A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 7

DEALING WITH FRUSTRATIONS — An Interview with Nate Kenyon

BL: Bram Stoker Award finalist and P&E Horror Novel of the Year winner, Nate Kenyon, has been kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about some of the frustrations writers encounter during the process from first draft to publication. Thank you for joining me on the journey, Mr. Kenyon.

Since 2006 when your debut novel, Bloodstone, came out to rave reviews and became a bestseller for the original publisher (Five Star Publishing), you have had a meteoric rise with two newer books from Leisure Books who also reprinted Bloodstone. Has the response to your work been overwhelming for you? Or do you take it in stride and try not to concentrate on it when you work on your next project?

NK: I don’t see it quite the same way, I guess. I mean, I’m very happy with the success I’ve had so far. It’s one step at a time…I’m thrilled to have people reading my work, but I have a long way yet to go to get to where I want to be. The fact is, when you sit down in that chair to write another novel, you’re always starting from scratch again, and readers are going to judge you on that book. Whatever you did before doesn’t matter one bit. I’m nowhere near well known enough to have people pick up my work just from my name alone.

BL: Editing can be a bitch. It is the process of cutting out beloved parts of a novel that can be daunting or in some cases debilitating to new writers as well as the old hats. What techniques do you use to coach yourself through “killing your darlings”? Or are you the writer who cuts them and keeps them in a separate file in case you change your mind later?

NK: That’s a great question, and it’s one reason it took me nearly ten years from first draft to publication for my first novel, BLOODSTONE. I had a lot of great feedback, but the novel was 145,000 words, way too long for a first novel, and nobody wanted to take a chance on it. I had to cut a tremendous amount out of it, and a lot of those scenes were favourites of mine. It was very difficult. But eventually I got there! And as soon as I got it down to around 100,000 words, I had an offer.

The best advice I can give on that is to just approach the editing process as if it’s not even your book. Pretend a friend has hired you to make these cuts, and then go about it as ruthlessly as possible. Anything that doesn’t directly advance the plot or illuminate something important about character needs to go, no matter how well written it is.

BL: There are scores of articles in books and on the Web that detail advice on how to write a Query Letter, so I won’t go into that but rather I want to ask you how you’ve learned to cope with the frustration of waiting to hear back from a publisher you’ve submitted to? Has it become easier after the publication of your first novel?

NK: Yes, it’s easier now, particularly since I have an agent. But the early times were tough. I got good advice from another writer on that–he told me to make sure I always had something else in the mail, so that when the inevitable rejection came, I would have something else to look forward to the next day. He was right–and when that rejection comes in, get it back out to someplace else asap, unless of course you’re lucky enough to get feedback that can help you revise first.

BL: Finding the right publisher for a horror novel can be a trial in itself, especially with a lot of the big boys shying away from using the word “Horror” in their list of needs. Some writers of horror believe that if you want to sell your book you have to call it by; thriller, suspense and add on descriptions like paranormal, supernatural or psychological. Did you feel pressured by this kind of common viewpoint when you shopped around your first novel or did you feel disheartened by the lack of major publishers willing to buy straight horror? Has Leisure Books blatant pride in the Horror genre changed this trend of viewing darker fiction with a wary eye?

NK: I did feel some of that prejudice, yes, but I don’t really consider myself a “horror” writer, or any particular kind of writer, for that matter. I just write the stories that I want to write, and although most of them end up dark and creepy, not all of them do. I leave the labelling to the publishers.

I think Leisure has brought some legitimacy to the mass market paperback horror novel, and they are one of the few publishers that has no problem declaring that they’re interested in that kind of work. But you can find horror everywhere–I find it amusing that there’s this huge fanbase for the Twilight series, and movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy are all time record breakers, and yet the mass media doesn’t want to label any part of them as horror. Did anyone really see the Scarecrow in Batman Begins? If that’s not horror, I don’t know what is.

BL: Writing can be a pleasure and a pain but it’s also a privilege and to be able to make it a career that you can put food on the table with is a rarity without any other income. New writers will look at the advances of writers like Stephen King and swoon with envy. What obstacles have you had to overcome to get to where you are, how did you manage them and what are your goals for the future of your writing?

NK: I’m lucky in many respects that I have a very good day job in marketing and communications, which allows me the flexibility to write what I want, when I want. So I’ve never really had to make that “choice” between writing books and putting food on the table. But there’s stress there, sure. Eventually I’d like to write full time, hit the bestseller lists consistently and become a “name” writer, but I’ll certainly take what I’ve received so far and be happy with it. I know how hard it is to get where I am now, and I won’t take it for granted.

BL: What is the hardest part of the writing process for you? For some it is developing the seed of an idea into a full-grown novel complete with likeable characters, arcing storylines and sub-plots that don’t take over a story, while for others it’s working around the rest of their life to get in the hours it takes to write a book. Do you find your homelife can distract from your writing or add to it?

NK: I think juggling my homelife is probably one of the tougher parts of writing, yes, particularly since (as I mentioned) I have a day job. With three kids, that makes it difficult to find the hours. In order to write a compelling story, I really have to immerse myself in it, keep my mind focused.

