GUEST BLOG: “The Great and Improbable Secret to a Great and Improbable Writing Career” by the Great and Improbable Weston Ochse

The state of publishing was explained to me early on, when I first started writing. You see, publishers prefer it if you write in a specific way, because they can categorize you much more easily. Likewise, booksellers know just where to put you so that your fan base can find you. After all, you’d never find Bag of Bones in the Romance Section or Duma Key in Men’s Self Help. In fact, if it was up to publishers, your first book would set the stage for everything that came after, thus locking you into a career of writing that very first thing which was published. So armed with this knowledge, I embarked on a writing career. 

My first book was coming of age dark fantasy. That made me an author of bildungsroman, right? I was a coming of age fantasist, much like my literary idol Ray Bradbury. Hot damn! I knew where I was going to be. I knew where my books were going to be sold. I knew my future. I was the second coming of Ray Bradbury.

But then my next two books were horror science fiction. Two books of a trilogy I never finished. Arggh, screamed my fans. Arggh, screamed me. I’d channeled Lin Carter and he’d taken me so far away from Mr. Bradbury, I couldn’t see my way back. But I liked writing this. I liked this sort of fiction. I might have even finished the trilogy had it not been for an a—well, that’s another story. So now I’m on track. I’m a horror science fiction author. Check. Got it.

Then my fourth book, to finally be published later this year, was an Iraqi War heist novel. WTF? Where’d that come from? There’s not even any horror or science fiction or fantasy or any of that good genre shit. Am I slipping into the mainstream? Please, Great Elder Gods of Genre Fiction, save me!

As improbable as it sounds, my fifth book was cyberpunk. What the hell was I thinking? In five books I’d written in seven genres. Didn’t I learn the lessons of those who’d come before me? Did I think that I was single-handedly going to revive an amazing genre which Neal Stephenson and William Gibson planted, grew, cultivated, then watched die before the millennium? Yeah. I suppose I did.

To right my literary ship, my sixth book was a zombie book. It was also my first worldwide-selling mass market book. Zombies! Can’t get more horror than that. Snapping teeth, supernatural hunger, undying monsters, running for your lives. Yep! That’s it. I’m a horror author. After all, I belong to the Horror Writer’s association so I have to be a horror author. Right?

But then my seventh book, also a worldwide-selling mass market book, was a post-apocalyptic science fiction book. Jesus Christ on a big wheel. I am a horror author right? Does this mean I have to join SFWA, because I’m writing pseudo-science fiction tales? I wonder if there’s a post-apocalyptic science fiction club somewhere? Rumor has it there’s one in Estonia. Note to self-Google it.

In an effort to bring myself back to my horror roots, I resurrected an old novella turned screenplay and turned it into a full-fledged novel, making my eighth book was a no shit horror book dedicated to the B Movie Monsters of our past. Now that’s horror.

I was so happy being a horror author, I decided that my ninth book would be a short story collection. Of course there was some science fiction stories in the book. Of course there was some fantasy. In fact, to be perfectly honest with you, in broad daylight I was calling myself a horror author, but behind closed doors when I dressed up like a real author in frilly women’s clothes and high heels, I called myself a fantasist. It sounded cool; made me feel like Ray Bradbury and all that shit.

My tenth book, by far my best-selling book from a by-God-NY-Publishing-House was SEAL Team 666, a mash-up of supernatural military thriller fiction; as is my eleventh, which is the sequel and currently in the editing stages. Oh, hell. I’m now a supernatural military thriller fiction author. Is there a club for that too? Do they serve drinks and meet once a year? Is there a fancy logo I can slap on my webpage? What about a secret hand shake? Oh fuck it all.

My twelfth book is a coming of age dark fantasy book, sort of like my first one. Wait? What the hell am I doing. I’m not a coming of age author anymore. I’m a horror author. Or a fantasist. Or an author of supernatural military thriller fiction.  Coming of age was twelve books ago. Please, Gods of All Things Literary, don’t make me run the wheel through all that mud again.

So here we are now. My thirteenth book is contracted with Solaris. You might know them as a dyed-in-the-wool science fiction publisher located in England. As I signed the contract, I realized something. All those adjectives that describe me as some kind of author all end with the word author.

I am an author.

What kind doesn’t matter.

I’m an author.

If you’ve been able to keep up with my great and improbable writing journey, you can clearly see that I didn’t pay attention. I wrote all over the map. I wrote what I wanted. I wrote what pleased me. And I wrote as well as I could. Although it seemed as if I had no rhyme or reason to my writing, that’s not exactly true. You see, I wanted to be like Ray Bradbury. I wanted to be like Dan Simmons. I wanted to be able to write in however many genres I wanted to, I wanted to be published in mass market by serious NY and London publishers, and I wanted to do it on my terms.

And what were these terms you asked?

To be edited as many times as possible.
To not self publish.
To always be paid.
To be true to my craft.

There were times along this journey I was forced to make decisions. Several of the books could have been published earlier if I’d self published them. Self publishing works for some people, but not for me. I need the edits. I need the confirmation of my work. I need someone else instead of me doing the marketing and cutting the checks.

I could have also been published by some mid-majors. But once I found that their payment was less than small press publishers, I found that suspect and knew that if I’d have signed with them I would have felt used. I would have felt disappointed. If there’s one thing I know about myself is to avoid disappointment at all costs.

And of course I am true to my craft. I read in all genres. I read outside the genres I write. I sought out and received a Master of Fine Arts degree because I wanted to better critically understand why people write certain ways. It’s something I felt I needed to do in order to continue to improve my own craft.

So what does all this have to do with me, you ask?

Instead of an answer, let me ask a few questions. If you’re a writer:

Are you true to your craft? Are you doing things to better yourself and understand the craft of writing?
Do you seek out as many edits as possible? Note that an editor has to have some sort of training. Merely calling oneself an editor isn’t good enough.
If you’ve self-published, did you do it because it was on your own terms, or was it because you were too impatient for the impossibly slow and laborious publication process?
Are you true to yourself? Are you writing what you want?

An ancient Chinese proverb says that there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same. We each have our roads to publication and success. None of us have taken the same path. For some it came quick and easy. For some it came after many trials and tribulations. Some of us found shortcuts. Some of us took the long road. In the end it doesn’t really matter how we got there. What matters is that at the end of the day we can stand back and look at our work and be proud. What matters is that we’ve cultivated a population of readers who desire our work. What matters is that we’ve honored the craft, because at the end of the day, it is the craft we all strive to perfect, and in that striving, we all become a little bit better.

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For those interested in the names of the books mentioned above, here they are: 1 Scarecrow Gods  2 Recalled to Life  3 Track of the Storm  4 Babylon Smiles  5 Velvet Dogma 6 Empire of Salt  7 Blood Ocean  8 Blaze of Glory  9 Multiplex Fandango  10 SEAL Team 666 11 SEAL Team 666: Age of Blood  12 Halfway House  13 Grunt Life