Publication is only one of those steps. One of those huge incremental steps. The first step is deciding to write. The second is sitting down to write. The third is resisting the pull of the television/video game/fridge when you decide to write. The fourth is convincing your exhausted spouse that you are actually writing and not spending your time looking at porn. It goes on from there. About ten steps up--right when you begin to feel the burn you have something happen. Something that either gives you some hope--or knocks your legs out from underneath you and precipitates you back down to the bottom.
For me the first sign I was actually making a go of this thang...getting off my butt--or more accurately getting on my butt and trying to make a go of being a paid writer was my first rejection letter.
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It was a fairly standard letter as these things go, but it was framed and on my desk until my first actual sale. Once I made my first buck--(fifty bucks actually)--I got rid of it. No use keeping negativity around.
The first thing I published was a short story. Huzzah.
Finally published. Finally. My ouvre, she was aborning. My life as a fantasy/science fiction/horror writer had begun.
So it was particularly gratifying to see that the first thing that anyone actually paid me for was a non-fiction piece for a cooking magazine. Yup. Nary a crypt dwelling horror, barbarian swordsman, or alien prophet in sight.
And here is the actual rub. I sent two stories. The first was a darkly horrific piece called" The Age of Food." It was the one I had spent a year off and on editing, crafting, pouring my heart and soul into...okay--it was one that I liked and did do quite a bit of work on okay? I always have ten or so ideas on the go at a time and that one was about number four on my hit list for that particular year. The other was a piece I literally scribbled out in the half hour it took to decide to send the first story.
So of course they picked the half hour hack job.
"La Cucina Italia."The Italian Kitchen. A short non-fiction memoir piece about my immigrant grandmother. A piece, by the way, that I quite liked but never had any high hopes for.
Hey-you know what? Fine and good.
The next published piece--after a ton of rejection letters--most of them quite encouraging actually--is the Oasis of the Moon.
This started as an attempt to get Robert E. Howard out of my head. Don't get me wrong--I love Howard's stuff. Conan, Sailor Steve Costigan, Solomon Kane! Adenture in it's purest and most entertaining form. It was the equivalent of the adventure serial film in print. As a natural storyteller, world builder and action writer Howard was peerless. Flawed deeply as a formal writer-but with the kind of flaw that makes you love the writer even more because the work is flawed. He got me at 12 years of age. I first read his stuff when trapped with my family at the cottage one rainy summer. My older cousin had left a stack of them--the old re-prints with the frazetta covers. One look and I was hooked. It was so vivid--the world so real--the violence pure, the sex impied for the most part--but there. I loved it. I loved it so much I still have a ton of it on my book shelves even if I don't find myself reading it much anymore.
You read Howards stuff and it still sings--but it is elemental and primitive. As fantasy literature it lacks the polish and sophistication of modern fantasists; the George R.R. Martin's, the China Meivilles, the Scott Lynches, the Joe Abercrombies. And don't get me started on Gene Wolfe. I had high concept stuff. I have stories in progress that have more depth--more involved considerations of theme and character. But honestly, they aren't nearly as fun to write.
A word to the snooty. Yes I have read James Joyce, Dostoevsky and Dickens. They as well have their places on my shelves. Yes they were art. Art has its place in my head and heart. But fantasy is my comfort food. Fantasy is what I want to read on a rainy day when my wife and the sprout are away visiting and I am up on my chores. Fantasy is exercise for the imagination. A car is a car is a car. But you have to meet the writer half way when envisioning the face of the ogre, or the colour of the magic.
So I wrote a pastiche. And originally it was a Conan tale--honestly-- just to get the thing out of my head. A friend of mine took a look and said--hey man--this is good pulp. I enjoyed it. So I changed the names to protect the innocent--added some other ideas and sent it out. One of those steps by the way is sending your stuff out. And out of all of the stuff I produce--the pastiche is what was picked up.
And you know what? I'm all kinds of right with that.
The company--CrystalWizard Productions is a small shop out of Texas and going ahead with a bang. The work was professional and the people are good folks. Okay, so I'm not a huge fan of computer generated cover art for books. But having said that--the cover on mine is the best of the bunch in my humble opinion.
Nothing like a naked female haunch to jack some sales amongst the target audience.
I wanted to dip my toe into the sword and sorcery genre as a tip of my hat to my past--but you know what--I enjoyed writing it. So I think I'm going to write a bit more of the stuff and see if I can get a few more bites.
John Jakes got a lot of nasty mail years back when he wrote his Brak the Barbarian tales. I always remember how he responded--He didn't write to mock or rip anyone off. He didn't think he was Bob Howard renewed--He wrote because Howard ended his life by suicide at 30 and with all of the things he did put to paper --there were never enough stories to go around. He wrote becasue there were only a few folks out there putting pen to paper in a genre that modern fantasy owes a greater debt to than they will recognize. I am not a literary writer. I am a genre writer. And that actually means something.
So hey--here you go. The Oasis of the Moon. My attempt to make sure that there is at least one more of those tales out there for the 12-16 year old kid trapped at his or her cottage (who forget the power cord to his hand held video game unit.)
"I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who's half a man,
Or the man who's half a boy. "
-Arthur Conan Doyle
JK
