K. Marvin Bruce

I’ve been a bad boy.  I haven’t been posting on my poor, neglected blog lately.  You see, like all truly creative types, I’ve been protesting. Call me simplistic, but I always thought America was about freedom.  I grew up writing fantastic (as in wild, unusual, not as in great) stories and nobody said anything I wrote was threatening.  I didn’t know any better—I was just a boy with a tablet and a pencil.  I wrote my imagination. Now we have a president who’s trying to slash the National Endowment for the Humanities.  There’s no profit in it, you see.  And this after having W say just a few years back that freedom isn’t free.  What?  You have to pay for freedom?  Forgive me, but I’ve always been a live and let live kind of guy. My horror isn’t gruesome.  It’s existential.  Maybe that’s why I have such a tough time getting published.  With nearly twenty stories in press I hope my writing’s not that bad.  I ...

One becomes inured.  That is to say, rejection letters are far more common than acceptances.  So it became clear to me while looking at my Submittable page recently.  The number of cheery blue acceptances is largely outweighed by those dreary gray “declined”s. Look, I’m an editor.  I know how this game works.  Every day I see the pitches the hopeful send, wanting to be represented by my press.  Every day I try to think how to write rejection letters that are complementary, comforting, encouraging.  The point is, I see bad writing. Some people see dead people.  Others of us see dead writing.  Books that should never have been born.  When you agonize over every word, and when you know that you’ve got some felicity with the pen (or on the keyboard) being classed with those who clearly don’t understand is painful. Awfully gloomy for a positive post, I must say!  I just received the good news that my story, “Glass-Wall...