K. Marvin Bruce

  I’ve been quiet for a while because I was working on a novel.   I’ve written novels before; seven of them.   Thing is, they’ve never been published.   One was under contract and then cancelled.   Now it’s under consideration again.   The other six are very patient. In addition to these novels, I’ve also written a nonfiction manuscript using my pen name.   It’s not published either.   The reason for this cross-over is that my current employment might become my past job if anyone read this piece.   Best to keep my identity false. Long-form writing is something I enjoy doing.   I do want some of the novels to be published, but it seems that you have to have someone take a chance on one before anyone will bother to look at another.   Such is the writing life. Just a thought, but for my fiction you need to give it a little time.   The first page might not snatch you, but the stories draw you in.   I read novels like that. ...

  So I’ve been reading about writing.   Or more properly, about publishing.   It’s really kind of a fascinating story.   The paperback novel, as we know it, is less than a century old.   It was essentially invented for soldiers during the Second World War.   In the economic downturn after war, it made for a cheaper way for people to buy books. There were lots of big publishers in the fifties and sixties, and then they started being bought up by large corporations.   They became much more bottom-line oriented.   And it became much harder to become a fiction author.   In reading about this, it really stands out that it was kind of an incestuous business.   Everybody in publishing knew everybody else.   You could still send in a manuscript without an agent.   You could be discovered—Stephen King didn’t have an agent for his first book.   Then things began to change. These days there are five very large publishers in English. ...

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...

  A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers.   I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks.   As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying.  Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine.   And it’s likely true.   But the stories:   “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing.   JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher.   I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology.   Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game!   A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast.   Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted.   It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...