…Vintage Dave - vampires - and welcome to October!

By David Niall Wilson

I have traveled roads long and weary, darkness my companion and destiny my guide. I have seen the sun rise and set on the courts of kings, and I have seen those kingdoms crumble back to dust. I have shared wine with women, war with men, and the night with no one. I have no name, and yet I am. Death does not stalk me; not though I dream a thousand nights for his cold embrace. This is my destiny.

Though I was born to poverty and ignorance, I have aspired to eloquence and power. I am a success story on an epic scale, one with a tragic footnote. This story I have put down that those who follow in my footsteps will understand that I was here, that I endure, even now, even in the social wasteland of this place that they now call Norfolk, but that has none of the charm, or the old-world civility, of the original city of that name.

I came here out of boredom, out of an incessant need for travel, a yearning for change. I have spoken with derelicts, madmen so soused on wine and midnight dreams that they could barely remember their given names, but whose words wove the tapestry of society with clarity and vision. I have stalked men, and women as well, from upper to lower class, knowing each, loving few, ending the existences of all but one. That is my story.

I prowled the docks, for they are near the sea, near those whose adventuresome souls and yearning hearts mirror in some small way the eternal quest that drives me onward. The men of these later days do not have the heart, nor the strength, of those whom I knew in earlier times — in greater times — but the spirit is still there, and it was that I sought. Something different, something new. Someone who might relieve the unbearable weight of boredom that bears down on my shoulders every waking moment of the night. I never dreamed of entertainment, I sought only a moments relief.

I thought momentarily of the bars. There is always music. Caustic and violent as the modern groups tended to be, there was still the allure of poetry, still the message of their souls to be picked free. I decided against it. It was a night to wander beneath the stars, to find something unique. Somehow I felt it, and I have learned to trust my instincts.

And so the docks — the waves — the moonlight dancing on choppy, off-shore swells and glistening in the captured pools of salt-spray on the rocks. I moved as silently as the breeze, as effortlessly as the gulls who owned the day-time sky.

I dream, at times, of those moments — the price of immortality — the daylight lives and trivial pursuits of those upon whom I fed. I can remember, even now, the graceful swooping movements of birds, their arrogant cries. Such dreams are an empty pursuit — painful.

I saw him as I crossed from one darkened alley to another, walking along a row of abandoned warehouses without concern, despite the hour and the solitude — despite the danger. We were not in one of the better neighborhoods, those held no interest to me. It was the edge of things, the borders of the “real” world, that caught at my senses and gave me a reason to go on.

From the instant he caught my eye, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. He wore what appeared to be a robe, sweeping to the ground at his feet. It was sewn and patched together of a hundred colored rags, of old shirts and pants, even socks, wash-cloths, towels and sheets. It was multicolored and ragged, and in the moonlight, with his long gray hair and unruly beard, with the staff he held in his right hand as he moved, he might have been an ancient prophet, Moses with his robe of many colors moving through the night.

I swept past him far to one side, coming at him from the front, where he could see me clearly, moving slowly and watching him with wondering eyes.

He never flinched. His eyes were filled with light and energy, the one thing about him that bore witness to an intelligence buried beneath the veneer of madness, of secrets he knew and none would guess. I smiled, and as I drew near, I held out my hand.

He stared at me, not offering his own hand in return, but he stopped as well, as though he’d spotted, or guessed at, my own nature. He did not turn to run, nor did he cower, but he stood there as an equal, calm and self-assured.

“You are Death?” he asked calmly?

I shook my head. “I am not, nor are you Moses, but there is a strange light about you.”

“I am a prophet,” he said matter-of-factly. “I have seen things — many things. They will not listen.” He waved his arm in a gesture that encompassed the world.
“They never have,” I told him. “From one who knows only too well, they never have. Walk with me?” I asked him, but there was not really a question involved. He moved at my side easily, comfortably.

“I did not think you were Death,” he told me, “because I have not yet foreseen my own.”

“You see everything?” I prompted.

“No, only that which matters. To me, life matters very much, so I believe I will see Death, and I will know him.”

“You are not so far from the mark,” I admitted slowly. “I have been as the angel of death to many — too many to count. Does that frighten you?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “Death is for all — I have always known that. If you were Death, I would walk with you anyway — what would be the point in resistance?”

“You are a religious man?” I asked, thoroughly intrigued. We were moving back toward the beach, along the water now. There were the flashing lights of boats — naval vessels — and the occasional backfire of a car’s engine as backdrop to our conversation — nothing more.

“I am a religious man,” he replied, his eyes growing far away, “In a sacrilegious land. I am a prophet in a world of non-believers. I am the answer to questions better left unanswered, and so, am unwanted as well. There is no soul in mankind any longer.”

“And yet you believe in your own?”

“I live within my soul. It is my soul that draws me onward, that shows me ways when others see walls, that opens windows where others see only air. There are veils, shuttered portals all around us, but we have trained ourselves to ignore them. There are windows to the soul, but man has bricked them over.

“There is poetry, still, but it is empty. It is re-played pain and endless unfulfilled dreams. They do not know what will fulfill them, so they build towers to reach a God they do not believe in, hoping that when they arrive they can take over and all will be well.

