Skeletons in the Reacher Family Closet

Lee Child learned style from Hemingway. Or maybe from Elmore Leonard or Dashiell Hammett. He writes short, clean, sometimes incomplete but straight-to-the-point sentences. Brief paragraphs, plus almost as short episodic sections consisting of alternating points of view. Except when he writes long action sequences with lots of ands and Reacher did this and that and then his opponents fall down like flies after being sprayed with insecticide. Reacher gets knocked down, too, and instantly he’s back on his feet again. To stay down long means to die.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Although the writing is often sparse and minimalist, it’s also detail-rich. Child pays close attention to tiny details, and so does protagonist Jack Reacher.

Past Tense (Delacorte Press/Random House, November 15, 2018) is Child’s 22nd Reacher thriller.
Patty Sundstrom and Shorty Fleck are a Canadian potato farmer and a timber sawmill worker on their way to NYC to sell something valuable enough to raise sufficient capital to start a new life in Florida. When their old car breaks down in the woods near Laconia, NH, not far from where Reacher’s father Stan was born and raised, they plan to spend only one night. Little do they know they might be trapped there for the rest of their lives.

Jack Reacher, walking and thumbing his way across America, sees a sign for Laconia and decides to visit the town where his father allegedly  grew up. Of course, nothing is ever simple in a Jack Reacher novel. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

It’s been said that Reacher walks where angels fear to tread. Whenever he encounters a wrong, he feels duty-bound by his own internal code of honor to set it right. Whenever he finds a bully picking on an underdog, he has to step in. He’s a giant of a man, both literally and figuratively. And when he gets mad, all hell can break loose.

Those are traits he inherited from his father.

Faithful readers will find many of the elements they expect in a great Reacher novel in the 400 pages of Past Tense: an intriguing  mystery to solve (several, actually); plenty of broken noses and broken bones; bodies piled up like cordwood (some dead, others merely knocked unconscious); a beautiful female cop who proves not only extremely competent but an excellent foil for Reacher to toy with; plenty of bad guys and a few good guys Reacher needs to protect; a realistic threat to life and limb; and a get-out-of-town deadline. What makes Past Tense different, however, is the number of previously-unknown Reachers that may or may not be closely related to Jack.

Like all the other Lee Child novels, I couldn’t put this book down. The dramatic tension and anticipation of violence kept me devouring words. Learning more about the Reacher family was icing on the cake. Highly recommended.

Lee and me at Thrillerfest. I’m the guy wearing glasses.

What's in a Name?

“Paul Dale Anders…son,” the women sang. They broke my name up into two stanzas of two syllables each, placing the emphasis on the second syllable.

“Paul Dale,” they sang. “Anders Son. Paul Dale. Anders son. Paul Dale. Anders son.”


It became a magical chant. So rhythmic. So hypnotic. So simple.
Louisa and Virginia were my two partners in crime on the Faking it in Fandom panel at Windycon, the Chicago-area science fiction and fantasy convention November 10-12 in Lombard, Illinois.

It turns out they were also heads of the programming committee who made panel assignments. When they came across my name, they didn’t know what to do with it.

It was much too long to fit on name placards.

So they shortened it to Paul Anderson.

And it became simply P. Anderson in places on the printed program.

Anyway, they sang my name. They claimed my name was musical, and they really made it sound like music.

Paul Dale. Anders Son. Paul Dale. Anders Son.

One of the reasons I used to use pen names was the unwieldy length of my full name. I needed to include Dale to differentiate myself from authors like Poul Anderson and Paul Michael Anderson. That made my name too long to fit easily on book covers or spines and on convention badges and placards.

And one of the reasons I’m not better known in the sf community is because my name often gets truncated on programs, name badges and placards.

“You’re who?” people ask.

“Paul Dale Anderson.”

“Never heard of you.”

“Try singing it. Break it down into syllables so you’ll remember.”

Paul Dale. Anders Son.

My father was Paul Anders Anderson, and I really am Paul Anders’ son.

I lived the first twelve years of my life as Dale Anderson. My parents, relatives, and friends all called me Dale to differentiate me from my dad. Some of my friends still call me Dale.

Because editors found it difficult to include my full name on book and magazine covers, you can find some of my novels with only Paul Anderson on the spine. I used Dale Anders as a pen name for a while. It proved useful for contemporary romances and erotica. My first story in The Horror Show bore the Dale Anderson by-line.

But I prefer to use my full birth name for fantasy and horror.

Maybe Paul Dale Anderson doesn’t sound as scary as Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Try punctuating it. Paul Dale. Anders Son.

Yeah. That’s scary.

