K. Marvin Bruce

My first story in Jersey Devil Press was about literary wish-fulfillment.  The idea was that, if someone loved literature enough, it would literally come alive whenever a book was opened.  As someone who has always wanted to have a published novel, this was the most guilty pleasure I could imagine. For those of us who write, everyday reality can often be painful.  We work jobs whose sole objective, on most days, seems to be to crush the very creativity from us.  I awake inspired every morning, and return from work each day completely emptied and dispirited.  Life, but not as we know it. “Literary Ops” was a story of profound hope.  Although the protagonists awake each day to various, historic world empires attempting to destroy their home (let the reader who has eyes to see understand) they may rebuff attacks by knowing just which author calms the marauding hordes.  In my dreams, life is that simple. In today’s business-driven world, the...

A lifetime in higher education has taught me that connections, not authenticity, make a writer.  At least in society’s eyes.  If you can afford the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, doors will be thrown open for you.  Don’t you dare being born a nobody, though. I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, unconnected, in a small town.  My teachers praised my work but really had no experience with publishing.  Stories moldered away in a dilapidated cardboard box stuck in a ratty, unused upstairs room until the bulldozers threatened and I had to haul them away. I grew up without much.  I had an armload of books for friends and I wrote tales that no one ever read.  This kind of thing doesn’t get you a job.  In a small town with no bookstore—or even a library—I never heard of literary journals; I didn’t even hear of journals period until I got to college.  First generation.  Thoroughly confused.  Nobody has to teach you how not to kn...

The first story I actually had accepted for publication was “Hide and Seek.”  It appeared in Danse Macabre XXXIII, Erzählungen (March 2010).  Danse Macabre subsequently changed servers, and my story is no longer available there.  I’m hoping eventually to have some of my short stories republished in a collection, but first I have to get more of my short stories published period. I remember clearly the inspiration for “Hide and Seek.”  One day during lunch I’d wandered to the space around a vacant building.  It was one of those single-story, multi-purpose monstrosities with no real character or charm.  The parking lot had weeds breaking through the pavement, and the building on either side, probably built by overly optimistic speculators, also stood vacant.  It was rather peaceful. Having been a writer since a very young age, I habitually carry either paper or a notebook in my pocket.  I found a bench with chipping paint, sat down...