“There is religion in the world, but there is no passion. The passion is for things of the Earth, things of the flesh. There is no passion for spirit, or for beauty. There is more passion for death — it must be pleasant for you?”

He turned to me then, and I was fascinated. “There is no passion in death, so it is not such a pleasant thing. I take no pleasure in death, my own or those of others. Death is a necessity, to me, the universe — even to you.

“I serve no Gods but the night, the stars, and hunger — only one demands anything of me and the effort necessary to please him is slight. Your Gods, it would seem, deny you nothing except life.”

“I have more life here,” he gestured to his breast, his eyes softening for a moment, almost twinkling, “than you will find in the rest of this city. I learn, I watch, I survive. These are my life. To know is enough.”

“But it would be better if they knew, as well,” I countered. “That is why you try to make them see.”

“I tell them because they ask. Then they laugh, point their fingers, and wander back into darkness. It is not for me to judge, or to desire, but for them.”

The hunger was calling to me, and I knew that if I stayed longer, much as I was enjoying this exchange, that I would feed. Something within me would not allow it. There was something in his eyes, something that reminded even me, after centuries of cynicism and loneliness, of faith. There was a promise in those eyes, and I would not snatch it from the Earth.

“I must leave you now,” I told him. “To you I am not Death this night, but there are others. Walk your paths, prophesy and speak when they will listen.

“Our roads are not so different. We are solitary, we are visionary, and we are free. They are lonely roads, but they are true — keep that nearest to your heart.”

With those words, and looking back only once into the flashing depths of his eyes, I was gone. I moved as swiftly as my heightened strength and agility would allow, beyond the limits of his sight — or perhaps not. He raised his staff, and he waved in the direction in which I’d moved. I did not return that wave, but turned to embrace the darkness with new vigor.

Somewhere behind me, a beacon, a latter-day Moses, walked the streets of his own land, showing miracles to the blind and preaching to the deaf. I moved as he named me, the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper with fangs as my scythe and hunger as my guide. We both blended with the darkness.

All around me the blood called to me. Somewhere in the shadows of the city the renewal of my own form of life pulsed through another’s veins. For once, I would dine with a clear conscience — I had spared a life that mattered, and he had shared that life with me of his own free will. Such are the miracles of the night.

—– DNW

Sarah Monette

So I said, back in July, that writer’s block probably deserved a post of its own. And since I’m having no luck coming up with a better topic for September (self-reflexively, I am experiencing a kind of writer’s block), let’s just run with it and see where we get.

The first thing not to do with writer’s block is reify it.

“Reify” is a fancy litcrit word, from the Latin res, and what it means is taking something–a social custom or an institutional practice or a way of thinking–and letting it turn into the black monolith from 2001. It becomes something you can’t change–can’t even think about changing–because you’re forgetting that it has origins and purposes and all those other things that human artifacts, whether material or mental, have. Writer’s block isn’t an unfathomable object. It’s kind of mysterious, because it’s a conflict between the conscious mind and what I tend to call the underconscious, but giving into the mystification angle, letting it become a reified thing, merely makes it harder to deal with. Eventually, it leads to pulling an Ernest Hemingway and blowing your head off.

Bad idea.

The second thing not to do with writer’s block is to use it as an excuse.

There is a perfectly legitimate point in the process of moving from unblocked to blocked to unblocked again where trying to write is only going to make things worse, and you do have to recognize and respect that, but it’s all too easy to start saying I have writer’s block, when the real problem is that you’re struggling with a craft issue, or you’ve made some horrible mistake that you don’t know how to fix, or you’re bored with the story you’ve been working on, or, hell, you just feel lazy today and don’t want to work. Or all of the above. “Writer’s block” sounds a lot better than any of those things, and there’s always the possibility that it can be milked for drama and sympathy.

… Another bad idea.

Writing is hard work, and I don’t think there’s a writer on the face of the planet–or beneath the face of the planet, if there are Morlocks down there writing poems and stories and recipes for baked Eloi–who doesn’t have days when she just wants to QUIT already and go dig ditches for a living or something. At least, if there is a writer out there who never has that sort of day, I’m not sure I want to meet him. But any human endeavor is like that, unromantic and sweaty and hard damn work, and if you don’t want to do the work, it’s better to just admit you don’t want to do the work, whether that’s for a day or a week or whether really you ARE quitting and where’s the nearest ditch-digger school? Prettying it up by calling it writer’s block doesn’t do anyone any favors in the long run.

And the third thing not to do with writer’s block is to give into it.

No, Virginia, it isn’t going to go away on its own.

One of the hardest steps in going from a dilettante writer to a serious writer, and then to a professional writer is learning to generate inspiration. The lightning bolt from the blue is all very well, but it isn’t reliable, and if you want to make a career out of writing, you cannot sit around waiting for the lightning to find you. You have to get behind the mule in the morning, as the Tom Waits song says, and you have to do it whether you’re inspired or not. When you’re blocked, that means you have to go look at what’s blocking you, see if you can crawl under it, or climb over it, or squeeze around it on the left, or hack a chunk out of it on the right. And if it throws you off, you have to jump right back in. You have to make the block explain itself to you, and then you have to take it apart and keep walking.

Writer’s block can stop you from writing, but you cannot let it stop you from working. And that’s the most important thing not to do with writer’s block.