WisCon 2017

I signed books at WisCon’s SignOut in the second floor ballroom of the Concourse Hotel in Madison, WI on Memorial Day, May 29, 2017, from Noon until 1:30 PM. I do so every year, although few people at WisCon ask for my autograph (I do, always, have at least one; and one is all I need).

I attend WisCon as a learning experience. Not only do I learn about authors and books I would not hear about otherwise, rubbing shoulders with diverse writers and readers takes me out of my normally complacent comfort zone, therefore allowing me to grow both as a person and as a writer and reader of science fiction and fantasy.



Each year I come away from WisCon filled with fury. I — a privileged white straight male - am seen there as the hated enemy, the quintessential dirty old man, the has-been, the exploiter of the marginalized and vulnerable downtrodden. I am, at WisCon, The Invisible Man, not H. G. Wells’ fictional character but James Ellison’s. And that makes me angry.



WisCon is filled with angry people of all ages, races, gender identities, political persuasions, and disabilities. People like me have always been in the minority at a gender-bending feminist celebration. It doesn’t matter if I support feminist ideals or love the works of Russ, Tiptree, Nisi Shawl, and Nora Jemisin. I am, nevertheless, an outsider at WisCon.



Outsiders, in my biased opinion, make the best writers. We’re able to observe, not necessarily more objectively but more intensely, events and relationships.



One of the cherished events I always look forward to at WisCon is the gathering of mid-career sf and fantasy authors who meet to share survival secrets. We have all been published by major NY houses sometime in the past, but we’ve been affected by changes in the book industry and changes in our own lives that have adversely affected our careers. At one time, we may have been the darlings of the book trade, winners of awards and inspirations for wannabe writers who have since replaced us on bestseller lists. We may or may not still look like our photos on book jackets or that decades ago appeared in Locus. Living up to our reputations has made writing more difficult for many of us. We often become our own worst critics. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my self-doubt.



Maybe I’m not as much of an outsider as I think I am.



WisCon teaches me that we all fear being left out or left behind or simply ignored. We all want to matter, to be important, to make a difference.



That’s a good lesson for a privileged white straight male to remember.

Anima and Animus: Writing from a female POV

As I work on The Girl Who Lived, the sequel to Spilled Milk, I’m acutely aware I’m a male writing from a female’s point of view. I have been both lauded and criticized for attempting to understand the female mind and portray a female POV in my novels. “How can a man possibly understand what it’s like to be a woman?” I’ve been asked. Here is my answer.

I love women. I’ve been married to three different women during this lifetime and I’m in an ongoing intimate relationship with another. I’ve lived with women all of my life. My mother was a woman. My grandmothers were women. My aunts were women. More than half of my cousins were women.

My daughter is a woman.

Most of my teachers have been women. Many of the writers I read regularly are women. Many of the students in classes I teach are women.

I am a trained observer of women. I learned to be an objective observer first in journalism classes and then in graduate-level psychotherapy classes at several universities. More than half of the faculty on my thesis and dissertation committees were women. Most of my therapy clients were woman when I was in active practice. I have had access to women’s innermost thoughts and feelings during hypnosis sessions.

I am a good listener. Women tell me they love to talk with me because I listen to them and show I’m actively listening to them by my responses to their statements.

And, lastly but not least, I am a human being. All human beings inherently have both male and female traits. I was likely a woman in at least one of my past lives. I was a female in the womb before testosterone kicked in and defined my anatomy and restructured my brain. Carl Gustav Jung said I have an anima as well as an animus. I believe Jung was right.

Yes, Virginia, I CAN write from a woman’s POV. And women CAN write from a man’s POV. Whether I write accurately or not is up to readers to decide.

I’m supposed to be on my way to New Orleans, but I had to cancel my scheduled appearances at Bouchercon in New Orleans this week because of pending deadlines. I need to finish another novel before I attend the World Fantasy Convention in October. I also have planned signings at Rockford Public Library and Ida Public library between now and WFC. And I have a 6,000 word story due at another anthology before the end of October.

I guess there’s no rest for the wicked, is there? Heh heh.

Instead of driving south to meet and greet so many of my good friends who write mystery and suspense, I’m spending the day at home with fictitious friends from Spilled Milk and Darkness. They tell me their continuing stories and I dutifully record their utterances in words on paper. Like the newspaperman I once trained to be, I try to listen and observe without intruding myself into their lives unnecessarily. From time to time, I do ask pertinent questions. But the stories I write are their stories and not mine. I’m merely an interested bystander.

I can’t help but be reminded of the opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Telling stories is like that for me. Let us be the silent observers who visit humanity in the best of times and the worst of times. Will you come with? I promise to show you things you have never seen before. Or, if you have, to offer you a new perspective.

