K. Marvin Bruce

 One of the most difficult parts about being creative is that you get carried away with ideas.  I've had four nonfiction books published and lately I've been taken—I mean really taken—with an idea for a fifth.  I've started writing it even before hearing if I'll get a contract for it. In the midst of the mania behind that writing (and I've got so little time to write that it's painful) I received the good news that fiction story number 30 has been accepted for publication.  Not only that, but it has been accepted in  Corvus Review .  I've published there before, but it's exalted company for me and I'm thrilled they like my fiction. Since my disc is still crashed and since I don't have access to The Space between Atoms (never trust a single disc!), this seems like a good time for a celebratory post.  This particular story is called "The Hput" (yes, a hput is a real thing), but it's a thing I can't tell you what means. This parti...

Several years ago now I wrote a story called “Without Crutches.”   Ah, distinctly I remember, it was before the wonderful journal Glimmer Train closed down.   I was going through one of my phases of actually reading journals before submitting, and I’d read a tale or two in said Train about characters with addictions. Perhaps going back to the almost mythic Edgar Allan Poe, writers have struggled with mind-altering substances.   Those of us who write see the world so differently and crave new experiences in an almost manic way.   Alcohol, drugs, and even religion can lead that way. “Without Crutches” was a story defending writing without using foreign substances.   As the child of an alcoholic, this path looks quite dark to me.   Besides, my imagination has a healthy libido.   Yes, even sex can lead to altered states of consciousness.   Of course, my story found no publishers. I recently read about Stephen King.   Actua...

I suppose I should get over it.   I feel mercenary about writing for money.   Almost as if I’ve sold out.   What a strange way to announce my first story accepted for publication for pay.   Don’t get me wrong—I’m absolutely thrilled.   I’ve received prize money for my writing before, but getting paid to have someone publish it is new. This past week two bits of good news arrived on the same day.   My story “Meh-Teh” was accepted by The Colored Lens , and they’re a paying venue.   Simultaneously my story “Creative Writing Club” received honorable mention in Typehouse ’s second biennial short fiction contest.   I literally had to go for a jog after opening the emails just to clear my head. You see, I’ve been writing fiction for forty years.   I sent my first story in for publication a decade ago.   It won a contest.   Then the rejections began rolling in.   I’ve lost track of how many there have been. ...

In the never-ending quest to be published, I’ve turned to nonfiction.   In nonfiction, you see, all you have to do is convince someone you’ve got an idea nobody else has had.   It took me a few years to figure that out, but then I’ve always been a slow study.   Even doctorates don’t help. I keep working at my fiction.   It’s where my heart is.   I just finished reading a book, World War Z , by Max Brooks.   Now, I know it’s a matter of taste—this was on the New York Times Bestseller list—but I didn’t care for it.   It wasn’t that well written.   Yes, it was a new idea but so is the one I’ve been trying to get published for a decade now. What happened here, I wondered.   Then I looked closer.   Max Brooks is Mel Brooks’ son.   Yes, History of the World Part I Mel Brooks’ son.   Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks’ son.   I was reminded of a bit of advice from Writers’ Marketplace back when print books still exist...

I remember reading an interview with Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son.  It was when I was reading his perfectly titled Heart-Shaped Box .  In the interview he mentioned the kinds of things he thinks about when out and about in the world.  His macabre thoughts are similar to mine. Joe Hill, however, is a bestselling author.  His father is one of the most successful writers currently alive.  Even though Stephen King writes other than horror occasionally, now that October’s nearly over his classic works come to mind. As does the dilemma of the unknown writer.  My parents don’t write.  One of them is deceased, so that is probably a good thing, but neither one of them was educated and writing is not something either enjoys/ed.  Nobody could tell me how to get published. I started writing at a young age.  I attempted my first novel in middle school.  It was also the first manuscript I ever tore up.  I’ve had eighteen short storie...

