Today's Beautiful Prose (again, not mine)

I've learned more from the prose of F. Paul Wilson, Norman Partridge and the late Charles Grant than anyone I've read recently.  These are the only writers I've ever consciously tried to imitate in terms of style.  Not copy, exactly - but really ingest their styles, let their works mold and shape my style - while still trying to write in a way that's unique to my own self.   

Paul Wilson and Norman Partridge's word economy, specificity, and pacing are marvelous.  Wilson's Repairman Jack novels move so well, cover so much territory with prose that's almost addictive.  And his characterization, even of bit players is superb.  Norman Partridge's words hit like quick, sharp jabs.  Like precise chisel-strikes that carve out rock-solid stories. Anyone who wants to learn something about characterization and POV, start with Paul's The Tomb and read on. For some writing that packs serious punch - I mean, that will literally kick you off your feet - start with Norman's Dark Harvest.

Charles Grant, however.  His prose is beautiful, in that melancholic way that only other folks prone to melancholy (like myself) can appreciate as being beautiful.   I've got a more detailed post about his work later on this week, but for now, the following samplings are today's "beautiful prose of the day", a two-fer-one deal...

The fog had been there from the beginning.

When the Appalachians rose in dark volcanic flame and the sea slid back boiling, when the centuries-old glaciers gouged and ground and crushed their way through to pulverize the land and create the narrow valleys, when the lakes filled with rain and the beasts returned to prowl the forests, the fog was there, barely shifting, seldom rising; when the trees finally grew and the land became fertile, when the birds returned to roost and Man was born, the fog was there, breath of the night and mirror of the moon, scuttling to shadow ahead of the sun, returning to dusk to reclaim its place.


From The Tea Party.

I stand at the window, hands in  the pockets of my robe after cleaning my glasses for the fifth or sixth time and lighting another cigarette that, for some reason or other, I don't bother to finish.  The rain is still falling (sheeting now against the window) , the wind has found a crack under the front door (it's colder than before) and the house has filled with shadows that bring with them distant whisperings.

Meanwhile...I stand at the window, with the book shimmering behind me, and I see each time the wind shifts the indistinct figure of someone standing just outside the reach of the streetlight, of someone darker than shadow in the corner of my porch, of someone waiting on the lawn, oblivious to the storm.



From Nightmare Seasons.

The Whispers of Gaps in My Genre Education, and a night With Tom Monteleone & F. Paul Wilson: P1

Been thinking about a TON of stuff lately.  Most of it regarding my future as a writer.  What I want to accomplish (the crazy, pie in the sky goals), what I'd be happy/content to accomplish (spritzed with a dose of reality), what I want to spend my time doing, where my energies would best be expended.  This is pretty weighty stuff, so I'm splitting it into Part 1 and 2.

I recently stepped down as Shroud's Review Editor.  After over five years of reviewing, I simply came to the end.  Satisfied I'd installed a durable system at Shroud, I realized it was time to leave.  

I'm not done with Shroud, however.  I've pitched at least two more issues to Tim Deal, The Terror at Miskatonic Falls is on its way, and I'll revisit Hiram Grange eventually.   Shroud has become like family, and that'll never change.

Recently, however, I hit a milestone: a phone pitch interview with a senior acquisitions editor at a New York Publishing House. Then, several months later, I met with said editor in person, discussed my pitch, and handed this editor a series synopsis, the synopses for the first two installments plus the first four chapters of each, and a brief overview of the third installment.

I came away changed.   This experience clarified many things.  First of all, since the publication of my first story - for cash - four years ago, I've done okay.  Sold five fiction shorts to decent markets for at least semi-pro pay, six creative non-fiction pieces to very good markets for really good pay.  

Attended Borderlands Press Writers Bootcamp two years consecutively.  Wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote a pretty decent novella that's gotten good reviews, even notched some Stoker Recommendations, though it fell short of the preliminary ballot.  Edited a very unique anthology in The Terror at Miskatonic Falls, as well as Shroud's 2010 Halloween Issue.  

Along the way, I attended a few cons, met some awesome people who have not only been great help, but also great friends.   I started receiving some short story solicitations, so I geared up to write those, another Hiram novella, some Hiram flash, a novel or two, and then...

I stopped.

Looked around.

Realized that I as happy as I was with what I'd accomplished...I wanted to go further.