Advice to New Writers

 

Advice to new writers who want to become professional authors or the trials and tribulations of all fiction writers

It’s time to share some of the things I’ve learned during more than fifty years of professional writing. I thought about calling this “advice to young writers,” but many writers are no longer young when they turn pro. So this is probably good advice for all writers, young and old alike, professional or aspiring, myself included. Take it for what it’s worth. My advice is usually free. I charge for my stories (smile). If you like what you read here, perhaps you’ll buy one of my novels or short story collections at Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/Paul-Dale-Anderson/e/B00A9XFLBQ/ or BarnesandNoble.comhttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/paul+dale+anderson?_requestid=514797. I’ll eventually get royalties. Every penny helps.

You’re a writer if you write. You’re a real writer if you write regularly. You become a professional writer after you sell your first story for cash money paid at professional rates, and the story is actually published and available for public sale.

Very few professional writers earn their living entirely from writing fiction. Most pros have to supplement their royalties by writing non-fiction, and/or teaching creative writing classes, or working a full or part-time day job. Short stories and novels may pay the rent and put a little food on the table, but you have to be really prolific (as well as good) to also pay for health insurance, social security (self-employment tax), and income taxes solely from fiction sales. And, if you expect to save money for retirement, you need to start saving now and put something away from each monthly or semi-annual royalty check. Royalty income tends to diminish with time, and you can’t count on receiving big royalty checks forever. You’re only as popular as your next novel. Backlist books don’t usually sell well unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson.

I began writing when I was four. I turned pro when I turned seventeen. I won a state-wide writing contest for high school students. My short work (less than 2000 words) was published in multiple places and I was paid for each publication. I earned $175.00 from that initial sale ($25 for winning the contest, $150.00 for first serial rights and subsequent publications; I considered that big money back in 1962). I put all that big money in the bank and it helped feed me my first year at the University of Illinois. Eventually, I earned a BA in English with a minor in journalism from Loyola University, and I sold a bunch of non-fiction pieces to newspapers and magazines and worked briefly as a magazine and a book editor.

I wrote my first novel while in high school, my second, third, and fourth novels while in college. Those novels were valuable learning experiences for me, but the novels never sold. I still have dog-eared copies tucked away in trunks somewhere. From time to time I think of revising them and trying again to sell them. Someday, perhaps, I will.

I sold only four short stories between 1966 and 1977. I sold three work-for-hire down-and-dirty novels (one western and three erotic/porn novels) between 1977 and 1984. Although I did consider myself a professional writer, I wrote only part-time and worked full-time day jobs while serving my country, managing businesses, raising a family, and learning a lot about living. None of the four science fiction novels I wrote during that time period sold. They are also buried in a trunk somewhere; rightfully so, I suspect.

I became a full-time pro writer in 1984 with the publication of multiple short stories and three novels bearing my Paul Dale Anderson by-line. I also taught writing classes for the University of Illinois and Writers Digest Schools, and I wrote articles on writing for which I was sometimes paid and that were published in national and small press publications. I joined SFWA, HWA, and MWA. I served as a vice president and trustee of HWA. I remained a full-time writer until 1990. In 1990, when my wife first became ill and we needed insurance, I took a day job at the local public library and remained working full-time for libraries until 2011. I earned a masters in Library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin and retired as an honest-to-goodness reference librarian. I worked for both public and academic libraries and taught classes during that twenty-year time period, and I earned both a meager state university retirement and a public employee retirement. I also earned a masters in educational psychology and worked on a doctorate. I did research and wrote journal articles and a University-published thesis and dissertation, but I wrote no new fiction from 1993 until 2013.

When Gretta died in 2012, I decided to return to writing fiction to save my sanity. I retired from academia and closed up my successful hypnosis practice in 2013. I didn’t write full-time until 2014, but I did begin to attend sf conventions and reactivated my memberships in SFWA, HWA, and MWA. I joined ITW and The Authors Guild. I dropped my memberships in National Guild of Hypnotists, American Psychological Association, and Association for Psychological Science. I sent out novel proposals to editors and agents, and I sent new short stories to editors. It was like starting over again. Most of the editors I had worked with had died, as had Barbara Puechner, my literary agent. Few people in the industry recognized my name in 2014. I used multiple pen names when I was a prolific writer working in multiple genres, and that didn’t help. Nor did being best-known as a horror writer, because my new works were more fantasies and thrillers or crossed genres.

It took me two years to get rights back to my previously-published novels and find new publishers to reprint them. I began selling regularly to the small press. Eldritch Press, Damnation Books, and Crossroad Press bought new novels and Weirdbook and The Horror Zine bought short stories. Within a year after publishing my novel, Eldritch Press went out of business. Damnation Books sold out to another publisher before they published my book. I immediately sold both titles to Crossroad Press.

