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 time finding a literary home. What a difference a century and a half can make.
Not that I’m nearly as good as either Poe or Lovecraft. Like them, however, I let my mind go where it will and, if you’re reading this, you’re one of the few willing to follow. Writing is like that. Showing your ideas, like your dirty laundry, to the world.
A friend who has managed to get published told me that those who hold decisions of writers in their hands are a small group. They know, like, and publish each other. They hold the keys to respectability.
Another writer I know, who’s landed on the New York Times Bestseller list every now and again, told me, “I am incredibly lucky.” He indicated that many capable writers are never given a chance.
The internet, it’s said, is changing the way we think about publication. True enough. Getting hits is hard without full-time development. Most of us, however, have jobs, and bills, and jobs. Ours are the voices from the third estate. And the established powers, as always, do not wish to hear what we have to say.
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