D.T. Neal's Blog, page 23

Taking it on the Chinotto

I have this curse, where things I particularly like either disappear or become very hard to find. It happens all the time with shows I like -- I've even said as much "This show is toast; I like it too much." Whereas stuff I don't like seems to endure forever.

A simple example of this is my love for the San Pellegrino soft drink, Chinotto. It's one of my very favorites. Some people hate Chinotto, but they're wrong; it's wonderful!

It's also damned hard to find. It wasn't always hard to find. I used to have particular stores where I'd pick it up from time to time. Then those stores went out of business, and the remaining ones carry all other types of San Pellegrino drinks, but not Chinotto. Literally, the *one* flavor I want is the one that's increasingly hard to find.

So annoying. Now, I *could* order it online, but the markup on it is absurd, versus what it should cost off the shelf. Ergo, I'm quasi-questing to find some local shops that might carry it, and so far, no luck.

What's particularly frustrating is all the other flavors can be had, just not the Chinotto, the only one I want. I see the other flavors on the shelves, mocking me with their un-Chinotto-ness. C'mon, man!

My curse continues...

Submission Control

Unless you're living in a cave (and, if you are, well, go for it, I guess), you've seen the pile of stories about Clarkesworld closing to submissions in response to being flooded by AI bot submissions.

NPR, the Guardian, the NYT, the Washington Post, etc. They all covered it. I have to hand it to Neil Clarke's adroit media acumen in pushing that story out and getting buckets of ink from it.

As a flesh-and-blood human writer who's had stories rejected by Clarkesworld many a time since it started in 2006, to the extent that I gave up submitting to it many years ago, I can only look at their plight and shake my head.

But a joke did occur to me, which I'll share --
two writers are talking (oh, let's put'em in a bar):

Writer 1: I heard that Clarkesworld is closed to submissions.
Writer 2: Really? How can you tell?

*rimshot*

All kidding aside, it does highlight a real problem, in that what remaining publications are still stumbling along out there are getting plagued by a digital zombie apocalypse of AI bot submissions. That's going to make it even harder for unconnected writer(s) to get seen/heard (and it's already a very steep climb).

Clarkesworld has the benefit of being one of the very few good-paying speculative fiction venues still out there, which is also why they're a target of these unscrupulous hacks slinging AI-assembled things (I hesitate to call them "stories").

Inasmuch as these AI bots will choke submission portals like, it's going to make things terribly difficult for actual writers to sell their stories (even the ones who're able to).

Not sure if there's a way out for the industry. I mean, near-term, Clarke's posting and the lavish media coverage will maybe provide a short-term boost of awareness of his publication, but that'll probably only draw more AI bot story pimps (I can't call these people "writers", because they're not writers).

Maybe it'll create more dependence on the known human writers who actually have names, reputations, and followings -- what I'd call The Velvet Rope Scenario (VRS) -- where select writers get fanned through, while everybody else is left curbside.

We're already seeing that in some fashion with the propensity of publishers to extend invitations to well-known writers on anthology calls. But a VRS approach will scuttle the publishing world at large, as it needs fresh blood sooner or later.

Or maybe this'll just hasten the collapse of even more venues, as the burden becomes too onerous for the already overworked editors and screeners to handle, and fewer and fewer writers will even bother slinging stories over the publisher battlements. It's going to be a curious situation. There's no easy answer.

Stoked (or not?)

Today's the launch day (aka, the "book birthday" as some people put it) for THE THING IN YELLOW, my short story collection I've mentioned already, so yadda yadda yadda on that, since I've written about it before.

I'll be curious how it fares, as this one may be uniquely qualified to weather the book void better than my others. It's well-suited to be a cult book, basically. Lord knows the Chambers book has continued to entice since 1895, so there's that.

But while I'm stoked about the launch, the recent Stokers Award parade gnawed at me a bit, since I've been Stoker Award-free since 2011. Like not even a nomination or the remotest consideration for my novels and novellas.

