“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”–H.P. Lovecraft. It’s not just horror I search for. It’s that ‘something else’ that might inspire awe, too. A shifting in the writing focus? Hmmmm… We’ll see. Anyway, good Wednesday morning, friends. On the agenda? Run-around…then words. Need to wrap up a couple of pieces, one fiction, one non-fiction. As I often say, busy is good.
Shall we get to it?
This nightmarish protrait of HPL–the background being, perhaps, that which haunted his sleeping…and waking thoughts (also, that’s a rather grim look on his face, eh?) comes courtesy of Carlos Valenzuela.
Enjoy!
You, John Claude Smith and 10 others like this.
Stephen Lombardi Not scarey…. Ellen McKinney Kind of awe-sss-ome~~sauce!
Gene Stewart Just had a submission bounced for being too literary. Iditor “lost interest by page four” and wanted to know if I could cut it in half and make it genre. Wow. If I write what I want to write and to the best of my ability, my work is swatted down. All they want is wind-up toy extruded genre product. I can see why CRK wants to kill herself. Why so many of us do. We are writers but all they want is fourth-grade reading level crap with the same old elements and patterns.
John Claude Smith Stephen, no, but it amuses me. Ellen, sure, that’s an interesting way to put it, heheh… Ah, Gene. Is this one of the stories I have read? Either way, just wow. Too literary. Your comments are spot on, which is sad. They want cut and dried and average and it needs to fit into THIS genre, etc., whatever. Not all they, though, which is good for us. We must break through to those few who want something different…and with intelligence. I find it amazing the editor suggested cutting it in half and making it genre? So, what…he likes the writing but not the tale? I’m thinking if he likes the writing, he should give it a full read, but that’s just me. Man…head shaking stuff.
Gene Stewart She, but yeah, apparently if it’s over a fourth-grade level it is “boring” and “baffling” and “where are the monsters?” and so on.
John Claude Smith Well, it’s obviously not where yoiu need to be published if the editor doesn’t even want to Think beyond those parameters.
Gene Stewart I’ve been peddling older genre stories, and she’s been buying them, but now and again I am reminded what’s really going on and it sickens me. I’m pandering, essentially, even if it helps me unload old stories written more to genre specs, and even if it builds up a group I can collect later into one coherent package that has some market appeal. See, the business end of writing and publishing is what corrupts things.
John Claude Smith Y’know, you and I and many Want to Think outside of the norm and expected with what we read. I know there’s been a lot of positive developments in this kind of thing, what with a lot of the ‘weird’ fiction writing, True Detective, etc. Stuff that doesn’t fit comfortably into the expected. I can only hope the audience expands exponentially as opposed to being just a small fraction out there.
Gene Stewart May be all we can hope, short of sparking a culture shift on our own to expand things. As genres break down and begin eating themselves it seems they clamp down harder and become more constricting. Space opera wins Hugos, tired Universal movie monsters with glitter sprinkled on them win Stokers, and so on. Egad.
John Claude Smith Your comment came i[ as I posted mine. I see where you’re coming from. Then again, man, I will say this until you do it. The last 12 or stories you’ve sent me. Put them in a collection, there’s a cohesive thread there, they ‘fit’ together, perhaps not even unlike how my latest collection’s stories fit together. It would be stellar and, I think, would stand up as a premier dark fiction collection that could be just that: dark fiction. Psychological. ETc. You’ve got another comment, I’m going to read it…
John Claude Smith But then there’s CRK winning best novel a couple years ago for The Drowning Girl, so there IS hope!
Gene Stewart Meanwhile the literary writers are eating our lunch and, when we let them in and they win “our” (genre) awards, the fen howl how unfair it is. They can’t have it both ways, as several big name writers said lately, including Joe Hill, Nathan Ballingrud, and Cory Doctorow. Wm. Gibson, too. If we as genre denizens want respect we have to up our game or concede the lits are right to sneer. Do genre folks learn? No, they buttress the ghetto walls and get surly.
Gene Stewart I voted for CRK’s wonderful The Drowning Girl and that it won stunned me and really pleased me for her, and for all writers of better, weirder stuff.
John Claude Smith Interesting points. All of them.
