K. Marvin Bruce

Free samples attract customers.  Amazon offers way for authors to give away copies of their books, and although it is counterintuitive, it is, I’m told, a great way to gain attention.  If I ever get published, I hope to try it out. Meanwhile, authors sometimes send me their books to mention on my blog.  That’s a nice freebie.  I love books and I’ll read just about anything.  But there’s a price to this free material. You have to write a review.  I can say this with the protection of a pseudonym: I’ve been disappointed in just about every free book I’ve been sent.  It’s usually pretty obvious why they’re being given away.  And yet, the author has given it to me.  Don’t I owe a positive review in return? I am a softie.  I don’t like to hurt the feelings of others.  It probably comes from growing up in an emotionally abusive situation.  I want to say something nice.  Sometimes it’s very difficult. Especially ...

Institutions.  They can take many forms and missions, but they all have something in common: they're collectives.  They speak with the voice of many, while most of us speak with the voice of one.  This matters if you're a writer.   The world is full of noise.  I'm older than the internet, and I remember when getting published meant writing a letter, by typewriter, to a publisher, asking about your book.  I got turned down in those days too, but it was a lot less competition.  Now, unless you have an institution to vouch for you, you can't shout with enough decibels to get any notice.   Publishers are institutions.  If you manage to get published, your voice automatically becomes louder.  Even a small publishing house reaches more than most individuals.   If you teach at a college, you have an institution to speak for you.  Putting the name of a school after yours can open doors for you.  Credibility comes with the prestige...

I love used bookstores.  While visiting one recently, I thought of how used books represent immortality to a writer. As usual, I came out with mostly an armload of non-fiction.  I write mainly fiction, but non-fiction gives me the material with which to work.  Many of my ideas come from the world of what really happened, often to someone else. Nevertheless, I lingered long over the fiction section.  Maybe it’s because it’s harder to find specific books of fiction.  I keep a list and I take it with me to stores—otherwise I get over-excited and can’t find anything.  I did spy an early set of Poe, but I left him for a more worthy owner. The fact that many people came in on a pleasant Saturday kindled my hopes.  There’s so much you can do with a summer Saturday.  Spending it looking at old books is one that few select, but here I was among other inveterate readers.  Readers unite! Used books mean that an author’s words continue a...

How do you date a book?  My writing partner Elizabeth likes old books.  She once asked how you date a book without the usual copyright page (the traditional “n.d.” or “no date” for all those school papers we had to write. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing the question became.  As a convention, I often say a book was “written in” a certain year.  I can’t know that, of course.  I have written several books. Most of them span at least a year. A book with a copyright page is a fairly recent development.  The older convention was to print the date on the title page, along with the author and place of publication.  That would tell you when the book was actually produced. Books, however, can be rebound.  In fact, some of the most unusual findings in the manuscript world have come in books that were rebound together with material not in the original printing.  Paperback binding wasn’t even invented until the 1930s, and reb...

It is a truism that if you're famous you’ll have no trouble publishing a book.  For instance, I’m currently reading Contact by Carl Sagan.  I’ve seen the movie, and in a moment of not having anything new on my fiction shelf, I went back to Contact , which I had started years ago. Not all books are thrill rides, of course.  I’m not really a thriller fan, but there’s a je ne sas quoi about most literary novels that keeps you coming back.  In Contact , it’s clear that the author is a scientist. Not that one has to be a literary professional to become a writer.  I think of Michael Critchton, who wrote several bestsellers, despite being a medical doctor by profession.  I often wonder how people like that get started. I’m not a literary professional either.  I have, however, finished six novels and had very little success getting any interest built in them.  I wrote Passion of the Titans when Clash of the Titans had been announced but b...

It may be that I didn’t pay attention in school—but my grades seemed to indicate otherwise—but I don’t recall learning about genre.  Of course I recognized science fiction and horror and western and romance.  What about those that fit no category? This used to be called “literary fiction” but those who publish literary fiction don’t like elements of “genre fiction” and won’t generally consider them.  Thus I fear to submit. My story collection, Empty Branches , submitted to Tartarus Books, received the quick Band-Aid treatment. Three days from submission to rejection.  They prefer, I suppose, straight horror.  I write something that defies genre.  It is the kind of thing that lurks in my mind. This followed on the heels of a slow, six-month rejection for a single story that is very much in the Lovecraftian mode.  In times such as this, I remind myself that Lovecraft had great difficulty getting published.  Today Poe would have a hard t...

There are two schools of thought regarding bandages (Band-Aid, as it turns out, is a brand name): those who advocate swift removal, and those who prefer slow. Each method has its merits as well as demerits.  The swift method is painful but gets it over quickly.  The peel method isn’t as painful, but lasts longer.  It reminds me of submitting stories for publication. After screwing up my courage for weeks, I finally submitted a collection of stories to a publisher.  This is a combination of some twenty-one weird tales, only eight of which had been previously published.  To me they looked, in turn, impressive and pedestrian.  Since I have a storehouse of unpublished pieces, I was able to make substitutions until I finally got what I thought was a moody collection. Tom Petty’s song “The Waiting” has always had a special poignance to me.  The question is, would I prefer a swift jerking off of the bandage or a slow peeling where I can feel each...

I'm pleased to announce that my latest story, “Pearls before Swine,” has just appeared in Dali’s LoveChild .  If you care to read it, the link is here . This story concerns the metaphorical fate of a Bible believer.  It takes place in a Bible store in the Arizona desert.  I have to give my friend Steve credit for the main idea, although the setting was inspired by a trip I once made to Tempe. Steve was raised in a very religious household.  The Bible was a big deal to him growing up.  In the bookstores in his hometown and at his college, accessories for Bibles were big business.  The book itself was so sacred that you couldn’t put it on the floor or lay other books on top of it. I wondered what it must’ve been like to have been raised in such an environment.  Would you eventually reject what you’d been taught?  Would you simply accept it all your life and push on with a meek living in an unsatisfying job? The two brothers in...