Inhabiting Your Setting

 Actors sometime talk about “inhabiting” a character. As near as I can tell, they mean that they try to get inside the skin of the character and live—at least for a while—as if they are that person. They want to ‘think’ like the character so their actions will come natural.

We writers generally can’t do the same thing because we are writing “many” characters. We can’t inhabit just one or all our characters will sound and act the same. What we can do, however, is inhabit the setting our characters move through. Setting has a powerful influence on character thoughts  & actions. It affects every character.

Take the woods, for example. I grew up in the country and spent a lot of time in the forest. I’ve been there in daytime, in fog, in mornings & evenings, at night. I’ve camped out. Explored. I’ve been cold and shivering there, felt awe and fear. While writing the book Cold in the Light, which was set mostly in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, I took many long walks in the woods at night to try and get back the feel for such wild climes. I was putting my characters through that kind of experience and wanted to feel what they were supposed to be feeling. I think it worked, and parts of that book made me distinctly uncomfortable while writing them.

Anyone can experience the woods, of course. But what if the story setting doesn’t actually exist? Under the Ember Star takes place on the frigid desert world of Kelmer. I’ve never been. So how did I ‘inhabit’ that environment?  First, my wife and I took a trip several years ago to Arizona & New Mexico. Lana is a photographer and took many pictures of barren, desiccated landscapes. We toured a slot canyon that showed the power of water in a desert setting. I spent a lot of time in those places, soaking in the feel. I also read a bunch of books about living in desert environments, such as Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.

Then I did lots of imagination work related to the story. Not just on the storyline. I imagined and worked through scenarios in my head for all kinds of settings in the book. I asked questions like, what if I had been there a few hours before an event in the book took place, or a few hours after? What would the temperature be? How much dust would be in the air? Would there be bugs? Would there be any food?  How would the plants look? I followed these questions up, if needed, by Googling photos and chronicles that might help me.

A writer’s primary job is to get the reader to ‘experience’ what the characters are experiencing. Inhabiting the setting for a story is one way to do that.

-----

-----

A Taleran Language Lesson

When Wraith of Talera is published, sometime this year, I hope, it will contain a fairly extensive glossary of Taleran places, races, mythology, and terms. I've spent many fun hours over the years developing this material. I use it as my guide in writing the stories, but I also just enjoy working on it even if some of it may never see light in the tales themselves. I thought I might post a little preview of the glossary here, focusing on some Taleran vocabulary. Below we have the Taleran words on the left side, with their equivalent meanings in English on the right. This is only a sample of some of the more common terms.

Ahy – Greeting. Basically “hello.”

Dihn – A small coin of little importance.

Dhu – Hundred.

Efrinore – Druid-witch-shaman. A magic woman of the forest. Herbalist.

Gleene – Blade.

Hyr – Half.

Jaikil – Raptor.

Jhesan – Lord (or sometimes Prince).

Jhesana – Lady (or sometimes Princess).

Khi – This is an important concept on Talera. It means, among other things, soul, spirit, psychic energy, charisma.

Khiang – Warrior, in the Nyshphalian tongue.

Khisan – Warlord, one who rules by the Khi.

Kyr – King.

Lehr – Outlaw.

Mercredi – A mercenary who serves as infantry.

Mordai – The name for the 1^st hour of the Taleran day, the hour after midnight when the veil between the living and the dead worlds is said to be thinnest.

Munt – Monkey.

Phoros – Healer or Physician.

Phrer – Priest or monk.

Rhanvin – Fighting slave, gladiator.

Saar – Polite title, like Sir.

Saaress – Polite title for a woman. Madam.

Saysa – Term of endearment, equivalent in English to “baby” or “honey.”

Verdredi – Mounted mercenary.

---

---

The Dark and Stormy Night Effect

Everyone knows the phrase: "It was a dark and stormy night." Those of us who are writers often get a little chuckle out of it. But that chuckle doesn't mean there isn't something important happening in the background here. 

