K. Marvin Bruce

I remember reading an interview with Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son.  It was when I was reading his perfectly titled Heart-Shaped Box .  In the interview he mentioned the kinds of things he thinks about when out and about in the world.  His macabre thoughts are similar to mine. Joe Hill, however, is a bestselling author.  His father is one of the most successful writers currently alive.  Even though Stephen King writes other than horror occasionally, now that October’s nearly over his classic works come to mind. As does the dilemma of the unknown writer.  My parents don’t write.  One of them is deceased, so that is probably a good thing, but neither one of them was educated and writing is not something either enjoys/ed.  Nobody could tell me how to get published. I started writing at a young age.  I attempted my first novel in middle school.  It was also the first manuscript I ever tore up.  I’ve had eighteen short storie...

I recently read a novel which, because I like only to say kind things of authors, I shall not name.  Suffice it to say that the author had written two successful novels before and I hoped for a mood to match the season in this one.   It was a ghost story, so I thought I was definitely on track.  It was set in a different historical period, but that's fine by me.  Past ghosts are just as troubling as present ghosts.  The story, however, couldn't ever strike a mood.   The setting was in a time of an epidemic.  As well as war.  But the optimism—can I even call it that?—of the narrator seemed not to allow for what Edgar Allan Poe once said was essential for stories: the "single effect."  It was a story scattered all over the place.   Perhaps most jarring to me was the use of language that seemed inappropriate to the time setting of the story.  Phrases that seemed modern, or lighthearted, sprang up in awkward places....