K. Marvin Bruce

I’ve got a bandage on my thumb.  It’s because of my overweening love of books.  To write well one must read even better.  Then the book stacks begin to grow. I head to the basement.  I used to live in a four-bedroom house, but it was owned by the institution that intimated my services were no longer required.  After that I’ve moved to a succession of two-bedroom apartments and all that implies. In the basement lie my dormant power tools and scraps of wood.  Back when we lived in “the house” my basement buzzed with the making of cheap, pine furniture.  Mostly bookshelves.  Here in the apartment the basement is shared and space is at a premium.  Some people don’t like finding sawdust all over their stuff. The result has been stacks of books growing up beside the existing shelves.  I don’t mind that so much, since a background of books is always visually interesting.  But then I went to get a book from the bottom of ...

It was one of the nicest rejection letters I’ve received.  “It’s not you.  It’s me.”  You get the picture.  I’ve lost track of how many times this book has been rejected.  A friend of mine in publishing tells me that publishers are hungry for content.  I’ve got six pretty good novels lying around with very little interest shown. Perhaps I suck as a writer.  I don’t really think so, though.  You see, i read a lot.  On the order of three hours a day a lot.  Some of what I read sucks.  I recognize suckiness.  I don’t produce it. And yet when I submit to a publisher they want three months to consider my work before rejecting it.  You’d think I’d have learned the lesson by now.  If they don’t write back the next day, so excited they can’t stay in their seats, I’ve failed to sway them.  At least that’s how I imagine it must go. This particular novel—the first I’ve seriously tried to publish—is an orphan....