Tuesday night, authors Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant held a launch party for their novel Gotta Keep on Tryin’ at B. Smith restaurant in Manhattan. DeBerry and Grant had just completed a 14-city tour in support of their newest novel, the sequel to their 1997 bestseller Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made. At least 100 of their friends and fans (if not 150; a head count was difficult) turned out at the elegant restaurant to cheer them on, share wine and hors d’oeuvres, learn about a possible film adaptation, and get copies of the new book autographed.

I was one of them.

As I’ve mentioned before, I attended high school with Donna, so I was thrilled to be able to join in the celebration of her and Virginia’s hard-won success. (You can find a few more pictures from the night here.)

Avant-garde author and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, perhaps known best for his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, died Monday. He was part of a group that came to be known as the New Novelists, which, as yesterday’s New York Times obituary pointed out, eschewed “literary conventions like plot and character development, narrative and chronology, chapters and punctuation.” While that may be true, I’ve still managed to find wisdom in his essays contained in For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction, which offer good advice far more clear-headed and down to Earth than that previous description would indicate.

In the 1957 essay titled “On Several Obsolete Notions,” he had this to say about the novel: (more…)

I had a couple of hours to spare after my visit to 30 Rock yesterday afternoon, so I walked a few blocks north to the Museum of Modern Art. I hadn’t visited it since its renovation. (Come to think of it, the last time I had been inside might have been before my escape from New York in 1985.)

Call me a philistine, but most of what I saw for the first half an hour or so had me thinking that instead of being in an art museum, I was trapped in the You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me Museum. In one room, I saw a pinkish fluorescent light bulb mounted vertically in a corner. In another, I saw completely blank canvasses. These constructs, and others like them, had no emotional effect, other than causing me to think, “Oh, please!”

And then I walked down a hall, and there was Rousseau’s “The Dream.” The moment I saw it—POW! I started to tingle. The hair on my forearms literally stood up. And in the next gallery, in front of Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy,” I nearly wept. And then van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” … and Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” … and Picasso … and Chagall … and I thought …

How can the “artist” who thought to lean a fluorescent light bulb in the corner see those and not then curl up in shame? (I do like Jenny Holzer’s work, but I’ll leave the reasons why for some future entry.)

But I’m not just here today to rant. I’m also here to share a little known—well, little known to me, anyway—publishing fact. (more…)

In Dr. J. Berg Esenwein’s 1908 book Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story, he not only tells us exactly what sort of story we should write, but he also gives advice as to what sort of stories we should avoid.

Here’s what was apparently off limits a century ago: (more…)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

As Co-Chairman of the HWA Stoker Awards Committee, I’m proud to announce the nominees for the 2007 Bram Stoker Awards. Below is the Final Ballot for this year’s awards. The winners will be announced at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City during the Stoker Awards Banquet on March 29th.

This information is for immediate dissemination and publication.

Please contact me or HWA President Deborah LeBlanc if you have any questions or need further information.

Thanks in advance.

Hank Schwaeble (more…)

Yesterday’s mail brought a copy of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Two, edited by George Mann. I noted the presence of contributors whose work I’ve long admired, such as Paul Di Filippo, Robert Reed, Michael Moorcock, and others, and I looked forward to hunkering down with it over the weekend.

This morning, in a wonderful example of synchronicity, I received an e-mail from editor George Mann in which he accepted an 8,200-word short story of mine, “Glitch,” for the third volume of his anthology series, due out in exactly a year. What remarkable timing!

“Glitch” is my first original fiction sale of 2008 (but not my first sale, as I did place a reprint last month with John Joseph Adams for his forthcoming zombie anthology). I can’t wait to learn who’ll be joining me on that table of contents!

Rejection is eternal, but so are the very human responses of fight or flight. When that manuscript comes back, the reaction that springs up deep down in the gut, whether we are conscious of it or not, is to either tell off the editor, or to curl up in a ball in the corner and get depressed. Then we must shrug it off and go on.

So even though this may be one instance in which some things never change, it’s still useful to take a look at Dr. J. Berg Esenwein’s advice for handling those emotions from his 1908 manual Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story.

Here’s what he had to say about rejection: (more…)

I’ve often told my wife that if I should die while working on a new story and I haven’t completed at least two or three drafts that she should cremate us both.

My first few drafts bear little resemblance to the story which will eventually exist, with sentences reordered, scenes added and deleted, subtext altered, points of view changed, characters added and deleted, tone tinkered with, tenses switched, endings trashed, and the whole often so transformed that sometimes I wonder whether readers would actually be able to tell that the first and final drafts related to the same story. Sometimes, in the midst of revisions, I even realize that I want the story to say the opposite of what it started out to say.

So until I get to the end of that second or third draft (better make that the third draft at minimum) I wouldn’t want the story to have any kind of independent life. By then, maybe it can clumsily hint at my point, but until then, it’s not yet anywhere near truly mine. (more…)

With all of the love currently being shown online to the high-profile projects Steve Gerber had been involved with—including Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, and Man-Thing—I want to make sure that everyone also remembers his absurd work as editor of Crazy magazine.

Crazy was intended by Marvel to be just another MAD clone, and while it did have the standard movie spoofs everyone has come to expect from that sort of knock-off magazine, it also featured Bob Foster’s bizarre “History of Moosekind” series, artwork by Lee Mars, Will Eisner, and Marie Severin, and strange photo features starring unidentified members of the Marvel Bullpen.

And, oh, yes, then there were Steve’s offbeat editorials.

Here’s one of them, titled “Beat the Scuzzies,” from the August 1975 issue of Crazy. It includes Steve’s recommendation for a 1976 presidential candidate, so it’s timely again now.

The inside front cover of the same issue of Crazy spotlights another piece of Steve’s writing, this one a spoof ad featuring one of those undercover Marvel staffers I mentioned.

Me. (more…)

Following up on Dr. J. Berg Esenwein’s advice on whether it’s necessary to typewrite one’s short-story submissions and his thoughts on selling stories by paying personal visits to the editors, both cribbed from his 1908 book Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story, here are his thoughts on the all-important matter of getting paid.

Pay careful attention to what he has to say. One particular fact stood out for me. Let’s see whether the same thing grabs you:

If you have sold enough manuscript to warrant it, you may wish to set a price upon your story, but by doing so you run a risk. No ordinary circumstance will lead an editor to deviate from his regular rate. The fact that you have sold one or two stories at five cents a word to one magazine will not warrant your expecting another to pay you more than its accustomed honorarium. At the same time, if your minimum rate is actually five or three or two cents a word, frankly say so and abide by the consequences. If you offer a manuscript “at regular rates” do not haggle about the price after your story has been accepted. Remember that some magazines pay “on acceptance,” other pay “on publication,” while others pay not at all. …

Never put a string to your offer of a manuscript by telling the editor that you will accept his offer if it is good enough. If he is human, such a request will irritate him and may cause him to reject the story forthwith.

What struck me is that if you looked back at the cost of most things in 1908, you’d laugh. You’d chuckle about how life has changed and how cheap things were and how far we’ve come. For example, a century ago, the average annual income was $915 per year, bread was a nickle a loaf, and milk was 32 cents a gallon. You could buy a car for $500 and a house for $4,500.

And yet the price writers get for their work one hundred years later remains stable, and that’s not quite so amusing. The 1908 prices an editor might have paid are not very different from what we might be offered for our short stories today.

In 1908, you could buy a loaf of bread with a single word. How many words of short story would it take to buy a loaf of bread today?

And just try trading a 10,000-word short story for a new car!