What this cliche phrase tells us is that the environment in which characters move is, in most cases, at least as important as the characters themselves and the actions they take. In my first novel, Cold in the Light, for example, much of the action takes place at night and in the woods. The villains in that story are at home in the dark woods. The heroes are mostly city folk, and like all humans they are at least a little bit afraid of the dark.

Pitting the characters against harsh nature raises the stakes for those characters, and ups the suspense that a writer can wring out of a scene. It's a very effective way of adding depth to a story. I personally love to read these kinds of stories, where the characters must face not only other humans or wild beasts, but such forces as brutal cold, desiccated landscapes, mountains and wild seas, rain and wind. These kinds of settings tend to engage me in ways no amount of dialogue between two people sitting in a parlor somewhere ever could.  

Jack London was a master at using harsh nature in his tales. One of  his most memorable is available online. "To Build a Fire" is a virtual lesson in how to pit a character against nature. I highly recommend it. 
---

Also, one of our own, Randy Johnson, has gone into the hospital. I haven't been able to find out how he is doing but I urge everyone to keep him in your thoughts. 
----
-----

Talk Scheduled on January 25

On Saturday, January 25^th, I’ll be giving a presentation on generating suspense in fiction at the Biloxi Library from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. This is the branch at 587 Howard Ave., Biloxi, MS, 39530. The phone number I have listed for them is 228 436-3095. My talk is being sponsored by the Gulf Coast Writers Association but is free and open to the public. If you’re interested, here is the GCWA’s website and facebook page.

Suspense is what keeps readers turning the pages. At the simplest level, it is about wanting to know what happens next. I’ll be talking primarily about dark suspense, which is the kind you find in thrillers, mysteries, and horror fiction, but most of the elements I’ll discuss will have relevance to any kind of suspense, including romantic and comedic.

If you’re going to be in that area on January 25, I’d love to see you.

----

----

School Almost in Session

Faculty meetings yesterday. That makes for an official first day of school for us teachers. Today and tomorrow mark registration and classes start next week. I had a busy morning with registration but the afternoon has been slower so I have a few moments to blog.

I'm waiting on final word about a big project I will need to get started on, but in the meantime I'm working on "Gods of Talera" and having fun. I managed 1000 words yesterday, and wrote most of them while in a faculty meeting. Good to kill two birds with one stone.

Blogging will be more hit and miss now that we are back in school. Just depends on how much work I have piled up in the mornings. I've got to carve out more writing time from my schedule too so that may slow down blog production.

I'll be teaching the Writing in Psychology class again this semester. I have 17 enrolled so far. I'll be posting some blog posts related to that class and how it is going. Last time I taught it I did not end up happy. I was working very hard but several students complained at the end of the semester and I felt like I was doing more work than they were for their grades. It's been about half a hear since I taught it, though, so maybe this time around will be better.

----
----

Dreams of Talera

Although I have some big projects coming up soon that will prevent me from finishing Gods of Talera, the sequel to Wraith of Talera, I've begun doing some writing on it until I know exactly what those other projects will entail. I've only done the first couple of chapters on "Gods" but last night had a dream about Talera that essentially gave me the ending to the book. A very nice twist that I don't think anyone will see coming. Jotted it down and now I have to write toward it. Thank you unconscious!

In other news, faculty return to school at Xavier tomorrow. I don't know how the Christmas break got over so fast. I got some writing done, and a lot of reading, so it wasn't unproductive. I finally got to see my son, Joshua, yesterday. He'd planned on coming up earlier but got the flu. We went out for Sushi, and Lana accompanied us. Then had peameal bacon and eggs for supper.

With school starting up, I'll be blogging today but probably not tomorrow. We'll see how much work is piled up Thursday and Friday to see whether I have a chance to blog or not.

-----
-----

First Blog of 2014

Only a few more days of break and then back to school on January 8. I’m already working on syllabi, of course, and hope to have them done by the end of the day. Since I no longer allow myself to be overwhelmed with social obligations during the holidays, I tend to be able to relax and do a lot of reading. I finished a number of books, which I have dutifully reviewed on Goodreads.

