Category: career

I finished The Spanish Bride yesterday.  Two marathon sessions, Saturday and Sunday, got me through the last four chapters.  The last two ended up needing major reconstruction.  About a week or two ago I realized I needed one more plot thread, which required me to bounce back and forth throughout the body of the novel to insert the necessary connective tissue.

But it’s done.  Donna will go through it once more for nits to pick, but that should only take a week or two, then the last pass to straighten out typoes and such, and off it goes to my agent.

Normally in the aftermath of a novel I go through a bout of major house cleaning.  It needs it, to be sure, as I haven’t actually finished writing a novel now for almost four years.  I’ve gone from one to the next to the next to this one in a constant stream of wordcraft, with barely a break between.

I have, therefore, four novel projects now ready.  My agent has three of them.

First, for anyone wondering, there is a new Secantis novel.  It’s called Ghost Transit and it is complete and it is in the hands of an editor.  Should he take it, I have hopes it will be as part of a two or three-book deal and I have two more Secantis novels in the planning stages.  (I had every intention of writing a follow-up to Peace & Memory, which would have been the only direct sequel to any of the books, but the whole MeishaMerlin implosion scotched that idea.  I’d still like to do it.)

Secondly, there is a big walloping alternate history called Orleans, which is the first book of a planned trilogy.  It is set in the 1920s, in French America—one premise being that Napoleon kept Louisiana.  There are many cool things in this book and I very much wish to see it published and get the chance to do the next two books.

Thirdly, there is a space opera completely independent of the Secantis Sequence called Under Athena’s Eye, which was begun at the request of an editor, but did not pass muster.  However, I did more than a hundred pages of it and I liked the premise, so I intend to finish it.  This is the only project that is making the rounds incomplete.  A hundred pages and the outline.  It would be a stand-alone, but you never know how the unconscious works, it’s possible to do sequels to damn near anything.

Now we have The Spanish Bride, which is pretty much straight historical.  Ostensibly, there is a murder mystery in it, though honestly I’m not sure how much of a mystery it actually is, but there it is.  Something of a thriller.  I’m hoping it attracts enough interest that it becomes a series.  I have at least two more books planned in some detail and a concept that would see it through perhaps ten books.  It begins in 1780 and I decided that if I do a series it would go to 1821—Missouri statehood.  In that timeframe, there are numerous historical characters I can use, including Daniel Boone, Manuel Lisa, Aaron Burr, James Wilkenson.  I don’t even have to leave it set in St. Louis—in fact, the third book will largely take place in Pittsburgh.

There are a few other projects I’d like to do, but I’ve decided to stop here for now.  I need a sale.  I need a contract.  I need to know which direction I’ll be going next.  It would be nice to believe I can do all these projects, and in fact I probably can, but I had best not add any new ones to the list.

This is a strange feeling for me.  I won’t be starting a new novel after this until I hear something positive about the others.  In a way, this may be detrimental, but right at the moment I must confess to being thoroughly exhausted.  There are other aspects to my life that need tending to—not least of which is trying to find a new job, with better income than I now have, because I must be realistic about my prospects.  It is conceivable that I can strong-arm my career to the place I want it, but I thought that was going to happen five years ago and everything basically fell apart.

The simple fact is, I’m discouraged.  I’ve completed this novel by dint of sheer will power and stubbornness, practicing a kind of Zen self-obfuscation, ignoring the little demon on my shoulder telling me it’s pointless.  Being too much a realist can be detrimental to a creative process.  But this is the thing I wish to do.  I am satisfied at this point that the four projects previously outlined are good enough to accomplish this, that starting a fifth one right now would do little to advance my situation.

Now, before I get all moribund and morose, let me say that all of this is conditional.  I’ve quit before and it never took.  I’m not quitting now, I’m just taking a strategic break in order to assess my prospects and take care of some other much needed details.

Like cleaning my office and my house.  Like finding a more immediate source of better income.  Like dealing with the Missouri Center for the Book, which is doing fairly well at the moment.

But mainly I need to put my life in order and get happy.  I can’t say I’m particularly happy right now.  I’m not miserable, but I’ve fallen into the trap of using temporary distractions in lieu of real living.  This is part of the novel-writing process, it’s nothing new.  But usually I finish the damn book and go do something else.  As I said, I haven’t finished writing novels now for four years.

But right now I’m sitting here composing this instead of beginning the chores.  They’ll keep.  This feels more important just now.

One project looming, which may turn out to be nothing, is a short story collection from a new local small press.  I met the owner/editor a month or so ago and she is enthusiastic.  She knew my name and we talked about the possibility of a project, so I’m going to look into it.  I have a few short stories that probably fall outside the scope of the main body of my work, so it would be interesting to do something like this.  A couple of the stories would be new, previously unpublished.  We’ll see.

I’m more than a little ambivalent about the future just now.  It’ll pass.  This is just me being brain-fried from this extended period of work.  Give me a few weeks and other things to do and I’ll get back in shape.