BL: Horror magazines tend to include more author interviews than others. I sometimes wonder if others genres care as much about where the stories come from the way horror readers do. Do you think horror writers have to work harder to sell their work than the person writing the next literary/romance/mystery sensation? Are interviews a pleasure or stress for you at this point in your career and do you see yourself getting frustrated with the clichéd questions like; “Where do you get your ideas” and “Why horror”?

NK: I don’t think we have to work any harder, really–these days, all writers have to get out there and promote themselves or they’ll sink without a trace. There’s so little marketing money from publishers, and where there is usually goes to the name writers. So us mid-listers need to do more of it on our own.

I enjoy doing interviews because it gives me a chance to talk about writing, and that’s something I’m passionate about. Sure, there are clichéd questions, but I have stock answers for those I can use, and I always find at least a few unique and interesting questions in every interview that make me think.

BL: There is a lot of pressure to get an agent. What’s your take on this? Is it worth the frustration or do writers get scared of contracts filled with legal mumbo-jumbo that amount to selling their souls for a pittance advance and sliver of the royalty pie and frighten themselves into thinking they can’t sell their work for what it’s worth without them? Or is it a matter of finding an agent who wants to build a career instead of building a stable of one-offs?

NK: I think there should be a lot of pressure to find a GOOD agent. A bad one can be more damaging than not having one at all. A good agent should support you, be passionate about your work, responsive and happy to talk with you. They should know how to sell books. This is a brutal business, and you need a powerful advocate in your corner. The good news is that they are out there; the bad news is, you’ll have to compete with everyone else who wants to land them. But if you get one, they are absolutely worth it.

BL: The Reach has been optioned for film, congratulations by the way, but could you tell us a bit about what that experience has been like for you? Several writers like Ray Garton and Robert J. Sawyer have had options purchased for their books without the films going into production, do you worry that the same might happen or do movie releases like Twilight, The Box and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door add to the excitement? How are your fingernails doing? I’d be gnawing mine off.

NK: Good question. It’s been a fun experience. I just try to sit back and let my agent do most of the work, and if something happens, great. If not, I haven’t really lost anything. I really like this company that optioned THE REACH, and I hope we can make a movie. But if not, we’ll move on to the next one.

BL: Do you find that writing novels has decreased your short story output?

NK: Yeah, I think so. Writing good short fiction is HARD. Maybe harder than writing a novel. I was never a huge short story writer anyway, and now it’s tough to justify the time put into it for a relatively small return, when books need to be written. Still, I get a real thrill out of finishing a good short story and seeing it in print, so I don’t think I’ll ever give them up completely.

BL: I want to thank you again, Mr. Kenyon for taking the time to answer what became more than a “few” questions and finish off by asking what future publications we can keep our eyes out for? Maybe you could give us a brief description of your next novel from Leisure Books, Sparrow Rock, coming out in Spring 2010?

NK: Thank you! SPARROW ROCK is my favorite novel I’ve written so far. I LOVE this book. Here’s the jacket copy:

They were just a group of high school kids looking for a place to party. They didn’t know the end of the world was coming. Now, alone and trapped belowground in a state-of-the-art bomb shelter, they are being stalked—and the creatures that come for them through the dirt and ash are like nothing anyone has ever seen before.

There is a new ruling life-form on earth, and these six humans are the only remaining prey.

Welcome to your worst nightmare. Welcome to…Sparrow Rock.

It’s a wild, dark, thrill ride of a book, the first I’ve done in the first person, and there are some huge twists that I don’t think anyone will see coming. I can’t wait to see the reaction readers have to this book. My editor called it a “modern classic of horror,” and I hope many others will agree. We’ll see! There’s major movie studio interest too. SPARROW ROCK is due out in May 2010.

Other than that, I have a limited edition of SPARROW coming from Bad Moon Books in the spring, and there will be a couple of neat surprises with that. I’m writing several short stories for a secret anthology that’s going to be amazing, and I am signing on to write a novel based on a major gaming franchise–details on that should be released soon. A lot of readers have been asking for a sequel to THE REACH, and I’m considering writing that as well. Lots of things happening, which is the way I like it.

Find more about Nate Kenyon on the Web.

http://www.natekenyon.com

Or follow him on Twitter! http://twitter.com/natekenyon

 

 

A Messy Affair

A MESSY AFFAIR
By
Brandon Layng

“Don’t worry sweetheart I’ll clean up this mess.” The counter was cluttered with dishes covered in chicken and pasta; a wooden bowl contained sour smelling remnants of a Caesar Salad. Sauce and seasoning was sprinkled over the Formica like the sand by the back door. The sand from the turtle-shaped box in the back, the one with the shovel and pail which sat half buried beneath the grains they had had delivered from the place down off of the highway. They had given it Danny his birthday that last summer.

He started to run the water in the sink and squirted a short stream of apricot scented dish soap into the rapidly filling basin. Rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt to keep the water from splashing onto the white cotton, he took off his Bulova watch, the one Rachel had given to him for the Christmas that had just passed. She had been tired of constantly yelling at him for being late and never failed to remind him that it was the cause of their misfortune.

“Did you enjoy your dinner Rachel?” He didn’t really need an answer, he could see that she hadn’t touched her food, it sat on the plate the pasta getting hard and the chicken stiff and cold. The barbeque sauce on the chicken reminded him of a head wound leaking congealing post-mortem blood.

