Psychedelia Gothique

On Saturday, May 15th I will be a guest on Ahkil Chawli’s Majestic Mutt podcast in which successful individuals with atypical backgrounds show why everyone is a Majestic Mutt. Recent guests have included Canadian Astronaut Dr. Dave Williams, accountant and comedian Neha Kohli, and physician/Wellness Coach Dr. Mashall Khan, I was thinking about talking points for the show and realised that there is a HUGE aspect of my work in progress – which is the second half of the diptych that began with my novel, The Human Template – that I have yet to publicly broach. On the surface, it very much goes against the grain of public opinion. Writers, more so than most in the art world, have long been obsessed with plagiarism and the laws that protect us from the spectre of having our work stolen: copyright laws. Certainly, computers and the changing way we read – or enjoy any kind of entertainment – has shifted dramatically over the past 25 years. It is easier than ever for unscrupulous people ...

I’ve been working on the final chapter of my novel for a few weeks now. Not that the old one wasn’t working. Of my eighteen beta readers, only one reader picked up the flaws at the climax and they didn’t mention it until literally yesterday. No, I mean it. Yesterday. Literally. The thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is the importance of endings . The other day I tried to track down a Gardner Dozois quotation that made a big impact of me – I think it was from one of his Best SF of the Year anthologies. In it, he mentioned a couple good novels that came out during the year he was reviewing and he paused to contemplate how great they might have been if their endings had been the same quality as the rest of the book. I remember how much it resonated with me because I too had just read several potentially great novels that fell apart or simply petered out when it mattered most – during the climax that ends the book! This is a thing writers do - spend five years writing their ...

I’ve been writing fiction since Junior High School, took creative writing in university and starting publishing short stories (and a few poems) in the 1980s.  I never tried writing a novel until I was in my forties, and the path was fraught with hazards, the road, littered with unfinished manuscripts. Here we are in 2019, and I am just finishing the fourth draft of my first novel to go beyond first draft. Was it worth all the angst and self-flagellation I’ve put myself through over the years? Am I qualified to make that call before I have actually published it and received reader and market feedback? Can I do it credibly? Hmm. Okay, be that way. I’ll do it anyway. 1)       The best reason to write a novel is because you can’t not write it. You persevere through the obstacles, risk alienating your family (because you need that private time to write), and face 100+ rejections when you try to try to find an agent and a publisher. And then you...

A View from the Cheap Seats In most ways, the internet enhances every writers life by making it cheaper and more enjoyable to do what we do. But it complicates life in many hidden ways, especially for writers who have worked for decades to get as good as they are – only to come up against a market that is completely flooded with work by everyone on the planet who thinks they can write – which, in these days of high educational standards and low employment – is most of us in the civilized world. Things Any Writer Older than 45 Will Probably Remember: It used to be that sending out queries for a novel, to either agents or publishers, was an extremely time consuming, labour intensive proposition, and potentially a very expensive one. Imagine having to individually type out every copy of every manuscript. Multiply that by the number of copies created. Spilling a coffee could create several days work, because the last thing you wanted to do with a manuscript was show how ...

As I get closer to completing  Avenging Glory ,  you’d think I would have the path ahead mapped out. After all, I’ve been writing for decades, have researched the markets exhaustively, have lots of friends who are published authors, and know a few publishers and agents personally. But the truth is, only a few of those people I know are happy with the paths they’ve taken. And number of people who used to be happy, are no longer satisfied. The number of potential routes have multiplied to the point where it’s fair to say that all or any of us can get published – but hardly any of us will get noticed outside our circles of friends, or adequately paid for all the hard work we’ve put in. Many of the publishers are flying by the seat of their pants. Or doing it as a labour of love. And there are almost as many publishing models out there as there are publishers. Before submitting the book to major publishers, I need to think seriously about getting an agent. There...

Over 50 published short stories and no novel. What’s that about? I’ve been writing seriously since I was about 15. For a few years, in the late 80s and early 90s, I was fairly prolific, publishing upwards of eight stories in one year. I spent a long time pushing the envelope, trying to be edgy – and I even succeeded on occassion. One in three stories I’ve written over my lifetime was good enough to be selected to appear in my collection, Psychedelia Gothique , which contained 17 stories – several of which had been nominated for Aurora Awards, Pushcart Prizes and the like. A number of my stories appeared in small scale “Best of” anthologies – with pieces in Wild Things Live There ( The Best of Northern Frights ), The Best of Eotu Magazine , and the Sign of the Times 20 Year Anthology . A couple of my pieces appeared in newsstand magazines and in the same table of contents with some of my favourite authors. Writers I admire reviewed several of my stories very favourably. A magazine...