Gene Stewart Weird ≠ Weird Tales; that stuff’s 1920s, guys. Stop the pastiche and start THINKING and WRITING your own stuff.
John Claude Smith I was also stunned she won, and quite pleased as well. I wasn’t in the HWA then, but now I am again.
Gene Stewart As to VanderMeer’s “The New Weird”, that was a sorry attempt to imprint a market category and it fizzled because it was artificial. Genre can only be identified after it grows organically, and that’s where you and I are caught, JC. We’re in the midst of creating something that will be spotted only years down the line. As pioneers, as innovators, we won’t reap the rewards. Never works out that way.
John Claude Smith Many do. Have you read Ballingrud’s collection? Outstanding i so many ways I cannot express my joy when I read that one. There are more. We are moving forward. I make a Lovecraft reference up there to go with the pic, but that’s not exactly where my head is, quite obviously; funny, writing my second Lovecraft related short story upon request for two anthologies and let me tell you, though I play with the ‘feel’ perhaps, and the one right now will have a direct reference, they are pure me, haha. Especially the one in progress. Taking the weird and moving it into the present…and future.
Stephen Lombardi We live in a world with small minded people who do not want to think, however need to be entertained and self important. We create as a direct result of our connectiveness to our higher self and consciousness, and those of us who are open to the depths our own subconscious draw from a wealth of imagery and communication styles which threaten the thinly veiled, egg shell facade of the timid mind. I paint. I paint because it pleases my soul. Fuck the rest.
John Claude Smith Well, I’m of the mindset that people like Laird Barron and John Langan and more are kicking in the door, so perhaps we’ll see something for our efforts. We must persevere and stay true to what We do, our vision. We’ll see, but I sense we’re in a good place and a lot will unfold over the next few years, really opening things up.
Gene Stewart The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl were but harbingers of a more literary sensibility, acceptable (barely) due to CRK’s dedication to HPL and dark fiction generally.
John Claude Smith Stephen, yes, and I write because it’s a way to get to know more about me, the world I live in, and how I perceive it all, take it in…and because it’s also where I go, ahem, for my entertainment, creating this strange tales…
John Claude Smith Gene, I agree.
Gene Stewart And notice, JC, they ask you for a Lovecraftian tale. They perpetuate the antiquated tropes and topoi.
John Claude Smith Haha, I know, yet it both cases, they wanted something that related but wasn’t pure Lovecraftian. A strange place fo rme to play, actually, even if some might say I use elements from his work, at least, perhaps, philosophy-wise. But…if i can do this and remain true to myself as I have–particularly in the tale in progress, which is a handful of paragraphs away from completion–then perhaps that’s my ‘in’ and it won’t hurt to play there.
Gene Stewart I’ve done pastiche myself, we all have, especially when we start to learn how to write. Developing our own voice, though, is frowned upon if it strays from genre constraints, and, while they claim to want “original” and “weird” and “fresh” and so on, those things scare the gonads off them.
John Claude Smith Perhaps, yet again, the pieces I’ve done for two Lovecraftian anthologies are pure me…and have a thread that connects them to him. Especially, again, the one in progress. I see that one, I read what’s there and it makes me smile. And there’s a build up to a revelation at the end, but I could tweak it a hair and it could probably be something that might not even related to Lovecraft…but this Lovecraftian revelation, it kinda…well, it’s the first time I’ve actually used anything of his and it’s in such an original an unexpected manner, welll…okay, rambling…
John Claude Smith You know I agree, Gene. Good stuff here. MUCH food for thought.
Gene Stewart Organize it and publish it on the HWA site or something, but then we’d be kicked in the teeth, guaranteed.
John Claude Smith Haha, I don’t think we would be kicked in the teeth, but right now, I have a migraine nipping at the edges of my sight and a story and blog piece–not for my blog, for another one–that I need to deal with and I don’t sense either one will be finished tonight if the migraine–a rarity for me, but my eyes are feeling something–decides to clamp down. Shutting my brain off for fitten or twenty, weill be back shortly…
Gene Stewart I’m sorry you feel a migraine niggling and hope it veers off for you. Go rest and take good care of yourself, JC. Thank you for a good discussion, as always. Namaste.
