K. Marvin Bruce

There is, I’m told, a natural progression to dating.  If a girl doesn’t like you on the first date, it’s over.  A second date is a hopeful sign and, barring unforeseen circumstances, a third date is likely. Don’t take my word for it.  I was never a proficient dater, and the girl I married was one I never dated.  My first girlfriend entangled me in a tragic relationship that strung over two years and came to define my senior year in college. No, this isn’t a dating advice column—you wouldn’t want to read one by me!  It’s a metaphor.  You see, I used to think getting published was like dating.  Once you found an editor who “got” what you were doing, you’d be able to move forward.  Progress. I think of H. P. Lovecraft, who is now being taught at universities, and how he really only found one magazine that liked his work.  I thought maybe I’d found that magazine in Danse Macabre , but then they started to be less-than-enthusiastic ab...

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...

I used to work with someone who was disgusted at those who Google themselves.  She felt it was unseemly and a waste of time.  I disagree. As a writer trying to build a platform, you’ve got to know if you’re making an impact.  In the days before, say, the 1980s, you sent your material to a print publisher and they did the work.  They advertised, distributed, and tried to make sure it would sell.  It is no longer so. Today a writer must promote their own material, even with big publishers.  You must make yourself known.  And so I Google myself.  And there is a kind of logic to it. I’ve published with six different journals.  To my limited imagination, that means six places have, on occasion, liked what I produce.  When I want to submit something for publication, I wonder which of the six might like it.  I also wonder which of the six will get viewed. Google tends to put the pages with the most hits at the top.  B...

I have a confession to make, and it may be shocking coming from a writer.  I’ve never used drugs.  I had a brother who did and some of what happened scared the shit out of me.  That, and my father was a professional alcoholic. “The First Time,” recently published on Dali’s LoveChild , is based on a couple of reflections.  A while back a friend invited me to try hallucinogenic mushrooms, as a spiritual experience.  I politely refused, but wondered what would have happened if I had. You see, growing up in an alcoholic family, you never know what is normal.  I thought the kinds of things involving guns and beer were typical.  You mean you don’t do this at your house?  I went to a bar for the first time before I was five. But my concern is deeper.  I don’t know what reality is.  If I tried shrooms, would I become trapped in an alternate reality?  What if they never wore off?  Sometimes I’m just not very brave. ...

Like most Americans, I don’t understand cricket.  I do know there is a batter and what we would call a pitcher who “bowls” a ball to try to knock down wickets behind the batter.  If the bowler knocks down all three wickets with successive balls, it is called a hat trick. Hat tricks are, by definition, rare events.  According to the venerable Oxford Dictionaries on the somewhat less venerable Internet, the bowler was given a hat to commemorate the feat, thus making it a “hat” trick.  Now any three unexpected successes are called by that moniker. I’ve been submitting to many publishers from my copious backlog of short fiction for about five years now.  For the first four years of my efforts I only found two online magazines willing to put any of my stories out there ( Danse Macabre and Jersey Devil Press ).  Over forty other mags turned me down. Then, out of nowhere, a hat trick.  Three submissions accepted in a row.  I don’t expect th...

I often wonder how many people read my stuff.  That’s the thing about the World-Wide Web.  You’ll never know.  Hits, yes, may be counted.  But who really reads? My writing is metaphorical.  Unapologetically so.  To gather by past responses, this is not a popular or desirable thing.  It is, however, what I do.  I began publishing fiction in 2009.  (I’ve been writing fiction since the 1970s.)  Rejections fell like rain. Over the past month, strangely, there have been a few more open editors.  I feel confused.  Within a three-week period I had acceptances from Dali’s LoveChild (an excellent new surrealist literary magazine) and Deep Water  (a more established, darker venue).  I even had a maybe from Defenestration . I’m a realist, despite my fiction.  I know many more rejections will come.  I still regularly get them.  I submitted a truly creepy story to a magazine that was rejected in less t...