Two surprises came for me at the end of the year. I made two end-of-the-year lists. I think it may be the first time it’s ever happened to me. And both were lists of ‘good’ things. I know that’s never happened to me. So, for the first blog of the new year, I’m gonna put up a couple of links.

First, over at Adventures Fantastic, Keith West put up a blog entitled “2013: An Assessment.”  How neat it was to see my name about halfway down, and the mention of my 2013 titles “The Machineries of Mars” and “Under the Ember Star.”  Thanks, Keith! Glad you liked ‘em.

Second, on Wednesday, Sandra Seamans posted her “Top Ten Story Picks for 2013” on her blog, and “Eye Spy” by this Charles Gramlich guy popped up.  Wow, that was published way back early on in 2013 and I’d almost forgotten about it. Cool to see that someone remembered it. Thanks, Sandra!

And now, time to run some errands before I get to work on my syllabi. Maybe I’ll grab a burger while I’m out. Hope you are all enjoying a great 2014 so far. 

-----

-----

Last Blog of 2013

Like some novels I’ve read, 2013 started out pretty good, sagged seriously in the middle, then picked up toward the end. Not the greatest year but still better in almost all ways than the years 2010 through 2012, each of which saw major family losses and serious illnesses strike. I’m glad at least the trend for health issues was up.

School was school. No great victories. No great tragedies. I’m glad for that. I do like things on an even keel. Personally, Lana and I continue to be very happy together, although Lana did have some serious back issues for several months that caused us great concern. The worst of that seems to have passed.

In writing, I mentioned before that I wrote about 80,000 professional words, which I’m confident was up from the years 2010-2012. The best thing was the completion of the fourth book in the Talera series, which should be out in 2014. I did not have any books published through Borgo/ Wildside in 2013 and much of that was because I’d decided to focus on some long term projects and some personal self-publishing concepts I had.

In early 2013 I put up the three volumes of the FictionTechniques series, “Creating Suspense,” “Characters Wanted,” and “The Twist Ending.” These actually sold pretty well, although I have not gotten many reviews on them. They also helped earn me a couple of speaking engagements, which is nice.

In the spring I put up MicroWeird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. Despite garnering 4 five star reviews, it did not sell well and ultimately has been my slowest seller of any self-published title. In the fall, though, I put up The Machineries of Mars, which also gained 4 five star reviews but which has far outsold “Micro Weird.” It’s been my best seller since Harvest of War.

The only other publishing related thing I did was putting the Louisiana Inklings anthology into print. I was glad to learn how to do this and may start doing print editions of some of my other self-published work in the days to come.

All in all, a pretty good year that reversed the trends I’d been experiencing in the three years previously. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going into 2014. And let’s hope that all of us here in the blogosphere have a great 2014 with lots of success. 

---

---

2013 Word Count

For the first time ever, I kept records of how many words I wrote professionally this year. This is not counting blog materials, facebook writings, journal materials, or school related writing (unless it was for publication). I had hoped for at least 100,000 but I fell well short of that. The total came out to be right around 80,000. These 80,000 fall into three major categories: 1) those already published or scheduled for publication, at about 65,000, 2) those which mark progress on long-term projects that are probably a year or more at least away from competition but which I think likely to be published, at about 12,000, and 3) miscellaneous poetry and pieces of stories that may or may not ever be completed or published, at about 1400.

I also realized, however, that a simple word count does not constitute a very good measure of my writing productive for the year. For example, I had an older nonfiction project I worked on where I only added 558 total words. However, this also involved extensive editing on the material that was there, which meant cutting out lots of stuff that was there before. I worked pretty steadily on this project for a couple of months and also did lots of reading for it. The 558 added to my count scarcely touches how much work I put in on this project. There are several projects like this that I’m busy with.

So, all in all, I’m not totally unhappy with my productivity. Quite a bit better than last year I’m sure, even though I didn’t keep a word count in 2012. I don’t know whether I will keep up my counting next year. It seems like a relative waste of time for me since I have many small projects to keep word counts for. If it were just novels it would be a lot easier and less time consuming. It was an interesting experiment, though.