I only recently acquired a new agent.

So here is my advice: write every day. Write what you want to write and like to read. Writing should be fun and you should be so absorbed in the story itself that you can’t wait to find out what happens to your characters next. Before you finish one novel, start on your next novel. Write a short story a month. Keep writing. Take a break from one project to work on another, if you need a break. Have lots of fun because you deserve it.

Although writing should be fun, revision and editing should be, and will be, hard work. So, you will find, is marketing hard and time consuming work. You write for the love of telling a good story. You edit and sell your writing to make a living.

Never hire an editor to edit your manuscript. Editors offer to pay a professional writer (you) in advance for the privilege of editing your manuscripts. Editors pay you. You don’t pay them. Period. End of sentence.

Editors today expect a manuscript to be almost perfect before they first see it, so the real editing work is your responsibility. It’s not the responsibility of an editor you hire. Nor the acquisitions editor. Nor your agent’s. The responsibility for editing your work is yours and yours alone. Your editor may assign a copy editor to check continuity and facts, a line editor to check spelling and punctuation, and a proofreader to catch typos. If you are a true professional, their job will be easy and minimal. They’ll remember you and thank you for it.

Before you can write, you must read. Read everything, including the ingredients listed on a cereal box. Read everything you can get your hands on.

Before you can edit, read Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style. I’ve memorized The Little Book (Strunk and White), and you should, too.

Next Up: The business of writing

Why Writers Need Swelled Heads

This morning I responded to requests for an updated bio. Those who know me understand my reluctance. I’m a shy guy who would much rather extol the accomplishments of others than my own.

“You? Shy?” I hear some people say. “I don’t believe it!”

“I am shy most of the time,” would be my truest answer. Both my father and mother were shy people who hid their accomplishments. I had no siblings, and I grew up in an environment where each of us was allowed to be a private person with our own private personal spaces. My parents were basically introverts, and so am I. Shy is my comfort zone.

That does not mean I’m always an introvert. Like all humans, my essential personalities tend to cycle in 90 to 120 minute intervals. I go from quiet, shy, and retiring to loud and boisterous literally at the blink of an eye. Read studies by Ernest L. Rossi or my 2003 States of Consciousness and Cognition (http://www.worldcat.org/title/states-of-consciousness-and-cognition-a-study-of-state-dependent-learning/oclc/55033686&referer=brief_results) if you doubt this normally happens to practically everyone almost every day. Has it ever happened to you? Probably.

I spent twenty years helping various hypnotherapy clients, many of them very successful high-achieving professionals, overcome what researchers call “The Impostor Syndrome.” Here is a brief description from Wikipedia: “Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Some studies suggest that impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women,[2] while others indicate that men and women are equally affected.”

I possess two of the syndrome’s major symptoms: diligence and avoidance of displays of confidence.

What that means is, I believe I need to work harder than others to achieve success. And, no matter what I do, it’s never enough.

My parents, puritans to the core, taught me that blowing my own horn was sinful.

So imagine my reluctance to write my bio. Major trauma! I was conflicted to the max.

What I did was to wait 90 to 120 minutes. My biorhythms switched over. Then I wrote down the following facts:

Paul Dale Anderson is the author of The Instruments of Death series of police procedurals from Crossroad Press, the Winds Cycle of supernatural thrillers, and other genre novels and short stories.

Do I need to say anything more?

I could say I’m a panelist this year at Odyssey Con, StokerCon, Thrillerfest, MidAmericon2, Bouchercon, and World Fantasy Con. I could say my stories have appeared in major anthologies and genre magazines, and I have two published collections of short stories available and another in the works.

The reason I’m asking these questions is because others have asked me to supply bios. I have pitch sessions scheduled with several agents and editors who also want bios.

And because some readers have asked me to tell them more about myself. Like the Lone Ranger, I have hidden behind masks. Much of my early work was written under pseudonyms. I’m a private person who prefers to work behind the scenes rather than on stage.

In short, I keep shooting myself in my own foot. It matters not that the bullets are pure silver.

Intellectually, I realize I need to blow my own horn. If I don’t do it, who will?

The solution, of course, is to hire a publicist. Does anyone know a good publicist who works cheap?

Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to limp along as best I can.

I’ll need to be diligent and work harder. And I’ll need to develop a swelled head so I can act confident when I appear in public.

And that brings me to the the theme of this short tale: Why writers need swelled heads.

There are simply too many books out there for readers to choose which to buy without some guarantee they won’t waste their time and money on trash. Readers want to know in advance what else the author has done and if that work proved successful. Someone has to introduce the writer to the reader and tell the reader good things about the writer.

In today’s marketplace, that someone is often the writer himself or herself.

