Time for the 2 p.m. Schmeerskahooven!

well, it's off. the first submission of TUQG, that is, and I'm totally having a spazz about it. I thought I could take this calmly, but no, I feel like throwing up repeatedly. I keep remembering all the horror stories about submissions that I've heard--like the woman who sent a submission in only to ave it returned three DAYS later with the words "NO THANK YOU" scrawled on it in red ink....

When I was younger I had a lot more confidence. I could send submissions off without a second thought, sure that they'd be successful. And none of them ever were (well, except for "Moon Turn the Tides"). Which was a huge blow to my ego--after all I spent the years from 14-18 virtually winning every writing prize I applied for. So it's been a long time since I felt that high of success and I am beginning to think I never will.

Granted, there are various forms of rejection. I was astonished to learn this when my husband took a creative writing class last semeter. because I always got very nice personal letters from editors. But I guess most people get form letters and some people just get pink slips. I guess I should have kept trying.

Problem is, I want it all now. I want to be a bestselling author NOW. I have a hard time with the work involved and part of me says, "If you don;t like it then fuck you." I also started out submitting to big publications, like The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, rather than smaller once that might be willing to take a chance and pay you in copies. Well, that's what I did. I don't want to take small steps. I want the giant step, which is why I published Dragons of the Mind by myself. Unfortunately that was not as big a step as I would have liked, as I have only sold about 35 copies of the dang thing. Everyone who reads it loves it, so why can't I get more people to read it? exposure. I don't have it.

I know that artists do their art for themselves (thanks for reminding me of this, Alex). But there comes a time when you really want it to be out there. And as long as it's out there you don't really care who likes it and who doesn't. But the fact that it's out there enables you to continue. Sometimes writing is the most depressing thing, sitting in a little room all by yourself inventing stuff. You want the audience. I once told a therapist, "Plants don't live to be watered, but if you don;t water them they die." Writing is similar. For me at least, if I don't get that....recognition, someone at least reading it no matter what they think, the urge to write just dries up.

A big thank you to all who encouraged me to do this and who are sending stong vibes to Tor books in New York to take on this project! If you want to do the same I would welcome your participation.

And if it doesn't work, I'll just keep trying until it does.

What Day is It?

It's her birthday today. That woman who used to be my best friend up until 5 years ago when her bad attitude and general toxicity about ruined my life and surely had a good deal to do with ruining my health.

Why can't I forget these things? Some people don't remember birthdays, I always do, even the birthdays of people I haven't seen in near on 30 years. I don't forget. And we were friends for so long, I doubt I'll ever forget.

Today I am remembering all the good times we had together. The good things about her. The times she was genuine with me and not a person stuck always behind a mask of others' expectations. The times she was honest, not reciting lines.

The truth is, I miss her still. I miss having a living, breathing girlfriend.

The sad thing is, I doubt she understands to this day what she did to me that made me break off the relationship. She has a pretty good life now, from what I hear and see. She has what she wants and though it's not whatI would want I'm glad for her. That's today. Tomorrow I may go back to referring to her as the bitch, but today she's just my lost friend, as lost as if she had died.

So happy birthday Elliot. Wherever you are in your mind I still remember you as a one time friend. and that's the thing that hurts the most.

I coulda been a contender...

so I finally got up the nerve to look through the score sheets I received after entering The Unquiet Grave in a novel contest last year. (Okay, to be honest I didn't look at them; I had my husband read them to me from a safe distance.) I did not win this contest or even make the finals; if I had this blog would not be what it is. that's just in case you're curious.

What astounds me about these score sheets is just how varied the responses on them are. One judge graded me relatively high (71 out of 80 points). Another graded me in the middle range (61 out of 80) and the last, who had the task of reading my submission because the other two didn't agree by 10 points graded me very low indeed: a mere 52 out of 80. This, needless to say was rather a blow to my ego as I am used to attaining high writing scores in everything I do without even trying.

