The Race Is On, Another Reason Why George Jones Was A Genius And Why Horror Is A Dead Genre

A mouthful is a brain full but it has to be said.

"The Race Is On" was written by the late and great country star George Jones when country music was about nerve and emotion; when country music and music in general was about the lyric rather than about the look.

The song details that moment in time when a man faces a loss in love and how he copes, badly. It is a pure and honest lyric. Like all great literature, simple and sturdy. The song was written and recorded in the early 1960s and is covered to this day.

George Jones was a genius that is why his music lives on.

The same goes for horror, a genre in decline. Yes, decline. Like all art forms the many kick out their imagination to only to prove Sturgeon's law is as basic as breathing. Some may call it an evolution, as such genres as Bizarro invade coupled with the monthly mad race of publishers to putting to paper and screen blander and blander fare in an industry struggling for funds can only spell out one thing; to paraphrase a genius:

The race is on but there are no winners other than false pride and a sense of 'done'.

My God, in a world obsessed with Bigfoot --- Bigfoot; do I have to say anymore? Yeah, public education demands I do.

Not a lot of this is going to survive meaning not a lot of us will survive either if we continue on this present track. We need to be bolder with our fare and we need to get our swagger back. We need to delve deeper with our lyric and our riff. We need to look beyond pleasing a gimmick in order to satisfy a muse.

The slackening of standards demands that I remind all; a country and culture can be found in decline when its art begins to slip. When the story is quantity over quality; when books are published by blind and illiterate editors whose spell check was chucked for the latest crush game on almost a weekly basis and anything goes you know we have gone.

And then there are those whose promises to publish are as fleeting as the proverbial 'candle in the wind' to quote Elton John.

When professionalism is a dirty word; when editors' cowardice is shrouded in their disdain for writers in shouts of silence; when stories are driven not by plot or idea but by quota; you have what we largely have today.

Not all the work out there is bad but I believe Theodore Sturgeon's law, truer than ever before, tells us that in most cases that the true winners do lose all.

   

Get Over It

This younger generation is amazing to me. And forgive me if I sound like my father. Someone posted on Facebook one of those 'clever' fake news stories claiming Stephen King purchased/posted a number of fake reviews to lift a doubtful book upon publication.

I stated in my comments that I didn't believe the story. After all King is an icon. Fan boys and girls, mostly horror writing hopefuls, would spend their mother's last nickel to purchase a fully stocked, flies included, manure bucket if Mr. King himself wrote the word 'manure' on it. In between fainting over the brilliance of the written word, these same followers would write 'clever' tomes extolling the bucket of manure's historical horror virtues. This is a given. So the story itself is clearly ridiculous.

What isn't ridiculous and what I commented on was the author/publisher practice of filing a flurry of fake reviews to bolster a questionable book; as well as some finagling of printing/sales
data to boost numbers on best seller lists. This IS and HAS ALWAYS BEEN found in literary circles for decades.

Of course I am attacked. Of course I missed the point. This is a genius fake story that is so funny H. L. Mencken himself can be heard belching in belly laughs from his own grave.

Well, the story itself is not funny. It's as funny as most bizarro literature. And clever? It's clever like two plus two equals four or is it seven now that we have Common Core?

I wish this generation specifically would actually experience the outside world and stop being reactionary and naïve. We don't live in a utopia. There is no such thing as an utopia. The world is a bad place. The world is a dangerous place. The world is deceitful.

Authors and publishers will do anything to promote a book and pad sales. Hype is promoting and is usually promoting something far from genuine. And if I say something about Stephen King that is negative, which I did not, I do have freedom of speech.

Well do I?

All my years, history backs me on this, to live in  a world believing everybody is nice, that no one lies, that is no one is bossy; and unfunny is funny will only leave that dreamer holding nothing but a bucket of manure.

Wake up.

Heartbreak.....

Yes it is, when you find out after months of waiting on whether a story has been accepted that two of the publishers have gone belly up in the last two weeks.

Oh well, welcome to the 'business' end of creativity.

Still Waiting Part II

And that frustration we have all felt as writers continues as I await the publication of THE MEETING in a magazine that I realize is struggling; struggling as a lot of publications are. In my writing class I told my students that self-publishing and self-promotion is very much on the rise and may be where we are headed until this economy is in fact saved and not saved in the bizzarro=world way that the President says. But since our government, both state and federal feel that it is a crime for working stiffs to have disposal income to invest in projects; much of our culture, not necessary just this little dusty and sticky corner of the world will not only suffer but will crumble.

Our Monthly Downward Spiral

Duotrope's report is out again today. For all us writers the trend continues. This month we find 122 new markets while 222 have closed. Being down a hundred may not as bad as prior months but consider this: many of the 222 new markets are one shot anthologies. The lack of any continued publication speaks to a thinning marketplace that may ultimately signal a much stronger self-published maket.