I should be thankful I am in the Central time zone, this way I have an extra hour to poke away at this keyboard. This may change in the very near future. My one-fingered click clack, I mean. I’ll stay in the Central time zone, probably die here. Not in the suburbs, somewhere back in the city. I leave that up to karma. I’m looking down at my fingernails, like a guy testifying at the mob trial currently transpiring here, or some trying-to-be-serious comedian on a late night HBO special. I’m putting off what I want to say, to confess. Proactive contrition, if you will. Its a world of iPods and nanopods and other things I do not even know how to spell correctly. Some phone that moves like a three card monte dealer shuffling the deck. People who don’t have writing programs on their computers but they can text the basics for TREASURE ISLAND or CANDIDE to a friend, while the quiz is being handed out. Virtual Cliff notes. In a few weeks, the 25th anniversary showing of BLADERUNNER will be in our theaters. Some nights, when the pain is bad and I try to keep the voices at bay because when PK Dick’s goddamn voices started jibber-jabbering, he wrote about the damn things. I’m stuck with them just floating in my thalamus, as my one good finger tries and puts their rants down about as fast as Abe Vigoda’s character Phil Fish taking a witness statement on BARNEY MILLER. Nights with the pain, after ten or twelve hours at the plant, I’d fall on my knees in worship if I saw the floating cube with the Oriental woman selling little green pills (if I recall the color correctly, and it was probably a damn stool softener, not some pain killer, oh the jolly jape of madness!)from BLADERUNNER. I want to finish this. I feel as if I am tapping from the inside of my ribcage.

When I take my eventual dirt nap in the time zone I alluded to, hopefully the corpse found in a timely manner so as to be stuffed and mounted and auctioned off every year so that I can be owned and taken to conventions and banquets by Beth or Brian or David or Sully, depending on who ponies up the most money for the charity of their choice, I want to be remembered as the guy who did it the only way he could. Rather…I wanted to be remembered that way. I’ve always been content with my body of work, even if it meant ignoring the voices of envy, of all those who type faster, those who get everything purged while my output is that of a 48 year old man with an enlarged prostate. I wanted the vanity, if that is the word, to be dead without ever enhancing my manner of typing. I have indeed dictated to writer Yvonne Navarro and teacher Janet Winkler while I was recovering from the car accident in 1989. I often get offers from people to type something for me, and right now, Kate Sterling is retyping a long essay I wrote for the defunct ED McBAIN COMPANION, just so I can get it on disk and try and whore it elsewhere.

Proactive contrition, my friends. I absolve myself from what I will do this coming week. I am surrendering a huge part of me, a truly enormous portion of my mind and soul, and purchasing Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.0. I so so so do not want to do this, to become a robot, to become a voice that will speak faster than my stream of consciousness and likely fuck up my stories better than the meds I take for being bipolar. But I have to do this, I have nonfiction assignments from Salem Press, a poetry collection from Annihilation Press, and if it kills me, I will write CITY WITH NO SECOND CHANCES, scenes of which float in my head like slices of deja vu when I am awake or asleep. I have an agent, a good one, and I know he will be on my @$$ like a good agent should. I haven’t had an agent in a decade and I’ll do this fellow right, and I’ll do all of you, my readers, right, as well. But I feel that I am doing myself a great wrong.

I have discussed this with many people, most feel it is about the body of work I still have in my various brain cells, locked up by a palsied caretaker. There are those who wouldn’t give my dilemma a second thoughts, those with the texting and the iPod shuffle. But this is a very hard thing for me. Turning over myself to a computer program.

For the greater good. Should there be a question mark there? As of October 15th, I will have been with America Online for ten years. Its a way of life for me now. Will Naturally Speaking be that way, as well. Or am I simply afraid that I will fail, that I do not have those stories in my head after all. Proactive contrition: Philip K. Dick, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest my sins, blah blah blah. I’m confessing my sins before I commit them. Next month you won’t be reading my type written word, you’ll be reading whatever the hell my voice tells the computer program.

And I hate myself for surrendering, all for the so-called Greater Good.

Happy October, my favorite month of the year. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll let a little bit of myself die before you hear from me again. Thanks for your time and patience. Your chattel, Wayne

Last time out, I discussed the ins and outs of taking criticism and doing something with it besides letting it amp your blood pressure to the point where blood jets out of your eyes. It only seems fair and sensible, then, to flip the conversation over this month and talk about critiquing, and ways to do (or not to do) so as to avoid giving the critique victim a grand mal seizure at the sight of the first comment in the margins.

Agreeing to look over someone’s stuff is not something that should be taken lightly. After all, if someone is handing their admittedly unfinished prose off to you in hopes of earnest commentary, they’re opening themselves up for a ruthless, microscopic examination of something that is almost certainly unready for prime time. They are counting on you to be fair but honest, and to give it your best effort. After all, a half-assed assessment isn’t going to help them improve, and may actually be damaging. An offhand, “Oh, it’s fine,” when a story actually has a plot hole big enough for Godzilla to stomp through without brushing the sides is enough to actively damage someone’s writing. Yes, they should be able to spot that sort of issue for themselves, but hey, we all miss the obvious on occasion; that’s why we ask other people to look at it.

