Key to the DaVinci Code

The case against Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, brought by Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, has gone to trial in London. Leigh and Baigent cowrote a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, published in 1982, which they say Dan Brown stole from to write his bestselling book.

Whether or not their case has merit is for the courts to decide. But I do have an opinion about The Da Vinci Code. I've read both books. I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail first. Which in large part explains my extreme dislike for The Da Vinci Code.

Nearly every plot twist and informational cliffhanger that has made The Da Vinci Code such a thrilling book to read for so many was for me a source of frustration and anger, as I already knew what was going to happen and what was yet to be revealed, because I had already read Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

I don't know whether it can be legally be proven that Dan Brown stole from Baigent and Leigh, but for all practical purposes, he did. He wrote a fictional story based on their quasi-historical research.

And as much as I disliked The Da Vinci Code, fictional stories based on another person's historical research is how historical fiction gets written. Without it, there would be no Autobiography of Mrs. Jane Pittman, no Amadeus, no Name of the Rose, no Braveheart. Writers of historical fiction depend on the work of historians to be able to tell their stories.

My story, "Long Pilgrimage Home" (published in Paradox magazine), would have been impossible without a variety of history books, including a wonderful book on Templar history called Dungeon, Fire and Sword by John J. Robinson. My interest in the Templars was kindled by... you guessed it - Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

I dislike the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. I think Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a better book by far - they tell a more interesting story without all the asinine cliffhangers and three page chapters and two-dimensional caricatures. I think Dan Brown went too far in his borrowing of their research. His book is lazy and uninspired and written by template and filled with literary cheats and cheap tricks. And it's selling millions of copies, so go figure.

But I can't agree with this lawsuit. It's wrong. Baigent and Leigh should get over it and be happy with all the extra copies of their books that would never have sold were it not for the popularity of The Da Vinci Code.

Medic!

Three rejections on one day! Oh, agony agony agony agony agony!

But there is a thin silver lining. One of the rejections came with a note saying the editors want to see more stories from me. And that their current acceptance rate is around 4%. So that's something.

As soon as I know what it is, I'll let you know.

The moral of the story is - when you send out a bunch of stories on the same day, your rejections tend to come back in bundles as well. So if one rejection sends you careening down Depression Alley with the lights off and no brakes, you might want to consider spacing your stories out.

By the way, the Christian publishing ads that have been appearing down there on the right side of the page are curious. It seems that if a blog post says something like "God wants us to be happy," even if that is in reference to drinking beer, the Google computers in their infinite wisdom think you must be into Christian Revenge Fantasy like the Left Behind novels.

Don't Drink the Water

Dasani is filtered through a state-of-the-art purification system and enhanced with minerals for a pure clean taste that can't be beat.

Just make sure you drink it before the brown shit starts to grow.

We found this bottle at the back of the fridge in the breakroom at work. It has a date of Nov0606 on it. As you can see, it is the color of muddy water and has all sorts of interesting things floating around inside it.

And it has never been opened.

http://www.makeyourmouthwater.com/

Brother, Can You Spare a Click?

It is my intention to make Southern Gothic Online a professionally paying market for fiction and poetry by January 2007. But to make this happen, I need your help.

First and foremost, you can make a tax-deductible donation by visiting the site and clicking the Paypal link at the top of the page, or by writing to me. Second, you can help by clicking the Google Ad links that you find on the site. Each click averages about 16 cents in revenue for the magazine. Third, you can tell you friends and professional relations about Southern Gothic. The more people who visit, the more who click those links, the closer we get to our goal. And while they're there, they can take a gander at some of the best fiction and poetry around.

Our goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of this year. On average, only one visitor in 38 takes the time to click on one of those ads, so you can see how long this is going to take without your participation.

Why $10K? Because I am applying for an NEA grant, and NEA grants only go to those able to raise matching funds. Since the smallest grant they'll seriously consider is $10K, we need to raise $10K or be disqualified from consideration.

So far this year, we're a little short of this goal - $9966.79 short. If 30 visitors a day click on three links per visit, we'll be halfway there. If just one visitor per day were to donate just $15, that would take us the rest of the way.

What can we do with $20,000? A hell of a lot. With $10,000 in revenue and a $10K grant from the NEA, we could publish 400,000 words at a professional rate of 5 cents per word. That's two 2,500 word stories a week, every week, for a whole year. And no, I'm not excluding you poets, just using these as examples.

So anything you can do to help will be greatly appreciated by the authors who are published at Southern Gothic Online. Clicking an ad or three is a small price to pay to help Southern Gothic Online move into the professional market and continue to publish the best southern gothic fiction and poetry around.

Now That's Art

I don't know art, but I know what I like, and I like beer. So this is art. I call it Still Life with Head.

Congrats (if congratulations are the appropriate response) to Robie upon the drinking of his 200th beer at the Flying Saucer. Let the heaven's sing.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
- Benjamin Franklin

Dead Parrot Society

If you've been paying attention to the sidebar (and I know you have, because you're so interested in every aspect of my fabulous career as a writer), you may have noticed how the number of stories I currently have out and where they are under consideration has been fluctuating between 14 and 17 in the last week or so. That's because I've been getting rejections (two last weekend) and shuffling stories off to the Revise pile and shuffling other stories out of the Revise pile and back into the Send pile and finding out about markets that have since died and finding new markets.

For example, Shadows of Saturn is no longer with us. They've had a story of mine since December and I only found out they were an ex-parrot by checking their website. Thanks for the note, SoS. Hello, Polly! No explanation. They must be pining for the fjords. Beautiful plumage, the Norwegian Blue.

