K. Marvin Bruce

My latest publication, “Glass-Walled Cabin” has appeared on The WiFiles.   As is my custom, I devote a post to the story to share with readers what went into the writing process. The WiFiles publishes fiction with a paranormal bent.  That fits the horror genre particularly well since few people take sasquatch seriously.  To write a story like this, however, requires some first-hand experience.  At least in my case it does. Many years ago I went to visit a forest ranger fire spotter in a lonely observation tower in the northwest United States.  Most people are aware that the western part of this country suffers from perpetual drought, making the mountains, especially in summer, a potential tinderbox.  The fire spotter had to live in this glass-walled cabin for four months at a stretch.  Short visits were okay, but long-term guests would be a distraction. Climbing to the tower meant hiking to the top of one of the tallest peaks in the area....

I remember the days when computer files were saved on disc.  Diskettes, actually.  All my stories were carefully backed up in duplicate.  I felt secure. Technology progressed, as technology will.  The floppy disk gave way to higher capacity storage systems—I had a Jaz drive, once upon a time.  These cassettes, reminiscent of an 8-track, held an enormous amount of data.  But not enough. Computers came with CD drives then, but you couldn't save onto a CD—like the early PDFs.  Then they made CD writers common hardware with your computer.  I began saving everything on CDs.  Large tubes of them fill a forgotten desk drawer. Then came the terabyte drive.  Holding more storage capacity than a moon-launch computer, this little device, used weekly, safely holds my secrets.  Stories are secure at last.  My computer wants me to save them to the Cloud.  And pay for the privilege. So I dutifully backup my hard disc onto the ter...

I’ve often wondered if it’s accidental that fact and fiction share consonants.  Oh, the vowels are completely different, and fiction ends with that trickster consonant n, but don’t let that fool you.  Things aren’t always as clear cut as they say. In some languages, I’ve been told, the meaning of a word lies in its root.  My friend Steve once told me that Hebrew words have “triliteral roots.”  That is, words based on the same three consonants, in that order, are closely related.  You can make a noun into a verb by taking the root and changing the vowels.  Maybe something similar is going on with fact and fiction. Jorge Luis Borges, I have to confess, hasn’t appeared in my reading as much as he should.  Many of his story revolve around the indeterminacy of words.  They change, they shift, they mean something we didn’t mean for them to mean.  And he sometimes uses Hebrew as an example. I don’t read Hebrew—English is difficult enoug...