It Was Already Broke When I Got Here

Installment #20: Of Books, More Books, and "We Interrupt Our Irregularly-Scheduled Column to Talk About ... Ah, Mmm, Well ... Books!"

2006-12-19T08:58:00.000-08:00

Ah, the holidays are upon us and the end of the year is nigh; everywhere you go, the sound of Christmas music fills the air like the anguished shrieks of the damned echoing from the bowels of hell, shoppers wander the malls with glassy-eyed stares that make them indistinguishable from the rotting zombies in Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and all around there is a feeling of DEAR GOD KILL ME NOW AND GET IT OVER WITH!

Yes, the holidays are upon us like a drug-crazed mugger who's just jumped from the alley behind you to throw an arm across your throat and press the business end of a semi-automatic against your temple, demanding that you hand all of it over right now if you want to live to see dinner.

Bubbling over with warmth, this Season of Giving will soon surrender to thoughts of the New Year, and come 11:55 p.m. on December 31, New Year's Resolutions will be contaminating the atmosphere like the stench of that last bit of Thanksgiving turkey you forgot was in the back of the fridge until someone accidentally pulled off the plastic wrap, and these heartfelt resolutions will be delivered in the same dedicated, committed, unwavering tone of voice usually reserved for "Of course I'll call you later -- have you seen my underwear?"

And I, filled with the holiday spirit (as I always am this time of year), have decided to contribute to the Joy of the Season by doing something that everyone -- it seems -- except me has been doing for years: offering up my list of the Best Books of 2006.

A few words of explanation and some ground rules, first:

People send books to me all the time, be it for review, as a gift, or to read for award consideration, and while I am always happy to receive the gift of the written word, my schedule (both writing and work-related) is such that I end every year in the red, reading-wise; I rarely have the chance to read every book that comes my way throughout the previous 11 months. But that's okay; I feel a little bit like that character from Chet Willimason's wonderful novella "The House of Fear" who believes that, as long as he goes to bed every night without having finished the book he's currently reading, he won't die in his sleep, because the unread pages of the book will protect him.

So, if you read this and find a particular book or books you've read omitted, please don't e-mail me and ask, "How could you leave (insert title here) off the list?" This list will contain only those standout books that I have read.

(Parenthetical pause: I qualify that because, on certain message boards I frequent, there are readers and reviewers who are listing novels like Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box and Dan Simmons's The Terror as among the best novels they've read this year, which isn't playing fair. While I've no doubt that both of these novels will be superb, neither one is scheduled to be released until the first part of 2007; these folks have read Advance Reader's Copies of the novels. Ain't gonna do that here, which leads us out of the parenthetical aside and makes a smooth transition to:)

The books listed here will be only those published in 2006. I will not be recapping the plots of each book because, A) If you've read any of these, then you already know what happened in them, and, B) If you haven't read any of these, then I refuse to spoiI anything for you: consider these mini-reviews an attempt to whet your appetite.

I am also not restricting the list to a "Top 10" or a "Baker's Dozen" or anything like that; the list will be as long or as short as it needs to be. I have the stack of books right beside me, didn't bother to count how many there are, and, frankly, don't really care. 2006 was a damned good year for genre books, overall (I'm talking in quality, not necessarily in sales or popularity), and looking at the stack now, I'm grateful to have been among the above-ground folks so my life could be enriched by having read these.

With that out of the way -- and in no particular order -- here is my list of the Best Books of 2006:

NOVELS:
The Pressure of Darkness by Harry Shannon: Not only is this a first-rate thriller, a first-rate mystery, and a first-rate action-adventure, it is, hands-down, the best horror novel Shannon has yet written. One of the things I've come to admire about Harry Shannon's work is that it's among the most muscular and unpretentious being written in any field, and Shannon heartily embraces Gary's Golden Rule of Writing Good Fiction: Forget Genre. Shannon will use any element necessary in order to tell his story the way the story demands to be told, so it's no surprise that The Pressure of Darkness blurs nearly every genre line you can name. At a hefty 440 pages, it reads like a book half that length.

Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry: Everything you've heard about this impressive first novel is true; it's haunting, lyrical (God, is it lyrical), suspenseful and scary (the two are not the same thing), and, most of all, deeply humane in the depiction of its characters. This is the first book in a trilogy from Maberry, and I for one can't see the release of the second book soon enough. The atmosphere throughout this wonderful novel (which can hold its own alongside the Silver John tales of Manly Wade Wellman) is so rich and textured you can almost feel it with your fingertips.

The Nightmare Frontier by Stephen Mark Rainey: Hurt my widdle bwain trying to figure out something better to say about this novel than I said in my blurb for it and failed miserably, so I'll just repeat myself: "Remember what it was like to read a horror novel that actually made you sweat with dread and your hand shake ever-so-slightly as you turned the page? Remember what it was like to feel your heart thud against your chest as the plight of the characters became your own? Remember what it was like to have a story cast a spell over you rather than ram everything down your throat? If so, you've reason to rejoice; if not, then you need to discover what that's like. In either case, Mark Rainey's The Nightmare Frontier delivers the goods. This is the Good, Real Stuff. From its powerful opening in the jungles of Vietnam to its nerve-wracking finale, this novel never releases its grip on the reader's nerves, brains, and heart." Rainey is Old-School (Like Huigh Cave and Robert Bloch, thank God) and nowhere is his craft more refined than this novel. Get it, get it now.

Bloodstone by Nate Kenyon: Kenyon's debut novel has been compared (not without justification) to the early works of Stephen King, in that it deals with a malevolent force that all but consumes a small town populated with the usual array of small-town characters; think It but on a smaller and more intensely-focused scale. The one quibble I have with this novel is that -- unlike many debut horror novels -- it actually needed to be a bit longer. There are times when Kenyon seems to packing a little too much into his 354-page narrative, but his writing style is so clean, his confidence in his story so strong, and his overall narrative arc so compelling, that in the end, my quibble is actually a compliment: it's better to leave the reader wanting more than to leave the reader feeling his or her time has been wasted. Your time will most definitely not be wasted with Kenyon's excellent debut.

The Keeper by Sarah Langan: Horror as social commentary the way it ought to be done, with the agenda hidden in the background and illustrated by the actions of the characters rather than in long-winded didactic speeches. While I felt that the overall story arc wasn't as strong as it could have been, Langan's exquisite prose more than makes up for any perceived shortcomings in its plotting. Along with Mayberry's Ghost Road Blues, this novel overflows with prose so effortlessly lyrical there are passages where the words threaten to shimmer right off the page. Langan also understands that, in the end, it's the cumulative effect of building terror that remains with the reader, rather than the quick shock; she also knows the difference between genuine human tragedy and the merely tragic, and her fine debut packs quite an emotional punch because of it.

Forever Will You Suffer by Gary Frank: Even if I hadn't found Frank's central character immensely likable, even if I hadn't found the story gripping, and even if I hadn't found his writing style strong and assured throughout, I would still put this book on the list because Frank pulls off a remarkable balancing act with this novel; he combines dread, tragedy, pathos, and fall-on-the-floor-laughing humor so well that you not only don't know where this story is going to go from one chapter to the next, you often can't predict where it's going to go within a single scene. The book switches gears so fast you sometimes feel like you're in the last 3 laps of the Indy 500, but never once does it hit any bumps. I admired the hell out of that; that the rest of the book had me laughing, holding my breath, and even fighting a lump in the throat once or twice (something that's not easy to do to me), was just the trophy at the end of the race (to play out the less-than-subtle racing metaphor).

Again by Sharon Cullars: If you're one of these folks who have avoided reading so-called "Paranormal Romance" novels because you think all they are is bodice-rippers with ghosts, no single book could more prove you wrong than Cullars's luminous, eloquent debut novel. Reading like a collaboration between Toni Morrison and Jack Finney, Again announces the arrival of a fresh, distinct voice, telling a story that is romantic, sensual (in the dictionary sense of the word), frightening, genuinely erotic, heartbreaking and, ultimately, life-affirming, with a final line that is pitch-perfect -- as is the rest of this lovely, heartfelt, deeply affecting novel.

Eyes Everywhere by Matthew Warner: Yes, I have a certain bias when it comes to this novel, I'll admit it -- but consider: if I had not thought so highly of this dazzling psychological horror story and its unflinching depiction of an Everyman's rapid and tragic descent into paranoid schizophrenia, I wouldn't have agreed to write the Aftwerword for it, would I? Light-years beyond Warner's debut novel, The Organ Donor in both plotting and execution (i.e. the quality of both the macro- and microwriting) -- and I say this as one who thoroughly enjoyed The Organ Donor.

Headstone City and The Dead Letters by Tom Piccirilli: Yeah, two superb novels in the same year. I considered not including either one because I have now decided that I hate Piccirilli -- no one should be this consistently excellent. I then realized that he's much bigger than I am, knows where I live, and could tie knots in my spine without breaking a sweat; so, here they are. Not only is each novel a fine reading experience in its own right, but if you read them in the order they were published (which is the same order in which they are listed here), you'll note the further evolution of Piccirilli as a story-teller; while both novels contain supernatural elements, those elements become increasingly downplayed as you move from one novel to the next; to the point where, in The Dead Letters, they're peripheral in the story yet essential to it. Piccirilli has been reaching the height of his power for the last few years; with these two stunning novels, he's even closer to the summit. The world will shake when he gets there, so hang on.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King: Like Bag of Bones (to which this novel serves as the companion piece), Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and From A Buick 8, King's Constant Readers are divided about this one; I have no such quibbles. When King puts his heart and soul into something, he can be devastating, and Lisey's Story is one of the most unflinching explorations of grief, love, and unachieved potential you'll ever read. The "secret language" of marriage that is grappled with throughout this book has made more than a few readers grit their teeth, if not abandon the book altogether. Their loss. This is, in my opinion, King's finest achievemnt as a novelist, genre be damned.

Pandora Drive by Tim Waggoner: Though much less serious in its intent and execution than Waggoner's previous Leisure novel, Like Death, Pandora Drive is nonetheless further proof that Waggoner, intentionally or not, has picked up at the torch where Clive Barker placed it before he took a left turn into fantasy. Often wildly over-the-top (especially in an exhilarating, funny, shocking, and endlessly creative 115-page set piece right smack in the middle of the book) but never succumbing to the outright ridiculous, Waggoner's second Leisure novel is marred only by a less-than-satisfying conclusion, but not so much that it taints the rest of the story that has come before. If you go into this expecting a serious and terrifying horror novel, you won't make to the halfway point; if you go in knowing that Waggoner has turned the surreal comedy dial all the way to 11, then you're in for one hell of a ride. Just don't be eating anything once you hit the midway point.

The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene: Good old-fashioned, gross-out, breakneck-paced, gross-out, fun, gross-out, pulp horror, period, delivered by the writer who's arguably revitalized the extreme horror sub-genre. You'll think twice about what you use for bait when fishing season comes around. Did I mention gross-out?

Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough: Following on the heels of her wonderful debut The Hidden and its follow-up, The Reckoning, Sarah Pinborough has fast become my favorite new horror writer. Now, more than ever, I am convinced that Pinborough was not born, but rather created in a lab by some literary-minded scientist who decided to combine the DNA of Jane Austen, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter. Breeding Ground contains the same eloquent, richly dense prose as The Hidden while building upon the flair Pinborough displayed for the dreadful and shocking with The Reckoning. Imagine Rosemary's Baby as a 3-way collaboration between the hosts of Pinborough's DNA and you'll have some small idea of the scope and subject of this terrific, often electrifying novel.

COLLECTIONS
Four Octobers by Rick Hautala: The flap copy for this quartet of novellas from Hautala (who some of you may know as A.J. Matthews) would have you believe that the four tales are "...loosely connected..." Well, sure, if all you look at are the physical locales and the element of some characters making peripheral appearances from tale to tale, but look closer and you'll see that more connects them than just people and places: there is a palpable sense of overwhelming loss that permeates every story, so that "loosely" thing? Not so much. This beautiful edition from CD Publications boasts a gorgeous cover and interior artwork from the redoubtable Glenn Chadbourne, and collects 2 of Hautala's most accomplished novellas -- "Miss Henry's Bottles" (a personal favorite of mine) and "Cold River" -- as well as 2 brand-new works, "Tin Can Telephone" (reminiscent -- and deserving to be mentioned in the same breath as many works -- of Ray Bradbury) and "Blood Ledge". The result is one of the year's finest single-author collections, and further proof that Hautala is much, much more than just "...that other author from Maine."

Thundershowers at Dusk by Christopher Conlon: As with Eyes Everwhere, I have to confess to a certain bias; Chris asked me to read this collection in manuscript form with an eye toward providing a cover blurb. After I finished reading it, I told him, "No, I won't do a blurb -- I want to write the Introduction!" So I did. Conlon is best known as an award-winning poet and anthology editor (the most recent anthology being the excellent Poe's Lighthouse from CD Publications), but he's also a stellar writer of fiction -- he just doesn't write it all that often, which is a real loss for readers. Thundershowers at Dusk is a hands-down brilliant collection from first page to last, every story is a winner, and it contains one of the finest novellas I have ever read in any genre, period, "The Unfinished Music". As rich and rewarding a collection as you'll ever read. (And I will add here, for any publishers who happed to read this, that Conlon is now shopping around a stunning first novel entitled Midnight on Mourn Street that is going to bring a lot of sales and accolades to whichever publisher is smart enough to snatch it up.) I maintain that Conlon is a better writer now than I could ever hope to be, and Thundershowers at Dusk more than proves it. Hence my deep-rooted resentment of him.

American Morons by Glenn Hirshberg: Paul Miller's Earthling Publications gets the Hat-Trick Award this year for having published 3 exceptional books in 2006, the first being this collection, Hirshberg's follow-up to The Two Sams. While I greatly admired the first collection, American Morons surpasses it on several levels, mostly because Hirshberg's writing has become even more focused and polished; he's going to be a major force in the field in the next few years, and while his writing has more in common with that of Steven Millhauser than Stephen King, it is nonetheless some of the most nerve-wracking and unapologetically literary work being produced in the field. All of the stories are winners, but the book is worth its price for "Safety Clowns" and "Devil's Smile".

The Tenant by Roland Topor: A million thanks to Millipede Press for putting this short novel back into print, along with 4 rarely-seen short stories and Topor's own artwork (which reminded me of the surreal work of Heinrich Kley). It's an utterly gorgeous book, boasting an intelligent and articulate Introduction from Thomas Ligotti ... but mostly, there is The Tenant, which remains today just as terrifying, eloquent, and compelling as it was when originally released in 1965. The 4 shorts accompanying it are equally impressive, resulting in a genuine must-have collection.

The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel: Hempel, in case you've not read her work, is one of the finest short story writers of the last 25 years, and this omnibus assembles all 4 of her collections, including the hard-to-find At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom. With the exception of the jaw-dropping novella "Tumble Home", most of her stories run less than 10 pages in length, and stand as a testament to what a skilled writer can do in a very limited amount of time. This collection contains one of my all-time favorite short stories, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried". If all so-called "literary" fiction were as exquisite as Hempel's, the world would be a better place.

The Ocean and All Its Devices by William Browning Spencer: It's been 10 years since Spencer's last collection, The Return of Count Electric and Other Stories left readers screaming for more, and Spencer delivers in a big way with this follow-up. For my money, Spencer;s work -- be it in short stories or novel form -- has always read like a head-on collision between John Cheever and Donald Barthelme; which is to say, it's rooted both in the humane and the surreal. The title story is both tragic and nightmarish, containing some of the most chilling imagery you'll encounter. Spencer doesn't write nearly enough, so grab this superb collection and keep it near to bide your time until he releases his next book.

NOVELLAS
World of Hurt by Brian Hodge: The 2nd Earthling book to appear on this list, this nerve-shattering and heartbreaking novella showcases Hodge at the top of his form, taking a tired old storyline (a character who is revivded from the dead, only to discover that something has followed him or her back into the corporeal world) and infusing it with a heavy doses of intelligence, emotional realism, and existential (in the dictionary sense of the word) terror. The most emotionally challenging and richly-rewarding a novella of the year, Hodge's prose has never been more eloquent, his storytelling never more powerful and affecting.

Mama's Boy by Fran Friel: It's almost impossible to discuss this nasty little story without giving away or hinting at its many twists and turns, so you're just going to have to settle for this: This blackest of black comedies, ingeniously structured, will leave you thinking that Norman Bates maybe wasn't all that bad a fellow. An impressive and memorable debut, and deliciously wicked to the core.

Bloodstained Oz by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore: When I first saw that Golden and Moore had collaborated on a novella, I thought it was a mis-print. How could these 2 writers -- who, in my eyes, anyway -- are polar opposites in so many ways, possibly write something together that wasn't going to read like 2 clashing styles meeting in the literary equivalent of a car crash? The answer? Bloodstained Oz, easily the nastiest work on this list (sorry, Fran), and one guaranteed to forever ruin the Judy Garland film you've come to know and love. The voice employed here in a singular one, smooth and assured; the pacing is a wonder to behold; and the story itself is, well ... oddly inspiring, in a twisted sort of way. A bloody winner, this, and Earthling's 3rd book to make this list.

The Colour Out of Darkness by John Pelan: I have a confession to make: most Lovecraft-inspired stories make me cringe, and Lovecraft pastiches make me despair, because more often than not, they bring out the worst in writers. Luckily, John Pelan's Cemetery Dance novella is an exception. Eschewing a lot of the usual trappings of the Cthulhu Mythos, Pelan adds more than a few original spins to the Lovecraft canon while never resorting to tired imitation of Lovecraft's style. Another winner.

The Bad Season by Dennis Latham: This lean and mean entry would make a great double feature with Jonathan Maberry's Ghost Road Blues, as both rely heavily on folklore and how it manifests itself -- with terrifying consequences -- in the modern world. Latham's prose makes Hemingway's look wordy and purple. A fast, hard, unnerving ride from first page to last.

SPECIAL CATEGORY
For the best on-going series of books. This was a no-brainer: Gauntlet Press's The Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling: Now at #3 in the series of 9 volumes (#4 will be released in March, 2007), this series of books is a must-have if you're a Serling and/or Zone freak like me. These beautifully-designed oversized books may be a little pricey for the casual reader, but they're worth every cent. Containing not the text of the scripts but reproductions of the scripts themselves (hence the size of the books), each volume is signed by Carol Serling, features Appreciations by some of the biggest writers in the business, as well as photographs from the episodes and behind the scenes, and -- and this is the biggie -- reproductions of Serling's hand-written notes on the scripts. Copies purchased directly from Gauntlet also include a chapbook with alternate versions of scenes from the broadcast shows. Each volume is a treasure chest, and invaluable to admirers of Serling and/or Zone.

And that brings us to the end of my list for 2006. I realize that the absence of an ANTHOLOGY category may seem a bit puzzling to you, but the truth is most of the anthologies I read this year also happened to have stories by me in them, so it seemed a little self-serving to list them. I'd like to say to apologize to all the wonderful editors who saw fit to purchase and publish my stories in their anthologies this year, and hope all of you will understand why I decided to forego the ANTHOLOGY category this time round.

Thanks for taking the time to endure yet another list. If you haven't read some of the books mentioned here, I hope you'll seek them out; there's a lot of great stuff here, and gives me a lot of hope for what we'll see in the year to come.

Until then....

Installment #19: Of Fond Memories, AGIOs, and "Oh, My God, What Died In Here?"

2006-11-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's the day before Thanksgiving, 2006, the Holiday Season is upon us, and as is my habit this time of year (being the cheerful and ever-so-happy fellow I am), my mind turns to thoughts of loss and death ... only this time it makes me smile.

Stay with me, this won't be depressing, I swear.

In an introduction I once wrote for a collection of Elizabeth Massie's short stories (Shadow Dreams), I made the following comments concerning the often flippant and careless use of the word "Art":

"There is, in my opinion, not one writer, actor, painter, sculptor, dancer, director, musician, what-have-you living today who has the right to call him- or herself an artist: to loudly declare, 'I'm creating a piece of art!' is to invite pretension and arrogant high-mindedness; it is to proclaim to anyone who cares to listen that you’re so cocksure your work will have a profound impact on everyone who encounters it that they should feel privileged to encounter it.

"Art is not something that can be consciously created; it has to occur. Usually it's a happy accident. Timing, luck, happenstance, a person's mood at the time, all of these come into play -- and the creator's underlying intent is always secondary. Always. No exceptions. Period.

"It's more than just 'liking' a piece of work, it's experiencing a complete, pure, and total communion with the work; for one second -- maybe longer if you're blessed -- you are submerged in the emotions summoned up by the piece and the world is reduced to only your burning core and what this work does to it, gives to it, asking for nothing in return, and what, finally, this communion means to the rest of your life: You come away from the work more than you were before. Art lingers as a ghost called emotional resonance, and from that moment on you, not the creator, have the right to call this something a 'work of art.'"

Looking at it now, perhaps that mini-rant is a bit high-minded and hoity-toity itsownself (especially considering the context in which it's about to be applied, which I warn you is in questionable taste), but at its center it remains something I fervently believe: Art cannot be created, it has to occur ... so the next time you hear someone defending the context of their work whilst brandishing the "... because I am an artists" shield, do me a favor and smack the living shit out of them.

Moving on.

A little less than 2 years ago, a very dear friend of mine -- one of those rare friends you have from childhood who remains close to you throughout the rest of your life, even if you lose contact for years at a time -- passed away suddenly. It was a tremendous shock and a heartbreaking blow to anyone who knew him, because he was one of the most gracious, good-natured, and outright kindest people I have ever known. Some of my fondest memories of childhood and early teen-aged years (like there's really a difference when you Get Right Down To It) feature him in a major role. (Those of you who've read my non-fictin book Fear In A Handful Of Dust: Horror As A Way Of Life will know that the word "fondest" is not used lightly by me ... childhood (for me), not a great time; not a lot of laughs; not a lot of material that's gonna make my Highlight Reel anytime soon. Once again, moving on ...)

For the moment, we are back in early 1973: The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and The Patridge Family are at the top of the TV ratings, Bananafish, Rolling Stone, National Lampoon and Melody Maker are the only magazines the Utterly Groovy read,
The Joy of Sex is topping the bestseller list, Shaft and Superfly (both films featuring incredible, award-winning scores by, respectively, Isaac Hayes and the late, great Curtis Mayfield) have ushered in the era of the so-called "Blaxploitation" flick, and The Sting is fast becoming one of the greatest Hollywood blockbuster movies of all time and has everyone refusing to tell their friends about the surprise ending.

A small group of friends -- 5 guys, myself included -- are continually spending our weekends hanging out in someone's basement room because the Girls We Were Madly In Love With have yet to realize how Utterly Groovy we were. Sometimes we read comic books; sometimes we worked on Aurora monster models; sometimes we flipped through Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (or Creepy, Eerie or Vampirella because most of our parents thought they were wicked and evil and would warp us for life -- in my case, they did, but my folks were Fairly Hip, if not Utterly Groovy, and had no problems with my monster magazine collection, knowing that monster were My bag, man) ... but mostly we hung out in various of our basements because that's where the central and most important piece of our Kid Hardware was located: the holy record player.

Yup -- mostly we listened to records, always accompanying the best songs with our various air instruments (except for the Air Bass -- ever notice how no one ever plays the Air Bass? Seriously -- when was the last time someone in an air band said, "Hey, man, I wanna play the bass because the bass player gets all the girls."? There may be a lesson here. Think on it and get back to me). And, of course, being 12 years old, we'd decided that we were all going to form the World's Greatest Rock Band and be big, big stars, so that Girls We Were Madly In Love With would come to concerts and see us in all our Rock Glory, realize how foolish they'd been in refusing our affection, and throw themselves at our feet, begging for our eternal love.

Ahem ....

If you were around back then -- that is, if you're now staring down the barrel of middle age as I am -- then you'll recall that the album that every Utterly Groovy person had in their collection and on their turntable was Deep Purple's Machine Head; none of us were any exception. (A bit of trivia here: when "Smoke on the Water" was originally released as a single from MH, it all but tanked here in the states; it wasn't until the live version from Made in Japan was released as a single that it became the monster hit we all know and claim to loathe. Remember this the next time you play Trivial Pursuit.)

In truth, none of us had any idea what the hell we were going to do with our lives, so Rock Stardom seemed the most obvious choice -- forget that, between the 5 of us, not a one could play any instrument worth a damn, unless you count the armpit as a muscial instrument, in which case we could have formed the world's first and greatest armit orchestra. (There's an image for you ....)

But it was Johnny, my now-late friend (miss you, buddy; miss you every damn day) who one night, in the basement of his house, provided what was for me one of the earliest examples of what can happen to a person when art occurs.

Understand that Johnny, like me, did not come from a well-to-do family; his folks worked factory jobs just like mine; there wasn't a lot of money for allowances, so you had to save for weeks -- if not months -- if you wanted to buy a model kit or a record album (which cost you a whopping 3 or 4 bucks back then); he wore old clothes that were not in fashion; he wasn't particularly articulate (we were 12 -- all of us sounded like idiots when we talked for more than 4 minutes at a time); and -- and this was the killer for his social life at the time -- he was a bit too tall and bit too fat for his age. (That fat later turned to muscle and made him unstoppable on the football field; I remember with great joy the sight of many a fullback deciding to plow into Johnny's mid-section head-first, freezing in their tracks once they'd slammed into his gut, and then dropping to the ground like a bird that's just flown into a window.)

On this particular night in 1973 we'd exhausted all our usual time-killers and were just sort of sitting around wondering whteher or not if the Girls We Were Madly In Love With were going to magically come knocking at the door to keep us company (they didn't), when Johnny made the announcement: "Hey, I wanna show you guys something."

Now, we'd all pooled our money that night and bought a couple of pizzas and an 8-pack of bottled Coke-a-Cola, then Johnny's mom had insisted on making popcorn for us; despite being stuffed the to eyeballs, some of us had eaten a little of the popcorn (Johnny consumed most of it). We were all stuffed and sleepy, so whatever in the hell it was he had to show us had better be pretty Utterly Groovy.

Johnny opened -- I kid you not -- a can of cold beans and ate precisely one-third of it, then finished off the last of his bottle of Coke, and crossed the room to his Chair.

I use upper-case for Chair because no one -- no one -- but Johnny was ever allowed to sit in this thing; you weren't even allowed to park your ass on one of its arms, lest Johnny come barreling across the room like some freight train from Hell and push you into a wall (for which he'd later apologize, and then give you one of his comic books so you wouldn't stay made at him).

Now, I have to tell you about this Chair.

In all the history of chairs, there has never been an uglier, sadder, more rickety, patched-together, malevolent, taped-up, uncomfortable-looking, and potentially dangerous monstrosity than this thing that lived in Johnny's basement; I mean, this was the kind of chair that would cause every other chair in the world to cross the street were they to see it heading in their direction; had such a thing as chair Most Wanted posters existed, this Chair would have been Public Enemy #1; it was the Captain Ahab of chairs; the Frankenstein's Monster of chairs; it was the Chair that other chairs warned their children against at night so they would behave.

Not an attractive piece of furniture, is what I'm saying. Covered in what we used to call "banana-skin" (now referred to as "pleather"), it had countless springs sticking out from the seat that were covered in duct tape; stuffing spilled out of its back like the innards from some victim in a Romero zombie flick; one leg was held together with chicken wire; the left arm was covered in red banana-skin (the rest of it was an ungodly shade of green); and -- perhaps its most horrifying characteristic -- the seat appeared to sometimes breathe of its own accord after Johnny rose from it: for several minutes on end, the seat would expand and then contract, making low but nonetheless terrifying hissing sounds, bubbling and undulating like some evil experiemental fluid in a mad scientist's laboratory. Many of us were convinced the thing was alive; possessed even. It attacked us in our nightmares. Came after our family members. Made us eat our vegetables. Forced us to sit in it and watch Hee-Haw or The Lawrence Welk Show.

