K. Marvin Bruce

  While I wait and pray for data recovery—as I mentioned last week, The Space between Atoms was lost with the crash of a WD Elements drive—I didn’t want to neglect this poor blog.   Since I’m a struggling writer, I’ll note how editors like to kick you while you’re down. Even while I’m waiting to see if my files can be recovered, I received my weekly quota of rejection letters.   A really good story submitted to a carefully chosen journal, and a collection of stories submitted to a contest.   They all say the same thing—your work is good but there’s so much out there that’s so much better, in my opinion. You see, I know editors, and it’s those last three words that are the killer: in my opinion.   Editors have likes and dislikes.   They’re the gatekeepers for publication success. Early in my fiction publishing attempts, I kept submitting to the same publication— Danse Macabre —because I seemed to have found a sympathetic editor.   This relationship con...

  I’ve been doing some thinking.   I have dozens of stories written.   Most of them aren’t very good, but several of them are.   I’ve been trying to get them submitted. Part of the problem with being a graphomaniac is that you have so much material that you begin to forget it.   I’ve read some of my own stories that I have no recollection of writing.   One that I recently finished was “Squirrel Play.” Recently finished stories I remember.   I wanted this one to get read, so I decided to aim high.   The Horror Zine is a phenomenon that took off.   I’ve tried to publish there before, without success.   I decided to try again. Much to my surprise, it was accepted.   I’m thrilled beyond words! As a struggling writer I wrestle with self-doubt constantly.   I wasn’t given much encouragement as a writer, except by two English teachers in my high school.   Although that was nearly forty years ago, I only got the courage to submit...

The ghost story, as we know it, was originally associated more with Christmas than Halloween.  That makes sense, since the solstice is darker than the equinox.  Both days stand as transitions—Halloween is the beginning of the darkness, and Christmas is midnight. If you’re like me you may have comfy memories of childhood holidays.  That snug and warm feeling of being at home, well-stocked with food against the cold outside.  The hope of presents and a day of not worrying about the realities outside. Nightmares, however, know no holidays.  I awake in the dark and the light is but a mere sliver of the day.  Long before dinnertime the sun has set again.  Breakfast and supper are in the dark.  Is it any wonder the ghosts linger around the Christmas tree? My first published story, now on a defunct website, was the 2009 winner of the prix d’écriture de Noël in Fiction in Danse Macabre .  A scary Christmas story?  This was what gave...

There is, I’m told, a natural progression to dating.  If a girl doesn’t like you on the first date, it’s over.  A second date is a hopeful sign and, barring unforeseen circumstances, a third date is likely. Don’t take my word for it.  I was never a proficient dater, and the girl I married was one I never dated.  My first girlfriend entangled me in a tragic relationship that strung over two years and came to define my senior year in college. No, this isn’t a dating advice column—you wouldn’t want to read one by me!  It’s a metaphor.  You see, I used to think getting published was like dating.  Once you found an editor who “got” what you were doing, you’d be able to move forward.  Progress. I think of H. P. Lovecraft, who is now being taught at universities, and how he really only found one magazine that liked his work.  I thought maybe I’d found that magazine in Danse Macabre , but then they started to be less-than-enthusiastic ab...

So, I sign into my gmail account yesterday to post my piece only to discover a rejection letter in my inbox.  When a journal called Down and Out rejects you, you know your work must suck. I’d be lying if I said I’d forgotten how many rejection notes I’ve received.  I actually do keep track.  (45 different journals, if anyone’s wondering.)  It’s a practice I recommend.  Not because it’s good to keep depression in your back pocket, but because it’s good to know who likes your work. For a long time only Danse Macabre seemed to find me worth publishing.  Jersey Devil Press took a couple of my stories, but a change of editor resulted in a stream of rejections.  Even Lovecraft had Weird Tales . Then suddenly five journals accepted pieces in quick succession.  Since then, nothing.  Feast and famine.  Love and hate.  Life and death. In this era of internet publications, finding an editor who “gets” you is the best yo...

Like most Americans, I don’t understand cricket.  I do know there is a batter and what we would call a pitcher who “bowls” a ball to try to knock down wickets behind the batter.  If the bowler knocks down all three wickets with successive balls, it is called a hat trick. Hat tricks are, by definition, rare events.  According to the venerable Oxford Dictionaries on the somewhat less venerable Internet, the bowler was given a hat to commemorate the feat, thus making it a “hat” trick.  Now any three unexpected successes are called by that moniker. I’ve been submitting to many publishers from my copious backlog of short fiction for about five years now.  For the first four years of my efforts I only found two online magazines willing to put any of my stories out there ( Danse Macabre and Jersey Devil Press ).  Over forty other mags turned me down. Then, out of nowhere, a hat trick.  Three submissions accepted in a row.  I don’t expect th...