So, believe it or not, I actually turned down most of those story solicitations.  They just weren't for me.  I also realized that I'd sold myself a lie.  I'll never be a prolific short story writer with hundreds of short stories to my credit.  Just don't have it in me.

When things started "happening" for me, I got really excited.  Couldn't wait until I published enough stories for my first short story collection.   My credits were decent enough.  Had enough good reviews and blurbs, and here's the quirk that POD publishing has brought the small press horror market, for good or ill:  the acceptance of a novel or short story collection through a small or micro horror press no longer hinges on an author's marketability or selling power.  This sounds like a good thing.  More freedom.  More open doors to new voices and fresh writers.  It MUST be a good thing.

I'm becoming ever more uncertain of this.

Especially in the case of short story collections.  What's the logic behind publishing a collection of a writer's short stories?  The motive?  The more I chewed over this, the less appealing the thought became.

You don't publish a collection of your short stories simply because you've racked up enough "readable", "good" stories published in "good" markets.  In fact, it could be argued (let's leave self-publishing ebooks out of this,  for now), that a writer shouldn't publish his own short stories at ALL.

A publisher - of any kind, specialty, small, or micro - should approach  the writer, say to them: "We love your work.  People love your work.  You've done great things.  Won awards.  Have a name and a following.  We'd LOVE to put together a collection of your shorts."

This past week Tom Monteleone and Paul Wilson visited my Creative Writing students, conducted a workshop with them.  I'll just say this now: I love Tom and Paul.  I love Tom's short work, I love Repairman Jack, and both of these guys have left indelible stamps on my writing, thanks to two years at Borderlands' Bootcamp.  So when they asked me to hang out with them and a friend of theirs who lived in Binghamton, I jumped at the chance.

I can't detail that evening here.  That will be Part Two.  Suffice to say...it was better than any Con I've attended yet, (except Borderlands), I kid you not.  It blew my mind.   Overwhelmed me with how little I knew of genre fiction's past.  Most of all?

It humbled me.  Left me in awe. And from my viewpoint, that has crystallized the undeniable negative that POD publishing has brought to the horror genre.

A lack of humility.  Of patience.  Why commit yourself to a dream that will require hard work, patience, and a thick skin?  Why work to be better?  Why suffer rejection from those big, bad, uncaring New York Houses, when we can just self-publish ebooks or publish collections through small presses?

Understand, I'm not slamming small presses.  Cemetery Dance, Apex, Shroud, Thunderstorm and Maelstrom, Belfire, Deadite...all quality publishers.   And places that I'd be happy sending my work, but....

I've been aiming at the bottom of the ladder (and not in quality, just in size and distribution and marketing and name).    Ignoring the top and even the middle.  Convinced myself I wasn't good enough, maybe.  Maybe impatient, also.  Because to hit the top, I need to do two simple things: WRITE.  AND WAIT (and try and try and try....woops.  That's like five things.)  

Maurice Broaddus once wrote a blog entitled "A Fate Worse Than Being Unpublished".  In it, he shared that if he couldn't be published WELL, he'd rather not be published at all until such a time came that he did publish well.

Of course, there's no guarantee of hitting the top or the middle.  Ever.  Maybe - MORE THAN LIKELY - no specialty house will EVER approach me for a collection of my short fiction.  Very possibly, I'll NEVER land a deal with a New York House.

BUT I WANT TO TRY.  

And I'm willing to wait.  For however long it takes to happen.  I'm willing to weather as many rejections as it takes.  As Norman Partridge asked recently in some BRILLIANT blog posts about publishing for the newbie writer: "Have you tried New York? I mean, really tried?"  

No.

No, I haven't.

So I've slowed things down.  I'm still working on my novel, but have no immediate plans to publish it, simply because of THIS awesome piece of advice, also by Norman Partridge: the only magic bullet in publishing success is the writing itself.

I stepped down from Review Editor, and I've accepted a position as a slush reader.  

Slush reader?  

Isn't this a step backward?

No.  It's a HUMBLING step.  One that will teach me SO MUCH about what makes an excellent short story.  I'm also going back to "bone up" on my horror:  Charles Grant. TM Wright.  Ramsey Campbell.  The Whispers anthologies.  So many others I missed because my focus was too narrow.  

And of course, all my current favorites: Gary Braunbeck.  Rio Youers.  Tim Lebbon.  Neil Gaiman.  Norm Partridge.  Norman Prentiss.  Nate Kenyon.  Ronald Malfi and Mary Sangiovanni.  T. L. Hines and Travis Thrasher.  Of course, Tom Monteleone and Paul Wilson. And I need to check out other folks, like Laird Barron and Tom Piccirrilli.