But what confounds me the most is the diffference in the comments. One judge says, "I don;t know what the main character is feeling." Another says, "it's perfectly clear how the main character is feeling." One judge says "Your use of detail is your strong point" and another says "you use too much detail; trust the reader more." I mean, how am I supposed to know who to believe here?

That's the bitch of writing for a commercial audience: the subjectivity of the reader. You never know, when you're sitting in your little room writing away, how anyone is going to react to anything. You only have yourself to go by. And in the end you succeed or fail not because of what you've done, but because of how someone judges what you've done. That's hard to take.

Funny story here: about the time I got these score sheets back a woman wrote an article in the newsletter of the writers' organisation I belong to. She got back the critique and package from a contest she failed to make the finals in on the same day she got a call from a publisher saying they were going to buy her book. I mean, is that weird or what? It just depends on who you get that day, I guess.

In the end, I failed to make the finals because of that low score, because it was one point closer to the middle score than the middle score was to the high score, and they add the two closest scores to get your final outcome. Well, to be honest, even if it hadn't been for that low score I wouldn't have made the finals because 71 and 61 don't quite add up to 135, the minimum qualifying score. Why couldn't that middle judge have given me 3 more points??? That's going to haunt me for a long time, especially as some of her comments seemed wishy washy, like she didn't want to go one way or the other, high or low. You know, like that teacher you had in school who never gave out A's just because. It haunts me now especially since I've decided to "submit, submit, submit," rather than publish the dang thing myself and save myself a lot of grief.

I think that low-scoring judge really wanted to be a critic--one of the kinds who doesn't look at the work in front of him but looks for the work as he thinks it should be. And that's frightening to me. What if I get an editor like that? Of course, in the music business I've heard it's good not to be too perfect because producers want something they can leave a stamp on, not something too polished. But is it the same in the writing field? I don't know. All I can think is how it will feel if I get the call. The call saying someone out there has seen the worth of my work and is willing to take a chance on my book.

And then I won;t be saying, "I COULDA been a contender." I'll really be one.

Well, I've decided.

I've taken the decision: I am NOT going to publish The Unquiet Grave myself. I'm going to start the tedious round of submissions. I figure, what have I got to lose except small pieces of my ego?

Gee, I don;t really have anything to say about this, except: if you;re looking to read TUQG, please put some energy, prayer, or what-have-you into my success at getting this thing published or finding a reputable agent.

I just think there's more wrong with the POD industry than there is right, to tell the honest truth. They're not there to sell your books: they're there to sell their services. and some of those services are QUITE expensive. Take a $900 base price for a fairly well designed book, add another $300 to havbe it copyrighted (if you do it yourself through the U.S. copyright office it's $45), another hundred for the Library of Congress registration....you get the idea. and that doesn't include marketing of any kind. Plus, if you want your book to be returnable--something most major bookstores demand--that's ANOTHER $700 for just a year.

POD companies also don;t sell a lot of books. They're seen as vanity presses, which don;t have a very good reputation among booksellers and reviewers. So don;t go to one expecting to have the next break out best seller because it probably isn't going to happen.

I do think there are lots of problems with "traditional" publishing methods as well, not least the subjectiveness of the whole industry. But I'm going to give it a shot.

It's been a long time since I've tried to have a book published and things have changed---not least my writing. So maybe, just maybe I have a chance.

That's all for now.

Sweet Surprises

I remember the date very well. It was June 2nd, 1977 and I was 14 years old, spending the night with a friend. Up until that time my musical experience had been limited to the Beatles, Jethro Tull and Cat Stevens, as well as the local easy listening station. Boy was I in for a surprise.

Beth was a metal head. I guess in these days you wouldn;t call her a metalhead anymore than you'd call Led Zeppelin and Queen Heavy Metal, but that's how they were known then. Now I guess they'd just go by the label hard rock. Anyway. Beth started playing me music out of her collection. And blown away doesn;t begin to describe how I felt. I guess considering my listening history it would not have been out of order to suppose I'd hate the stuff she played me, but I loved it. I felt my blood pounding with the guitar and the drums. I felt alive and awake in a way I never had before. And it sure didn;t hurt that most of the guys on the album covers were wearing very tight clothes and were extremely good looking.