Honestly, I don't lose any sleep over this -- the landscape of awarding is always fraught with all sorts of popularity contest machinations, and even the winners (or multiple nominees and also-rans) likely wonder the value of a nomination and/or a win. Not sure if it ever translates into anything tangible.

I guess as a talking point, it's something, I suppose. If someone can claim to be a Stoker Award winner, there's at least an implication there that somebody, somewhere, thought their work was award-winning. And if someone gets nominated a lot, there's that, too. Proof points and such. In the dire quest for readers, being able to claim that likely counts on some level, since readers can be so squirrelly about reading anybody new.

However, as one who's 100% Stoker-remote, I look at it somewhat differently. Is my work without value because the powers-that-be that drive the Stokers never consider my work? I don't believe that. My work is good. Sure, I'm biased, but few realize that nobody out there's a stronger critic of my work than me -- I'm ruthless in my self-critique, but for the sake of devil's advocacy, let's just say I'm biased about the quality of my work.

Does the lack of even a nomination mean my work is devoid of value? And, on the other hand, does the constant nomination of other writers imply that they are superior writers than those who never get Stoker nods? Or are they simply better-placed and/or considered for the awards?

I'm not impugning those who get the nods or the wins, so much as I'm impugning the self-dealing nature of awards in general as criteria of value, and the process behind them.

If a book sells millions but wins no awards, what does that mean, versus a book that barely sells but wins an award (or multiple awards -- not really a risk in horror writing, honestly). Or a book that barely sells and lacks even an award?

Awards say a lot about the award-givers as much as the award-receivers -- the message the givers are trying to put out there, and who gets the proof points, and who doesn't. It's all very postmodern, but do awards mean anything, anymore, beyond the ability to declare that something or someone is "award-winning" -- is that all it does? Awards (and noms) are nice to have, but they're tangential to the process, not central to it. They're a side effect of a process, and are reflective of the process that spawns them. Talk about horror!

This isn't another "American white guy whining about being disregarded" rant; I accept that I'll never get the accolades for my work from "the horror community" -- and I've heard rumors that the Stoker Awards in particular are packed with rampant self-promotion by the aspirants, that they work the HWA like a pipe organ to get considered. I don't work that pipe organ, so my work isn't ever at risk of consideration.

Man Getting Hit by Football

Maybe that's my fault. Perhaps if I enthusiastically (if cynically) greased up the HWA, I'd get a nod -- I mean, I'm not even a member of the HWA (which is another topic unto itself, the value of such associations). I pondered joining it over a decade ago, when I was getting some short stories sold, I briefly considered joining the HWA, but I never did. I didn't see the value there.

And that's actually when the HWA was markedly stronger than it is today. Today's HWA feels like a moribund vestige of a lost publishing world, to be brutally honest. Will the HWA still be around in another decade? I have my doubts. Or if it is, will it just be another luminous revenant stalking around, anointing those who've managed its gladhanding gauntlet successfully?

This might be hubristic folly on my part, or the quixotic idealism of the willful artist, but I believe in the strength of the work as the only meaningful and trustworthy arbiter of value. How, then, is that strength measured?

My work is well-received by the (few) readers who actually read it. I don't have nearly the visibility I'd like for my work, and I don't have any bonus proof points to offer that might give cautious new readers the courage to try me out.

Maybe I'm just wistful, as THE THING IN YELLOW is my last indie horror offering amid a proliferation of disregarded books I've reliably served up to nonexistent readers and very few reviewers, in the near-total absence of accolades, recognition, appreciation, or fandom.

As far as gothic fates go, it's strangely appropriate. I'm like the proverbial ghost departing a séance that never took place, because no one thought to look for me, or knew that I was ever there.

Launchpaddywack

Tomorrow, THE THING IN YELLOW launches, and I'm hopeful for it, as I always am with launches, even as I'm worried it'll also fly off into the void (which, ironically, is a very on-the-nose fate for a book of weird fiction infused with cosmic horror).