He had booked the day off for the anniversary. It was a special day for them but a somber one. Scraping off the dishes into the garbage bag he thought about the appointment filled day he would have when he got back to the hospital. He felt guilty for taking time off; his patients needed him and yet so did his family, more than ever they needed him.

Rachel’s dinner slid as one chunk into the grocery bag and the foul smelling salad followed. He used a fork to scrape the fat and grease from the frying pan before he put it into the sink. Not one to do the dishes often, he had half expected to hear Rachel snap at him for putting the pan in at the same time as the plates. She was always told him to wash the pans last otherwise the plates and glasses would come out with a film on them.

The only sound in the kitchen was the pop of bubbles in the water and the pan settling onto the pile. Next he put in the pot he had used to cook the pasta in. The white Alfredo sauce mixing and clouding the water like a cataract.

“I hung up that picture Danny drew for me. The one with the sailboat on it. I put it over my desk in a frame I picked up down in the hospital gift shop. My receptionist Betty, you remember her from the service last year, she didn’t look like she approved. I don’t know maybe she thought it was unprofessional or something.” He put his hands into the hot water and saw Danny’s Spider-man cup sitting on the window sill behind the sink. It was covered in a fine layer of dust and he couldn’t remember when he had put it up there. Maybe Rachel had put it up there. He would have asked her if she was not being so quiet. Sometimes you don’t want to ruin a good thing. Instead he put the pot back in the water and washed the cup.

After the cup came the pot, both placed in the drying rack and started to find the silence in the kitchen oppressive. It was like a boulder on his shoulders that weighed him down and troubled his thoughts.

“I thought maybe this summer I’d go out and buy one of those small sailboats, one of the little three person kinds, and take it out to Crescent Lake,” he said and when there was still no reply from Rachel he decided he’d had enough; it was time for someone to talk about what happened while he was making dinner.

“Listen Rachel I’m sorry I rose my voice to you earlier, but it just pissed me off when you said you hated celebrating the anniversary.” With trembling fingers he picked up a plate to wash it, stared out the window to the backyard where the sandbox sat by the pool, the turtle shaped lid pushed to the side from the last time Danny was in a rush to make a sand castle. The cover was pulled over the pool and a layer of snow that would soon melt sat on top like a bundled up blanket. “I get so upset when you start talking to me about Danny that way. Our poor sweet little Danny.”

He wouldn’t give her time to interject with her own two cents that she seemed to need to spend on an argument. He hadn’t wanted her to hit him with one of her patented cheap shot remarks that always cut into his heart like a knife or beat him over the head with yell after yell like she was slamming him with a frying pan.

“I hate how you always have to tell me that what happened was my fault, shoving it into my face, like I don’t already know.” His voice cracked with emotion like an egg hitting the floor and splattering bloody yolk. He washed the cutlery as he talked; swiping the knives, spoons and forks with the dishcloth while staring out at the piece of plastic with the snow covered sand in it. The shovel stuck out like a hand raised in triumph. Or one grasping for help.

“I mean where do you get off Rachel? Saying it was my fault because I got home too late. I was in the middle of performing heart surgery on a man for Christ sakes!” He fought for control of the angry quiver in his voice and lost the battle. “You called the office and told them Danny was missing while I was cracking the man’s ribcage, I couldn’t very well leave. And where were you?” He remembered the two wine glasses he had seen in the sink that day, one with the red lipstick she wore on the rim, the other with only a trace of the wine that sat in the bottom like the last dredges of water in a drained pool. He knew what that water looked like because he had seen it later that day when they closed down the pool for good.

He wasn’t surprised to hear silence from his wife at his question. She never answered that one because a guilty conscience would not permit her to lie.

She had smelled of another man’s musk. Smeared lipstick making her face into a bad clown mask. Panties hanging like a noose from her jeans pocket. The front door had been ajar when he’d come home, panicking to the point of almost running the car through the garage door, his hand was on the knob and swinging the door open before he registered that someone had recently left by that way and when he saw the long stemmed glasses, he knew that while his son’s lungs filled with chlorinated water and suffocated the life from his body, depraving his brain of oxygen, a man who took pleasure in his wife’s body ran from the house when he could have pulled Danny from the pool. His wife taking the precious minutes of their son’s life to get dressed, so her infidelities would not be as obvious. Rachel had his limp form pulled onto the concrete where his water soaked clothes puddle around him, her fists pounding his chest while she screamed.
He washed the pan bottom with the steel wool pad he had exchanged the dishcloth for and tried to scrub off the meat burned to it. Getting frustrated with it, he never thought it would be so difficult to get something like that off of a pan. If he had maybe he would have used the pot.

He had pushed her away, fearing that she had already cracked one of his boy’s ribs and paid no attention to the splashing as she fell backwards into the pool. He started CPR and when the wrenching sobs that had wracked his body subsided and the cooing of a dove in the trees hovered over their huddled bodies like a lament.

“You know what? Screw it! I’m just going to let this thing soak in the other side of the sink and I’ll come back to it later after I’m done cleaning the floor.” He ran the water as hot as it would go in the other side of the sink and watched as the steam began to fog the window making the images of the backyard grow vague and indistinct like memories of objects instead of the objects themselves. He shut off the water and picked up the pan to toss it in the clean hot water. Something stuck to the pan came loose and plopped into the dirty water before he could put it in the other side to soak. His emotions were too unwieldy for him to notice the tiny splash.

