Kevin Lucia's Blog, page 38

Update on Zack: Back to School, and Madi and Daddy's "Last Summer"

So today marks Zack's first day back to school at the Institute for Child Development at Binghamton University, and also marks the last summer he'll spend there, as he's integrating into public school this coming fall.  
Understandably, my feelings about this are mixed. Zack has been attending year-round school - including summer school - since he was diagnosed as severely autistic just after his second birthday. 
And he's made great strides at BU, moving from a one-word vocabulary to framing complex, interactive, intuitive sentences. He can read and add like nobody's business, and has been downgraded to moderately/mildly autistic. 


And even though I've always felt bad that my pre-K boy had to attend school year-round, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Anyone who has autistic children or has worked with them understands that schedule and routine are key to managing their day. Hash out a regular, active, appropriate daily routine, and someone with Zack's level of autism is manageable. 
So Zack attending school these past three summers has helped give him a routine, provided structure to his summer...which is not to say I couldn't have given him structure, but as Madi was still growing into herself those three summers, and Zack himself was growing past his developmental delays, those summers and all that free time would've been a struggle for us all.
Also, these past summers with Madi have been full of bonding and fun adventures. By now, she and I have a list of excursions that we've planned out for the summer ahead. And this will be the last summer we have together, because next summer - unless we find a summer program elsewhere,since his public school doesn't offer one - Zack will be home with us.
And, though I'm a little loathe to lose that special "Madi/Daddy" time, I think Zack has developed to the point where he can join us on MOST of our adventures. Though he still struggles for emotional control at times, (lately, he goes from zero to screaming to try and get his way), his socially acceptable behavior has been marvelous lately. He was nearly perfect this past week at the Adirondacks, so I'm fairly confident that adding him to our summer routine next year won't be so troublesome. 
Of course, I am a little nervous about him leaving ICD and integrating into the public school system. We've toured the facilities for school next year and are very impressed, and even his teachers at the ICD believe he no longer needs to be there. But the ICD has become a comfort zone for us. We know the teachers, know the routine, know what to expect. Like any unknown situation, Zack integrating into the public school system has us a little anxious.
He's ready, however, and he deserves it. He's going to be a smart kid, which was never in question. The thing that still hovers in the future is how well will he adapt and grow? He'll never become unautistic. Even if his diagnosis is downgraded even further, he will still always be autistic. The question is: how well will he adapt to the world around him, and learn to function in school and then society in spite of his autism?
And of course, in the next year, while Zack's integrating into the public school system, I'll be trying to land a book deal, Madi will be entering third grade and heading toward her first round of state tests, and Abby will be returning to school to receive her certification as a Registered Nurse.
But that's okay. A calm year would probably be boring....

Back From Vacation, A Review, Summer Plans, Some Thoughts And High School Glory Days

So we're back from our annual trip to the Adirondacks, and while this year's vacation wasn't QUITE as restful as usual, (we stayed in a smaller cabin and there was less space for us to move around, so we spent more time out and about doing things, rather than lounging about doing nothing), it was lots of fun and restful enough.  I made decent progress on Billy, did a ton of reading, and fun was had by all.

Anyway, a lot happened in my absence, an absence that was blessedly internet-free, which once again made me speculate about the detrimental effects of the internet on writers, but I'll share my thoughts about that at a different time. Anyway, first off:

1. My story "Down in Dark" was accepted into the Four Horseman's Anthology Year Two: Inner Demons Out . I'm especially excited about this, because it features a first look at my Weird Western Billy the Kid. It will be released at AnthoCon 2013, then on Amazon afterward.

2. Came across a nice review of my serial novella for Lamplight Magazine, And I Watered It In Tears. This will eventually be available in its entirety in Lamplight's YEAR ONE collection, can be read now in serial fashion (the first issue is free) and there's a chance you'll be able to read it as a standalone eventually. 

3. My flash fiction story "Just A Dream" has been accepted into Apokrupha's coming flash fiction collection Dark Bits . Especially happy about this, because I rarely write flash fiction, and this was also, literally, based on a dream...

4. Came home to not one, not two, but THREE short story solicitations, so in addition to finishing Billy, I have work to do. One of the invitations is nonfiction, which I'm very happy to see. I haven't received an invite for that type of fiction in awhile,  and as I've mentioned before, though my fiction often reflects my values, I really save any reflection on my faith and how it's impacted our lives for my nonfiction. Anyway, my mother-in-law and my Dad will be happy to have some more "nice fiction" to read (if I sell it, that is.)

5. Over vacation I thought a lot about short fiction, this recent post of mine, and the potential of Amazon's digital marketplace - as today's electronic newsstand - for garnering a readership. My thoughts on this are only partially formed, so that's another blog for another time.

6. And finally, a high school friend posted and tagged me in the video clip below, from an exciting football game my senior year in high school, in which I caught a game-winning touchdown pass with two minutes left in the game. Sports taught me SO MUCH about life, and, believe it or not, writing and surviving in the writing industry.  Anyway, it was a fun stroll down memory lane:

On Experimenting with The Shelf, the Realities Thereof, And Still Being Worried About What People Think

So, in this post I talked about "blowing dandelions seeds into the wind" and trying  creative and interesting and different things - including using my Facebook Page for Things Slip Through  - to spread my name around, in an effort to develop some sort of grass roots readership. I was kicking around an idea along the lines of Richard Wright's The 52 , only I was going to call it The Shelf, based on the cool shelf of trinkets I have in my basement office. 