That said, it should be well-received. It's a solid 13-story collection, and I'm very happy how it turned out. My hope is that because fans of the Yellow King are already aware of that universe, there'll be an audience for it, but you never know.

Here's a mini-interview of me on THE THING IN YELLOW.

Likely I'm reacting to the otherwise quiet reception for THE CURSED EARTH, which was very well-received in NetGalley (thank you again to all who reviewed it), but otherwise disappeared from anyone's awareness, at least on the Twit. I know that Twitter is not representative of the majority of the population (and, hell, it's like 15th in social media channels), but I had high hopes (haha, pun intended) that CURSED would find its audience, and that didn't really happen -- even though plenty of people are hopping on the fungus horror (aka, "sporror") bandwagon of late, and likely far more now that THE LAST OF US is drawing eyes. CURSED is one of my best novels, although I suppose because it's well over 400 pages, that curses it (definitely intended that pun) among readers who don't actually like to read too much.

Since THE THING IN YELLOW clocks in around 260 pages, my hope is that more readers and plays in a pre-existing (and, at least theoretically, pre-approved) mythos, that they'll will be willing to pick that one up.

I guess we'll see, won't we? Personally, I think THE THING will offer readers a satisfying weird/occult fictional ride, and I tried to put elements into those stories that might stick with readers, even if they're not familiar with THE KING IN YELLOW.

Meanwhile, the prelaunch jitters continue. I'm always most comfortable charging over the wall, am less at ease when I'm on the other side of the wall, waiting for the signal to charge.

I do hope if/when readers pick up this latest book, they actually read, rate, and review it. That'll hopefully help offset the thundering silence that typically accompanies my book launches.

This one may have a slow build as people discover it and take the plunge.

THE CONSULTANT (2023)

Okay, the primary reason I watched THE CONSULTANT on Prime was Christoph Waltz -- he's such a weirdo, he's always compelling to watch. And, unsurprisingly, he's the primary reason to watch this show.

For all the Bentley Little horror fanboy musings out there, this one seemed so heavily Don DeLillo-influenced to me -- the sort of dark corporate satire kind of thing rooted in obligatory pointless weirdness. There's even a DeLillo name-drop in one of the episodes, referring to someone named Denise DeLillo -- ooh, easter egg. *yawns into back of hand*

And it's a willfully weird series that almost seems to lack the courage of its (lack of) convictions. Big shocker: people effectively mortgage their souls to advance in the corporate world.

The set-piece strangeness of it all felt very paint-by-numbers to me. Maybe I'm too jaded, I don't know. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I didn't even particularly like it. Waltz is always entertaining to watch, but I found myself glancing at my phone several episodes in, because I wasn't particularly engaged with it or the characters within.

I guess I'd give it three (out of five) stars, for being moderately entertaining, if otherwise unexceptional. I'm a tough crowd, but the affected strangeness of it felt forced to me, and narratively, the arcs just aren't quite there.

***

COCAINE BEAR (2023)

I was stoked to catch COCAINE BEAR, mostly as a novelty. I mean, come on, right? So ridiculous a concept, I had to catch it.

It was gleefully idiotic, and rampantly campy. Elizabeth Banks definitely channeled the 80s-type trash movies as the foundational aesthetic of it, and it delivered on that front.

A few gripes I had with it are:

1) it wasn't nearly as funny as it ought to have been -- I don't know what's going on with humor these days, but this one felt very Millennial/Zoomer humor to me, which is to say, humor rooted in awkward zaniness over actually funny stuff. Which likely means those groups will find the movie hilarious, but as your friendly neighborhood Xer, I'm here to say: it wasn't funny.

In fact, nearly all of the "comedic" lines fell flat at the theater I attended -- like stone silence. You know why? Because it wasn't funny. Awkward and zany, yes; funny? Nope.

2) Predictably, it was a one-joke movie, which overstayed its welcome the umpteenth time a character said something equivalent to "OMG! That bear's on cocaine!" No shit.

