How Many Novels?

After spending many years writing short stories I was always trying to learn to write novels. And it took me some time to construct a novel that I was able to sell. It was a long, strange struggle for me.

Since the sale of that novel (THE FLOCK), I have written very few short stories. Part of this is due to the fact that there are so few markets for short stories these days. Even when I was actively writing them, the markets were not so many and the competition extremely fierce for open slots. These days the anthologies and the magazines that I used to try to crack are mainly gone. Now there is the self-publishing world of crap and muck and I refuse to take part in that hideous and noxious game.

Two days ago I finished my latest novel, THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH. It's based on a story that I wrote when I was a very young man

and which failed to sell in text form. I did, however, sell it in comic script format to Stephen R Bissette's legendary comic book anthology, TABOO. The story was a song of praise and admiration for the zombie mythos created by George A. Romero and to a specific B-class horror movie that influenced me as a kid: "Fiend Without a Face". I combined images conjured by those two influences and came up with THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH. In a way, I was writing zombie yarns long before the current wave of zombie fiction. I just hadn't sold any of it until "The New Ecology of Death" saw print in TABOO.

And now I have completed transforming those ideas from that story into a novel. Someone recently asked me how many novels I've sold. I had to admit that I didn't know. For some reason--compared to most other writers I encounter--I don't actually have the ego of a writer. Just about every other writer I have known walk about thumping their chests and going on and on about their work. It's probably why I can't stand the company of other writers and stopped attending science-fiction conventions. But I was actually flummoxed. I hadn't sat down to count the novels I'd sold, just as I long ago stopped counting the number of short stories I have sold.

So. How many is it? I've sold THE FLOCK, THE CLAN (sequel to THE FLOCK), THE COALITION Series (three novellas making up one novel), HISSMELINA (my favorite of my novels, but my poorest selling), THE LIVING END, WITHERING, and THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH. So...seven novels. That's not bad, I reckon.

A few years back I even optioned the movie rights to my first novel to Warner Brothers via Don Murphy and John Wells. I'm still waiting to hear that it has received the green light to make its way to the screen. But one of my old writer friends told me that even if that day never comes, I at least got farther in that direction than he did, and he'd sold more than thirty novels.

And how many short stories have I sold? I honestly cannot say. When I was younger I would keep a tally of my sales to various small press magazines, slick professional mags, and anthologies. But then I actually got tired of that. I stopped counting. All I can say with any degree of confidence is that I've sold somewhere between sixty-something and seventy-something stories. What can I say?

(I'd like to post images for the covers of THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH and THE CLAN, but neither of those has seen print yet. They're coming...I just don't have the images for them.)

"AT LAST! A ZOMBIE NOVEL WITH BRAINS AS WELL AS GUTS!" THE LIVING END.

"Often the monster is just a misunderstood anti-hero. But sometimes it's murdering, blood-thirsty asshole!" WITHERING.

The Arrogant Bastard

Writers and Assholes and Jerks! Oh, my!
Copyright 2009 by James Robert Smith.

When I was younger and supposed that other writers must all be very neat people to meet, I would go to various science-fiction and fantasy conventions in an effort to encounter these folk.

Initially it seemed a good idea. I thought that I'd meet other people who shared the same passion not only for writing, but for the same type of fiction that drove me to create. In short order, though, I found that what drove almost all of these other writers was not so much a passion for writing as a passion for attention. This is, of course, a common thread among writers. It's the same thing, essentially, that drives athletes, painters, dancers, actors, sculptors, illustrators...the thirst for attention. The act of creating for most of these people is a shrill "LOOK AT ME!".

For me, that part of the attention-grasping stops there, with the creation of the work and the submission process. I create and try to distribute, but I don't wish to labor on and on about the merits of the work, its creation, or the personality behind it. I don't work that way and generally can't stand the kind of person who does.

I quickly tired of hanging out with writers. It's hard to hold a conversation with people who only want to talk about themselves. I wanted to talk shop. They wanted to talk about THEIR shop.

The first time I realized that I might have a problem in dealing with these creeps was when I got the chance to meet a particular writer I'd wanted to encounter for some time. He wrote mainly fantasy--sometimes horror--and he occasionally penned some really interesting work. I'd heard that he would be attending a specific show where I'd bought a ticket and so I looked for him.

It didn't take long, and I soon found this writer sitting behind a table selling chapbooks and magazines and a few anthologies that contained his stories. Like myself in those days, he was a short story writer. I longed to break out of the magazine and anthology markets and into novels. I'd already written a couple of novels at that time, but I didn't yet have an agent. I wanted to talk with him about the problems a young writer encounters in selling novel-length fiction.