All of which means that if you’re going to do it, you should do it right. And by right, I mean that you should provide feedback that is useful, helpful, and designed to make the subject matter better. That doesn’t mean that you should just blow kisses and wave pom-poms, but rather that you should remember that the purpose of the critique is not to benefit the critiquer, or their ego. It’s to help the writer, and more importantly, the writing.

In my admittedly jaundiced opinion, the most important thing in providing feedback is to remember who is actually writing the story. By that, I don’t mean the narrator. I mean the author. One of the most aggravating mistakes a “friendly” reader can make is to confuse what the story needs with what they would have done with the story instead. Their comments become a rewrite, simultaneously managing to irritate what Shakespeare might have called the native and true challenger while missing the point of the damn thing entirely.

In other words, if I send a story to someone to look over, I don’t want to know what they would have done with it instead. If I did, I would have sent an email saying “Here’s an idea, and I’d love to see what you can do with it” instead. (Mind you, the appropriate response to an email like that is generally “Thhhbbbtt”; nobody will tell you this, but the ideas are the easy part. It’s the writing that’s hard.) No, I want to know what I did wrong, and what my reader thinks I can do to fix it.

So, the key is to remember that it’s the author’s story, not yours, and that any feedback you give should be couched in those terms. “Were you trying to say X here?” goes over a lot better than a deleted phrase and a replacement in the margins; “I’m not sure about this guy’s motivation for beating someone to death with a grotesquely large rutabaga – could you clarify it for me?” does a lot more good than “No way, man – he should totally use the sweet potato instead.” It’s not what you would do if you were writing it, it’s about what the writer could do to make it better, and questions are better for helping someone find their own path than demands or overwrites. That’s not to say that you can’t suggest alternatives, but doing so respectfully, and with the assumption that the choices the writer made to this point were in fact made for a reason, makes them a lot easier to swallow.

Tying directly into that is another point that may be equally important: It’s about the writing, not about the writer. Feedback should not be a direct assault on the writer’s self-worth, talent, or ancestry. Even if you hate the piece, odds are that the person who wrote it is a reasonably worthwhile human being and not deserving of vituperation over something their verbs did when they weren’t looking. Any sentence of feedback that starts with the word “You” should be carefully scrutinized for lurking ad hominems, for the simple reason that if you attack the author, they’re not going to be in the mood to read anything you said about their writing. That, of course, means that you’ve wasted your time as well as theirs, and nobody wants that.

Besides, it’s just not nice.

What is nice, however, is occasionally taking the time to point out good stuff. Hopefully it’s in there, and if it is, it should get called out. There are good reasons to applaud an especially deft bit of characterization, nice turn of phrase, or clever plot twist beyond the urge to be neighborly. For one thing, it helps the author get through what would otherwise be an unending slog of negatives – fix this, change that, what the hell were you doing over there? – by providing encouragement and support. It’s useful technically, too – point out what they did right, and you’re providing examples so they can do more of it.

I might add that calling out the good stuff helps the critiquer as well. If you’re just pointing out the bad stuff, it can become white noise. Boring. Frustrating, even, which can lead to cranky or bad or worst of all, inaccurate commenting. Allowing yourself to look for the positive is worthwhile, if for no other reason than to provide a way to keep you on your twinkly editorial toes.

From there, it’s just a short jump to what should be common sense, but so often isn’t: Don’t be a jackass. Reading over someone’s stuff is not a contest. You don’t win if you provide the most cutting bon mot, the sharpest critique, or the nastiest putdown. There’s no group of judges sitting there in a box, holding up numbered cards as they go through each reader’s responses and awarding degree of difficulty points for the best Dorothy Parker impersonation. The competition is not with any other readers, and the competition is not with the author. That’s because there is no competition.

In theory, at least, everyone is working towards the same goal – making the piece better. Nobody is looking to see how clever the editorial remarks are, nor will they ever be. Turning a request for feedback into a power game demeans everyone involved, and doesn’t help the writing. Instead, it makes you look like a jerk and irritates the guy on the receiving end. He wasn’t asking for a psych profile when he asked you to look over his 3000 word short story, and getting a nasty one isn’t going to help his disposition.

And before you ask, no, I’m not saying that feedback can’t or shouldn’t be forceful when it’s appropriate. At times, it needs to be. There’s some stuff that’s just plain old bad writing, and if you’re wimpy about pointing that out, then you’re not doing anybody any favors. That doesn’t mean you should use the editorial firehouse when it’s not called for, not needed, and not helpful.

Last, at least for the purposes of this essay, is knowing when to stop. Not everything needs to be nitpicked in the minutest of details. Not every instance of a repeated error needs to be called out. Marking it once and moving on serves everyone better – the editor who doesn’t have to say the same thing over and over and get burned out, and the writer who doesn’t have to read it and feel persecuted, nay, hounded as a result. At a certain point, enough has been said and anything else is just piling on or padding the comment stats. That’s when it’s time to let it go, send it back, and hope that what’s been said makes a little sense.