My original idea? Write one short story a week based on any random object on the shelf that catches my eye. I'm still planning on doing that once we get back from vacation, because it's a new exercise for me: using a visual prompt for inspiration. The big  question remains, however...

What will I do with those stories?

Initially, I thought I'd feature them as an exclusive benefit of the Facebook Page. You 'Liked' the page, you got access to free stories others didn't. Richard Wright, however, helpfully - and very rightly so - pointed out that really, I was just cutting a huge swathe of people out from those stories. Also, I was tying myself up in knots trying to figure out a way to "share" the stories but retain some sort of protection, (password protected forum, etc), so I could still try and market those stories. Richard also, once again, pointed out this was an all-or-nothing sort of deal: either write one story a week and try to market them, or write one story a week and share them with all, for free.

And as the end of the school year drew near, ANOTHER factor reared it's head: can I really AFFORD to give these efforts away? I don't talk about it much because it's private and also, I generally keep a positive outlook (it's in my nature, but sometimes I do it by force of will), but our finances are shaky at the moment. We're consolidating school loans, putting ourselves on a budget and right now, even an extra $25 here or there is helpful.

Now, I'm not a "marque name" in the field of speculative fiction, but in the past year or so, I've actually made a little bit of money that was turned toward our budget, and that was nice. Even though I don't exactly command a certain $$$ for my fiction, can my FAMILY afford for me to GIVE stories away without even trying to sell them?

And, let's not forget: in the project, I'd be giving stories away for free. Not trying to sell them to professional magazines with name power, but just giving them away for free. Isn't that a big no-no for a relative nobody like me?

Young writers, take some advice on listening to writers' advice (see what I did there?). Along your career path, you're going to get lots of different types of advice from lots of different types of people, and honestly, most of that advice is all going to contradict, and guess what?

It's all going to be good advice.

Because what works for one writer won't necessarily work for another. And while I DO think it's important to set some standards about where to send your work (for example: no more 4theluv, royalty-paying only anthologies/fanzines for me), important to have some lines drawn in the sand, (another example: right now and for the immediate future, I won't send a novel to a small, small press. Way too much effort for little to no return), and I think it's important to aim higher than where you were before, (I've taken the plunge and sent two novellas to the best in the horror business, so we'll see), who's to say giving away free stories ISN'T professional and ISN'T the right thing to do?

But that "fear" of what other writers (rising stars who counseled me early on, veterans of the genre) will think of me (if they think of me at all) for giving away free stories still lingers. I mean, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do regardless, but like we never QUITE shake free of our parents' opinion of us, it's the same with our writing mentors and role models.

What to do, what to do?

I can be honest and say I'm not sure yet. And that last factor, worry about what others will think is the least of the three. My biggest conflict is whether or not my family can afford me giving away my stories, especially right now. If I could venture a guess, I'd say my approach most likely is going to be half and half. Some of those stories I have to try and find a home for, have to try and sell. Our budget's tight, even $25 here and there could help, and I owe it to my family to try and use my skills to bring in whatever I can.

However, I still want to experiment, still want to sow some dandelion seeds and see what happens. And it also begs the question: should I write these stories and then post them over the summer, right away? Or write them, revise them, draft them, then share them at their best, near the release of the collection?

We'll see. Of course, there IS one thing I know I'll be doing.

Writing every day, as always...

Horror 101: Haunted House and the Gothic Tale in YA Novels

The newest installment of Horror 101: Exploring the Roots of the Horror Genre is up at Tales to Terrify , and this time I'm exploring a few YA titles that dabble in the haunted house/Gothic motif. Featured this month is William Sleator's Blackbriar, The House With A Clock In Its Walls by John Bellair and From the Dust Returned, by Ray Bradbury, not EXACTLY a YA title, but his work is accessible to all, and it's a wonderful CELEBRATION of the Gothic  haunted house mystique, introducing to us the Family, who lives in a haunted house in Bradbury's celebrated Green Town, Illinois. 

This month's "Horror 101 Recommends" is House of Stairs, by William Sleator - not a haunted house or Gothic tale, really, but still a wonderful dystopian tale I had to mention; The Fall of Never, by Ronald Malfi - a wonderfully brooding and atmospheric modern rendition of the classic Gothic tale, and also by Ronald Malfi, Floating Staircase, again a beautiful take on the haunted house story. Make sure you visit Ron on the web. 

In the next few episodes, we'll be looking at some seminal classics in the "haunted house" motif: The House Next Door, Hell House, Burnt Offerings, as well as considering the "suburban gothic" of The Girl Who Lived Down the Lane and also considering the real-life phenomenon - or hoax? - of The Amtiyville Horror.

On Summer, THE NOVEL, Writing What I Want To, Writing What I AM

Well, it's summer, which means I'll be blogging a lot more. Probably two or three times a week, mostly about random things, whatever is sitting on top of my head.
First of all, it's time for my Second Annual Bradbury Marathon. I've already read Bradbury's biography The Bradbury Chronicles, From the Dust Returned, re-read Dandelion Wine and read it's sequel Farewell Summer, and now I'm reading one story a day from his collection Long Past Midnight. It promises to be another wonderful Bradbury summer.