----

----

Books that have Stayed with Me, Part 3

Here's the last installment of Books that have Stayed with Me:

9. Never Cry Wolf, by Farley Mowat. I was assigned to read this book in my college biology class and I still remember how irritated I was at the assignment. I read constantly, and always had a TBR pile ready to go. I didn’t want to have to read what someone else thought was good for me. I remember griping and growling about it until I set down with the book and started. Within moments I was laughing uproariously and totally engrossed. I later picked up and read almost everything Mowat has written. This particular tale is about Mowat’s study of Wolves in Canada, but it is nowhere near as dry as that description suggests.

10. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen. Never Cry Wolf got me into reading stories of nature and this is another such tale. But it’s also much more. It’s the story of Matthiessen’s journey into the Himalayas to find the elusive Snow Leopard, but it’s also a spiritual journey and offers great insights into the human condition.  It also has some of the most incredible writing I’ve ever seen. When I want beautiful prose that resonates through me, I often go to this book.

11. Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin. This is also generally considered a classic and had I read it as a youngster I would probably not have liked it. However, since it deals with gay characters I would never have found this book in any high school curriculum in Arkansas in those days. I read the book in my thirties, after having already read and enjoyed a number of other Baldwin books such as The Fire Next Time and Go Tell it on the Mountain. The story is about an American Gay man living in Paris and about his relationship with Giovanni, an Italian fellow. I didn’t continue reading this for the adventure. It’s a character study and has great humanity.  It’s also impressive to me that Baldwin, an urban African American man, could write so well about white characters in France. Of course, Baldwin was gay and had lived in France for many years, but still I found this work well worth my study as a writer.

12. House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday. This book opens with gorgeous prose and is a very fine character study as well. I still pick it up from time to time for the prose. It was also memorable to me as an introduction to a Native American character with depth and a kind of humanity that I did not get from most of the reading of western genre fiction earlier in my life.

---

----

Books that have Stayed with Me, Part 2

Here are the next four books on my list of twelve that have stayed with me. One more part to go.

5. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. I could fill up half my list with Bradbury’s work but I’ll limit myself to this one. Chronicles is another collection of short stories that are loosely connected to each other around the theme of colonizing Mars. Bradbury was the master of melancholy. No one else does the haunting beauty of loneliness as well; no one else writes “sad” so wonderfully.

6. Murder in the Wind, by John D. MacDonald. I said I love the archetypal characters created by writers such as REH and ERB, but to me, no one has ever created more ‘realistic’ characters than John D. MacDonald. JDM was outstanding at putting real people on the page, and he told compelling stories about them too. This book has a number of characters thrown together during a hurricane. The interactions are a lesson in how to do characters.

7. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. In high school, I had to read such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, and The Metamorphosis. To this day, I still think Silas Marner and The Metamorphosis are two of the worst books ever written in the English language. At least for our modern times. The Grapes of Wrath is actually worthwhile but is way too long for required high school reading. After being forced to read this material in high school, I came to the conclusion that I generally hated the classics, and to this day I struggle to get myself to read such material. Had I not already been in love with reading, High School English class would have destroyed it for me. But all this could have been avoided if they’d just let us read The Old Man and the Sea. It’s short, vivid, full of adventure, full of characters of depth, and introduced me at least to a culture I knew nothing about but found interesting. It was this book, read when I was in my late twenties, that restored my interest in the classics. Most of the classics I’ve read since then wouldn’t have gotten read without this book coming first.

8.  Northwest Smith, by C. L. Moore. I had no idea when I first read these stories that C. L. Moore was a woman. Nor would I have cared. Anyone who can write stories like this will get my attention. Smith is also an archetypal character, but there is far more vulnerability in him than in most of the characters created by REH and ERB. Having something of a melancholy personality anyway, these tales resonated strongly with me. As I grew older and began my own writing, I also wanted to create such characters. They should be bigger than life, but also have that vulnerability as well. 