3) The 80s patina of it was thinly rendered -- like it started strongly with 80s looks and motifs, but those kind of bled away by the second or third reel. Not sure why that happened.

'Obviously, the CGI killer bear took the (pun intended) lion's share of the budget, and maybe other things suffered for it.

One weird sidenote: this movie was like an AMERICANS reunion, with:

Matthew Rhys (cameo appearance)
Keri Russell (a lead role)
Margo Martindale (supporting role)

That was kind of surreal for me. How those three ended up in this movie is probably a story unto itself. They seem like better actors than this kind of thing, but maybe it was just a post-AMERICANS paycheck for them, not sure.

The standout sequence is the Depeche Mode scene, where they play "Just Can't Get Enough" to great effect with the bear rampaging. Definitely the best scene in the movie.

All in all, I'd give it maybe two-and-a-half stars. It'll likely be a huge success just on the ludicrous nature of its concept, and/or for all the unfunny people out there who'll think it was hilarious.

**.5

Punch (& Judy) List

Writers lead a kind of miserable existence in the 21st century. The type of soul drawn to writing, well, there's some masochism inherent in their makeup, whether or not they're any good.

To that end, here's a bit of self-flagellation rooted in my own writerly experience, when contemplating my own failures as a writer. My writerly brain wraps around why I don't have more readers:

1) I'm a shit writer. I'd like to think every writer thinks this, but there are probably some who love whatever they create. Spoiler warning: those are the true shit writers. I believe I write tight, clean, evocative, honest prose, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

2) The stories I come up with suck. This is tied to the tyranny of "high concept" (you know, like "Dude, what if Jesus was a Nazi?" "What if everybody suddenly switched genders?") But there's always the nagging question of if/whether a story you're telling is worth telling. Maybe readers just don't dig the stories I've told so far.

3) I'm too middle-aged, white, middle-class, straight, and male. As a progressive, this one nags at me a little. I understand that other groups need to have their day, but does that also mean that I can't have my day, as well? Is it presumed because I'm those things that I'm automatically successful and therefore undeserving of any support? Spoiler warning: Not the case.

4) Reading is hard. This is kind of a twofold problem, so I'll tackle the first half first. Namely, that with a wealth of entertainment options, more and more people are reading less and less. This is the "nothing personal, Dave; people just don't read as much" argument, a kind of "it's not you, it's just the market is saturated with books and writers."

5) OMG, your books are BRICKS! This is the other half of the above -- namely, that I don't write pamphlets. I like to write novels (and, sometimes, novellas). Big books are more work than wafer-thin works pretending to be more than what they are. Ergo, readers avoid that sort of commitment implied in a big book. Who has the time to read? Versus, you know, social mediating?

6) You're Gen X. Why aren't you dead, yet, Boomer? This is the ageist argument -- there are about 30 million FEWER Gen X folks than either the Boomers or those who came after. I chalk that up to The Pill -- which came into popular use right in the meaty part of the Gen X life cycle. There are simply fewer Xers out there compared to other generations, and my own doggedly Gen X POV is just alien for most (including a swathe of Xers, too; we're not a highly committed bunch).

7) You're just too optimistic for horror. This is another "it's not us, it's YOU, Dave" argument. I'll admit that I'm a curious mix of humor and darkness, but day-to-day, despite (or maybe even because of) my nihilism, I'm fairly upbeat. Maybe that leads me to create horror that's not horrifying enough? Maybe I'm still too hopeful to drag down into the gory depths of horror?

8) You're too smart/weird for horror. In my tendency to enjoy the more intellectual aspects of horror over the overtly visceral, maybe I'm missing that mark. I try to explore concepts and ideas that horrify me, but maybe those are too abstract for folks who just want chainsaws and meat cleavers. Not sure. Related to that: I'm not a norm; I'm one of the weirdos. Ergo, I go to weird places in fiction where the normies fear to tread (I chalk that up to my punk past, which never really left me. I even toyed with that by titling a novel, NORM, as a nod to mock-normalcy).