Still Waiting...

I have a book to review but for obvious reasons the author wants me to hold off until the publisher actually prints the thing. I know the feeling. While I understand the stress and strain publishers are under every day, we writers are similarly vexed. I am waiting on the 3rd issue of Insomnia Magazine. Unfortunately I hear it will be their last for a time. Like life the business end is always the most grueling.

Now these are the kind of rejections I like....

Well, the first ones I like are ones that lead to a better gig and many have. But here is a good one; I won't mention the magazine because today it dropped off google like a lead rock and we can only hope it drops faster. Anyway, the rejection email comes from an editior with a changed name on the email heading. I would think as an editor you would get that in sync; isn't that the very definition of editing. Don't get me wrong I am not venting. With that kind of sloppiness and now the disappearing act I am happy about this one.

The business end...

The business end of writing seems to be taking up more and more time. In a way this is good because it means there is actual 'business' to attend to. After all, it is nice to be paid. But a colleague just brought up the more insidious side of business, that is lawsuits.As a writer do you incorporate? This is a litigious society. It truly is. Any comments would be appreciated.

Interesting Numbers

Besides the 38 inches of snow that fell here between Friday and Saturday; as well as the 5 foot snow drifts etc.; I came across some interesting numbers that have been trending for the last six months. Many of you who feel the need to practice this torture called writing and submissions are aware of the website DUOTROPE. It is a writers' website where we hopefuls can search and find the next crushing rejection. Free until the beginning of 2013 the site does publish a monthly state of the state of publishing. In the last 30 days 177 markets have re-opened! Hooray!!! BUT 166 others have temporarily closed and an additional 114 are offically dead leaving a net loss of 103. On this day before the night that THE WALKING DEAD return, and I don't mean the state of music to be celebrated via the Grammys (Go MEGADETH), the downward trend of markets has been steady. As writers we need to plug away and utilize every potential media we can. Like the dead who walk that we write about, we are not quite finished yet.

Barnes and Noble Is Not Friendly To Writers

Clearly not as much as Amazon.com is. It was as if I was pulling a large, cracked and bleeding molar before Barnes and Noble would even look in my direction. What I wanted to do was what I had already did do on Amazon. What I thought Barnes and Noble possessed was what was already held by Amazon. And that is an author's page from which to promote a book. Amazon couldn't be nicer and easier to me and for all writers; novice and established, treating both with dignity in the collective pursuit of selling books. But if you wish to promote your book on Barnes and Noble, the small press department imposes requirements only a manic depressive accountant and a medieval torturer would love. Bottomline: It is a rigged game in favor of established publishing houses and their writers. Upstart publishing houses and new writers cannot possibly comply, unless they self-publish and do so through Barnes and Noble. The six week review process alone cripples them. Think about that when you purchase a new book and think about, in the end, who you are helping and quelling. For my money it more adventurous to travel to the Amazon.

Time For An Experiment

I am now being told, as publishers die off, that the future is in writing labs or workshops as precursor befor publishing. This is sort of a focus group approach to publishing thus taking the editor off the hook for decisions that might be too controversial or questionable. Here a writer will submit a work to the 'collective' of other writers in the shop will review the piece and offer suggestions to the writer as to how to shape the work for publication. Once the story has been workshopped the editor will review the piece and comments and the revised piece and make a final decision. I understand the commercial use of this but am concerned about how a writer makes a name for him/herself by writing a daring tome. Well, I have decided to approach this process with one of my new stories and here we will report the results. More to come.

It Just Doesn't Do It For Me....

This is an up and coming new standard rejection from editors. I recently received one and other writers have reported the same reply. I think this is perhaps the most honest rejection one can ever receive from an editor because isn't it always about the editors gut? And after the editor, like a director, has the overall vision for the larger piece. And writing and publishing is all about fit in the end. One editor's rejection is another writer chance at a greater market that opens later. We have all had those.

Horrorus Interruptus

So an editor writes me that his editorial panel is disappointed with my horror story and they will not publish me because a character was killed. Yes, someone in my story was murdered. Yes someone's life-force was extinguished to further the tale along. (Before I continue I want to thank Monty Python for a good portion of this copy) True the character had ceased to be. The character was pushing up daisies. The character had gone to see the choir invisible. He was a dead character. (Please check out the Dead Parrot sketch of Monty Python, one of the most brilliant pieces of comedy ever written.) Even if I voomed with him with 50,000 volts he wouldn't budge... Okay. Enough of making light of this. What makes horror horror is the blurring of the line between life and death. It is the very existence of death that scares us; it is the dead who terrifying us. Skin crawls and cringe at the sight and smell of rotting putrid death. Without the element of death what do you have? Nothing. Please editors if you wish to spice up your pages and increase your readership with a dabble in horror understand this genre cannot be translated in 'politically correct'. Understand that death is a staple of horror just as it is a staple of life.