Michael Montoure's Blog, page 9

The World Will Try To Stop You

The timing of this has been so coincidental and implausible that I would find it ridiculous if I were reading it in a book. It’s almost funny, really, but somehow I haven’t been laughing about it too much.

Less than a month after I started trying to devote myself to writing full-time, I started developing tingling and numbness and pain in the fingers of my left hand. I still need to let the doctors run some tests, but it sure looks like carpal tunnel syndrome to me, or something similar. In any event, whatever it is, it’s definitely making typing difficult, and some days impossible.

It makes me think, what the hell, Universe? Do you not want me to do this? Are you trying to tell me something?

Now, you might not know it from reading my stories, but I’m really a rationalist. I don’t honestly believe that the universe or God or any invisible force is actually out to get me, or to help me either, for that matter.

But the world is trying to stop me. Because that’s just what the world does.

There doesn’t have to be anything malicious or perverse or intentional behind it all. It’s just a kind of friction. A kind of entropy. Whatever your dream is, the more you try to push forward with it, the more the world will push back.

Events will conspire to stop you. You have to take on more hours at work. Your kid gets sick. Your car breaks down and you have to start wasting time taking the bus. Something. Something always happens.

People will try to stop you. The people who are jealous of you, the ones who never achieved their dream, or maybe never even tried, they will mock you and laugh at you and try to tear you down. Even worse, the people who love you will try to stop you, because they don’t want to feel disappointed or hurt and they want to protect you.

Let’s assume for a minute that there is a purpose behind all this. If so, maybe the reason isn’t what we think it is. Maybe the world isn’t trying to say, you can’t have this, you don’t deserve this.

Maybe it’s trying to say, how bad do you want it? How much are you willing to do to get it? What will you endure?

Whatever you’re trying to do with your life, if the world is pushing back, maybe it’s time to get angry. I don’t mean the useless kind of anger that leads to bitterness. I mean the kind of anger that makes you start fighting.

The kind of anger that makes you look at your obstacles head-on and say, this won’t stop me.

This won’t stop me. Say it out loud if you need to. Get up, walk away from your computer, go look yourself in the eye in the mirror and say, this won’t stop me. Make those words the drumbeat pushing you forward. Repeat them until you can feel your heartbeat pulsing in time with them. This. Won’t. Stop. Me.

The only way you lose is if you give up. The only person you’re really fighting, the only person who really has the power to keep you from trying to get what you want, is you.

A few months ago, I wrote about using some voice recognition software. I didn’t really put much stock in it at the time. I wrote it off as potentially useful, but mainly just an interesting toy. I’ve been forced to reevaluate that position, to start using the software again, and this time, to really put time and effort into training it how to understand my voice. I used it to write this post, and at this point I’d say it’s about 90 to 95% accurate, and only slightly slower than typing.

However long it takes to fix my hand, in the meantime, I will do whatever it takes to keep getting words down on the page. I will keep bringing you these posts, and I’ll keep bringing you my stories. That’s my promise to you.

How To Write 80,000 Words In A Weekend

Holy crap. Normally, I don’t pay a lot of attention when other writers talk about their word counts — we all work at different rates, what matters is quality and not quantity, et cetera, et cetera. But I’ll admit that my eyes maybe bugged out of my head a little when I read that Brian Keene wrote 80,000 words over the course of a single weekend. (For those of you who aren’t writers, that’s the length of an entire novel.)

The most I’ve ever managed in one day was 19,000 words, during the marathon home stretch of a novel. It’s nothing to sneeze at, but still, I don’t feel quite so cocky about it any more . . . .

He writes:

This past weekend was designated as a writing marathon, meaning all I did during my waking hours was write. This is not a normal mode of operation for me, but after a month-long and much-needed vacation, I’m behind on deadlines and had to get caught up on things.

On Friday, I wrote 40,000 words. Unfortunately, I posted about it on Twitter, and in doing so, caused a minor stir. Many people were happy for me (and I thank them). A few were skeptical. [....]

The first thing you need to understand is that this doesn’t work for everybody. Writing 40,000 words in one day is really only practical for three things — pulp, porn, and first drafts. [....]

