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| Planet of the Apes, (Morguefile.) |
Louis Shalako
My grandparents had some pulp fiction on their
bookshelves, including Ellery
Queen. At one time I might have even bought Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
probably when I was working 12-hour shifts as a security guard. They had their
shelves stocked with old mystery, western, and romance novels for the most part.
I’ve even submitted a couple of stories to Ellery
Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I wrote The Handbag’s Tale for submission to this
market, and when it was rejected, I published it myself. A few one-star troll reviews,
and I was so pissed off I wrote a novel.
(I’ve often wondered about them guys, incidentally.)
I haven't written any fiction in two or three days. If
I don't have any compelling ideas for a short story, I might as well start my
next novel. For one thing, my conscience would be clear for the next couple of
months. Also, since it's a larger work, I don't necessarily need to have the
ending in sight, which would more often be the case with short stories.
There are quite a few literary influences in my
background. My first girlfriend had a bookshelf full of science fiction. My
mother loved mystery and romance, my dad had books on war, history, psychology,
and sexuality. My grandparents had all kinds of pulp fiction on the shelf. That all represented a certain era, and what was sort of written, and what was sort
of available, during the period of their lifetimes.
When I was a young working man, with a disposable
income, my girlfriend and I made a regular thing of going to the bookstore.
Looking back, that was a very nice thing.
Right now, I have some ideas on books that I would like to write someday.
Why I wouldn’t want to start any one of them right now
is a very good question.
I want to do something in 1968. It involves New York
City. There is a large and disparate cast of extreme characters. That one is a
kind of literary fiction, satire, or parody. That one is very personal and I
don’t want to write that one in anger.
For some reason I still want to do some kind of
science fiction a la A.E. van Vogt, Gordon R. Dickson
and possibly E.E. ‘Doc’
Smith. To me, that one sounds like sf with some fantastic, even spiritual
element to it. The trouble with that one is that I know what happens to
independently-published science fiction novels.
I want to continue my Inspector
Gilles Maintenon mystery series, and yet writing the second one in a year
was an odd challenge. It was both too easy, and too hard at the same time. This
is just the author talking, but the first one I wrote this year, Speak
Softly My Love, is probably a better book than How to Rob a Bank.
I don’t know why that should be, it just is. As for
writing a third one this year, it is certainly possible.
The other thing is that we’re trying to figure out
what’s going to sell. One of my pen-names has a relatively successful short
story, and so naturally, we wrote a few more short stories to support that
pen-name. We’ve sold two or three copies! That’s the sort of thing that defies
popular wisdom, but the new stories are historical aviation adventure. The
successful story is a submarine story. Go figure. But it’s clearly two
different sets of readers. On the other hand, Tom Clancy did both and
made it work.
All of this is important in some way. For me, work is
an escape
from reality. I know that sounds a bit off in a world where a lot of people
hate their jobs and can’t wait for retirement—where one of the things on their
bucket list might be to write a book. It’s a pretty common dream, and of course
I’m living that dream from their point of view.
They probably have a lot more money than I do, but the
grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You have to admit, it’s
a bit of a trade-off.
I’m not bitching here.
When I’m not working on anything, as a retiree, I have sixteen or seventeen hours in the day with
nothing much to do. And to escape into the world of the novel is just that.
It is an escape, an escape for the author just as much
as it is for the reader.
Perhaps even more so.
You guys only get to enjoy it for few hours—I’m in
there for weeks and months at a time, at least to some degree, for three or
four hours a day.
“The book that will change your life is the book that
you write.” – Seth Godin.
I must have wanted to change my life pretty bad, and
that carries certain considerations with it. Like, what do I want my life to become, for example.
And I’ve never really been entirely sure, ladies and gentlemen.
However, that first book really did change my life. I
would imagine they all did to some degree.
Anyways, I’m the only one that can make something
happen here.
END
Backstage Lensman.
(A footnote to history.)
