K. Marvin Bruce

I’m working on a steampunk novel.  Although none of my other novels have yet found a publisher, one of them has been submitted to an agent and I sit with my fingers so tightly crossed that typing is difficult.  The Passion of the Titans , as it was originally called, had been accepted for publication only to have the indie press renege on its contract.  So it goes. This isn’t about that. My current project is all about gears and corsets and gentlemen adventurers.  There’s a dirigible, of course.  And absinthe.  What is steampunk without absinthe? As the child of a professional alcoholic, controlled substances take on a dark cast in my mind.  I overcame my fear of beer over a Guinness in a crowded bar in Boston while studying for a master’s degree in one of the many schools in the city.  I still don’t drink to excess, but my former enemy has become an occasional friend. But absinthe.  Once claimed to be psychotropic, it was il...

Gothic is a difficult word to define.  Although much of what I’ve published, in my little way, has a dark humor to it, my favorite writing genre is Gothic.  A backlit, ruined castle with a raven winging through an overcast sky, with a leafless tree in the foreground infuses me with inexplicable paroxysms of wonder. Summer can be a difficult time for those of us who would easily live in an eternal autumn.  Right now  the sun is shining and it feels like things might be okay after all.  So today I’ll give my tips to having a Gothic day, even in summer. Select a dark and gloomy morning to awake before sunrise.  Since I haunt my chilly apartment halls frequently at 3:00 a.m., I know such days come even in the summer. Take a long bath with steam rising from the surface of the gray water.  (This works best on a chilly morning.)  Preferably do this in a claw-footed steel tub.  Light a few candles. Breakfast lightly, trying to mainta...

I add posts to this blog too infrequently.  The reason: distractions.  The largest one, without question, is work.  Day-to-day routine is hardly conducive to a truly creative life.  Still, its often on my mind. Number two distraction: the world-wide-web itself.  It used to be that writing came in paper form.   Even in hardcopy, though, you had to sort the signal from noise.  There were choices to be made.  When I was a child Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured a man—I can’t remember who—that was the last person to have read every printed book. Well, I kind of doubt that.  Maybe he read every printed book available in Europe.  Other languages, such as Chinese, had been printed from an early time.  In any case, that period is passed.  All reading involves a choice. Talking with my writing partner Fantasia, I once asked about how a story she was working on was coming along.  She admitted to having been distracted...

Sometimes I have to remind myself that whether or not I’m published, I am a writer.  I know this because writing has been a lifelong avocation, and, although I’ve never been paid for it, apart from biological necessities, it is the only thing I do every single day. I’m really sensitive about my writing.  It often takes me days, weeks, or even months to gather the courage to send anything out for publication.  As a result I usually send a bunch of things out at the same time—I try to avoid simultaneous submissions—and then I’m met with a hailstorm of rejections in an equally short time. What’s trickiest are those that don’t reply soon.  I have stories, presumably not accepted, as submissions to publishers that have been out for over three years.  A year is not uncommon.  Several months goes without saying.  Waiting is part of the game. My novel, Boeotian Rhapsody , was under contract with Vagabondage Press.  Unfortunately no kill fee w...