Relationship Status: Complicated

Now that all of the titles have been taken down and re-posted, and all of the links have been re-set, it’s time for me to face the fact that my first publisher and I are no longer in partnership. It was an amicable parting, if reluctant, but I felt it was best for my brand and they did not disagree, so we are going our separate ways. I am grateful for the help and support I received while I was there.

And now I’m on my own again, a purely self-published author, not a hybrid. I’m not going to list all of my books here because links are available on this site, and that’s not the purpose of this post–I’m writing it because that’s what I do, and this is a big move for me which will have long-term consequences, the most obvious and immediate being that (once again!) I have to pivot and take a new road.

At the beginning of the year, I started a stand-alone SF pastoral/space opera/mystery/gothic novel that I was going to try to pawn off on some unsuspecting publisher. When that stalled, I decided to go back to the Stolen Future universe, where I had already finished the first novel of a spin-off that I thought my then-publisher would be interested in. If one project is going nowhere, I thought, why not start on the second part of my spin-off, whose ultimate publication is highly probable, if not guaranteed?

Well, of course, nothing is guaranteed, and as the chances of that second trilogy (should I finish it) being published are now slim, I put aside that book to return to the space opera. (I now have three unfinished novels in my computer, all from the past eight months.) I actually allowed myself a small vacation to get my thoughts together and perhaps work on a short story between asking to be let out of my contracts and having to re-publish, but things turned around faster than I thought, so now that the work is done, it’s time to turn from time travel to space travel.

And that’s where I stand, working on an old new novel while waiting to see how self-publishing experiment #2 works out. It’s been interesting so far, learning to use art programs to make some limited alterations to my covers. And if I can’t fly on my own, there are a few other venues that I can pursue.

If this year has taught us anything, it’s that next week could look entirely different than today. Writing-wise, I hope that’s not true. All this spinning from project to project is making me dizzy.

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Who’s Who in New Pulp

For those who are into it (and those who should be but don’t know about it), I wanted to take a moment for self-promotion by pointing out that I have an entry in Who’s Who in New Pulp, a charity project designed to help increase the visibility of the Modern Pulp movement and those who are participating, “222 … of the finest New Pulp writers, artists, reviewers, editors and publishers.”

“New pulp” is a continuation (and perhaps a revitalization) of the pulp fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. Named for the cheap paper upon which the magazines were printed, it was the successor to the infamous dime novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and predecessor to the comic book and the paperback. Its most famous character was undoubtedly The Shadow (ironically invented for the radio, not magazines), but it included such colorful names (and movie heroes) as Tarzan, Zorro, Doc Savage, and dozens more (including my own Nemesis). Its influence on Batman, Superman, James Bond, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones cannot be disputed.

All proceeds from Who’s Who in New Pulp will go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

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The OTHER Question We Can’t Answer

I was asked a question by a friend recently that made me stop and search for an answer. It wasn’t, “Where do you get your ideas?” (That’s easy; there’s an online store on Internet B running a special on novellas right now.) It was: “Which of your books are you most proud of?” On reflection, I chose How to Know if Your Stockbroker is Ripping You Off, because it’s designed to be of use to people in their financial lives, and in a way, it took me 30 years to write. My friend, however, was not about to let me off that easily, and came back with: “Which of your novels are you most proud of?”

Ooh. Okay, now we’re entering dangerous territory. I had already demurred to picking my “favorite,” but this was perhaps even more difficult. It wasn’t merely a matter of which book was the most accomplished, or sold the most. It wasn’t a matter of which book had the most positive reviews. These things make me happy, but pride in a project is more than simply pride in success.

My novels are entertainment; should I be proudest of whichever is most entertaining? Judging them on that metric isn’t really my job, but the job of my readers. Perhaps it should be the longest, since that represents the greatest effort. But that’s not fair, because every story has its best length. I could just as easily be proudest of the book I wrote the fastest, because it represents the most focused effort. Or maybe I should be proudest of the book that was hardest to write, but none of them was what you’d call easy.

The truth, of course, is that I am proud of all of them. Each time I set out to tell a story, and each time I succeeded. Sometimes I wasn’t able to pull off a story with quite the panache I’d hoped, and more than once the story I told varied significantly from what I set out to do in the beginning. But I am proud of the accomplishment each stands for, that I was able to string together several tens of thousands of words (in one case more than 100,000), into a coherent narrative, something which many strive for but few achieve.

So which of my books am I most proud of? With any luck, it’s one haven’t written yet.

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The Beginning of the Ending

One of a series. Maybe.

I saw today, as I do often, where a writer is asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Aside from its inherent non-answerability, this is not a bad question–it is just the wrong question. The difference between writers and non-writers is not that we get ideas, it’s what we do with them. And the difference between writers and those who would like to be writers is how we do what we do. As Inigo Montoya said, “Let me ‘splain.”

You read a short story and it has a twist ending. You think, “Wow! I didn’t see that coming!” Maybe you didn’t, but the writer did. And the trick to a successful twist doesn’t lie in the twist itself; it lies ten pages back where the author laid down a subtle hint of what was to come that you won’t see until you read the story again.

Nor is this limited to surprise endings. The success of any story’s ending lies in its beginning and its middle (I would say, particularly the middle). I was once asked to rewrite a story to strengthen the ending, and it wasn’t until I realized that I had to start the ending half-way through that I was able to re-write it properly. (I’m doing right now with another story, and it ain’t easy.)

Think of it like a judo throw. To watch, you’d think it was all hands and arms, but in reality it starts down in the hips. Until you learn to use those muscles down in your roots, you can’t do the moves. Until you learn to root your ending deep in your story, you can’t carry off the twist. Yes, you can write it, and it will be surprising, but it won’t be elegant or satisfying.

To paraphrase Master Kan, “The writer is at one with his universe. Between the opening line and the writer’s block, there is only harmony.” Well, he may have been a wise man, but he wasn’t a writer. Still, like Kwai Chang Caine, if you stick with it, you’ll get it–even if it takes ten years…

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