The thing is, I find myself once again really thinking about what it is I want to write. Not necessarily genre - the weird and strange and supernatural is my home. It's those types of stories that get me out of bed at 2:30 in the morning. And Billy the Kid is still a go, because that's also the type of story I adore: an anti-hero slugging it out against impossible odds and his own personal demons and the world's demons to save the day, that doomed, cursed hero with scarring and damage but a bright, shining soul that won't let him quit. And it's also highly mythic, an epic Weird Western. As soon as this novella is done, the summer will be dedicated to finishing Billy the Kid.
But I've been reconsidering the tone and intent of my short stories. Things Slip Through, coming November 2013, represents what I consider to be the best of my early work, and also, for the first time, introduces my little haunted town, Clifton Heights, New York. It's my Castle Rock, Cedar Hill, and Green Town. And they're good stories I'm really proud of.
However, in reading Ray Bradbury's biography, I found what I think is going to be the turn-key in how I feel about my short fiction (note: I didn't say the turnkey for my SUCCESS. Just how I feel about the short work I produce).
Bradbury was a hopeless idealist. Someone once accused of him being over-nostalgic and a sentimentalist and his response was: "You're goddamn right I am!" He was able to take that magical view of the world and mine his personal experience to produce some of the best work we've ever seen.
I'm no Bradbury and never will be. But I'm a hopeless idealist and highly sentimental and nostalgic. I believe in a higher power, that our lives have purpose and meaning.  And lately, my eye has been turning ever toward my childhood as a source of material. I have a novella which I REALLY HOPE FINDS A HOME with a major publisher right now which, even though still set in Clifton Heights, is my first attempt at this personal type of writing. The second is the novella I'm about to finish up and send out.
The thing is...I'm not sure if all these stories will really be horror. I mean, the current novella I'm finishing up definitely is, but other one I've recently sent out isn't. It may or may not be supernatural, but it's not horror. And all the other short stories I've been thinking about lately aren't really horror either, though they delve in the realms of the fantastic.
And they're probably going to be hopelessly sentimental and idealistic. And, I've come to the point in which I just don't care.
Because that's me.
So I'm going to write these stories without a clear idea where I'll send them (more on that in another blog, because that's caused much fodder for thought also). But they'll be ME on the page, more than ever, and I'm excited about that. This whole thing started just a year ago, when Madi and I spent the night at my Dad's house. Sleeping in my childhood bedroom, on inspiration, I churned out the following and posted it to Facebook. This and Billy the Kid is what's really got me excited about writing this summer:
(long)
So, here it is. How much of this is true, and how much of it is made up? I'm not going to say, though I will admit to changing all last names and most first names. However, for those I went to high school with - if any of you read this - please keep the following in mind: it is, however "autobiographical", in the end, fiction. And if I've turned things that really happened on their head, the reason why is expressed perfectly in the following quotes, by authors Neil Gaiman and Tim O'Brien:
"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.” ― Neil Gaiman
"Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth." - Tim O'Brien
Is this the novel I'm planning on self-publishing? Well, I'm not sure. But, it's a story I'm passionate about, the story I've always wanted to write, and I think that if I really want to see if self-publishing works, I have to try with something I really care about, something I consider to be my best work, ...and this, I think, will be it.
***
Prologue
I wrote my first novel in this bed. Every night, hidden under the covers. Sweating in the stuffy air as my flashlight burned away the darkness, my Number Two pencil scratching out a story across the lined pages of a spiral-bound MEAD notebook with a turquoise-blue cover, an uncontrollable urge gripping my mind to get it all down, as fast as I could, every single night. What had started as an exercise in idle curiosity - a requested short story for a proposed school newspaper - had blossomed into a manic explosion of creativity the likes of which I'd never before experienced.
Of course, the newspaper never got printed. Either the students or the newspaper moderator or maybe even our computer teacher, Mrs. Trueax, lost interest, I can't remember which. But at that point, it didn't matter. I was a lost cause. Hooked, like a new junkie, I was main-lining the hard stuff, writing a "novel" about my life, every single night, under those bed covers by weak, jittery flashlight.
I had never felt anything like that before.
And, even with my modest list of publications now, I'm not sure I've felt that way since, felt that burning, consuming need to tell my story.
And it all began here.
In this bed, where I'm writing this, right now, in this room that's basically become a "catch-all,” where Dad stores stuff he hasn't got any other place for. But much of the original furniture is still here, and if I close my eyes, I can see in my head everything as it was, years ago.
A tall bureau stands directly to my left. Gone are all the assorted race car models I'd arranged on top as a kid, hours of cutting and trimming and gluing and painting and decaling long past, now. Not sure where those models are. Maybe long-since thrown away, or stored in a box up in the garage loft or down in the basement, somewhere.
My bed - which I'm lying in, right now - sits where it always has, headboard against the far wall, in the middle of the room. Against the opposite side of the room stands my very first bookshelf. Growing up, it had been crammed full of all kinds of books: the entire Hardy Boys collection, old westerns and pulp novels given to me by my late, great-grandmother, junior-grade and Young Adult titles long-lost to me, now; The Chronicles of Narnia, Choose Your Own Adventure novels, everything you can think of, and maybe more.
Eventually, my junior year of high school, and into my freshman and sophomore years of college (I attended the local community college, lived at home for those two years), I replaced those books with a heady collection of science fiction novels, most notably the Star Wars and Star Trek novels, movie tie-ins, and anything written by Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Ray Bradbury and H. P. Lovecraft I discovered later, after I moved into my first apartment with my sister.