Publishers have reduced the money they spend on publicity in order to maximize profits. These days, writers have to arrange and pay for their own book tours, including attendance at conventions and bookstore signings. Midlist authors like me aren’t considered worth the investment.

How can I convince them otherwise? Write a blockbuster best-seller that earns millions and gets made into a major motion picture.

Do I have the confidence and diligence to make that happen?

I’ll have a chance next week when I pitch proposals to agents, editors, and film-makers at StokerCon. I’ll have another chance in July when I pitch at Pitchfest during Thrillerfest in NYC.

So, please excuse me if I seen to have developed a swelled head. I’ll need it if I want to overcome my impostor syndrome and become the best-selling author I want to be.

Wish me and my swelled head luck. We’ll need it.

On Visions and Voices

The hardest writing secret for me to learn—-probably the most important secret any writer can ever learn—-is to write only for yourself. You are your ideal reader, and the only person you need please is yourself.

I’m my own harshest critic. I obsess over every word. I’m a perfectionist at heart, and nothing is ever as good as my image of the way it should be.

That does not mean I don’t appreciate other perspectives. I do. I always appreciate advice and criticism from editors, agents, readers, and other writers.

But I don’t write to please others. I write only to tell the stories the way I envision them told. Sometimes I hear the words. Sometimes I see the words written down. Sometimes I feel the words or smell them or taste them.

Words are magical to me. Words enchant me and entrance me. I am under their spell.

Because I write in several genres, I’m not as well known as a horror writer, a suspense writer, a thriller writer, a science fiction and fantasy writer, or a mystery writer as I probably would be if I concentrated on one style and one genre only and published everything under one byline. I was raised in the great pulp tradition when writers had to write in many different genres and styles and under a variety of bylines just to earn a meager living. I wasted years studying mass-market trends and writing to guidelines established by editors or suggestions made by agents who supposedly knew the markets better than I.

By the time my stories or proposals crossed an editor’s desk, my themes were ofttimes out of vogue or the editor had moved on and the new editor wanted something different or the publication was no longer accepting unsolicited submissions. More than half of what I wrote never saw print.

When I returned to fiction writing in 2012 after an absence of nearly twenty years, I wrote only what I wanted to write without understanding how markets had changed in the interim. That proved to my advantage. Like many science fiction writers, I was either far ahead of my times or far behind my times. With a little bit of revision, several of my old novels and trunk stories became marketable as new 21st Century e-books because the truths I told then are particularly relevant to readers today. I am in the process now of dusting those stories and novels off, cleaning them up, modernizing them, and publishing them on Amazon.

Since I no longer write to spec, I am free to write what I want when I want and how I want. I write formula fiction because it’s what I know and love to read. But I cross genrelines with impunity, and I even toss in a few mainstream literary devices when I feel like it.

I’ll never be totally pleased with my writing, although I am certainly pleased with the progress I’m making as a writer. I’m pleasantly surprised when readers tell me they appreciate what I did in their favorite short story of mine or in a novel. It’s not like the old days when fans would often come up to me at cons and quote verbatim what they found especially memorable in one of my stories. These days, fans demand to know more about my characters and what will happen to so-and-so next because today’s fans don’t pay particular attention to the exact words I use to make my characters and their harrowing life-situations come alive, but they really do care about individual characters and what happens to each of them in their fictional worlds. I suppose that’s progress. It certainly makes selling sequels much easier. I like most of my characters, and I want to know more about them, too.

I shouldn’t be surprised that some readers appreciate my psychological horror (slasher) novels while other readers like my supernatural (paranormal) fantasies more. Still others prefer my police procedurals or my military thrillers. I realize it’s impossible to appeal to every reader out there. I must admit I was a bit surprised when a writer I admire told me he found Winds more fascinating than Light. Some of the settings and characters are literally the same in both novels. I should probably give up trying to second-guess readers. I find all of my novels fascinating, and that’s why I wrote them.

There are times I wish someone else would write my novels so I wouldn’t have to.

You know how this whole writing thing works, don’t you? You see a story idea and it grabs hold of you and simply won’t let you go. It’s a story that MUST be told. You do research, look around everywhere, for the same story already in print. When you can’t find it, you have to write it yourself to learn how the characters grow and develop and to discover how the story ends. Each of my novels—whether a standalone or part of a series—is a story I desperately wanted to read exactly the way it’s written. I hope you’ll want to read it, too. But if you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it for me.

I know this goes against all of the conventional wisdom and everything I’ve learned in numerous writing classes and in books on the craft. I’m supposed to call you “Dear Reader” and pretend it’s all for you and I seek your approval with my writing. That’s a goddamned lie.

I write for me, and for me alone. I am willing to share my writing for a price.