This was the terror which Johnny began to approach on this night in question.

One more aside, and then I'll reveal the remarkable thing that occurred a minute after Johnny sat down in the Chair from Hell.

Johnny had an unfortunate biological quirk during childhood that he often could not control; he had a tendency to suffer AGIOs -- Audible Gastro-Intenstinal Occurrences ... popularly know by the layperson as farts. And Johnny's farts were, well ... loud. And sometimes frightening. Think Godzilla's roar in a lower register and you'll have some idea of how these things sounded. I've heard foghorns that sound like a newborn chick's peeps compared to these things.

We're back in the basement now, and Johnny is approaching the Chair. He sits. Looks at us and smiles. Shifts his weight around a little, moves one of his legs a little to the side, and then puts a finger to his mouth to tell the rest of us to be quiet, please.

"I've been practicing this for a couple of weeks," he said.

Then he closed his eyes, shifted the position of his behind a fraction to the left, took a deep breath, and did one of the most remarkable things I have ever witnessed.

He farted the opening riff of "Smoke on the Water", all 12 notes, on-key.

It was not only miraculous to hear, but to see, as well. He reddened with effort and concentration; a small vein bulged in the center of his forehead; his face, neck, and arms became almost instantaneously lacquered in perspiration; he would partially raise one cheek while shifting a leg, then lower that cheek as he raised the other, sometimes using one of his hands to press in on a certain area of his abdomen; he twisted his features with each note, biting down on his lip, closing one eye, flaring his nostrils ... a sick walrus in the midst of an agonizing breach birth would have been more appeaing to look at.

But none of us cared. We were witness to something extraodinary in the annals of kid mythology. No human being had ever done anything like this before. Perhaps no human being would ever do this again in the remainder of world history. I wondered if perhaps we should kneel and make the Sign of the Cross to acknowledge the sanctity of the moment. And pray that he wouldn't accidentally shit his pants. (Soiled underwear has a way of taking some the oomph out of a miracle.)

Still, Johnny continued with the second bar of the opening:

Bwap-bwap-bworf, bwap-bwap-bworf-BWOOOORF, bwap-bwap-bworf, bwap-bworf ....

When it was over, we all stood there, nailed to the spot in a kind of twisted awe.

And, yes, the odor was enormous, which explained the tears in our eyes. But the loss of air in our lungs was a small price to pay.

When the moment of awe and near-suffocation passed, we broke into loud cheers and applause, crowding around Johnny, slapping him on the back, wiping his brow, rubbing his shoulders, and basically acting like a bunch of trainers at ringside after a championship fight. So loud were the accolades we were bestowing on Johnny that his sister came down to see what the hubbub was all about; no sooner had she hit the bottom step and taken in a breath than she cowered back, exclaiming, "Oh, my God -- what died in here?"

There was no way to make her understand the inexplicable, astounding, epoch-marking event that had just occurred; mere words could not do it justice. All we were capable of was staring at her little brother in open-mouthed (and pinched-nosed) wonder. He had done something no human being in our experience had ever done before.

(I feel it only appropriate to add this bit of trivia for your further edification: there was a man who had, in fact done this before. Le Petomane was the stage name of the French professional farter and entertainer Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 - 1945). He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to break wind at will. His stage name combines the French verb peter, "to fart" with the -mane, "maniac" suffix, found in words like toxicomane. In English, a translation might yield "the fart maniac". His profession can also be referred to as a "Flatulist" or a "Fartiste.") (By the way, I lifted that bit of information, word-for-word, from the Wikipedia entry about him; after all, why try to improve upon perfection?)

That night became legend very quickly, and within a few weeks, we would have parties where Johnny and his unique, amazing talent would be the high point of the festivities. Even the Girls We Were Madly In Love With began to attend these gatherings, and Johnny never failed to deliver the anticipated finale.

But he always had to be in the Chair, the one and only Chair, which we carried to and from the various parties with the greatest of care and reverence, as if it were a Van Gogh painting, or a Da Vinci sculpture, or Ann-Margret's breasts.

And Johnny always prepared for the big event the same way: pizza, Coke, popcorn, and one-third of a can of cold beans, consumed in that order, in precise quantities, at pre-determined times so that it would all settle into him in the same way before each performance. He always moved the same way, always lifted this cheek or that at the right moment, clenched and unclenched so as to maintain the right pitch ... it was Utterly Groovy, ya dig?

Johnny's gone now, dead of a heart attack at age 45, and not a day goes by that I don't miss him, or recall how, every time we saw each other, one of us would bring up the Chair Concerts, as they came to be called. He died watching a football game, sitting in the Chair, eating pizza, after a too-short but rich and happy life wherein he met and married wonderful and beautiful woman, made dozens -- if not hundreds -- of friends, worked at a job he loved, always had a kind word for you, a smile on his face, a joke to tell, or a great-big, rib-bruising bear hug at the ready should you need one to brighten your day.

The Chair, by the way, is still in his family, and no one sits in it. It is proudly displayed, and even children -- nieces, nephews, cousins -- who never met Johnny, know the story about the Chair Concerts, how Uncle Johnny could fart "Smoke on the Water" perfectly every time ... providing he could properly prepare. It is a story that will be passed on from generation to generation, and there will always be, eternally, the Chair as proof.

So how does this story of farting apply to the subject of art? (And, yes, it has crossed my mind more than once that "fart" and "art" rhyme, which in I find oddly appropriate for this particular column.)

This story applies to the subject because, whether we're willing to admit it or not, every person we know possesses some gift that they bestow upon the world; a skilled auto mechanic; a detail-oriented brick-layer; an expert toolmaker; even the proficient janitor -- all contribute something of the aesthetic to everyday life, something that impacts you and adds to or enhances your existence. Okay, maybe a well-tuned engine isn't exactly on the same level as a Kurosawa's greatest films, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have deep and abiding value; doctor or doorman, composer or custodian, sculptor or sales clerk, everyone possesses some skill or talent that makes them unique among the carbon-based life-forms we pass every day. What they do on an everyday basis may not obviously be an occurence of art as I described it at the start of this column, but bear in mind that the definition was more than a bit insular: occurences of art are all around us, we just have to be willing to see them for what they are, regardless of how mundane or trivial they may appear on the surface.

Have you ever seen the film Babette's Feast? It's not about a woman who prepares a meal for a bunch of people; it's about the creation of a moment of art that can never be repeated, but makes such an impact on those who experience it that it will live on in their hearts and memories forever.

Kind of like Johnny's farts. As crude as it may seem. I know in my heart that long after I am gone, people will still be talking about Johnny's farts while my books and stories will be, if I'm lucky, a minor footnote in some genre textbook gathering dust on a dim shelf somewhere.

But you know what? That's okay. Because for the rest of my life, I will have readers who appreciate what I do, and I am thankful for that. I am thankful that I knew Johnny, that I knew my parents, that I knew my uncles, that I knew the too-numerous amounts of people who are no longer part of this world.

If this sounds like something of a pep-talk, that's because it is; not just for you, but for myself, as well. It's too easy to give into grief and sadness and despair -- believe it or not, as dark and depressing as my work gets, that is one of the core points I try to get across with it.

So, tomorrow, when you're sitting with your family and friends and (hopefully) enjoying one another's companionship, be grateful that you have people in your life who care about you and respect what you do and are pleased to be in your company. (I say this as someone who remains constantly baffled and humbled that anyone is glad to see him.)

Enjoy your family, your friends, your meal, and your memories.

Just -- and trust me on this -- don't try to entertain everyone afterward by farting the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or everyone might be put off that pumpkin pie for desert.

Until next time ....

Installment #18: Of What's There, What You Thought Was There, and "I Know Damn Well I Read That!"

2006-08-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my you-should-pardon-the-expression professional career, a single work of mine has garnered the most outstanding notices I've ever received. My forthcoming novel from Cemetery Dance Publications, Prodigal Blues has been getting nothing short of rave reviews since the ARCs were shipped (ARC, in case you're not familiar with the term, is pub-speak for Advance Reading Copy).

No one -- and I mean no one -- has had anything even remotely bad to say about it. (Now watch; just because I've tempted Fate by saying that, the pans will start coming in non-stop. Yes, I'm an optimistic sort.)

Here are a small handful of some reviews:

"Expert storyteller Gary Braunbeck outdoes himself with Prodigal Blues, a haunting, unsettling, eerie and beautiful novel about the hazards of childhood in the face of overwhelming real-life horrors. Here is a tender, heart-felt, unflinching exploration into shattered lives that will leave the reader disturbed, enlightened, and with a real need to hug loved ones. Braunbeck is one of those rare writers whose work can actually teach it audience a vast, human lesson."

-- Tom Piccirilli, author of The Dead Letters and Headstone City

"A toe-tapping tale of terror ... Prodigal Blues is good enough that you might feel scarred after reading it. But in the end, it is that good. And it is really the first non-supernatural novel by Braunbeck, but one hopes not the last. As ever, Cemetery Dance puts together a wonderful hardcover novel. Deena Warner's illustrations are plentiful, dark and suggestive. They ratchet up the level of disturbance and move the story but are tastefully rendered. Braunbeck's been hitting the paperback racks with his novels of the supernatural, but there's real potential for him to eke his way into the mainstream without ever really becoming mainstream. No Braubeck is definitely not mainstream fiction. He's more like the big, solid rock that sits in the middle of the river. Always there. Always strong."

-- The Agony Column

"Prodigal Blues is a disturbing novel. It deals with the most vicious forms of abuse and molestation of the young. To describe in detail the bare bones of what transpires to several youths in this novel would be excruciating. And Gary does not flinch one bit from the horrors in it. Yet he imbues the story with such tenderness that it is impossible to not feel a sense of joy. Prodigal Blues demonstrates humankind's obstinate ability to maintain dignity, compassion, and even a sense of wit in even the most dire circumstances."

-- Horrordrive-In.com

I'm not listing these to toot my own horn or to gloat (okay, maybe I want to gloat a little -- after all, I want all of you to buy it), but there's been a recurring theme to all the reviews that bothers me a little bit.

Understand that I am in no way dissing the reviewers who have thus far been incredibly complimentary of the novel (you wait your whole professional career for reviews like these, and I remain continually stunned by the reactions the novel's been getting), but at least half of these reviews describe sequences that, uh, um ...well ... aren't in the novel.

The story, briefly, concerns a man who, while on a road trip, is kidnapped by a group of children who have been physically mutilated by a man known to them only as "Grendel" who, throughout the novel, is never far behind them. They kidnap him because, in almost every case, their faces have been mutilated beyond recognition, and they fear that their families will no longer recognize them; hence, they need someone with a "normal face" to act as their go-between.

There's a lot more to the story than what I've described above, but the above is all you need to know for the sake of this column -- that, and one other thing, which is admittedly a peripheral point, but one I feel compelled to make:

In horror fiction (as in, sickeningly, real life) children are easy targets. Even the laziest and sloppiest of writers can generate a certain amount of dread and suspense by putting a child in danger, simply because all of us who possess an iota of compassion will automatically feel protective of a child, even a fictional one. But if one chooses to do this, one must be cautious of a few things: 1) The child has to be more than a mere symbol or literary construct; he or she must be a fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional human being -- and that includes any annoying flaws in their personality; 2) Said child must also be depicted as not completely clueless of their situation; otherwise this could lead to their surrendering to the role of victim, which could very well harm not only the integrity of the narrative but hurt reader sympathy, as well; and, 3) The depiction of any cruelty against said child must be both justified in order for the story to maintain its integrity and depicted with a deft hand -- that is to say, it must be as swift and brief as possible.

Okay, with that mini-rant out of the way, I'm going to jump around for a few paragraphs, so stay with me.

I once had the pleasure of spending fifteen minutes at a bar with the late, great Robert Bloch talking about movies, fiction, and peoples' misconceptions about what they both see and read.

Bloch told me -- as he did many other fans over the decades -- that he still had people come up to him and complain about how bloody and violent they found the shower scene in Hitchcock's film version of Psycho. ("Thank God I didn't have her sitting on the toilet," Bloch always said.)

People complained about Janet Leigh's nudity and how seeing her naughty bits so offended their sensibilities; they complained about the excessive amounts of blood; and they complained, consistently, about the violence of seeing the knife plunge into Ms. Leigh's body over and over.

Uh-huh, okay, right.

Go back and watch Psycho and pay particular attention to the shower sequence. Hitchcock -- aided greatly by the work of the brilliant film editor George Tomasini -- pulled off a dark magic trick that to my mind has yet to be equaled in American film: they made you believe you were seeing things that weren't actually depicted.

You do not see Janet Leigh's naughty bits. You do not see blood spalttering all over everything. And you most definitely do not ever, even once, see the knife plunge into Ms. Leigh's body. But the sequence is so brilliantly photographed and edited that viewers were -- and some still are -- left with the impression that, dammit, they saw all of that.

(Another good example is the justifiably famous "hobbling" scene from the film version of Stephen King's Misery; you see Annie smash Paul's left foot for all of 2 seconds, just long enough for your to shout "Ouch!", but you never see her do the right foot -- you hear it, and you see Paul writhing and screaming, and that remains enough for viewers to insist they saw her smash both ankles.)

I find that I am in a similar situation when it comes to the reviews for Prodigal Blues. (And, no, I'm not trying to compare my work to that of King, Bloch, or Hitchcock, we clear on that? Good.)

What's happened is this: at least half the reviews have warned readers that the novel contains scenes of (to quote from one) "...graphic child abuse and torture..."

Sounds like another fun, light-hearted, gay-spirited, slapstick comedic romp for which I am so well-known, doesn't it? A little something to make Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door seem like a Neil Simon laugh-fest. (And as an aside, if you want to read a supreme example of how savagery directed against children can be used as an integral part of a story, then steel yourself and read that groundbreaking, heartbreaking masterwork from Ketchum.)

There's just one thing -- with the sole exception of a single brief image the narrator glimpses on a digital computer file, the novel contains no depictions of abuse or torture of children. Zero. Nada. Don't worry about coming across it, 'cause it ain't there. Trust me, I wrote the thing, I'd remember.

Every instance of abuse and/or torture suffered by the group of children is conveyed -- again, with the exception of that single image, which takes up all of 2 lines in the book -- through dialogue, through the children relating their experiences to the narrator.

Yet one reviewer to whom I spoke after his review was posted said to me, "I know damn well I read that!" I asked him to pick up the ARC and flip through it and read to me any graphically-depicted scene of totrture and/or abuse.

After a minute or two of his flipping around and muttering under his breath, he finally sighed and said, "Well, shit! I thought I read that."

He then offered to go back and amend his review, which I said was unnecessary, because he (and the others) had proven an important point to me -- one that I wanted to prove mostly to myself; that if one exercises the utmost care when dealing with a delicate and controversial subject, one can make a reader believe that they've read something that isn't actually in the book.

It's a wonderful thing when a reader's imagination can fill in the blanks you as a writer deliberately create, because nearly every single time that happens, said reader can summon up images and events infinitely more disturbing and horrifying than anything you could describe in excruciating detail.

Which, to reiterate, I do not do in Prodigal Blues.

I know that lately I've been talking about this novel to the point where you may be sick of hearing about it, but it's a work of which I am supremely proud.

Until next time ....

Installment #17: Of Nalo Hopkinson, Readers' Perception, and "It Ain't Necessarily So."

2006-07-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

My wife Lucy and I are lucky in that we can call award-winning writer Nalo Hopkinson our friend. Nalo, in case you're not familiar with her work, has been nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus Award, and the World Fantasy Award. In 1999, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She's one helluva story-teller, and a damned nice (not to mention smart, compassionate, and sexy) person.

She has told me on more than one occasion that, based on what she's read about my work, it sounds fascinating to her, and she wishes she could read some of it ... but she avoids reading horror because she finds it too disturbing. (Which I can understand, but in Nalo's case this statement creates something of a mystifying contradiction: if you have a chance to read her amazing short story collection Skin Folk, you're going to encounter a quartet of horror stories that are out-and-out screamers; one of which, "Snake", will sear its way into your nightmares for a very long time. But I digress.)

Nalo is not the first person to tell me or Lucy that they've not read my work because they find horror too disturbing. It occurred to me -- Mensa material that I am -- that the reason for this is simple: I am so closely associated with horror (I'm the freakin' president of the Horror Writers' Association, fer chrissakes!...at least for a few more months) that many people automatically assume that everything I write is horrific.

To quote the great song from Porgy and Bess: "It ain't necessarily so."

Sometimes readers' (or, in this case, potential readers') perception of your work can work against you. I have written in the fields of mystery, fantasy science fiction, science fantasy, western, romance, so-called "literary", mainstream, and even -- if I understand the definition correctly -- slipstream.

So I have decided -- as a courtesy to those of you who have avoided reading my work because you share Nalo's concerns (and in a blatant attempt to garner more readers, being a needy sort) -- to offer here a list of my works that are most definitely not horror. Sure, some of the stories that follow are dark, and may not deal with the cheeriest of subject matter, but none of them are, in my opinion, horror in either the traditional sense or the popular perception of what constitutes the field. I'm going to start by listing and briefly discussing a half-dozen of non-horror stories, and then follow with a complete list of my non-horror stories.

1) "I Never Spent the Money": This is as straightforward a mainstrem story as I've ever written, a simple tale of two men who strike up a conversation in a bar. One is on the road because he's depressed that his divorce is about to become final in a few days; the other -- a much older man -- has just walked out of a nursing home and is readying himself to go across the street and rob the bank located there. It's a story about shattered hopes, wistfulness, and, ultimately, self-redemption. It has appeared on this web site, as well as in my collection Things left Behind and Graveyard People: The Collected Cedar Hill Stories, Volume 1. (Parenthetical pause: to save time and column space, you need only pop over to my Bibliography section to track down the stories and where they've appeared.)

2) "Aisle of Plenty": Another mainstream piece, this one my contribution to the series of post-9/11 fiction that, for a while (understandably so) almost became a genre unto itself. This one concerns itself, on the surface, anyway, with a series of near-tragic events that befall a Pakistani man (who's recently become an official US citizen) when he goes to a department store to buy a gift for some family members. Mistaken for an Iranian, an Iraqi, and a Saudi by the various customers and employees of the store, his simple, thoughtful errand quickly turns into a nightmare of prejudice and mistaken identity.

3) "At Eternity's Gate": A fantasy tale that concerns itself with a young woman, an artist who's dying in hospice, and her encounters during her seizures with Vincent Van Gogh, who is attempting to complete an unfinished painting through her.

4) "One Brown Mouse": The only outright science-fantasy story I've ever written, this one concerning a widower's discovery that the death of his wife was a "quantum accident" that various beings -- some of the extraterrestrial -- are trying to correct. I walked on air for a week when Ellen Datlow, in that year's edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, called it "...a remarkable story...".

5) "Danaid Night": A short-short that was written as an anniversary gift for a couple of friends. A semi-surreal piece that was written as my nod to Borges. It is also the most unapologetically romantic story I've ever written.

6) "Matthew in the Morning": A sort-of mystery story set during the battle of Cold Harbor during the Civil War, a study of how war can corrupt even the best and most innocent of souls, yet have a certain sort of dignity and glory emerge. One of my personal favorite non-horror stories.

Now, here's the list -- a bit long -- of all my non-horror stories, including the genres in which they can be classified (and remembers, go to my Bibliography section to track down where these pieces have appeared):

"After the Elepant Ballet" (Fantasy)
"Adhumbia" (Mystery/Suspense)
"Afterthoughts" (Fantasy)
"A Leg Up, or The Constant Tin Soldier (Gonzo Version)" (Fantasy, and a shameless tribute to William Goldman's The Princess Bride)
"All the Unlived Moments" (Science Fiction)
"The Ballad of the Side-Street Wizard" (Fantasy)
"Bright Be the Face" (Fantasy or Slipstream, depending on how you define the latter)
"Captain Jim's Drunken Dream" (Fantasy -- and, yes, I stole the title from the great James Taylor song)
"The Cat's-Paw Affair" (Mystery)
"Consolation Prize" (Fantasy)
"The Envelopes, Please" (Mystery)
"Fisherman's Delight" (Fantasy)
"From Among the Stars" (Fantasy)
The Hand Which Graces" (Fantasy, inspired by the work of Rod Serling)
"In the Direction of Summers Coming" (Fantasy or Slipstream)
"In the Lowlands" (Mystery -- my personal favorite of all my Cat Crimes stories)
"I Suppose This Makes Me Sancho" (Mystery)
"Just Like Mom Used to Make" (Mystery)
"Kite People" (Slipstream)
"Mail-Order Annie" (Western, the title taken from a Harry Chapin song)
News From the Long Mountains" (Fantasy)
"Palimpsest Day" (Science Fiction)
"Point of Contraction" (Science Fiction)
"The Rabbit Within" (Fantasy -- another personal favorite of mine)
"Rami Temporalis" (Fantasy/Fabulist)
"Redemption, Inc." (Fantasy)
Resurrection Joe" (Mystery/Suspense)
"Rights of Memory" (Fantasy)
"Silver Thread, Hammer Ring" (Slipstream)
"Small Song" (Fantasy/Slipstream...I've never really been able to nail down where this one belongs)
"A Song for No One's Mourning" (Fantasy)
"That, and the Rain" (Fantasy)

... I'm sure I'm overlooking a few stories, but for those of you who've been hesitant to read my work because you're adverse to horror, I think the above-listed tales will have something that will appeal to you.

I don't read in any single genre, nor do I write in any single genre; nothing worthwhile can be created in a vacuum, regardless of what field in which you toil.

So while I will always be proud to be thought of as a horror writer, I think it important for potential readers to know there's more to my work than a single genre label.

I hope you find something on that list to enjoy.

And thanks for giving my work a chance, Nalo.

Installment #16: Of Subtext, Subtlety, and Coming In After The Fact

2005-09-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

A word of warning: If you're not a writer, this particular installment may well bore you into a coma, so non-writers should read it only if they're suffering from insomnia. Never say I'm not looking out for your health and well-being.

I'm kind of a snob when it comes to fiction -- horror or otherwise -- and don't mind admitting it. This gets me into a lot of trouble when it comes to reading for pleasure, something I have less and less time for these days. I often make the mistake of applying (sometimes consciously, mostly not) my own storytelling standards to the work of those I read, and that's just silly (as well as being a habit I am fighting to break); if everyone wrote the same kind of stuff I do, and wrote it the same way I do, "variety" would be the stuff of fairy tales. And everyone would be depressed and grumpy all the time.

But every once in a while I start to ask questions about the fiction being produced in the horror field, simply because I'm still stubborn enough to want to see the field expand beyond its popular definition.

Take, for instance, a certain type of story, one that I have come to call the After-the-Fact story. I have not seen many After-the-Fact stories written in the horror genre; mostly, they've stayed in the neighborhood of you-should-pardon-the-expression literary fiction. So, why haven't we seen more of this type of story in horror?

After-the-Fact stories are tricky little bastards, because the main action of the story has already happened before the first sentence. After-the-Fact stories do not employ flashback, nor do they resort to the obvious mechanism of having a character offer a quick recap of what happened before the reader came into it; no, in these stories, you're presented with a situation that, nine times out of ten, is in no way connected to what actually happened; you have to piece together the events by what is said and done by the characters. They're a little like walking into a room just after someone's had an argument or gotten a piece of bad news; even though you know something's just happened, no one will tell you what it was, so you have to figure it out for yourself by observing the effect it's had on those around you: you have to pay attention to the detritus, because that's all you've got to go on.

A classic example is John Cheever's story "The Swimmer". On the surface, it's about nothing more than some rich guy in suburbia who's spending a Sunday afternoon running from neighbor's house to neighbor's house to use their swimming pools. "I'm swimming my way home," he tells his friends and neighbors, all of whom laugh and remark on what a card he is as they go about mixing their martinis and discussing events at the country club. Occasionally someone remarks, in passing, " ... he's looking better, don't you think ..." or ... I'm really surprised to see him out like this, after, well ..." Then the main character comes over to them and that line of conversation is dropped. This goes on for a while, each successive neighbor becoming more surprised and anxious at seeing him, offering more whispered comments when he's out of earshot -- " ... didn't realize he was back ..." etc. -- until it becomes obvious that something fairly awful has happened to this guy sometime before the story began, and though Cheever never once directly states what happened, everything you need to know is there.

The first time I read "The Swimmer", its sudden shocker of an ending seemed to come out of left field, so I went back and re-read the story, much more slowly than the first time, and realized that Cheever had, indeed, dropped a ton of clues; unfortunately, the majority of them were hidden in the detritus, given only through subtext.

Raymond Chandler (creator of Philip Marlowe, the hero of such classic novels as The Big Sleep and The Little Sister) once gave the best example of what constitutes subtext that I've ever encountered (and I am liberally paraphrasing here):

A man and woman, both middle-aged, are waiting for an elevator. It arrives, and the man helps the woman get on. For the first several floors they are alone, watching the blinking lights. They do not speak and stand well apart from each other. The woman wears a very nice dress. The man wears a suit, tie, and hat. The elevator stops -- not their floor -- and a young woman gets on; she smiles at both the man and the woman, who smile at her in return. The man removes his hat. The ride continues in silence. The elevator stops, the girls gets off, the man puts his hat back on. A few floors later, the man and woman get off and walk together toward a door at the end of the corridor.

It was usually at this point that Chandler would ask the listener: "What's written on that door?"

So I'll put the question to you: what words are written on that door which our middle-aged couple are heading toward?

How the hell am I supposed to know? some of you may cry. No one in that freakin' elevator said word one to anyone else, and on the basis of all the nothing that happened during that boring, boring, boring ride, I'm supposed to guess what it says on that stupid door?

Yes, you are.

Because an awful lot happened during that elevator ride: 1) The man and woman never spoke to each other, even while they were alone; 2) They also made it a point to stand well apart from each other even though the man helped her get on; 3) When the young woman got on, the man, obviously out of respect and courtesy, removed his hat; 4) Once the young woman disembarked, he put the hat back on; and, 5) The man and woman got off on the same floor, and are heading toward that door together.

Still say nothing happened and that you have no clues to go on?

Detritus. Subtext. The unspoken information that is conveyed to a reader through a character's behavior, actions, speech, or lack thereof. In acting, it's referred to as "nuance". It's subtle, but its implications are quite direct if you care enough to pay attention.

That is, in my opinion, what the horror field has lost over the last few decades: a willingness on the part of both writers and readers to (respectively) employ and appreciate the quieter, more delicate, and less obvious details of character and scene that can make fiction so much richer and rewarding.

Last chance; take a guess what it says on that door.

Try: Marriage Counselor.

That was an After-the-Fact story; tricky little bastard, wasn't it?

There's usually very little action in these stories; nothing much seems to happen at the core -- it's on the periphery that you have to watch out for yourself.

A handful of other After-the-Fact stories you'd do well to search out and read include Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"; Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path"; Raymond Carver's "What Do You Do In San Francisco?", "Popular Mechanics", and "Why, Honey?" (these latter two being arguably horror stories); Carson McCullers's "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud"; Michael Chabon's "House Hunting"; John O'Hara's brilliant "Neighbors" (a horror story if ever there was one); and a personal favorite of mine, Russell Banks's "Captions" -- perhaps in its way the most extreme After-the-Fact story I've yet encountered --wherein Banks details the agonizing disintegration of a married couple's existence through captions taken from newspapers or written underneath pictures in photo albums.

