Expanded from comments posted to CarolynMarieReads on
Youtube’s book tube on 25 Oct 2527 —
My mother would give me a mmpb in my Easter Basket, and I believe the first one ever was Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. From then on I was hooked on Dickens, and sharing his birthday didn’t hurt, either. Yes, I’m a writer. As if I ever had a choice, right?
I’d begun reading at age 3 and loved Brothers Grimm, H.C. Anderson, Aesop, and other imaginative tales. I savored the tinge of darkness in many of them, too, that drew me. In childhood, thanks to a great aunt who was VP at a bank, (she had money), I was introduced to the classics, and until about 13 or 14 read primarily classic books.
My second-grade teacher asked me what I was reading one day. It was Moby Dick by Herman Melville. She saw it was unabridged and asked if I understood it. Well, at the time I sure thought I did, and gave her a précis of what I’d read so far. I liked the adventure parts and glommed onto the nonfiction stuff explaining whaling. Fascinating book for a kid who, at that time, was hooked on nautical stuff like Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, etc.
In high school I balked at reading James Fennimore Cooper, just a chapter in a text, and offered to read three James Joyce stories instead. “No, write me an essay why you can’t stand Cooper.” So I did, and the teacher read what I’d written and said, “Oh, Twain.” I had no clue what she meant, so she showed me his essay, “The Literary Sins of James Fennimore Cooper” and turned out I’d recapitulated most of Mark Twain’s valid critiques. Hooray for me, I figured. She thought I’d copied.
I was the only kid in that class not afraid of the teacher, and who liked Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
As an adult my reading of Melville and other classics appreciates much I missed earlier, but I think it was good for me.
One day in Jr. High I borrowed two books, as was my wont, from the school library. Islands In the Stream by Hemingway and … The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. That second one I borrowed on the off-chance it would be about Mars, a topic that, along with so many others, fascinated me.
It proved to be fantasy and led me to Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and so on. That’s how I discovered science fiction existed as a thing more modern than the works of Jules Verne and H G Wells.
Then came fantasy via Tolkien, at a stop at the Book & Candle Shop at the Station Mall in Altoona, PA after my paternal grandparents had been good enough to take me for new glasses, which my parents couldn’t afford. I recall squatting to examine the bottom racks and noting that three books went together to form one image, plus a fourth with a similar image. That’s when I purchased The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I recall the ride up Cresson mountain in the back of my grandfather’s forest green Chrysler New Yorker looking at the maps in those books and wondering what this was all about.
Mystery of the Christie, Queen, and Gardner varieties came to me through my paternal grandmother, who was a Justice of the Peace and liked mystery novels and short stories. She also subscribed to EQMM and Hitchcock’s.
As a little kid I’d loved TWILIGHT ZONE, HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, OUTER LIMITS, ONE STEP BEYOND, CHILLER, and other spooky TV shows, even though my mother was unsettled by them. I recall being in a rocking chair, covered by a crochet’d blanket, watching such stuff in the orchard house, where my propensity for talking with trees upset my father. My tortoises were understanding, and the witch tree let a rabbit carry her spirit away before Dad cut it down. Boy did that freak him out.
Old pulp stuff I found in my grandfather’s closet in the sunporch hall, so Edgar Rice Burroughs and Max Brand and that ilk invaded my swirling mind.
At about 15 I found Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, and it floored me. I’d not known you were allowed to DO that kinda stuff in writing. I threw it at the wall several times in sheer astonishment, no kidding. That was power.
Literary or mainstream works, John O’Hara and, later, Mailer, Vidal, and Capote, stayed on my radar too. On came Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and so forth, and now I’m a ruin of eclectic books.
Sorry for having gone on, but I so adore books, reading, and learning to write. Yes, at 65 I’m still learning.
Began at age eight, “The Big Fish”, and have continued studying story and prose ever since, producing a mountain of material, some of it even published.
At 16 I was called by Esquire magazine, wanting to publish a story of mine, “Not Buzzard”, until Rust Hills, the editor, found out I was 16. Ageism, man.
At 22 or so I apprenticed, and made decent money, writing erotica and filling phony letter columns, often using Greek and Roman myths for inspiration.
At 32 Marion Zimmer Bradley bought and published my first non-erotic story, a fantasy, “Weal & Woe”.
Through the 1990s I published a lot of short fiction in a wide spectrum of venues but never managed to get enough to appear in close cluster that might draw publishers’ attention.
One of my novels was accepted by Baen Books but I yanked it when I learned, via a sub-editor, that Jim Baen himself was rewriting it to insert pro right wing crap. When I got the ms back, it was confirmed.
Withdrawing that submission got me blackballed and, although John F. Carr kept asking me for more War World novellas and filler, I ended up drifting away from others’ standards.
Health and family issues imposed a hiatus on me and, by the time I crawled out of those holes and began submitting again, I found the whole business had changed out from under me. Also found out I’d been bad-mouthed and wasn’t able to place stories any longer, so I stopped submitting.
You can see a lot of that stuff at genestewart.com by the way. Where you’re reading this, eh? Haven’t updated my sales list in donkey’s ears but I keep adding new content to this site.
This brings me to today, when I’m strongly considering print-on-demand self-published books, to put my work in front of people again. Look for mention of my titles coming soon to a virtual space near you, including a site devoted entirely to my new productions.
So, how did you discover books, or reading, or writing? What are your ambitions toward curating a collection or producing stories to entertain people? I’d ask you to let me know in the comments but, well, let’s just say I learned that allowing comments only encouraged vile trolling and viral swarm attacks. No time for that. None of us has time for that.
Be kind and have fun.
/ Gene Stewart
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