It was common for the pulp writers of old to write 40,000 a day. This is because they had no choice. They wanted to eat and to earn their pay, they were required to crank out journeyman novels and stories to beat ridiculous deadlines and for a low rate. (In truth, not much has changed since then… and I see a whole bunch of mid-listers, ghost writers, and media tie-in scribes nodding silently).

So how did he do it?  He describes the process as “NO DISTRACTIONS,” “KNOWING WHERE I WAS GOING AHEAD OF TIME,” and “QUANTITY OVER QUALITY.” Check out the link below for more detail.

It’s pretty damn impressive, but not something you can do all the time, naturally. Nor should you worry about trying to do that.  He concludes:

The important thing to remember is this — writers get too hung up on word counts. It doesn’t matter if you produce 1,000 words per day or 10,000 words per day. What matters is that you produce words. Novels and stories don’t write themselves. Ass in chair, fingers on keyboard, repeat as necessary is the best method I know. If you’ve written 1,000 words today and someone else has written twice that amount, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve written. Be proud of what you’ve produced.

– How To Write 80,000 Words In A Weekend – Brian Keene

Books in Unusual Places

I keep hearing that “Print is dead,” that bookstores are doomed, that actual real paper books you can hold in your hand are disappearing — but for all of these doom-and-gloom prognostications, I still see a lot of love for books out there in the world.

I’ve bookmarked a few articles lately that I keep meaning to post about here, and when I noticed that they all had a common theme, I decided I’d just post all the links at once.

A Novel Idea: Vending Machines for Books

I was in London recently. The first thing that welcomed me upon my arrival at Heathrow Airport was a vending machine that sells books. A novel idea, you say? That is exactly what it’s called!

Novel Idea is a mini bookshop that allows you to pick from up to 24 current and bestselling titles . You can pay with your credit card, and be on your merry way to the Tube or airplane, knowing that you have a great read in your hand.

When you purchase a book from Novel Idea, it pops out in a pre-packed gift box (so that the book can’t be damaged) with a pull-out carry handle and press out bookmark.

Little Free Library brings neighbors together through books

Jonathan Beggs wanted an easy way for his neighbors to share books.

Using odds and ends of fiberboard and Douglas fir, the retired building contractor fashioned a hutch the size of a dollhouse. He gave it a pitched cedar-shingle roof capped with copper. The door, trimmed in bright red, opens to three shelves filled with books by Joyce Carol Oates, Tony Hillerman, James Michener and others. Below hangs a sign: “Take a book or bring a book or both.” [....]

When a 9-year-old boy knocked on his door one morning to say how much he liked the little library, Beggs knew he was on to something. He added amenities to make it more welcoming. He crafted wooden benches from leftover beams and installed them on either side of the library amid redwood chips that cushion the feet. [....]

His Little Free Library is part of a movement that started in Wisconsin and has begun to catch on in Southern California. In large cities and small towns, suburbs and rural communities, advocates see the libraries as a way to keep the printed word in the hands of seasoned and budding bibliophiles.

An abandoned Walmart becomes largest public library in the U.S.

Many times abandoned places are left behind, but not in this case. What once was a Walmart is now the largest single-story public library in the United States [....] The result is a spacious library packed with books as well as an auditorium, computer lab, classrooms, meeting rooms, and reading lounge for adults and teens. [....]

The best part? Within the first month following the opening, library registration spiked by 23 percent!

Getting More People To Come To My Readings: What’s Working

Last Friday’s reading at Wayward Coffeehouse went really, really well.

My fellow author Luna Lindsey did a terrific job — if I hadn’t already know that this was her first time reading in front of an audience, I honestly never would have suspected it. There are so, so many ways an author can really screw up a live reading — talking too fast, failing to project their voice, not making enough eye contact with the audience, just flat-out being too damn nervous — but Luna managed to avoid all those pitfalls and just sailed through it like an old hand. I know she prepped and practiced and rehearsed like mad, and it all definitely paid off.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy my stories — I read “Cold Season” and “The Thirteenth Boy” from Slices, and “Melt the Bullet, Blunt the Knife,” a brand-new story that will be in my next anthology in October. That one seemed to be everyone’s favorite of my pieces, which was very gratifying. I’d been kind of nervous about reading it, because one of the characters has an accent I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off.

I did a rough head-count at one point, and we had about forty-five people. I don’t know how many people the place can hold, but I’m betting it’s not a lot more than that.  That’s a pretty decent turn-out.