You've undoubtedly noticed that the above list contains no horror writers. There is a reason for this: not many have attempted an After-the-Fact story. Maybe it's because the structure of this type of story seems to self-consciously "literary" to them; maybe it's because horror readers have become far too accustomed to having everything spoon-fed to them and don't think they should have to work a little while reading a story, and so horror writers just automatically assume that All Must Be Revealed as quickly and in as simplistic of terms as possible. I don't know, I'm guessing here. But I've been going through my books searching for at least six examples of a successful After-the-Fact story in the horror field, and here's what I came up with:

"Sitting in the Corner, Whimpering Quietly," by Dennis Etchison
"Petey" by T.E.D. Klein
"Red" by Richard Christian Matheson
"Snow Day" by Elizabeth Massie
"Taking Down the Tree" by Steve Rasnic Tem
"Gone" by Jack Ketchum

... and that was it (even with this small a list, Klein's, Matheson's, Ketchum's, and Tem's stories almost offered too many concrete hints to qualify).

I thought perhaps Peter Straub's "Bar Talk", "The Veteran", or "A Short Guide To the City" (all from his magnificent collection Houses Without Doors) could be used to beef up the list, but that would have been stacking the deck (pardon my mixed metaphors); Straub's work is the result of an exceptionally well-read literary background, so of course the sensibilities of his work are informed from countless sources, resulting in fiction that is challenging in its approach to structure and subtext -- no more so than in the "Interlude" fictions sprinkled throughout Houses.

So no Straub; it wouldn't be playing fair on my part. Same goes for Stewart O'Nan, whose wonderful collection In The Walled City contains not one, but two After-the-Fact stories, "Calling" and "Finding Amy". (I exclude O'Nan because, though he does sometimes dabble in the horror field, he is not primarily a horror writer.)

So I came up with six stories, four of which (though superb) just barely made it onto the list. I'm sure there are other After-the-Fact horror stories out there that I missed, but my guess is, not that many.

Horror may be trying to outgrow its popular definition, but it's still suffering from a case of arrested literary adolescence -- and I'm not one who apologizes for using the term "literary" when talking about horror. It can be among our most literary forms of storytelling; emphasis on can be; we still need to take chances, even if we fall flat on our faces in the attempt.

I had never attempted this particular type of story for fear of making myself look pretentious or foolish, but I figured that if I'm going to gripe about horror writers not taking chances, then I damned well ought to be willing to call my own bluff. But the thing is, this kind of story is difficult as hell; it's difficult to read, difficult to figure out, and you-bet-your-ass difficult to write; After-the-Fact stories are tricky little bastards.

Sometime later this year (or early next), an anthology entitled Corpse Blossoms is going to be released, and it's going to contain my attempt at an After-the-Fact story, a piece called "Need". If and when you read this story, I ask that you pay attention to what happens in the elevator (metaphorically speaking). Study the detritus. And don't think for a moment that what's being said by the characters has a damn thing to do with what happened before you came in. Whether or not I've succeeded with "Need" is not for me to say, but I do hope that you find the story worth your reading time and your consideration ...

... after the fact, of course.

Since I'm not really playing fair this time -- after all, it's going to be months before the story in question comes out -- I'd like to ask all of you to help me see if we can't expand that list of six given above. If you can find any other After-the-Fact stories in the horror field (remember the criteria), point me in their direction, and I'll do a follow-up to this column in a month or so.

Until then, stay tuned ....

Installment #15: Of Reviews, Fragile Egos, And "He Sure Went Ape-Shit", Part Four

2005-08-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Since the last time, I have received nearly two dozen e-mails from people asking for a "preview" of this particular installment; Brian Keene received sixteen e-mails on the day the last installment posted, most of them of the "What the hell are you and Braunbeck fighting about?" variety.

It is to laugh. Sincerely. I mention Brian in reference to the Ron Horsley/Shocklines Affair, and everyone automatically assumes that he and I are going at each other's throats. More than a few of these e-mails expressed concerned that I was either going to point fingers and name names or -- at the other end of the spectrum -- tell people what they want to hear.

We'll be getting to all of this shortly.

As I said in the last installment, one of the things that prompted me to bring up this subject after so long a time is that, in the past five weeks, I have encountered no fewer than seventeen instances on-line of published writers attacking their negative reviews. I say "attacking" rather than "responding to" because in every single case, the writers have wound up throwing hissy fits, nearly all of which have ended with something along the lines of "...you ought to try writing a novel sometime and see how easy it is, then see how you'd respond to a review like the one you gave me."

Wah-wah-wah. Get over yourselves.

I'm not talking about the kind of reviews wherein the reviewer gives careful consideration to the writer's work, its intent, its overall effectiveness, craftsmanship, etc., and ends on a negative note ("I cannot recommend this book.").

No, I'm talking about the kind of review (and I use that term in its broadest possible application) that says, "Man, this book sucked. This guy can't write his way out of wet paper sack. I'm never going to read him again, and am going to tell all my friends to avoid his work. At least I don't have to buy any toilet paper for a while now."

These, for the most part, are the types of "reviews" that I have seen writers attacking lately. With a passion.

And it's embarrassing as hell. I have no doubt that many -- if not all -- of these writers think they are making a strong point by putting the reviewers in their place, but as far as I'm concerned, all they're doing is giving people the impression that the reviewer hit some kind of nerve with them; after all, if the review has no merit whatsoever, why would anyone bothering responding to it? But since the writer did respond, then the review must have some grain of truth to it, no matter how ineloquently expressed. Right?

Once more, with feeling: Wah-wah-wah. Get over yourselves. Not everyone is going to love every single thing you write, and some folks are going to be less than kind when expressing that opinion. Besdies -- shouldn't you be working on the new book or story, not wasting your time defending yourself to someone who's going to take your response as a backhanded validation of thier point?

At this point, I'd like to ask that you pop over to the Guestbook area of my web site. Scroll down until you come to post made by vince on July 7, 2005 (you maybe should scroll down a little farther, as well). Basically, Vince (a wonderful guy who's been a regular here for a long time) thought that Brian Keen's The Rising (direct quote here) "...sucked." There's a little more discussion about this, and then, if you'll scroll back up, you'll find the following post from Brian Keene:

"Hey Vince--sorry to hear that THE RISING and CITY OF THE DEAD didn't work for you. Perhaps TERMINAL will be more your cup o' tea (it has characters and no zombies). But anybody that jams to Golden Earring is okay in my book. ;)"

That, my friends, is how you respond to negative reviews -- if you choose to respond at all. As a result of Brian's gracious reply, he sold 2 copies of Terminal to folks who otherwise would not have bothered. Brian did not get on there and say, "Yeah, well, you didn't spend 7 months writing and revising it, you didn't lose sleep over plot problems, and you don't have to worry about how you're going to make your next house payment if the book doesn't do well, so you know what? Suck on this...."

But responses like that from writers have been popping up with alarming frequency lately, and there's no good goddamn reason for it. Maybe this sort of thing has been going on for a long time and I've only recently become aware of it, but aware of it I am, and sickened by it, as well.

And when did I become so (arguably) over-sensitized to this?

During the Infamous Ron Horsely/From the Borderlands/Shocklines Affair.

For those of you who might not be familiar with The Shocklines Discussion Board, it was established by Matt Schwartz -- one of the premiere on-line booksellers of horror fiction, and quite possibly the most infectiously cheerful human beings you'll ever meet -- a few years ago as a way for Matt's customers to directly interact with those writers whose work they were buying. Curious about what T.M. Wright's next novel will be? Then go on Shocklines and ask him. Want to know why Jim Moore decided to split his latest novel into three separate volumes? Ask him on the board.

This was, and remains, a pretty damned smart marketing strategy on Matt's part -- and make no mistake, marketing was one of the primary reasons Matt decided to host the board; if his customers had a place where they could communicate with the writers whose work he was selling, then it's all good for everyone invloved: his customers get the pleasure of interacting with their favorite writers, Matt sells more books, and the writers always have a place to go to hear what's on readers' minds (and to get an ego boost when one is needed -- you will not find a more friendly, enthusiastic, and vocal group of fans than those who haunt this board, and more than a few of the published writers you have read have stopped in for some much-needed kind words from readers when the work sometimes get the better of them). People can talk about damn near anything they want, so long as it doesn't become personal or discourteous. (And Matt will make this call if needed; it's his right. He pays for the web space, he monitors the board, and everyone is there because of his money, time, and effort. It's his virtual home -- like this web page is mine -- and in Matt's house (as in mine) there will be courtesy.)

A little over a year ago, just after Warner Books released the anthology From the Borderlands in paperback, a guy by the name of Ron Horsley posted an utterly scathing review of it on the Shocklines discussion board. Ron liked some of the stories in the collection, but mostly he didn't. A lot. A lot.

It was, in actuality, only half a review of the book itself; the other half was a merciless criticism of Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone's editorial process, which Ron found to be unfocused and overly self-congratulatory.

In short, it was an almost wholly negative review that was in places a bit mean-spirited (not nearly as mean-spirited as his reviews would soon become, but we'll get to that). The review was bad, yes, but not so much that Matt considered it to be offensive or discourteous -- Matt, in fact, welcomes conflicting opinions on the board, as they often lead to interesting and in-depth discussion.

Well, even if you weren't party to the debacle that followed Ron's review, you can probably guess what happened: the backlash was instantaneous and overwhelmingly defensive. Everyone thought -- to put it mildly -- that Ron's review was unnecessarily harsh, but (and this is the part that was consistently overlooked after the initial explosion) almost no one who responded to this addressed any of Ron's points; they instead went after Ron himself. He was an "asshole", a "jerk", and "...probably some wanna-be writer who got rejected by Tom and Elizabeth." The theorizing about why he did it and what kind of writer and human being he was continued ... and yet only a small handful of people -- mostly writers who had a story in the collection -- made reference to his criticisms of the work itself.

(An aside: Tom Monteleone -- never one to shrink from a good fight -- recognized the review for what it was, and did not bite. Instead, in typically classy fashion, he chimed in once with: "I can see some of the points he's trying to make. I don't agree, but I can understand how someone might see it that way. We should just move on." If only that had happened....)

Well, Ron was quick to respond to every comment made, and as the thread went on (and on...and on...) the posts between him and those who jumped into the fray grew increasingly more vicious, defensive, spiteful, and, at last, personal. It quickly became no longer about the review, but about one-upmanship, who was going to get the last word, the best zinger.

It was pathetic and embarrassing and childish and beneath the intelligence and dignity of everyone who chose to remain involved. (And please spare me the defense of, "Well, he started it." Yeah, he did, but people could have chosen to not continue it, could have taken Tom's sage advice and moved on, but they didn't. Once a gauntlet has been picked up, it doesn't really matter a damn who threw it down.)

Ron then went on to shoot himself in the foot when he replied that, yes, he had submitted to Borderlands and, yes, his story had been rejected. Well, that just went over like gangbusters, because now everyone had even more reason to dismiss his opinions as sour grapes. The focus shifted completely from the content of his review to the reviewer himself, and it got ugly in a hurry on both sides. Ron posted reviews of The Rising, House of Blood, Possessions and several other books in rapid succession, the mean-spiritedness of which increased geometrically with the rancor directed his way on the board. A scathing review from Ron was met by infuriated responses, back and forth, until it all became so personal and offensive that Matt started locking threads and, ultimately, banned Ron from the board.

But it didn't remain on the board. It spilled over onto Ron's own mesage board, as well as those of several other writers, not to mention countless e-mails that flew fast and furious between people, the contents of which became more and more personal. I'm not going to discuss this aspect of the event because I deliberately stayed away from it -- even those few times Ron tried to bring it up in person with me. And I did this because none of it should have happened in the first place. Why?

Because Ron posted a review that was obviously designed to get the response it did. Had peoples' reaction been like that Brian Keene gave to Vince in my Guestbook, none of the ugliness that ensued would have happened. But the bait was thrown out, and it was taken, and what followed, followed. (An aside: Brian Keen's initial response to Ron's review was not unlike that he offered to Vince. It was not until Brian felt that his friends were being unjstifiably attacked that he got deeper into it, but enough of this already; methinks you've got a good idea of what went down.)

And I didn't say a damned thing.

I didn't say anything because, A) I had a story in From the Borderlands that made Ron's very short "pass" list (with reservations on his part), and knew that anything I said woyuld have been seen as defending Ron because he gave my story a thumbs-up; B) I knew most of the people who were taking part in the argument; and, C) Ron was -- and remains -- a close friend of mine. To step in and say anything would have been seen as choosing sides, and I refuse to be pulled into any fight that I had nothing to do with. I'm gonna be dead soon enough, and I've got better things to spend my anger and passion on than a flame war with delusions of granduer.

But then it started coming back on me and my wife. And it's still coming back on us. I started getting e-mails, and then phone calls, from people telling me that I had to "...do something to control" Ron or it was going to hurt my career.

Huh?

Lemme get this straight: here's a guy who all of you think is an asshole, whose opinions you find meaningless and worthless, and who -- in the words of one writer whose book Ron was particularly harsh on -- "...should not be taken seriously, nor should anyone who associates with him..." -- this is the same guy who's going to damage my career and credibility because I'm friends with him?

I put this question to Matt Warner when he called me with his concerns, and Matt told me -- as a friend -- that there were: "...a lot of people who're taking your silence as tacit approval of what Ron's doing. They think because you're not saying anything, that you agree with him."

Well, it turns out that Brian Keene was one of those people who assumed that my silence was tacit agreement with -- and approval of -- what Ron was saying. "Kinda figured you didn't care for the old Broiler anymore," was what he said. ("Broiler", by the way, is my nickname for Brian.)

If you have been reading this carefully, then you're going to realize that nowhere in this installment have I taken a side on this issue -- except, of course, my own and that of my wife.

For those of you who made the same assumption that Brian did (and he and I remain friends, as do Ron and I), I say to you now the same thing I said to Broiler:

You should have asked me.

But thus far, only Brian Keene has had the good sense to do so -- directly ask me -- after I said that.

Which is why he is the only person who knows what I thought and still think about the whole unfortunate mess. He was concerned enough about our friendship -- not his ego -- to ask me, because he knows that friends can both strongly agree and/or strongly disagree on something and still remain friends.

I wish other friends had paid me this courtesy.

Here is where I definitely take a side.

My wife and I live in Columbus, Ohio. This part of Ohio is all but overflowing with science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark fantasy writers, many of whom live less than an hour from our front door. Off the top of my head, I'd say there are at least half a dozen writers who live nearby, many of whom Lucy and I used to see socially at least once a month. We thought of them as friends.

Well, take a wild guess as to how many of them we've seen socially since the Ron/Shocklines debacle.

Zero. No get-togethers, no phone calls, and e-mails only when it has to do with business.

Had it only been one or two of them, I would not have given it a second thought -- after all, we're all busy writing, and that has to come before most things in life, save health and family.

But it wasn't just a few of them -- it was all of them, and at the same time. You needn't be Einstein or Hawking to discern the connection. (There is one fellow who both Lucy and I don't include in this group because we know how damned busy he is, and always has been, but for the most part, we've run out of excuses for the rest of them.)

For my part, I can live with it; in one form or another, I've spent most of my time alone for most of my life, I'm used to not hanging out with folks, so the lack of an active social life isn't exactly a stake through my heart.

This has, however, deeply, deeply hurt Lucy, and that I cannot -- nor will I -- live with. Lucy used to be a web-page designer -- and a pretty good one, to boot.

But here's the thing: since the Shocklines debacle, she has lost every one of her clients, a couple of whom at least had the balls to tell her it was because "...everyone knows you're friends with Ron..." and they didn't want it coming back on them. (I'll remind you that Ron is the asshole whose opinions carry no weight whatsoever, nobody takes him seriously, his views are worthless, etc.) She has also had potential clients decide to not use her services for the same reason.

Not only that, but as the war escalated onto other boards and blogs, some folks felt compelled to seek out some of Ron's on-line writing so they could tear it up the same way he tore into Borderlands. Some of his stories had been published in Dark Planet , a web-zine that had been running for several years, edited by Lucy (long before she permitted me to be her hubby). It wasn't enough for these folks to just attack Ron's work that appeared there, no; they had to attack and insult the zine itself, as well as Lucy herself and her efforts at editing and maintaining it. Even when I pointed this out to one group, no apology followed; instead, what I got was: "Yeah, well, it's a lame title for a 'zine, and Ron's stuff sucked, so it doesn't say much about her abilities as an editor that she published it." (That she also published work by Kelly Link, Nalo Hopkinson, Brian Hopkins, and several other award-winning writers was never mentioned, nor that some pieces originally published in Dark Planet went on to be reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Doesn't say much about her abilities as an editor, my ass.)

At the same time "Ron-Gate" was happening, an anthology was being put together that was only recently released (nope, not gonna tell you which one). I saw this anthology, and wondered aloud why I hadn't been invited to submit something for consideration -- the type of stuff I write would have been perfect for this book. So I asked the editor -- a person I've never worked with and now never will. This person's response? You guessed it: "Everyone knows you're friends with Horsley, and I didn't want that affecting sales."

But the icing on the cake for all of this was applied a few weeks ago when I came across a brief thread on another discussion board about my forthcoming Leisure novel, Keepers.

Quick backstory: at the request of editor Don D'Auria, I did a major re-write on Keepers (it orginally appeared in my CD-Rom collection, Sorties, Cathexes, and Personal Effects); I wound up cutting something like 35, 000 words from it and replacing them with nearly 45, 000 new ones. At its core, it's still the same story, but much of it is very different from its original version.

Anyhoo ... I wound up getting seriously blocked on the new opening sequence. Well, enter Ron one afternoon with a brief story about a funny air-freshener he saw hanging from the rear-view mirror of another car and -- viola! -- the new opening sequence reveals itself to me, whole-cloth.

So I dedicated the book to Ron. Told a handful of people about it, and why.

So here's this discussion thread, wherein one person says: "He's dedicated it to Ron Horsley. I'm sure as shit not gonna waste money on any book dedicated that that asshole."

This followed by several posts of agreement; so at least seven people I know of aren't going to be buying the book because I dedicated it to Ron. Talk about guilt by association....

So, here you have two people -- my wife and myself (mostly my wife, goddammit) -- who had nothing to do with what happened at Shocklines, but who, now, have been hurt both professionally and personally because they chose to stay out of it, and it's easier for people to make wrongheaded assumptions about their reasons than do the intelligent thing and ask them.

And all because a handful of people could not handle a bad review that was all-too obviously designed to make tempers flare.

Don't call me or send me e-mails detailing all the personal stuff that happened after Ron's first series of reviews. I am talking solely about his reviews and the initial reactions they solicited on the board. Even more specifically, I am talking about his review of From the Borderlands that began all of it -- and should have ended it right then and there, had not everyone been so willing to take the bait.

If I sound angry, it's because I am. I am angry that my wife has lost all her web-page clients since then (and all within the first week); I am angry that some editor passed me over for an invite not because my work wasn't what he was looking for (my stuff would have been right at home in this book, and he knows it) but because I knew someone who was an object of controversy at the time; I am angry that there are writers out there who assume that the Shocklines board -- as wonderful a place as it is -- represents the attitudes and opinions of the horror field as whole, which it most certainly does not; I am angry that people Lucy and I thought were our friends just assumed that I was siding with Ron because I refused to get invloved in what was and remains an ultimately childish display of tempers; I am angry that people were not only quick to assume my views, but then speak of it to others as if they had some sort of inside information; and I am utterly disgusted that since all of this happened, more and more writers are taking to the web to attack their bad reviews as if it actually proves something other than their complete lack or professionalism, thick skin, and a spine.

My wife has felt diminished and lonely and sad because of what has been directed her way since all this happened, and if it were in my power to assemble everyone who made her feel this way so that I could go down the line with a baseball bat and break all their kneecaps, I would do so without a moment's hesitation. Because you may think that by doing what you did, you proved that you could take a stand against those who attack others' work, but all you've accomplished is to show what weak and pitiful cowards you really are. You hurt my wife's feelings for no reason other than you couldn't hurt Ron's, and so felt compelled to make someone suffer your wrath so you could go to sleep feeling self-righteous and secure in your sycophantic place. How easy it is to side with the majority, even if you know or suspect that the majority may be just as much to blame for things going sour as those the majority accuses of instigating the trouble.

Dress it up in all the bullshit justification you want, but the truth is this: she did nothing to deserve this treatment. (And by the way, neither did I.)

You should have asked.

But you didn't. And so you will never know.

You know what? The above statement isn't completely fair. I decided to write this installment so I could clear the air, and that's what I'm going to do, so here goes:

Did I approve of what Ron did? What the hell does it matter? He's an adult, just like everyone else who got involved, no one needs my permission or approval. For the record: I wish he hadn't done it (I told him that to his face) because it hurt his career. If you're nice, it's viewed as a weakness, and peoples' memories are short; if you piss them off, they will be cursing your name on their deathbeds.

Did I agree with anything he said in his initial series of reviews? Some of what he said, yes. He did make some salient points, but the manner in which he made them too often overshadowed -- and arguably negated -- their validity; it became not so much about the opinions he was expressing as it did how they were being expressed. (This also have I said to him face to face.)

About which books/novels/stories that he reviewed did you agree with him? That's my business and mine alone.

Do I think he is entirely to blame for what happened? No, I do not, and if you've been reading this installment carefully, you know why.

Do you think anything good came out of this? Yes, I do. Every time Ron posted a review, that particular book and its author were a hot topic of conversation, and several people said ourtright that they went out and bought the book so they could read it and offer an informaed opinion about why Ron was wrong. Several writers garnered themselves new readers and additional book sales because of the controversy. Like the old saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

So, actually, you're defending him, aren't you? You haven't been reading this very carefully, have you? I'm not defending him, nor am I distancing myself from him; he is my friend, as is Brian Keene, as are several of the people who were invloved in this unfortunate incident. If a friendship can't survive a strong disagreement, then it wasn't much of a friendship to begin with.

Then why bring all of this up? Because my wife has been insulted, ostracized, and deeply hurt as a result, and it's been going on for a year now, and it's going to stop, because the people who have done this to her have subtracted enough joy from her life; I'm also bringing it up because I am, A) sick and tired of seeing supposedly professional writers acting like a bunch of shrieking infants every time they get a bad review, and, B) everyone else allowing them to get away with behavior that would be right at home on a playground during 6th-grade recess but has no place in the world of professional publishing.

Which brings me back to my original point: If you are a writer who feels compelled to publicly defend your work against bad reviews, all you wind up proving is that you have too fragile an ego to be in this business in the first place. And if your anger and passion is channeled into anything other than your work and making this world a better place for those you love and care about, then it is wasted effort. Period.

That's it for this installment. From the looks of things, the Fuzzy Bunny Squad may be returning -- with reinforcements -- next time. Come back at the end of the month and see for yourselves.

In the meantime, I won't be looking for any party invitations to come my way.

Until then, stay tuned....

Installment #14: Of Reviews, Fragile Egos, and "He Sure Went Ape-Shit", Part Three

2005-07-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Because the last installment ended by presenting you with a Catch-22-type situation, I want to recap a couple of thing that we've covered up to this point:

1) Reviews can be useful tools in helping a reader decide whether not they want to read a particular book.

2) Reviewers should not be made to feel that they must hold back certain information about the story (a.ka. ***SPOILERS***) if that information plays a key role in supporting their thesis.

3) But readers, for the most part, don't want any ***SPOILERS*** contained in those reviews.

Where doth the twain meet here?

There are a couple of things that you can do to avoid this quagmire: you can read the work in question first, before you even so much as glance at a review, thus removing the ***SPOILER*** element from the equation, or you can employ a trick I've learned over the years: if the reviewer in question knows their stuff, if they adhere to the ideal structure of a review (see Part One of this column for an illustration of that structure), then you can read only the first two and last two paragraphs of the review in order to know what their overall opinion was. Then bookmark or set aside that review so you can come back and read it in its entirety after you've read the work in question for yourself.

To illustrate this pont, I once again direct you to Nick Mamatas's review of In the Midnight Museum. Nick knows his stuff, and because he does, you can read only the first two and last two paragraphs and have a clear understanding of his thesis. G'head.

See what I mean? We've now solved the problem: you've read enough of the review to know Nick's opinion, and Nick doesn't have to worry about someone throwing a hissy fit because his review contained ***SPOILERS***. You can read the novella, then go back and read the review in its entirety to see if you agree with his points. Everybody wins.

Except... (Knew that was coming, didn't you?)

Except there's a strong possibility that a lot of readers don't want to put in that kind of effort. Some have actual lives and better things to do with their time (a concept most writers I know cannot grasp). Some just don't have that kind of patience. Some don't want to waste time reading reviews that could be spent reading the book itself. And some may just be lazy and expect reviewers to put in ***SPOILER*** warnings.

So what's that leave?

Blurbs.

If you're not familar with that term, a "blurb" is a brief piece of text wherein the virtues of a particular book or writer are turned all the way up to 11 in order to give potential readers the prose equivalent of a sound bite. Both of my Leisure novels, In Silent Graves and the forthcoming Keepers, feature on their front covers a blurb taken from Publishers Weekly: "Braunbeck's fiction stirs the mind as it chills the marrow."

This is a perfect blurb; it's concise, it gets your attention, and it gives you a sense of what my work is about without revealing anything specific about the work. It's also a "general" blurb -- one that comments on my overall body of work rather than a specific book.

That blurb, by the way, was taken from the PW review of my first short story collection, Things Left Behind. Now, because it's a "general" blurb, its appearing on the cover of these novels is not taking it out of context; it is being used to give readers an idea of what they can expect from my work in general.

Now, flip over Graves and you will find on the back cover a handful of blurbs taken from reviews of the book itself. Open the cover and you'll find a full page of them that tout both the novel and my work in general. Taken individually, each one is (hopefully) enticing; taken as a whole, they're designed to make the hesitant reader decide in favor of purchasing and reading the book. (This why they're called "marketing tools.")

None of the blurbs were taken out of context (I'll get to that shortly), and I think they make for an intriguing sort-of introduction. Which is why I am a firm believer that a handful of strong blurbs can be just as effective as the same number of positive reviews; they're shorter, they're direct, and they reveal nothing ***SPOILER***-like about the work in question. This, to my mind, makes them a good alternative for potential readers who don't want to chance having a review give away too much of the story.

Not all blurbs are culled from reviews; sometimes -- okay, probably half the time or more -- a writer will contact other writers and ask them if they would be willing to read something with an eye toward providing a blurb. I have gotten several wonderful quotes this way, and have also provided them for other writers. (I don't always do this; in the past 4 years I have been asked to read several novels for which, in the end, I couldn't in good conscience provide a blurb because, well...I didn't like them.)

Let me quickly address a few misconceptions about writers providing blurbs for other writers:

1) Yes, a lot of the time these writers know or are at least acquainted with one another -- but that in no way means that a good blurb will be guaranteed.

2) I can't speak for others, but I myself do read, from first page to last, each and every book I am asked to blurb. (There seems to be a rather cynical belief that writers don't bother reading their buddies' books before giving them a blurb -- while I don't doubt that this happens every so often, it is most assuredly not the norm.)

3) Yes, any writer providing a blurb is aware that it's going to be used to entice a reader to buy this particular book, and will slant their blurb to that end -- but bear in mind that is because they like and believe in the book to begin with, so its integrity needn't be called into question.

This is not to say that things can't go wrong here, as well. If a book is saturated with too many blurbs, one gets the feeling that the publisher is overcompensating and perhaps trying to sell you a bill of goods. The first book in the new Dean Koontz Frankenstein series has ten pages of blurbs inside. That's overkill, because the sheer amount of them robs each individual blurb of its effectiveness. You're so numbed by the time you reach the end of the damned things you almost don't feel like reading the book -- which turns out to be quite a lot of good, old-fashioned fun. But because it starts off by pummeling you with page after page of rave blurbs (almost none of which refer to the book itself), you go in with the creeping feeling that someone is trying to convince you a sow's ear is actually a silk purse.