And once the critique is done, it’s done. Kaput. Finis. Over. It’s moved on, and following up, beyond a polite “I hope that was helpful” starts crowding the border of counterproductive. The writer needs time to digest, to see if what’s been said is appropriate or useful or warranted. If they then ask for follow-up or clarification, great. That’s an open invitation to contribute more. But otherwise, you’ve done all that you need do, and there’s probably no need or call to do any more. What has been asked for, has been given, and in the immortal words of Stan Lee, ‘nuff said.

In the end, there are no hard and fast rules for providing feedback; just suggestions, guidelines, and the fruits of hard-won experience. Every rule has its exceptions, and there are folks out there for whom any given technique might be utterly useless. Regardless of the specifics, though, anyone who looks at another’s work owes something to them: an honest and respectful effort, and a genuine wish to help them make that piece of writing better.

But when it comes to the rutabagas, they’re on their own.

by Janet Berliner

This will be a very short blog, not because I’m lazy but because it’s something I feel strongly about, something that needs to be said in a short and pointed manner.

We write and talk a lot about success–the yearning for it, the fear of it and the acceptance of it when it comes. That’s all good stuff and necessary for our wellbeing. What we don’t discuss is the attitude change that happens all-too-frequently in our friends and colleagues.

Here’s my theory, based on my own experience and that of many others:

There are people who are what I call ‘Funeral Followers’. They get warm and fuzzy coming to the aid of their sick, struggling friends. They love to commiserate. But here’s what happens when those friends have something good to share. The Funeral Followers disappear. Or they come up with things they would change in a book already out. Or they write reviews–most often for nothing–where they bury the lead and start with something negative like: “This book arguably has the worst cover blurb I’ve ever read.”

Sure, they ultimately praise the author as a genius, but they know full well that it’s the first sentence that counts, in a Google search for example. It’s that whole first impression thing. Think of it this way. I’m dressed by a designer for a black tie affair. I go to the bathroom before making my grand entrance and the unthinkable happens: Trailing toilet paper adheres to the back of my outfit.

On the way into the grand ballroom, I meet a lot of people I know. Does one tell me about it? Noooo. Of course not.

I remember once, waiting at Michael’s in New York to have breakfast with Larry Ashmead. A well-dressed woman sat down across me. She had neglected to take the dry cleaning tag off her designer jacket. The moment I noticed, I told her how great she looked and told her about the tag. She was grateful almost to the point of tears.

Michael’s being the place where publishing makes many of its deals, I could have thought, ‘Hey, don’t say a word. She may be after the same book deal you want.’

Sad to say, many if not most people do take the latter route.

At this point, if you’re still with me, you’re probably getting your panties in a knot and asking why I’d be saying this to you when you would never do such things.

I’m writing this as a warning, thus the title.

Here’s one personal example. If I’d been warned, I’d have shed fewer tears and felt less betrayed.

I started a Writers Workshop, which lasted for six years. The writers were my peers and my friends, or so I believed. My first breakthrough novel launched the day before our monthly meeting, which I thought would be something of a celebration. Only it wasn’t. One person of the nine who attended brought a cake. He was a guest who had not yet written anything. As for the rest, they ignored the entire event.

For me, that was the end of the workshop and the end of any kind of real friendship with all but one of the members . . . the one who couldn’t make it that Sunday.

Does this matter in the scheme of the Universe? Of course not. Did it matter to me? Absolutely.

And when your first book comes out, or you first see your name in a New York Times Book Review ad or even on “the List”, remember my warning. Not everyone you call friend will be happy for you.

By Stan Ridgley

What a grandiose metaphor! And I fear that it is far too grandiose for the subject to which it is harnessed.

Especially as I am a quasi-neophyte in attacking the subject matter . . . which is why I wait for a glowering Zeus to nod at me.

But soon - very soon - I can write authoritatively on the world of academic publishing.

Soon. . . but not yet.

Right now, I wait.

I wait for the sign from on high.

I wait for word that my manuscript may continue forward after being vetted by the high priests of my academic field.

I wait for Zeus’s Nod. Or simply a raised eyebrow. A subtle gesture. Some sign that the gate is lifted and my manuscript may pass through.

Academic publishing. A kind of genre.

What a snoozefest for a group of horror writers.

The process is somewhat different than that of fictioneering. I’ve gone that route, albeit unsuccessfully. Two unpublished 185,000-word novels in the ’90s cured me of any visions of a Clancyesque lifestyle . . . and the truth is that I never would have completed either of them except as they served as my means of procrastination to prevent me from writing dutifully on what would result, eventually, in a two-volume 623-page dissertation (with another 50 pages of tables and documentation).

Actually, I came within a hairsbreadth of novel publication at St. Martin’s back in ’97, but there’s a cliché about “close” not counting, and I’ll not repeat it here.
And, for the record, let me acknowledge all of your robust headshaking about these extravagant word-counts I cranked out. Duly noted and inscribed in the high tome of excess verbiage.

I stand chastened.

Which brings me to non-fiction. To be precise, the world of “academic” publishing.

Research.

Rigor.

Relevance.

It is a world with its own rules. Its own clique. Its own mystique.

A world of “fruitful results,” comprehensive literature reviews, “especially rich” data, and “research programmes to be pursued.”

Surely, much of the process, mechanistic as it is, is the same with all publishing. Authors write, agents sell, editors edit, printers print, bookstores sell.

But academic publishing includes an extra step in the process.