Now that bookshelf is full of Dad's books: war memoirs, old engineering and manufacturing handbooks, math and physics textbooks, his Boy Scout Handbook, and his only literary concession: James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, which he made me read the summer after my seventh grade year, (along with Pilgrim's Progress, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Cask of Amontillado), and which I remember fondly, good old Natty Bumpo and his trusty rifle Deerslayer, which never, ever let him down.
To my left, further down the wall, next to my dresser, still stands the desk I built all my model race cars on, its wooden top scored by countless flicks of all those silver XACTO knives cutting through plastic or balsa wood or cardboard. Little splotches of sliver or metallic blue or orange paint still linger. I'd labored there for endless hours, building race cars of every kind, size and shape, from kits, or from spare parts and scratch. During my childhood, works-in-progress had perpetually littered the desk, along with assorted little glass bottles of Testors' enamel, and Testors' squeeze bottles of plastic cement, as well as bottles of Elmer's Glue.
I remember being an avid, enthusiastic, productive but only average modeler, not nearly patient or meticulous enough to build the perfect, pristine model car I'd always wanted, but what I lacked in precision, I made up for in enthusiasm and effort and production...oddly enough, a lot like my writing career, so far.
In the far right corner - from my perspective, here in bed - is, of course, the closet. Where the monsters hid at night, very early in childhood. Left open after dark, it became a portal to unknown, alien worlds through which Stygian night beasts would lurch, eager to strip the flesh from my bones with gleaming, obsidian teeth (Believe it or not, this fear emerged long before I discovered Poe or Lovecraft).
Of course, when a little older - say, six or seven or eight years old - I often hid in that closet when in trouble and awaiting the wrath of my father, who, it had been promised, was going to teach me “a lesson when he gets home, young man!"
Once, in a desperate, hysterical, heart-pounding vigil that lasted maybe ten minutes until I got bored and slipped out my window to tramp around in the woods behind my house until Dad did arrive home and dispensed said lesson, I wrote on the closet's back wall in black crayon: "I hate you!" only to scribble it out immediately, convinced that if I happened to die in the next five minutes, I'd be committed to the fiery bowels of hell for such sinful graffiti.
Against the right wall stands another, shorter clothes dresser. Years ago, I kept my old toy record player on top, with its cheap, tinny-sounding speakers, which played Star Wars dramatizations (turn the page when R2-D2 beeps!), Tim and Tammy Bible Stories, (the Bakers in happier, simpler times, before fame and power and greed and Jessica Hahn and Playboy), and best of all, my collection of Disney movie records. To this day, I know most of the Jungle Book's songs by heart, thanks to that record player.
Later, of course, my aunt's old Hi Fi system - complete with tape deck and eight track player - replaced the toy record player atop that dresser. On it, I played the Queen records and AC DC eight tracks my aunt surreptitiously slipped me one weekend at my grandparents, and I also went through an amateur Hi Fi-dabbler stage, wiring together car radio speakers salvaged from the junk cars littering Grandpa Collins' hay fields, glueing them into a cardboard box with holes cut out, soldering or sometimes even just taping the wires together, creating my own, home-made, jury-rigged "sound system" that I then jacked into my stereo.
I'm a little surprised, in retrospect, that I didn't set anything on fire during that phase. To my direct right, under the window, sits my homework (and later, writing) desk. Here, during high school, I reluctantly but dutifully labored over fractions, division, multiplication, Pythagorean Theorem, kinetic and potential energy, and, my junior year, summarizing each and every chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which I loathed then, but fell in love with later in graduate school.
By that time, of course, my bedtime was a thing of the past, so I no longer had to write under the covers by flashlight, rather I sat at that desk late into the night, and wrote some of my earliest - and awful - short stories, by hand and later on a Texas Instruments Word Processor, mostly lame attempts at space opera that never made it past Analog or Asimov's Science Fiction's slush readers, and several Star Wars pastiches, back when I labored under the delusion that I was destined to someday write a Star Wars novel (although, truth be known, I still labor under this delusion in secret, often sitting in my basement office, staring wistfully at my shelves of Star Wars novels, imagining my name on one of their spines).
And, after a tour of this room, we come back to this bed, inevitably. Because it was here where I first realized that putting words on paper, making a story, took me away to some far off, magical place, where my characters - people I'd made - lived and breathed as my pencil moved, and when I stopped writing, when my pencil fell still, they stopped living and breathing, stuck in limbo until I started writing again.
Right here, in this bed.
Like me, tonight.
Initially, Dad had invited Madison, my daughter, to sleep over alone. Dad loves both my kids dearly (my son Zack amuses him to no end; he gets quite the 'kick out of him', as they used to say), but I sometimes think he dotes especially on Madison. Whatever the occasion - feeding the chickens, milking the goats, walking in the woods, fishing in the beaver pond just down the road - he takes her in hand with remarkable ease. Could be he's bonding so well with her because she's at that fun age of perpetual wonder and discovery, when EVERYTHING is amazing and new, and he's just fulfilling the role of doting grandfather.
I often wonder, however, how much of me he sees in Madi (because, as Abby puts it, Madi is "you with a pony-tail"), and if he's especially drawn to her because of that. This may be a bit of self-flattery, but I'll take it, gladly.
However, despite Dad's easy way with Madi, Abby and I were a little concerned about how Madi would handle herself, thirty-minutes away in the deep, quiet country, on a sleep-over alone, with no Mom and Dad if, for some reason, she had a nightmare, or simply had a hard time sleeping in strange surroundings. For all her expressive vocabulary and sophistication and maturity, Madi is very much still a seven year old little girl, especially at night.
