My sister tipped me off to a great article on why novel publishing can be so slow — sometimes taking several years, from when an agent sells a manuscript, before a book sees print. Well worth the read: “Waiting for It,” at the NY Times.
Weird Tales Subscription Drive
I just received word from Weird Tales that my story, “Directions to Mourning’s Deep,” certainly one of the strangest and shortest stories I’ve written (only a couple of pages, and written in second person), is scheduled to appear in the April/May issue. They’ve done a major revamp of the magazine, and in honor of this, they’re doing a subscription drive in which you can get six issues (a full year) for a mere $12. A fantastic deal. If you like weird fiction, take advantage of it. Here’s a shot of the new cover:
Also, you may have noticed a few changes to the website. I decided that the old site needed a little revamp, and since my day job is working in instructional technology for a university, it was a good excuse to learn a little more about PHP, CSS, and other geekery, things I needed to learn anyway to help faculty and students. I wanted to better embed my blog on my site as well as take advantage of tools which allow me to have the same content appear on multiple pages without actually having to update that content on every page. I’m still by no means a professional web designer, and it’s still not exactly what I want, but I’m happy with the progress. Probably more small tweaks, as time allows.
Road Trips and Reading
Took a two-week whirlwind road trip with my wife, seeing
Not much writing done during the trip, but it’s slowly coming back up to speed. Taking a week off next week from the day job to do some marathon writing, which should be interesting. It’s the third draft of a young adult fantasy I’m trying to get right, making it easier to put in some long days (since I know the story), but I’ve never done more than two marathon days in a row before (which I define as writing for at least eight hours a day). See how it goes.
Relentlessly Readable
I had never read any John Irving so I thought I’d give him a shot. I was aware of his work from the books that were turned into movies (The Cidar House Rules, The World According to Garp), but we all know that watching a movie adapted from a book and reading the book itself are two completely different experiences. My wife had recently read A Widow for One Year and heartily recommended it, so I thought I’d pick up the paperback and give him 50 pages (my standard for trying out a new author). I was pleasantly surprised.
One of the qualities I strive for in my own writing is to make it relentlessly readable. I don’t always succeed, but accessibility–meaning, the ease at which the reader is pulled into and through the story–is very important to me. I’m also acutely aware of it when reading others.
One of the masters is, of course, Stephen King. If you haven’t read him before, you really should, and don’t be put off by his reputation as a horror writer. True, he’s written lots of horror, but his writing is a lot more diverse than that. Try Bag of Bones, one of his recent novels, which mixes suspense, romance, and even a bit of the John Grisham legal thriller, or his most recent story collection, Everything’s Eventual. There’s masterful writing in both that novel and the short stories.
John Irving’s one of those writers, just like Stephen King. He meanders frequently, and there were times that I was tempted to skim, but I never did because I was afraid I’d miss something good. Definitely a master storyteller.
Other great recent reads: L.A. Dead by Stuart Woods (good, pulpy mystery and A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg (unapologetically sentimental, but I’ve always been a sucker for a good sentimental story.