My own personal cutoff point is two pages or a dozen blurbs (whichever comes first); after that, I ignore them. With blurbs, less is defnitely more. (The ideal for me, by the way, is a single page containing somewhere between five and ten concise, tantalizing quotes.)

I am very careful to make certain that none of the blurbs used for my books are taken out of context -- I don't want readers to feel that these quotes have been employed to mislead them, and I don't want reviewers to feel that I've misrepresented their theses by "doctoring" their comments.

F'rinstance: if you go back to Nick's review of Museum, you'll find -- as I did -- that there are some choice lines that could easily be pulled out and used as blurbs, the most obvious being "...entertaining and gripping..." taken from the 3rd paragraph. But I won't do that, because, while excerpting that trio of words does not (technically) misquote Nick, it would constitute a misrepresentation of the review's overall tone and conclusions -- hence, taking them out of context. So no blurb from Nick Mamatas for me.

So what it boils down to is that strong blurbs can serve as the middle ground for readers who want some sense of what to expect from a book but don't want to chance having anything "spoiled" for them ... and reviewers can write whatever they damned well please without fear of being accused of "spoiling" anything.

I still think the best solution is to read the book first, but if that's not possible for whatever reason, then go the first-two-last-two paragraph route when reading a review; if that doesn't appeal or work for you, then turn to the blurbs. Beyond those three options ... I got nothing.

Two weeks from now, I'm going to publish the final part of this four-part column, and I fully expect to have a lot of people upset with me afterward, because I'm going to talk about a trend that I've been seeing more and more of lately, one that I find both infuriating and embarrassing: that of writers attacking reviewers who give their work negative reviews. Sometimes these attacks come in the form of a snide line or two from a particualr writer's blog, and sometimes they appear as long posts in discussion threads on message boards. While I don't doubt that this situation has existed for a while, I first became aware of it during a prolonged and ugly flame war that began on the Shocklines message board a little over a year ago when a friend of mine by the name of Ron Horsley posted a scathing review of From the Borderlands.

What ensued from there was a debacle of near-legendary proportions, one that I chose to stay out of, foolishly believing that my silence would be seen as, simply, objective nuetrality. (It also left me keenly aware of the trend I mentioned above, one that is not restricted to Shocklines or any single discussion board or blog.)

I'd hoped my silence would be seen and respected as impartiality; such was not the case, as it turns out. And as a result, both myself and my wife have been dealing with several personal -- and sometimes professional -- repercussions. I was bound and determined to not get involved with it or to ever comment on it publicly or privately, but a series of e-mails last week between myself and Brian Keene made it clear that I'm going to have to talk about it whether I want to or not.

And it's not gonna be pretty, so don't say you weren't warned.

See you in two weeks.

Until then, stay tuned....

Installment #13: Of Reviews, Fragile Egos, and "He Sure Went Ape-Shit", Part Two

2005-07-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's the 5th of July and this second part of the column is 4 days late. I was going to apologize, but then it occurred to me that had I posted this on the 1st, most of you wouldn't have read it, anyway, preparing as you were for a knockout holiday weekend. I hope it was fun and safe for all.

As you may recall, I left you with something of a cliffhanger last time concerning the identity of the reviewer who gave The Indifference of Heaven (a.k.a In Silent Graves) its first and most brutal review.

Let me repeat something: upon re-reading that review, I realized it was a good one -- well-written, well thought-out, well-structured, honest, and intelligent. It was a good review, just not a positive one. That didn't stop people from writing to me to declare that the reviewer was an "idiot", a "jerk", and "an asshole".

So who was it?

Bentley Little ...

... who is decidedly not and idiot, a jerk, or an asshole. Little is a terrific and popular writer, and one hell of a smart and perceptive individual whose crticism is always sharp, direct, and informed. The reason that this initial review hit me as hard as it did -- aside from Little's criticizing parts of the book that I myself feared might be pointed out as being problematic, thus confirming my shortcomings and total lack of talent in my own eyes, ergo making him a jerk (after all, how dare he remind me of my weaknesses as a writer? The nerve....) -- was that Little, Norm Partridge, and I sort of began publishing at the same time; at one point, the three of us were unofficially vying for the title of Cemetery Dance's Poster Child. Little and I used to publish regularly in Crispin Burnham's now-defunct (and much missed) Eldritch Tales (along with another relative unknown at the time by the name of Joe Lansdale). Little and I pretty much started out at the same time, and while Little had (and has) enjoyed a dozen times the commercial success I've known (justifiably so), some unreasonable, immature part of me thought that he'd cut me a little slack because, well, we came onto the scene at the same time. You know, "brothers in arms" and happy horseshit of that ilk.

Looking back on it now, I'm glad he didn't. I'm glad he was so brutal in his review, because you know what? When it comes to judging the literary quality of someone else's work, it shouldn't matter a damn if you know them or not, or whether or not you started in the trenches with that person -- 'cause it ain't about the person, it's about the work, and any review or opinion that doesn't begin with that rule firmly in mind is compromised before it even begins, and that, my friends, does an irredeemable disservice to all involved.

(Allow me a brief aside here. Any fiction writer who also does book reviews is arguably in a no-win situation from the start. If you write a postivie review of a fellow writer's work, you're going to be accused of cronyism -- "Hell, he knows so-and-so, of course he's going to give it a good review." If, however, you write a negative review of another writer's work, you stand a very good chance of being accused of sour grapes -- "Well, he's just jealous that so-and-so is more popular than he is, so of course he's going to give it a bad review"; or, worse -- as was the case with one person who thought Little's review was unnecessarily harsh -- "Well, he just wants to make sure he doesn't lose any readers to anyone else, so of course he's going to trash anything of quality!" You can't win, so peoples' possible reactions to your review should never enter the equation. I bring this up because in the next week or two there's going to be some updates to the web site, including a mess of new reviews, and one of those reviews is going to be for Brian Keene's latest novel Terminal. It's not going to be a wholly positive review. (For me, as a reader, the novel ultimately failed, but is still a very worthwhile read; the review is, I think, the longest I've yet written for the site). I can already hear the screams of "Sour Grapes!" and "He's just jealous because Keene's more popular than he is!" falling on my head like a curse from Heaven. Here endeth the aside.)

To repeat something that I do not think can be emphasized enough: there is a difference between a good review and a positive one. A good review pulls no punches, and comes at you with an informed viewpoint that is intelligently and reasonably articulated, even if the overall message of that viewpoint is not one of praise for the writer's work.

I'm going to give you a link here in a moment to a fine example of the type of review I'm talking about -- it's a review of In the Midnight Museum, one that is good without necessarily being wholly positive -- but before I do, I want to ask a couple of small favors of you:

1) If you have read Museum, then please read the entire review, first line to last; if you have not yet read the novella but are planning to, do me a favor and skip the 3rd paragraph, the one that begins: "They key to Martin's weird perceptions..." (I'll tell you why in a moment.)

2) Make sure you read all of the readers' comments that follow the review, because the issue of ***SPOILERS*** is raised in a most interesting way -- and, curiously enough, is the next thing I'm going to cover here.

Okay, surf on over and check out Nick Mamatas's excellent -- but not wholly positive -- review of In the Midnight Museum. Then come back here and we'll chat a little more.

Now that's a review. Sure, I wish he'd liked it more than he did (what writer doesn't want everyone to like their work?), and I wish he hadn't talked about certain elements of the story (more on that shortly), but the review was so intelligent, thoughtful, and informed that whatever disappointement I felt at his not digging it to the nth degree was balanced out by his careful consideration of the material.

Look at it again, because you can learn some things about how a good review should be done; f'rinstance: Mamatas is someone who knows my work, not just this particular piece -- he even goes as far to say that this novella would work for someone who's not familiar with my work, but since he's up-front about approaching it as someone who is a reader of my stuff, he's got a pretty strong arsenal of facts to back up his opinions about what he thinks are the weaker aspects of the piece, and why he thinks that. He also carefully balances the harsher criticisms with some fairly glowing (for Nick) praise of those aspects that he felt worked in the novella's favor. You'll also note that he had no Agenda behind the review -- excepting that of reading for quality writing and storytelling. He didn't soften anything, nor did he overpraise. It's a beautifully balanced review, and any writer would be a fool to ask for one more honest and informed.

(But please don't think that I never get really scathing reviews. I've been lucky in that the majority of the reviews for my work have been positive overall, but when I get a negative review, an outright pan, they don't mess around.)

Time is running short for this installment, so let's go right to the ***SPOILER*** discussion. You did read the readers' comments after the review right? If not, go back and do so, pretty please.

I am of two minds when it comes to this issue. The most obvious example of a ***SPOILER*** (which is a ***SPOILER*** in itself, you have been warned) would be someone telling you as you're about to view The Sixth Sense for the first time, "Yeah, man, I was blown away when they showed that Bruce Willis had been dead the whole time."

A less obvious example (again, a ***SPOILER*** in itself) would be something like this:

Someone asks if you've ever read the wonderful Roald Dahl story, "Lamb To The Slaughter". You say, no, you haven't, and they say: "Oh, man, you gotta read it. It's about this lady who kills her husbad with a frozen leg of lamb, and then cooks it and feeds it to the police so they don't have any evidence!"

Ultimately, this sort of ***SPOILER*** reveals the punch but does not necessarily ruin the story; if you've read it, then you know that Dahl expertly sets this up so that the "surprise" of the story isn't so much a twist as it is a grin-inducing moment of exquisite irony.

Still, it robs the reader of some of the joy of discovery for him- or herself, it detracts from the reading experience. Now, while I agree with the notion that something that exists solely to surprise a reader doesn't have much to stand on to begin with, and so arguably shouldn't be "protected" in reviews, there is a difference between a "twist" or "surprise" and a "revelation". A "revelation" (for the sake of this argument) can be defined as that moment within a narrative when something that has been set up, foreshadowed, and hinted at is brought fully into the light so that the reader is at last able to see how everything connects -- and has connected -- all along. It's that moment where the reader can nod their head and say, "Oh, okay -- now I see how it all fits." And while the story doesn't necessarily (and shouldn't) hinge on that revelation, it is made richer by the reader not knowing what it is going in.

It's about the joy of discovery while reading.

I asked those of you who haven't read In the Midnight Museum to skip the 3rd paragraph of Nick's review because he discusses virtually all of the revelations that occur in the second half of the story. Now, while his discussing those revelations won't "spoil" the story for you in the end, I have to admit to a certain disappointment in having seen them included in the review. Museum is structured in deliberate layers -- the layers of reality play a major role in the story -- and I worked very hard to make sure that every "revelation" was foreshadowed so that, when they began to appear, none of them seemed like something I'd pulled out of my ying-yang in order to write myself out of a corner. My hope was -- and is -- that the reader would be as stunned by these discoveries as is Martin, the story's central character, because they would make the discoveries at the same time he does.

Here's where it gets problematic. Yes, Nick wrote an excellent review; no, Nick shouldn't have to "withhold information" necessary to back up his thesis on the grounds that it's going to "spoil" something for a reader -- that would hardly qualify as an informed, inclusive opinion, would it?

But at the same time, his discussing the revelations contained in the second half does (arguably) subtract something from the reading experience if one has not yet read the novella. I've had a couple of people tell me they think his discussing the revelations actually trivializes the effort I put into the story's structure. (You'll note that one of the people responding to the review -- my wife, God bless her -- pointed out that his discussing those particular aspects of the story ultimately had no bearing on his overall thesis, that they weren't needed in order to make his point.)

You can't win here, you really can't. On the one hand, you want reviews to pull no punches, to be intelligent, informed, and honest; on the other hand, you don't want them telling you that the lady cooks the only evidence of the murder and then feeds it to the police.

I do not begrudge Nick Mamatas anything he wrote about Museum -- as I said, it's a terrific review -- and I would never be so arrogant as to demand that he or any other reviewer be required to place a ***SPOILER WARNING*** in thier reviews -- that's just childish.

Hence, we return to something I said in Part One -- that it's best for you to read something before looking at reviews. Fer chrissakes, you don't need someone to tell you why something's good or not, you've got a brain, you're intelligent, you're capable of forming your opinions without any outside input, thanks very much.

So maybe you can win in thse types of situations, providing that you do the intelligent thing and read the work first, before looking at reviews. That way, it won't matter if the reviewer tells you about the cops chowing down on the evidence, or that Bruce Willis has actually been dead for most of the movie. (Yes, I know that I'm talking about a movie with that second example, but it helps back up my point and, besides, I used the example earlier and I'm all about the continuity). Reviewers won't have to pull punches, and you won't have to feel that anything has been "spoiled" for you.

... ah, but I can hear those old gears grinding away: didn't he say that reviews can sometimes help someone decide whether or not they want to read a particular book? How is someone supposed to make that decision if they don't check out some reviews first? It's Catch-22 all over again.

So what's the answer to this seemingly impentrable conundrum?

In a word: blurbs.

Come back on July 20th, and I'll make an argument in favor of blurbs.

Until then, stay tuned....

Installment #12: Of Reviews, Fragile Egos, and "He Sure Went Ape-Shit", Part One

2005-06-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about reviews lately. Part of it stems from the critical reaction to my new novella In the Midnight Museum; part of it stems from my absolute dread of how reviewers and readers are going to react to the second Cedar Hill collection, Home Before Dark, and my novel Keepers when both are released in September; and the last -- and possibly greatest -- part of it stems from a series of events that occurred several months ago on the Shocklines discussion board, events about which I remained for the most part silent while they were happening but that, as much as I've tried to let them go, still bother me a great deal. (And even though I had almost no part in it, I am still dealing with several personal repercussions...as is, inexcusably, my wife. And I'm a bit pissed. You'll understand come Part Three.)

This particular column (which looks to be a 3- or 4-parter (yes, I've been saving up) will deal with, in order (more or less), the following:

1) Reviews and reviewers
2) Blurbs
3) How it's not a question of how an author reacts to good reviews, but how he or she reacts to the bad ones that test the true mettle and show the true colors
4) ***SPOILERS*** (as in, what does and does not constitute them, and why you should or should not care)

... and...(drumroll, please)

5) The Infamous From the Borderlands/Ron Horsley/Shocklines Affair (and why I've waited so long to talk about it).

A lot of territory to cover, so what say we get right to it?

Reviews and Reviewers.

Uh, mmm, wel....

A lot of the time you will hear writers say something along the lines of, "I don't let reviews affect me." If you're ever in the presence of a writer who says this, immediately reach up and hold closed your nose with thumb and index finger, because the stench of bullshit is about to hit you square in the face. I've no doubt that there are writers who don't care about thier reviews, good or bad ... and in most cases, these are writers who have a strong fan-base, who have been publishing steadily for years, whose names have appeared on bestsellers lists, and who can afford to not give a shit. (C'mon, you think Michael Crichton loses sleep over a scathing review in The New York Times?) The rest of us know that the life of a book can very well be prolonged or cut short by enough good or bad reviews; it's one of the harder truths to accept. Sure, you might have a nice 2- or 3-book deal with a publisher, but if all 3 of those books are met with mostly negative reviews and a steady decline in overall sales, someone in the sales department is going to infer a correlation and then your ass is in trouble.

(An aside: have you ever noticed that these writers who loudly claim to not care about reviews are usually those whose web pages contain the most blurbs and review excerpts? What's wrong with this picture?)

There are some in this field who will tell you that the only reviews that really count come from places
like Locus, The NY Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, The Village Voice, or other high-profile
magazines and newspapers. While a good review from any of these is definitely something to exploit, most of us in this field aren't lucky enough to have our work consistently reviewed in these publications. (An example? Let me know if you ever see a review of a Leisure title in Locus -- for the record, an excellent publication -- for it will mean that the universe has shrunken farther, the time streams are merging, and we've entered an alternate universe.)

Those of us who aren't fortunate enough to be consistently noticed by such high-profile publications must cull our reviews from every source available to us. This in no way means that we are "settling" for reviews from, say, Horror World, Cemetery Dance, The Horror Fiction Review, or SF Reader, to name but four -- I don't care if a review comes from Lusty Llama Lover's Quarterly, if it's well-written, intelligent, and is going to help me draw notice to my latest book, I'll jump right on it. I am always grateful for reviews, because it means that the publication and reviewer thought my work was deserving of their time and consideration.

Personally, I don't think it's the source of the review, but the content of the review that should be emphasized. Because we know that readers' time and money demand that they be selective about what they read, we want to offer them as enticing a pitch as possible; ergo, we find as many positive review excerpts as we can to aid us in attracting a larger readership.

I am very lucky that In Silent Graves received many good reviews and looks to make a decent sell-through, but one qualified success does not a career as a novelist make. My gut tells me that it could go either way with Keepers because, while it deals with many of the themes that I've always explored in my fiction, it's a much more brutal (and sometimes surreal) novel than was Graves. I do some things here that I've never tried before, and while I am proud of the way it turned out, my fear is that readers who are expecting In More Silent Graves are going to finish Keepers and say, "What the hell was he on, anyway?"

We'll see in September.

Back on track now.

I try to not read reviews of others' works until after I myself have read the work in question; it's not that I think the review will influence my opinion (it won't), but I like to approach a new novel or short story collection with no preconceptions whatsoever -- and whether people are willing to cop to it or not, if most read a review of a book before reading the actual book, some part of that review is going to linger in the back of that reader's mind, so that when they encounter something that the reviewer, say, thought was weak or contrived, they'll think, Oh, I see what they meant. Like it or not, the review has already had an influence on how you're reacting to a novel or collection while you're still reading it, and anything that subtracts from the enjoyment of the reading experience is to be avoided. Period.

So I don't read reviews until afterward. I get a kick out of seeing if the reviewer's opinion is similar to mine, of seeing what they thought worked and what didn't, and discovering whether or not the reviewer had an agenda or a preconceived opinion. (It never fails to amaze me in a sad sort of way when a magazine or newspaper assigns a genre novel to a reviewer who doesn't bother hiding their dislike -- or, in some cases, outright contempt for -- genre fiction; I remember the Newsweek review for Stephen King's Firestarter, wherein the reviewer, after spending a good portion of the review discussing the "...appeal of trash fiction", went on to give it one of the most backhanded recommendations I've ever read. The result was a review that could have been one sentence long: If you're the kind of person who likes this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing that you will like. But I digress once again....)

So what value do reviews hold for both readers and writers? For readers -- whose reading time is precious -- they very well may help that reader decide whether or not they want to read a particular book. A good review can produce word of mouth, that in turn can spark further reader interest, that can turn into book sales, thus sparking more word of mouth, more reader interest...you get the idea. (And by "good" I don't necessarily mean "positive"; we'll get into that somnewhat this time, more fully in Part Two.)

I review books on this site, but I'm up front about my agenda; thus the reviews originally appeared under the title Recommended Reading. I'm not going to waste your time telling you why you shouldn't read something that I didn't like. So, yes, the book reviews you'll find here will be for books that I liked enough to recommend to others.

This is not to say that I goober all over everything; if I had problems with certain aspects of a book, I'll tell you about them (check out the reviews of Kealan Patrick-Burke's Ravenous Ghosts and Harry Shannon's Memorial Day; two books that I strongly recommended but with which I had certain reservatons). To my mind, honesty is what constitutes a good review, even if the overall message of the review is not a positive one. If I review a book, I'm going to tell you what I did and did not like about it.

As far as I'm concerned, a good review should follow the old high-scool debate-team "plank" structure: Begin by stating your conclusion (This book is good/bad), follow it up with a breakdown of the reasons why you arrived at the previously-stated conclusion, and end by, 3) re-stating and re-affirming your initial conlusion.

To that end, I have to share a story with you concerning one the most succinct reviews I've ever encountered.

It came from my late father.

My dad was not an educated man. He grew up during the Great Depression. He had to drop out of grade school in order to go to work and help support his family. He fought in and was severely wounded during WWII, and as a result of his wounds spent 18 months in a body cast. He liked movies, and he liked to read (providing the print wasn't too small). But because of the 18 months he spent in that body cast, he couldn't sit still for very long, which made it difficult for him to go to the movies.

The acid test of a movie for him was if it could pull him in enough to make him ignore and/or forget the muscle spasms and cramps that always began to set in after about 40 minutes. Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron kept him glued to his seat, as did Taxi Driver, Seven Days in May, The Big Red One, Meet John Doe, The Court Jester and a small handful of other movies. Dad's reviews of movies
were, for the most part, given silently; if he sat there and watched the entire thing without once getting up, that was his version of a "thumbs-up".

Okay. One afternoon in 1985 my Uncle Don came by the house and invited Dad to come along with him to see Rambo: First Blood, Part Two. Much to my surprise, Dad said yes and off they went to Stallone's two-hour testosterone fest. When Dad came back home later that day, I asked him: "So, how was the movie, Dad?"

I will never forget his review.

Dad looked at me, smiled, gave his head a little shake, and said: "It was okay. He sure went ape-shit. I missed some of it because I had to get up and stretch my legs, but I guess it was okay."

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Whenever I am reading a book or watching a movie where the creator(s) (are) is going wildly over-the-top in order to achieve a desired effect, I always hear Dad's voice in the back of my head: He sure went ape-shit. Short, sweet, and right to the point.

Before singing off this time, I'm going to leave you with a teaser for Part Two, this one concerning people's reaction to negative reviews.

When Obsidian Press released The Indifference of Heaven back in 2000, I was a nervous wreck waiting for the reviews. I'd damn near wrecked my health finishing it, and knew at the end that I had evolved as a writer. I had challenged myself, tried things I'd never before attempted, and knew that I was never going to be the same writer or human being again. I put a lot into that book, and was anxious about critical and reader reaction.

Then the very first review came in.

Here's the first line: "Small-press stalwart Gary A. Braunbeck's debut novel is a jumbled mess."

And it went downhill from there.

I received a lot of e-mails from friends and fellow writers telling me that the review was "...stupid", that the reviewer was "...an idiot", "...a jerk", "...an asshole", and that the book was "...probably too smart for him -- after all, you make people think."

I won't lie, I was devastated by the review; not only because its overall conclusion was that the novel was too complex and humorless for its own good (two elements I'd secretly feared would be criticised), but because, on a second reading, I realized that the review itself was a good one -- well-written, well thought-out, well-structured, honest, and intelligent. It was a good review, just not a positive one.

Oh, the reviewer? Who was this "idiot", this "jerk", this "asshole"?

Someone whose name you will immediately recognize. Someone whose work you have read. Someone whose work I have read and admired for years.

Wanna know who it was?

Then come back when Part Two goes live the first of July.

Ain't I a little stinker?

Stay Tuned....

Installment #11: Of Re-Writes, Re-Thinking, and Reprints

2005-06-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

When I decided that an on-going column was going to be a permanent part of this web site, the one thing I promised myself was that I would never fall into the easy out of reprinting something. It seemed to me (and still does) that if you good folks are going to keep coming back here on a consistent basis, then you by-God ought to find fresh, new material for your time, faith, and effort.

I had a dandy new installment all set to go -- a multi-parter, in fact, dealing with reviews and reviewers, how readers and writers react to them, how sometimes the manner in which an opinion is expressed overshadows any salient points that may or may not be contained in said opinion ... all sorts of nifty stuff -- and was giving it a final once-over when, well, something happened.

To be a little more specific, a couple of things happened, via the Shocklines discussion board (still one of my favorite virtual hangouts), that caused me to to re-think the content and tone of the column. I don't want to go into any more detail because you'll find out about it soon enough (the incidents have almost run their course, and I want to see how it all ends before tackling the re-write, so I think it's safe to say that All Will Be Revealed soon enough).

But that still left me with a column space that hasn't seen an update in six months. So -- for what will be the only time I intend to resort to this -- the majority of this column will be a reprint of an essay I wrote a few years back that has been referred to -- as well as outright quoted -- by several other columnists and reviewers since its original appearance. I'm doing this because a lot of you have e-mailed me and asked that I make this available on the site. So, in a moment (for those of you who haven't seen it before), you can read my "Storytelling Unbound" essay.

I did want to offer an explanation concerning the prolonged silence. I know it's been a long time since last I cornered you with my thoughts and opinions, and for that I apologize. I'll do my best to make sure this doesn't happen again.

So, what happened? As a lot of you know, Lucy and I purchased and moved into our new house, that took a lot of time and effort; the custodial gig kicked into serious High Gear (as it always does this time of year); writing deadlines had to be met (and, in some cases, extended, thanks to the patience and faith of a couple of wonderful editors and publishers); some personal family business arose (as it always does when one has a family) ... any one of these, I know, would have been accepted by you, along with my apology for the silence.

But you know what? None of them were the real core reason. Yes, they're contributing reasons, but even taken in totality, they don't justify six months of silence.

One of the things that I've always tried to do -- not just with these columns, but in my speaking about writing in general -- is to share with you good folks what exactly I bring to the table as both a writer and human being when it comes to storytelling. I have almost no patience for those who would lead you to believe that writing is some mystical, ethereal thing that you could not possibly hope to understand. I think that kind of attitude is arrogant. Any writer with the common sense God gave an ice cube should have no problem describing the creative process to a non-writer (I went to great lengths to illustrate this in some sections of my non-fiction book, Fear In A HandfulOf Dust: Horror As A Way Of Life). If one is to de-mystify the creative process, then one has to be willing to talk about those corners of one's heart and psyche that are usually not considered acceptable topics of polite dinnertime conversation. This is a roundabout way of saying that I try to be honest with you, so, the reason for the silence?

I have been seriously re-thinking what value my work has to the horror field.

This is not whining or self-pity or anything cheap like that. I know that there are many other writers out there who respect my work and do not hesitate to step up to the podium and say so, and I am grateful to all of them; I also know that my readers -- bless you -- are a fiercely loyal bunch, and my gratitude and affection for you knows no limits; but I also know that the term "...it's both horror and not" has been applied to my work so often that many people have come to assume that it falls more on the "not" side of the coin.

So I'm re-thinking some things. Have been for a while.

This is not an attempt to trick you into sending ego-boosting kudos my way, it's not an attempt to gain sympathy, and it sure as hell isn't an attempt to get any worried word-of-mouth going. It's a simple statement of fact. I proudly lay claim to being a horror writer, and stand by everything that I say in the essay that follows (as Pollyanna-ish as some of it strikes me now). I sincerely believe that the horror field can expand its boundaries if publishers, writers, and readers are willing to take chances.

It's just that I don't think the majority of them are. I think a lot of lip-service is paid to the idea of "expanding the boundaries" of the field, but the sales say otherwise -- not my sales, but the overall sales within the field. Every time you blink, it seems, another novel about zombies, vampires, serial killers, cursed houses, and evil cults seeking human sacrifices has taken the place of the one before it.

No, I do not look down on these books or their writers; I begrudge no one their success; and I am just as willing as you to see what fresh angle a writer if offering to the, say, zombie or haunted house theme. The reason Brian Keene's zombie novels are so successful is because he has a genuine affection for the subject, one that comes through in his writing, and he also can pace the living shit out of his novels. The reason that Rick Hautala's ghost stories (now being released under the name A.J. Matthews) do well is because Hautala -- as he proved time and again back in 80s -- is our modern equivalent to M.R. James; his work is drenched in atmosphere, his affection and respect for his subject rings true on every page, and he is a master at building cumulative terror.

So don't think I'm looking down on anyone, because I'm not.

What it boils down to is this: you, as readers, come to the horror field for a single core reason: to enjoy being scared. Sure, you want solid characterization, you want humor to be present to break the tension, you don't shy away from topicality, and you wont refuse any food for thought (provided it's not rammed down your throat), but, primarily, you look to horror for the scares, for the suspense, for those books and stories that keep you glued to the page, that agitate you, that cast such a spell on you that when you're reading late at night and the phone suddenly rings, you damn near jump out of your skin. Keene is scary. Hautala is scary. Tim Lebbon. Elizabeth Massie. Tom Piccirilli. Caitlin Kiernan. Jack Ketchum. Karen Taylor. Kealan Burke. Ray Garton. Mike Laimo. Sephera Giron. The list goes on, as well it should.