So, I decided it'd be best if Madi and I slept over at Mom and Dad's together; Madi sleeping in her aunt's old bedroom, and me on the couch in the living room because, as I've already said, over the years my old room had become a store room of sorts. However, much to my surprise, Mom had cleaned off the bed and cleared the floor prior to our arrival, and after a fine night roasting marshmallows and hot dogs around a fire, listening to crickets chirp and coyotes howl, watching for shooting stars, picking out the Big and Little Dipper, we retired for the night, Madi to her aunt's old room and bed, and me to my room.
To this bed.
Where it all started.
And as soon as I bedded down, a torrent of childhood memories bombarded me, so - in-between projects right now - I pulled out my notebook and began writing.
Because this summer, especially, I've been thinking often of my childhood. Maybe it's because of the wonderful summer we've just about finished: clear and hot every day, filled with adventures and excursions and milestones. Madi, catching her first garter snake, barehanded. Her and I building a fort and campsite in the woods, catching crayfish for lunch from the creek down the road, spending hours on the beach, where Madi passed the deep end swim test for the first time while I spent hours delightfully working my way through Karl Edward Wagner's Year's Best Horror short story collections and Charles Grant's Shadows anthology series.
Taking day trips to used book stores, discovery centers, the library, the zoo - Ross Park, the oldest zoo in the country, and the perfect setting for a ghost story I'm determined to write someday. Seeing the falls and visiting curiosity shops in nearby Ithaca, driving its brick streets and enjoying its beatniky Commons. Madi and I coming here once a week to pick blueberries and poke aimlessly around the "old homestead", as Dad likes to call it (he's added two buildings, a greenhouse, two chicken coops, another berry patch, and a small barn in the last twenty years), and walking in the woods where my sister and I and our friends camped and tramped, as well as visiting the railroad tracks running through the woods, right behind Mom and Dad's.
And also, on a more somber note, near the end of the summer, Madi biding farewell to her favorite of our two pets, Peanut, a thirteen year old tabby cat who'd suffered a stroke, bravely carrying Peanut in her lap, comforting her all the way to the veterinarian’s, and before Peanut was put to sleep, quietly, calmly - and so maturely for a seven year old - kissing Peanut on the head, whispering "Goodbye" before going out into the waiting room, where she prayed that Peanut have a special place in Cat Heaven.
A week later, we found a special rock in a creek at Dad's, and he engraved it with Peanut's name, and we placed it on her grave out back. And, showing the amazing resilience of youth, Madi - after waiting a respectable period of about a week - began eagerly inquiring into the recent batch of kittens her Aunt Mindy's cat had given birth to, wondering whether or not they were old enough yet to adopt.
And it was this, in particular, that REALLY unleashed the memories of my youth, opening the floodgates on one year, especially. Death has a way of doing that, of course, because from Death comes Life. It's simply the way pf things, probably one of the first, and most powerful lessons we ever learn.
And yes, it was only the death of a thirteen year old cat that had suffered a stroke and had to be put to sleep because of old age...
But still. The things that trigger our memories, setting our minds into motion, are often the smallest, most trivial things, and those small, trivial things turn like keys in our minds, unlocking gigantic doors to memories equal parts fantastic and terrible. Watching Madi so maturely and sensitively encounter death for the first time reminded me of when I first experienced death, when someone my age died on the railroad tracks behind my home, and when one of my closest friends and teammates drowned in the river behind the school, probably by accident, a tragic dare gone horribly wrong.
Probably. No one still knows for sure.
And those memories, sparked by Peanut's death, turned like a BIG key in an even bigger set of doors, warning me of what loomed ahead, that, after putting the final touches on my first collection of good and maybe entertaining and technically proficient but not astounding nor especially important short stories, and while the first draft of a Weird Western novel featuring Billy the Kid and demons was being ripped apart by beta readers, it was finally TIME. Time to turn my attention towards my "holy grail", my magnum opus, the ubiquitous "coming of age" novel, or the "author's-thinly-veiled-creative-rendering-of-his-childhood-as-he-wishes-it-actually-happened" novel. Or something like that, anyway. For years, I had worried that, when it came time to write this novel, I wouldn't have much to say about my childhood, that it wasn't all that special, really. Abjectly normal, pedestrian, vanilla, rather boring, even - as I recalled - nothing all that exciting to write about.
But as it turns out, I was wrong.
Because I'd been thinking of my "coming of age novel" as a writer plotting his next project, considering my childhood through the filters of adulthood, my imagination bogged down by flat tires and ruined transmissions and rusted mufflers and broken timing belts and bad power steering, replacing water heaters and septic tanks, budgeting for bills we can't pay with money we don't have and the grind of my own studies and teaching career. Viewed through this lens, colored by these very grown-up things, my childhood seemed far away and depressingly average, indeed.
But everything this past summer - from our daily adventures, our annual family vacation in the Adirondacks, even the somber introduction of death into Madi's life - everything that's happened this past summer has unearthed a reservoir deep inside me, one I hadn't realized still existed. A cascade of memories has filled my head, making me realize how strange and wonderful and sad and joyous and spiritual and MAGICAL my childhood really was, and with that realization came another realization, shocking in its utter simplicity: it doesn't matter if things actually happened the way I remember them. It only matters that I remember.
And I remember how everything began, that one year, when Al Moreland died on the railroad tracks behind my house.