-----

-----

Books that have Stayed with Me, Part 1

Recently, a meme went around facebook asking people to quickly list ten books that have stayed with them over time. My first thought was, only ten books? How could I possibly do that. Many hundreds of books have stayed with me. However, the guidelines also said not to give it a lot of thought so I just jotted down ten. But, as I usually do when it comes to books, I wanted more, and I wanted to say why certain books have stayed with me. On my blog then, I decided to give an expanded version of my list. And I pushed it to twelve. It might take me a couple of blog posts to get through this, but here, in no particular order, are some of those books.

1. A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is perhaps the purest “story” I’ve ever read. ERB didn’t waste time justifying things or explaining ‘how’ things happened. He pitched you headlong into adventure and let you sink or swim. I learned to swim, and to this day I find this kind of sword and planet adventure to be my most enjoyable reading experience. Not to mention that this book is a primary influence on much of my writing, particularly the Talera series.

2. To Tame a Land, by Louis L’Amour. Another pure story. This time a western. A youth and his father are crossing the plains with a wagon train when their wagon breaks down. The rest of the train rolls on past, leaving them behind. From this premise, a series of adventures take our youthful character into adulthood. All the boring parts are left out. Ryan Tyler, the character from this book, is my favorite fictional gunfighter.

3. The Sowers of the Thunder, by Robert E. Howard. This is a collection of four short stories by REH, “The Lion of Tiberias,” “The Sowers of the Thunder,” “Lord of Samarcand,” and “The Shadow of the Vulture,” all set against the backdrop of the crusades. I love a good story but I also love good writing. This collection has some simply beautiful poetic writing that ignites my imagination every time I pick it up. In addition, I’m also a fan of archetypal characters and Howard’s crusader tales are the perfect trifecta, from Red Sonya to John Norwald, these characters are bigger than life and cannot be forgotten.

4. Teot’s War, by Heather Gladney. Gladney’s tale is also a fine story, but the writing here is simply exquisite. I often pick this book up just to read her prose. Few stories have so put me “into” a world as this one.

---

--- 

Deep Thoughts on the John

I’m reading The Power of Myth, an extensive interview with Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. It’s currently my bathroom reading, meaning it’s handy for those daily sit down situations that come with being human. In this morning’s reading, it became clear that Campbell believes that religious books such as the Bible were understood by ancient peoples to be intended as allegory rather than as fact. In other words, to Campbell, these ancient folks were wiser than many people alive today.

That the Bible and other ancient religious texts should be read as allegory and metaphor certainly seems clear to me. And even the most ardent literalists of today do read sections of the Bible in that way. Consider. “You are the salt of the earth,” from Matthew 5:13. Doesn’t everyone read this as metaphor? From this, you may take that I consider an absolutely literal reading of the Bible to be a mistake. It can’t be taken that way.

On the other hand, were ancient peoples wiser than many folks today? Somewhere buried in history are the folks who “first” told these stories. I have always imagined that they knew the tales were not literally true, but they believed them to be symbolically or spiritually true. I cannot rule out two other possibilities, though. First, they may not have believed the stories to be true in any sense, but were only making them up for entertainment value. I’m sure that humans have been telling ‘whoppers’ ever since our race started. However, I’m personally skeptical of this scenario. Second, it’s also possible that the people who first told these tales had hallucinatory or dream experiences that convinced them the stories were literally true. I think this is more likely than the former possibility.  

But what about the people who first “heard” these stories? Did they think the tales were to be understood as allegories, or did they think they were fact? My personal opinion generally disagrees with Campbell, although neither of us has proof of our speculations. I imagine that there were three types of folks in that first audience for these tales. First, there were those who took the tales as literal truth, perhaps given to them by an authority, or because they jibed with what these folks already were thinking to be true. Second, I also suspect that other members of that original audience didn’t buy the tales as literal at all but felt them to have a resonance and deeper meaning. Third, there were probably those who didn’t believe a word they were hearing but didn’t say anything because of the social pressure of those around them. 

