I just saw a glowing review by Soleil Noir of the Drollerie Press anthology Needles & Bones, which contains my “Subterranean Song.” The reviewer takes the time to go into detail on each of the stories and poems, saying what she likes and dislikes about each. Here’s what she has to say about mine:

Subterranean Song (poem) by David Sklar

“Ghosts and Music intertwined: to dance their way out of hell, or fall from the gates of heaven.”

A story set to poetry, literally, and utterly enthralling. I loved the imagery Sklar speckles through his verses. I cackled delightfully over his version of -er-hell. Artists, Musicians and Writers, of course, should get a kick out of this.

To whet your appetite, I give you my favorite lines:

“‘Cause death’s not so bad; I know people who’ve done it/and hunger and cold you get used to in time/but wondering what has become of someone/fills the twilight with shadows and wind.’”

His bio mentions he’s written more poems, I do believe I will have to go find them.

You can read the review in its entirety here.

My colleague Rachel de la Vienne, author of Pixie Warrior from Drollerie Press, has written a series of what-if questions on her blog–some truly intriguing, some ordinary, some just unusual, but overall much more interesting than the funky question memes you usually find on e-mail or LiveJournal.  And, unlike most of these multi-question lists, she only asks you to pick the three you like best and answer those.  So, if you’re in the mood for that sort of thing, here it is.

Well, the article I just linked to had inside it a link to this article, which is also a pretty good read–in which Theresa Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books gives some examples from Rejectioncollection.com of authors seriously overreacting to some fairly positive rejection letters, and then discusses the editor’s point of view when reading slush.

On the one hand, it’s very comforting, because it reminds you that rejection isn’t personal and that editors have to go through so many manuscripts.  On the other hand, it’s kind of disheartening, because when she lists the various reasons for rejecting manuscripts, the conclusion seems to be that if you can build a coherent story you’re really competing with only 5% to 10% of any given publisher’s submissions.  And if that’s the case, then it means, at least speaking for myself, that my acceptance ratio is a lot more disappointing than I had previously believed.

My favorite part:

What these guys have failed to understand about rejection is that it isn’t personal. If you’re a writer, you’re more or less constitutionally incapable of understanding that last sentence, if you think there’s any chance that it applies to you and your book; so please just imagine that I’m talking about rejections that happen to all those other writers who aren’t you.

One reader took issue to this claim (took it personally, I daresay), but for myelf I say guilty as charged.  Though I like to think I’ve learned to hide it well.

It would be an interesting experiment to write a story with the title “Slush” and see how editors respond.  Unfortunately, I usually title my stories after I’ve written them, not the other way around.  Oddly, though, I seem to have already written that poem and gotten it published under a different title, years ago.

I get kind of self-indulgent and talk about how this compares to my own acceptances and rejections after the break. . .

Read more

A friend from my critique group just posted this link about why first-time novelists are usually older than first-time actors or musicians.  Focusing largely on the work and timelines involved in writing and publishing a novel, rather than the need for actors who can convincingly portray younger roles.  At 40 years old, with a novella e-published in small press and my first novel only half written, I’m not sure whether to take comfort in the relative ages of other first-time novelists (averaging around 37 for those winning the John W. Campbell Award, according to one person posting a response) or to moan about the amount of time and effort left before I can hope to see publication of The Skin We Wear.

One remarkable thing, it seems like a lot of people go through 3 or more trunk novels (according to the linked post and the responses) before they come up with anything saleable.  So, unless you count the trunk novel I wrote when I was 14, it looks like, late start or no, I did pretty well on producing a first opus that at least a respectable small press editor thought was worth showing the public.

[cross-posted from my LiveJournal page]

It’s blog tour time again!  Below find the snippet from Elisa Diehl about how her father pushed her to get her novels published; in due time Meredith Holmes will post my blog tour entry about my efforts to influence my children in any way at all…. Normally I would track down the links and post them, but it’s after 1:00 in the morning, and my computer is running very slowly tonight.  Master list should be on the Drollerie Press blog later in the day.

 Enjoy!