But that's nothing. I just heard the all time winning story for non-responsiveness from a publisher, via my friend Corey Mesler - owner of Burke's Bookstore, brilliant poet, and author extraordinaire. As an aside, Corey's new novel, We are Billion Year Old Carbon, just came out, I've read it, and I really think you ought to buy it and read it, too. One of the story chapters was nominated by storySouth as one of the best online stories published in 2004.

Ok, to Corey's tale:

Saturday I got a call at home from a woman who said she was the editor of N3# P®3$&. She wanted clarification of a word in my poem. I couldn't remember the poem but she rattled on, scolding me really, saying, "We have checked and there is simply no such word." So she reads the poem to me (I still don't remember it) and she comes to the offending word: ensorcelled. I say, ahem, well, it certainly is a word and it simply means under a spell. She says, hm, well, I guess I learned a new word today. I will turn your poem over to the editors now. I say, excuse me, but before you hang up, can you tell me when I submitted this poem. She rattles some papers and says, oh, yeah, 2000. Over five years ago, I say. And she says, yes, it just came to my attention.

Hello, Polly! I've a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you!

Heed My Prophecy!

And the bison shall be huge and black, and the eyes still of red, with the blood of living creatures! And the whore of Babylon, shall ride forth on a red-headed serpent, and throughout the land shall be a great rubbing of parts.

And in that time, Southern Gothic Online shall be updated after many travails with the... the RoadRunner, and the... the Dee Essell. And the Lord shall strike them down with boils and hemorrhoids and cold sores in the corners of their mouths.

And to all them who do not visit the Southern Gothic Online, the Lord shall visit upon them many tedious hours listening to demented strangers, and a pox shall be upon their houses, not until the seventh generation, but unto the seventy and seventh generation.

And Woe...

Not So Different After All

It's pathetic, really. JT Leroy, it turns out, is a 40-year-old woman, not a 25-year-old male prostitute. JT allegedly was the brilliant author of some books supposedly inspired by his life on the street as a teen prostitute and drug addict. If this sounds strikingly familiar, it's because James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) was recently exposed as a fraud for claiming his fiction was the truth. Plus he pissed off Oprah.

As the article states, there seems to be something of an epidemic of fraud in the world of literary greatness, including Nasdijj, the Navajo writer who appears to actually be a white boy named Tim.

It turns out JT was really a woman who couldn't figure out any other way to get her work noticed and so decided to create living fiction in the form of a Cinderella boy and his glass book of slippers. Because people are oh so willing to believe Cinderella stories like this and A Million Little Pieces. Life is brutal, ugly and short, and everyone wants to believe in second chances and miracles.

But if the actions of these writers are disgusting, it is no less disgusting than the industry that created them. Apparently, Laura Albert wasn't good enough to tell her stories, but tragic, young JT was. Good enough, in fact, for The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (there's irony for ya) to get a movie deal and for JT to be invited to write an episode of Deadwood. I doubt, especially now, whether Laura will be invited to take JT's place. But the truth is, she probably wouldn't have been invited in the first place were it not for JT. It wasn't her stories that sold, it was JT's story that sold her stories.

The publishing industry is often accused of being more interested in style than substance. It is difficult to sell a book, but easy to sell an author if that author has an interesting backstory, something Romantic with a capital R to capture the interest of the celebrity-addled public. Who would you rather read - the guy who spent 5 years living on the street writing his life story on the back of grocery bags while turning tricks to feed his heroin habit, or the guy who graduated from the University of Iowa with a masters in creative writing? Never mind that you can hardly find paper grocery bags anymore - that should ring your alarm bell right away, but hell, it sounds good, especially if he is 24 and looks good on the back of the dust cover in a forest somewhere staring boldly at what lies ahead.

So while I blame the authors for selling their souls, I can't really blame them entirely. I must also blame the industry that allowed and encouraged this to happen and rewarded those who got away with it. I have a feeling that it happens far more often than anyone is willing to admit. Anytime you hear a backstory that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A long time ago, a literature teacher asked us not to read the author bio before reading the stories - she warned that it can unduly influence your opinion of the author's work.

She was right. And although I don't expect it to ever happen in the publishing industry, I wish that every novel and story would have to pass a blind reading before being accepted or rejected. That would go a long way to improving the quality of what is published every year.

But like I said, it's not gonna happen.

Boo Hoo Hoo

I didn't win the Zoetrope screenplay contest. I didn't even make the finalists list. I guess that's what I get for submitting a kung-fu movie.

God knows kung-fu movies aren't for serious filmmakers. Why even bother?

But that's ok.

1,000 Year Heroes is the first screenplay I ever wrote. And guess what. It made the semi-finals. Not bad for a kung-fu movie written by a white guy from Tennessee who had never written a screenplay in his life.

Small victories - I'll take them.

And if you know Jet Li or anyone in the Hong Kong martial arts cinema, send them my way.

UPDATE: Back up to three screenplays out. I just submitted my Sinbad script to Bluecat. I know, what's the point? What self-respecting screenplay contest is going to let a Sinbad movie win, right? I mean, it's supposed to be about art! Get a grip, man!

Just Hanging Out

Yep, that's about how I feel. An ear and sinus infection feels like it's about to press all my teeth out of my jaws.

Sure would be nice if I had health insurance.

On a positive note, I finally finished my unfinished screenplay. Huge, yeah, it's going to be huge... if the planets are in the proper alignment and I'm standing on the right street corner at the right time on the right day. It's a bittersweet time-travel romance that explores the legacy of slavery through the eyes of an artist and the women who love him.

Somebody tell Katie Couric. Somebody tell Oprah, this is one movie she's going to love.

I need a Big Fat Greek Miracle.