9) Dude, where's the gore? I'm not a gorehound in my horror-writing. Not to say I don't have what I consider good kills in it. Christ, the stuff I've written about, I mean, come on! But maybe it's not blood-soaked enough for the sensibilities of most horror readers?

10) No standout characters. This one gets me a little -- a couple of hits across the back with the self-flagellating whip. Maybe I haven't written THE flagship character to carry a book. I mean, I like plenty of characters I've written over the years, but sometimes I think I drop the ball in creating characters readers can root for. I've written about plenty of poseurs and assholes over the years, but I haven't written the kind of neurotic navel-gazer type of characters that maybe the normies can relate to better.

11) Your characters are too active! This one has come up in a few contexts -- my characters tend to be problem-solvers, versus sad sacks wallowing in their own misery. When confronted with a problem, they go after it. Personally, as a problem-solver, myself, I enjoy that, respect that. But maybe that's just too direct for most readers. Or at least for horror readers. I feel like maybe it might play better with thriller readers.

12) Nobody knows about your work. This is the "you just haven't found your audience, yet" argument -- that maybe there is an audience out there for my books, but I just haven't found them, and it's terribly hard to be discovered in a noisy sea of other writers.

13) You're not a horror writer. This is tied to some of the other points above, but maybe how I attack stories, the topics I choose, the way I write those stories, collectively they just don't rate as horror for readers. That's a strong possibility. It bemuses me when I start stories out with carnage and readers will say "slow start, but it builds" -- and I'm thinking "I literally killed characters in the first five pages. What do you mean 'slow start'?"

14) You don't network/schmooze/lick boots. Clearly, there's a ton of palm-greasing in the writing world, exponentially more in the indie world. Maybe I'm just too indie for indie? My reluctance to "work that bowtie" in that setting might have me marooned in my own little island, where a good schmoozefest might help. However, I don't really buy that -- writers might boost each other's works, but writers aren't the same as the elusive readers.

15) Dude, you're indie. Nobody cares about indie. Another ghost that haunts me -- like if/whether I'm hosed because of those indie horror novels, doomed to go unseen precisely because they're indie and I don't fit any kind of litmus test for ready boosterism. Spoiler warning: I think plenty of trad writers are feeling the burn, too.

16) Publishing's a mess. This is another of the "it's not just you; everybody's getting hammered" argument. Or the notion that the state of publishing is dire, and I'm only feeling my slice of it, but that plenty of others are, too. And even the "successes" out there (exception the TRUE stratospherics out there) aren't doing so well.

17) Horror is a niche market. This one targets the horror genre itself; that despite the mythology of, say, Stephen King, horror will never have a wide appeal for readers -- simply put, there just aren't enough horror readers to go around, and the ones who are want a specific type of horror I don't deliver. The disconnect between television/movie horror and literary horror is a chasm -- where normies love the former but blow off the latter (and the few who like the latter only like very specific types of horror). I try to write more broadly-accessible books, but because they're still bloodied with the horror brush, they won't be considered by other readers.

18) All of the above. Maybe all of these elements are backed into the Lasagna of Writerly Failure, who knows? It's partly why I'm turning my back on indie horror and tackling some other areas and genres -- the scientific, empirical part of me wants to test that and rule out some of the above.

So, there it is. I may have forgotten a few, but this is a pretty comprehensive list of my contemplative musings around my writerly failure -- defined as my failure to find a dedicated audience for my work so far.

Maybe some of these (especially #3 and #6) will hobble me in my latest attempts to reach trad. Who knows? I believe in the promise of indie, but that's empty calories in the face of lack of audience. And absence of audience is the truest death knell for a writer -- not that the writer can't keep writing, because lord knows we do persist -- but that we're writing into the void.

Netherworldly

Heh. I wrote a post this morning, but since deleted it. Haven't done that in awhile. Ah, well.

Even hapless Ozymandias had a ruined bit of statue to mark his passing. Goals, I guess....

Who Knew?

