Hey, here’s that fancy schedule graphic I promised you!
Also… remember the Dread Coast: SoCal Horror Tales charity anthology I’ve mentioned once or thrice in the newsletter? It’s got my never-before-seen-in-print story, “Flesh Trade,” and they’re going to have early copies at Comic Con! You can get it a month early! Grab a copy at No Bad Books, booth Q-04 in the small press area (along the back wall)! I’ll probably stop by there at some point Friday afternoon to scribble in whatever stock they have, or feel free to bring that copy you grabbed to any of the signings in that fancy graphic up above and get one personalized. A few other authors I’ll be signing with are in it, too– you could get multiple signatures!
Well, okay, haven’t done an actual ranty blog post in about a month. Sorry. These past four weeks have been pretty stressful, overall. Two sick cats and, by the time you read this, seven visits to the vet (they’re both doing better now). And that’s made editing this book a little tough. Then there was San Diego Comic Con, where I didn’t do any panels or signings but still had to shoulder my way through the unmasked crowds looking to pick up a few things.
Like covid, for example. I picked up covid. Lucky me.
I also had a quiet, casual meeting with one of the writer-producers of Orphan Black. And the producer of In The Mouth of Madness and Ghosts of Mars. And the writer-director of The Fog and Big Trouble in Little China and a couple other things you might’ve heard of. It was really cool and we chatted about some interesting things we might be doing together.
Or maybe I’m just making that last bit up. It’d be amazing if a group of people like that all liked one of my books and wanted to adapt it, wouldn’t it? And it’s not outside the realm of possibility. At the very least it sounds good, right? You could believe something like that could happen if any of those people had actually been at Comic Con this year.
And that of course brings us to this week’s topic. Well, really it brings us to Harry Houdini. Perhaps more specifically, to the time he claimed he’d discovered the lost city of Atlantis.
Okay, so some of you may have heard stories about Houdini and how he often tried to self-publicize by writing up stories about his “adventures” around the world. Escaping from Egyptian tombs, fighting werewolves, stuff like that. It was mostly nonsense and his ghost-writer—a wanna-be aspiring writer named Howard P. Lovecraft– flat out said so and often did page one rewrites of Houdini’s “true” adventure stories.
Except for one story Houdini submitted. One where he claimed that, on his way home from Europe, the ship he was on got blown a little off course in a storm and came across an uncharted island. And apparently even from the ship they could see all the buildings on it. So they diverted, sent a few boats out (with Houdini and his wife Bess on board, of course) and spent the next twelve hours exploring all these ancient Greek-styled buildings. And then a giant crab attacked them (no seriously) and killed one of the sailors and Houdini had to save everyone by making this clever set of snares to slow down the crab. Because if you can get out of knots, it kind of make sense you know how to tie them, too, right? And of course Bess lost her camera in the rush to get back to the boats, so there’s no evidence but Houdini swears on his honor it all really happened.
And, yeah, it all sounds like pulp nonsense, I agree.
But here’s the thing that made Lovecraft hesitate a bit. The log books from the ship Houdini was on, The Ocean Queen, still exist. There’s even scans of them online. And it turns out, yeah, they really were blown off course on that trip and they actually did investigate an uncharted island (at Houdini’s insistence) that appeared to have ancient structures on it. And a deckhand who’d gone along, Leslie Davis, was killed on said island and his body wasn’t recovered. Again, this is all true, historical fact. So maybe, in this case, Houdini wasn’t just making up stories. Maybe they actually found something out there.
Or maybe I just made it all up here on the spot. Every bit of it. Maybe it’s no more true than me claiming I met John Carpenter at Comic-Con.
See, here’s the thing. Lots of people tell true stories. And they often let you know it’s a true story on the cover or the first page or at the end of the manuscript. And I think they do this—not always, but quite often—to put a sort of armor around their writing. You think these are bad characters? Well guess what, they’re based off real people, so you’re wrong! The plot’s kind of thin? Well these are all true events so you’re wrong! The whole thing just comes across as a ridiculous pile of coincidences? Wrong, wrong, wrong! You can’t say any of it’s bad if it’s all true! If it really happened!
And look, here’s another ugly truth. Nobody wants reality. They may say they do, but they’re lying. To me or to themselves. The majority of readers prefer their reality with a thin (or very thick) veneer of fiction over it. They want clean dialogue. They want things to make sense and story threads to get tied up, or at least gathered together in an orderly fashion. They want characters who win (maybe not cheerfully or without scars, but they do win).
Y’see, Timmy, reality’s messy. All of it. No, seriously, take a good look at that thing. It’s clumsy and awkward and weird, borderline impossible things happen all the time for no reason.
But I don’t want my writing to be messy. I don’t want it to feel like a pile of random coincidences. I want it to be clean and polished and perfect. As many people have said, in a few different ways, the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. When I’m a writer I’m the God of my world, and if things just randomly happen without serving a greater purpose… well, I’m kind of a piss-poor god, aren’t I?
One final note about this. You know what finally did Houdini’s career in? Well, didn’t kill it, but definitely caused a lot of bleeding? Movies. He’d done thousands of live shows, escaping from so many different locks and handcuffs and so on in front of audiences, he figured movies were the next big thing for him.
