K. Marvin Bruce

I know a real, live, tenured professor who believes in tulpa.  He once told me how a friend wrote a fiction story, only to have an improbable event from the story happen after it was finished.  It was not something over which he had any control. Tulpa is a concept from eastern religions that suggests a being of pure thought or imagination might take on reality.  Writers, who create characters all the time, are perhaps engaging in tulpa.  We are creating, literally, as well as figuratively. I like the concept.  Many writers know the sensation of the character who refuses to behave.  A person that you make up does not what you want her to do, but what you know she shouldn’t do.  It’s like having an adult two-year-old. This same professor friend once told me that ideas may be created by a collective consciousness, and writers are those sensitive enough to capture those ideas that are floating freely in the ether.  (To be fair, he didn’t say “ether”.)  Writers are the beacons

Writers explore the depths of humanity’s experience.  At the same time, there are topics that we aren’t allowed to plumb. Let me back up a bit.  When I started to teach myself about which literary magazines would accept what kinds of stories, I spent a lot of time reading the do’s and don’t’s of the editors.  Some won’t allow men to write with a woman’s voice or vice versa.  Others disallow sex scenes and some forbid topics without which Nabokov could never have written Lolita .  Write short, still others say, anything over 1000 words is too long. Being a compliant sort, I tried for a while to avoid those things that would get me into trouble.  When someone is established, however, I’ve noticed, they can break all the rules and get rich.  So why are topics forbidden? I know editors.  A good friend is one.  And editors are people with tastes and prejudices just like the rest of us.  The problem is, there are a limited number of places that like the kind of thing I write, an

Those few who read my fiction generally comment on my satire.  Those who actually know me might call it cynicism.  Whatever one may choose to label it, it is a sense that things in our entrepreneurial world just don’t make sense. I’ve held a number of jobs in my life and have come to realize that just about all of them have a single purpose: to help those above me get wealthy.  I’m a daydreamer, not a corporate climber.  And yet I wonder what might happen if wealth had to face reality. A number of years ago I read about a sitting president (I can’t remember who it was, but it was before Obama) who couldn’t even guess near the price of a loaf of bread.  Those above us, it seems, have forgotten what it feels like here on the bottom. When the swamp monsters move in, those of ample means don’t know what to do.  Discrimination is frowned upon.  Yet, clearly, they can’t let monsters be monsters.  And so “Famous Neighbors” ( Defenestration ) came to be. The protagonist, à la

I have a confession to make, and it may be shocking coming from a writer.  I’ve never used drugs.  I had a brother who did and some of what happened scared the shit out of me.  That, and my father was a professional alcoholic. “The First Time,” recently published on Dali’s LoveChild , is based on a couple of reflections.  A while back a friend invited me to try hallucinogenic mushrooms, as a spiritual experience.  I politely refused, but wondered what would have happened if I had. You see, growing up in an alcoholic family, you never know what is normal.  I thought the kinds of things involving guns and beer were typical.  You mean you don’t do this at your house?  I went to a bar for the first time before I was five. But my concern is deeper.  I don’t know what reality is.  If I tried shrooms, would I become trapped in an alternate reality?  What if they never wore off?  Sometimes I’m just not very brave. As with all of my writing, there is a metaphor at work he

Like most Americans, I don’t understand cricket.  I do know there is a batter and what we would call a pitcher who “bowls” a ball to try to knock down wickets behind the batter.  If the bowler knocks down all three wickets with successive balls, it is called a hat trick. Hat tricks are, by definition, rare events.  According to the venerable Oxford Dictionaries on the somewhat less venerable Internet, the bowler was given a hat to commemorate the feat, thus making it a “hat” trick.  Now any three unexpected successes are called by that moniker. I’ve been submitting to many publishers from my copious backlog of short fiction for about five years now.  For the first four years of my efforts I only found two online magazines willing to put any of my stories out there ( Danse Macabre and Jersey Devil Press ).  Over forty other mags turned me down. Then, out of nowhere, a hat trick.  Three submissions accepted in a row.  I don’t expect the good bowling to continue—there are to

I often wonder how many people read my stuff.  That’s the thing about the World-Wide Web.  You’ll never know.  Hits, yes, may be counted.  But who really reads? My writing is metaphorical.  Unapologetically so.  To gather by past responses, this is not a popular or desirable thing.  It is, however, what I do.  I began publishing fiction in 2009.  (I’ve been writing fiction since the 1970s.)  Rejections fell like rain. Over the past month, strangely, there have been a few more open editors.  I feel confused.  Within a three-week period I had acceptances from Dali’s LoveChild (an excellent new surrealist literary magazine) and Deep Water  (a more established, darker venue).  I even had a maybe from Defenestration . I’m a realist, despite my fiction.  I know many more rejections will come.  I still regularly get them.  I submitted a truly creepy story to a magazine that was rejected in less than 24 hours—a new personal best! As a writer, I’m a consummate self-doubter.  W