CSI Pathetic

Is it just me, or is CSI New York only surpassed in overall horribleness by the utterly pathetic CSI Miami?

Last night's much-awaited conclusion to the 333 stalker storyline on CSI New York had all the hallmarks of a trunk story written in college and recycled through a half-dozen form letter rejections. The writers of CSI New York are never shy about having their killers go to elaborate lengths to set up or cover up their crimes, but rarely have they presented such a plethora of outrageously intricate and obscure clues designed to lead the story to a completely different city, apparently so they could not-write the word "coward" on a wall hangman style while simultaneously throwing in a grouchy police commissioner-type cliche so cliche they made fun of it in Beverly Hills Cop some 23 years ago. And the significance of the number 333? A hotel room. D'oh!

But not even that can match the mendacious disregard for reality that occurs every time David Caruso strikes a pose on CSI Miami. Last Monday night, Horatio dragged a rich white minor in for questioning over the murder of his own nanny - without the kid's parents or a lawyer. If Aitch had been a real cop, he'd be looking for a new job today. But nothing, not even a modest nod to credibility, gets in the way of the almighty story on CSI Miami, and not even the almighty story gets in the way of David Caruso's gritty one-liners.

CSI New York has a pretty good cast (better than Miami, anyway) and by far the bigger canvas for telling stories than either of its siblings. How is that they get it so right on the original CSI, and so wrong on the two knock-offs?

Exit Stage Left

Will Oprah do for politics what she's done to publishing? Heavens to mergatroid.

Buggy Whip Sales Down

When a writer reads such stories of the continuing decline in reading, said writer cannot help but feel like a designer of buggy whips round about 100 years ago, or a monastic scribe some 550 years ago.

What a rotten time to be a writer, the writer whines to the gods of grape and grain. What a rotten time to be born. Just as those before him, the whipsmith and the tonsured pensman of old, he wonders what will become of his art. For a thousand years heroic stories like Beowulf have been written on vellum, parchment and paper, with ink and pen or press. Why is it only now, in his lifetime, that the technology that drives his art is dying? Even as universities crank out more creative writing graduates than ever, and more books are printed than have ever been printed before - more and more writers and books are competing for the attention of a smaller and all-too-mortal audience. To be sure, a hundred years later the world will still need buggy whips - well, maybe not so much the world as a small corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio. But who wants to end his days writing for the literary equivalent of the Amish?

But then, he thinks, wasn't Beowulf originally told by storytellers, who saw their own art wither as writing and reading took over? Who needed a bard when he could get a book?

So who needs a book today, when he can get the bard? There's just one problem. Recorded stories have been around for a while now and they aren't exactly taking over the publishing world. Even with Podcasts and Youtubes, are young people any more likely to invest six hours listening or watching someone read a book? Fiction died as a performance art about the time people stopped sitting around open fires beneath the stars, and poetry wasn't far behind. When was the last time you loaded up the kids in the car to head down to the local Poetry Slam?

We can keep making buggy whips and hand-lettering vellum sheets and die a slow, agonizing death by dry rot, or we can embrace the technology and find new ways to tell our stories. It seems to me that movies are the medium - but either the costs or the audience's expectations must come waaaaaayyy down before video storytelling can ever replace the book. Honestly, I don't know what the new medium will be, I just know that someone needs to invent it, and quick. Because when I see it, I'm there. Unless I invent it first.

Egads, I've just written a "Print is Dead" post! See, there's nothing new under the sun. It's all been done and done and done.

The Rule of Pees

I have found that there's one secret to getting your stories published. The secret is, there is no one secret. There are many secrets, and many that aren't secret, hidden in plain sight. Like a ninja. A robot monkey ninja.

One secret is that you have to write stories and send them out to try to get them published. You'd be surprised how many writers never send their stories out. I don't know what they're waiting for, to be honest. I've been editing Southern Gothic for over two years now and I have never received one submission from a current creative writing student. Why is that? If you want to be a writer, you have to write, but you also have to publish. Sure, it's frustrating, but so is trying to get laid, but you keep trying, don't you?