“Infatuation, Technically,” was technically published on the Danse Macabre blog this past week.  This brief tale evolved out of experience working in a office where women are as difficult to get to know as they are arresting.  But the story isn’t really about that. If it weren’t for technology I wouldn’t be a published author (if what I can be called is such).  I make my submissions online and I receive my electronic voice online.  I look at maps online and I haven’t touched a phonebook in years. But still.  I’m still not convinced all of this technology is a good thing.  “Infatuation, Technically” is about the love of technology.  The human element is gone.  I could be dating a clone and wouldn’t even know it.  This food I’m eating never occurred in nature.  That fly buzzing around my head is a drone. A friend told me they are now printing cells with 3-D printers.  What if we haven’t found all the dimensions yet? ...

I’m not afraid of electronic publication.  Despite the fact that it could all be wiped out by a comet’s tail or power surge, it is clearly the way of the future.  Some of my earliest stories have, in fact, already disappeared as servers have shut down, reverting rights along with words. My earliest pieces appeared in Danse Macabre , a literary journal that seems to get what I’m trying to do.  Certainly the vast majority of literary magazines don’t “get” me, as I’ve had a great deal of trouble finding editors who’ll give my tales a chance.  I was pleased, then, to see myself as a part of two anthologies by Hammer and Anvil Press. Hammer and Anvil—a most appropriate name—is the book-publishing side of Danse Macabre ’s Adam Henry Carrière, the first editor to take a chance on my fiction.  I discovered two of my stories in anthologies, and I am very pleased that they still have a little staying power. Stories are memes that we cast out into the universe...

This is the title of a story that Danse Macabre published some months ago.  I wrote it under the influence of Ray Bradbury, who, it must be understood, can take no blame for my admiration.  It used to be if you wrote like Bradbury you’d find a publisher.  Those days have gone. The story concerns a magic necktie.  The necktie in itself is a suggestive accessory.  Not unlike a noose, it often represents the cost of the business world.  It is also the article of clothing most often to fall into your soup or sauce and become utterly destroyed. In one of my classes I had a student who commented on a particular tie I wore.  This one was vibrant with primary colors—flashy for my personality—that my mother had bought me.  It went with nothing, so it went with everything.  A white shirt showed it off best. In the right light the tie seemed to move.  That was, I suppose, the genesis of this story.  A man finds a tie on an accide...

A writer’s life is one of introspection and self-doubt.  There’s nothing like the ratio of rejection slips to acceptance emails to drive home the message that somehow your words are defective, your thoughts substandard, your ideas puerile.  Then a miracles happens.  A small miracle. It was a bleary-eyed Monday morning.  I hadn’t even bothered checking my email for a few days, sometimes trembling at the very thought.  Some days there’s only so much criticism I can take.  But this was something good. On a whim I entered a story in Calliope ’s annual writing contest.  This story had been rejected a total of seven times, but I believed in it.  Calliope is associated with Mensa, and I had an intelligent subtext to the tale—my stories are never about what they seem to be.  I sent it in and tried to forget it. The forgetting part worked, for the most part.  Daily life attempts to drown my writing hour from time to time.  Most...

My short story, “Night Jogger,” has just appeared in the excellent online magazine Danse Macabre .  You can read it here . A couple of conflicting truisms rebound throughout fiction writing: write what you know and don’t write what actually happened.  All fiction is autobiographical—how can it not be?  The only question is how deeply to layer the metaphor. I wrote “Night Jogger” because I used to jog in the dark.  The unevenness of the sidewalk in the diminished light led to more than just one spill on the hard concrete.  In fact, this happened to me again just last month.  I’m not as young as I used to be. While out in the dark, in jogging togs, you are terribly vulnerable.  Your trusted senses fool you.  Those people loitering on the street corner are in reality trees at a distance.  That person sitting on the porch is really a round house address plaque above a lawn chair.  Reality is no longer real. The truth ...

The folks at Danse Macabre are most accommodating.  I’m pleased to announce the appearance of my latest short story, “Circumstance of Victims,” In Danse Macabre 72, Oubliette . This is an experimental piece, but, if read with patience, it makes sense.  It is also, like most fiction, somewhat autobiographical.  If you would like to learn what that means, I would encourage you to read my story.  Those who hold power over employees don’t realize just how awful that responsibility is. I’ve been alive long enough, and with a personality strong enough, to have lost a job or two.  It is never shy of anything but devastating.  The first novel I attempted (unsuccessfully) to publish was about just this.  I suspect the editors who threw it on the slush-pile had never experienced it. I sent the manuscript to my friend Sluggo to read.  S/he said that it was pretty long, but the parts about what it feels like to lose a job were spot on.  A...

