martin_rose

If there's a writer who makes me feel impossibly small and intimidates the living shit out of me, so much so I'm too petrified to message him and tell him how fucking good he is, it's this guy:

Laird Barron

One day, I hope to climb out of my poverty to afford his books, because his lj entries make my toes curl.

Ya ever get ornery?

Most of the day I'm a quiet, reserved sort of person; but inside I harbor a very crotchety old man. On a good day, I love everyone and everything I read. But then the old man, my Saturn side, starts kicking over furniture, playing the music loud, and flinging insults at everyone just because he can. He starts stewing in his own juices over things that have been, that did not happen, or could not be and were.

My favorite is this one time, a guy insisted that you're not a "real" writer unless you're actively pursuing publication. Which I suppose, is a standard you can hold people to, if that's how you define "reality" for writers. I think the whole point of the tirade was to prove that people who like to add that bit of flourish to their bios where they write "I've been writing since I was ten!" or writing "since my mother pushed me out!" are being disingenuous. Because it's easy to invalidate someone's identity as a writer if you can say that they aren't real until they "pursue" publication.

But that's not a fair evaluation -- you know why? Because the guy who told me that knows at the outset that no one's going to say that they were pursuing publication when they were ten. It's a set-up.

Which is why I'm so much fun, because I say:

"Thirteen."

"What?" comes the startled response.

"Since thirteen. I mean, I would say I knew I was going to be a writer when I was twelve and I spent a whole summer in this incredible depression listening to R.E.M.'s Out Of Time on repeat, but I guess if we're talking pursuing publication, then it's thirteen."

Moral of the story: no one has the power to define the moment you become a writer.

I would say that if you are pursuing a career in writing, this standard applies. But if writing is a vocation -- a calling you cannot ignore, or turn from, or forget, ever -- if writing is your vocation, it will never matter what age you begin, what you were pursuing, or how long it takes you to get to your goal. It's down to you. Other people aren't going to be riding shotgun with you in the long and lonely nights when you question why you're putting pen to paper in the first place, they aren't going to be riding it out with you when the rejection slips come pouring in, and they aren't going to be there when someone is brutally taken from you and all you've got is a gallon of ink and a ream of paper to think it over with.

Just sayin'.

*Reaction gif not mine.

I got an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 4., for the short story "Dark Horse" in the excellent Fear of the Dark anthology -- published by the wonderful folks over at Horrorbound, Maria Grazia Cavicchioli and Jason Rolfe.

*FALLS OVER, DIES*

*

*reaction gif not mine.

I'm researching W. Somerset Maugham because I have plans to include him in a novel, and this led me to, oddly enough, running into the subject of stutters. Maugham had this speech impediment and it continued to haunt him the rest of his life. He used his protagonist's club foot (Philip Carey from Of Human Bondage) as a metaphor for what he felt was his own crippling condition.

It was a coincidence, fate, serendipity -- pick your flavor -- that let me to end up watching The King's Speech which covered the subject of stammers involving King George VI -- slightly younger than Maugham but from a similar time period. I'm not going to delve into history lessons or what-not. Only that it started my mind turning on the subject and what other people, real or imagined, have had stutters. How would I render Maugham's stutter in a work of fiction?

This popped into my head: Stephen King's It.

I read that book when I was about fourteen or fifteen. At the time, I loved it, though it's hard to say now if I would still feel the same if I gave it a re-read, but anyone familiar with the work (printed during what some consider the Golden Age of Horror publishing) will recall the central protagonist: Bill Denbrough.

Bill Denbrough has a stutter aggravated (or perhaps caused by -- bear with me, it was nearly seventeen years ago I last read it) by the murder of his younger brother. But it occurred to me with a shock that Bill is often the nickname for "William" -- so, sleuths, figure out the rest:

W. Somerset Maugham's full name was William and his friends referred to him as Willie. He would become a famous author involved in countless plays and often courted by Hollywood and sold many of his stories to the silver screen.

The fictional character of Bill Denbrough becomes a famous author with involvement in the film world himself. It's not hard to think it possible that Stephen King was using some of his own insights into what he must have been experiencing at the time and writing it into Bill Denbrough's character. But maybe that's too easy a speculation to make when it's all happened before -- to W. Somerset Maugham.

So is it coincidence, the fictional Bill Denbrough and the very real W. Somerset Maugham and their stutter?

When I was kid I lived off a diet of Stephen King, Robert R. McCammon, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice. That wasn't all I read -- I widened my tastes to include Conroy, Wharton, Dumas (both of them), Hesse, Tartt, Hammett, and a host of others I can't recall. But as a younger writer I often wondered what it would be like to meet these people I read so hungrily, and among them, Stephen King.

Now that I'm older the same interest I once had in the writers I used to read has waned and become more pragmatic -- I mean, what would you say if you met them anyway? Especially once you've become one? The most common ground you'll ever have is the desire to get away from each other as soon as possible so you can get back to writing. The reality falls short of the expectations once you've left the fantasy of youth behind.