At this point, that’s the main thing that makes me nervous before a reading — I’ve been doing them for long enough that I’m not worried about entertaining an audience, but I am concerned with figuring out how the hell to get them to show up in the first place. Here’s what seems to be working.

I teamed up with another writer. In this case, the aforementioned Luna Lindsey.  The first time I did this, it wasn’t my idea. I was a little horrified by the suggestion at first, actually — I thought, What? Share the spotlight with someone else?? But when the actual reading happened, I realized the advantage to it — all the people who would normally turn up to one of my readings were there, plus all the people who would normally turn up to one of her readings. As far as I’m concerned, anything that means I’ve just doubled the size of my audience is definitely a win worth repeating. I’ve had a second reader at most of my readings ever since.
I started promotion two-three weeks in advance. Any less notice than that, and people will already have made other plans. Any more notice than that, and I don’t think you can really sustain anyone’s interest and anticipation — that gives them long enough to forget about you.
I sent out a message about the event to my mailing list. This is the most important way I keep in touch with my readers — I always encourage anyone who seems interested in my readings and releases to sign up for the list, just so they can be sure they won’t miss hearing updates through other channels. (You’re on my mailing list already, right?)
I sent out Facebook invites. I know, I know. You hate Facebook. I hate Facebook. As near as I can tell, everyone hates Facebook, but we all still use the damn thing.
I “shared” the event on my Facebook Timeline, or “Wall” or “News Feed” or whatever the hell we’re supposed to call it these days. This casts a wider net than just sending invites — for one thing, I don’t send invites to people who are outside the Seattle area, but maybe they are going to be in town that weekend, or maybe they’ll see the post and think of other people to invite. For another, I’ve noticed that while some people will use the “Invite Friends” feature on the event itself, others are more likely to just hit “share” on my post about it instead. That’s totally fine — I want people to have as many different ways to spread the word as they can.
I asked other people to invite their friends and share posts about the event. While I’m sending invites and posting, I definitely make sure to include what — hold your nose — marketing people refer to as a “call to action.” It seriously helps.
I posted something on the Wall for the event every day for nine days leading up to it. This was something new I tried this time, and I think it was very successful. I had noticed that the events that I was most likely to show up to myself were the events that kept posting to their Wall, and kept showing up in my notifications, and therefore just kept reminding me, “Oh, yeah, that’s coming up soon.”  I had plenty of relevant links to post — links to the venue, to my website and Luna’s, to our books, and to videos of past readings.
I posted the event on Google+. That’s also something new I tried this time, mainly because Google+ launched a brand new Events feature just before the reading. I like the new feature — it’s much slicker than Facebook’s event functionality. I know it doesn’t have nearly the user base that Facebook has yet, but I think I managed to reach a couple of people who hadn’t seen the Facebook invite.
I sent a direct message the day before the event to everyone who had RSVP’ed “Yes” or “Maybe.” The message thanked them for RSVP’ing, and reminded them and/or encouraged them to attend. I can’t even tell you how many events I’ve missed attending myself because I simply lost track of the date.

And that’s about it. I also posted on Twitter and on Goodreads, and I don’t know if that helped at all, but what the hell, it didn’t take much of my time. There are many other things that I could do that I have done in the past, including stapling flyers to neighborhood telephone poles, leaving flyers at bookstores and comic shops and at the venue, and even buying ads on Facebook, but none of those things seemed to be worth the effort and expense.

So how about you? If you do readings, how do you get the word out? If you attend readings, how do you find out about them?

The Pre-Reading Jitters, and the Magic Number

So, as I’m sure you know, because you have the date circled on your calendar and you’ve been counting off the days with little crossed-off X’s and you keep stroking the calendar and lovingly crooning “Sooooon” until your roommates get creeped out and ask you to stop –

Tomorrow’s the “Wayward Author Reading” featuring myself and Luna Lindsey. at Wayward Coffee House in Seattle at 8:00pm.

I’ve been doing these readings for years now — a surprising number of years, really, considering that I’m not a day over twenty-nine.  (Shut up. Well, okay, would you believe I have the skin of a twenty-nine-year-old? In a garment bag in the back of my closet?)