There was a thump that caused him a moment of fear.

“I can’t believe you said what you said Rachel. How could you say Danny’s dead?” He slammed his fist on the counter and an angry tear dropped into the dishwater. He reached his hand in, it was the temperature of blood like the way it felt when he put his hands into the opened chest cavity of a patient on the operating table. He curled his index and middle finger around the drain stopper and pulled it out. The water quietly drained and the only sound his ears could hear was his own sniffles as he fought back the tears that threatened to follow the first like lemmings off of a cliff. He closed his eyes and could not open them until the drain gurgled with the last of the water. Looking down into the drain he saw the seared orb of an eyeball staring accusingly back at him. His wife’s blue iris runny like pool water and death.

There was another thump that made his heart jump followed by a mewling sound. He dropped the drain stopper into the sink, the metal clip poking through the pupil, rushed out of the kitchen so fast he was nearly running past the slumped form of his wife, ignoring her moans of pain. The empty eye socket seeped out onto the floor and he skidded across the puddle before making it to the carpeted living room, where he took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. The door at the end of the hallway was partially open the light from inside the room glaring off of the glossy plastic stick-on Optimus Prime. He slowed as he came to it and nudged it open with a shaking hand.

Danny was on the floor. Limbs sprawled out and stiff.

He moved silently across the carpet to where his son lay beside the race car bed. Danny often fell off the lumpy mattress, so often he’d been forced to put down padding to prevent bruising on the boy’s body. Gingerly he picked him up, feeling the rigidity of the limbs, looking down as he placed him on the bed and seeing the glassy sheen of the eyes; lifeless eyes.

He chided himself for thinking that way and held his poor sweet Danny in his arms while he wept silent tears.

“Your mother has gone to a better place son.,” he said and choked on the thickness of the words. “Y-y-your mother lives with grandma now. You remember her, don’t you? She passed last year.”

There was a twitch at the corners of Danny’s mouth and a dribble of drool went streaming down his son’s chin. He wiped it away with a corner of the blanket and smiled to see his son shining through the veil of his damaged brain.

He would clean up the mess later.
***

News and I need readers for AWAtD

In an upcoming installment of “A Writer’s Journey”, my blog series about the struggles and joys of breaking into a career in writing, I’ll have a guest. For the first in a series of future interviews, Nate Kenyon, Bram Stoker finalist and author of the books Bloodstone, The Reach, The Bone Factory, Prime (novella) and Sparrow Rock due out in 2010 from Leisure Books has been kind enough to answer some questions on some of the things that you, fellow writers, might find frustrating. I would like to host other interviews dealing with subjects the new and experienced writer might find of interest and I hope that readers will be able to take away useful information from them that will make breaking into the business a little easier and less stressful for them. I’ll keep you guys and gals updated when new interviews will be appearing and I’d like you to pass on the info to friends. Along with the interviews I’ll be posting bio info and links to where you can purchase copies of their books.

Now, I have a request of a more personal nature.

In January, I will be needing four readers to read my book A Walk Amongst the Dead and give feedback. Out of the several books I’ve written this is the one I’ve chosen to use as my first foray into finding representation and a publisher. This is an important one to me; the last book I wrote before my mom passed on and the one I never had the chance to read to her before her tumors made concentration difficult for long periods of time. I also had reservations about sharing it with her as it has a rather dark view of what happens to our bodies after we’re gone. Read the synopsis below and if you’re interested in being a reader send me an e-mail at foxtat2@hotmail.com with the subject line: “I want to Walk with the Dead”. Warning: this book is dark fantasy with a gore and horror bent, contains mature content and if you would like to be a reader I ask that you be at least 18 years of age and I would prefer if you have a background in writing, if possible.

“Mickey O’Flannagan is a husband, father and unlicensed physician for the mob. When mob boss Kiefer O’Bannion calls Mickey to a funeral home and asks him to perform a miracle to save the life of his right-hand man, Mickey realizes his own life is on the line this time. O’Bannion is a man with a ruthless reputation who doesn’t like it when things don’t work out the way he wants. All Hell breaks loose in the funeral home and Mickey gets burned, finding himself being buried in a box six feet down before the night is through.

“Body half-burned, Mickey wakes up in a pine box to the sound of scraping when he falls into The Otherside, a world where men carry their bowels in their arms like babies and only the newcomers breath, (some through holes in the necks). Mickey tries to make an afterlife for himself. He’s working as a physician again alongside a sadistic surgeon with a penchant for amputating and he starts to feel good about himself for the first time in years. All the while his daughter is struggling with the world he left behind, including her mother’s new love interest who she begins to suspect might be a part of her father’s disappearance and even worse are the dreams she is having where she is helpless and must watch her father survive against a biker gang called The Reapers, who are hellbent on killing her father for good.

“Mickey isn’t alone on the Otherside though. He finds help in the form of a young woman named Eve who has a deadly touch to the denizens of the Otherside. Through Eve, Mickey finds a way to get back to the world of the living but regaining his life and getting revenge on the man who took it won’t be easy with The Reapers hot on his tail and strange powers of his own growing stronger every step of the way. He must survive the Otherside if he wants to keep his daughter from joining him.”