Looks like I'm going back to school.

I've got lots of work to do.

Why Horror? - And Some Personal Revelations

So I'm going to try another question.  Some people actually answered last time, and that was cool.  We'll see how it goes this time.  I was going to do a Friday question, but we've had some sleep issues with Zack this week, so Friday morning was simply a no go.  He slept better last night, so we'll give it a whirl today.

But no, I'm not asking "what is horror" or trying to define "horror".  That topic has been done to death.  I want to know what brought people to horror in the first place - fans and writers alike.  Folks are often surprised to discover that horror wasn't my first love.  

There were certainly indications that I'd go that way someday: I loved those collections of "spooky" tales in the school libraries and I was obsessed with "movie monster" books in sixth grade.   Plus (don't laugh, people) as a youngster I found a few of the Hardy Boys to be a "touch" spooky, and I liked that.

However in high school I was pretty much an "equal opportunity" kinda reader.  I read everything I could get my hands on. Even a few (again - some of you, I KNOW where you live) teen romances when I'd exhausted our library's stores.  BUT, toward the end of my high school career I discovered Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and it pretty much hooked me.  

That same year Timothy Zahn wrote the first ever post-Return of the Jedi STAR WARS novel, Heir to the Empire.  During this time, my parents also got me my first box set of Star Trek novels, and this coincided with the premier of Star Trek: TNG on television.  So, for most my college career I considered myself a Sci Fi guy and devoured every science fiction novel I could find.  Of course, I also planned on being the next Isaac Asimov and my greatest dream was to write a Star Wars novel ( that latter sorta still is, BTW).

My first completed novel manuscript - written senior year in high school, in a Mead spiral notebook - was a goofy teen basketball drama/romance.  My second completed novel manuscript -part one of an epic science fiction trilogy that would stun the world with its bloated 178,000 words - I finished my senior year in college.  I also sold my first science fiction story - for a grand  total of $10 - to a long defunct magazine called Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy, of which only this encyclopedic entry remains (sadly, I misplaced my contributor copy during several apartment moves).

This all extended to January 2000.  Then, my life came to a screeching halt.  

I ran into serious money and credit problems.  Lived every day one step from eviction, and pretty much felt like a reprobate.

My personal life descended into a shambles.  I can honestly admit I did a lot of things and went  a lot of places I'd regret later.

I broke off my engagement to my then-fiance four months before the wedding.  Even though it was the right thing to do - that's never fun.  This, of course spurned me into several ill-advised relationships directly following.

I enlisted in the NAVY Reserves, went to Boot Camp, survived - and discovered what a BAD decision that was.

I had my driving privileges almost taken away, and was limited to a "work-restricted license".

After graduating from Binghamton University, being a teacher, Youth Director, administrator, and college basketball coach...I found myself working as an aide in a middle school for just barely over minimum wage.  And I pretty much lived in a slum apartment.

AND, for a brief time, I believed I'd never write anything, ever again.

Enter horror.  Enter Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub and for a few novels, John Saul.  On the faith side of things, enter Ted Dekker.  Science fiction just didn't do it, anymore.   Those stories didn't have that sense of "loss" that consumed my life for almost 5-6 years.  Plus, I no longer cared about monsters from space.  I'd seen - most powerfully in my mirror - what a monster a human being could be, and how people survived those things - even the monsters themselves - called to me in a way science fiction never has.

Soon after that, I met Abby and got married. Then, several years later, Madison was born... and then my sense of horror became even further defined.  Now, loss of life and sanity or soul didn't seem so bad.

How about the loss of a wife?  A child?  Your entire family?  Or loss of respect and pride before them?  Ironically enough, during this period I also discovered what I still believe are seminal works in my development as a writer, Peter Straub's lost boy, lost girl and in the night room - and to me, Rio Youers is the modern contemporary to Peter. And of course recently I've been delighted to discover T.M. Wright, Norman Prentiss and Charles Grant, writers who epitomize "quiet horror".

So  there.  I love battles against monsters and demons and ghosts, but I'm only interested in them insofar as they reflect the monsters and demons within, and our battles against them.  I'm into atmospheric, tension-filled, "quiet horror" - where any bloodshed is calculated and moderated.

So.  How about you? Why horror?  What type of horror is for you?