The thing is, no matter how much experience I have doing this, I always get — well, not stage fright exactly, because it’s not like I’m afraid to get up in front of an audience, but just kind of . . . pre-show jitters. A faint internal monologue that goes something like:

OH GOD NO ONE’S GOING TO SHOW UP, THEY’RE NOT SHARING THE INVITES, THEY WON’T BRING THEIR FRIENDS, EVERYONE HATES ME, I SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN, OH GOD WHY

. . . You know, like that.

It’s always hard to judge, even from RSVP’s, how many people are going to show up to any given event. Especially since this is Seattle. (Here’s a very Seattle sentence for you: I once had someone respond with “I will definitely try to be there!” Which sounds very positive and affirming without actually committing to anything whatsoever.) RSVP lists just give me a rough idea of how many people will be there — a certain percentage of people who said they’d definitely show up will inevitably space it, and a certain percentage of people who in fact planned to show up all along won’t actually think to say so ahead of time. It happens, you get used to it.

I’ve found, over time, that there’s a magic number in my head. So long as at least twenty-five people say they’re going to show up, then that’s great — I stop worrying.  Don’t know why.

All I can say is, we did indeed reach that magic number of RSVP’s a few minutes ago, and now I can relax for the evening.

Dunno if Luna is going to relax, mind you. She’s never done this before at all. So, if you’re in the Seattle area, do come by and listen to us, won’t you? I absolutely promise that any permanent damage will be mostly psychological.

“How The Doctor Changed My Life”, Five Years Later

Time may be an illusion, but it’s a pretty persistent one:

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually — from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint — it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly. . . timey-wimey. . . stuff.”

— The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who, “Blink”

That’s as may be, but from my linear, subjective, it’s been exactly five years ago today since one of the most significant events of my life.

Five years ago today, on 19 June 2007, the BBC’s official Doctor Who site announced the winners of a short story competition that I’d judged. The winning stories, all by first-time fiction writers, were later published by Big Finish as How the Doctor Changed My Life. [....] The book we produced is now sadly out of print — and commanding a small fortune second-hand. But I’m really proud of it, and the hard work the writers put into it.

– Simon Guerrier,  How How the Doctor Changed My Life Changed My Life

I don’t really think it’s possible to overstate just how big an impact Doctor Who has had on my life. I’ve often described it as my favorite thing in the world. That might seem a bit — overenthusiastic for what is, after all, a science-fiction series for children. But to me, the show has always encompassed all the possibilities of fiction itself — it has a format that allows it to go anywhere, any time, and tell any kind of story. I love that it’s a story that, as Craig Ferguson so memorably phrased it, is about “the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.” I love that it approaches life and the universe and humanity with a genuine sense of love and wonder, but also with a complete refusal to take anything too seriously, least of all itself. It’s huge and sprawling and ambitious and silly and it’s absolutely wonderful.

The first Doctor Who story I ever saw was actually not even a real, official episode — it was The Wrath of Eukor, a fan-made film starring the late, great Barbara Benedetti as the Doctor. So I knew from the beginning that Doctor Who was not just something you had to sit back and passively watch — it was something you could make yourself.

So make it I did, from fan fiction to costumes and props to full-sized TARDIS and console props. (Which my mother would like me to get the hell out of her garage someday.) When I saw the announcement about the Big Finish short story competition, I knew I absolutely had to enter it.

Many, many thanks are still due to my friends Ahna Blake and Ceci who not only talked me out of my nervousness and twisted my arm until I entered, but who were my beta readers for my story, “Relativity,” and helped make it as good as it could be. I should take them out to tea sometime soon to celebrate this anniversary.

To sum up, I think I said it best in the post I wrote after I got to meet Simon at a convention:

I’m glad I was able to thank him in person for having selected my story — to tell him that being able to officially write something for Doctor Who was a life-long dream, and to thank him for helping make it come true.  No matter what else ever happens in my writing career, I will always treasure that little bit of immortality — getting to carve my initials on a story that started before I was born and will continue long after I’m gone.

Why Are So Many People Willing To Write For Free?

Think about your day job for a moment. (I’m assuming you have one, but you probably do.) Whatever it is you do for a living, whether you’re a brain surgeon or a barista, I want you to imagine your boss walking up to you and saying, “Hey, listen, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I’m just not going to pay you anymore. This job is giving you good experience and exposure, I think it’ll be good for your career, so you should be willing to do it for free.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d be out the door so fast the sonic boom would knock his coffee cup right off his desk.

