Halloween has arrived, and with it, one of my favorite traditions: All Hallow's Read. And so, dear friends, I give you two stories for your contemplation on this dark and stormy end-of-October day. I read these both in the last couple of weeks, to get into the spirit of things. I offer you the same spirits.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
A Treatice on Speculative Fiction:
Why We Read it and Why We Write it
Morning. Alarm is blaring. I realize that it has been doing so for awhile. Green glowing numbers on the display out of focus. I blink. Shit. I'm late.
Weird dreams. Can't quite place them now but the flavor is still there, like that taste in your mouth before you brush your teeth in the morning. I lurch out of bed and stumble to the kitchen. On the counter is the tea kettle.
"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."
The kettle just looks at me, sitting heavy on its base.
"Some day I'm going to live in a world where that works," I mutter.
Tonight I finished a poem that has been floating around in my head and scrawled in bits across my journals for last few months. (I'm not posting it here so don't ask. If you want to read it, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way -- on a piece of paper I hand to you.)
I think it's good, but it's a poem so really, who can say? It is what it is and the best that I can hope is that it runs up to someone else and sucker-punches them in the gut. Writing poetry is rather like being the proud parent of budding bullies.
Poetry is puke on paper, I think. I'm not saying that I don't like poetry. I love it. I'm just saying that's what it is. Brain puke. Soul puke. This is what I have swirling around inside of me. Here it is. Take it. Allow me to throw it up all over you. Sometimes, in the detritus you find something that you can identify with, that you can latch on to. And sometimes you can't.
So I've been exploring routes to get myself published and found that the venue that I really want doesn't exist. If you want to publish stuff for children, there are outlets for you. If you want to publish Tolkien-style fantasy, King-style horror, or LeGuin-style science fiction, there are outlets for you. If you write poetry or my particular brand of fantasy (no wizards in pointy hats), well. . .
Last year my car was broken into. I lost my backpack (ouch), my iPod (bastards), my writing composition book (rotten, dirty, little thieves), and a small leather book into which I had journaled my life for four years (if I ever catch you stupid, greedy, little @#$#s, you will regret the day you ever saw my car).
The good news is I'm not bitter.
You probably know this story already. I've been whining about it for a year to all my friends/family/pets/random people who will listen. And I suppose that you know me in some sense or you probably wouldn't be here reading this.