Why You Should Contribute to The Midnight Diner's Indiegogo, Then Submit to Them

First, a little history. The Midnight Diner debuted as a faith-based speculative fiction anthology back in 2007. Its mission was this: to carve out a space in speculative fiction for writers of faith to tell the stories THEY wanted to tell, without being restricted by guidelines more concerned with "propriety" and not excellent story-telling. 

The first edition kickstarted several midlist author's careers - most notably J. Mark Bertrand, Mike Dellosso, Mike Duran, and Matt Mikalatos. I sold my first story to that edition - "Way Station" - and it earned Editor's Choice Awards in the "Jesus vs. Cthulhu" edition. (On a side a note, a heavily edited and slimmed down version of "Way Station" will be in the forthcoming collection.)

The second edition of The Diner featured another healthy list of midlist authors, Mike Duran again and this time Greg Mitchell, but The Diner also started to realize some of its true potential: a place for people with very different backgrounds to write speculative fiction dealing with different aspects of faith or belief, and it featured several names from the secular horror market: Dan Keohane, (whose contribution "The Box" was listed as an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror), Bob Freeman, Kim Paffenroth, whose 2006 book Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth won the HWA's Bram Stoker Award and Jerry Gordon, who would go on to edit Dark Faith  with Maurice Broaddus.

The third edition, this time edited by the talented Michelle Pendergrass, continued this trend, featuring authors Ed Ederelac and Brian J. Hatcher, as well as Greg Mitchell once again. I was fortune enough to be featured with my story "Lonely Places" which will also be featured in the collection.

The fourth edition, which was to feature my story "The Gate and The Way" (it's been decided that because it will appear in my collection, we're gonna just let it have its debut there), fell into some trouble and waffled in limbo for awhile. However, The Diner is back, with a revamped staff, format and BUDGET, so The Diner will finally be what it's always aspired to be: a market paying quality semi-pro rates, with the intention of soon becoming a pro-rate paying publication. 

And you need to contribute to its Indiegogo campaign, right now. Why? Because first of all, I seriously think that crowd-sourcing may very well be the future for spec fic anthologies that pay decent rates. Ellen Datlow and Chizine's fundraiser for Fearful Symmetries was a resounding success. Now, Michelle Pendergrass may not carry the same clout as Ellen Datlow, but I can tell you this: she knows her fiction, both horror AND literary, and she knows GOOD fiction when she sees it. I listed all the writers in the first three editions that have launched careers of sorts, but all the other writers - maybe not recognizable names - are quality writers also.

And we need that.

Desperately.

We need an anthology series that pays well, is open to all kinds of speculative fiction and is willing to tap ALL SOURCES for good stories. This past summer, I sorta binged on classic horror anthologies, from the Karl Edward Wagner BEST IN HORROR series to Charles Grant's Shadows and Stuart David Schiff's Whispers. What distinguishes those anthologies from today's is their variety, and the writers - who told QUALITY stories - who came from all sorts of places.

I spent about five years reviewing, and in those five years, I saw TOO MANY themed anthologies, featuring a lot of the same names, over and over. If it gets the funding it needs, The Diner can offer a non-specific speculative anthology that, because of the way it's drawn from both the faith-driven market AND the secular market, will always feature a diverse TOC. And, let's not beat around the bush: the more it can offer to pay, the better those names will be.

So what you need to do is contribute to their campaign, and then submit when the time comes.

I know will...

Final Installment of "And I Watered It, In Tears" in Lamplight Magazine, Issue 4, And Why You Should Submit to Them

The year's final issue of Lamplight Magazine is out, featuring the final installment of my serial novella, "And I Watered It, In Tears." I know I spend a fair amount of time here pimping my work and announcing sales and all that, and again,  I have no idea if anyone really IS buying and reading my work, but I guess if I would pick ONE thing of mine that I'm proudest of to date, something I really poured a lot of emotion and personal experience into, something I would like ALL of you to read, it would be this story. 

The idea came to me waiting in line to pay our kinda-late NYSEG electric bill, when I marveled at what a social cross-section was there, waiting to pay their bills, also. I mean, most everyone has to pay their electric bill, right? And lots of people have probably been late on their electric bill now and then. I found in that experience a very common, almost universal, blue-collar struggle.