And yet, when it comes to writing (and in my experience, web design and graphic design, and I imagine this applies to all kinds of creative fields), there are a ton of people out there who will, in fact, just straight-up ask you to work for free.

Take a look at some of the market listings on The Horror Tree, which is a fantastic resource for horror writers. Half the markets listed on there — hell, more than half, it seems like — are for “Exposure Only.”  Or a contributor’s copy. (I’ve seen a few where the contributor’s copy is a free download of a PDF version of the book. Gosh, thanks!)

As other artists have said — “People die of exposure.”

Why are writers willing to do this? I mean, I kind of get it — you want your name out there, you want people reading your work, but . . . if some other guy is going to be making money selling a book that has your story in it, and you’re not seeing a dime of that, then — isn’t he ripping you off?  What’s the deal, here?

You can only sell your First North American Serial Rights to one of your stories once. That’s kinda the whole idea, there. If you really think your writing is solid, professional-quality stuff, then you deserve to get paid for it like a professional. And if you don’t think your writing is good enough to actually be selling it somewhere, then for Chrissakes, you don’t want “exposure” yet — get yourself back to your desk and keep working on your material until it is good enough.

Now, if you want to donate a story to an anthology whose proceeds are going to charity, then that’s one thing. Or if you want to give away your own fiction directly to readers, without going through some middleman, that’s something else, too.  But if you’re willing to let someone else actually make a profit off of your hard work, then I think you’re being taken for a ride.

Horror Reading: Michael Montoure and Luna Lindsey, June 29th at Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle!

Well, not just horror, I have to say — the other reader joining me for this event, Luna Lindsey, will be bringing dark urban fantasy and a little science fiction to the table as well.

I know I’ve mentioned Luna before on this blog.  Luna is a fellow Seattle writer, and I’ve known her for — let’s see, less than a year now, actually, but we have no idea how we haven’t met sooner. We have a ton of mutual friends who have been smacking their foreheads over the fact that they hadn’t thought to introduce us — I think everyone just assumed we already knew each other.

The owner of the Wayward Coffeehouse, showing a brazen disregard for the clear and present danger of the Montoure curse, has invited me back. Her theory is that the place should be safe so long as the reading doesn’t actually happen at Halloween. We shall see. I’d hate to see Wayward close down. Again.

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Anyway! Enough doom and gloom — I don’t mean to scare you. At least, not until you get to the reading.

This will be Luna’s first live performance! If you’re in the Seattle area, and you can make it, please come out and see us, and bring your friends.  Thanks!

Horror Reading: Michael Montoure and Luna Lindsey

June 29th, 2012 8:00pm-10:00pm

Wayward Coffeehouse, 6417 Roosevelt Way NE #104, Seattle WA

Luna’s post about the reading
Luna’s blog tour, running from June 11th to July 9th
Wayward Coffeehouse, our lovely venue
The event listing on Facebook, if you would like to RSVP and invite your friends
Add the event to your Google Calendar

 

October Country: Remembering Ray Bradbury

Just like my last post, this is a slightly belated response to sad news.  I don’t seem to be able to write about these things immediately; I need a couple of days to process, sort it all out in my head, wrap words around it.

That was definitely the case this time.  I had no idea how to react to the death of Ray Bradbury.  How would a bird feel, I wondered, if you told him the sky was dead?

That was how large Bradbury loomed in my life, especially in my childhood; his imagination was the house whose crawlspaces and corridors I freely roamed as a child, never giving a thought to the builder, to the man who’d drawn the plans and raised the beams.

Even now, as an adult — or at least, as close to an adult as I’m ever likely to become — and after years of studying the art and science of carefully arranging words and dreams on a printed page, it’s still hard for me to grasp that so many perfect, iconic stories came simply from one man sitting at his rented typewriter. That these stories didn’t just simply exist, that they hadn’t just always existed.

I learned so much from these stories, about writing and about life.  “The Veldt” taught me the subtleties of horror;  “The Fog Horn” and “All Summer in a Day” taught me a melancholy beyond my years. My love for perfect endings was kindled by stories like “A Sound of Thunder”, and by “The October Game”, which has the best last line of any horror story ever.