Academic publishing includes the process of “peer review.”

Anonymous colleagues – qualified, one hopes – take first crack at your manuscript. It must clearly pass muster before a university press will give it due consideration. Yes, it’s necessary . . . but it is also tedious and daunting.

And that is where I sit now, awaiting word to be passed along from these anonymous peer reviewers about my manuscript. Thumbs up or thumbs down.
Then, and only then, can the process move forward in the more routine fashion of which we are all familiar.

Ah, yes . . .

The book?

Its working title, sure to be changed, is The Empire after Putin.

Yes, it is exactly what it purports to be. I am considered by some, not without reason, to be an “expert” on certain aspects of Russian business and society. I brought that keen acumen to bear on a research project that purports to be predictive of Russian political and economic behavior.

Surely a valuable contribution, eh?

A book that predicts the behavior of those unpredictable and inscrutable Russians! And just as Putin is stepping down. What a marketing ploy . . . if it were to be published prior to the March 2008 Russian Presidential elections.

So, friends, I face now the duel challenge of anonymous “peer reviewers” and a race against the clock to get my book into print so to keep it timely.

I will keep you posted.

Let’s hope my next column is a lush paean to the academic publishing process, basking in Zeus’s approval, and not one that simply transmits the single heinous word:

REJECTED.

Forgive me, but for limits of time and imagination, I’m modifying a recent entry from my own blog, but I hope it’s relevant to how we — or at least I — create characters, and defy legal disclaimers. Read on…

At Amazon.com, one reviewer of my novel DEADSTOCK said that the book’s female soldier Thi Gonh could very well be the Vietnamese sniper from the movie FULL METAL JACKET, while another Amazon reviewer griped that my attitudes toward the Vietnam War were Oliver Stonesque (I guess he’d have been more pleased if my sentiments were John Waynesque). Both reviewers are at least right in that the novel’s Ha Jiin people, and the Blue War with the Earth Colonies’ Colonial Forces, are inspired by Vietnam. But their comments not only don’t give me enough credit, but enough credit to the Vietnamese themselves. It is as if the Vietnamese only exist in the reality of Hollywood movies, my impressions of them based solely on these movies. Not taken into account is the fact that I’ve visited Vietnam six times, nor that I’m married to a Vietnamese woman. On my first trip to Vietnam, I was struck by how very little the war intruded upon my mind. These are people affected by past events, naturally, but very much living in the here and now. Of course, there were those specific destinations that brought the war to the forefront of my mind, such as my visits to the somber and chilling War Remnants Museum in Saigon, and the famous Cu Chi tunnels, where I ventured into a restored section of tunnel. Even with these sample tunnels widened a bit to accommodate the bodies of Western tourists, I felt I was going to burst out of my skin during the short time I was down there, and I can’t conceive how people could live in those labyrinths year upon year. On the Cu Chi grounds, I paid extra to fire live rounds from an AK-47 and M-16 (”experience the weapons of the Vietnam War!”) on a range, and our guide showed us various recreations of booby traps, not with a “aren’t these things monstrous?” kind of tone but with a “this is how we beat them” pride.

While she might not be transplanted from a movie, my novel’s blue-skinned warrior Thi Gonh is in fact inspired by other sources. She is largely a composite of an actual Vietnamese guerilla named Vo Thi Mo and my wife Hong Thomas (the former Truong Thi Hong)…with touches of a former lover of mine added to the mix for DEADSTOCK’s sequel, BLUE WAR, in which Thi plays a greater role. (Thi is also briefly alluded to in the short story, IN HIS SIGHTS, in THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION, vol. 1.) I read about Vo Thi Mo a few years ago, and remembered her story when I went to write DEADSTOCK, but using her middle name Thi had more to do with my wife’s middle name Thi. Most Vietnamese women have that as a middle name, just as most men have Van as their middle name. Gonh, of course, is Hong spelled sideways and is meant to sound like “gone,” to represent Thi’s elusiveness to protagonist Jeremy Stake. In the so-called Blue War, ten years before the events of DEADSTOCK, Thi became Stake’s prisoner, during which brief time he fell in love with her — moved by an act of mercy on her part that inspired her own people to change her nickname from the Earth Killer to the Earth Lover.

That act of mercy is pretty much lifted whole from an extraordinary event in the life of Vo Thi Mo. She was just a teenager when she became an officer in the all-women “C3″ outfit and battled US troops, filled with hatred for the Americans after having lost several brothers in the war and seen her family home demolished. But on one occasion, as the seventeen-year-old lay concealed in the brush, she saw three American soldiers enter into a clearing, oblivious to her presence. They began to read letters from home to each other and share photographs of loved ones, and all three soon broke down into tears. The guerilla had never seen US soldiers as human beings before, and she was moved by the naked emotion she witnessed. She was unable to shoot them, though she had them in her sights all the while (if they are still alive, I wonder if even today those men are aware of how close they came to death that day). There was a brief investigation about this formerly ruthless young woman’s inexplicable act of mercy, but it was jokingly said that the American killer had become the American lover and she was not punished for what might have otherwise been seen as an act of treason. She went on to survive the war, and a picture of her from 1985 shows her with eyes that I could very well mistake for my wife’s, staring off toward the distance as if contemplating the mysteries of human nature.