A felicitous bit of unexpected delirium came my way as I received news that one of my stories had been accepted for publication in Danse Macabre .  That magazine reserves a bishop’s throne of reverence in my psyche as the first place willing to publish my efforts at finding a voice. Not exactly a neophyte at fiction—I have been writing since grade school days—publication has been an uphill forced march in an icy rain for me.  I finished my first novel last century, in 1988.  Like many first novels, it sucked.  It didn’t seem that way to me at the time. Nothing is a better assassin to good fiction than academic writing.  Trying to establish a career in higher education, I wrote a couple of dry books and some articles, always trying to up the bar a little on style and panache.  Most publishers were not amused. I was 47 years old when my first fiction piece was published.  In Danse Macabre .  It won special mention as a macabre Christma...

The first story I actually had accepted for publication was “Hide and Seek.”  It appeared in Danse Macabre XXXIII, Erzählungen (March 2010).  Danse Macabre subsequently changed servers, and my story is no longer available there.  I’m hoping eventually to have some of my short stories republished in a collection, but first I have to get more of my short stories published period. I remember clearly the inspiration for “Hide and Seek.”  One day during lunch I’d wandered to the space around a vacant building.  It was one of those single-story, multi-purpose monstrosities with no real character or charm.  The parking lot had weeds breaking through the pavement, and the building on either side, probably built by overly optimistic speculators, also stood vacant.  It was rather peaceful. Having been a writer since a very young age, I habitually carry either paper or a notebook in my pocket.  I found a bench with chipping paint, sat down...

Vardøger, the title of my story published in Danse Macabre XLVI, Morgenblätter (May 2011), is based on an actual phenomenon.  The word itself is Norwegian for that experience of hearing someone arrive before they actually do.  It is common, and bizarre. There was an alley between our house and the next, through which we had to drive to park our car.  Since the alley was shared by the neighbors, we quickly learned the signature sound of each make of car.  You could tell who was home based on which car trundled up between the buildings. When my wife shopped for groceries, I helped carry them inside.  Naturally, on the days she went to the store, I kept an ear out for our car in the alley.  More than once I’ve dashed to the door after hearing her pull in, only to find no car there.  The sound seemed real enough; I’d never thought to try to record it since it is a daily sound.  Every once in a while, however, it was Vardøger. Folk trad...

Sometime back in the Nixon administration, I began writing my first fiction.  Although I had vague thoughts of publishing it, I had no idea what would be involved or that it would take me nearly forty years to accomplish it.  Writing is for those who have a very long view. I began by writing short stories.  A few were published in my high school newspaper, but since I was the editor that probably doesn’t count.  Teachers encouraged me to get published for real, although they didn’t really know how either.  Living in a small town you can still dream big.  It’s just a bit more difficult to pull it off. Danse Macabre is a great online magazine.  I submitted a macabre Christmas tale, “O Tannenbaum,” that won the 2009 prix d’écriture de Noël in Fiction.  The story was subsequently removed from the web when Danse Macabre changed servers, but it has a special place in my heart as the first piece someone other than myself considered worthy of ...

One of the few things that truly cause me happiness has just occurred.  I’ve seen my most recent story published.  I’m so happy, I’ll use an exclamation point! Those of you who’ve tried writing know what an accomplishment this is.  You’ve spent your life reading stuff that’s not as good as what you do, and then end each day with a pile of rejection letters so tall that you need a ladder to reach the top.  Just a moment of vindication, and you’re ready to start all over again. My first story published, “O Tannenbaum,” appeared in the online magazine Danse Macabre in December of 2009. It won an award for most macabre Christmas story that year.  Danse Macabre has since become my main squeeze for getting published.  They get it. Recently Jersey Devil Press joined the exclusive club of those who don’t automatically reject whatever I submit.  “Good for the Gander,” the story about a troubling goose attack, appeared this week.  You can r...

After lurking around the fringes of the World Wide Web for several years, I’m pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of my novel, The Passion of the Titans with Vagabondage Press next summer.   The Passion of the Titans is the story of Medusa, told from her own point of view—if you want to know how that’s possible, I urge you to read the book!  I’ll give you a hint, though.  Rock-and-roll did not begin with Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley.  It started a long, long time ago in a land far away. For those of you who’d like a little taste of the my other work, I’d point you to the excellent online magazine Danse Macabre .  My first piece published there, “O Tannenbaum,” won the 2009 prix d’écriture de Noël in Fiction for the magazine.  Unfortunately, in this age of impermanent servers and services, the piece has disappeared into cyberspace.  My second story, “Hide and Seek,” appeared and disappeared in the same journal...