I was standing on the customer side of his table. He was sitting on the other side, of course, but remained seated while we spoke. I asked him about his stories sold but not yet published so that I could look out for them when they appeared. Eventually, the conversation moved to novels. I asked him if he was going to write anything of that length.

"Two editors recently called me to ask for a novel," he said. He stated this with some boredom.

"Which publishers?" I asked.

"Let's see...one from Pocket Books, and one from Bantam Books. But I told them both that I haven't yet mastered the short story form so who was I to try to write a novel?" He all but sneered this last bit.

"...so who was I.."

Now...all I wanted to achieve in those days was a novel sale. It was my consuming passion, and remains so to this day. In all of my years as a writer I have managed to sell a single novel. And that took me almost two decades to achieve. In that particular moment, as I listened to this self-obsessed jackass, all I could feel for this fellow was an overwhelming sense of contempt. He was everything that I loathe in this world--his personality dripped with self-importance and arrogance and conceit. He was so presumptuous that all I could think of doing was fleeing from his general area.

Which is precisely what I did. I hope that my expression of loathing made some impact on him as I turned and left.

I've heard that he's still writing. But I never again looked for any of his work, so I can't say if he ever wrote and sold a novel. And, frankly, I couldn't care one whit less.

After that, I need a good laugh...

The Creeps I Knew

I have a really healthy work ethic when it comes to my writing. I love to write and I work on my fiction almost every day. The only times that I don't actually find myself working on a novel or writing a short story are the days when I'm in the midst of vacation or outdoor activities. When I go to hike a mountain or canoe a river or snorkel in a spring or along the coast I don't write.

This is the difference between me and a lot of the other writers with whom I once socialized.

In my younger days I tended to seek out and spend a lot of time with other people who either were writers or who wanted to work professionally as writers. Initially I got a kick out of meeting people who shared a similar passion for writing and creating. However, after a while, their company began to wear on me. It's natural for writers to be at least mildly selfish and egotistical. But the writers I found myself around had passed a certain point. They were pretty much uniformly obsessive about writing and--worse than that--obsessed with their own "greatness".

One guy I used to spend a lot of time with became disillusioned over his inability to sell a novel to a major publisher. He was forever whining about it and damning all of the editors at the larger houses as fools for not recognizing his genius. (I'm not exaggerating.) He was a pal so I put up with his near-constant complaining. Until, one day, he told me that he was probably doomed to never be appreciated in this life, but that when he died, his genius would be recognized the world over.

It took a great deal of effort, but I bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut. However, that was it. That was the straw that broke this particular camel's back. After that, I just never could look at the guy in the same way as in the past. He'd gone from being a sometimes amusing friend to an egocentric creep.

Over the years I've always tried to keep an objective eye on my writing career. I've never consciously complained about rejection. The way I saw it was that any editor who rejected my work must have had a good reason for doing so. I never begrudged them their decisions and if I ever spoke to any of those folk at all, it was to thank them for the time they spent with my manuscript. Their time is money, after all, and they do any writer a big favor by taking some of that time to review a work.

During those days of my youth, I would attend lots of science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and comic book conventions. Initially, I enjoyed hanging around with writers to pick up tips, share market knowledge, and just talking shop. Those were pretty good days, in the beginning. But after a time I kept running into that same old song and dance:

"ME ME ME ME ME."

Trying to talk to these guys and gals was a struggle.

'How about...'

"ME ME ME ME ME."

'Have you ever been to...'

"ME ME ME ME ME."

'Why don't we...'

"ME ME ME ME ME!!!!"

I don't mind listening to that stuff for a while, but too much of it grates. One day I realized that it had been over a year since I'd attended a genre convention. That stretched into two years, then three, then five...I never looked back. I've been considering attending a few shows in the coming year, but I'm not so sure. I fear that I'd encounter that same old droning, and I sickly recall why I'd stopped going in the first place.

Whenever I'd talk to some of these cats and ask them what they did when they weren't writing or reading, they would often just stare dumbly at me. As if they weren't aware that there was anything else to do. I've always had a number of hobbies to take the edge off of things. If I have a problem with a novel, I can go for a long hike to clear my head. If a short story plot isn't working out, a trip to go snorkeling can sometimes help. Or Carole and Andy and I will try out a new restaurant and sample different foods. Sometimes I'll take out a pad and pencil and do figure drawings. The things is, the world is filled with other ideas and other places and other things to do.

I just got sick of those obsessive personalities.

I don't miss them.

As for me...I'll be hiking in western North Carolina with friends today. To organize some of those recollections of those creeps of old. They appear from time to time as characters in my books and stories. Turns out that they're good for something, after all.