Silence of the Titans

The internet has filled the world with noise. Communications specialists tell us that it is important to distinguish signal from noise since signal is potentially useful information. Ah, but the internet is so vast! SETI would have more chance of finding signal in an infinite universe.

So when I heard from my contracted publisher that Passion of the Titans, my first novel accepted for publication, is being released back to me, my breath caught in my throat. Perhaps I should’ve heard the signal earlier. Accepted last summer, it was downgraded to an ebook release this spring, and then finally cancelled.

Wheat and chaff are very different from one another. As are sheep and goats. Signal and noise are far more ambiguous.

Like Edgar Allan Poe, and probably here the likeness ends, I have read many inferior bits of literature that have engulfed public demand. Has anybody ever tried to praise the literary merits of Fifty Shades of Grey? I had trouble getting myself to pick it back up.

Sex sells, but only if you get it into the right hands. Passion of the Titans is funny, sexy, and smart. Maybe that’s a bad combination. Maybe it’s just noise. Somewhere out there on the internet is an editor who liked it. Maybe it is time to hit the delete key and find out what Christian and Anastasia are up to. Fifty guesses...

I’m not the greatest writer who ever lived. Nor am I the worst. Why is it so fucking hard to find a publisher who likes the authentic voice and wry observations of a quiet guy who looks myopically at life, and wishes he could join the game?

Passion of the Titans was to be published by now. Instead, I am back at the starting gate. Only I’m exhausted already. And frustrated. And what is this constant ringing in my ears?

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K. Marvin Bruce

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