If you’re a professional writer, you already know the secret: what makes your work valuable is your unique vision—your insights and intuitions—and the way you show us (reveal) your world through characterization, dialogue (literally, “through everyday words”), subtext, and metaphors. Readers are willing to pay you to share your visions if your visions are significantly different, sufficiently unique, and superbly well-written. Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect, just good. A competent craftsperson with a unique vision is often more worthy of reading than a literary perfectionist who has nothing new to reveal. That has been true for sf and fantasy visionaries for centuries, and it’s still true today.

Some writers, like Stephen King, have a unique voice. They possess an ear for words, and readers hear that voice whispering in their inner ears like their own self-talk. I admire that greatly. Like a teen-aged boy entering puberty, I’m still developing my mature voice.

As a mid-list author at the mid-point in his career, I have a clear vision of what I want to write next. Now I need to combine vision with voice to tell my unique stories the way they deserve to be told. I’m working on that.

Yes, Elizabeth, I’m still working on that. I guess I always will be until I get it right.

On Life and Love

Gretta M. Anderson, my wife and constant companion of nearly thirty years, died four years ago today.

Gretta and I were (and still are) soul mates. We shared a love of science fiction and fantasy that bordered on fan-atical. We went to conventions together, read literally every story and novel published in the sf, fantasy, and horror genres between 1979 and 1995, and read thousands of manuscripts for 2AM Magazine. Gretta was the editor and publisher of 2AM, and I was Irwin Chapman, 2AM’s book reviewer and editorial assistant. We were extremely happy. I wrote stories and novels of my own and many were published by mainstream publishers.

Then Gretta’s father and mother became ill and shortly thereafter Gretta’s mother died.

Gretta never completely recovered from a fall off a cliff while hiking and rock climbing as a teenager. She broke her back in multiple places. Although she underwent extensive surgery, she remained partially paralyzed and had to learn how to walk all over again.

After the multiple-year illness and eventual death of her mother, Gretta’s own health began to decline. I, too, developed a life-threatening illness in the mid-1990s. Gretta and I reluctantly left science fiction and fantasy to search for cures. We both went back to college and did extensive research. We shared much of what we learned by opening the enTrance Center and teaching regular classes.

With one foot in traditional medicine and the other in alternative treatments, we explored wellness. We helped many clients to heal, and our students continue that healing work today.

On January 31, 2012, Gretta died of a massive heart attack. I discovered her body when I awoke that morning.

I am angry that Gretta left me. I express that anger in some of my writing. I closed the enTrance Center a year after Gretta died, and I returned to reading and writing sf, fantasy, and horror. I imagine Gretta visits me in spirit as I craft new tales.

This year I revived 2AM Publications in Gretta’s honor.

During the course of one’s life, if one is lucky, one may learn to love many people and many things. I love my daughter, Tammy, and I love my three feline companions. I love the books and magazines that line the walls of my house. And I love the house itself.

I love Elizabeth Flygare differently than I love Gretta. Elizabeth is more traditional and literary mainstream than Gretta. Elizabeth complements my life in new ways.

Dare I say that I also love Teddie, my first wife and Tammy’s mother? Dare I say I love Susan, my second wife? Love never dies, and it IS possible to love more than one person. But love and relationships change over time, and though love continues, life forces us to move on.

I’ve made my share of mistakes in this life, but allowing myself to love is not one of them.

I love you, Gretta. I have always loved you, and I always will.

Winning the Numbers Game

Winning the numbers game

Writing is a numbers game. The more you write, the better you get at writing.

The more you write, the more stories you have to submit for publication. The more stories you submit, the better your chances of being published.

More is better. The more mistakes you make, the more chances you will have to correct them when you write new stories. We all learn from our mistakes. It takes some us longer than others to learn from mistakes. But, eventually, we will learn if we keep writing. The more you write, the better you will become at writing. Period. End of sentence.

Reading helps. The more you read, and the wider the scope of your reading, the more you learn. You can learn from the mistakes other writers make. And you can learn from the models they provide when those other writers finally learn to avoid making mistakes and do things right.

To become a best-selling author, you must also build an extensive readership of your own work. Building a readership, like most things in life, is a numbers game. Each editor, each reader, who reads your stories will remember your name if you show any talent at all. They will want you to succeed and they’ll watch for your next work and the one after that and the one after that. As you progress as a writer, they will not only spread the word about your talent but they’ll buy much of what you write. You see, editors and readers love good stories and they are always watching and impatiently waiting for good stories to appear. They know the more you write, the better your stories become. Therefore, the more stories you have in print, the better the chances are that your latest yarns are worth a read.

See how this game is played?