Bragging/New Fiction

I realized I have a couple of new works out in publications recently and I haven’t bragged about them. So now I am, lol.

“Die Untoten”, Sonar 4 Magazine Fall Double Edition — Unfortunately this is the last time Sonar 4 is doing a print edition of their popular publication (they still do the online e-zine though) but fortunately they finish off with a big double edition that includes my short tale that is a cross between “Return of the Living Dead” and “Saving Private Ryan”. I use the comparisons loosely. It’s one of my undead type tales set during WWI and gives new meaning to the term “No Man’s Land”. Pick up a copy I’m sure you’ll find plenty of fiction inside you’ll enjoy and hopefully one of those tales that keeps you up at night is mine. http://www.sonar4publications.com/nbstore2.html

“Poppa M’s Bedlam Tales: Bedlam’s Souls”, The New Bedlam Project — I always forget to pump my own work appearing in this quarterly e-zine as I am usually doing my part as a contributing editor to promote people to read the rest of the great fiction that shows up on the site. Be sure to stop by and read the latest installment in my flash series. The series centers around a personable old man named, Poppa M, local druggist, pusher of fountain pops and embellisher of New Bedlam’s history. As this is the third issue of TNBP, there are three stories so far. The first was “In the Beginning There Was Bedlam” introducing Poppa’s version of a town founder, a man who can cure all ills with his tonics and elixirs, Doc Bedlam. Trust me when I say Doc Bedlam is not a man you want to meet on a dirt street late at night as this story’s vict- er… protagonist finds out. The second installment is titled, “Cough Medicine”, in which Poppa cautions a customer taking the day off work for a cough. Poppa relates to the customer a story about one of Doc Bedlam’s unfortunate employees who finds himself waking up to a little girl who has the cure for his cough hidden in a strange green jar. In “Bedlam’s Souls” Poppa explains to an elderly woman admiring his green candy jar how he came by it. This tale blends atmosphere with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor along with revealing a little more about the man known to the town as Poppa M.. Don’t miss these tales, they’re a quick and fun read that will entertain and fill time during the lonely hours of the night. Plus, they’re free to read. You’ll be able to read the third in the series by clicking on the “Zine” link to the left of the opening page but for the first two you will have to click the links for past issues after going to the “Zine” link. If you enjoy what I’ve written or what anyone else has written, then be kind and help this excellent publication with a small donation of a dollar or two.  www.newbedlam.com

Those are the recent two but you can also go to the link in my legend at this side of the main page of my site and follow the “Free Fiction” link to more of my fiction — free of charge — that can be found on the Net. 

Happy reading friends and if you are or become a fan, be sure to add my page to your favorites or send me an e-mail foxtat2@hotmail.com telling me what you liked. I’d love to hear from you and us writers are the vain types; we love encouragement.

Brandon Layng

The LPIF Fight Continues

Here is an e-mail I submitted to the misinformation site, www.stopthetvtax.ca regarding the LPIF Fee which their commercial states is a tax foisted on the cable and satellite customers by the CRTC. They have several facts up on their site but fail to mention that this tax was actually placed on the cable and satellite companies by the CRTC and it was these companies who decided they would refuse to take a hit to their profit margins by adding the LPIF fee to the bills of their customers. THE CABLE AND SATELLITE COMPANIES ARE REQUIRED TO PAY THIS FEE, NOT YOU THE CUSTOMER! DON’T BUY THE LIES.

In a letter I received from Rogers it was stated that this tax was being levied on the cable and satellites companies and that they were required to pay it but were going to pass it onto their customers. When I pay for basic cable I believe I also pay for these “Free-to-Air” channels and by passing on this tax to customers isn’t the cable and satellite companies simply double-billing for these channels? Wasn’t the purpose of this tax to make cable and satellite companies pay for channels they had been making a profit off of for decades? Cable and satellite companies pay for other networks and specialty channels, why shouldn’t they pay for local channels as well? Might this tax on cable and satellite companies (because the CRTC isn’t taxing the customers, the companies are, the CRTC just isn’t doing anything to keep you from passing it onto your customers)have been avoided by treating local networks the same way as other networks that these companies already pay for? Perhaps the CRTC made a mistake by not abolishing “Free-to-Air” networks, getting rid of their government subsidies and making the big companies pay for them. The problem would be that there would be little to no Canadian programming guarantee because they have to buy all US and Foreign shows to compete with the ratings to stay in business since Canadian centered shows garner ratings primarily in a Canadian demographic. I think it is immoral that the cable and satellite companies would twist the facts in their commercials to make it appear as if customers have to pay up to $10 because of the CRTC making them pay a tax when it is really a case of the big companies not wanting to take a hit to their profit margins and instead putting their responsibilities on their over-charged customers.

I’d like to see these answers posted to the site along with all the facts. I’m not alone and most people I’ve talked to are not stupid enough to believe that this is a CRTC tax on the public. People who received that letter and actually read it understand that the cable and satellite companies were “required” to pay this tax and it was the companies who decided to pass on the LPIF fee.

Try an honest approach and you might garner respect.

Brandon Layng

A WRITER’S JOURNEY: Part 6

LOSS BUT NOT LOST

If a loved one dies and you’re around to see it, do your fingers stop typing?