In other words, I suspect that first audience was pretty much the same as modern audiences, although the percentages of the three groups may have changed over time. This has been, Deep Thoughts on the John, with Charles Gramlich.

----

----

Drear Sky

Drear sky. Wet Earth.

A cold drizzle falls like nails.

The daylight is grey;

The green of the grass is heavy and dull.

Yet there is mystery here.

Goldfinches and chickadees flit in their hundreds

in and out of our bird feeders.

Doves bob for seeds

around the last shards of an old stump.

Cardinals and Blue Jays splash color

through the dark boles of oaks, pines, magnolia.

There is mystery everywhere here.

Leaves rattle downward through air,

stirred by a wind flying over

the quiet cup of our backyard.

Squirrels send up sentinel calls.

They sound like gossip to me.

They sound like mystery.

Dimly I become aware of another sound,

a susurration that is like breathing.

I think it a medley of moving wings,

crackling seeds, scraping claws, clicking beaks,

all set against a backdrop of water

sighing down trees.

The mystery taunts me.

There is meaning in all this.

Though I cannot fathom it.

-----

-----

Narrative Drive

I was reading a bit of literary fiction just recently. It was well written. The characters were interesting. The scene setting was quite good. It was a leisurely read, meaning that I felt in no urgency to get to the next paragraph or page. When I did reach the end I found, no ending. It just stopped. In fact, it stopped at a point where I thought something dramatic was finally going to happen. I just shook my head, put that one down, and picked up Rick Cantelli, P.I., by Bernard Lee Deleo. Our intrepid P.I. is kicking back on the beach with a couple of lady friends when here come three gangsters, including the brother of one he'd just recently killed. "Uh Oh," I thought, and was instantly eagerly reading forward to see what happened next.
The contrast between the two tales was dramatic to me.

The literary fiction was fine. There was nothing wrong with it. It felt a bit like looking out a window and studying the scene there. Sometimes I like looking out the window. On the other hand, the DeLeo tale has the elements of a good "story."  In a story, something happens, then something else happens, and so on, and the things that happen are connected to each other, and they affect characters that you've come to know and love, or, more rarely, hate.

A story involves "narrative drive." At least, a good one does, a compelling one. Narrative drive is about the giving and witholding of information. You give the reader enough information to understand "what" is happening, but you withhold plenty of the "why" information. The "why" information is only slowly revealed, and only at the last possible second that it must be revealed. And, almost every time you reveal some "why" information, it ends up raising still other "whys." It is the need to figure out the answer to the next "why" that creates narrative drive, and this is what keeps the reader glued to the story.

There's no particular reason why literary style fiction can't have narrative drive, and sometimes it does. Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" has it. So does "The Old Man and the Sea." A lot of literary fiction doesn't though, and when I'm looking for something to read it's almost always narrative drive that I'm looking for. I want to get lost in the story to the point where I no longer know I'm reading a story. Most literary fiction simply doesn't do this for me, and most of it is not supposed to. Doesn't make it bad. But for that reason, it's never going to be as important to me as a rollicking good story.
-----
-----

On the Writing Front

It’s been a busy school year and I haven’t gotten as much writing done as I’d hoped. That is often the case, however, so is nothing new. I managed to finish a sword and sorcery story over Thanksgiving for a project that I’m sworn to secrecy on. It’s going through my writing group for feedback now.

I was badly knocked for a loop by Robert Reginald’s death. I still think about him every day. I’ve been quite busy, though, which has helped me. I did get some positive news. I’d sent Rob the fourth Talera novel before his death. Everything was pretty much up in the air over that but it now looks like the book, called Wraith of Talera, will be published in 2014. I’m actually looking over the galleys now, although this is also the last week of classes, to be followed by final exams, so I’m being pulled in many directions.

Also, “The Machineries of Mars” did better than I’d feared it would. Not as good as I’d hoped, but you gotta grab the positives where you can. I’d actually made a kind of deal with myself, that if “Machineries” didn’t sell better than “Micro Weird” did I’d just hang it up. Good thing, perhaps, I didn’t have to be tested on that commitment. I don’t know if I could really “quit” anymore anyway. I’ve just been banging my head against writing for too long.