She saved her favourite band, Sweet, for last. She really wanted me to like them because a lot of people in our country didn't at the time: they were seen as a cheesy mix of Led Zep and Queen or an ex-bubble pop band trying desperately to make its own way without talented songwriters. But I loved them quite as much as Beth had hoped I would and ended up being obsessed with them for the next few years, even to harbouring a massive crush on their guitar member (incidentally, the only member of the band still playing and one acknowledged as the most talented).

Sweet did start as a bubble pop band. Remember the dreadful "Little Willy?" That was one of theirs. So was the odious "Wig Wam Bam." Both were written by the team of Chinn and Chapman (or Chinnichap) for the up and coming band. If most people think of Sweet they think of those songs, or of the later "Love is like Oxygen," which, though written by my darling Andy Scott, I think is a terrible song. But between the Chinnichap era and the time of the album Level Headed (or Leather Headed, as we called it then) Sweet was one of the rockin'est hard rock bands out there and also one of the most underrated. All anyone really knows of them is "Fox on the Run" and "Ballroom Blitz," and while both those numbers are good in a catchy poppy sort of way, they don;t capture the drive and energy of "Done me Wrong Alright" or "Sweet F.A." or...well anything else that the band wrote themselves during that brief period when they were known for their thundering guitar riffs, rapid staccato drumming and layered vocals.

I once owned the entire Sweet catalog on Vinyl, but years of poverty driving me to sell my most prized possessions soon relieved me of the burden. Now, I've been wanting to hear some Sweet again for years, but all I could find were compilations of their early stuff (ironically called "The Best of Sweet---eughh!). But today I did an Amazon search and found...yes, almost the whole catalog released on CD, Imports and all. Oh to hear "Midnight to Daylight" and "Action" again! What did I do? I bought the whole thing, of course. Even though I couldn;t really afford it. I mean, what are credit cards for?

I can't wait for these discs to come. I'll be ripping them out of the plastic and blasting the house down with the sounds of one of my favourite bands--the only way to listen to Sweet is REALLY REALLY LOUD!!!! And if the neighbours don't approve....too bad!

Now, does anyone have a copy of Strung Up that they're willing to part with?

Depression

I wish I had something more interesting to say than whine about my depression, but I don't. I wish I wasn;t depressed, but I am.

I guess I should be grateful that I'm not as depressed as I was a year ago or so, but I still can't but feel that true happiness is out of my reach. Every day it gets a little harder to get out of bed, a little harder to get dressed. When I do get dressed I most likely put on gnarly old sweatpants and a threadbare t-shirt because it just doesn;t seem worth it to put on anything else. No one ever sees me and I rarely see anyone. I don't miss these things. And that's part of being depressed that's frightening to me: how little I miss things. I vaguely remember times when I was energetic and active and had activities in my life that I enjoyed. But these things are distant as the memories of dreams. Like they happened to someone else, or like I read about them somewhere.

This is more familiar, this grey fog that creeps into my heart more and more every day. I've struggled with it as long as I can remember, honestly. I remember feeling this way when I was nine years old. Even then I knew I had no value. But even then I could find things that gave me a moment's happiness. Not so anymore. It's as if I've tried everything, leeched all the hapiness I could out of every activity imaginable and I can't think of anything else I'd like or like to do.

People who don't suffer this can't imagine it. They think you can just snap out of it or perk up at will. But dead flowers don;t come back to life and that's a fact.

I'm tired of this now.

My Family, By Request

I got a comment the other day on a blog I wrote way back in January asking me to delve more into my family dysfunction. Well, I don;t know if I can do that, precisely, but here's a brief picture:

My father was a minister (he's been gone now for some years). My mother was an English teacher (Middle school) She's stilll with us and probably will be for a good many years to come. They grew up during the GReat Depression and I think that shaped a lot of their lives. Also, they lived quite some time in the 1950s, that time of Leave it to Beaver families and not being talked about and specifically not mentioning BAD THINGS that might be going on.