He taught me that genre is just a game for other people to play, a game for booksellers and librarians, and that a writer shouldn’t try to keep his words in such neat little boxes.  He freely mixed science fiction and fantasy and magical realism all from the same palette, and painted in colors no one had seen before, with a vibrancy never matched since.

He taught me, probably more than anyone else, to pay attention to the sound of my words, that measure and meter have as much place in prose as in poetry.

Bradbury is gone, but his long endless golden childhood where it is always summer, but sometimes Halloween, will go on forever, and we can always visit him there, run laughing down endless tree-lined Martian streets until we fall down breathless, sipping dandelion wine with him on his front porch in the last of the evening light.

I’ve spent the past few days reading the words other people have written about Bradbury’s passing, and I’d like to share a few of them with you:

Some authors I read and loved as a boy disappointed me as I aged. Bradbury never did. His horror stories remained as chilling, his dark fantasies as darkly fantastic, his science fiction (he never cared about the science, only about the people, which was why the stories worked so well) as much of an exploration of the sense of wonder, as they had when I was a child [ . . . ]

A Ray Bradbury story meant something on its own – it told you nothing about what the story would be about, but it told you about atmosphere, about language, about some sort of magic escaping into the world.

– A man who won’t forget Ray Bradbury, by Neil Gaiman

For many Americans, the news of Ray Bradbury’s death immediately brought to mind images from his work, imprinted in our minds, often from a young age.

His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values.

There is no doubt that Ray will continue to inspire many more generations with his writing, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

– a statement from President Obama

Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called “A Sound of Thunder.”  The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant’s footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty.

– a statement from Stephen King

The Martian Chronicles is not a child’s book, but it is an excellent book to give to a child—or to give to the right child, which I flatter myself that I was—because it is a book that is full of awakening. Which means, simply, that when you read it, you can feel parts of your brain clicking on, becoming sensitized to the fact that something is happening here, in this book, with these words, even if you can’t actually communicate to anyone outside of your own head just what that something is. I certainly couldn’t have, in the sixth grade—I simply didn’t have the words. As I recall, I didn’t much try: I just sat there staring down at the final line of the book, with the Martians staring back at me, simply trying to process what I had just read.

– On the Passing of Ray Bradbury: “Meeting the Wizard”, by John Scalzi

Ray Bradbury was about all of life. The light and the dark of life; the tragic, the ironic; the cruelty of it, the beauty of it. Sometimes he merged those into one work: Fahrenheit 451 was a paean to the beauty and significance of books, of literature; it was also an observation of the dark side of human nature, the fascist lurking deep down inside us…

His prose had a liquidity, like blood running hot through a man’s veins. And blood pulses with life.

So we’ve lost him, he’s died—but if ever there was a writer who is still here with us afterward, it is Ray Bradbury.

– Me and you and Ray Bradbury, by John Shirley

Horror, Real Life, and Happy Endings: The Shootings in Seattle

Here in Seattle, a stray bullet killed a man in front of his children about a week ago. Someone else was shot in the right leg near the Space Needle. The next day, we had five drive-by shootings and a man was shot to death during an invasion of his home. Last Wednesday, another six people were shot to death and one was wounded at Cafe Racer, an artsy little coffeeshop. That brings us to twenty-one homicides in Seattle, so far this year. That’s more than were reported for all of 2011.

This doesn’t happen here. This happens in Chicago, or New York, or Detroit. We don’t know how to handle it here.

For my part, I was dealing with it with a kind of numb indifference.  You can call it cynical and jaded, or you can more charitably assume I’m just trying to keep the big picture in mind, but: I try not to pay any special attention to horrors in the world just because they happen to be in my backyard.

About thirteen thousand people are murdered every year in the United States. Guns kill about nine thousand of them. Worldwide, gun-related deaths number anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 annually, depending on who you ask. So why should I care about a shooting more just because it’s geographically close to me?  Isn’t that narrow-minded and tribal of me?  I mean,  just because the shooting happened in Seattle, it’s not like it affects anyone I actually know, right?

But it did.  The first thing that shocked me out of my complacency was this post on Twitter from my good friend and writing partner, Glynis Mitchell:

They found the vehicle and weapon for the shootings literally in our building’s front yard. Lockdown just ended. Fuck.