Hello, David Sklar’s readers! This is E. G. Diehl (a DP stealth author more commonly known as DokodemoElisa), and I jumped on the blog-tour bandwagon just in time to catch the topic on fathers. I must say, this is a topic close to my heart, and it also happens to be a topic close to my budding authorial career. So, without further ado, it’s story time!

I started working for the family business (a ServiceMaster franchise) as soon as it was legal for me to do so. I was very enthusiastic about the idea of making my own money, but I was also far too young to be spotted doing janitorial work or cleaning carpets and floors alone. Thus, from the get-go, I spent all of my time in my first job either working with my dad or my uncle.

It’s no small wonder I didn’t drive those poor men mad. To keep my mind busy while I dusted and emptied trash cans, I whistled, sang snippets of songs I didn’t know very well (usually Disney), and talked incessantly. I had a grand time, really, and some of my fondest teen memories are of the times I spent in the car between jobs with my dad. We often talked about fantasy novels I’d borrowed from him, or barring that we entertained one another by bickering (most often in a good-natured best friends sort of way. Dad and I can be a bit like siblings, and we’re remarkably similar, stubborn people). Our two primary modes of conversation merged about a decade ago when I started writing novel-length fantasy fiction. When I was too young to know better, I wrote a winding, cliffhanger-riddled, melodrama-prone thirteen novel series that Dad couldn’t have gotten me to not-talk-about if he’d taped my mouth shut.

So, not long after I started weaving the worlds that were growing in my school notebooks to my dad in the car between floor jobs in grocery store bank branches, my dad started telling me I should publish. The argument, which repeated itself until I was in my mid-twenties, ran something along the following lines: Dad would say that I should publish. Worse stories had been published and sold reasonably well, and there was no reason that I shouldn’t be making the money they were making. I, in turn, would fervently object to the very idea on the grounds that the series was a work in progress, needed more editing work than I could imagine devoting to it in a single lifetime, and had been written by an inexperienced kid with delusions of grandeur (that last bit sprung up in varying degrees, and far more often in the later phases of this conversation series). I was, perhaps, excessively worried about finding myself humiliated by my own work in the unlikely event that somebody actually did find it worth publishing.

Dad, through sheer persistence, ultimately won the argument, but in my defense, by the time he won, he had managed to get Mom on his side. I was outnumbered. Also in my defense, the two books that are scheduled for Drollerie Press e-book release this summer have nothing at all to do with the series I wrote in high school. Nor do they have anything to do with the five other books I wrote between that series and this. Still, I’ll admit I never would have taken the time to submit anything to anyone if it weren’t for my parents’ unwavering drive to convince me it should be done. Incidentally, Mom and Dad also kindly loaned me a room in their house for eight months between my three-year sojourn in Gunma, Japan and the start of my grad-school studies at the University of Hawaii, during which time I finished the last 60,000 words of the second book and put forth an uncomfortably fervent effort to find a publishing home for the first.

Now, instead of presenting my dad with the hundred and ten reasons I don’t want to publish, the conversations we have on the phone often go as follows: “Hey, Elisa, did they release your book yet?” “No, Dad. Believe me, I would have called you if that had happened.” “I thought you said that was going to happen this summer. I checked that website. I don’t see any news about your book.” “It’s not there, Dad. Believe me, I’d have called you if that had happened.” “Are you sure they’re working on it?” “Yes, I’m sure. Everyone’s very busy. It’s a really small company, and everyone has a lot on their plates. It’ll happen. I’ll call you as soon as I know” and so forth. I would swear he’s more eager and impatient about this than I’ll ever be. Conceivably he’s earned the right. He’s been the wind blowing in my (reluctant) publish-these-things sails since years before I’d conceived of the hero character who shares his middle name.

No, the middle name they share isn’t “Stubborn” or “Unrelenting.” It’s a little more mundane than that, but you’ll have to wait until the silly things have actually been published to find out what it is. Until then, I’m not telling!

The new anthology Needles & Bones, featuring my poem “Subterranean Song,” is now available from Drollerie Press. See excerpt below from the letter to authors whose work appears in this anthology:

Needles & Bones is now available in the Drollerie Press bookshop (buy page: http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=85 description page: http://drolleriepress.com/needles-bones/)

It will be available at mobipocket.com soon, and at Fictionwise and Amazon as soon as they process it.. . .