On Fiction Awards

I’ve been the chair person of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award (R) Long Fiction Jury for two years and a jury member for another two. Each year I read hundreds of stories between 7500 and 40,000 words and select ten to nominate for superior achievement in long fiction.

Being a jury member is like being an acquisitions editor for a magazine or an anthology. You read through submissions and select the stories that appeal to you and nominate those stories for further consideration by the editorial board. Other editors have also selected their favorites from slush and make their own nominations. A good editor advocates for his or her own selections, and all editors eventually must agree on (or acquiesce to) which selections should be included in the final product.

The Stoker Jury Chairs are not the same as senior editors or editors in chief who make the final decisions. Chairs have only one vote, as do all jury members. The duty of the chair is to ensure the rules are followed and a list of ten superior stories will be presented by January 15th of the following year.

This year I have had the pleasure of reading many outstanding stories that should all receive recognition.I had to re-read several before making my decision which ones I liked best. I narrowed down my selections and sent my list to the other jury members. Now the jury deliberates and decides which to send to the HWA for inclusion on the preliminary ballot. The entire membership gets to vote and select the stories for a final ballot. Then we all get to vote again and the winners receive awards at the annual award ceremonies in May.

Reading great stories is a joy. It is also a very humbling learning experience for a writer in the same genre. Instead of saying “I could have written that” I find myself saying “I wish I had written that” or “I wish I could write like that.”

I have harbored mixed feelings about the value of awards. Award-winning stories can act as role models for other writers and give us something to strive to attain or possibly to surpass. When awards mean more than merely a popularity contest, they can motivate us to achieve our absolute best. Because the HWA Stokers have a juried component, they avoid being only a popularity contest.

Sitting on a professional jury is time-consuming and takes time away from one’s own writing. It’s especially hard when one also has a day job and a family demanding attention. But it is important work and somebody needs to do it.

I want to thank all of the other jury members and the HWA Awards co-chairs, as well as the HWA officers and board members, for volunteering their time. The Stokers are, and always have been, a labor of love.

I Love a Good Story

I bought my daughter a Kindle for Christmas. Tammy was less than enthusiastic when I told her. Like me, she has a house full of books. Neither of us have room left to add new shelves and new books. So I thought a Kindle would be a great gift.

I own a couple of Kindles myself. Plus a Nook. I love being able to carry an entire library with me wherever I go. I love being able to buy a title online from home (often for much less than a paperback or hardback) and have instant access to the book. I love my Kindle. I love my Nook.

But I love the feel of holding a real book in my hands. I love the smell of pulp and ink and glue. I love physical books as much as I love the words printed on their pages.

So does my daughter love to own physical books. She loves to move them around on shelves. She loves to leaf through the pages to pick up bits and pieces of new knowledge. And, when Tammy reads a novel, she loves to become totally immersed in the tactile kinesthetic experience as well as the intellectual experience. She needs to touch the paper to give the experience full meaning. She needs to have real books at her fingertips, not plasticized digital images.

You may have heard that physical books are making a comeback. New independent bookstores are springing up all over the country, and even Amazon has opened its first brick and mortar store filed with real books. Publishers Weekly reports increases in hardbound and paperback sales, and decreases in e-book sales.

And the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) published a study this week proving that library patrons prefer physical books and audio books on CD to digital versions. Library circulation data confirm the BISG findings.

That’s both good news and bad news for writers. The good news is physical books in bookstores and libraries reach real readers who want to buy and read everything a writer writes. The bad news is writers get paid a smaller percentage of hardcover and paperback retail prices than the percentage they’re paid for e-books. Of course, the retail prices of hardbounds and trade paperbacks are usually much higher than e-books. I guess it all comes out in the wash.

Lately, I’ve found myself buying the hardbound or paperback versions over the Kindle or Nook versions, though sometimes I buy both. When Light and Winds and Spilled Milk came out in trade paperback, buyers of the paperback could also purchase a Kindle version for only 99 cents.

A good book is valuable in any form or format. Some folks find it easier to read digital versions. Some find it easier to read print copies. Gretta loved to listen to audio books on tape or CD.

I’m glad to see books are still viable, and I’m happy to see so many people reading or listening to stories in whichever form is most comfortable for them. I also read graphic novels and watch movies based on novels or short stories. I love a good story. Don’t you?

 

 

 

 

SF Conventions

I had the pleasure of appearing on panels and at book signings at Windycon, the ISFIC Science Fiction and Fantasy annual convention in or near Chicago, Illinois, held this year from Friday, the 13^th of November, through Sunday, November 15, in Lombard, Illinois. Windycon is a place where I always connect with old friends, make new friends, and buy a lot of books to get autographed. Regional cons like Windycon and Wiscon and Capricon and Odyssey Con are easier to attend and navigate than Worldcons like Sasquon, MidwesternconII, Bouchercon, Stokercon, World Horror Con, or World Fantasy Con.  