How will this complex woman be portrayed in Uwe Boll’s new film, TUNNEL RATS, due for release in 2008? That’s right – a few days ago I read online and later in FANGORIA magazine that among other films the infamous director will be bringing out soon, such as a sequel to the horrid BLOODRAYNE, is a film about the exploits of the so-called US tunnel rats, on a mission into the aforementioned Cu Chi tunnels to kill North Vietnamese guerilla Vo Thi Mo. Good Lord. If this woman is herself still alive today, I wonder if she is aware of this movie. Well, maybe Boll will recreate her act of mercy – maybe the tunnel rats won’t be able to bring themselves to kill her, in a surprising act of mercy, too. I can’t really denounce a movie I haven’t seen yet, can I? Hey, in FANGORIA Boll said that this film will do what other Vietnam war films haven’t done (shame on you, APOCALYPSE NOW and THE DEER HUNTER!), which is show how the US lost that war. So who knows, this movie could be quite human, quite enlightening. But did I mention that another of Boll’s films in the works is the recut and “hilarious” HOUSE OF THE DEAD: FUNNY VERSION?

Well, it looks like Boll and I have similar muses, eh? Real life inspires art. Do you really believe those disclaimers that the characters, places and events in books and movies are wholly fictitious? How could I or any writer truly keep people we’ve known or read about from insinuating their way into our work? On September 15th, my cousin Bill phoned to tell me that my Uncle Wally Thomas had passed away. Wally was another brave warrior – a veteran of both World War Two and the Korean War. Wally once took me on a week-long trip to Washington DC, one of the greatest experiences of my life, during which we did everything from see how money is made to watching LAST TANGO IN PARIS in the theater. Wally and his brother Robert – my father, and also a sailor in World War Two – are the protagonists of my short story POST #153, which appeared in the anthology OCTOBERLAND and will be reprinted in my collection DOOMSDAYS. In that story, the brothers Wally and Bob “Thompson” defend their veteran’s post on a rainy Halloween night from the ghosts of their wartime adversaries. “Wally and Bobby” also appear as veterans in the first chapter of BLUE WAR, again warming the bar stools of their neighborhood veterans’ post.

So forgive my lack of imagination, in cannibalizing facts for my fiction. But I hope that the manner in which I’ve used these inspirations has been imaginative in itself, and helped shine a little light on the remarkable behavior of human beings. Did Vo Thi Mo go on to kill any more US soldiers after that amazing event, or was it only those particular circumstances that stayed her hand? Whatever the case, this event is one of the most compelling stories I’ve heard about the complexities of the human heart. It encouraged and moved me, and it’s hard for me to relate to others verbally without choking up in the process. I hope it’s understandable why I would want to further immortalize it in my own little way. And why I might want to immortalize my Dad and my Uncle Wally, just a little bit, also. Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and Uwe Boll will feature them in one of his movies, too!

By Richard Steinberg

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration,” Pearl S. Buck

I’ve been incredibly gifted by my friendships. Ilario the Magnificent, His Sartorial Splendor, the Reformed Sexual Rapscallion, The Squire, the Goddess, and certainly the Dreaming Anchor are critical parts of my world. In fact, there are far too many for me to mention here. But as we continue this monthly journey together, I want to concentrate on two I haven’t mentioned often, but who bear being held up as examples of how to do what we do; and do it well.

The Ojai Warbler.

The Hot Mommy Chick.

The women have much in common, over and above their momentary lapse in judgment that allowed me in as a part of their lives. They’ve both been successful actresses on stage, in television, and other performance media. They both are painfully honest in their performances, their writing, and their lives . . . don’t ask their opinions unless you’re prepared to hear their truth.

They’re both truly gifted storytellers in their chosen formats.

One believes in herself without question, and keeps the self doubt to herself . . . more or less.

The other is publicly self-deprecating, and keeps shows of personal confidence to quiet, very private moments . . . more or less.

But there is much for all of us to learn from these remarkable writers.

Because of personal tragedy in her youth, The Ojai Warbler believes she turned herself off honest emotional expression for ten to twenty years. You know the person: good party manners, likeable, but no way to really get to know them. A lot of things slowly brought about a change – not the least of which was meeting, falling in love with, and becoming soul mates with The Supernal Bedrock. And when she grit her teeth and finally unleashed her decades suppressed creative soul-truths, my God . . . the results were stunning.

Her heart has been witnessed, quite literally, around the world. One of her works has been translated into over fifty languages. She has personally plied her heart’s truths from England to China. As a specialist in the performing arts’ written word, her works have been interpreted by a mass of household names from Bette Midler to Harry Belafonte to Judy Collins to Alvin and the Chipmunks.

That last most impressing me.

So, how does she do it? What’s her secret to harvesting real emotional content from the air and plugging it into her characters and stories? Once, when The Dreaming Anchor and I spent a day with her and the Supernal Bedrock, I asked her to share; to let me in on the magic.

She laughed – a sound that makes all men around her wish they didn’t like Bedrock as much as they do – and between attempts to catch her breath she gasped out the following pearls of wisdom:

“I MAKE IT UP! I pretend! I don’t write what I don’t believe, but I’m not limited to who I’ve been or what I know. Learning is cool, and taking what you learned and putting yourself into it (even though you’ve never been that person or even that sex) is very cool! I write from my heart, but also from my brain.”