And, the novella's denouement is literally ripped from a wrenching personal experience that ALMOST came true. Luckily it didn't, but the possibility of what could've happened has haunted me for years, so when I saw where the novella was going when I first started writing it (about a year ago) I knew I was finally going to write about that experience, and it was hard, and very emotional, but also very cathartic. It sounds ridiculous, but the experience offered a revelation very similar to the one Ray Bradbury experienced when writing "The Lake" and I feel as if my stories from now on will be very different because of this novella.

Also, I felt as if I was trying very much to mix styles in this story. I wanted it laced with suspense and tried to end every segment with that "cliffhanger tug" because, of course, this was a serial novella, and I wanted to somehow pull readers issue to issue. BUT, I was also trying to go create some atmosphere but also punctuate that with brief, visceral (but hopefully not too grotesque) scenes of physical horror. I'm not sure how it all reads, but I know it's something I like very, very much, which is unusual for me. I feel like I actually DID something with this story.

And, something I think will happen a lot more lately: this could be called a "Clifton Heights" story, taking place in the small, haunted fictional Adirondack town that will debuting in my first collection, Things Slip Through, coming November 2013. I'm writing a lot of those stories lately, and I feel like I've got a lot of good stories about that town waiting to be written, novellas especially (I recently subbed a Clifton Heights novella to one big publisher, and am currently finishing another Clifton Heights novella for another fairly big publisher. Cross your fingers...)

Anyway, here comes the rare pitch: folks, if you get a chance - please check this serial novella out. The first installment is free, because the first issue of Lamplight is free. The following issues are only $2.99 in a variety of formats, and Issue Four is in Kindle and Smashwords, with other formats to follow:

Issue Two
Issue Three
Issue Four

In addition, I highly recommend submitting to Lamplight, as they're open again to submissions.  My experience with editor Jacob Haddon was extremely pleasant. He was professional, efficient, and gave excellent feedback regarding my novella. I think he's got a good plan: a quarterly ezine that will produce an annual "Year in Lamplight" print volume. And honestly, it's a sold, decent paying market, and we need more of those out there.

Anyway. If you get a chance, please give "And I Watered It, In Tears" a try. And writers, go forth and submit to Lamplight, and spread the word, also.

Maurice Broaddus's Visit: Good Wine, Great Food and Blending Families

Doesn't seem like it's possible, but just a little over a week ago, author Maurice Broaddus visited with my Creative Writing students at Seton for our third annual Creative Writing Workshop. One day he spent working with the participants themselves, critiquing their work, the next day he addressed a general assembly of students, discussing his career and what has brought him here.

The program was a success on all fronts. The kids loved Maurice, who seemed to enjoy himself; we got great media coverage, and most importantly, we raised the funds ourselves.


Probably the best part of the visit, of course, was just hanging out with Maurice, whom I haven't seen face to face in several years, though I've conversed regularly with him through email. I had a marvelous time hanging out with him, and we talked about a LOT of things, things I had questions about, and his answers - about life, writing, the business, faith - really helped clarify things for me in many areas.

One of the best elements of this visit was an added personal touch. Right before the workshop, a student's mother asked if Maurice needed a place to stay, because they happened to have a completely separate third-floor apartment they'd used many times in the past to host visiting musicians for the Binghamton Philharmonic. 

At the time I was just happy to save Maurice money on lodging, but the personal impact of him staying with a student's family was of incalculable value, especially because the student in question has been thinking quite a bit lately about a writing career. Maurice's first night in Binghamton, we both had dinner at this student's family cottage on Quaker Lake, and the conversation (and food) was nearly breathtaking. Another night, Maurice and his host family stayed up until 11 PM just talking. You just can't buy that kind of experience anywhere.

The capper, however, was Memorial Day. Because of some schedule changes (a student had a conflicting college visit) we flew Maurice out here on May 28th. May 29th was Memorial Day and no school, so I'd already planned on having Maurice over for dinner. To my immense delight, he told me that he'd been talking to another wonderful author, Mary Sangiovanni (who lives near), and they were planning on hanging out. I invited both of them for dinner...

And what a night. Mary brought her son, and after dinner we managed to blow 6 or 7 hours at my house without even noticing. The talk went everywhere - from writing to life to parenting and teaching, and Maurice kept us in stitches and tears half the time.  We all had a wonderful evening, and in many ways it was such a beautiful night for me, because I was able to - for a short period of time - blend my family life with my writing life, which, as any writer will tell you, is very hard. But for six hours, dear writing friends (one kind of family) and my family-family were in the same place, and it was wonderful.

And, I'm sure at times Abby got lost in a little of the writing and publishing talk, but luckily, the kids behaved really well, and she got herself a belly-full of laughs, courtesy of Maurice. I think Abby is even more eager to meet Maurice's wife Sally now, so a return trip to MoCon is very likely imminent, with the whole family in tow, this time. Because unleashing Madi and Maurice's boys upon the whole church just seems like the thing to do....

In any case, the whole experience really brought it home to me, once more, the real reason why we writers like to congregate together at Conventions. Sure, there are networking opportunities and the chance to make contacts, maybe even meet new readers, but really... we just want to be with our family. Memorial Day was so awesome this year, because I was lucky enough to have members of my writing family and my family in the same place, at the same time.

And that's an experience NO amount of money can buy.

Enjoy the clip of Maurice Broaddus on our local news, below.