— Glynis Mitchell (@GlynisMitchell) May 30, 2012

The second shock was learning that among the dead was Drew Keriakedes, who I’d seen perform as “Shmootzi the Clod” with Circus Contraption. I never met him directly, but I will always remember him.  He was the perfect front-man for that wonderfully weird little troupe, both frightening and whimsical, welcoming and ominous, with his run-down clown look and his ragged and passionate singing voice that rivaled Tom Waits. Circus Contraption’s site describes him as a “sousaphonist, ukelelist, accordionist, banjo man, vocalist, [and] songwriter,” and I don’t know if that even begins to cover it. The Stranger’s blog has a post that can give you a better idea of what we’ve lost with this death than I can.

This did touch people I knew directly, after all.  It’s as if the universe was conspiring to remind me not to be so cold, to pay attention to what’s going on in my community.

It isn’t, of course. That really doesn’t happen. Things don’t happen just to provide meaningful little lessons.

That only happens in stories.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a post on fellow writer Stant Litore‘s blog, entitled “Horror Writers Against Happy Endings.” He writes:

I think often horror writing avoids happy endings because horror is more concerned with hope than with happily ever afters — but horror fiction has no interest in naive hope. Horror is grounded in human pain, in the open-eyed acknowledgment that life isn’t about happy endings. It’s about moments of bravery and love and hope wrested out of the jaws of violence, misery, loss, regret, and unfulfilled longing. [....]

There is a time and a place for happy endings. But just now — while large numbers of people in the First World can afford to ignore the suffering outside their windows — right now is not the time for happy endings. Right now we need what horror fiction can do for us.

That post just didn’t sit right with me.  I had some objection to it, some criticism I couldn’t put a voice to, turning over and over in my mind.

I guess that to me, it seems overly simplistic and reductionist to say that just because there are bad things happening in the world, horror fiction has to be relentlessly grim and dark as well. I’m more inclined to agree with this quote from Larry McCaffery’s “Conversation with David Foster Wallace” :

Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

I don’t think that horror writing has to have an unhappy ending in order to be honest.  I don’t think it has to have a happy ending, either.  The only thing I think that horror fiction has to do is to make us look openly and honestly at, well, horror. At the fact that dark and bad things happen.

But there are as many different ways to react to that darkness as there are people.  And how our characters react will shape the ending of the story.

Like any other genre, horror stories don’t have to have a happy ending or an unhappy ending — they have to have the right ending.  There are forces at work that shape the proper endings of stories, and we can tell when an author has tried to bend a story to have the ending he wants it to have rather than the ending that it demands.  We can ignore those forces, but we shouldn’t.  We’ve been telling stories for thousands, maybe millions of years, and we have the shapes of the gears and cogs that power their engines deep inside our subconscious. Let your story do what it wants.

Sometimes the right ending is the unhappy one. The one where hope is completely lost and everyone loses, because that’s what the story is about. Sometimes, the story needs a happy ending, it needs to have a final girl who will face the darkness and be touched and burned by it, but who will survive, and emerge again into the light.

Because good things happen, too. Denying horror the ability to have a happy ending would ignore that, and would fail to do the one thing good art always has to do — tell the truth.

After the shootings at Cafe Racer, a Reddit user commented:

I hope you got a chance to walk by Racer this evening. I only knew Drew and Joe though association of the amazing musical community here in Seattle, but I live right near Cafe Racer and have eaten and performed there on a number of occasions. I walked across the street to find an incredible sight. What seemed like hundreds of friends, musicians, mourners, neighbors, were all gathered together. They sang, they played, they cried, and they were all there for each other. The music was powerful. The emotion was real. This community was rocked by a devastating, senseless event, yet less than 11 hours later they were celebrating the lives and legacy the men from GFB left behind.

At one point in the evening, after much music with his accordion, Another GFB member shouted, “Without all this, we’d be fucked!” I looked to either side, and knew that he’s right. Without my friends, my bandmates, and the folks that surrounded us, I’d surely be lost. The power of music in this community is undeniably strong.

Here is a picture he posted, as well, of the memorial that had been left for those who died:

What he says is true of all art, not just music. Without it we’d be fucked, we’d never make these kinds of connections, never get to make sense of anything. In the real world, we never get endings at all, not in the sense that everything is tied up neatly and satisfyingly, no loose ends or unexplained mysteries. No proper endings. That’s why we have stories, I think.

In the real world, things just stop.