This isn’t a normal challenge for a beginning writer. Some fortunate people can go through a majority of their lifespans before losing someone close enough to them that could create an emotional writer’s block. These kind of blocks seem like massive walls in your mind built with bricks of anger, love, sadness, helplessness and depression among a variety of other feelings but the foundation is grief poured into the weak spots in your psyche. Losing a parent, spouse, sibling or child can be devastating to the creative process. The ideas may not come or they may and in such a deluge it becomes hard to find any of use. There may be a stable full of thoroughbred stories locked away in your head with no words to free them onto the field of the page. I’m hoping I am able to help a few of you find solutions to work through your grief. You’ll have to be patient with me reader, because as I write this I am trying to put into use my own method of coping.

On August 28th, 2009 shortly after twelve noon I lost my mother to cancer. She battled for close to two years with it after she was given a prognosis of six months. It was her second bout with it, in honesty I should say that the first one was never really won. When I was in my early teens she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, after a lumpectomy, radiation and chemo therapy that left her feeling half-alive she came out of the fight to be pronounced the victor; she was cancer-free. What the doctors didn’t know (and frankly couldn’t have known) was that like a group of war criminals several cells had survived to find sanctuary in her lungs and there they rebuilt their forces sending battalions of malignant little stormtroopers up into her brain. By the time she realized something was not right with her body and she went to the urgent care to have it checked out the army of cancer had set up three camps in her brain and was based in the area between her lungs. With tears in their eyes the doctors told her she could fight but there was no hope of winning this war. Fight she did, as bravely as any soldier faced with an impossible ridge to conquer, racing across No Man’s Land with determination set into her face and a twinkle in her eye. My wife and I were there beside her, bringing words of encouragement, helping her when she was weakened by disease to do the daily requirements of life, talking to her when she needed a friendly ear to confess her fears to. And she was there for us. God, was she there for us. So selfless and loving a person that she was the embodiment of the saying, “The brightest flame burns fastest.” She was amazing to watch and share a life with. She was everything people should pray to be and should didn’t want to let go until we told her we would be okay when she was gone, that it was all right to have peace from the pain at last.

She encouraged me and my wife in our writing. My wife just received her first acceptances for writing a couple of poems that will appear in the Terror of Miskatonic Falls anthology from Shroud Publishing. I’m proud of her and I know my mother would have been too. It upsets me that she never had the chance to tell her before my mother passed. I told her in my speach at her memorial. I’d like to think she was there listening.

The loss of a loved one or the imminence of such an event can be the push some writers need to finally take a leap and put the words on the paper. It’s a positive way to channel those feelings and discover a renewed purpose in life. If you’re reading this and haven’t started on the path of the writer yet but you’ve lost a loved one, try picking up the pieces by building new worlds. At a time when you feel helpless it helps to take control of something. Fiction is an excellent outlet for that, just ask a psychiatrist. Even inmates in prison are doing it. If you let yourself be open to where the story will take you it will help you to understand why people die whether we want them to or not. I’ve had many characters live that I wanted to die and cried when others died or will killed. You could ask why I didn’t just write it so they would survive? Good question. I would like to be able to do that. Except, the story would suffer for it. Readers as well as the characters themselves need to feel the full spectrum of emotions for it to be real. Imagine a life with only happiness and ask yourself how you would know how special that state of being was without ever experiencing the other side of the spectrum? Would you read a romance where the married man our protagonist is in love with leaves his wife, the wife is happy for him because she has met the new love of her life and the protagonist gets to live happily ever after with the man of her dreams? You would think it sucked. You would because there was no struggle, no obstacles to overcome — lots of feel good happy happy joy joy. A horror story with a monster who doesn’t kill anyone and when he is discovered in a mansion, he is instantly loved by the most beautiful girl in the town, her family approve of their marriage, the neighbours come over to the mansion for veggie burgers and a plastic surgeon offers to fix his deformities pro bono. Sounds like something Jack Ketchum might write, right? I don’t think so. he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole and neither should you. In real life, people hate the monster, ex-wives attack their ex-husband’s mistress and people die.

Fiction is a training ground for life. And when life gets hard it shouldn’t get in the way of writing your own fiction… it should go into it.

“It hurts too much and I’m worried I’ll write a lot of crap,” you say.

I say, “Then write a lot of crap.”

After a while the dirt and grime of grieving will be polished off of your brain and heart. You’ll realize that inside those stories are gems you can sift out and take a closer look at. You will notice upon closer examination that there are parts of the person you lost hidden in them. The walls blocking out the ideas and words will crumble a grain at a time.

Some exercises:

1) Write a letter to your loved one — talk about good ideas you’ve had, how much you miss them, what was great about them, what hurt you the most in their lives and about their deaths.

2) Write a poem or short story — make the main character someone based on the one you lost, explore who they were through the character.

3) Write a memory — look at a photo of the person and write down the memory that goes with it.

4) Write an article and submit it — it can be based on something wonderful your loved one did in their life or even the cause of their death. If they were taken by cancer, do a cancer charity walk and write about the experience. Share it with others.

5) Write a letter to yourself — let you know how you feel.

6) Live life and love the ones left behind even more.

