K. Marvin Bruce

I get the feeling not many people are truly haunted.   I know I am.   The reason I get this feeling is that my fiction, which clearly reveals evidence of haunting, is always a hard sell.   I can’t give it away, at times. You see, some of us are haunted by life.   I recently read a biography of one of my childhood heroes, Rod Serling.   The biographer said he wasn’t a haunted man, he just played one on TV.   Not that I want anyone else to be haunted, but I felt a little let down by that assessment. Is there something wrong with admitting being haunted?   Like the stigma of mental illness?   Why are people so afraid of those who are haunted?   I’ve always felt drawn to them.   You’d think the internet might be where we could find one another. Yet I had behind a pseudonym.   Why?   I’m afraid.   I’m afraid to lose my “real job” that I don’t enjoy.   Afraid that my family will find out what’s i...

Write and you’ll get advice.   Some years ago I signed up for Medium, a social network with many writers.   Now I get daily advice from the website, sometimes helpful, sometimes not.   You see, there’s no wrong way to write. Days after receiving the happy news that Ghostlight had accepted “The Pain of a Caterpillar” for publication, The Colored Lens emailed to say they were seriously considering “Meh-Teh” for their next edition.   It’s not the same as an acceptance, but a struggling writer takes all the signs of hope offered. Rod Serling, about whom I’ve written before, had a quote about writing that has stuck with me, although I can’t remember the exact words.   He noted that only writers understand the pain of rejection in the way with which we’re all so familiar.   As usual, he said it much more eloquently.   Still, having someone say “Maybe” is better than the more familiar “No.” I call myself a struggling writer becau...

The best advice writers give aspiring writers is this: read.  Read a lot.  The thing about our species is that we learn by watching what others do.  To write is to read. Thing is, I’m an eclectic reader.  And my writing, like a snowball, grows from contact with other words.  I read literary fiction, I write literary fiction.  I read horror, I write horror.  I read humor, I write humor.  My promiscuous reading leads to the sin of eclectic writing. How do I know it’s a sin?  The editors tell me so.  The great priestly gatekeepers who hold the means of recognition in their genre-stained hands.  Nobody knows what to make of the cross-genre man.  The transgender are fine.  Encouraged even.  But beware the cross-genre man. As I go sinning across the internet, reading a little of this and a little of that, the snowman I’m building starts to look maybe a bit like that of Pig Pen.  Did I mention I read childr...

I don’t often get the chance to write two posts on one weekend, but a combination of circumstances have made it possible today.  First, it’s a holiday weekend.  Second, I had two stories published the same day (July 1) and I like to give the links as soon as I can. The second story, published under the title “Prom Night,” appeared in Exterminating Angel Press: The Magazine ( here ).  The original title was “The Death of Oil City,” and the story was written (or overwritten) about five years ago.  Many journals turned it down. This is, in many ways, a biographical story.  I don’t often try to write a first-person narrative as a female.  I know many editors who say men can’t, and shouldn’t, do such things.  The protagonist for this story, however, had to be female since, in this situation, so much had to be lost. It’s my celebration, or mourning, for a small town.  Oil City, Pennsylvania actually exists.  I went to high school ther...

PBS recently reaired (if such a term can still be used) a special on science fiction television. This was in the aftermath of Leonard Nimoy’s death.  On the show Twilight Zone was lauded as being one of the most literate television series ever. They don’t write them like that anymore.  I was a kid in the sixties when the reruns of Twilight Zone were still being shown.  At the time I had no idea who the writers were.  One of them, I learned as an adult, was Richard Matheson. Matheson is best known for his short novel, I Am Legend .  From today’s perspective, the writing isn’t exactly stellar, but the ideas are rich and profound.  "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” for example, has stayed with me since I saw it on the Twilight Zone . I’ve been reading some of Matheson’s short stories.  I have no idea how many he wrote during his long life, but as I compare them to some of my own fare, it is clear that we think/thought pretty much alike. ...

An equation, by definition, has two sides.  Each side ultimately balances the other.  Being a writer is not an equation.  Being a published writer is. I recently had lunch with a friend who is a published author; I’ll feature his book in a post shortly.  As we talked about the long process it took to get his book into print, it dawned on me that I may be a writer, but I still need to play the publishers’ game. As writers we write what we want to express.  We are literate, intelligent, and full of emotion that finds satisfaction only in the written word.  Publishers represent the other side of the equation if we want to become published writers. Publishing is a business while writing is a creative enterprise.  As a writer it is easy to think that we don’t need to please anyone.  Our thoughts are our motivations and our souls are laid bare on paper.  Anyone should want to buy such valuable material. The publisher has to g...