Well, the information for the June Drollerie Blog Tour just came out.  I will be posting on the Web site of Meredith Holmes, whom I hosted in April, and I will be hosting Elisa Diehl, about whom I know nothing at all.  In honor of father’s day (and to balance out last month’s blog tour about mothers), we will be writing about fathers and fatherhood.  A brief summary of my take on it:  You never have enough money, you never have enough time, and you never have enough sleep, but you get to experience the entire world over for the first time.

Look for the full post to come out on June 21. 

 Welcome to the May installment of the Drollerie Press blog tour.  This month’s theme is “mothers,” as a tip of the hat to the recent Mother’s Day holiday, and below is a posting from Heather S. Ingemar, who’s letting the mother of one of her heroines have her say.  You can find more about Heather on her own Web site, or at a brief interview with her that recently came out at BooklandHeights.  Enjoy!

Vivian’s Story

Drollerie Authors Blog Tour Post, May 21^{st, 2009Vivian Belgrave is the mother of Clara in my story “Dead Woman Walking.” She’s a handful. You can read more about her in the “Bump in the Night” anthology that just came out from Drollerie Press.There are no mothers of any worth in the old tales.}

I am a woman of strength, of stature – the Belgrave estate has been in my name for the last ten years and I have managed it, without the aid of a man. I have managed my life. I am present. I am powerful.

Yet even as I feel this child growing in my womb, I see it in their stares when I wander through the market, hear it in their concerned words while on my way to handle the trading of the grain. You need a man, their stares seem to say. You are weakened by your burden, their subtext whispers.

Lessened. Diminished.

I am far from diminished. Do they not know the skill I possess with the Craft? Have they not seen how my property outgrows even the wretched Fowlers’ every year? Have they not seen the abundance of my estate? Even as my pregnancy quickens, I feel the Craft growing ever nimble in my hands. One day, I will be more than a match for Fowler with his handy spells and tidy potions. One day, he will not cast his shadow over me, with false proposals of marriage and degrading propositions.One day, I will have everything he took from me.

Because I am powerful.

Well, the proofs for Needles and Bones arrived this week.  Last I heard, Deena is planning to release the e-book on Thursday, coinciding with the monthly Drollerie Press Web chat.  My poem “Subterranean Song” appears there.  Granted it’s my own poem, but I hope I don’t sound too self-absorbed if I admit to liking it better every time I read it.

I haven’t had a chance to read a lot of the other stories in that book (with work and parenting duties, I manage to finish maybe a page a night of the new novel in progress, and then I’m wiped out), but there’s one right after my poem, called “Sleepwalker” by Darin Bradley, that I’ve started and find really intriguing.

 The Web chat is tomorrow (Thurs 5/21) starting at 10:00.  If I’m not mistaken, the Drollerie Press blog tour also takes place that day.  More info tomorrow on who’s posting what where.

Well, “Wood” has gotten accepted into the Circlet Press anthology “Like a Sacred Desire.”

“Subterranean Song” has been moved from the Drollerie Press anthology Things That Go Bump in the Night into the upcoming anthology Needles and Bones, also from Drollerie Press. I’m kind of excited about this, because “Bump” (ghosts, vampires, zombies) sounded like it might be good, but “Needles” (surrealism) sounds downright fascinating.

“Red ‘Hood” is in StereoOpticon, which is now out (also Drollerie).

“Behind the Tower” is still slated for publication in Straying from the Path: New Tales of Little Red (Drollerie again). To the best of my knowledge, the only thing we’re waiting on is the artwork. When I looked over my proof copy, there were more stories without art than with, but the art that was there was phenomenal.

I’ve been working on a story called “Where We Come From,” which will be a chapter in The Skin We Wear. It’s hard for me to estimate a word count, because most of “Where” is handwritten pages (which were written at different stages of exhaustion, in different degrees of lighting, so one page might have 250 words on a side, and the next might have 75), and because the full manuscript isn’t compiled but divided into individual chapters/stories.  But by my best guess, “Where We Come From” is currently at about 6,500 words, and the current book manuscript including those 6500 words (but not including any of the partial writes I’ve done on stories I might or might not finish) is just shy of 40,000 words.