At this past World Horror Convention, a book reviewer you all know by the name of Bloody Mary confessed to me that she couldn't read my stuff because it was "...too upsetting." She meant this as a compliment, and I took it as such, but whether she intended it to or not, her comment encapsulated for me precisely what is that keeps a wider readership away from my work. Jack Ketchum -- God bless 'im -- sent me a wonderful e-mail after finishing In the Midnight Museum wherein he told me how much he enjoyed it, and commented that it had "...a lot on its mind." Combined with Bloody Mary's remark, I realized that I might be missing the boat on something. (And, no, I am pointing a finger at neither Bloody Mary nor Jack Ketchum; they simply and eloquently gave voice to those aspects of my work that I've always secretly suspected keep it from reaching a wder horror audience.)

For all of the wonderful things that have been said about my work, there is a single, short, simple word that has almost never been used when describing it: scary.

And someone whose work doesn't fulfill the core requirement of being scary has no business calling himself a horror writer.

So I've been re-thinking things. Hence, the prolonged silence.

Just being honest; just wanted you good folks to know.

Okay, here's the promised essay. Check back here toward the middle of the month for an actual new column.

Anyone who writes fiction for a living, who has to put food on the table and make mortgage payments with money earned solely from practicing this holy craft, has to accept at some point that labeling is part and parcel of the bid-ness: It's something that's slapped in front of your name or on the spine of a book in order to promote and move a product -- and like it or not, all aesthetics aside, once a book or story has been written, polished, submitted, sold, and published, that's all it is: a product. Any writer who screams otherwise should be contented with their contributor's copies and day jobs and live out their lives knowing their artistic integrity remains solidly in tact ... of course no one else will ever know this because anything they've written will have been read by maybe 500 people who, odds are, forgot the writer's name before they reached the end of the story.

Not for me, thank you; I can't speak for other writers, but I'm aiming for a small piece of immortality: the stories in my head (and, since we're being honest here, my ego, as well) will not allow anything less. I'm not, absolutely not, in no way and under no circumstances, saying that writers should turn themselves into a cottage industry and only crank out slick, disposable, hollow work to make themselves commercially viable in the marketplace -- not by a long shot. It's theoretically possible (though increasingly and depressingly more uncommon) to establish yourself in the field by writing exactly what you want to write precisely the way you want to write it; you just have to resign yourself to the cold fact that you're going to be labeled, and then set about making your work as good as you possibly can in hopes that its quality, its craftsmanship and honesty, will either attract new readers all by itself, or make the Powers That Be give it a second look and think, "Hmmm; you know, we may be missing out on a larger reader demographic here by selling this guy/gal as only a fantasy (or whatever) writer." That is the ideal; it rarely happens, but at least you can cash the advance check without feeling like you've sent your soul down to the nearest street corner to turn a dozens tricks before dinner.

Literary prejudice is an affliction each of us suffers from, whether we're willing to admit it or not, and that prejudice -- which seems to me so much more rampant among readers and writers of horror fiction --can not only poison one's potential interest in exploring new and different forms of fiction, but can also create an intellectual vacuum that will eventually force readers and writers of genre fiction to do an Ouroboros and begin feeding on themselves, with readers forced to endure uninspired rehashes coughed up by writers cannabilizing concepts already dealt with in a derivative copy of a derivative copy of something that was derived from something else -- and if you want a concrete example of what this can lead to, pick up a copy of the novelization of John Carpenter's remake of The Thing and get a load of the writing credits: a novelization by so-and-so, based on the screenplay by such-and-such, inspired by the screenplay for the 1951 film by what's-his-name and that other guy, based on the novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell writing as... You'd almost laugh if it weren't so sad.

It embarrasses me to admit this, but at one point in my life -- and it wasn't all that long ago that this happened -- I thought myself above literary prejudice, considered myself to be well-read, open-minded, literate, intelligent, analytical, cha-cha-cha.

I try every month to read at least one novel or a couple of short stories in a genre that I've not read much before, if at all. High fantasy, sword & sorcery, historical fiction, romance fiction, children's books, mystery, suspense, erotica, even the dreaded western. And the more I read across the board, the more I see that all forms of genre fiction have a great deal in common; the more I see that all forms of genre fiction have a great deal in common, the more convinced I become that in order for genre fiction to prevail as we stumble through the first decade of this new century, a form of communion must take place -- merging numerous forms of fiction into one -- so that speculative fiction can take the next necessary step in its aesthetic evolution.

But this communion cannot be forced, it has to come about naturally. Yes, I'm talking cross-genre fiction; storytelling unbound. The type of richly imaginative, wildly exciting, joyously unpredictable storytelling where you get everything from a straightforward character study to a hard-boiled mystery and even a ghost or two; not only ghosts, but cowboys, as well, if the writer feels they need to yippee-ki-yi-yea their way into a chapter or two. Time travel and high-tech intrigue, alternate universes and comedies of errors; passionate romance and nerve-wracking terror -- hell, throw in the kitchen sink and a robot domestic while we're at it. Go for broke -- just don't go for the easy out. Read everything you can in as many different genres as possible. Don't feel that you as either writer or reader have to restrict your interest to "only cyberpunk" or "just the gaming-related fiction" or "SF, SF, and only, only only SF!" And God please don't exclude the opinions, observations, or insights of those readers and authors who toil in fictional fields beyond the boundaries of yours.

This goes so much deeper than simply wanting all forms of speculative fiction to march to a different drummer; it's a ferverent prayer that all of us will learn to foster a need and desire beyond all the needs and desires that have come before to catapoult ourselves into the burning core of our imaginations and meet the whirling, winged, wondrous things that have been waiting for us to take that next step in our creative evolution. "Look at us," they'll whisper. "See what we are and know that you musn't ever settle. Don't just be -- become! And don't just become -- transcend!" It's a prayer that we'll someday be able to get rid of all the mushbrained labels that insultingly oversimplify what the work is about because it will be impossible for anyone, no matter how hard they try, to put a label on our fiction. Storytelling unbound, wherein we can do anything we want, anytime, in any manner, knowing that there are truly no limits -- and God, is that kind of knowledge power! We'll know, then, that a summer sky can be poured into a silver chalice and drunk down like Bacchus's headiest brew, that the touch of a lover's fingertips against the skin or the brushing of lips holds the answer to what love and life were supposed to be, every emotion revealing the sensual, smoldering, staggering beauty of the cosmos.

Storytelling unbound. To live a thousand lives where every second is drenched in overpowering wonder, then turning yourself loose on an empty sheet of paper to see if you can possiblty convey this amazement to others, rejecting rationality enough to have faith in the unnameable something that drives you to want more out of your fiction than simply "a good read," that pushes you to push yourself and your work to new heights and maybe, just maybe, capture a piece of the Divine.

Yes, I'm calling for a revolution ... and you know where this revolution should start?

Down there in the darkness that I have loved all my life, that darkness in Literature's basement, with that drooling, hunched-over, scab-picking embarrassment of a bastard child called "horror" that no one wants to admit exists. No one's paying attention to it, not really, and those chains on the wall won't hold forever, so why not start now, while the shadows are there to protect us? By the time the lights come back on and the chains fall away, we'll be armed to the teeth with our stories and ideas and memories of drinking the sky from a silver chalice, and then just let 'em try to ignore us or lock us away once again.

Let 'em try.

My favorite poem is "I Saw A Man" by Stephen Crane. God, I think I get chills every time I read it or hear it read:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never--"
"You lie!" he cried.
And ran on.

That should be the writer's battle cry against those who would tell him or her that their work must conform to specific genre boundaries and never, ever, ever dare venture beyond those boundaries because something that is too different isn't acceptable, even in speculative fiction.

"You lie!" we cry, and then on we go, chasing the horizon, freed from illusionary boundaries implied by terms such as SF of Horror or Magic Realism or Dark Fantasy or What-Have-You. Don't you want that from our fiction? To capture the horizon, to drink down the sky, to know that, whenever you need it, a dream will call and raise its head in majesty? Storytelling unbound!

But know this: You may be forced to live outside their city walls when your fiction “doesn't quite fit anywhere” because they'll be scared of you. "He must be mad,” they'll say. "How else do you explain his producing this sort of stuff?" Then they'll go on coughing up safe, derivitive fiction, ocassionally looking down at the asphault to make sure their feet are still on the ground while you, you'll be kissing the hem of Venus's gown and flying alongside Daedalus and solving crimes with Marlowe and dancing with Gatsby atop the Pyramid of the moon at a celestial ball given by the gods of ancient Mexico.

It's really nice outside those city walls, trust me. You don't have to write what they tell you you should write, you don't have to settle for reading the same old same old thing repackaged and rewritten for the umpteenth time. You can be, you can become, you can transcend.

So come on, all ye Cyberpunks, ye Gamers and dreamers of darkness, ye technofiles, X-filers, Babylon Fivers, and Trekkers true; come on all ye mystery mavens of the hard-boiled and cozy schools, ye romance writers and historical scribes with your sense and sensibilities refined, ye rusty-spurred cowpokes and poets of brilliant brevity; over there, ye comics connisuers and artists, with pencils and paintbrushes and airbrushes raised high, step outside, join us beyond the city gates; you'll see our campfires burning in the night as we gather round to spin our tales in the manner, any manner, we damn well choose. Join us. Our ranks are growing. You'll find no prejudice here by our fires, no one who'll say “It just doesn't fit.” Bring your dreams, your angers, your sadnesses and passions as we begin our communion: all fictions merging into one.

And when you hear them calling to you from behind the city walls to come back, come back, come back here where everything is safe and in its place, remember the sacred words as you reach toward the horizon's hands:

"You lie!" we cry.

Storytelling unbound.

Until next time, then.

Stay tuned....

Installment #10: Of Catheterizations and Consolation

2004-11-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

Okay, had a bit of a prolonged break since #9. Yeah, it was Ye Olde Ticker once again. Two hospital stays, another cardiac catheterization, a bunch of other fun stuff that involved many, many people whom I did not know poking around inside my chest and doing many, many odd things that still give me the willies if I think about them for too long.

Sigh.

Short version: my arteries are now more-or-less cleaned out, and if I am to believe everything the doctors have told me, I should be back up to speed by the first of the year.

Hence, the prolonged break between columns.

Before going on, I want to thank everyone for their letters, calls, and e-mails wishing me well; your kindness and thoughtfulness mean the world to me. Thank you.

Onward.

At the beginning of Peter Straub's wonderful new novel, In the Night Room there is a quote from philosopher, publisher, and journalist Roger Scruton that reads: "The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation."

Not to downplay Straub's redoubtable achievement with this novel, but Scruton's epigrammatic bit of wisdom knocked my socks off nearly as much as did the novel itself -- and not to sound boastful, but I am not one whose sensibilities are easily affected; it takes a lot to genuinely move me, and Scruton ( Bad Attitudes; A Dove Descending and Other Stories) did just that.

To understand why this hit me as hard as it did, we're going to go back to 2002 -- October of 2002, to be precise -- and join Gary during his stay in the nuthouse. (Okay, technically it was not the nuthouse, more of the pre- nuthouse holding facility, but why nitpick at this late date?)

Understand something before we move on: none of what follows is intended to be a ploy for sympathy; it's not a pity party; and it sure as hell isn't romanticized. I did not have then -- nor do I now have -- much sympathy for myself. I was weak, self-centered, and more than a little stupid. I could have turned to others for help, but I didn't; it was far easier to allow myself to implode. In short: I'm not attempting to make you feel sorry for me.

Okay, then:

As some of you know, the 16 months between June of 2001 and December of 2002 were not, to put it mildly, blue-ribbon days for Yours Truly. During that time, I lost, within 9 months, my grandmother (heart failure), my father (cancer), then my mother (emphysema); I'd moved to a new city, gotten divorced (my fault, all my fault), underwent surgery to repair nerve damage to my right hand, and somewhere in there went off my anti-depression medication -- yes, I know, stupid, Stupid, STUPID.

The result from all of this is that one week before Hallowe'en of 2002, I found myself in possession of a lot of seriously strong and potentially dangerous medications taken from my parents' house. (My sister, Gayle, had enough to deal with, so I went through all the rooms and cabinets shoving Mom and Dad's medications into a box, intending to dispose of everything when I returned to Columbus.)

Bear in mind that though I am far from the brightest bulb in the sign, I am not (under the right circumstances) without a certain cleverness when it comes to finding ways to self-destruct. I could not go for 5 minutes without thinking of my grandmother's lonely last years, or seeing my father's body, or the look on my mother's face when I told her that I had come to the hospital to take her off life support, or the deep, deep hurt in my soon-to-be ex-wife's eyes the last time we had seen each other. I couldn't sleep; I wasn't eating, my writing production was down to practically zero because I couldn't concentrate on anything other than the People Who Weren't There Anymore, and my right hand was becoming more and more useless (this was before the surgery). I was now surrounded by a circle of friends who were, on average, 15 years younger than me and with whom I ultimately had very little in common (I knew I was in trouble when I mentioned Harold Russell and not one of them knew who I was talking about), and I allowed my world to become more and more circumscribed by the handful of rooms in my apartment. If I could bring myself to get out of bed at all, I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the television watching re-runs of shows that hadn't been very good the first time, but that didn't matter because I wasn't seeing them, anyway.

(An aside: some of you might be thinking, Hey, wait a second -- didn't you publish something like 6 books during that time period? How can you say that your writing was down to almost nothing? Easy: all but one of those books had been written previous to the Fun Time, and since it takes about as long for a book to get published as it does for a pregnancy to come to fruition in the birth of a new life, I was lucky that I'd been so productive beforehand. You might have noticed that the past year has seen only one book from Yours Truly, and it won't be until March of 2005 before a new one appears. This is a direct result of my not having been very productive during the Fun Days, and I'm working like a fiend to make up for that lost time. (I'm surprised Rich Chizmar at CD Publications hasn't taken out a hit on my sorry ass by now.) I wrote only a handful of stories during that 16 month period, and 3 of them -- "Duty", "Patience", and "The King of Rotten Wood" -- rank among the darkest and most hopeless tales I've ever produced. End of parenthetical aside.)

So it's October, roughly a week before Hallowe'en, and I'm not really here anymore; some empty, cheerless thing that's wearing my face and using my body to get around has taken the wheel, and I don't feel like fighting with it. I have enough money to get a motel room for the night. I have more than enough medications in the proper dosages to ensure that the job will be done correctly (I've been researching this for several weeks). And I have recently purchased two packages of pudding cups so that there will be a way to ingest all these medications without causing myself to throw up. (The Shuffling-Off Cocktail Recipe ends here; just know that I had everything necessary to do the deed and knew how and when to take it.)

There's only one glitch: all of the motels within walking distance of my apartment (I don't drive) have no vacancies due to a Quarter Horse convention that's in town. So, much to my disappointment, I'm going to have to do the job at the apartment and hope that my two roommates will still be able to live there afterward. I'm walking back to the apartment and realize I'm thirsty, so I make a short detour to the neighborhood Giant Eagle to buy a soda. I'm standing in line behind a couple with several children, and the youngest child -- maybe 3 years old -- looks back at me, then turns to her mother and tugs her sleeve and says, "Mommy, that man's crying."

Damned if she wasn't right. I'd had no idea, perceptive fellow that I am.

"Don't stare," says the child's mother, but the little girl looks back at me, still gripping her mother's sleeve, and says, "What's wrong, mister?"

"I'm sorry," I say to her sweet little face.

And then she starts crying.

Now everyone in this line and those on either side of us is looking over and trying to look like they're not looking. Me, I'm standing there shaking like an alcoholic in the grips of the DTs, my face soaked, crying so hard that snot is coming out of my nose in buckets, and a police officer is coming toward me.

Oh, good, I think. Way to be inconspicuous, Einstein. Everyone's staring at you, you've got roughly a thousand dollars' worth of prescription medications in your bag, and now a cop's coming. This is going to screw up the Shuffling-Off schedule something fierce if you don't think fast.

The officer asked what the problem was, and I managed to force a smile to my face and told him that I'd just come from a funeral and I was sorry, this just sort of hit me unexpectedly, and he bought it, and I purchased my soda and walked back to my apartment, still shaking, still in sloppy tears. Pathetic.

I got back inside, walked up to my room, dumped all the medications and pudding on the bed, and just sort of...imploded. I honestly don't remember much about the next 12 hours -- I have vague impressions of peoples' voices talking to me, of someone holding my hand, of eating something, of sleeping for a while, of watching a movie -- but when I finally came back to something like lucidity, I was being checked in to an emergency mental health facility here in Columbus. Two psychiatrists had been filled in on my recent history, both had talked to me (which I barely recall), and both had decided I was a danger to myself and to others.

I spent a week there before being deemed stable enough for release. I won't bore you with the details of the intensive day-to-day routine of life in there, save for one thing: the book I had brought with me: Stephen King's From A Buick 8.

Understand that I had given up hope. I had no faith left -- not in myself, not in humankind, not in love, friendship, integrity, this ethereal whoseewhatsit called God, nothing. And my writing career? -- forget it. I was more than aware that a lot of readers considered my stuff to be too dark, if not outright depressing, I didn't see my fiction becoming any more cheerful anytime soon, and as far as I could tell, the future was in no way bright enough to require my wearing shades.

Submitted for your approval: not a happy camper.

Still, I had already started King's novel, wasn't all that far into it, and God knows I didn't have anything better to do with my extra time, so during those free periods -- few and far between that they were -- I read.

And something odd began to happen.

I started feeling ... if not better, then no worse.

Don't go thinking this is leading up to my describing some thundering, overpowering, Wagnerian epiphany, because it isn't; I had no uplifting moment of realization; no heavenly choir began singing over too-loud, sentimental John Williams music as a beam of moonlight crept through the window and anointed my face and mind with the Silver Light of Truth and Inner Peace; I experienced no visions, no revelations, uttered no exclamations of "My God, the ghosts have done it all in one night!"

No, what happened was, simply, this: I became caught up in the story (which, for the record, may not be the the best-written story King has ever told, but is, I think, the best-told story he's ever written). I wanted to find out what happened next. And because I read slowly, I was able to pace my reading so that I had only enough time to read a chapter or two in the afternoon, and the same later at night. (Sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on what feelings I had "shared" with the group during any one of the five daily sessions that were held -- and those weren't counting the individual sessions.)

But here's the important thing: I had something to look forward to. What was going to come crawling out of the car's trunk next time? What was the deal with the lights and fireworks? Would the dog survive? (Dogs don't fare well in King's books.) Would King be able to pull off this round-robin of first person narrators? Inquiring minds wanted to know.

Okay -- I wanted to know. And that came as something of a surprise to me. Because all of a sudden, I cared about something again. Admittedly, it wasn't myself, but why nitpick? Something within me still held on to enough wisps of hope that it allowed me to become immersed in a story. And that immersion, that curiosity, that wanting to know what happens next, began to spread over into the way I behaved toward the other patients, the doctors, the nurses, and myself. I started to actually talk to and not at everyone else. What did I have to lose? If nothing else, I had Buick 8 waiting for me at day's end.

Yes, I'm skipping over a lot of things -- those times when I fell back into hopelessness; when something one of the characters said reminded me of something of my mom or dad used to say and I'd hurl the book across the room, only to retrieve it a few minutes later, smoothing out the cover and pages; those times I was too heavily sedated to focus on the words -- because the point here is that as both a reader and human being I had found consolation in imaginary things, and knew it my heart that it was not imaginary consolation.

Looking at my trusty dictionary, I read the following about "consolation":

con-so-la-tion n
1. a source of comfort to somebody who is upset or disappointed
2. comfort to somebody who is distressed or disappointed
3. a game or contest held for people or teams who have lost earlier in a tournament

Arguably, all of these definitions could apply (the third one falling more on the metaphorical side of the coin), but for the sake of this argument, we'll go with the first two.

I remember something comedian Red Skelton used to say at the end of his television show every week: "... if by chance someday you're not feeling well and you should remember some silly little thing I've said or done and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart ... then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."

That is the kind of consolation I'm talking about, and it is the kind of consolation that I found in reading King's novel at that time, and in that place. I honestly don't think any other book could have done this for me, under those circumstances.

What I came away with -- aside from three different types of depression medication that I have to take twice a day -- was the knowledge that good storytelling can be a source of great consolation, and that this consolation can give back a glimmer of hope to a weary heart.

How many of you reading this have been lost in depression, or sadness, or lingering grief, or loneliness, or doubt, or any of the thousands of shadowed corners in the human heart where even the blackest darkness would look like a star going nova, and found some moment of comfort in a book or short story that you've read?

And, yes, you bet your ass that this can apply to horror fiction. I'm not talking about that old happy horseshit that says imaginary horrors help us to better deal with the real ones -- we'll get into that at another time -- but, rather, how the very act of reading something that raises anxiety or provides a good chill reaffirms the immediacy and necessity of your own existence. If some part of you is still willing to choose to be frightened, or disturbed, or repulsed, then this same part is embracing life by embracing fear: if you can still be scared, then you still think life has value and meaning; and if you still think that life has value and meaning, then there is still hope in your heart.

What greater gift could a storyteller hope to pass on to his or her readers?

So, yes, the consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation. Even if those imaginary things live in dark corners and aren't sometimes particularly pleasant or uplifting.

As long as there is fear of the darkness, there will be hope.

Not a bad thought for horror writers and readers to consider this holiday season.

Shameless self-promotion here.

While finishing up my 3-novella collection Destinations Unknown for CD Publications (and still hoping Rich Chizmar hasn't put a contract out on me for the interminable delay), I started making notes for a new story, and then, suddenly, those notes turned into a page of dialogue, and the next thing I know, it's four days later and I've got a brand-new, 36,000-word novella called In the Midnight Museum ... and damn if part of it isn't set in the same mental health facility where I took a stretch in 2002 ... and damn if it doesn't deal with a lot of themes that have become staples in my work ... and damn if it doesn't go in several new directions, me trying things I've never attempted before ... and damn if it doesn't hold a couple of whopping surprises (one element in particular blind-sided even me).

Don Koish at Necessary Evil Press will be publishing it this coming March. It's got a fabulous cover and interior illustrations by Caniglia, an Introduction by my friend Ray Garton (you might have heard of him), and is arguably the most personal piece of fiction I've ever written. We'll be putting up a Midnight Museum page here on the site pretty soon, but in the meantime, you might want to go here for a little more information.

I am particularly proud of this one, folks, and hope you'll approve.

Stay tuned....

Installment #9: Of Heart Attacks, Borderlands, and the NWWA

2004-08-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

This one is going to be a little more personal than the others, and odds are it's going to be a bit longer than previous installments, not to mention more outright profane (not been in the cheeriest state of mind lately), so sit back and pretend that you and I are out on the deck in back with a couple of cold ones, watching as twilight descends while we're also keeping an eye on the chicken that's on the grille.

You know, I try to be nice, I really do. I make every attempt to be supportive of all new writers, and whenever I am feeling discouraged about my career (which happens a whole helluva lot more than you think), I try to keep it to myself so as not to leave any dark clouds in my wake.

In short: I don't want anything I say or do to directly or indirectly dishearten a writer who's just gotten started on the long road to publication. Why? Because I remember how goddamn difficult things were when I was first starting out; the friends I blew off seeing because I needed to finish a story (one for which there was neither a definite market in mind nor an editor who'd solicited the piece waiting for it); the late nights of typing away as much as I could in X-amount of hours because I had a job (or two) to go to and knew that, say, Thursday night/Friday afternoon was the only time I'd have all week to get anything written; the movies I missed, the parties I missed, the meals I missed ... and no one to talk to about it, no other writers to offer advice or support: I was in this alone (which I'd known going in, so don't misinterpret that as a ploy for sympathy).

But as miserable as I was a lot of the time (well over 100 rejections before my first professional sale; my only published work until then appearing in magazines that paid in contributor's copies), I dug in and stuck with it because I knew I had the talent and determination to eventually carve out some kind of career. I became so monomaniacally focused on that career that I not only missed out on seeing friends, movies, and concerts, but I completely missed out on a fourteen-year marriage to a marvelous woman that I looked up to acknowledge only long enough to realize I'd completely destroyed it, swell human being that I am. Writing is not only a solitary activity, it's one that can wholly isolate you -- both physically and emotionally -- from the world; so much so that the state of isolation might take on the deceptive appearance of being preferable, and you unconsciously (sometimes consciously) do all you can to maintain the status quo.

In three short words: It. Ain't. Easy.

That is why I now try to be nice to new writers, I really do.

But there are some brand-new writers out there who make it really. Quite. Difficult.

So that "nice" thing? Not so much anymore. Two reasons.

As I write this, my second heart attack in less than a year is about a month behind me. It wasn't quite as serious as my first one, but the thing is, as far as my recovery goes, this one has really kicked my ass. I get winded from a set of stairs; I walk out to get the mail and by the time I get back, that's pretty much it for the day's physical activities; I don't have the energy half the time to jump to a conclusion; and some days I'm lucky to make it through a light 4-hour shift at my real-world maintenance gig.

And writing? Don't make me laugh. This installment that you're now reading is almost three weeks late in getting posted. It has taken me nearly two days to write just this far. I've got 3 contracted books that are all now several months late in being delivered because I don't right now have the physical strength to work on -- let alone finish -- them.

And it's making me absolutely quite sincerely crazy. I basically have three states of being over any 24-hour period: Exhausted, anxious, or depressed. (Every so often I get a surprising burst of vigor and can add "angry" to that list, but those times have been so few and far between that they seem like lingering wisps from a dimly-remembered dream of more pleasant days.)

This is not, so I am told, conducive to a favorable recovery. And I know it isn't, but I’m damned if I can figure a way out of this. Not being able to write for at least 3 hours a day (my bare-bones minimum) is chipping away at my core. "Relax," people tell me. "Try not to stress; focus on getting better."

I'm trying; really, I am. And I know I'll either get through this and be all better and back on track sometime between now and the end of the year or drop dead in front of the keyboard before my 45th birthday when #3 comes along with all its attendant charms. (Told you I've not been in the cheeriest state of mind.)

But here's the thing: this second one has scared me more than the first. To one degree or another I'm scared most of the time now; every little twinge I feel in my chest causes me to stop in my tracks while reaching into my pocket for the bottle of nitro pills that I have to carry on my person at all times. Even more so than the first one, this second one has hammered home something I've always suspected: I'm not going to live long enough to write all the stories that are in my head. And any time that I lose from here on -- for whatever reason -- is another story of mine that's never going to get written.

And it pisses me off.

Which brings me back to some of the new writers out there; you know, the ones who make it quite difficult for me to keep being nice. I'm not talking about folks like my buddies Mike Laimo and Matt Warner, writers who've published a dozen or so short stories or maybe one or two books, no; writers like Mike, Geoff Cooper, Kealan-Patrick Burke, and Mehitobel Wilson (to name but a few of those who will still be cranking out the Godd Stuff while I'm being digested by worms) have more than proven they've got what it takes to go the distance: I'm talking about those writers who have maybe two, three, or four published stories under their belts and publicly (read: mostly on discussion boards) whine about how "hard" it is to keep making sales.

All of you, say it with me: "Well, duh."

Allow me to share a handful of recent examples. We'll begin with my friend Norbert. You remember Norbert, don't you? The literary construct I parade forth whenever I don't want to specifically name someone so as to spare them what would otherwise be dreadful public humiliation. Yes, Norbert. Again.