I won’t tell you how these exercises will help you because each person will take something differently from them. I’ve done a few so far and intend to do more. It isn’t easy, it hurts a lot to be reminded of the loss. It is better to hurt and grow than forget and repeat. I won’t show you the results of my exercises and that is because they read like crap. Hopefully this particular one won’t but I’ll risk that it might, even if it only helps one writer.

I’ll finish by saying, that while you’re getting past grief, I give you permission to write crap. Just don’t strive for only that, otherwise there might be a lot of editors with my name on their hit lists.

Take care,

Brandon Layng

Affordable Adspace at TNBP

General Information:

The New Bedlam Project is to be published quarterly: April 1, July 1, October 1, and January 1. Ads must be received 15 days in advance of publication date.

We expect to publish one poem, two flash, two short and one long fiction story per issue, as well as guest spots from various residents of New Bedlam.

At the end of each volume year, all issues will be removed from the website and bundled into a portable document file to download for a small fee.

Advertising Space:

In each quarterly issue there will be six spaces open for advertising. The premium spots are located in the sidebar of every page of the magazine, while the larger but more affordable spots are located in the footer of every page. In the year-end downloadable file, there will be 24 spots, first option given to web-advertisers.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS 09/15/09

 

Sorry for the delay on the announcements folks. There is good news you want to know this time though.

NATE KENYON — His novel “The Reach” has been optioned for film (fingers crossed that it goes into production, I’m still waiting for the film version of Ray Garton’s “Live Girls”). This book has the potential to be an entertaining film and more deserving of your hard earned dollars than the deluge of remakes flooding the theatres lately. I’ve also been told by Mr. Kenyon that he has turned in his fourth novel “Sparrow Rock”, which he says, “it’s my best book yet. People are going to be blown away by this one.” And after finishing “The Bone Factory” I can believe it. Keep your eyes out for it and when you see it snag a copy, in the meantime read “The Bone Factory”. The premise is similar to SK’s “The Shining” but the connections end there. The suspense is chilling and it isn’t just the isolated Canadian community being hit by a blizzard that freezes your spine in fear, there’s a man in the woods looking over your shoulder as you turn the pages. I read it and I definitely advise you to get it.

MORPHEUS TALES MAGAZINE — The free preview of Issue 6 is up and worth the looksee. Morpheus Tales is a magazine filled with quality fiction at a price you will find hard to beat and judging from what I’ve read in the preview this issue is more of the same good stuff. http://www.morpheustales.com/preview6.pdf Check it out.

DARK DISCOVERIES — I picked up a copy of this magazine the other day when I saw it finally show up at a local newstand. It’s been on my “to buy” list for a while and I’m glad I did. The newest issue is a “50th Anniversary Twilight Zone Special Issue” and the articles (not normally a selling point for me in a magazine, I buy for the fiction usually) are worth the cover price. They are very informative and the interviews are so cool they give you shivers. I’ve been so busy reading the non-fic I haven’t even had a chance to read the stories yet. I’ll be honest and tell you I’m waiting for the right moment to read Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. http://www.darkdiscoveries.com

That’s it for this edition of the Announcements. Until next time, friends.

Brandon

The Winner is…

The winner of the Survive contest I was hosting was Natalie Sin. Natalie will play a small role in my novella for the anthology DEAD BELLS edited by Jodi Lee and receive after publication, a signed copy of the book.

Congratulations Natalie and thank you to all who entered.

Take care,

Brandon

ROGERS CABLE wants to rip you off!

I’m irked. I mean really, really, very pissed off. I can hear a constant whistling of steam bursting out of my ears and my face is a decidedly bright shade of red. I’m about to start ranting now. If you don’t like angry ranting I understand if you turn your computer off but I promise you it will be slightly humorous and enlightening.

At my home today we received a letter from our cable company, the same cable company that goes by the name of Rogers Cable, the same company that has virtually harassed our household to try and convince us to switch to their Rogers home phone service. That’s actually where the anger was given birth. First it was a regular series of phone calls asking how we liked the services we were receiving and before we could say “fine” and hang up they offered to switch us to their phone service. We said no. They phone again and again and again as if we might have changed our minds during the week or over the weekend. Two days ago we get another of those calls and the answer is still no. During my dinner there is a knock at the door and two representatives of Rogers are there to offer me phone service for $30 a month and they will give me $10 off my cable bill. I say no and try to explain that we have been with the same phone company my whole life, we are happy with their services. The guys don’t take no for an answer and think I’m just one of those “hard-sells”, clearly not wise enough to read the expression on my face that says; “keep talking and I’m considering switching television providers”.

They ask me why I would pay more for the company I’m with instead of saving money?

I look at it this way; Bell is a phone company and Rogers is a cable company. I won’t pay my phone company to watch tv and I’m sure as hell not going to pay my cable company to call my relatives up north. Plus by paying two different companies for two different services, I’m actually stimulating the economy. It’s not stimulating the economy by simply spending money, it’s how you spend your money. I’m helping to make sure people at both companies have jobs including the two assholes who came to my door and disturbed my dinner. Most importantly I’m ensuring neither company has a monopoly on the communications market. Bundle packages are dangerous things people. That’s why after you agree to them because they save you a little bit of money you start to notice that eventually the service begins to get crappy, because they want you to upgrade and pay more, plus they make you afraid to cancel the crappy service for another provider since you’ll lose such a “great deal”.