 

As many of you know from previous blog posts here and elsewhere, I attended science fiction and fantasy conventions regularly between the North American SF Convention held at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, KY in 1979 and the 1993 World Fantasy Con in Chicago. Gretta and I did attend Chicon, the world Science Fiction Conventions, in Chicago in 1982, 1992, and 2002 (and I attended by myself in 2012). We also attended the Nebula Awards in 2005. But from 1996 through 2011, Gretta and I stopped attending sf and fantasy conventions to primarily attend American Psychological Association, American Psychological Society (now called the Association for Psychological Science), Illinois Counseling Association, American Society of Clinical Pathologists, Mid-American Hypnosis, and National Guild of Hypnotists annual conferences instead. As a degreed Educational Psychologist, Board Certified Hypnotist, and NGH Certified Hypnotism Instructor, I presented papers, appeared as a panelist, and earned CMEs. I wore a suit and tie instead of Jeans and T-shirt. I learned a lot and met lots of fascinating people, but I did absolutely nothing to advance my career as a novelist and short story writer.

 

After Gretta died in January of 2012, I began writing new fiction and I gradually began making the sf convention circuits to promote my novels. I continued my successful hypnosis practice until the lease ran out on my office, and I fulfilled my commitment to teach and mentor cohorts of hypnosis students through 2013. Then I closed my practice, and turned my clients over to my newly graduated students. I did attend the NGH and Mid-American hypnosis conferences in 2012, but I also attended Wiscon.  Like Doctor Who, I invited a companion to join me on out-of-this-world fascinating fantasy adventures. Elizabeth Aisling (Lizza) Flygare has been my companion at SF and Fantasy conventions since Wiscon in 2012.

 

Lizza is a mainstream writer and retired Librarian Assistant and not into sf and fantasy. She does appreciate psychological horror and police procedurals, and I’m introducing her to noir. She loves to dress up and she loves to peruse books in the hucksters’ room, but sf and Lovecraftian fantasy isn’t her thing.

 

This was my schedule at Windycon this year:

Saturday 10:00 Autographing: Hallway: Paul Dale Anderson, Bob Garcia, M. Oshiro, K. Wynter

Saturday Noon: Beyond Adams and Pratchett: Junior A: What Humorous Science Fiction/Fantasy Do You Love? Paul Dale Anderson, Alice Bentley (Moderator), R. Garfinkle, C. Johns, Jody Lynn Nye

Saturday 2:00 Is World Building Necessary?  Lilac C: Fritz Leiber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others created their worlds as their works evolved.  Can that technique be used by modern authors whose readers have modern sensibilities? Tim Akers, Paul Dale Anderson, Rebecca Frencl, Tom Trumpinski, Gary Wolfe (M)

Saturday 9:00-9:25 Reading: Cypress A: Paul Dale Anderson

 

It was wonderful to reconnect with old friends like Bob Garcia, Steven Silver, Richard Chwedyk, Jody Lynn Nye, Bill Fawcett, Jim Frenkel, Eric Flint, Mike Resnick, Gary K. Wolfe, Glen Cook, Alex and Phyllis Eisenstein, and Blake Hausladen. I was sorry that Gene Wolfe didn’t make Windy this year. Gene was a guest of honor at WFC in Saratoga Springs last week. People of my age find it difficult to attend cons the way we used to. I had to cancel my appearance at WFC in order to make Windycon. There is never enough time and energy to do everything.

 

I am rethinking my scheduled attendance at cons next year. So far I am committed to the following:

April 28-May 1 2016, World Horror Conention, Provo, UT

May 12-15, 2016, Stokercon, Las Vegas, NV

May 27-30, 2016, Wiscon, Madison, WI

August 17-21, 2016, MidamericonII (World SF Con), Kansas City, KS

September 15-18, 2016, Bouchercon, New Orleans, LA

October 27-30, 2016, World Fantasy Convention, Columbus, OH

 

I do plan to attend Windycon 43 in November, but I don’t know the dates.

 

To be honest, that’s more than I can handle at my age. Add signings at bookstores and libraries throughout the year, and I feel overwhelmed.

 

But the thrill of seeing my own novels on display in the dealers’ room, the joy of having strangers come up to me at the autographing table to buy my books and get my scribble, the desire to stay in touch with old friends and make new friends of like-minded people, the pure pleasure of reading my tales to people who listen and ask questions, and the love of discovering new authors and new books drives me to overcome my introversion and participate in even more conventions. I have already signed up for Bouchercon in 2017, and I’m seriously thinking of going to Helsinki Finland for the 2017 World SF Con.