Once upon a time in America, people (mostly men) could take an afternoon or even a full day off from work with only the declaration (usually scrawled on a strategically placed note) ‘Gone Fishing!’ I don’t know anyone who’s ever ‘Gone Fishing!’ on impulse, dusty Stuckee’s merchandise and Cracker Barrel t-shirts to the contrary.
I missed my Friday post. Consider this my ‘Gone Fishing’ sign, scrawled in magic marker and stuck to the door of this web site.
(Be back on Monday.)
I don’t suspect anyone would argue with the notion that one role of imaginative fiction is to provide readers with an opportunity to escape the everyday. Professors might sniff at escapist fiction, but there is good and not-so-good escapist stuff. The good stuff…
J.R.R. Tolkien famously crafted his own languages and myths. His chum C.S. Lewis cobbled together Narnia out of bits borrowed from hither, thither, and Christianity. Narnia fascinated me as a child but lost my interest long before Middle-Earth. I attribute that in part to more vividly drawn characters (with Eustace the principal exception in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.) Tolkien also offered a more disturbing villain and heroes without access to a (lionesque) deus ex machina.
He also offered a haunting vision of a utopia under threat. I’m not sure it’s fair to say good imaginative fiction is to required to present a vision of a world we think superior to our own. But that notion has never been far from my mind all these years I’ve been thinking about the world of Northern Arcadia.
Until the end of April, Netflix will offer subscribers an opportunity to instantly download and watch the 1970 film version of the Dunwich Horror. It’s goofy, and mildly amusing in a campy seventies way, but it has little to do with the original story from which it derives its name. I find that to be unfortunate.
H.P. Lovecraft is a uniquely American author, with a flair for horrifying imaginative fiction. His portrayal of early New England society excited my interest as a kid growing up in Rhode Island. The imaginative power of his cosmology excites my interest and admiration as a grown-up type writer.
You wouldn’t guess from his legacy, but in his lifetime Lovecraft was not a great commercial success.
The complexion of the world is as troubled as I can remember. Here in the US, the people are divided into two badly drawn groups. A large number of our elected officials are too craven and corrupt to support any legislation that threatens the revenue streams of our corporate overlords. I ask myself:
Shouldn’t I be doing something more important than writing books about made-up people in a make-believe world?
A couple of questions bubble up as I try to figure an answer. First, what do I mean by important? Second, what purpose do books of fiction serve, if any? Is my stubborn quest for publication a purely selfish enterprise (or just mostly selfish)?
The first question daunts me with its scope. The third is too easy to bother answering. But the second question? A provisional answer for that will be forthcoming in short order.
I mentioned in a previous post that one of my goals when doing a first-pass round of edits is to focus on appeals to all five senses. Done properly, the effect for the reader should be to make the story more pungent, vivid, and easier to imagine. I score two more benefits, though. I’m obliged to imagine the scene in fine detail in my own mind, and I’m also forced to confront some of the very different ways in which other people see the world.
For many people, I think meals are the (fanciful metaphor alert) hinges of the day, closing one segment of the day and swinging open another. Morning doesn’t begin without breakfast, lunch is a breath before the afternoon’s labor, and dinner heralds the calm before a night’s sleep. Food is a visceral pleasure. Food provides common ground for good conversation, and good food translates into better health.
None of that resonates with me. If I could pop a pill in the morning and have all my nutritional requirements met? I’d be content. I’m a rarity (not to say an oddity.) If I want to write fiction that appeals to people who aren’t like me, I think I’m obliged to see the world from different angles.
Or maybe that should be ‘I’m obliged to sample the different flavors of the world’?
This morning brought my second rejection letter from a possible agent. My spirits sank when I scanned the boilerplate. The potential for Abigail Moore and Northern Arcadia seems so obvious to me. The speed and ease with which the second Northern Arcadia novel, HEIST, is coming together, tells me this is a viable endeavor, one I could cheerfully extend and elaborate for years to come.
One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to communicate my vision for Northern Arcadia in a way that people in the publishing industry find inspirational. Hell. Maybe it’ll even be today.
After writing the first draft of a new novel (THIEF of the colonies) I’ve turned back to the task of selling the previous novel, WITCH of the colonies. I’ve opted to avoid snail mail this time around for my query letters, and focus upon agencies who accept ‘electronic submissions.’
I uncovered an initial list of agencies (and other free resources) at the Poets & Writers site. Nice site. I also forked over a subscription free to a site that featured the names of 44 agencies representing speculative fiction. I didn’t realize until after sign up only 6 or so of those 44 entries had been updated in the past two years. Just goes to show that online, even an old digital kung fu champion like myself can get duped.
My next stop for names is PublishersMarketplace.com. I won’t let rejection slow me down. I received my very first formal rejection letter for WITCH… the other day. I won’t kid you, the dismissal stung. But the email oddly also gave me heart. Somewhere, someone had been sufficiently moved by my words to take the time to write a brief, courteous note. Maybe next time I get a response they’ll want to see a sample of the WITCH manuscript. And maybe after I share the manuscript a few times, I’ll get an offer.
For now, all I can do is set my lines, as many as I can, and wait.
You’re wondering why I’ve been so quiet? I blame that darn question: ‘is the manuscript as good as you can make it?”
My sister reviewed the latest draft and was excited by what she read. She was also generous enough to offer up some blunt observations and pose some provocative questions. January I spent working up the plot and doing research for HEIST, the next installment in the Northern Arcadia series. February and March were dedicated to revisions and fixes, but as March comes to a close I’m hoping to shift my attention back to getting WITCH sold.
I’m not promising daily updates, but you’ll be hearing more from me, more often.
Kotaku.com reports in on the financial success of Skyrim, the fifth Elder Scrolls game:
The press release says that they expect that the game will generate more than $450 million in global retail sales at launch. They also tell us they shipped seven million copies worldwide. Also, and stay with me here, half of the game’s “launch units” were sold in the first 48 hours and the studio says it is swamped for large reorders.
Story, setting, history, factions, characters and critters… Northern Arcadia has them all. Now, if I could just convince people to start emigrating…