These two gentlemen standing at my door didn’t understand what I was saying. They asked me if I knew about all the great features that my cable package had to offer and I told them yes but it still sucked. Every night when my wife and I sit down to have a bit of peace and quiet to ourselves after spending a stress filled day going in opposite directions we turn on the tv and spend fifteen minutes scanning the 900 channels trying to find something, anything, to watch together. There is absolutely nothing on that we would be even minutely interested in watching. The On-Demand channel offers movies that appear on other stations on an annoying basis and want to charge you an extra six bucks to watch them at your convenience and you can watch it for that amount of money as many times as you want during a twenty-four hour period. I can pick up the same movie for ten dollars at the store and then I own it and can watch it as many times as I like for the rest of my life. The one gentlemen says why don’t I PVR it. Now, why would I do that? If ever I get sick and tired of their sales tactics or service and I cancel it, I lose the movie. It’s the same as, “Why do I buy paperback books, instead of downloading them onto a Kindle?” Because if I drop a book in a puddle of water by accident and it gets ruined I only have to pay to replace one book for $10 instead of having to buy a new $500 Kindle device plus pay $10 to replace each and every goddamn book I downloaded. What makes more sense to you, honestly? The fact is what is deemed easier by the corporations doesn’t always mean a logical and intelligent decision and it certainly isn’t any cheaper.

The young gentlemen continued to stand there and take more punishment after I told them I thought their customer service department was terrible. I like to pay my bills in person, I hate giving companies access to my bank accounts, I don’t trust them and frankly who has every been given a reason to? But the thing is, when I go into pay a Rogers bill, I wait half-an-hour to an hour to pay it. It only takes two minutes to ring it through and give me a receipt and the rest of the time is spent waiting for the two people ahead of me to finish buying their friggin’ cell phones. The young gentlemen thinks he can sell me on their phone service by telling me that the company recently fired six-hundred customer service people. I asked him if the company was “fucking stupid” and “why the hell would they do that?” He says they were being rude to customers. I explained that he would be too if he was over-worked, understaffed and stuck with a brand new system that doesn’t allow the employees to suspend a cell phone sale to take the two minutes required to take a bill payment. They needed to hire people not fire them and the real reason for letting them go was to shift the blame and add more money to the CEO’s pocket linings.

This conversation at more door lasted twenty minutes before they realized I was having fun blasting their shitty service and was mentally deciding to cut the services I am currently getting from them to the basic plan. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure I was going to do that but then the letter came.

Read this article here If you want to know more about what’s going on.

The letter says this and these are direct quotes.

“The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has established a new fund to which cable tv and satellite companies are required to contribute.”

Note the use of the word “REQUIRED”, it refers to the cable tv and satellite companies, specifically.

“Starting on your first bill after August 31st, 2009, you will see a new line on your invoice called CRTC LPIF fee, and a corresponding charge of 1.5 % of your recurring monthly service fee.”

Wait a minute and pardon my French, but what the fuck? The previous line said that ROGERS CABLE was REQUIRED to pay into the fund. So why does this line say I’m actually doing the paying? Oh, wait, this next line explains why.

“The fee that is collected goes directly to the CRTC’s Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF). Rogers Cable receives no financial benefit from the LPIF fee. All other aspects of your service will remain the same.”

So basically the gist of it is this. The CRTC wants Rogers Cable to actually start paying for stations that up until now they have been stealing from the airwaves without renumeration and Rogers Cable is saying, that is going to cut into our profit margins, lets flip the bill onto the customers and if they don’t like it, they will complain to the CRTC who came up with this idea but either way we are still getting these channels for free that we can charge our customers for as part of their package just like we’ve been doing all along. Get the idea?

The fact is Rogers is right the money (possibly an extra $6.50 on top of the money customers already pay the company for access to these channels) doesn’t go into their pockets. Except the purpose of the fund was to make them pay for channels they we’re getting for free and charging customers for.

Do you see why I’m pissed off? And if you’re a Canadian, you should be too. This act of greed is bordering on the illegal. It’s definitely unethical. It’s a big old “Fuck you” to their customers.

But I have a few solutions to the problem. You had to know this was coming.

To cover the cost of the 1.5% increase to my bill I will be cutting my service back to basic cable, which will cost the company roughly $65 in fees a month from this particular customer. I’m also going to suggest that other customers do the same or at least scale back services by getting rid of channels from their packages that they don’t watch anymore because after the first month, you know they started to suck the old rotten egg anyways and you won’t miss them — trust me.

I also urge people to contact the CRTC and demand that Rogers Cable be charged a penalty for conducting business this way, with a stipulation in the fine that they cannot charge it back to their customers.

I then strongly urge you to contact Rogers Cable and tell them how you feel about being price gouged. Don’t cut off their service, just cut back on the amount of money they are getting from you. The idea is to show them that if they think they can penalize you for their greed that you can do it right back.

And lastly, tell all of your friends and family about this by using your own words or sending them to this blog post. Feel free to copy and paste this article into an e-mail and send it to people you know.

DON’T LET ROGERS CABLE GET AWAY WITH THIS and don’t let them convince you that it is all the CRTC’s fault. We shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes committed by greedy corporations.