Speaking of “The Machineries of Mars,” I picked up a nice review by Keith West over at the Amazing Stories Blog. Keith also reviewed Tom Doolan’s “The Pirates of Themos.” Both of these stories are tied in to the concept of the Lost Empire of Sol. The review is here if you want to check it out.

There is also a review of "Machineries" over at James Reasoner's blog. Thanks much to him for the kind words.

Now to get the last bits of the school semester dealt with and have some time for writing over the Christmas break. That time is already spoken for with a nonfiction project I need to complete. But maybe I can work in some fiction as well.

-----

-----

MAKING NEW STORIES TODAY

Michael Burgess

Michael Burgess has died.  He was just sixty-five. I usually called him Rob, because Robert Reginald was the professional name that he did most of his writing and editing work under. I never met him in person but I talked to him occasionally on the phone and corresponded with him for years through email. I knew he’d had health problems as a consequence of a bad heart attack about ten years ago, but his energy was always so palpable that it came as a complete shock to me to find out he had passed on November 20. I had an email from him a week or so before saying he’d just gotten out of the hospital and was feeling pretty weak, but that he was glad to be home. I never for a moment thought that would be the last email I ever saw from him.   

I was introduced to Rob by a mutual friend, Charles Nuetzel. Rob was editor and publisher of Borgo Press, which later became an imprint of Wildside Press. I wrote him about my Talera series of novels and he asked to see them. He accepted all three and that was the beginning of my working relationship with Rob. He went on to edit three collections of my short stories, a couple of my nonfiction books, and the Wildside Double that I was very proud of, having grown up reading the old Ace Doubles. A couple of years ago, when Rob was revisiting the Talera series to put them in ebook and audiobook format, he wrote to tell me that he’d almost forgotten how good they were and that I should write more. That compliment really meant a lot to me and I did indeed write another Talera book. I sent it to him at the end of this past summer, and though he acknowledged receiving it I don’t know if he ever got a chance to actually read it. I like to think he did, and that he enjoyed it.

Rob was a professional editor and always freely expressed his thoughts, comments and suggestions on my work, but he was also an incredibly warm individual who was easy to approach and open to discussion. He always took into account my thoughts and hopes for the stuff I sent him. He was certainly the kindest and most supportive editor I’ve ever met. I will miss bouncing ideas off him and knowing he’d give them an honest but caring appraisal.

A second way that I knew Rob was through his own writing. He wrote mysteries, pulp noir, science fiction, and nonfiction with equal ease. I was a particular fan of his science fiction, which was very much classical SF in tone and content. That is, he took interesting ideas and melded them with action and wit for a fun and thoughtful read. I’m lucky that I still have several of his novels yet to read. Each one will be especially meaningful to me now.

The picture I put up of Rob comes from the webpage of Bobbitt Memorial Chapel, where the services are to be held for him. I imagine it was provided by Rob’s family. The link is here if you would like to visit. There is also an obituary of him up at Locus Online.

One of the good things about the age we live in is that we can become friends, good friends, with people we have never met face to face. I consider Michael Burgess (Rob) a friend. I’m very sad today that he is gone, but very happy that I got a chance to know him.

----

----

The Right to Bear Arms

Nowadays, many folks are afraid to give their kids toy guns to play with. They don’t want to encourage violence. But I’m not a violent guy and playing with toy guns was half my childhood. Of course, I didn’t have many ‘actual’ toy guns. I had pretend toy guns. Other than a cap revolver that was part of a cowboy outfit, the only toy guns I had were ones I either found or made myself from items around the farm. I had a piece of fence post that looked a little like a tommy gun, and a long, straight piece of limb from a Chinaberry tree that I used to represent a musket like Dan’l Boone used to carry. Sometimes I used a pocket knife to improve these pieces’ resemblance to actual weapons.