As you may or may not know, Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone over at Borderlands Press are currently reading for their Borderlands 6 anthology. I have been lucky to have had stories appear in the last 2 volumes of this prestigious series. I say "prestigious" because the Borderlands series is one of the hardest markets to crack, and for one simple reason: the Monteleones will not settle for something that is simply "good". There are plenty of markets out there that will accept the simply good stuff (lucky for me); Tom and Elizabeth want stuff that is going to knock their socks off, that's going to leave them stunned, that's going to haunt them during the day as well as into the night. You want to get into Borderlands? Who the hell doesn’t? For me, I've found that if I take something that I think is absolutely, hands-down my best possible work and fix it, make it better, make it leaner, smarter, richer, deeper, darker…they'll still ask for a revision before saying "yea" or "nay".

To paraphrase something I said earlier: They. Ain't. Easy. To. Please.

Back to Norbert. He showed me a story that he thought might be worth submitting to the Monteleones. I read it over a couple of times, and while it seemed to me that it had the makings of a solid story, something about it wasn’t quite there yet. It was good, but that's all it was. Not thinking at all of Borderlands, I sat down with Norbert and dissected the story on an almost line-by-line basis (I’m a fiend when it comes to this sort of thing), and as we discussed possible changes, Norbert began verbally reshaping the story into something that was smarter, richer, deeper, and darker than what he'd originally shown to me. By the time we were done dissecting and rebuilding the piece, he had the spine of something that was, to my mind, original, subtle, and chilling. Norbert was, in fact, quite excited about the prospect of revising the story and sending it off to Tom and Elizabeth; and I had a good feeling about it, as well: it seemed to me that – if he revised it as he said he would – he had something that was a possible Borderlands contender.

I never saw the revision, so I don't know what he did or did not do; what I do know is that Tom and Elizabeth sent it back with one of the most detailed rejections I've ever read. I'm talking about the kind of rejection I used to dream about receiving: one that pointed out both the strengths and weaknesses of the piece while being complimentary of the overall writing (if not the narrative structure) and ending with sincere words of encouragement.

I got a call from Norbert after he received this rejection. Here are the high points of that conversation: 1) Norbert was angry that they had rejected a story that he thought was one of his best pieces; 2) He railed about how "hard" it was to get published, how it seemed like you had to "know somebody" or "have an in" to get something seriously considered (what remained unspoken but heavily implied was that Tom and Elizabeth had never given his story serious consideration, so I guess the detailed rejection was just a clever smokescreen on their part); and, 3) He tried to put some of the blame for the rejection on my shoulders. "You've sold to them before, so I figured you had some idea of what they were looking for!"

If I could have crawled through the phone line, I would have throttled him senseless.

Keeping the above in mind, let's go to the next example: about a month ago, HWA's president, Joe Nassise, popped by a few select discussion boards to announce that the governing body of HWA had just revised the membership requirements for Affiliate members. Now, itused to be that anyone could join as an Affiliate, regardless of whether or not they had published anything; all that was required was a "... demonstrated intention to become a professional writer." The new requirements -- of which that "demonstrated intention" is still a part -- stipulate that to join HWA as an Affiliate member, you have to meet certain minimum sales requirements -- reasonable requirements that are a whole helluva lot easier to meet than those for Active status.

Okay; the HWA private members-only discussion board -- which is often unjustly characterized as being filled with nothing but name-calling, sniping, finger-pointing, flaming, back-biting, bitching, complaining, vitriol, wrath, anger, and general overall discourtesy and rampant grumpiness -- reacted thusly: with calm, courteous, professional discussion, and like support.

But the wave of outright ire, rage, and indignation it sparked on other boards…wow. I've rarely seen a subject get so ugly so fast. And the majority of this ugliness (you're way ahead of me, aren't you?) was propagated by new writers who, while they might have a handful of published stories on their bibliography, did not under these new membership requirements have enough credits to join as Affiliates.

I'll spare you the endlessly unpleasant specifics and jump right to the punchline, simply and eloquently expressed in 3 short, to-the-point paragraphs by Angela Hawkes-Craig, who was gracious enough to grant me permission to reprint her comments here:

"The tightening up of Affiliate membership requirements, in my opinion, is an excellent step in the correct direction. I, for one, am sick and tired of inarticulate postings by people writing such things as: 'I wrote this here book. It's real big. I want to write books for a living. Give me your agent's name and tell him I'm a real good writer.'

"Anyone joining HWA should already possess the basic knowledge of the publishing process; they shouldn't have to get on the boards and ask what a cover letter is, or what simultaneous submissions are....this should be known to any professional writer.

"The problem up until now has been that the organization is full of Buffy fans who want to be writers but want it handed to them on some sort of silver platter by other writers and editors. With the requirements now in force, we will weed out the fans and wannabes and start attracting writers who are serious about their craft."

Simple, direct, and to the point.

Which brings us back to the Norberts of this world. This time, for the clincher, we turn to a member of the opposite sex, who I'll call Norbette. (Bear in mind that Norbert and Norbette each have maybe a half-dozen published stories to their credit right now.)

Norbette's tale of woe is almost exactly the same as Norbert's: she showed me a story, I helped her dissect it so she could see where she was less adept than she needed to be, she talked through her revision ideas with me, went off, wrote the story, sent it into the Monteleones (again, I never saw the revised piece), and was rejected with an equally detailed response. Norbette confronted me face to face with her anger and whines, which were exactly the same as Norbert's. When she was done, I tried offering a few words of comfort: "Rejection is part of the game, it's not personal. Everybody's got to pay their dues"; she then said -- as Norbert had -- "Maybe I should just quit", to which I replied, "You need to chalk this up to gaining needed experience and move on to the next story and the next market", and she came back at me with this one:

"That's easy for you to say, you never get rejected anymore; you've got people waiting on stuff from you."

And here, my friends, is where I got so angry that I actually wound up in the ER again when the nitro did nothing to quell the not-at-all-fun chest pains that soon followed.

I crumpled up her printed e-mail rejection from the Monteleones and dropped it in her lap while saying something along the lines of the following (which started as slightly more than a whisper and ended somewhere in the middle range of the Richter Scale): "First of all, yes, I do still get rejected; secondly, that line of people waiting for stuff from me isn't nearly as long as you seem to think it is -- hence my working a maintenance job 4 to 5 nights a week; and lastly, how fucking dare you sit there and try to make me feel as if I should apologize to you because I'm now seeing some measure of the success I've worked my ass off for! I've been doing this for seventeen goddamn years! I've thrown away more rejection slips than you've yet to write enough stories to begin to collect, and I will not be made to feel guilty because I stuck with it and have now earned enough of a reputation that editors know they can expect a quality piece of work when they see my name on the by-line! I've earned the right to sometimes be able to get into print easier than someone who's just barely gotten their feet wet!"

To which she replied -- after her ears stopped ringing and the windows stopped their rattling: "I knew it wasn't going to be easy; I just didn't think it would be this hard. Maybe I should quit."

That's when the chest pains really kicked in, so I never got the chance to make a reply; I will do so now.

Maybe you should quit. Maybe you don't have what it takes to make a career as a writer. Maybe you're one of those "writers" who are like the main character from David Morrell's terrific story "The Typewriter", a "writer" who realizes that he " ... liked to talk about it and be called a writer, but the pain of work did not appeal to him."

Okay, here's where it all starts coming together (finally):

There is no easy road to quick publication; there are no "ins"; it doesn't matter a damn "who you know"; no one is going to hand this to you on a silver platter; and so what if you've been at it for only 1 or 2 years and have yet to make a sale to Borderlands or Cemetery Dance or see one of your three published stories recommended for a Stoker? It doesn't mean there's some grand conspiracy out there whose sole focus is to make sure that you and you alone never see success in your career.

It. Ain't. Easy. It's not supposed to be. This is something to which you must wholeheartedly dedicate your life or you don't stand a chance. And if you're so used to getting everything right now, if you've so bought in to the fast-food/TiVo/iTunes/LJ/E2/On-Demand/instant results/instant reaction/instant access/instant gratification mentality that you sincerely believe you have the incontrovertible right to see your work immediately in print without having to take the time, effort, and patience to work toward building a reputation and career, if you're feeling frustrated and angry because you haven't seen this instant success and think you ought to maybe quit…then quit!. Fer chrissakes, quit. Please. There are already enough of us out there competing for a limited number of magazine, anthology, and book slots. You'd be doing us a big favor, because the time that editors would otherwise waste on reading your stuff could be spent getting closer to reading our stuff, stuff that, odds favor, is infinitely better than yours because instead of spending our time on every discussion board we can find bitching and complaining about how *sniff-sniff* hard it is to get into and stay in print, we're busy actually writing and revising and re-revising in an effort to make our work as good as it can possibly be so that the Monteleones can tell us to revise it one more time.

So, yes, please, do quit and spare the rest of us your endless whining about how hard this business is.

And if you're one of the Norberts or Norbettes of this world who don't quit after the first 10 or 15 rejections, I offer the following piece of advice:

Grow a fucking spine -- and an extra layer or two of skin while you're at it. And do not waste a moment of your or anyone else's time publicly grousing about how hard this is, because the time you piss away doing that could be better spent working on your books and stories. Take my word on this next because I am speaking from recent and on-going experience: there may very well come a time when you'll find yourself unable to write as much as you'd like to (if you can do it at all), and you will deeply regret every second of precious writing time that you wasted on grumbling and complaining and self-indulgent self-pity.

Six days. It has taken me six days to write this column. A month ago, before the second heart attack, I would have cranked out this sucker in a few hours -- yes, I've worked on other things during these six days, but have been physically unable to devote more than an hour at a time to any of them. Trust me, it's a great big puddle of suck.

But will I close this installment without offering advice to those Norberts and Norbettes who are determined to continue their campaign of complaining? Absolutely not; like I said at the beginning: I make every attempt to be supportive of all new writers. So here's my advice for all of you young curmudgeons out there:

Form your own organization, one that anybody can join without regard to experience, skill, or commitment; call it the NWWA: The New Whining Writers' Association. Get together on your discussion boards and talk about how arrogant, unfair, and elitist HWA and other professional writers’ organizations are because they've got the nerve to demand that potential members actually meet certain standards. I'm sure the discussion threads will be lively…if not particularly well-informed, articulate, or intelligent.

Maybe the rest of us will pop in from time to time on our days off to talk about our latest book deal or how we've sold yet another story to Cemetery Dance or Borderlands.

If this installment has offended you, if it's pissed you off, if you think I'm being unfair, then get off your ass, write as well as you can, and prove me wrong.

Just don't give yourself a heart attack in the process ....

Installment #8: Of Contests, "This Is Supposed To Be A Horror Story!", and Mediocrity Conditioning

2004-06-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

As some of you might know, I was asked to be one of the judges for this year's Chiaroscuro/ Leisure Books Short Story Contest ; Michael Rowe and Stewart O'Nan are the other two judges, with Don D'Auria from Leisure Books serving as the tie-breaking judge, should it come to that.

While I'm not going to talk too much about the contest (I will tell you that, as I write this, we've narrowed it down to the 15 Finalists, from among which the winners will be chosen), I am going to talk briefly about the overall quality of the submissions -- at least, the overall quality of the nearly-100 submissions that were sent my way.

On a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the highest), the stories came in at a solid 6 1/2 to 7, which, I have to admit, surprised me -- if for no other reason than a handful of past judges from other contests (not just this one) had led me to expect otherwise.

To be honest, I wasn't prepared for there to be such originality among the submissions; for every mad slasher, ghost, vampire, and (insert tired horror cliché here) story I read, I found there to be at least one story whose content, writing, or central idea outshone the more predictable tales (and even the predictable stories displayed a level of technical craftsmanship that was refreshing).

But even in a majority of these original stories, certain disquieting similarities began to pop up, the most predominant one being that, somewhere past the mid-point of the story, it seemed that the writers suddenly thought: Whoa, wait a minute -- this is supposed to be a horror story!...and subsequently grafted obviously horrific elements onto the narrative so it more resembled the popular concept of horror.

Example: one story dealt with a young boy's imaginary friend whose physical form and behavior changed to suit the young boy's mood; if the boy had been mistreated by his friends, the imaginary friend appeared to him as beaten-up and angry; if the boy's mother had scolded him for something he did wrong, the imaginary friend appeared to him as smaller and sadder.

You get the idea.

Now this was -- for the first 6 pages -- an absolutely wonderful piece, reminiscent of the best Twilight Zone episodes, but then--

-- Whoa, wait a minute -- this is supposed to be a horror story! --

-- the imaginary friend shows up, unbidden, in the shape of a deformed whosee-whatsits wielding an axe, tells the boy that he's "...sick and tired of pretending to be something I'm not", and chops the little boy up into bloody chunks (the death of the boy takes almost 2 pages, and is unnecessarily graphic).

Now, had this turnabout been set up anywhere beforehand (which it wasn't), I might have accepted it; it might have been a terrifically vindictive morality play about allowing reality to intrude too far into one's fantasy life (which it is, at least for the first 6 pages, and beautifully done); the ending might have been interpreted as the death of one's fantasy life equaling the spiritual and physical death of the Self; in other words, it might have resulted in something deeper and infinitely more disturbing than the cheap, bloody shock that the writer chose to end it with because, gosh-golly-gee, it's a horror story and you expect this sort of thing, right?

What made this doubly alarming is that, in almost every case, the writers who grafted these ham-fisted horrific elements onto their stories had demonstrated a level of skill that led me, as a reader, to believe they were going to stay true to their voice and vision (and no, I won't apologize for using that last word); until these grafted elements intruded, each story had suggested that its writer was not only well-read and intelligent, but trusted their own instincts enough to know that it's okay to do Something Different in horror; yet near the end, some mass-market, don't-challenge-the-expected-norm, lowest-common-denominator gene kicked in, and something SPOOOOOOKY or Shocking!!!! (read: recognizably horrific) arrived to bust up the party and send everyone home way too early.

And I keep wondering: Why?

Flashback to a month ago, on the Shocklines discussion board. The subject was something like: What Do You Think Of These Writers? Someone listed half a dozen or so writers, among them Yours Truly, and one of the responses was: "Gary Braunbeck? Too dark and depressing for me. Sorry, Gary, if you're reading this, but I like some light at the end of my darkness." The response of the other Shockliners was basically along the lines of: "Yeah, I have to be in a certain mood to read him, so I can understand how you feel."

That both hurt and made me smile; it hurt because I realized that I am never going to see the kind of commercial success enjoyed by those writers who always offer a little "...light at the end" of their darkness (which I think I've always known, it was just a little jarring to see it spelled out in such direct and honest terms); it made me smile because it also means that, when readers are in "...a certain mood", only stuff like mine will suffice.

Yeah, my work is definitely an acquired taste, and I think it's because I refuse to graft "lighter" elements onto stories to make them more palatable to readers who have come to expect a certain formula from horror: meet the main character, get to know/like him or her, follow him or her through the horrific darkness that ensues, and emerge alive and triumphant with him or her into the light at the end.

Mind you, I've got nothing against happy endings - providing that they emerge naturally, are consistent with the overall tone of the piece, and (this is the important point) are justified. Otherwise, it's just bad plastic surgery.

I did this once (in truth, I allowed myself to be bullied into it) with my novella "The Sisterhood Of Plain-Faced Women" as it appeared in Things Left Behind. (For those of you who haven't read the story, worry not, I'll offer no spoilers.)

The argument was made to me by several people that, considering all the horrible experiences she'd been put through, it was "...unsatisfying" to have the story end for the main character on such a dark and hopeless note. Well, wanting to be widely-read (and any writer who claims they're happy being a "...best-kept secret" is one of two things: independently wealthy or delusional), I thought it over, re-read the story, saw an "out" for a "happy" ending, and re-wrote the last three scenes. The result is, I think, an immensely forgettable finale that reduces an otherwise pretty solid story to something that's just okay. You think. If you remember it at all.

The reason this "happy" ending doesn't work is because it does not fit within the world-view presented throughout the rest of the story; it's inconsistent with the tone, it does not emerge naturally from the sequence of events, and it requires that the central character suddenly put all of her faith into an act that is, for her, reckless (she is not reckless by nature, and even though this change in character might be acceptable under other circumstances, it would hinge on her having faith in her fellow human beings, which she does not; and since this particular form of faith is what's required to justify her final reckless act, the ending gets trapped in a Mobius-loop, Chicken-or-the-Egg logic that does not hold up to even passing scrutiny).

In short: I grafted a happy ending onto a story where it did not belong, and as a result fatally damaged the piece -- which is why, when Shocklines Press releases my next collection From Beneath These Fields of Blood (Redux), it will contain "The Sisterhood" with its original (and better) ending. No, it ain't a happy one, there's no "...light at the end", but it is the only ending that works because it's the only ending that's justified. (I can't get more specific without citing events from the story and thus possibly ruining it for those who've not read it, so I hope you'll forgive the generalizing.)

Happy endings only work when they're justified from within the natural progression (both tonal and narrative) of a story, and in my fictional universe, that rarely happens; horrific elements only work when they're justified, and in the case of many of the submissions to the Chiaroscuro/ Leisure Books Short Story Contest, this just wasn't the case; too much grafting, not enough 2nd or 3rd -drafting: the writers didn't trust their own instincts enough to not take the obvious way out.

Consider if you will Stephen King's remarkable novel, Pet Sematary; here you have a story that is incredibly dark, with only the briefest flashes of light and hope sprinkled throughout. The dark (and, at best, melancholy) tone of the novel is set early on, as are the ground rules of its microcosmic universe, and King never once betrays those rules or the novel's tone: because of the expert way he sets up everything, he can't betray them and remain justified in the world-view he presents. Many readers were shocked that King ended the novel as he did, and the reason behind this shock? As a friend of mine put it: "After all the horrible things that had happened, I was expecting a happier ending."

Not if you read it correctly, you weren't.

From almost the very beginning, you know there's no way in hell that this is going to turn out for the best. So how would you have felt if King had betrayed his story to give readers an "expected" happy ending? And even if he had found a way to cop-out with touching warm fuzzies at the end, do you think the novel would have had the effect on readers that it did? That it still has, over 20 years later?

King never flinched here, never pulled back, never hoodwinked for the sake of making things more palatable or comfortable for the reader; the result is a novel that is not only one of the most emotionally rich he's ever written, but arguably the single most horrific of his career. (And for you "...light at the end" folks, ask yourselves this - and be honest: how many of his novels and stories have had "happy" endings? I can think of maybe four - and even those aren't "happy" endings in the traditional sense. So why does his work endure? Because it's honest unto itself. From A Buick 8 may not be the best-written story he's ever told, but it's arguably the best-told story he's ever written, simply because he remains true to the tale. And sometimes that means not ending things with a gaudy display of horrific fireworks; and sometimes it means not ending things on a happy note, lest the story and the reader be betrayed.)

Old Willy S. said it best, folks: "To thine own self be true."

That is, in reverse, the answer to my question about the contest submissions: these horrific elements were grafted onto the stories because their writers (for whatever reasons) have been conditioned -- be it through uninspired films, television programs, or from reading work by writers whose only influence has been said films or television shows -- to believe that readers will only accept a story as being "horror" if it has certain readily-identifiable elements -- i.e. gore/violence/zombies/ vampires/what-have-you -- that are popularly mistaken as being the only elements that horror is concerned with.

There is a new generation of upcoming writers who are being conditioned for mediocrity; they will not -- or cannot -- trust their own instincts because the popular misconceptions about horror are threatening to become the accepted rules. If that happens, if the tired, formulaic, tried-and-true become the norm once again, then I'll be more than content to make due with being a writer whose work is only read when people are in "...a certain mood."

But I will not be content to sit idly by and let the upcoming generation of horror writers betray themselves, their stories, their craft, and their chosen field by giving them the impression that it's all right to shove a bloody shock down a reader's throat because this is supposed to be a horror story.

The solution is simple: Don't Do That.

If you get to a point in a story where you say to yourself, Damn, I'd better have something horrific happen pretty soon, do yourself and the rest of us a favor and walk away; come back to it in a day or two when you can approach the story fresh, on its own terms, and not those you have been programmed to think are applicable; yeah, you might not end up with a wide readership, but odds are the readership you will have will be a fiercely loyal one.

You'd be a fool to expect more.

Italics.

After exclamation points and profanity, the horror writer's third greatest enemy.

Like profanity, italics are most effective when used sparingly. From my point of view, italics should only be used to: A) place emphasis on a particular word or phrase; B) cite the name of a book, film, television or radio program, or musical work (as in the name of a symphony or a specific album, such as Mahler's 1st, The Who's Tommy, Warren Zevon's Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, etc.); C) to insert a brief flashback - be it a sequence of events or a snippet of recalled conversation - within the body of the current narrative; and, D) to set apart the contents of a letter, excerpted lines from a poem, or a snippet of song lyrics (which could arguably be accomplished with the use of block quotes instead, making this last "rule" more of a stylistic choice on the part of the writer).

(Second parenthetical pause here: when citing the name of a song or a story, quotation marks are what's required, as in: Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" or Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back". The title of the album or collection in which the piece is included would be italicized, as in: Simon and Garnfunkel's Greatest Hits and Night Shift. The differences are subtle, but profound, and not necessarily as easy to discern as one might at first think.)

Remember the Dragnet-theme warning I suggested when it came to using exclamation points? (Quick recap: imagine that every time you use an exclamation point outside of dialogue, it comes accompanied by the first four notes of the Dragnet theme; you'll use them sparingly as a result.)

Well I've got a similar warning cue to employ when it comes to italics: imagine that whatever is italicized is being either whispered or Shouted Through A Bullhorn (however circumstances dictate); it's a matter of extremes, like it or not.

An italicized letter or quoted poem? A whisper.

A panicked warning (as in: "Look out!")? A shout through a bullhorn. (And bear in mind that when you combine italics with all caps -- "LOOK OUT!" -- it's overkill; the circumstances under which something like the above is italicized give the words or passage an immediacy that presenting them in all capital letters only diminishes; it's hitting the reader over the head with your intent: DEAR GOD, THIS IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT AND I'M GOING TO MAKE DAMN SURE YOU KNOW IT!. Overkill. Don't do that.)

There is another -- and less directly acknowledged -- reason that it's a good idea to use italics sparingly: like it or not, a prolonged passage of italics quickly tires the eyes while reading. It's that simple.

As a writer, whenever I come to a passage that I know is going to have to be italicized (such as a letter or brief flashback), I apply the same rule to my own work that I do to anything that I might choose to read: no more than 3 pages. That is all that my eyes can take as a reader, so I assume that's my readers' limits, as well. After 3 pages, it just gets annoying; and the last thing you want is for a reader to become more aware of how you're presenting something than of its content.

So: a whisper or shouted through a bullhorn, no more than 3 pages, and you just might find that italics can be a useful ally, rather than the horror writer's third greatest enemy.

Realizing that my earlier comments might be disheartening to some, I want to close this installment by saying to all the writers who submitted to the Chiaroscuro/Leisure Books Short Story Contest that none of you need feel slighted; I had a great time reading all the submissions (even those of the well-worn-out trope variety), none of your stories had anything wrong with them that another pass or two couldn't fix, and when it came down to picking my final 5, I had a much more difficult time than I'd foolishly led myself to believe I'd have; in a couple of cases, it was almost painful to decide which story went on to the finals and which one didn't. In the end, I elbowed aside the writer in me in favor of the merciless reader that I can be...and even then, the choices were tough. We're down to the 15 Finalists now, and it doesn't appear that it's going to be any easier. That's it's been this tough just to get to these last 15 stories should tell you folks something about the overall quality of the submissions.

I know this smacks of blowing smoke up the old ying-yang, but it's the truth; you should all be proud of just how damned difficult you've made it for the judges this year.

Stay tuned....

Installment #7: Of Creepers, Details, and "Dude, It's Just Horror!

2004-06-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, in case you haven't already heard (which means my scream of shock didn't reach all the way across the East Coast), this past Saturday night, June 5th, the Horror Writers' Association honored my short story "Duty" with the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction.

That's right: I won a Stoker. I'm still reeling from it, still incredibly happy, and still half-expecting someone to come tap, tap, tapping at my chamber door, saying, ahem, there was a terrible misunderstanding and could they please have it back because Stephen King is waiting for it.

I will confirm that it's one hell of a humbling experience to receive one of these, and I am more grateful than I can put into words; but like I said in my acceptance speech: for those who claim the Stokers don't mean anything, try standing up on that stage with one of them in your hand and saying that.

After having visited NYC, I can say to all of you New Yorkers that you've got every reason to be damned proud of your town; everyone I met -- from the shuttle driver to the people who manned the hotel desk to the bleary-eyed guy who sold me a cup of coffee at 5 a.m. -- was friendly and (get this) courteous; that's right, you read it correctly, courteous. Even though it was obvious to all of them (sometimes painfully so) that I was a visitor from Ohio, I was never spoken down to, never made to feel like a hick, never dismissed out of hand, and not once was I ever made to feel like they were doing me a favor by putting up with my presence in their city. The song is right: it's a helluva town, and I can't wait to visit again. (And not to overlook the New Jersey folks I met: you're equally cool, as well.)

And for the record: the coffee I had in NYC was the most delicious coffee I've had in my life; and I want to move to Tower Records -- not near Tower Records, to Tower Records, as in: I wish to live in the building, preferably somewhere on or near the escalator that links the CD section to the DVDs one floor below. Yes, I have problems, but you already knew that.

One more thing, and then we'll get to the topic this time around.

After the "A**holes" section of the last column was posted, I received a lot of e-mails expressing concern for my financial situation. One reader even went so far to actually send some cash to me through the mail (thanks, Rick). I felt really bad about this because a lot of you good folks came away from that installment with the impression that I was on the edge of homelessness and poverty, which is decidedly not the case; but, as you know, I'm not getting rich from doing this, either (hence the three part-time jobs).

In almost every single letter, a suggestion was made, and while I at first gave it a thumbs-down, enough people have continued to suggest it that I thought, what the hell, so here it is:

If you really enjoy the content you find on this site, if you like the rants and appreciate the free bi-monthly stories, video, etc., and if you'd like to tip the writer as you would your favorite bartender, here's the place to do it:

Or, if you'd rather donate to a far worthier cause, make a donation to Protect.org or Strange Horizons or the organization of your choice. Whichever you choose, I thank you.

Onward...

A few weeks ago, a writer friend of mine -- we'll call him Norbert -- was busy making final revisions on a story he was planning to submit to an anthology that is currently reading. Norbert asked me if I wold look at his story and offer suggestions and opinions. I read the story over, and while a full 75% of it was rock-solid, the final sequence seemed to me to fall victim to over-ripe melodrama.

Now, instead of just saying outright that the finale was overbaked (and a bit nonsensical), I instead pointed out to the N-man what I saw as the place where the story wandered off the highway; it had to do specifically with the nature of a central character's physical and spiritual metamorposis mid-way through on which the rest of the story's events were hinged; the precise nature of this metamorposis, and what the character intended to accomplish with it, were unclear and -- I felt -- because of their nebulousness, robbed the story of any impact. Instead, Norbert had chosen to finish things off with a (figurative) loud and histrionic display of horrific fireworks.

I began asking him specific questions about the precise nature of this character's physical and spiritual metamorphosis: what exact physical change was taking place, how it affected the character's ultimate goal, and what that ultimate goal was supposed to be.

"What exactly is the nature of this change?" I asked.

"It's a supernatural transformation," was Norbert's reply.

"But a supernatural transformation into what, exactly?"

"I don't know...it's just a supernatural transformation," he again said.

"That's not good enough," I replied. "In order for you to get from the mid-point of the story to a more logical, chilling, and less cartoonish ending, you have to know exactly the nature of this transformation, how it affects the character's psychological and spiritual make-up, and what the character's ultimate goal is once this transformation has been completed."

Now, I thought this was a fairly clear, concise, and thoughful piece of criticism. Norbert, after throwing up his hands and sighing loudly in frustration, looked me right in the eyes and said: "Dude, it's just horror! It's not like science fiction where these kinds of specific details matter!"

No, I did not kill him, but I did make it clear that he had not only just insulted and trivialized the horror genre, but also (intentionally or not) my life's work.

