On Readers Getting Who I Am

An early review of Through A Mirror, Darkly - my novella quartet due from Crystal Lake Publishing, June 5th - has popped up on Indiebration​. I'm a little flustered, as always, to be mentioned with these names. Honestly, I just hope folks dig it, like everything else.

"Lucia certainly has a knack with words and a clipped economic style that hints and intimates things in the corner of our mind’s eye rather than wave them in our faces. What I really think makes this writer’s fiction is that he has learned from the masters of the genre but is not imitative of them. There are elements of Stephen King, Thomas Ligotti and H.P. Lovecraft in this fiction, but Lucia is very much a writer with his own voice." 

There's a lot to like in this interview. As many authors have said in response to reviews of their work - both formal like this, and from everyday readers - is how awesome it feels when readers get it. And by that, I don't mean that they get how smart we writers are, (because that can be debatable, especially in my case) but they get who we. I'm very gratified to see folks who enjoy what I feel like is my voice, emerging from all the influences I've poured into my brain over the years.

Of course, I don't aim at a distinct style or anything like that. Did a bit of that in my early days, trying to be "stylish." That changed, however, when  - ironically, when he was visiting  with one of my students - horror author and friend Dan Keohane once remarked that the best stories are the ones in which the author disappears, in favor of the story. Since then, I've always tried my best to get out of the story's way (though I'm sure I'm not always successful). All I can say about writing in my voice is this: more and more, I just try to write the stories I want to, and that's all. And it's nice to know that folks dig my voice. Helps me get up every morning, in effort to hone that voice, and tell more stories that only I could tell.