Later, she added: “Our first job is to entertain; and if we blow that, nothing else really matters.”

Like her partner-example in this essay, The Hot Mommy Chick also took a few decades to discover her writer-hood. But she has a different excuse . . . she was too busy being a highly in demand, well regarded interpreter of other people’s words in movies and television. I guarantee you’ve seen her, and more than once. She’s worked across the board – movies, television, the stage – with every one from Steve Martin to Meg Ryan to Lauren Bacall to Brad Pitt. And on breaks between shots, she’d write a few words on a novel she knew knew she’d never finish; let alone get published.

Hell, she was an actress. Not a writer.

Yeah, well . . . with her fourth novel set to come out in the not too distant future, that’s not exactly accurate.

Hot Mommy Chick is as self-effacing as The Warbler is bold. In part, because she hasn’t been doing it as long; in larger part because she doesn’t really know how good she is. Don’t get me wrong, The Chick knows she’s a good writer; but she has not yet reached the point of standing up and saying she’s among the best at what she does; just isn’t ready to believe it regardless of other’s opinions.

I asked her once about her writing – which she does daily around a pile of children, activities in various schools for same, and the less than creative acts required of a writer with a new novel out each year – and her answer was (like the woman herself) spectacular:

“I always loved writing and love it even more now that I’m figuring out how to do it. Come on! As an actress you only have a little control over the product. As a writer, it’s all on me. I love it, especially when you get to do new things with old characters; or find new characters where you didn’t expect to. That’s really fun.”

Another time, she added: “With kids and a life and stuff it’s hard to find the time to write. I have to work hard to find it. But I almost always do, and whether or not that day’s work was good, my doing it is what’s important. I do it, and I feel better.”

The Ojai Warbler who writes from her head then her heart.

The Hot Mommy Chick who writes from her heart then her head.

Or are they the other way around? Depends on the day, I guess.

And between them . .. me – now there’s a picture to be libidinously considered on a muggy September evening – The Believer.

The Believer: who desperately wants to see and taste and wrap himself up in the glorious splendor The Warbler finds. But usually falls short.

The Believer: who longs for a life lived simultaneously in the world and the words; being nurtured by both, renewed by all like The Hot Mommy Chick. But who has mostly failed living successfully anywhere but in the words.

Writing is both mystical and manual to me. A thing I do to the highest professional standards possible. That I conjure from the most unexplainably dark and gooey place my so damaged soul can secrete. It is my sanity.

Even more, it is my lunacy.

But I look out at my friends of words – tonight The Warbler and The Chick – and I draw a certain sense or order from them. An understanding that there is no one right way to do this thing we do. That we must – and must is too light a word – find those rhythms and internal music that works for us, that nurtures and expands us.

That makes us writers instead of creative typists.

“The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones,” Soren Kierkegaard

The Ojai Warbler and The Hot Mommy Chick are beings of incandescent passion, luminous life force, and radiant creative energy. They won’t like my saying that, but truth is truth. Within their words/worlds you are distracted, challenged, entertained, provoked, or simply amused. Maybe all you’ll get from their work is a genuine diversion from life; often the most profound gift possible.

Together we are fictioneers! Alchemists, who just make it up or plan it out in depth; who work while waiting for inspiration. Who know that however profound our message, it is meaningless if we have failed to lower your barriers by entertaining you first. So that you are transported away from who and what and where you are to become lost in who and what and where we would conjure.

The Ojai Warbler.

The Hot Mommy Chick.

The Believer.

And you?

Believe!

Like most folks, I’m inherently lazy on some level. When there’s something I should be doing, I’d often rather be playing games, running around with my kids, or catching up with my wife. I’d be great at being independently wealthy.

Of course, I’m not, and I’m a full-time writer/game designer, so I drag myself to the keyboard every day to set my fingers dancing across it to create something new. Most of the time, I don’t have to drag too hard. After all, I get to set in a comfortable chair and make things up. It beats digging ditches any day.

At this point in my career, I occasionally have people ask me to pitch them something, to send them some ideas about projects we might tackle together. Often I want to do these things. The idea of working on them feeds my demons, and I know they could be lots of good-paying fun. But many times I never get around to doing it. There are just too many other things to do, professionally or otherwise.

Am I being lazy? That’s what the sinister voices in the bad of my head whisper. But the boisterous, fun-loving voices do their beer-drinking best to shout them down.

Nothing focuses my mind like a deadline though. It changes the parameters from having something I should do to something I must do.

Without deadlines, my gigs all seem like distant beasts, hazy outlines heaving up out of the horizon as the road rolls in their direction. They won’t become sharp-toothed monsters I must slay until they get closer. Until then, there’s danger I might nod off at the wheel.

I normally deal with this by outfitting my rig with atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed. I race toward those deadlines as fast as I can, then demolish them, all the while hunting for bigger, richer targets on my radar. As a writer, it makes me something of an adrenaline junkie, but that’s the way I like it.

It doesn’t leave me much time for those ephemeral pitches, but it keeps me sharp and active. Otherwise, I just get lazy—truly lazy—and along that slow and easy road lies madness.