However, if I did ever have a chance to meet Mr. King, I can honestly say I have a question worth asking after all: Did W. Somerset Maugham inspire Bill Denbrough in any way?

“I got into this business for one reason and one reason only. It wasn’t to become a celebrity. It wasn’t to own a boat. It wasn’t to be on a television show, you know, that went for ten years, and then check out. It was for the love of story. You know, and I love telling stories. And I love digging deep into stories, and I love speaking to critics as much as I love speaking to actors as much as I love speaking to fans because at the end of the day, if story is king, you know, that’s what we’re all here for. Because we all give a shit about that if it’s done right, if it’s done good."
-Walton Goggins

Quote from this interview with the actor who plays Boyd Crowder on Justified, at roughly 8:48:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fonHeSXr6lo

I just figured I'd point out that the self-publishing movement* is still in its infancy and as it stands it is currently disorganized; and a very smart and savvy individual is going to fill the vacuum that nature so abhors by creating a third option to the current publisher's price monopoly on ebooks: a one-stop shop virtual experience. It's going to happen. It's a matter of time. A place where you can submit your story, have it go through all the usual steps that a Big Six publisher would have it go through, and then give birth to an ebook on the other side that won't be dragged down by the onerous prices currently being charged. If they're smart, they're lure big-name authors by granting them more freedom and more rights.

A person that savvy to start such a virtual publishing house would make a killing.

Unfortunately, it won't be me because I'm languishing in Van Gogh-like poverty, but I find it amusing to sit by the sidelines and attempt to predict when this moment will come and why you all don't see it coming.

Also, you should be paying attention to what this man has to say over here.

* defined here as anyone who is stepping up to the plate to take advantage of the ease with which an ebook can be made available to the public at a minimum of cost as compared to "traditional" paper publishing, and in general skipping the hierarchy of the literary world (agents, editors, marketing teams)

Allow me to bore you:

Walker's Dead is finished. Nobody was killed during the making of the manuscript.

I've discovered I'm an asshole. You're welcome.

Dropping out of HWA. Mixed emotions. It was a sweaty one night stand that lasted two years.

I have a tumblr here, and tumblr in a word is mesmerizing.

Something happened to me. I'm still not sure what. Somewhere between here and there I lost every last shred of humanity. From here on out, I have no intention of being bored. Maybe it has something to do with the coffee.

This is a 1927 edition of the Works of Oscar Wilde from publisher Walter J. Black, Inc, of New York. I found this in a thrift shop at the Jersey shore and it sold for pennies on the dollar. I wholly endorse ebooks. As a result, when I choose to buy a physical book, I prefer to buy one with a history. It should be noted that there is no great value assigned to this particular edition; its value is strictly in the worth of Wilde's text alone -- but the art nouveau design is not something we see anymore.

Also, this was a bargain as it also came with a decades old crushed ladybug on the inside for good luck.

It's exactly like this. Remember, bring your flame retardant suits in case of incineration.

The more I see, the more I read, the more quiet I become.

This: a cacophony of pandering fools, all clamoring for undivided attention. There is a prevailing belief that businesses have an inalienable right to your dollars as though they are benevolent nobles overlooking their loyal sharecroppers instead of a desperate frenzy of starving sharks.

We live in a day and age when some writers believe the tissue they sneezed in is worthy of a dollar-value. Conversely, some writers produce roses with an alchemical magic that leaves the reader breathless -- and are told what they have written is worthless.

In the end the years will drag on and at the end of the road you will look back on your life, if you are lucky enough to be given the time. Some of us won't. We'll be cut down young by circumstance or enemies. Life ends bloody and horror writers ought to know that, not as a fiction, but as a real possibility. It isn't a fate reserved for the "other guy." You might roll out of the bed and discover that all this time, you have been the other guy.

Either way, you'll be dead.

What was it you were doing that was so important, again? And how would you do it differently today if you were to die tomorrow?

It's not an abstract, academic concept. Your heart will stop. The blood vessels will no longer carry the oxygen to your brain and you'll have a minute or so of consciousness left outside of the stalling of your heart. Without oxygen, your eyesight will fail but you'll still retain brain function for a few fleeting seconds as electrical impulses still race through your neurotransmitters and synapses. Time in which you won't be able to think at all -- instead, you'll be lost in a morass of sensation and feeling.

There will be a great quiet, then.

It is this great quiet that determines how I spend my time -- among those who squander it or those who whore it or those who run out of it and those who give more of it than you had before.

Do not waste your time. Should we live to be a hundred, we will never command enough of it. The moment changed forever when I realized I would never have enough time to write all the stories that needed to be written. Therefore, if you are not serious about the business of writing -- you have no call to take up anyone else's time.