Long before I read much Stephen King (I only started on King in my late 40s), I had made up a fictional town.  King is well known for his fictional towns of Derry and Jerusalem’s Lot (‘Salem’s Lot) in Maine.  These are lands of magical realism where the paranormal happens, but people act just as people do. My fictional town is Breck, New Hampshire.  One of my published stories, “Good for the Gander,” is set in Breck.  Since my fiction hasn’t yet found a wide readership, nobody would realize just how many of my stories are set in my fictional town. Like most working writers, I write in fits and starts.  I begin each day with writing time, but occasionally it is harried by work and daily life issues.  I begin, continue, and finish stories and move on.  Most of them have never been sent out for rejection. Recently I realized that my Breck stories might start to interlock.  I had started a novel about Breck some years ago, to introduce th...

My writing partner Elizabeth and I like to talk about characters.  In some of my stories the characters are only vaguely defined.  To me, that is one of the aspects of short stories.  Did Poe know or care where Roderick  Usher went to college?  What kind of tree the raven's nest was in?  Somehow I doubt it. Still, getting a clear idea of character helps a story immensely.  One of the most basic aspects of character is desire.  We all want something.  If a character doesn't want anything no pitfalls will come on the way to her or his goals. The character's world will be dull and meandering. If there is one thing you must know about your characters, it is what do they want? I've read books where the author clearly doesn't know what the character desires.  The story can unfold and interesting, titillating events can transpire.  You can even feel for the losses or injuries the protagonist bears.  But you...

For many writers, getting a book in paperback is a measure of success.  As writers we think of those books so common that you can find them in grocery stores and drug stores and airports.  Books by Stephen King are everywhere. We tend to think of hardcover books as overpriced and out of reach for hoi polloi .  Besides, who has room to store a bunch of hardback books?  They take up valuable shelf space.  If a book doesn’t come out in paperback we think of it as a failure. Publishers tend to look at it the other way around.  Books are a luxury item.  As much as I shudder to write this, you can live without them.  Publishers know this and that’s why book prices often seem so high.  I’m old enough to remember when a mass-market paperback could be purchased for just over a dollar. Mass market is almost impossible to hit.  As I sit here waiting for six publishers to get back to me on my Medusa novel, I know that it won’t be mass m...

A few years ago my writing partner Elizabeth pointed me to the website “I Write Like” ( iwl.me ).  As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t emulate anyone in particular, but, like most writers I pick up some traits of those I read. Back when I first tried I Write Like, it was hardly surprising that its first answer was H. P. Lovecraft.  I’d been reading a lot of Lovecraft at the time, and I sent in a sizable sample of my writing.  Oh, and it also suggested Stephen King. Elizabeth tried it and also came up with Stephen King, despite the fact that her writing was, at the time, young adult and geared towards talking cats.  Perhaps Mr. King has written so much that it is hard not to sound like him? I’ve written thousands and thousands of words since I last visited the website.  Not really sure I’d still find it available, I was pleased to see it there.  I’ve been experiencing a reading malaise, and I needed to recharge my dry cells. Copying seve...

I remember reading, a long time ago, the biography of Thomas Merton.  Merton was a Trappist monk who grew very fond on Buddhism and eventually became famous in his own lifetime.  His Seven Story Mountain is a kind of classic. Merton didn’t grow up Catholic, and as he narrates his story he tells of finding a book with an imprimatur.  He was so angry he wanted to throw the book out of the window.  What right did a group, even so large a group as the Catholic Church, have to declare a book fit for print?  It riles the creative sensibilities.  Of course, he went on to become a monk. The concept of imprimatur is one that all writers face.  Publishers, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or any kind of religion or secular, hold the imprimatur.  There are the successful self-published of course.  I’ve read enough self-published books to see the value in what publishers offer. Still, publishers get to decide what the world reads.  It’s a...

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 )...

I add posts to this blog too infrequently.  The reason: distractions.  The largest one, without question, is work.  Day-to-day routine is hardly conducive to a truly creative life.  Still, its often on my mind. Number two distraction: the world-wide-web itself.  It used to be that writing came in paper form.   Even in hardcopy, though, you had to sort the signal from noise.  There were choices to be made.  When I was a child Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured a man—I can’t remember who—that was the last person to have read every printed book. Well, I kind of doubt that.  Maybe he read every printed book available in Europe.  Other languages, such as Chinese, had been printed from an early time.  In any case, that period is passed.  All reading involves a choice. Talking with my writing partner Fantasia, I once asked about how a story she was working on was coming along.  She admitted to having been distracted...