They had five children, four girls and one boy. I'm convinced they meant to stop after my brother was born because there are nearly eight years between him and me. I told my mom once that I thought I was a mistake. Her reply was, "You may have been unexpected but that doesn;t mean we love you any less." Hmmm.

My dad was ten years older than my mom. They met during WWII. her father never approved and never let my dad forget it, from what I can gather. Being married just after the war meant that they brought up most of their children during the '50s. Then the 1960s hit and nothing was ever the same again. I think this is onhe of the defining moments of my parents' lives. They just weren't able to make the adjustment from the repression of the '50s to the freedom of the '60s and when their older girls started marching to a different drummer, well...I hope you get the idea because being about 1 at the time I don;t really have many memories of this.

In 1961 of thereabouts, my eldest sister got pregnant. Of course, my parents wanted to hush it up. They made arrangements for her to go away to a home for unwed mothers. My sister, understandably, wanted noting to do with this. She eloped with her boyfriend and because she was underage, got his mother to stand up before the city clerk and say she was my mother so the marriage could come off (My parents had it annulled later). But the worst thing was the pregnancy out of wedlock, as far as my parents were concerned. This was the defining tragedy of my mother's life, and maybe my father's too. It didn't make matters any better when my next eldest sister became a heroin junkie and ran off to california where she had two children out of wedlock to different fathers (I think; they don;t resemble one another in the least).

Now you;d think, by today's standards of understanding, that someone would have got a clue from this that all was not right in the Lampe household. But all my parents could tink was that the girls were intrinsically bad. Which always puzzled me, as the grandchildren from these alliances were always treated quite a bit better than I was. When I had problems, it was seen as another sign of that intrinsic badness. I don't know how many times I was told, "You;re going to grow up to be just like your two older sisters." It didn;t matter what I did. The thing I remember was wanting to perm my hair. This seems innocent enough to me, but somehow to my mother it was a sign that I was going to get pregnant and run away, I guess, because she just threw a fit at me. I permed my hair anyway, and I never DID get pregnant or even have a boyfriend until much, much later.

I always felt shut out of my family. They don't talk. At least, they don;t talk to me. Between my elder siblings there's a bond--they grew up together. But by the time I was old enough to talk to or even have any idea what was going on, they were all gone. And they continue to shut me out to this day. I've tried communicating with them but the best I get is a card on my birthday, if they remember. My two older sisters don;t send me cards at all. It's like I don't exist on some level. I've never understood why this is. To me, it seems to reinforce the idea that I'm somehow the black sheep of the family and that all the troubles are my fault.

A couple of years ago I had a series of miscarriages. I really wanted my family to be there for me at the time and I went out of my way to write to my next oldest sister (the good one). I was really open and told her all my fears and what it had been like growing up. Her response was, "How could you say Daddy didn't love you? He always loved little children." I remember his holding his grandchildren and even me when I was very small. But my main memories of are him telling me how bad I was and how much trouble I was and that I treated my mother like mud all the time. How can you think someone loves you when this is all you hear?

No one was there for me growing up. In juvenile novels there's slways someone: an aunt, a teacher, a librarian who encourages the protagonist to blossom and grow. But there was no one like that in my life. Just me and my thoughts. Is it any wonder I felt I didn't deserve to live?

Of course I know now that there's a real scientific basis for my continuing depression and flights of mania. But at the time it was just, "Stop being bad. Stop being upsetting." My mother accused me once when I was in tears of "Being a good actress." My therapist asked me just the other day why on earth anyone would act like they were in pain like that. But I get so confused sometimes, I don;t know what I'm really feeling or whether I'm just making it up. I don;t know what's real.

I don;t know if this is what that person wanted me to write but that's what has come to me right now and I don;t think I can go on anymore. Not with this, I mean. My life is still in the balance but I thik I'm coming out okay. THis time.