In the last twelve months, I've had seven stories published (one of them twice) and five more accepted for publication in the next few months. According to my records at Duotrope.com (an invaluable resource for writers, by the way), in that same twelve month period, I have sent out 274 story submissions. That's roughly one story published for every 23 stories submitted. It's a wonder I still try. But the truth is, that one success is worth suffering through 23 rejections.

Just today, I sent out seven stories. I currently have stories out at 45 different magazines. Some stories are picked up quickly ("The Sum of Man" sold to the first place I sent it) while others are rejected time after time (17 times for "The Prettiest Woman in the Room.")

Each time a story is rejected, I revisit it and try to figure out why. How can it be made better? On rare occassions, an editor will tell you why your story was rejected, but be warned, all an editorial comment really means is that the editor liked it enough to not send a form letter. Chances are her reasons for rejecting it, if she gives any, are just some shit she made up to try to soften the blow. It has been my experience with editors, and as an editor myself, that editors don't really have the first clue what they like, they just know what they don't like - and only after they see it.

So the first secret is Perseverance, along with the ability to self-edit when needed and to not edit when not needed and the confidence and experience to know the difference.

The second secret is knowing people. This isn't really a secret, as you will quickly learn as soon as you visit a Con for the purpose of getting to know editors and publishers so you can bypass the slush pile. They see a thousand people just like you every day at these gatherings. They're not there to meet people, they're there to sell books, but since a good portion of their book sales are to hopeful, starry-eyed writers trying to wrangle an invitation, they try not to be too rude. Nevertheless, if you know the right people, you often don't need the first secret.

As with wine, the label can and does affect your appreciation of it. Blind tastings are a nightmare for wine critics and editors alike. A lot of what is rejected is as good or better than much of what is published.

So one contact is worth 25 blind submissions. There is an old saying - it's not what you know, it's who you know - that is universally denounced by the publishing world. That doesn't mean it isn't true. "The devil's greatest wile, Baudelaire has said, is to convince us that he does not exist."

One major fiction magazine, who shall remain anonymous because they have a story of mine in their slush pile, publishes roughly 120 stories a year. But of those only four or five come from the slush pile. Which means the other 115 stories are by authors with whom the editor already has a personal or professional relationship.

Don't get me wrong. They're not publishing any old crap their friends send them. They consistently publish some of the best fiction around, year after year. But the truth is, famous names sells subscriptions. Famous names sell books. Look at your own bookshelf. How many novels do you own by writers no one has ever heard of? How many are by Steven King? Fiction publishers are in the business of selling fiction. Discovering amazing new future best-selling authors and publishing their first story ever is merely a perk. If they get two brilliant stories, one written by you and one by Ursula K. LeGuin, guess who's getting published. Her name on the cover sells magazines. Yours doesn't. Sorry. As the Dread Pirate Roberts tells us, "Life is pain. Anyone who tells you different is selling something." Most likely subscriptions to hopeful, starry-eyed writers.

What you have to do is work. Write. Submit. Rewrite. Work. Submit. Write, rinse and repeat. The best contact in the world means nothing if you don't have finished stories of quality. Then go places and meet people. Don't sit at home waiting for New York to beat a path to your door in East Cupcake, Idaho. Na gah happen. You have to sell yourself as much as your work. Opportunities will appear, but you have to make them happen, and you have to have done the work beforehand so that when you get your chance, you can jump on it.

So the Rule of Pees is:

Prepare + Persevere + Pimp = Publication

Or you could just wait to win the lottery.

Cruel Shoes

My perverted fairy tale, The Other Slipper, has been accepted for publication in the next print edition of Sein und Werden.

Revised Terms and Conditions

Yesterday, I received a set of revised Terms and Conditions for my credit card.

It seems the new penalty rate for being late twice in six months is now 35%.

35% interest. Nice racket.

This is the face of evil, children. There really are monsters in the world. They issue credit cards.

Meanwhile, the US national debt topped $9 Trillion dollars.

This is the other face of evil. There really really are monsters. They run for office.

Update: Speak of the devil!

I have to add here that you should always wade through your terms and conditions. They are written in such a way as to discourage this. They don't want you to read them, because if you did, you might discover that you have the option to opt out of the 35% penalty interest rate by writing a letter and sending it to them before a certain date. Thanks, I certainly shall. And to be certain they get it, I'll send 10 copies of the letter.

