K. Marvin Bruce

Publishers, in a time of plague and pandemic, have a difficult time.   People aren’t really interested in much else beyond the crisis of the moment.   Sometimes I wonder if it’s bad form to seek publication at a time such as this. Fiction, I remind myself, is truer than fact.   And it’s a great release from the daily stresses of living amid COVID-19.   A friend of mine who’s an editor told me that novels are selling well.   Nonfiction not so much. For the last several weeks I’ve heard nothing from the agents I queried all the way back in January.   Many of them are in New York City, the epicenter, it always seems, of American drama.   So many people living so close together.   How could they be thinking about fiction? It’s the future.   Fiction, that is.   Those of us who indulge in speculative fiction know that it is a coping mechanism.   It teaches us how to handle “what if…?”   The coronavirus is a big “what if…...

In the never-ending quest to be published, I’ve turned to nonfiction.   In nonfiction, you see, all you have to do is convince someone you’ve got an idea nobody else has had.   It took me a few years to figure that out, but then I’ve always been a slow study.   Even doctorates don’t help. I keep working at my fiction.   It’s where my heart is.   I just finished reading a book, World War Z , by Max Brooks.   Now, I know it’s a matter of taste—this was on the New York Times Bestseller list—but I didn’t care for it.   It wasn’t that well written.   Yes, it was a new idea but so is the one I’ve been trying to get published for a decade now. What happened here, I wondered.   Then I looked closer.   Max Brooks is Mel Brooks’ son.   Yes, History of the World Part I Mel Brooks’ son.   Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks’ son.   I was reminded of a bit of advice from Writers’ Marketplace back when print books still exist...

Stress can be great for writing.   Having too little time to practice the craft, in some odd way, makes it flow more easily.   Take the case of the working writer on vacation. I sometimes feel bold enough to call myself a writer.   My job doesn’t depend on it, of course, but who finds meaning in their job?   My sense of purpose comes in the off hours.   Nevertheless, each day presents minimal opportunities to spend with my true vocation.   Then comes vacation time. Unstructured days spread out before me like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest.   I have stories I’ve been working on for months.   I have at least two non-fiction projects going as well.   At last I will have long, open days when writing will flow and I’ll live in the gooey comfort of constant inspiration.   As if such things ever happen. Vacation is family time.   Writers—those of us who live alone in our heads—can’t simply separate ourselves f...

Advice from writers to writers is cheap.  I try not to give advice beyond “there’s no right or wrong way to write,” but still I’m influenced by others who say how to write.  After all, you have to please others, no? I’ve been told you have to write short to write long.  The idea being that if your short pieces get noticed then you’ll be in a position to say more.  (I.e., write short stories before trying a novel.)  Then I asked a New York Times bestselling author.  He said, “If I had done that, I’d have never gotten published.” Another chestnut we’re freely given is that we shouldn’t make our readers work to understand us.  Pander to the reader.  This past week I started to read a novel, again a New York Times bestseller, and some thirty pages in I still have no idea what’s going on.  Now, I do hold a doctorate in the humanities so I think I know how to read.  Somebody’s bucking the advice and making plenty of bucks at it. ...

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had unsolicited advice from a couple of sources suggesting that my writing expectations are off.  Aim low, they advise, and even then don’t expect much.  That I already understand.  It’s the next bit of advice that gets to me: Don’t write what you want to write.  Write what sells.   One way they suggest doing this is to become a ghost writer.  People who have the profile to sell books but who can’t write often want someone with talent to tell their story and give them the credit.  It is accepted wisdom that this is a standard way to break into writing. I don’t doubt that they’re right.  Nobody’s heard of K. Marvin Bruce—he’s never been a major athlete, political figure, or entertainer.  Why should they care what he has to say?  (Never mind the creative part, or even the fact that he’s a nice guy.)  Someone with billions of dollars we care about.  We want their story. I’m frien...

I was recently reading a piece by a New York Times best-selling author.  It was a bit discouraging.  Best-sellers, he noted, are often decided on the basis of hundreds, not thousands, of sales.  The book-buying public is small. Reading, this author averred, is hard work.  Most people would rather watch TV or surf the net.  Anything but read. My friend Steve works in the publishing industry.  He told me once that studies show only about 5% of the US population buys books.  While that’s a low percent, it is a high enough number to keep the industry going.  Still, it does make it harder for writers. A publishing industry feeling stressed will try more and more for “a sure thing” rather than to take a chance on something new.  The runaway success of Andy Weir’s  The Martian and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train —both passed by major houses as too outré until they started making money—show that editors often have no id...

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 t...