K. Marvin Bruce

As a self-taught writer, I frequently second-guess myself.  (Funny phrase, second-guess.)  I don’t know what’s normal, so when I receive a rejection note, I suppose the problem must be with me, not with the place I’m seeking to publish. I have a friend who is an editor.  He tells me that if a work has promise, he’ll advise the author to revise and resubmit.  This shows that there’s something worth pursuing, and it is only if it fails to impress the critics two times around that it is passed altogether. In the fiction publishing world, I’ve received a revise and resubmit suggestion only twice (both from Jersey Devil Press ).  The first time the editor really like what I was doing and worked with me to get it into the form he wanted.  The second time they turned down the revised piece and haven’t published me since. It is my usual practice, after a piece is rejected, to rewrite.  As my writing partner Elizabeth says, in a byte of inter...

At the suggestion of my writing partner Elizabeth, I went to a sculpture garden for an evening stroll.  This was an attempt, in the metaphor of Jack London, to stalk our muses with a cudgel.  Inspiration is sometimes far too fleeting. This particular garden has many sculptures based on classical paintings with works particularly by the expressionists rendered in three dimensions.  Renoir, Monet, Munch, and Grant Wood are all represented.  Being winter, the sun set early and masses of birds reeled overhead. Subdued lights kept the pathways illuminated, but when walking by a tall hedge we were startled when birds would suddenly began flapping their wings in the stillness.  You couldn’t see them.  Silence and then sudden flapping. Being in a sculpture garden at night is uncanny.  Many statues of people—easily mistaken for human beings in the daylight even—can be glimpsed in the half-light.  Are they other visitors here for a stroll or ar...

Like many people, I had a few days off over the recent holiday season.  Being a working-class writer is not easy, since most employers demand their pound of flesh, and then some, so taking a few days to write was, in a word, bliss. The new year begins with a new round of responsibilities and a boss making renewed demands for more time.  As it is, the time I have to write is measured in minutes rather than hours.  I keep hoping that this will be the year that I’m noticed. Well, I may be exaggerating there a bit.  I started writing fiction, by my recollection, in about 1975.  It may have been earlier, given how sloppy those initial manuscript pages look.  In a working-class family, I didn’t have the first idea about how to get published.  I’m still learning. 2014 was a boon to me, with four fiction pieces published in one calendar year.  That has never happened before.  I first started sending out potential publications in 2009, an...

It must’ve been about a year and a half ago when I discovered Duotrope.  Before that I found literary magazines on the Poet & Writer website.  Everyone wants you to read their magazines to figure out what they like, and that makes sense.  I work full-time, however, and can’t read everything. I love to read, but the working writer faces some unique challenges.  I’m still seeking a publisher for Boeotian Rhapsody, and the other day on Duotrope I found a publisher that wanted authors to submit a marketing plan for their books along with the manuscript.  At least they were very clear—we’re not going to publish unless you do the selling. One of my best friends works in publishing (non-fiction, unfortunately).  I sometimes ask him about this.  Are authors supposed to market their own books? Well, this blog is one answer to that question.  Yes, even established publishers with full staffs have to have author support to make a book succes...

I know a real, live, tenured professor who believes in tulpa.  He once told me how a friend wrote a fiction story, only to have an improbable event from the story happen after it was finished.  It was not something over which he had any control. Tulpa is a concept from eastern religions that suggests a being of pure thought or imagination might take on reality.  Writers, who create characters all the time, are perhaps engaging in tulpa.  We are creating, literally, as well as figuratively. I like the concept.  Many writers know the sensation of the character who refuses to behave.  A person that you make up does not what you want her to do, but what you know she shouldn’t do.  It’s like having an adult two-year-old. This same professor friend once told me that ideas may be created by a collective consciousness, and writers are those sensitive enough to capture those ideas that are floating freely in the ether.  (To be fair, he didn’t ...

Writers explore the depths of humanity’s experience.  At the same time, there are topics that we aren’t allowed to plumb. Let me back up a bit.  When I started to teach myself about which literary magazines would accept what kinds of stories, I spent a lot of time reading the do’s and don’t’s of the editors.  Some won’t allow men to write with a woman’s voice or vice versa.  Others disallow sex scenes and some forbid topics without which Nabokov could never have written Lolita .  Write short, still others say, anything over 1000 words is too long. Being a compliant sort, I tried for a while to avoid those things that would get me into trouble.  When someone is established, however, I’ve noticed, they can break all the rules and get rich.  So why are topics forbidden? I know editors.  A good friend is one.  And editors are people with tastes and prejudices just like the rest of us.  The problem is, there are a limited number ...

Those few who read my fiction generally comment on my satire.  Those who actually know me might call it cynicism.  Whatever one may choose to label it, it is a sense that things in our entrepreneurial world just don’t make sense. I’ve held a number of jobs in my life and have come to realize that just about all of them have a single purpose: to help those above me get wealthy.  I’m a daydreamer, not a corporate climber.  And yet I wonder what might happen if wealth had to face reality. A number of years ago I read about a sitting president (I can’t remember who it was, but it was before Obama) who couldn’t even guess near the price of a loaf of bread.  Those above us, it seems, have forgotten what it feels like here on the bottom. When the swamp monsters move in, those of ample means don’t know what to do.  Discrimination is frowned upon.  Yet, clearly, they can’t let monsters be monsters.  And so “Famous Neighbors” ( Defenestration )...