Except movie audiences had already figured out that you could do anything in movies. They’d seen people travel to the moon. Monsters of several types. And yes, many daring escapes. They knew the “reality” of what was on screen was a lot more flexible, and a lot less important than if it was entertaining in some way or another. Houdini didn’t grasp that on screen anyone could be a great escape artist. The fact that he was actually doing all this stuff… it just didn’t matter.
Sorry to hammer it home but, again, nobody cares if my story’s true or not. They just care that it’s an interesting story and it’s well-told. If it’s a boring story told in a lackluster way, being “real” isn’t going to make up for it. If I want to tell the true story of drug addicted sex slaves in 2010’s Texas, it needs to be just as compelling as a story about, say, Houdini discovering the lost city of Atlantis. It doesn’t matter if one of them’s true or not. In the end, I’m telling a story, and it’s either going to be a story that holds my reader’s interest or it isn’t.
Reality doesn’t enter into that equation.
Next time, I’d like to give you a quick, easy lesson on storybuilding and conflict.
And now, one of those quick commemorative posts! Yeah, I know I owe you all a month or so of real posts. I haven’t forgotten. Sorry this has continued to be shoved down the priority list.
Did you know it was ten years ago today that Crypticon 2012 opened in Seattle?
Yeah, I know Crypticon 2022 just ended yesterday. Calendars are funny.
Did you also know I also released a new book at said Crypticon?
The year before I‘d pitched my publisher a zombies on the moon story, but he’d just bought a zombies in space book and didn’t want to do two right on top of each other. So I pitched this other half-formed mystery/ sci-fi/ horror idea I’d been kicking around. He said sure, go for it. I wrote it, he read it, told me it was one of his favorite things he ever seen. He absolutely loved it.
He then also warned me that every book he’d ever picked up that he absolutely, completely loved had bombed. Sooooooo… I should be prepared.
It was supposed to come out in June of 2012, but as a surprise the publisher got twenty copies (maaaybe twenty four???) printed up for Crypticon, where a bunch of the press’s authors were going to be (including Craig diLouie, Jessica Meigs, Timothy Long, Eloise Knapp, and more)
I gave one of those first copies to Kelly Young of Strange Aeons Magazine (and podcast) who was also at Crypticon because I was pretty sure he’d like it. Sold all of them that weekend (except for one I kept for myself). And then the book came out on Amazon and Audible (let’s throw some more thanks to Ray Porter) and, much to everyone’s surprise—me more than anyone else—it turned out to be somewhat popular. So in so many ways this is also the ten year anniversary of when my life turned around, I clawed my way out of poverty, and realized I could make a living telling weird little stories.
Happy tenth birthday to ~14~ , my weird little novel that could. And so many, many thanks to all of you who found it, told some friends about it, and wrote kind reviews about it.
So, if you’re one of the hundred or two regular readers of this space, you may notice this past year’s been a little… sparse. Not quite the standard level of output for this blog. Normally by this point in the year I’d’ve made at least a dozen posts, and I think this one makes seven so far for 2022.
It’s not for lack of topics. I’ve got two or three on deck, plus a nice question about foreign languages someone asked in the comments a while back (thanks, Oliver!). And I’m sure I’d end up with one or two more by the time all those are done. Saturday geekery usually spawns a good one every other week or so.
Truth be told… I’ve just been fried. Since 2022 started I’ve traveled for the first time in two years. I’ve been reading books for blurbs. I’ve been trying to work on my new novel and also the novel after that and a pair of short stories for different anthologies. There were a few vet visits (cats are all fine, no worries) and a new kitten who can be VERY loud sometimes (often in the middle of the night). Taxes are coming up and I still have a ton of work to do to get those even semi-organized. And of course, I had a new book come out—The Broken Room—which is a whole big thing in itself. Many thanks to those of you who may have read it and left a kind review someplace.
And, yeah, I know a lot of this is just what a pro writer’s supposed to be doing. Juggling stuff and scheduling time and making it all work. I’ve been doing it for many years now. But these past few months—since the holidays, really—I’ve just been friggin’ burnt. And like a lot of folks who hit this state, I’ve been letting one or two things slide. Not intentionally. It just sort of… happened. And this blog was one of the easiest things for it to happen with because…
Well, let’s be honest. This has never been a major stop for the general writing community. I really, truly appreciate all of you who’ve found your way here over the years, but I also see the numbers and I know this has never been a super popular spot. I’ve had plenty of off-the-cuff tweets that get far more visibility and interaction than posts I’ve spent multiple days working on. I enjoy doing this, but if something was going to slide it was bound to be the thing that feels like it’s got the lowest work/return ratio.
So I’m going to try to take a little time, maybe the next two or three weeks, and just try to get myself back to a place where I can get all those balls back up in the air and keep them there. I know I can do it. I want to do it. But one thing most people don’t realize about juggling is that it’s a serious arm workout. And you can only do any workout for so long before you either collapse or start getting kind of distorted.
And, hey, speaking of all this…
This weekend I’m going to be at WonderCon in Anaheim. I’m hosting the Writer’s Coffeehouse on Sunday (11-1:00) where I’ll be talking about publishing, answering questions, and trying hard to be educational and entertaining. If you happen to be there, please stop by and say hi.
Next time… we will talk about languages. I promise. And I’ll make sue you all know when it’s up.