I'm a Who superfan (although really like 1965-1973 -- that's my prime Who love; I did see the 3/4 Who in 1989, however).

In fact, I deconstructed my love for The Who in an early part of SAAMAANTHAA, the lead book in my Wolfshadow Trilogy, where I have one of the ultimately doomed hipsters speak about why The Who are the all-time greatest rock band. I think I made a convincing case.

I'm more than a bit of a Mod (although these days, I'd say I'm far more of a Mocker -- Mod fused with Rocker). To that end, I have a fondness for the Fishtail Parka, which remains a versatile all-weather kind of coat.

An unintended consequence of me wearing my parka around town. is that I think it unsettles people. It took me a bit to pick up on the vibe, but I'd catch wary looks from people.

Then it dawned on me, like a threefold epiphany:

1) I'm a tall, middle-aged guy, not some twee, elfin Mod;
2) I'm sporting a beard (definitely NOT Mod);
3) It's America.

This is just my theory, but I suspect when I'm in a store with my parka, maybe there's a "crazed veteran" or "possible vagrant shoplifter" vibe people are getting -- like the olive drab color of it, plus what I enumerated above.

Most people in the States wouldn't know Mod if it bit them on the ass, so I just look like a big, bearded guy in an Army Green overcoat. Am I shoplifter? Am I a would-be mass shooter? None of the above, folks. I'm mostly harmless, beyond being a writer, which is always a dangerous profession, populated by desperately anguished souls.

Kind of bemusing, but there it is. I've caught the "wary look" vibe enough times with my parka to come up with that theory about it. It's the most unintentionally controversial wardrobe item I possess, because it really does draw a reaction.

Which says a lot about the slow rot of American society, if you ask me. My parka's fab, and I love it! So, deal with it, fellow Yanks!

Personage

The old adage "write about what you know" is one of those that amuses, bemuses, and haunts me.

When I was a kid, after an initial flurry of slinging stories to big venues (18-19 years of age, eager, innocently ambitious -- sad that most of those venues are gone, now), it was absurd to me that I'd write anything for the world -- I spent roughly age 20-30 reading tons of writers, journal-writing (longhand), and blogging (I fried all of those blogs long ago in a fit of pique; kind of wish I hadn't, but whatever).

I distinctly remember thinking back then that it was presumptuous of me to share my "wisdom" as a 20-something. What did I know about the world? I was a Rust Belt kid. I'd grown up in a middle class environment in a working-class Ohio town that was well on its way to becoming a ghost town. I wasn't world-traveling. Much more of a Richard Yates-type existence than, say, Hemingway (although both of them appealed to me in their writing style).

Anyway, the "story" of a writer is one of those bits of fiction seemingly integral to the process -- think Tom Wolfe and his white suits, right? Something for people to fixate on. I see authors with their stories -- they get trotted out by their publicists (or whomever) as they try to create a "there" there for prospective fans to glom onto.

There's certainly a writerly me there, but I perhaps naively favored my work standing on its own merits over whatever persona I might have to draw people to my work. In that sense, I'm more reclusive in the style of Salinger, although far less uptight than he was.

Those few who know me (and the fewer still who care) know I'm unlike anybody they know. I've been called a "character" a lot over the years. I know exactly who and what I am. Some of it bleeds through in my Instagram feed (which is nearly 10K photos, frighteningly enough), most of it's only shared out in glimpses here and there.

But I don't really think of those things as part of my "persona" -- they're simply who I am. If I had to boil myself down to a persona, I would likely be something like:

Smart-assed, well-dressed gadfly & (pop) cultural commentator who's marinated in insouciance and highly prone to laughter at the (so far) never-ending tragicomedy of human existence.

No big-game hunting for me, or worldwide backpacking or voyages of self-discovery in exotic lands. My life is framed by the money I don't have, which means I write as a way of taking the trips I can't afford to make. I'm utterly and entirely unconnected.

Write about what I know? What I know sucks. It's why I write about weird stuff.