Remembering Ray Bradbury: Redux

Two blogs in row. I know, right? Anyway, I felt like yesterday's blog was a bit rushed and didn't really touch upon how Bradbury's work has impacted me as a writer, especially recently, so I thought a supplemental blog was in order.

When I started writing, like many genre writers I'm sure and apparently like Bradbury (as stated in his biography, The Bradbury Chronicles ), my stories were very imitative. I set out to write "horror" stories like the ones I'd read. Even AFTER I started widening my reading diet, I STILL found myself copying those who had come before me, copying their technique, style, and plots.

They weren't bad stories, so much. A few attempted to be thematic. But they weren't...me.


And that's what Bradbury wrote. Stories that were, in some way, even if very small....him. Stories that came from his personal experiences or observations or struggles. And after reading about his life, it's amazing how many of his short stories came from his personal experiences.

About a year ago, I started a journal, more like a list, really, of short story ideas, things that popped into my head from personal observations or experiences. The very first one of those to get written is my serial novella with Lamplight Magazine, "And I Watered It, In Tears." (First issue is free, second and third are on Amazon Kindle). Now, it's definitely horror. But the core of it comes from a frightening, deeply personal experience that still leaves me uneasy, even today.

Last summer, my daughter and I spent the night at my father's house, where I grew up.  I slept in my bedroom, IN MY BED. And before I went to sleep, I wrote twenty pages of what I think will be a coming of age novel, and it all came from my memories of growing up, and I practically have an outline of the novel, loosely based on a year from my life.

The current novella is based on a personal observation, something that I see every day when I drive to work, and also, I've made my protagonists very close to people I knew as a kid, even utilizing the first person narrative, making the barrier between my characters and myself very thin.

There's something...different, here. A fresher voice. Ideas that stream forth much easier. Along the way, I've switched over to typing first, and the results have been impressive. I have no idea how this will impact my writing, but that's been Ray Bradbury's gift to me: channeling personal experiences, writing very close to my heart, and simply sitting down and taking off, "rattling the keys" as Norman Partridge once put it.

And it feels good. It feels REALLY good. Will it make a difference?

Who knows?

But count me just one of thousands touched by Bradbury's magic....

Remembering Ray Bradbury

One year ago today, Ray Bradbury left us. That night, it rained, and the rainbow in this picture appeared over my house, I kid you not. It was the most fitting farewell I could possibly imagine for someone whose words touched so many.

I'll always remember what I was doing when I learned he'd passed. My freshmen had just finished what had become a weekly ritual: watching an episode from The Bradbury Theater. At the end I shut off the projector, checked the web, and saw it on Yahoo News...



Ray Bradbury had passed away just hours before.

Slightly numbed, I announced this to my class, and pin-drop silence followed, until one girl piped up in a somewhat somber voice: "Wait. That means he'll never writing anything, ever again."

As far as teachable moments, go - hell, LIFE moments - that was pretty big, and not one I could have ever arrived at through any kind of lesson plan, which, of course, makes it the best kind of moment possible.

All my students know my love for Ray and his work. Ever year, my freshmen read Something Wicked This Way Comes and Fahrenheit 451; my sophomore honors class reads Dandelion Wine and The October Country, and this year I also assigned The Halloween Tree for the first time. I shove Bradbury short stories at them like a drug dealer peddling his wares, hoping to hook them in the best way.

And I must've done something right, because on the first anniversary of his death, I held my first annual "Ray Bradbury Day" and gave away over 40 copies of his works, and half those went to students who have already read him, indicating that, hey...maybe my mad plan worked.

I can't put into words what his work has come to mean to me over the past ten years or so. For some reason, my high school teachers didn't assign Bradbury, so it took me awhile to discover him through my own searching, and then a little longer to fall in love with his work. 

When I did, it was a revelation, and his work has come to mean so much to me, not just because of his beautiful, poetic prose and vivid imagery...but because of his idealism, his zeal. I've had a hard time finding my place in the "horror" genre, finding my voice, and as I mentioned in a recent post, his work, Dean Koontz's work and the Twilight Zone has really had an effect on how I view my "calling" (if you will) as a writer.

Because of this revelation,  last summer, I proposed a challenge for myself: read one Bradbury short story every day, all through the summer. Of course, the real challenge proved in LIMITING myself to one short story a day which, I'm happy to say, I failed at. By the end of the summer, I'd read through five collections: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, and his 100 Best Stories collection.

198 Ray Bradbury short stories.

Also, I tried to put into effect something similar to the "Bradbury Daily Diet." In one of his essays, he recommended reading a short story, an essay, and a poem every single day. I've come somewhere near to that, and I feel like my mind is mapping out new, fresher story ideas than before. Whether or not this actually changes how I write remains to be seen.

This summer I will once again read Ray Bradbury. I just finished his wonderful biography - written by Sam Weller - The Bradbury Chronicles. I'm moving on to re-read Dandelion Wine and will follow that up with its sequel, Farewell, Summer. After that, I've got the following slated to be read:

Long After MidnightFrom the Dust ReturnedNow and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99
Quicker Than the Eye
Now, I'll add more if I need to, but these are the ones on their way from Amazon at the moment. I believe this is going to become my biannual tradition: reading Something  Wicked This Way Comes  and The Halloween Tree during October, and reading the rest of his fiction during the summer.
And thankfully, there's plenty left there for me to read. A whole lifetime of work, actually...