I don't know anyone who enjoys hearing their life's work reduced to a triviality, do you?

Now, in Norbert's defense, he was dealing with a story that had been giving him problems for a while; so much so that it had been put away and only recently approached again.

I would also add that Norbert has not written or read as much horror as he has science fiction and fantasy.

I would also add that he had been having a really, really bad couple of weeks personally, and as a result felt like I was attacking him.

That said (and, yes, he apologized later when he realized the remark -- however off-hand -- had hurt and offended me quite deeply), the N-man's comment encapsulated for me, with disturbingly and depressingly crystal clarity, why it is that a lot of horror stories and novels being published are of an at-best journeyman quality.

It's because too many writers think, Dude, it's just horror! Too many writers think that it's okay to just say "...it's a supernatural transformation", and leave it at that, because once you've let the demon out, you don't really need to think about the How's and Why's and How-Come's; once the Boogeyman is boogying, the details don't matter, just so long as it's exciting or suspenseful or horrific.

Wrong.

It is exactly when the Glop is slurping victims left and right that you most need to think about the details. Every story -- no matter how believable or outrageous its premise -- must follow its own internal logic; it must establish the rules for its own microcosmic universe and then adhere to those rules. Fairly basic stuff, unless you think it isn't necessary to bother establishing those rules in the first place.

Let me give you an example: the first Jeepers Creepers movie. Throughout the story, all we know about the Creeper is: he's a demon (and even that much is left for us to infer, rather than being directly established). Nowhere in the first film does the writer bother establishing the Creeper's precise nature; we don't know where it came from, what it wants, why it wants it, or what, exactly, the Creeper plans to accomplish through its actions. As a result of the Creeper's nature and powers never being established, the story leaves it wide open for it to behave however it needs to in order to keep the story suspsenseful.

That's not necessarily a good thing; yes, because neither the audeince nor the characters in the film know the Creeper's precise nature, it is impossible to predict what it will do next, and by default that should have generated more suspense...but it doesn't quite work. It's the very unpredictability of the Creeper's actions that works against the second half of the film, preventing it from reaching the dizzying levels of suspense that mark the first forty minutes; if we, the audience, had been given some vague idea of the Creeper's nature, had we been given just a few rules, had just a few details been established, then we wouldn't have felt so much that the writer was simply pulling things out of his ying-yang in order to make the next scene SPOOOOOOOKY.

It's sloppy storytelling, pure and simple. (And I would remind you that the reason Jeepers Creepers 2 was such a success was because the writer took the time to painstakingly establish the background elements lacking in the first film; because we did know the Creeper's nature, what it wanted, why, and -- an old trick that always works -- that it was functioning under a time limit, the second film generated and maintained a high level of suspense that was both intense and followed the internal logic set down by the ground rules. No, it ain't Lawrence of Arabia, but on terms of storytelling, it's light-years ahead of the first movie.)

If you think I'm making a tempest in a teapot here, consider this: Stephen King went back and revised the first four Dark Tower books so that they better followed the internal logic and ground rules that emerged as he wrote the last three novels in the series; he did this because the details are important; he did this because, as a writer, he was not content to simply let gaffes in continuity remain uncorrected; he did this because he takes his work very seriously, and part of taking it seriously means that you think about the details, you follow your own ground rules, and you (as the late Theodore Sturgeon so eloquently phrased it) ask the next question: what is the true nature of the beast?; why does this happen?; what does he or she want?; what brought them here?, etc.

No, you don't have to offer these answers outright during the course of the story, but you, as the writer, have to know these answers yourself, for if you start your novel, novella, or short story with all the answers already in mind, you'd be surprised at how quickly and clearly your story will follow a logical course of events wherein these answers are shown to the reader through the actions of the characters or the progression of events.

I myself am doing the same thing with the three Cedar Hill Stories collections; every reprint story that appears in these has been tweaked a little here and there so that each better fits into the universe of Cedar Hill, better adheres to the ground rules, and better holds its logical place in the chronology of events leading up the "end" of Cedar Hill in the third volume. (An aside here: the late John D. MacDonald is rumored to have always written the endings of his novels first, obstensibly so he'd always know what he was heading toward, and so could ensure that everything else pointed in that direction; it's also been rumored he did that because he was afraid if he died before the book was finished, some jackass would finish it and give it the wrong conclusion. Starting with Graveyard People and moving through the next two volumes, everything in all three books is pointing toward the novella "This Dark March", which will close the final collection.)

The details are important, folks; they are vital; they are not to be dismissed off-handedly; because it ain't just horror: it's a question of careful storytelling, because it's only through genuine craftsmanship that we can offer readers a much richer and rewarding reading experience than simply tossing the details out the window and just being SPOOOOOOOKY.

If you disagree, then go back and read the "Fuzzy Bunnies" installment and ask yourself: wouldn't I feel cheated if the majority of what I encountered in horror consistently made these mis-steps, ones that could have been avoided had the writer taken the time and effort to ask the next question?

This column's writing tip has to do with the second of the horror writer's three deadliest enemies: profanity. (Italics being the third, which we'll cover next time.)

First of all, unless you're writing Christian YA (and even that's up for debate), it would be unrealistic to write a novel or short story wherein one of the characters didn't swear at some point; our lives have becaome much more fast-paced and frustrating, and a result of that frustration is that people swear more now than they did, say, back in the days of Booth Tarkington's Magnificent Ambersons.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), there is a difference between the way people swear in real life and how they should swear in fiction. I know a guy who would have a full one-third -- if not half -- his vocabulary hacked off at the knees if he were unable to say f**k. I've passed strangers' conversations wherein I picked up at least nine different profanities before they were out of earshot.

I remember one instance, while reading Skipp & Spector's The Light At The End, where in a single line of dialogue, one character used eleven profanities -- including all of the Biggies -- in one sentence; it was rather impressive...but it was also way too much. Yeah, I have no doubt that there are people out there in the real world who do speak like that, but (and here comes the tip), if you over-use profanity in your dialogue, you rob it of its most important function: profanity is simply violence without action; it should be employed in fiction to either foreshadow or replace violence. If you follow this suggested guideline, you'll not only use less of it your writing, but what you do use will be so well-placed that it will have ten times the impact of an endless string of curses.

Example: in my novel In Silent Graves, there is a sequence where the main character (who's just lost his wife and newborn child) enconters two guys on a city bus who are swearing and cursing and spewing the most unbelievable filth (Andrew Dice Clay wouldn't say some of the things these two guys do); their language is upsetting a young woman who's sitting nearby the main character, and as the intensity of the profanity and filth builds, so does the main character's frustration and anger. It's the only time in the book that profanity of this level is used, and that was a deliberate choice on my part: I wanted it to be as shocking to the reader as it is to the main character, and I wanted it to build along with his anger. Everyone who's read the novel has mentioned this sequence as being very effective, and inwardly I cheer; I wanted it to be effective, I wanted their language to be shocking, because the increased intensity of the filth that comes out of their mouths foreshadows the violence that ends this sequence.

So: remember that profanity is simply violence without action, and that it should be employed only to foreshadow or replace violence; you'll find that you use less of it, and that what you do use will be all the more effective.

That'll do it for this time round. I want to thank all of you for continuing to support myself, my work, and this web site (for the first time ever, I exceeded my bandwidth allowance last month, so the traffic here's getting pretty heavy, and I dig it, thanks). Look for more free stories, video, and downloadable audio in the weeks to come, and if you've any suggestion for topics you'd like to see covered in future columns, drop me an e-mail.

Stay tuned....

Of Awards, A**holes, and Assorted Aggravations: Part Three

2004-05-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, before moving on to the third and final part of this three-parter, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who e-mailed me after Part Two; some of you offered thanks for making you aware that not all writers have the luxury of writing one book a year and then sitting back and waiting for the fat royalty checks to come a-rollin' rollin' rollin' in; some of you wrote to tell me that I was full of sh*t because there's nothing wrong with downloading music and movies (even though I made it abundantly clear that I was discussing only written copyrighted material, which led me to think maybe a few of you might benefit from cracking open a book once a decade so your comprehension levels might rise to slightly above that of an amoeba); still others wrote to offer financial assistance should I need it, and while I was and am deeply appreciative of the sentiment and concern, I'm in no immediate danger of becoming homeless or starving. I won't be flying to the Bahamas or buying an LCD widescreen television any time soon, either, but we all have our burdens to bear.

However, there is something you can do for me, if you'd like: if you really want to hop onboard the "Help Gary Stop Being A Janitor And Return To Writing Full-Time" bandwagon, then walk into your local bookstore and just buy one of my books. Barring that, you can click over to the Links section here, and from there surf on to, say, Shocklines, Earthling Publications, Borderlands Press, or Cemetery Dance, and pre-order one of my upcoming collections or novels. You'll get a good read for your money, I think, and each sale gets me that much closer to parting ways with my mop bucket, toilet brush, and bottles of Windex (the smell of which I used to find pleasant but now just makes me want to let fly with a massive Technicolor Yawn).

And in case my saying it outright last time wasn't clear enough, I want to reiterate, re-phrase, and repeat that I was in no way, shape, manner, or form attemptiong to speak for Harlan Ellison, nor was I attempting to represent or (as one friend accused me) misrepresent his fight; the only thing I was representing in Part Two was my opinion about Ellison's ongoing battle against internet piracy.

Are we clear on that? I speak here for myself and only for myself.

So...we've now covered Awards and A**holes, so that leaves us with (drumroll please):

III. Assorted Aggravations

As you may have correctly inferred, this last part is going to be a bit scattershot, jumping and tumbling about like a paper cup caught in the wind. I'm going to cover a handful of things about the horror field that bug the living sh*t out of me on an often daily basis, but individually don't have the makings of a full column in them.

Take, for instance, 1: The Look Of Most Horror-Related Web Sites.

You may have noticed that, with the exception of the gravestones and angel statues (which are few and kept in the background), there is nothing about this site to overtly announce it belongs to a horror writer; this is not because I am embarrassed to be a horror writer (you should know better by now); it's because:

A) I write things other than horror, and sometimes even the things I write that are horror don't fit neatly into the popular conceptions most people have of the work being done in the field;

B) Deena Warner, this site's designer and web master, has a deft and subtle touch with visual elements; she knows how to convey the spirit of my work with the placement of a single image, the use of a specific font, the balance of a particular color scheme: if there is such a thing as a definitive visual representation of the basic nature of my work, the design of this web site (Flash intro included) is it;

C) The visual design of most horror-related web sites I find to be either self-conscious, juvenile, or so over-the-top as to be laughable. A lot of times you will open a horror site to met with SPOOOOOOOKY MUSIC (usually of the too-loud Omen-type, Gregorian chant variety), onyx-dark backgrounds, animated GIFs of burning candles, skulls with glowing red eyes (or that f**king rotating 3D skull that I know you've all seen), bats flapping their wings, horizontal rules that appear to be dripping blood, carved pumpkins with fire flickering behind their eyes and smiles...I have even come across more than a few author's web sites where the author's photo shows the author him- or herself spattered in blood. (Ooooh, I forgot to mention the blood spatters; you have to make sure you've got plenty of blood spatters all the hell over each page, to give it that always tasteful post-Manson-Family-visit look.)

For the record; yeah, the Flash intro of this site includes music, but it is not a piece of music that is self-conscious or over-the-top; I wanted something that was more disconcerting and quirky than SPOOOOOOOKY, and this particular piece of music (royalty-free, which I purchased) fit the bill; if you listen to it, you'll find that it never does quite what you expect it to (kind of like -- if I am to believe my reviews -- my own work). It was chosen very carefully, and part of the criteria was that it not sound like every other piece of music used in a horror site Flash intro.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that horror-related web sites that get so far up in your face they're practically halfway down your throat from the opening page bug the sh*t out of me. If the above-mentioned elements are being used in a tongue-in-cheek way, that's cool (a couple of my links go to sites that use them for just that purpose), but the majority of them are actually trying to be scary, and it doesn't work; it just makes them look like unimaginative, bloody-minded, ham-fisted juvenile con-artists who think Last House On The Left constitutes a genuine cinematic achievement and booger jokes are the height of wit.

Onward...

2: Horror Writers With A Self-Invented Moniker and/or "Persona"

Gimme a break. I don't know about you, but if I encounter one more writer (in most cases, new writers, which makes me despair, sincerely) who prefaces their name with "The New Bad Boy/Bad Girl of Horror", "The New Queen of Terror", "The New Prince of Dark Fiction", "The New Court Second-Scribe in Charge of Queasy Sensations at The Pit Of Your Tummy" or some-such other bullsh*t handle designed to draw attention to the writer rather than the work, I'm going to climb a tower, I swear it. (For clarification on this last, see Part Two.)

(Second parenthetical pause: wouldn't it be interesting to have someone call themselves "The Nice Guy Of Horror" or "The Courteous Queen Of Terror" or "The Really Swell Dude of Dark Fiction"? I'd actually remember that, and would probably seek out their work to read just because they were clever enough to do it.)

Sometimes -- dash, repeat, italicize -- sometimes these monikers are created not by the writers themselves, but, rather, by reviewers. The most recent case of a writer who's employed a moniker he or she didn't create her- or himself is that of John Paul Allen, one helluva nice guy and author of the novel Gifted Trust. A reviewer for that novel dubbed Allen "...the father of nightmares." An interviewer who read that review used the phrase to introduce Allen, so it comes as no suprise that Allen has used that phrase in publicity releases -- and why the hell shouldn't he? It's a terrific, eye-catching, memorable phrase that is going to go a long way in helping potential readers remember his name; he didn't come up with it and decide to label himself; and any writer who's handed an unsolicited blurb like that is a fool not to get as much mileage as he can out of it. Yes, writing a strong novel is damned important, but once the work is published, it all boils down to bid-ness and marketing, and anything that draws attention to your work can and should be used to your advantage. So, good for John Paul.

Since starting this column, I have come across (or been introduced to, unsolicited) a number of horror writers who, both on-line and at conventions, assume a "persona" not only for the benefit of their readers (assuming they actually have any, as they claim), but for that of other writers and editors, as well. When asked why they insist on assuming these personae, every last one of them (at least, to whom I have spoken) have answered with something like: "Because I want readers/editors/other writers to remember me. It's a way of making a strong impression." On the surface, it might be seem like a good answer, but it reminds me of a snippet from a Bill Cosby routine wherein two guys are talking about cocaine usage; the first guy asks the second one, "What's the attraction?", and the second guys answers, "Well, cocaine intensifies your personality." To which the first guy responds: "Yes, but what if you're an a**hole?"

If you focus the majority of your energy on perfecting a "persona" so that other writers/readers/editors/artists will remember you, then I guaran-flippin'-tee you that you'll succeed; they'll remember you; but ask them to name a piece of your work and see what happens; you could probably hear a gnat fart in the silence that will follow. Which is precisely what you'll merit; if you choose to make it all about you rather than the work, then you richly deserve the disdain and/or obscurity that is coming your way.

I can say this without fear of reprisal because I do not have a persona; I barely have a personality. Trust me on this.

Onward and downward:

3: People Who Claim To Be An "Expert" On Horror Because They've Read Everything written By Stephen King (or Anne Rice, or Clive Barker, or Robert McCammon, or Peter Straub, or Or OR...)

You get the idea. Odds are, you've met someone who's this type of "expert". You've probably had to endure their homilizing endlessly about their extensive knowledge of the field based on having read only King or Rice or Barker or Or OR...(not dissing these writers, get it? Got it. Good.); and you have undoubtedly heard these "experts" dismiss out of hand any writer who isn't King or Rice or Barker or Or OR... because these "experts" don't want to expand their understanding and appreciation of the rich diversity of fiction offered in the field because to do so would be to admit (to themselves and others) that they don't really have the slightest god*amn idea what they're talking about. For someone to claim they're an "expert" on horror based solely on having read everything written by a single author is tantamount to my claiming to be an "expert" on automobile mechanics because I've read the owner's manual that's stuffed in the glove compartment of my girlfriend's Toyota.

Try this little experiment: the next time you find yourself confronted by one of these "experts", politely interrupt them and ask them how they feel about the influence M.R. James's or Nathaniel Hawthorne's work might have had on King or Rice or Barker or Or OR..., and see how quickly that stops their lecture mid-sentence. And if they can't answer because it's obvious they've never read (or, in most cases, even heard of) James or Hawthorne or Matheson or Blackwood Or Or OR... tell them to shut the f*ck up, then go have an intelligent conversation with someone who has the brains to admit they don't know everything.

Onward...

4: Rampant Abuse Of The First Sale Doctrine By Some Booksellers and Individuals

Okay, this one is a real sore spot with me, and is going to take some explaining, so get comfortable.

You have, of course, encountered on-line booksellers who offer copies of books (often-times books they did not themselves publish) for outlandish prices. I myself have seen copies of my Cemetery Dance collection Things Left Behind going for as much as $1, 750.00 (which, by the way, is a good deal more than I received for writing it; not bitching about what Rich Chizmar paid me for it, not at all, but I would dearly love to have more than one copy of my first book but that ain't gonna happen because I can't afford the prices many places are charging for it). The recent sold-out release of Borderlands 5 turned up at several on-line auctions within days of its publication with bids starting -- starting -- at between $200.00 and $500.00.

There are some who mistakenly think this sort of thing is illegal; it isn't. It is allowed under what is known as the First Sale Doctrine. Section 109 of The U.S. Copyright Act codifies this doctrine which, in essence, states that whomever first purchases the physical copy of a copyrighted work (a book, a DVD, VHS, CD, etc.) has the right to do with that copy whatever they want, including transfer ownership of that physical copy in any manner they choose; they can give it away, sell it to some place like Half-Price Books, or offer it up for on-line auction. The First Sale Doctrine deals with the physical object, not the intellectual expression contained within.

Here's what p*sses me off about this: there are some booksellers and individuals who will purchase several copies of a book with no concern for the intellectual expression contained therein -- they couldn't give less of sh*t about the quality of the stories or the novel, no; what they're concerned with is obtaining as many physical copies as possible because (as was the case with Borderlands 5) a particular book might sell out very quickly, and they, in turn, under the protection of the First Sale Doctrine, can then transfer ownership of this physical copy at a price that is sometimes as much as 700% higher than what they paid for it originally. When confronted with their unapolegetic avarice (and avarice it is, make no mistake about that), they will inevitably defend their actions by claiming that they've every right to turn a profit on their investment...and then probably have the nerve to bitch about having to pay two bucks a gallon for gas because OPEC are a bunch of greedy bastards. What's wrong with this picture?

Understand something: I am not condemning specialty-press publishers like, say, Donald Grant, who produce exquisite (and justifiably expensive) limited editions of books geared toward book collectors -- those rare birds who have a deep and abiding respect both for the physical object and the intellectual expression contained within and who, it should go without saying, can afford these editions; nor am I condemning any specialty-press publisher who at a later date offers up copies of a book they've previously published at a higher price: after all, it's their product, and if they can find a buyer for their product, more power to 'em; I am also not condemning those who offer up for auction or re-sale books with the intent of using the money to assist others who are struggling with financial hardship (the upcoming auction to benefit Charles L. Grant being a prime example; I donated a book of mine and hope like crazy that the bids climb into the hundreds for it because Grant is a wonderful guy and superb writer and shouldn't be saddled with spirit-breaking worries over medical bills); my problem lies with those who buy books solely for the purpose of re-selling them at obscenely inflated prices so as to fatten their personal pockets just because they can. No, it isn't illegal, but in my book it is and always will be reprehensibly and immoral...which is why I do not buy books from sellers who engage in this practice, be they on-line or in the dealers' room at a con. (As soon as I see one of my books selling at more than twice its original asking price -- I'm not completely unreasonable about this, I realize that booksellers have to make a certain amount of profit to stay in business and cover basic operating costs, so doubling the price of a sold-out or out-of-print book strikes me as equitable and fair, but beyond that -- I walk away...and God help 'em if they have the nerve to ask me to sign any books for them so they can up the price even more.)

One more, for good measure:

5: Dumb-Sh*t Things Some People Say To You At Conventions (And A Few Suggested Comebacks)

"Tell me a scary story." (There once was a writer who killed several innocent people in a hotel lobby because one person too many asked him to tell them something scary and he just snapped, like in about four seconds.)

"What's your name again? Hmm...never heard of you." (And what do you do for a living? Really? You actually made a conscious decision to make that your life's work? For the love of God, man, WHY?)

"So you, like, write that Friday the 13th stuff, huh?" (So you, like, have a reasonable dental deductable, right?)

"Do you know Stephen King? What's he really like?" (So you, like, have a reasonable dental deductable, right?)

"You write horror? Ew!" (Mostly encountered when you're stupid enough to announce your profession at a sci-fi con.) (Phuck-u barada nikto.)

"I can't write, but I've got a great idea for a book; you can write it and we'll split the money." (Oh, MAY I? How long have I dreamed of this moment, when a selfless soul such as yourself would deem me worthy to WRITE SOMETHING FOR THEM while they sit on their ass and do nothing? How long have I prayed for yet ANOTHER person who isn't me to make money off my efforts while I work 3 jobs, turn insomnia into an art form, and eat macaroni & cheese four times a week? BLESS YOU, SELFLESS ONE! BLESS YOU!)

"Why are you openly weeping?" (Usually asked after forty-seven minutes of sitting at an autograph table where the only person to approach you is an overweight drunk from the local NASCAR convention asking for directions to the "sh*thouse".) (I want my mommy; my mommy reads all my books.)

"I don't read horror." (Then WHAT are you doing here? Oh, you're a hooker? Here's a fifty -- there's a guy over at the autograph table who's openly weeping; go cheer him up, would you?)

Yes, I have more, but this has turned into a longer installment than I'd planned, so I'm going to get out while the gettin's good. The writing tips will finally return next time, so stand warned. Thanks for enduring this three-parter, and for your continued support of my writing and this web site.

Stay tuned....

Of Awards, A**holes, and Assorted Aggravations: Part Two

2004-04-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Before moving headlong into the second part of this three-parter, I thought some of you might like to know that the mysterious origins of the term "Stroker" have been discovered, thanks to an e-mail from the redoubtable David J. Schow, one of my favorite writers and a man who -- by no fault of his own -- also happens to share the same birthday as me.

Mr. Schow informed me that the term first appeared in a parody article in the second issue of Midnight Graffiti, (Fall 1988). It was not slamming anybody. It was an alternate universe joke piece that suggested "Stroker" awards (a sculpture of one hand washing another) for categories like:

"Most Typos"

"Novel Most Worthy of Novelization"

"Best Stephen King Ripoff"

"This Year's 'New Stephen King'"

"Best Work by a Dead Writer"

"Best Never-Published Story"

"Best Horror Story or Book that Isn't Horror"

... and so on.

So, now we know.

One more point to clarify: There never was a by-law on the HWA books that forbade officers from having work considered for the Stoker; during his presidency, Dean Koontz withdrew his own work from Stoker consideration while urging all current and future officers to do the same in order to avoid the appearence of favoritism or impropriety. Koontz's suggestion was thought by some (myself included) to have been an actual by-law, which is was not -- it also doesn't really change anything I had to say in the previous section, but I don't like loose ends, so...there you go.

II. A**holes

Now...let's talk about a curious species of Internet parasites whom we shall call, for the sake of overall column continuity, A**holes, shall we?

As many of you know, Harlan Ellison has been for a few years now embroiled in a long, exhausting, and expensive battle against Internet piracy (for the specifics of this noble and important campaign, check out the information on Ellison's web site ). I've heard more than a few people wax mocking of Ellison's "Quixotic" battle (and a battle it is; one that must be won), and in almost every case, when asked why they think he's wasting his time, energy, and money, they invitably shrug their shoulders and say something profoundly intelligent like "He can't win," or "He's making it into a much bigger problem than it really is," or -- my particular favorite of all the bonehead responses -- "So what if somebody put some of his stories up on their web site or is offering them for download? It's not like he's losing any money because of it."

Of all the types of idiocy that cause me to despair (if not bleed) internally, it's that last, oh-so-smug variety that makes me want to grab a rifle and climb a tower.

It's not like he's losing any money because of it.

In order to help you understand just how insipid a statement that is, I'm not going to speak in generalities; nor should anyone think that I'd dare speak for Mr. Ellison (I like my spine attached to the rest of my body, thank you), no; instead, I'm going to whittle this down to specifics: case in point, the adverse effect that pirating of the written word has on those who make their living through writing: even more specific case in point, myself.

About a month ago, a very fine and conscientious fellow named Eric Collier (who haunts the Shocklines Message Board ) announced that the work of a half dozen or so writers who also frequent the board was being pirated -- some stories were being posted without permission on web sites, while still more stories -- and books -- were being offered via file-sharing services.

Before going any further, understand that I am restricting this argument solely to the illegal pirating of written material -- and for the sake of clarity, we will define "written material" as short stories, novellas, novels, and short story collections.

And make no mistake about this next one: if you put a story written by someone else up on a web site without their direct permission or that of their professional representative, and do so without compensating them for the use of that work, or if you offer stories or books written by someone else for free download via a file-sharing service without their direct permission or that of their professional representative, and do so without compensating them for the use of that work, that constitutes an infringement of their copyright, and is piracy, and is illegal. Period.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I was one of those writers whose work was being illegally pirated, and the moral question of it aside -- I've come to believe that people who engage in illegal pirating of others' copyrighted work subscribe to a code of morality that is, at best, highly selective -- I quickly (and much to my shock) realized just how financially damaging this could be to me.

Understand something: most of the writers whose work you read, whose books you purchase from the paperback shelves, and whose stories all but gurantee you'll buy a copy of the anthology or magazine in which they appear, are not rich. The vast majority of us do not get Stephen King-, Anne Rice-, or Dean Koontz-level advances for our books (not dissing any of the aformentioned writers, all of whom worked damned long and hard to earn the kind of money they're getting now), no; most of us are lucky to make three months' living expenses from an advance. We also scrabble to find to find time to work on short stories, most of which bring in, on the average, two- to three-hundred bucks a pop, if the markets are strong and pay well.

On the surface, that might look good to a lot of people. A three-thousand dollar advance for a book, three hundred bucks a pop for short stories? Sell a couple of books, a short story a month, that's almost ten thousand dollars a year from your writing; what the hell are you complaining about?

Well, for starters (if I understand the IRS's categorizations correctly), the Poverty Line starts at nine thousand dollars or less a year. So if you're lucky enough to have the time and energy to write, edit, re-write, and sell two books as well as one dozen short stories over a twelve-month period, you'll be a thousand bucks above the Poverty Line.

Lucky you. Who wouldn't be envious of a life like that?

Yes, I hear you: You're doing something you love, something you're good at, and something that others are willing to pay you to do; most people would kill to be in your position. Why aren't you grateful?

I am grateful; I'm grateful to have an at-least journeyman ability to tell a decent story, I'm grateful that there are editors and publishers out there who feel my work is worth their advance bucks, and I'm incredibly grateful for those readers who feel that my work is worth their time and money.

However, most people who think it's that easy ("...a couple of books, a short story sale a month...") have never really tried to write a novel or produce quality short stories on a consistent basis. Add to this equation that most of the writers whom you read also hold down at least one other job, and the time devoted to further polishing one's craft is -- at the very least -- cut down by one-third.

Time to get very specific.

I made just over six thousand dollars last year from my writing. Part of that stemmed from the heart attack I had last Septemeber that knocked me on my ass for the better part of four months (and whose subsequent medical bills I'm still trying to get caught up on); I fell behind on writing projects and, as a result, did not have that money coming in.

The best year I've ver had as a writer thus far saw me bring in almost twelve thousand dollars -- and that was only because I was writing full-time like a maniac because my wonderful (now ex-) wife Leslie had a damned good corporate job and could afford to support her (not-so wonderful) hubby while he went at it full-tilt-bozo.