Since about 1982, though, being a writer is about the only ambition I’ve had beyond being a good companion to Donna.  I’ve put so much into it that I can’t really see anything else.  Hence the career counselor I’ve been seeing.  Publishing is fickle.  Even if I get a new publisher, there is no guarantee that things won’t turn out the same way again.  I need something else.  But it’s hard to even consider it.  I’ll get The Spanish Bride into shape, send it off, and wait.  Maybe I won’t have to do anything else.

I’d really like people to see all this work, though.  I’m very proud of it and it won’t do any one any good sitting in a drawer (or a hard drive) unpublished.

It’s Hallowe’en.  It was supposed to be cloudy today, but the morning light is beautiful.

I have an office in the basement of my house, with three windows at ground level, situated in such a way that a great deal of daylight floods in.  Three walls are covered by books.  My work area contains three computers—this one on which I’m writing a Distal Muse entry, my main writing computer (which is attached to the internet in no way), and my old 386, which had been my writing computer for years.  The only reason I replaced it was because my old HP printer died and all the new ones use USB ports instead of the massive pin-register cables.  It made less sense to spend the money on an adaptor which might or might not have worked.  Besides, it was time.  I needed some more sophisticated word processing options than good old WordPerfect 5.0 offered–though for straight composition, I still think it was unbeatable.  I use WP 10 now and it has more bells and whistles, but also a couple of things I don’t like.  It is not really any better for writing than 5.0, but 5.0–or even 7.0–would not run the new printer.

I am not a software geek.  All I know is when something doesn’t work.

But things work well enough and I can be productive, if occasionally annoyed.  I recently had to change internet software.  I am now a fan of Firefox.

Also in my office I have a futon which serves mainly as a couch, a drafting table (now cluttered) and an old but very decent stereo, on which just now Mendelssohn  is playing (Von Karajan, complete symphonies).  It is a cozy space.  If I had a coffeemaker down here I would never have to go back upstairs while working, which I intend to make so once I have sold some new novels and divested myself of the Day Job.

This is an ongoing struggle.

I’ve been working toward being a full-time fiction writer for about 25 years now.  It would seem that I either should have achieved it or given up.  I admit the problems are daunting.  Not knowing what to write next that would facilitate success is a biggie.  Which is why, when students ask, I tell them they might as well write what they want, what they love, because it has the same chance of success (or better, since the writing will probably be more sincere) as whoring by writing to demand.  Perhaps that’s harsh.  But I’ve done four franchise novels and they gave me no more freedom than my own work.

I am currently working on a historical murder mystery.  I finally (I think) have a good handle on it and am proceeding on the (I hope) final draft.

But I am also wasting time doing this.

Which means I am not sure what sentence comes next and I’m trying to distract my interior critic.  To do this, I usually write in the morning, before I am fully awake.  This works fine for first draft.  Not so good for rewrites, when that critical faculty is indispensible.  Last night, I came home from work with a clear notion of what to do next, came down here, and did it.  This morning I look at what I did and, behold, it is not so bad.  So I’m fiddling.  Technical term, that.  Noodling with a sentence here, a word there, a paragraph or two.  Cutting and hacking occasionally.  And pacing a lot.

And doing something other than what I should be doing.

Frederik Pohl wrote in his autobiography, The Way The Future Was, that some young student wanted to watch him work.  He said the poor fellow was bored to tears because for the most part all he saw was Pohl staring at his typewriter.  Long stretches of Nothing Happening.

(Sorry….just slipped over to the other computer to write a new sentence–see? it works.  Sometimes.)

The hardest thing for me, with a novel, is to know where to start.  Often I end up junking the first chapter, sometimes the first two chapters.  On the last novel I finished, this wasn’t entirely necessary, but I had to write two brand new chapters to precede the original chapter one.  Asimov, in one of his essays on fiction writing, said that if the story is going nowhere fast, likely as not you started it in the wrong place.  I have found this to be true more often than not.  Sometimes, though, you have picked the wrong main character.  Far less often, the setting is wrong.  Most depressing is when you simply have a bad idea for a story.

This novel–called The Spanish Bride–is not a bad idea.  In fact, I have an entire draft done and two of my readers like the general idea.  What I’m trying to do now is find the right form.

And in so doing, I find myself distracted, and doing other things.  Like this.

Just to let you know.

The other day I received an email from Delos Books, an Italian publisher, informing me that they have accepted a short story of mine. This is a resale and is, in fact, the first such I’ve made to a foreign market on my own. The story in question is Flesh Trades which appeared originally in Tales of the Unanticipated, the fall/winter 95/96 issue. Ten years later I’ve managed to resell it.

I should have been pursuing foreign sales all along, but it’s one of those details that, until you get comfortable with it, you just tend to neglect. Besides, it can be confusing. Foreign magazines are often worse than American magazines, like mushrooms after a spring rain, popping up everywhere and fading almost as quickly. Going through the market reports, gazing at the submission requirements, can be daunting. Until the advent of email submissions, you had to deal with odd postal rates and so forth, and you could never be really sure it would be handled the way you want.

But a couple years ago I bit the bullet and sent out a score of second-rights submissions. A couple of years. This is the first one to strike any kind of gold. I’m pleased. It will be in issue # 55 of Robot Magazine.