I even had a kind of armory for all my weapons set up in one of our barns, and I’d go and pick out whichever one was most suited to the type of game I was about to play. My nephews, Terry and John, who were six and seven years younger than me respectively, knew where my armory was but I didn’t often let them play with my “guns.” And then only if I knew about it. I’m sure I was just trying to protect them from growing up to be outlaws.

Apparently, however, Terry didn’t care much for my selfishness. One day I couldn’t find my Chinaberry musket in the armory and began searching all over for it. I finally discovered it broken and lying nearly under the wheel of an old wagon that we had on the farm. I couldn’t figure out how the gun had gotten to its new location, or how the wagon wheel had broken it since this wagon had four flat tires and hadn’t moved in years.

I confronted Terry and John about the broken weapon and found out that Terry had borrowed the gun, broken it, then put it under the wagon wheel in hopes I’d buy the fiction that the wheel had run over it and done the damage. I don’t believe he had thought the whole thing through. 

-----

-----

Writing as Play

Years ago when I first started writing I read something that stayed with me. A well known writer—I no longer remember who—said you shouldn’t tell other people about your stories because if you talked them all out you’d never write them. I certainly followed that advice as I began my career.

As time went on, though, I began to hear about “plotters,” those writers who meticulously plan out stories and novels before they put the first word on screen. That seemed to me to be much the same as “talking a story out.” I didn’t think I’d like it and I just didn’t do it. I often commented on the issue with, “that would take all the fun out of it.” So, I continued my life as a “pantser,” a writer who prefers to discover what is going to happen in his or her story as they write it.

To be completely clear, however, I’m not 100 percent a pantser. I don’t commit to a novel, for example, until I know about where it’s going to end. I often have a good ending in mind even for short stories, although such endings are more likely to change as the tale weaves on. In novels, I will generally know some trends and some high points in the book well before I begin writing those sections. But I don’t meticulously plan and outline and I always leave lots of room for ‘discovery’ as the tale unfolds.

As more time passed, however, I discovered that—many times, but not always—plotters got bigger contracts and made more sales than pantsers. I also discovered that plotters often spoke of writing two or three thousand words a day (or more), and sometimes of writing 1000 words in an hour. I was flabbergasted. I generally averaged about 250 an hour and seldom made more than a thousand in a good writing day. Finally, one plotter told me they could write so fast because they knew exactly what they were going to write when they sat down. They knew what the scene was about, where it was going and what was going to happen.

An epiphany! The scales fell from my eyes. I suppose I should have easily realized this but I’d not actually made the connection between writing speed and complete scene knowledge. Maybe this was the secret to producing more, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

So, a few days ago, I set down to play the plotter role. I’d already written an opening scene for a story in my usual way, but decided now to carefully plot out the rest. By the end of an hour or so, I knew every plot turn and twist in the tale. I knew all the characters and had the setting firmly in mind. I began to write. The words flowed swiftly—500, 800, 1000, 1250. In less than two hours. I was pleased.

Then came day 2. I found myself not very eager to get back to the story. It took quite a bit of motivation to do so, but I got started. 500 words, 600. I began to slow down, paused to check email, 700, paused to watch a sit-com, 800, 850, stopped. Still, a respectable showing, and I’d been working on the tale less than an hour.

Day 3. Again, very tough to get myself motivated. I waited until an hour before bed but I knew I could do a good amount in an hour. I rolled to 400 very quick but then started looking for breaks. I fought that urge, made it to 800 in about 30 minutes and quit for the night.  And I realized one important thing. I was bored as hell with the story. I’d enjoyed the ideas during the plotting phase. I thought the story had a good concept and could have some very nice elements of suspense. But I was not enjoying the writing at all. It felt like paint by the numbers to me.

I’m going to finish the story, read through it again, and see if it is worth anything. Not having done this before, maybe it will be just fine. I can’t tell until I see the finished product. But one thing I know.  For me, writing is very much a form of play. And when I know precisely how a game is going to turn out, I don’t enjoy it nearly as much.

 ---

----