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. ...

I’ve been thinking that this blog could use a little attention.   My problem is—well, one of my problems—I lead a double life.   I write fiction under a pseudonym because my real nym is tied to a respectable job.   So it goes. One of the solutions to my double life is that I could start putting some fiction on this blog.   Good idea or no?   I have a novel on which I’m working and it won’t likely find a publisher, so I could start pasting it here, in serial form. On the other hand of my double life I have a nonfiction book under my nonfiction name that is currently due at the publisher’s.   I need to spend time on that too, and I have a job.   And the lawn isn’t going to mow itself. So I’m thinking that instead of neglecting this poor, but truly loved, child of a blog, maybe I could feed it fiction.   That would at least keep it alive.   Right now it’s like a cactus, getting water only a few times a year.   Is that a mixed m...

How many novels must one man write, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, before you can call him an author?  I’ve completed six, none published, and I’ve got another well under way.  My business card, however, nowhere indicates that I’m an author. Being a writer is more than an occupation.  It’s an identity.  Like the vast majority of writers, I work for a living.  Long hours.  Long commute.  Heavy eyelids.  Sloped shoulders.  Weary sighs.  My boss thinks of me as an employee.  I think of myself as a writer gathering information. For me, there’s an ethics about it all.  I spend a lot of time reading.  Years, if I add up all the hours.  Am I not morally required to give something back?  I’ve written, sweated over, edited, and polished my novels.  Yet they sit on my hard drive seen by my eyes only and the even harder eyes of alabaster editors. Such is a writer’s life.  I’m not really looking for th...

I write both short stories and novels.  This is not unusual for a writer because different ideas play themselves out at different lengths.  Indeed, the division is artificial.  Edgar Allan Poe famously opined that a short story should be unified by mood and short enough to read in one sitting. A novel is a long-term commitment.  Or at least an affair that lasts more than a one-night stand.  Your characters have time to get to know one another “on screen” and the tale might get very complicated. It is difficult to come off of a novel into a short story, I find.  Going the other way around isn’t nearly so much of a let-down.  A story, after all, may develop into a novel.  Few novels can exist in the few words allotted to the short story. I’ve been working on my Medusa novel.  I’m about to start sending more letters of inquiry, and I’ve pretty much finished with the current round of polishing.  During my daily writing tim...

Having gone back to my Medusa novel for the umpteenth time, I find myself still proud of it.  Every great once in a while, a writer produces something that s/he knows is very good, and worthy of publication.  Of course, the publishers hold all of the cards. I went back to the drawing board to look for publishers who will consider literary humor.  It’s not a large coterie, but, at the same time, there is an embarrassment of riches.  Lots of publishers claim to be interested in humor.  Look at their offerings, however, and a different story emerges. People like to laugh.  I read humorous novels frequently.  Finding a publisher, however, may require an agent.  Agents are more standoffish than publishers are.  Most won’t even acknowledge a query.  Their websites are outdated, and they have no interest in an author without name recognition. A disturbing number of independent publishers, I see, now only accept agented submissions....

I don’t know about you, but the I’ve always been told that publishers don’t want novels that make readers do the work.  We, the writers, must accommodate them, explaining ourselves, “writing to the end user,” and dumbing down intellectual content.  My novels are intelligent, I hope, but accessible, I pray. Clearly this bit of publishing boilerplate doesn’t apply to everyone.  I recently finished reading Empty Space: A Haunting , by M. John Harrison.  I do enjoy ghost stories, and this may have been one, I think.  I’m not really sure what it was. I had to work for this novel. The book had been recommended to me on a list of scary books.  It’s hard to be scared when you can’t figure out what’s going on.  My confusion settled in almost immediately.  Lingo, jargon, and the use of words in ways I didn’t recognize made the action, if any, difficult to discern. The characters were interesting—memorable even.  It was depressi...

The advice that many writers give to those who would be authors is simple: read.  In order to be able to write, you need to learn what good writing looks like.  Fashions change over time, but good writing is just good thinking. I’ve decided to take one of the many reading challenges you find online at the beginning of the year.  Various websites suggest that such “contests” are better than resolutions that fall by the wayside by the beginning of February.  For me, I don’t need a contest to make me read, but these contests may make you read things you otherwise wouldn’t. One of the categories in my contest is a book that you’ve read before.  If a book is far enough in my past, the details become hazy.  I hate to admit it, but I’ve even read books that I remember nothing about.  My details of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov are one such victim. I picked this book up the first week of the year.  It is a big book and I’m a sl...