Last Train from New York

I’m pleased to announce my latest piece has appeared in Corvus Review 6; you can read it here: http://nebula.wsimg.com/47de969e212ebf15837556bcc515fc67?AccessKeyId=3C22B84D674D5BA7A77D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

As usual when I have a story published, I give a few hints as to what was going through my mind here. “Last Train from New York,” in addition to being one of my most rejected stories, is also one of my favorites. It’s personal.

While I’ve never been on a haunted train, knowingly, the story came to me through a confluence of unfortunate events. I lost a job quite unexpectedly—my first job in New York City. The story is primarily about how it feels to lose a job. This particular trauma was my third professional job lost because of circumstances.

Yep, that’s blood.

The story also has roots in reality. Once, on a New Jersey Transit train, my family jumped on board the first car. We were on our way to the airport and didn’t want to haul our luggage along to the upstairs or downstairs seating area.

While sitting here, right behind the conductor’s cabin, the panel to the electric room kept creeping open and slamming shut. It sounded like a haunted house door, and we could stare inside at the guts of the machine. It was eerie on quite a few levels. This continued the entire trip.

The ticket-taker kept coming up between stops to talk to the driver. We could see only the driver’s feet and hands. The main elements of the story, if you’ve read it, suggested themselves. All they required was some fictionalization and the blending in of the worthlessness a worker feels at being let go from a job after a positive review.

I still work in New York. I’m very circumspect about my job. But I now take a bus to work. Just in case.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best...

Creative Righting

Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world. That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week. That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press. The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor. She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher. I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions. I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor. That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it? You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify. It’s got speculative elements to it. ...

Patterns

There’s a pattern I’m noticing. For fiction publishers. Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle. Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers. The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in. That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested. I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns. This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses. I check many lists. What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic. It’s literary but it’s weird. Publishers don’t know what to do with it. If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered. Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

K. Marvin Bruce

Search This Blog