I do have other foreign offerings. Mirage is available in Hungary and I’ve been told there is a Russian edition of Compass Reach. But I have done rather poorly in foreign markets. This is a lapse entirely on my part, a breakdown in discipline. I can make excuses, but to what end? They aren’t buying because I’m not submitting. This will change now. This has inspired me.

I have 55 short stories published. If I sold each one two or three times to a foreign markets I could make a fair amount of change. Not huge, but nothing to sneeze at. And, more importantly, I’d grow my audience. That’s the grail quest. More readers.

So–to work.

Tomorrow morning at a little after seven in the morning I will be getting on a plane and a couple hours later getting off it at Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. As president of the Missouri Center for the Book I’ll be attending the National Book Festival this weekend. The following weekend, I’ll be back in town at The Big Read in downtown Clayton Missouri, also with the MCB.

I thought I’d take a few moments here to let you (my hidden and presumed Reader) know what’s been going on. At least two people who have signed the new Guestbook asked about future book projects, so…

Right at the moment, Nothing Is Happening.

Let me explain. In 2003, Peace & Memory came out from Meisha Merlin Publishing, the third in my Secantis Sequence. No, there’s no link to Meisha Merlin. They no longer exist, at least not as a viable publishing company. A part of them is still putting out the Virginia Edition of the Heinlein Collection, but for all intents and purposes Meisha Merlin is defunct. I have reacquired all the rights to the three novels of mine they published, which include Compass Reach, Metal of Night, and the aforementioned Peace & Memory.

In 2004, ibooks, the publishing arm of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, released a media tie-in I wrote, a Terminator 2 novel called Hour of the Wolf. After that, I began some talks with the company for any number of new projects—a new Asimovian robot novel, a novel or two in The Prisoner series, other ideas. Byron Preiss died in 2005. My editor there (though he had gone freelance by then) Steve Roman called me on a Sunday to tell me and I thought for a few seconds that it was a joke, but no, Byron had been struck and killed in his car by a bus on Long Island. The company limped on for a few months, but finally shut down.

This was shortly after my last novel, Remains, came out from BenBella Publishing.

Remains is my favorite novel to date. I worked very hard on it and I had excellent editorial help at BenBella. It was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which precipitated a visit to WisCon, a convention I had always intended going to but till then had never gotten a chance.

With the publication, also in 2005 of Of Stars & Shadows, a novella packaged as a double from Yard Dog Press, the year closed with what I considered my tenth book. Ten novels, all published since 2000. That and the 55 or so short stories constitutes a career. That’s a lot of work, a lot of words, and I am very proud of it all.

Like other aspects of the entertainment industry, though, you are only as viable as your current or next project. So what’s been happening?

I’ve been writing and searching for a new publisher. I joined the Missouri Center for the Book in 2002 and in 2005 they elected me president. I’ve been working part time at a fading job as a lab tech (photographic).

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next.

The vicisitudes of the publishing industry are daunting and byzantine enough that one need not attribute malice to anyone or anything to explain problems. It’s big and complex and things Just Happen.

So. Here’s what I’ve been working on.

There likely won’t be anymore robot novels. With the demise of Byron Preiss, that franchise has been all but shut down. Should the opportunity ever arise for me to revisit the three novels I wrote in Asimov’s vast and accommodating sand box, I shall be glad to.

There is a fourth Secantis novel currently knocking on doors, looking for a home. I have plans for at least two more.

I wrote an alternate history, the first volume of what I hope will be a trilogy, which is also trying to find room at the inn.

I am working on a quite different science fiction novel (apart from the Secantis Sequence) and just sent the first third to my agent with a synopsis.

Because of the alternate history, my interest turned to a more or less straight historical idea, and I am working on it. I have a full draft of it, which now needs rewriting. Since it is a “straight” historical, a genre I’m not used to working in, it will require more revision than I expected. Some time in the spring, it ought to be ready.

Interestingly and annoyingly, my short fiction production has gone right down the drain. I had a short story published in the program book for this past NaSFic (Tuckercon) and now and then I get a notion and start, in anticipation and hope, a new short story, but I’ve been doing novels steadily since 1999 and I’m having trouble shrinking my efforts down to such a small package.

Back in May I was a guest at the annual Missouri Writers’ Guild conference and I gave an address and taught a workshop. I discovered that I loved it. So I’m open now to doing workshops and certainly to lecturing. Soon I’ll have contact information here on the website for anyone wanting to discuss that with me.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. I thought it was time to update the website and with that in mind I found a new webmaster who has done a marvelous job. At his suggestion I’ve decided to use the Distal Muse as a kind of blog. I do blog at two other sites, mentioned in the Bio, so I may reserve this for news and occasional long rambles like the previous piece on YES.

You might wonder at my state of mind after reading this. Let’s just say I’m optimistic. I’ll be 53 soon. I’ve been working at 110% for a long time and it’s taken a toll, but nothing a six month long vacation wouldn’t cure completely.

Anyway, when I get back from Washington D.C. I’ll have a few remarks. Till then…