Are you getting the idea here? Most of the writers whom you read are not getting rich from their writing. Most of them are holding down at least one other job.

I, personally, am holding down two other jobs; one as an on-line writing instructor, the other as a custodian at a local Jewish temple. I have to do this because of the income I lost as a result of my heart attack; I also have to do it because of the medical bills that resulted from that heart attack; and I also have to do it because, like most of the other writers I know, I ain't getting rich from it. I made just over six grand last year from writing and I owe the government over three hundred dollars in taxes; as I sit here writing this installment, I have about eleven dollars in cash on my person, and not-quite two hundred dollars in my checking account. If I did not split a large apartment with two other people, I would be royally screwed (and, no, this ain't a Pity Party for me; these is just the facts, ma'am.)

Which brings us back to the insipid, It's not like he's losing any money because of it.

Thanks to Eric Collier, I discovered that two of my short stories and one of my books were being illegally pirated via a file-sharer. Now, to be honest, the two short stories that were (and probably still are) being pirated have both been reprinted several times, and I doubt that their being pirated is going to cost me any more reprint sales, but I'm still taking action because it's the book that really infuriates me, and for my own financial safety I cannot afford to be selective.

My new novel, In Silent Graves, is being illegally pirated via file sharers under its original titltle, The Indifference of Heaven. Some people who have downloaded it -- and are offering it for download -- have made it a point to let others know that this is the same novel. When I expressed anger over this to someone I know, their initial response was along the lines of: Why get upset about it? So a couple dozen people download it, maybe a few more. It's not going to harm your sales or your royalties all that much.

(There I go, up the tower steps, adjusting the scope....)

For the sake of not hurting relations with one of my publishers -- Leisure -- I'm not going to tell you what my advance was on In Silent Graves; just know that, of the the little over six grand I made last year, the advance was part -- but by no means all -- of it; I had several story sales, as well.

And just so you understand how this seemingly "harmless" file-sharing can hurt a writer's livelihood, all of the figures that I state from here on will be rounded up to the nearest tenth cent; yeah, it's oversimplifying things a tad, but I think it will help make the point.

One copy of Graves will set someone back seven dollars. Of that seven dollars, my royalty will be (again, rounding upward) sixty cents.

So, if someone illegally downloads one copy of the book, I'm out sixty cents. Big deal, right?

Keep going.

If ten people illegally download copies of the book, I'm out six dollars. (Six dollars, by the way, would pay for one generic version of a prescription I have to take as a result of my heart attack; six dollars would also pay for the food with which to make my lunch that I take to the temple where I work the second and -- from a financial standpoint -- most primary of my three jobs; writing has now been moved down to the Number Two position, which makes me soul-sick and sad if I think about it too much.) Ten illegally-downloaded or -shared copies of the book is most definitely a deal...maybe not a big deal, but a deal nonetheless.

Keep going.

If one hundred people ilegally download copies of the book, that's sixty dollars that has been taken from my pocket. Try and tell me that you'd be all right with someone stealing sixty dollars from you. And if those one hundred people make the book available to one hundred more, and they in turn make it available to one hundred more...then soon it's conceivable that one thousand people might illegally download the book, at which point I am out six hundred dollars that I bloody well earned; I am out one-tenth of my total income from last year.

How would you feel if a group of people (who aren't associated with the IRS) just offhandedly decided that it was all right for them to steal one-tenth of your yearly income because they felt that what you did for a living wasn't really work, and you made all kinds of money from the advance anyway, and it's information and all information should be free, or whatever bullsh*t justification they use to anchor their highly selective form of morality? (And have you ever noticed that most of these Neolithic dipsh*ts who claim that "...all information should be free..." are usually in the process of shelling out or paying back tens of thousands of dollars for a college education so they can have a goddamn piece of paper to hang on their wall to show that they know what they're talking about because they've Got. A. Degree!? Talk about your "Never the twain shall meet...")

Now do you understand why Harlan Ellison's "Quixotic" battle is. So. Damned. Serious?

It's because if the A**holes aren't stopped, and if the ISPs and file-sharing services that rent them the space in which they practice their piracy are not in some way held accoutable when they fail to take action after being made aware of the problem, then it's only going to get worse, and pretty soon the problem will come to your doorstep, Dear Reader, and you'll be paying double the usual cost of a book just so the publishers can avoid bankruptcy and the writers they publish can struggle tooth and nail to simply remain above the Poverty Line of income.

Here's a quick test:

If you have ever, at any time and for any reason, downloaded a short story, novella, novel, or story collection by a writer from whom you did not have direct permission to do so, then you are an A**hole.

If you have ever, at any time and for any reason, offered the work of a writer for free download via a file-sharing service without that writer's direct permission, you are an A**hole.

You are an A**hole because you infringed on that writer's copyright, and by doing so -- whether you've got the guts to cop to it or not -- you stole money from that writer's pocket that they need in order to afford the day-to-day expenses of living.

How the hell would you feel if someone stole from you, and then was too much of a coward to admit to it and so hid themselves behind a lot of double-speak intended to muddy what are otherwise very clear waters?

Goddamned angry is how you'd feel. Angry like Ellison is angry. Angry like I and the other pirated writers are angry. Angry like the readers aere going to be angry when they're paying fifteen dollars for a paperback that used to cost only seven bucks.

I urge all of you who have a conscience and respect the written word to click on the link to Ellison's web site and make whatever small contribution you can to his Internet Piracy Fund.

And if you took the earlier test and discovered that you're an A**hole, it is my sincere hope that this column has given you both a new perspective and some food for thought, and that you will consider changing your ways.

It also my sincere hope that I will go to the mailbox today and discover a certified check for fifty thousand dollars made out to me from the estate of a rich, reclusive, eccentric uncle I did not know I had.

...any delusions that keep me away from water- and clock towers are of massive benefit to everyone. Sincerely.

(To conclude May 15th)

Installment #4: Of Awards, A**holes, and Assorted Aggravations: Part One

2004-04-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

I. The Stoker Awards

In case you're not already aware of it, The Horror Writers' Association recently announced the nominees for the 2003 Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in Horror. A quick look at the list of nominees confirms that, like it or not, Horror is Back.

I was completely and utterly stunned to find my work had been nominated in three separate categories (I'm still reeling a bit from it), and in the days since the nominations were announced, I've been thinking about awards in general, the Stokers in specific.

Removing my own nominations from the equation, the cited works on the ballot this year run the gamut from extreme bloody horror ( The Rising, Wolf's Trap ) to the more you-should-pardon-the-expression literary forms ( In The Night Country; lost boy lost girl, "The Haunting", "The Red Bow"). This year heralded Peter Straub's gloriously lean-and-mean redefining of himself as a writer of horror, the beginning of Stephen King's swan song to the field, and hands-down the strognest batch of fiction in the Work For Young Readers category that I've ever seen.

I am one of these fools who makes it a point to read (or see) all the nominated works each year before casting my votes; I think it only fair to the nominees and to HWA that I take my voting power seriously...and, besides, it keeps me reading, and anything that is going to require people to read more is okay by me.

The big plus this year is that (still keeping my stuff out of the equation) so many of the nominated works are just so damned well-written that it's been a pleasure to work my way through everything.

The point is coming, bear with me for a little while longer.

The day after the Final Ballot was announced, I received several e-mails congratulating me on having 3 works nominated. The majority of these e-mails were genuinely nice, but a few of them -- one in particular -- used the opportunity to remind me (in annoyingly back-handed ways) that the Stokers "...don't really mean anything." (That being a direct quote from one of the "congratulatory" notes.)

To which I say (borrowing Joe Lansdale's succinct phrase), "Bullshit, pilgrim."

Let me tell you why I think the Stokers mean something (and this can be apllied to all awards in one form or another).

There has to be a way of measuring standards in the field, not only for those who are working in said field, but also for those whose only way of judging the value of said field's work is by the award-winning caliber of that work to which they are exposed. If someone not affiliated with any writers' organizations -- like, say, the readers who buy our books -- sees a book whose author is touted as "Bram Stoker Award Winning" (or "World Fantasy Award Winning", or "Hugo Award Winning", etc.), the reaction that I think a lot of them have is: Wow -- this won awards. It must be good.

Damn straight; it must be good, because there has to be some way that writers and editors in the field can demonstrate to the reading public that what their particular field has to offer is quality work, work that the voters feel deserves to be called a Superior Achievement, work that deserves your attention, money, and reading time, work that will (hopefully) prompt you to seek out more books and stories in the field, even if these other works aren't touted as being "award-winning." The Stokers remain the single biggest opportunity for the horror field to draw public attention to the quality of the work being produced by its practitioners.

Go back and take another look at this year's list of nominees (and, yes, still keep my work out of the equation). I have read or seen almost everything on the ballot, and as one who is a merciless reader, you can take my word that the quality of work nominated this year is staggering. Horror is not only back, it is also coming of age, finally, and if this trend continues, stands a good chance of at last being taken seriously as the single most all-encompassing and moral form of storytelling it is and always has been.

The Stokers are arguably the lynchpin in earning and expanding the reading public's knowledge and appreciation of what the horror field has to offer. For that reason alone, they mean something, pilgrim.

The Stokers have been jokingly referred to as "The Strokers" both within the horror field and without, and continue to be criticized (and in some cases, ouright mocked) by many people. (But mock the Hugos, Nebulas, or World Fantasy Awards, and many of these same folks go apoplectic). The "Stroker" moniker came about as a result -- in my opinion -- of the 1997 awards, after which rumors and accusations of "vote swapping" ran rampant. ("I'll vote for your work if you'll vote for mine.") Now, my memory might have slipped a fear gears since then -- and if I'm recalling any of this incorrectly, I've no doubt that someone will justifiably point it out to me -- but I honestly do not recall the "Stroker" moniker being employed before the '97 awards. (Although the redoubtable Bob Weinberg -- a superb writer and a man whose word I'd be a fool to question -- tells me that the term "Stroker" originated outside of HWA as far back as the early 90s, possibly originating in Mike baker's Afraid magazine.)

Here's the short version of what happened:

Back in '97, there was a by-law in place that stated something to the effect that no one holding HWA office in any given awards year could have their work on the Final Stoker Ballot (that by-law has since been removed from the books).

If you'll pop over here for a moment, you'll see that the recipient of that year's award for Superior Achievement in Novel was Children of the Dusk by Janet Berliner and George Guthridge. When that novel was announced as that year's recipient, a lot of people were very surprised; until the recipient was read aloud, everyone (myself included) assumed that Tananarive Due's My Soul To Keep had a lock on the award.

What made this one of -- if not the -- single most controversial award in the history of the Stokers until that time was this: in 1997, Janet Berliner was an officer of HWA (I believe she was president). George Guthridge, however, was not. The reason Children of the Dusk was permitted on the ballot -- one that I agreed with, by the way -- was because Guthridge, not being an HWA officer, should not have been penalized because he co-wrote a novel with someone who held office; ineligibility by association could not be permitted. So Children got on tha ballot, everyone assumed that My Soul To Keep would win, anyway, and all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds --

-- until the moment the award was announced.

God, the accusations and rumors that started flying; Berliner had used her office to coerce people into voting for the novel; there had been vote swapping; there had been "political favors" promised in exchange for votes...it got really ugly really quickly. People whose work hadn't even been on the ballot started attacking one another about things completely unrelated to the awards (though the subject of the awards was, in most cases, what had prompted the initial disagreements); the younger members started accusing the older, more seasoned pros of forming an impenetrable clique, thus guaranteeing no new writers ever had a chance at winning a Stoker; a large amount of known pros left HWA as a result of the ugliness, and the Young Turks who took over in their place proved almost instantaneously that they were just as capable of keeping things as effed up as the old guard had supposedly been...it was bad. And HWA was viewed as an organizations composed of bloody-minded, mean-spirited, socially-inept weirdos whose members all suffered from a perpetual case of arrested literary adolescence and gathered in NYC every year to engage in a well-dressed tunnel-visioned circle-jerk called the Stroker -- uh, Stoker Awards.

(Two-paragraph parenthetical pause here: Yes, there is still some -- note that word -- some in-fighting at HWA, but I defy you to name me any 3 writers' organizations where some in-fighting doesn't occur from time to time. G'head, I'm waiting...

(But keep in mind that HWA has repaired a lot of the damage since then, a majority of it due to the efforts of the current administration under President Joe Nassie, who embodies the intelligence, grace, diplomacy, savvy, and willingness to listen that any president damned well ought to possess. If you're thinking about joining HWA, do it now. It's got a lot to offer if you have the sense to seek out and/or ask for it. Any writers' organization is only as strong and useful as its membership...and HWA's membership boasts a lot of power and integrity, starting with our prez.)

Not only was the value of the Stokers tainted by the ensuing ugliness in '97, but -- much worse -- the integrity and stability of HWA itself was called into question -- and, in my opinion, still hasn't fully recovered in the eyes of many, which doesn't surprise me; after all, Horror has always been the bastard child Lit-ra-chure keeps chained up in the basement whenever respectable folks come to visit and talk about Ulysses or Dune or other works that deserve serious consideration. Do I seem angry and perhaps a touch bitter? Hmmmmmm....

What got buried under the detritus of all the in-fighting, accusations, rumors, and exoduses resulting from the '97 awards was one simple fact: Berliner and Guthridge had agressively campaigned for the award: e-mails to members politely asking for their consideration, actual honest-to-God paper letters to the voting members and, finally, copies of the novel itself were sent to all qualified voters. (And we're talking something like 200 Actives at that time; a 6-dollar cover price, with a couple bucks in postage to send each copy, and you're looking at a couple of thousand dollars in materials and postage -- not to mention the twelve hundred or so dollars' worth of sales that Berlinger, Guthridge, and their publisher wouldn't make because of sending out all these freebies.)

Until the '97 awards, I had never received an actual nominated book, free of charge, for my consideration. Yes, I'd gotten more than my share of photocopied short stories and novellas, but this was the book, not an Advance Reading Copy, the actual book -- signed by both authors.

Upon removing Children from the padded envelope in which it had been sent, my first thought was: Wow, they must really want to win. This couldn't have been cheap for them. It impressed me enough to sit down and read novel at the first opportunity in order to give it the serious consideration I thought it deserved -- if for no other reason that its authors' obvious genuine desire to win. (For the record -- and I hope this doesn't come off as tacky -- I voted for My Soul To Keep. Children, while quite good and very much worth my reading time, just didn't strike as deep an emotional chord in me as did Soul.)

But -- as a result of Berliner's and Guthridge's aggressive (and probably expensive) campaigning -- The Little Paperback That Could was the recipient of the Novel award that year, and I cannot help but wonder if all the brouhaha following in its win would have occurred had Berliner and Guthridge -- instead of practicing the politically correct habit of saying things like, "We would very much appreciate your consideration of our novel in this year's Bram Stoker awards" -- opened their letters and e-mails with the following words:

Dear Active Voting Member of HWA: We want to win the Stoker this year, and so are sending you this copy of our novel so you can read it for yourself and hopefully vote in its favor.

But no one who's nominated ever does that because they're afraid that such honesty will be viewed as unprofessional and needy and have everyone chuckling at them behind their backs; which is really too bad, because I think a lot of unpleasantness could be avoided.

So -- knowing that people already chuckle at me behind my back, and knowing also that I am a needy little dweeb (though very professional, methinks) -- I have the following to say regarding this year's Stoker awards:

I want to win.

I want to win so much I can hardly stand it.

Am I campagning for the awards? You bet. "Duty" has been one of the featured stories on this web site since the whole sheebang went live four months ago because I want to make sure all voting members have access to it -- I'm not going to send anyone anything unsolicited, which is also why Graveyard People and Fear In A Handful Of Dust are being offered as PDFs that members can request (and, in the case of Graveyard People, Paul Miller at Earthling is generously making available a limited amount of PC copies that members can get on a first-come, first-serve basis). I'm making all my nominated works as available as is humanly possible without cornering each individual member outside their homes and ramming copies up their noses at gunpoint. At this point I'd probably piss on a sparkplug in the middle of Times Square at rush hour if I thought it would help my chances.

All because I want to win. Hell, I'd like to pull a hat trick and win all 3 (who wouldn't under the same circumstances?)

I want to win. There, I said it. Chuckle away.

Personally, and for the record, I have the sinking feeling that I'm going to set some kind of a record in June by becoming the firt person to lose 3 Stokers in the same year, so what's a bald-faced admission going to hurt? I am still -- and always will be -- thrilled at having my work nominated in 3 separate categories in the same year.

(Update: I was just informed today -- April 11 -- that I would not be the first person to lose 3 Stokers in the same year; that has happened twice before; first with Harlan Ellison in 1988, then P.D. Cacek in 1998, so at least I'll be in sterling company.)

I'm also going to tell you why I want to win: Because I hold HWA and the Stokers in high esteem, and because a win would mean that the other members -- writers and editors whose work I have always respected and looked up to -- would be saying that, in their opinions, my work deserves to be held up to both the publishing industry and the reading public as being among the very best the horror field has to offer. (I also have some intensely personal reasons for wanting to see "Duty", in specific, win, but I won't depress you with them here.)

Besides, I'm damned proud of all 3 nominated works; where's the crime or tackiness in that?

The Stoker award is the second highest honor that a horror writer can have bestowed on their work; the highest honor will always, always be having loyal readers who support and appreciate your work. But the Stoker...that comes from your fellow writers, artists, and editors, those who know how much work it takes to get and stay published, who are not so proud as to never stop and give another a pat on the shoulder and say, "Damn good job, congratulations".

For myself -- and I'm guessing a lot of others who are too embarrassed to say so -- winning a Stoker Award is something of a dream -- though not by any means the end of the dream; regardless of the final votes on June 5, we'll all go back to work June 6, because there are deadlines to be met and readers to please.

Now try telling me that the Stokers "...don't mean anything."

And I will quote again Joe Lansdale (a multiple Stoker recipient, by the way): "Bullshit, pilgrim."

(End of Part One; Part Two goes live April 30th)

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.014-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything, and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof, so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades
...away...and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching. Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie example, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. Fifty pages later, they've all got their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies brought them back.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version with the Fuzzy Bunny moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who won't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one -- has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its components are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin' proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was just as ubiquitous, only not as immediately obvious. Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise, it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.011-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything, and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof, so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching: just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see; the Fuzzy Bunnies moved it.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one, has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its compenents are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin' proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was just as ubiquitous, though not as immediately obvious, I fear, to most readers and writers.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise, it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.010-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see; the Fuzzy Bunnies moved it.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one -- has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its components are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was just as ubiquitous but, I'm afraid, not quite as obvious to most.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise, it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.009-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see; the Fuzzy Bunnies moved it.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one -- has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its components are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was just as ubiquitous but, I'm afraid, not quite as obvious to most.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise,
it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.008-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see; the Fuzzy Bunnies moved it.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one -- has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its components are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was not just as ubiquitous.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise,
it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.007-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization, internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one, has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its compenents are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was not just as ubiquitous.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise,
it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.006-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations", the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've
found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical
pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back
from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned
much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or
fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And
they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization,
internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out
or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one, has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its compenents are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was not just as ubiquitous.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise,
it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....

Installment #3: Of Laziness, Mistakes, and the Fuzzy Bunny Squad

2004-03-20T12:31:00.005-08:00

So you thought I was kidding about the fuzzy bunnies column? How little you know me.

This is going to take a little explaining, so get comfy.

Picture this: you're reading a novel, or a short story, or perhaps watching a movie or television
show; you're being entertained, you're caught-up in the story, enjoying the heck out of everything,
and then--

--what the...?--

--something so unbelievably, incredibly, and mind-numbingly STUPID happens that whatever spell has been cast by the story/novel/film/show is instantly broken, and you spend several moments trying to figure out why this moment of radiant brainlessness has elbowed its way into something that was, up until this point, doing a damn fine job at helping you suspend your disbelief; in fact, you spend so much time meditating on this conundrum that you miss whatever happens next, or are so flummoxed by it that there is absolutely no way in hell that you can enjoy the rest.

What is a person to do?

The obvious answer is to seek out those books, stories, movies, and shows that have some integrity and
acumen behind them, and whose creators display an obvious respect for your intelligence. (And while you're at it, discover that cure for cancer we're all waiting for, will you?)

Unfortunately, most people have neither the time nor the inclination to seek out those works that adhere to
the above guidelines (they are out there, but keep in mind as we go along, everyone is entitled to the occasional mis-step; this statement will be made clearer shortly).

So the answer to the question What is a person to do? is actually very simple. What follows is my personal solution:

Fuzzy Bunnies.

Think about them for a moment: you've got these bunnies; they're all warm and plump and fuzzy; you can hug them and squeeze and call them "Norbert"; they've got their cute bunny noses and adorable bunny whiskers and those loveable floppy ears; you can hold them in your arms and pet them and -- just like Spock with a Tribble -- all your cares and concerns just...fade...away...under...the...weight...of...all...that...cuteness.

For the record, I'm not suggesting you go out and purchase an actual fuzzy bunny; they tend to poop and
copulate a lot, and you don't need any more frustrations; I'm talking about metaphorical fuzzy bunnies, the
type you keep running free in the Watership Down field in the back of your mind, all ready to be called
upon when needed.

But what use are these fuzzy bunnies if you cannot properly identify a Fuzzy Bunny Moment?

Lucky for you I have no life and few friends and am terrible lonely and so have spent a great deal of time
considering this problem in order to give my existence the illusion of meaning.

Let's start with the supreme Fuzzy Bunny moment from the film Aliens. I like this movie, but had it not
been for the Fuzzy Bunnies, the ending would have ruined it for me.

You have to know the moment I'm talking about. Sigourney Weaver has bitch-slapped the Queen Mother Alien
down into this airlock chamber. The Queen is scarbbling to get to Sigourney. There's no time to close the roof,
so Sigourney -- in an act that defies not only all logic but at least three separate laws of basic Physics -- hits
the "jettison" button, the doors open, and the Queen is sucked into space.

But what of Sigourney? How does she prevent herself from being pulled into the death of sapce's vacuum with
the Queen?

With one arm -- count it, one -- she holds onto a single rung of a ladder. Forget that the sudden decompression is sucking pieces of equipment that weigh several tons more than she all the hell over the deck above, Ripley somehow manages through a feat of god-like strength to hold onto the rung for several seconds, all the while defying the power of the vacuum to reach out with her free arm (which should have been wrenched at the very least out of its socket, if not ripped off entirely) and hit the button to close the door, and the day is saved.

You could do several things at this point while watching the movie: laugh; shake your head; run, screaming, for
a copy of Ernest Scared Stupid because you want a film that at least follows its own internal logic; or you could do what I did: think "Fuzzy Bunnies".

...all warm and cute and plump with great floppy ears and cute widdle noses...and the moment...fades...away...
and soon Ripley is back up on deck with Lance Henriksen and the little girl, and you've saved yourself some
profound frustration, having discovered the secret to putting your brains on hold long enough to get past the
idiocy and enjoy the rest of the movie.

Try this the next time you encounter a moment of radiant brainlessness in something you're reading or watching.
Just look at it, think or say "Fuzzy Bunnies", picture the adorable little things, and soon the sun is shining
and the birds are singing and all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Or you could just drink constantly and be so fractured eighty-five percent of the time that you just don't care
how stupid something gets.

(I was going to use the last James Bond film Die Another Day for my Fuzzy Bunny movie illustration, but -- despite one of the best first hours of any Bond film since Sean Connery left -- the second half of this movie has so many moments of glittering idiocy that the Fuzzy Bunnies can't copulate quick enough to create enough of themselves to save it.)

Sometimes, though, Fuzzy Bunny Moments occur not because of laziness or stupidity on the parts of the creators, but because of simple oversight.

Consider Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers. Around the mid-point of the book, everyone in the town loses their teeth due to exposure to the radioactivity. About fifty pages later, everyone suddenly has their teeth back.

How did this happen?

The Fuzzy Bunnies returned them.

Consider the second page of Dan Simmons's Joe Kurtz novel, Hard Freeze; Kurtz walks into a restaurant and orders a hot dog, onion rings, and a black coffee. He suspects that he's being followed. He pays for his order, takes his tray to a table, and proceeds to eat his hot dog, his onion rings, and, on page 3, sips his Coke. Has Simmons slipped in a bit of magic realism here? Did the coffee somehow metamorphose into a Coke while Kurtz was busy watching his soon-to-be attackers follow him in? Perhaps the person behind the counter wasn't listening and screwed up the order.

Or, perhaps the Fuzzy Bunnies decided that Kurtz didn't need any hot liquid in his tummy and so switched his drinks
while he was busy casing the joint.

I am accusing neither King nor Simmons of stupidity, laziness, or sloppiness; but as I said near the start, every once
in a while, everyone makes a mis-step. The above were mistakes that -- had the authors not caught them -- should
have been caught by proofreaders. But they weren't, and so we, as readers, have to call in the Fuzzy Bunny Squad.

I myself recently discovered a Fuzzy Bunny moment in one of my own stories; at one point in my novella "Tessellations",
the body of the main characters' mother is discovered in two different places simultaneously. I could not believe
that I'd made such a bone-headed gaffe, and quickly fixed it before its appearance in the Graveyard People
collection; but those of you who have Trick or Treat: A Collection of Halloween Novellas from Cemetery
Dance Publications, have the version of the story with the Fuzzy Bunny Moment in it. Go re-read it, you'll see.

Sometimes, you just make a mistake. And that's all right, providing that it's just once in a while; but I've
found, the more I read (specifically in the field of horror), and the more I see films (see previous parenthetical
pause), the more and more I have to call on the Fuzzy Bunny Squad in order to justify the time I'll never get back
from reading certain books or watching certain movies, and they're getting fairly irked at my pestering them so damned
much. They have, in fact, given me notice and are looking for new employers.

So consider this whole column a very long pitch for their new home.

The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is waiting to serve you -- providing you're the type who doesn't call on their services ten or
fifteen times during every horror book or film. They're cute. They're fluffy. They have great floppy ears. And
they're guranteed to take your mind off those all-too-frequent moments in horror when intelligence, characterization,
internal logic, and respect for your brainpower are all thrown out the window in favor of a good shock or gross-out
or just to make something more --oooooh -- spooky.

Operators are standing by.

#

Today's writing tip comes about as a result of recent reading (shock of shocks).

I recently had the pleasure of reading some upcoming novels in manuscript form. I was happy to do this because
the writers who'd asked me to do this (with an eye toward a cover blurb) are all damn good writers, and
I'd been a little frustrated with some mistakes I'd encountered in a distressing number of published books.

But I found the same mistakes in some of these manuscripts.

Two, specifically.

The first one -- and, man, am I getting sick of seeing this one, has to do with "its" and "it's".

Look at those two words, will you?

I'm going to over-emphasize this, just to get through your heads:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

They do not mean the same thing.

"Its" is a possessive, as in, "Its compenents are too complex."

"It's" is a contraction, as in, "It's not my problem if its components are too complex."

This is not something that is up for debate.

If I seem grumpy about this, it's (meaning, "it is") because, in two of the manuscripts I read, the friggin'
proofreader corrected the author's use of "its" (when it was used correctly) for "it's."

Once more, with feeling:

THOSE TWO WORDS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Stop doing it.

The next problem I encountered was not just as ubiquitous.

Read this and see if you can figure out what's wrong:

"Get out now!" he hissed.

Figured it out yet?

In order for someone to "hiss" something when they speak, there has to be at least one
sibilant present.

Too many writers are doing this, and it must stop.

"Stop it!" she hissed. That works because there is a sibilant present. Otherwise,
it ain't hissing, folks.

To recap: It's a question of sibilants being present in speech before its hissing can happen.

Subtle, ain't I?

Stay tuned....