First, a "Leaves" update …

"Leaves Brown"

5,895 / 8,000 (75.0%)

Also, as the requisite horror writer ’round these parts, it is my duty to wish you all a Happy Halloween. Living across the street from a cemetery does something to bolster the image of myself as a scribbler of terrifying tales, but I can tell you that I was actually much more inspired by the building next door than the boneyard across the road. It’s a low-rise apartment house, not much different from the one in which I currently reside … except for the sign out front, that is; the one which bears the words that eventually became the name of the story I will one day write – No Vacancy.

The words themselves are not very strange — especially to those who have ever embarked on the adventure known in some parts as Raiders of the Lost Apartment. But in this instance, they seemed not just unusual, but almost ominous. Although it is customary for an apartment building to have a sign out from on which the superintendent can post signs like 1 Bedroom Available or No Pets Allowed, in the case of the building next door, the words No Vacancy were actually painted on the sign. As if the building had never been vacant at all … and never would be. To me, that was more than a little bit strange. And after awhile, the gears started turning and I began to wonder if the building had a story to tell.

It turns out that it did. And oh boy, it’s going to be a doozy!

• Currently reading: The Diviners, by Margaret Laurence

One of my writer peeps forwarded me an interesting article. It actually focuses on both small-press writing and commercial writing, and the writer expresses many of my own thoughts on the subject, so take a look.

"Small Press Magazines: Should You Bother?"

Just thought I’d drop a short note to let you know of my ongoing progress with the new story.

"Leaves Brown"

4,489 / 8,000 (56.0%)

Hope to finish it by the weekend and send it off early next week, so there probably won’t be many updates over the next few days.

Don’t all cry at once, though.

• Currently reading: The Diviners, by Margaret Laurence

There’s a very interesting and amusing interview with Stephen King in the Weekly Reader.

Nice to see an interviewer asking some intelligent questions for a change instead of the usual where-do-you-get-your-ideas tripe. Some particularly good bits on writing routines, theme, and characterization.

King also answered some questions from a group of kids at a reading. Check it out.

I finally started serious work on my new short story, "Leaves Brown." Hard to say much about it at this point, except that it takes place in Cape Breton and it’s a much more laidback piece than the last few stories I’ve written. The first of my East Coast stories, I guess you could say.

"Leaves Brown"

2,537 / 8,000 (32.0%)

Also, I’ve posted a link a bit further down on the right-hand sidebar, just below the search box, for anyone that wants to subscribe to this site via RSS feed. I don’t know precisely how it works (something to do with XML, apparently), but I hear it’s all the rage today with the kids.

Now I feel twenty-nine.

• Currently reading: The Diviners, by Margaret Laurence

Poppy Z. Brite has a very interesting rant posted on her LiveJournal, spawned by a comment by a reviewer on Amazon.com. I don’t think I’m the sort of person who’ll care what every little soapbox screamer on the Internet says about my work, but I can certainly sympathize in her case.

At the start of her career, Brite established herself as a writer of horror stories. She’s written a number of great tales, one of which, "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood," has been reprinted so many times I bet she can probably recite it by rote. Then she wrote a vampire novel called Lost Souls. The horror fans and goth kids gobbled it up and demanded more. So she wrote Exquisite Corpse and Drawing Blood and more short stories which were collected into the books Are You Loathsome Tonight? and The Devil You Know. Then she decided she didn’t want to write horror anymore, and the fans went berserk. Or rather, the stories she felt like writing after those ones just didn’t happen to be of the horror variety. (Brite has had to clarify many times to her "ex-fans" that she doesn’t hate horror, nor did she turn away from horror; the story ideas that started popping into her head just happened to fall under another genre.)

The problem isn’t that Brite is denying her true writing self or that she is being disloyal to the fans. She doesn’t owe her fans anything, and any fan who thinks that writers are little more than prostitutes with big vocabularies is an ignorant moron. These are the same people who think that because they buy a book that means they deserve the same satisfaction (and often the same plot) from subsequent books. If a person is so worried about being entertained, then maybe they should stick to borrowing them from libraries. Writers don’t owe their fans anything. They should not write what the fans expect them to write or stay in one genre just because it’s what the fans want. Fans might buy the books that are responsible for a writer’s success, but that doesn’t mean they own them, and some fans really, really need to be reminded of that fact.

The problem for Brite is that she started out writing in science fiction/fantasy (horror falling under the fantasy heading), and fans of this particular genre are probably some of the most difficult to please. The flipside is that they are also some of the easiest to please. How does that work? Well, look at all the people who climbed onto their online soapboxes (i.e. blogs) and harangued about the poor quality of George Lucas’s new Star Wars movies. Now, I’m not defending the films, but bear in mind the people that hated those movies are also the same batch who lined up at midnight of opening day to see all three films, and no doubt picked up the DVDs after they came out. These guys like to argue their points of view because they think it means they’re smart, the same way the Trekkies will argue the scientific inaccuracies of Star Trek because they think it makes them look smart, but no matter how much they grouse, these are the same people who are buying the books, the movies, and all of the merchandise. If you want another example, look at the film adaptations of Lord of the Rings. There is a great quote by Peter Jackson on how scared he was to direct those films because he knew that the people who would sing their praises would be the same people to damn them. Yes, these examples refer to films, but the book-readers are part of the same group, I can assure you. Look at Stephen King and his Dark Tower Cycle. Some fans didn’t like the way it ended, which to me is a natural reaction — some are going to like it, and some aren’t. And those that didn’t made sure that everyone on the Internet knew how much they didn’t like it … well, those on the Dark Tower message boards, anyway. Some of these people seem so offended by the ending that o

ne must wonder if they would have preferred it if King had polled his readers before he wrote the book and asked them how it should end. The ending with the most votes would be the one he would write. Fiction by democratic method. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

If you’re going to write books or make movies in the sf/fantasy genre, you need to have thick skin and you really have to take the fans’ opinions with a grain of salt. Opinions matter, to be sure, and I’m not saying they should be ignored outright. But bear in mind that that particular demographic is one of the most volatile and unpredictable, and although they take a kind of obscene pleasure in nitpicking and pointing out errors (again, to make them feel observant and smart), it doesn’t mean they still aren’t fans.

Writers don’t need to justify their fiction. If the reader doesn’t like it, there are plenty of other books out there to read. That’s not an ultimatum or a reason for fans to say Fine, I’ll go read ANOTHER author and buy THEIR books and make THEM famous. But fans can’t expect to keep their favorite authors in boxes like pet snakes. Doing so is how writers end up pumping out the same book over and over again, which, granted, is what some fans seem to want. But most writers aren’t satisfied to be little more than flesh-and-blood Xerox machines. Writers do good work when they are happy, and for most writers, writing the same thing over and over doesn’t make them happy. (Can anyone see Harlan Ellison putting up with that shit?)

Ultimately, I think its best to maintain a bit of distance between the writer and his/her fans. Best for the writing to keep his/her head down and keep writing and let the fans go on their rants. Think of it as giving them something to write about.

Investigators Search for Canadian Lake Monster

And here I am sitting at home writing novels and short stories. Dammit.

Uploaded fifteen new pictures taken over the Thanksgiving weekend – five from Eels Lake and ten from Peterborough.

     

Enjoy!

• Currently reading: The Diviners, by Margaret Laurence