Plays with Matches

When I was about ten years old, I got hold of a box of matches. There I was, walking down the sidewalk, merrily thumping lit matches into the air, pretending they were Japanese zeroes going down in flames.

I heard my brother yell my name. I turned around.

And there between us was a neighbor's yard, merrily ablaze.

I don't remember much of what happened after that.

So now the ten year old boy who accidentally set one of the fires in California could face millions of dollars in fines and be taken from his parents and placed under the care of the state. Sounds reasonable. Certainly I should have been charged with the crime of being a ten year old boy.

The only difference between my crime and his crime was the size of the fire.
The size of the fire wasn't his fault. Last time I checked, seeing into the future isn't on the list of recognized human abilities. I'm sure had he been a mutant child with X-factor precognition, he might have reconsidered playing with those matches. If he started the fire anyway, knowing it would burn 21 homes and injure three people, then I'd say yes, he's definitely in league with Magneto. Carve that motherfucker, Wolverine!

Why is this even a story? Why is Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley even keeping this matter "under review?" Because somebody is demanding justice? From a ten year old boy?

If anybody needs to be locked up, it's the people who would lock up a ten year old boy.

Fetchez la vache!

MANSON, Wash. -- A Chelan County fire chief says a couple were lucky they weren't killed by a cow that fell off a 200-foot cliff and smashed their minivan. District 5 Chief Arnold Baker says they missed being killed by a matter of inches Sunday as they drove on Highway 150 near Manson. story

They had to put poor Bessie out of her misery at the scene. As one of the commentors to this story asked, what kind of cow is it that can fall 200 feet, hit a moving car and not be instantly killed? A zombie cow, that's what.

Aim for the head! It's the only way to stop them.

Speaking of strange livestock:

Swiss police are investigating after a flock of 90 sheep vanished from a remote Alpine pasture - for the second time. It is the second time in a year that the flock has vanished, leaving no traces of their whereabouts.

Three Recent Books and Other News

The last three books I read (or didn't read) were American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke, and Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard.

Of the three, I thought Purple Cane Road the best by far. Burke's hard-boiled detective is very much within expectations for the genre, and really he doesn't give us much of an intellectual stretch beyond what we'd expect from a stereotypical pre-Katrina New Orleans and environs, but his storytelling is superior, his characters jump and live and hurt and feel and you honestly worry how they'll come through it all, which is what good storytelling is all about. I read the last quarter of the novel in a single night between 9 pm and 1 am and afterward I barely slept because I couldn't get Burke's voice out of my head, which is what good writing is all about.

Elmore Leonard is Burke's equal as a writer, but with Cuba Libre, he isn't Burke's equal as a storyteller. Cuba Libre is a good historical novel, filled with lovely historical details through which a cast of characters walk and talk like cutouts on a felt board. They don't seem part of their environment, or even really part of each other, and everyone is just a little too good at what they do, a little too comfortable with their roles, as though they've already seen the script and know how everything's going to turn out. I expected better from Mr. Leonard.

By the time I finished the second chapter of American Psycho, I was begging for the killing to begin. Never have I seen so many utterly obnoxious characters so obnoxiously drawn. I hated everyone and everything about this novel and couldn't finish it. I don't often pick up a book without finishing it. I think the last time was around 1989 with one of the early Dragonlance spinoffs. Unfortunately, readers can't skiddoo into the pages and start strangling the characters, which is what I really wanted to do, so we do the next best thing - we close the book, take it to a used bookstore, and trade it in for credit.

Speaking of strangling, over the weekend I read Macbeth and Suddenly Last Summer.

Monday I began The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing.

A book I want to read - I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Why? Read this to find out. It doesn't come out until January, and then in hard back. I'll probably wait until the soft cover.

The Futures from Nature anthology comes out November 13, with my story "Hot Dogs at the End of the World," plus some other writers you might have heard of, like Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, Cory Doctorow, Michael Moorcock, Frederick Pohl, etc..

Meanwhile, my thoughts appear as if by magic in the latest two issues of the Los Angeles Free Press. Go figure.