K. Marvin Bruce

So I finally got an agent to talk to me.   That doesn’t mean he’ll represent me, but he knows, at least a little of, who I am.   This didn’t come about through a web search and cold call.   He agreed to talk to me because we have a mutual friend. This friend I have never met.   He contacted me after reading a blog post.   We subsequently talked by phone.   He emails me often.   He’s a real booster.   Turns out he’s a writer too.   Those of us who write need one another. My friend doesn’t know my pseudonym.   In fact, most friends to whom I’ve revealed it have forgotten.   They grow weary of waiting until I break through.   Until they can say “I knew him when.”   Of what does breaking through consist? Twenty of my short stories have been published.   My fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Write Well Award (Silver Pen Writers Association), and the Best of the Web Award. ...

Thanksgiving seems to be an appropriate time to express my gratitude to the editors of Calliope .  Apart from being (to date) the only literary magazine to actually print one of my stories (others, I am grateful, post them online), the editors have nominated “Initiating an Apocalypse” for a Pushcart Prize. I’m enough of a realist to know that my chances of actually winning a prize are slim, but it is nice when a story previously rejected many times is seen to have some potential.  I suspect, but I may be wrong, that writers don’t submit material unless they believe it is good enough to publish. Still, being declined repeatedly wears not only on the ego, but on the soul itself.  It’s easy to feel like a poser or mountebank trying to pass yourself off as a writer.  Still, somewhere deep down, we believe. At times I seriously question whether I should keep at this at all.  The ideas, however, burst out regardless.  Either I will catch them or they...