Friends, Links, Miscellany.
I'm not sure what this section should be called. It's where I'm going to
put things that interest me. Expect it to be jumbled, like my mind.
Writers and Writing
My
pal Larry Kahaner has a new book coming out in the fall of 2006 on the history of the AK-47. AK 47: The Weapon That Changed
the Face of War. Check it out here...
And if you thought my rant about how tough it is being a writer in my Why Writers Like to Hear From Readers essay was nuts, (
Rant) here
are Larry's thoughts along those same lines, dashed off in a letter one day, but I saved it...
Dan Stashower is a member of my writer's group. He's an Edgar Award winner and has a new book coming
out also in the fall of 2006 about the crime that was a model for E. A. Poe:
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allen Poe
and the Invention of Murder. Here's his website:
www.stashower.com
Another member
of my writer's group,
John McKeon, has a new novel about pre-WWI espionage and the race to produce the great British battleship, Dreadnought.
Demented Choirs.
http://www.dementedchoirs.com
Bhob Stewart has been a friend for many
years and has edited almost all of my fiction. My last Alex Balfour book is dedicated to him. He's a graphic artist as well as a writer
and has written a book on the comic artist Wallace Wood. Against the Grain: Mad Artist Wallace Wood. It's available on Amazon.
Tips
An editor of mine at
Publishers Weekly sold a book of short stories and a proposed novel to a publisher last year. She quit her job
and moved to Seattle to write. I wrote her the following advice:
Writing Tips. I'd be interested in hearing from other writers who
have practical/humorous/serious tips of this nature. Send them to me if you have any and I'll put them in the Writing Tips essay.
www.appelworks@msn.com
Giles Tippette
Tippette is/was a Western writer -- meaning he wrote
Western novels -- that I have always admired. He's dead now, but if you're ever in a used bookstore and run across one of
his Kid Wilson Young books, they're all in paperback, buy it. I love his writing, and I fear the future will forget him. Too bad for
the future. He and I had an editor-in-common for awhile, and I used to hear great stories about his trips to New York. He dumped his
wife and married my editor's secretary. Here's an obituary written about him.
Obit.
Photography
I was an art photographer for many years before I became a writer. My work can be seen (and purchased!) at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery
in Washington, D.C.
www.kathleenewinggallery.com
Some of my photographer friends have great sites and
terrific work.
Allan Janus has an extremely inventive site with excellent pictures and a blog.
www.janusmuseum.org Expect
to spend some time if you visit this site. It's got music, video, stills and a running commentary. I nominate Janus as the cleverest
man on the Internet. His amusing and informative book,
Animals Aloft, is available at bookstores and at Amazon.
Mark Power is one of my oldest friends; he gave me my first photo show at his Icon Gallery many years ago in Washington, D.C. He's
also one of the world's great photographers and writers about photography. See his work at
www.markpowerphoto.com
And
On a Personal Note
Putting up a site like this seems so narcissistic. Why does one do it? Probably the
biggest reason is so people who read my books and see my pictures have a place to find me. I love hearing from people who like what
I do, for the reasons already explained in the Why Writers Like to Hear From Readers rant.
People write and
ask what I'm working on now. For the last year I've been working on a huge fiction project that will consist, if I live to see it
through, of three big fat books that take place over the course of a hundred years from now into the future. When I was a kid and
as a young man, I loved nothing more than sitting down and immersing myself in fat books -- science fiction, biography, regular fiction
-- anything that took me out of myself and West Virginia. My mother was the same way; we would sit in the same rooms for days
on end, hardly talking, reading our books. She'd finish one and hand it to me and I'd start right in on it. You may have noticed there
aren't many fat books around these days. That's because publishers hate to pay for the paper to print them. A short-sighted monysaving
tactic, in my opinion.
Every book I've ever turned in has had approximately a third of the manuscript cut
out before publication. When I took my first Alex Balfour book to New York (I had tied it up in a large bundle with twine) and thumped
it down on Kent Carroll's desk he just looked at it and laughed. Then I heard those words that I've heard ever since from every editor
I've ever had: "Cut 200 pages out and bring it back."
Which I have done with hardly a whimper. I've always
kept my mouth shut, never protested, always done what they tell me. The last Alex Balfour, In Time of War, had an entire subplot cut
out that was the length of a stand-alone novel. I have to ask, did it do me any good, this slashing and burning? I don't think so.
Every one of my novels has been a commercial failure. Would things have been different if the publishers had left the manuscripts
alone? Left the books big and fat, the kind of books I like to read? We'll never know.
What I do know is this
time I'm writing my book the way I want to write it. And while I appreciate editorial help, this time when they whine that the manuscript
is too long, that it will cost too much to publish, they'll only consider it if I cut out 200 pages, I'm going to say, to hell with
that. This time I'm going to do it my way (crank up the Frank Sinatra song) or I'm not going to do it at all.
When I go to my grave, just toss the unpublished manuscript into the casket with me. Christ, It'll be so heavy it will take ten pallbearers
to get me to the boneyard. Or maybe I'll just write the damn thing and send it out the way I do the manuscript for the unpublished
Alex Balfour book, Sea of Time. One copy at a time. One reader at a time.
There are worse ways to live. Worse
ways to write.
Worse ways to quit the writing game.