A mentor, editor and writer all wrapped up into one

I met Melanie Fogel over 5 years ago, through a creative writing course she offered (and still offers) through the Ottawa School Board's Continuing Education program. Her course caught my eye because she was the editor of Storyteller magazine through the fifteen years it was in existence.  I scoured enough local writing courses to know that it’s rare to find a course taught by anyone who is more than a hobbyist.  I jumped on the opportunity.

She told us that it’s difficult to teach people how to write, but she was able to draw on her experience in reading through endless slush piles to provide  examples of how not to write.  We learned how you can lose a reader by the end of the first paragraph.  How not to leave the reader with a sense of “So what?” by the end of the story and how if you can’t summarize your story in a single sentence, you’re probably in trouble.  It was an excellent course and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in developing their writing skills.  

I was especially fortunate in that she saw something in me and chose to continue to offer mentorship with my writing ever since.

Her latest short story, Pied-à-Terre, can be found in Cutting Block Press' Tattered Souls II Anthology.  A preview can be found here.  

Congrats on another publication, Melanie!

Just the Stats, Ma'am.

I finished my media blitz* to promote the release of the Spirit Legends anthology, containing my short story, Shadows Lost.

*Media blitz = I posted a status update on Facebook:

Kevin Quirt: I recently sold a short story (Sci-Fi) to an anthology publisher and the ebook version came out today. I downloaded the book and showed my five-year-old that his dad is a published writer. He scanned the first page, looked at me and asked, "When's the movie coming out?"

I’m not a firm believer in the power of social networking as a promotional vehicle, but my view might be skewed by the fact that I’ve only populated my Facebook friends list with actual friends. I don’t expect them to drive my career to the next level. That’s not what they’re there for. They’re friends and I'm privileged to know them. I want to share this experience with them, but also want to make sure that none of them think I’m expecting them to start paying my salary as a writer.

It’s crazy to assume that most of your friends would even like your work, no matter what you do. Writer. Painter. Artisan. As a writer, I can see this quite easily. Head into any large bookstore and imagine how many books they have that you would like to read. Is it ten? Hundreds? Compare that number to how many different books are in the store?

Any reader will only like a small percentage of any books available in a book store, and the preferred books likely run down genre lines (e.g,. Thriller, SF, Horror, Romance,…). I’m a stats guy, so I know that only some people like SF. Only a small portion of those people are my friends. The odds are pretty good that while my friends will be genuinely happy for me getting published, most of them probably wouldn’t like the story. (Venn diagram added below for dramatic effect)

If I had a friend who was a writer of speculative bagel stories (what if bagels were square?), I would wish that person every joy and success writing could bring. But, I’d never read any of their work.

It’s seems strange to say that I don’t mind whether or not my friends like my work. I really hope they do, especially if they’ve paid money to read it. But, I’m not going to put pressure on them to prop up my ego as a writer. The market will let me know how I’m doing and the market won’t feel pressure to be nice in giving real feedback.

I've received a lot of positive feedback and support over the past few days from those who are most important to me and I am very grateful for that.   It let me know I was sharing this news with the right people.

Speaking of Writing...

One of my stories, Shadows Lost, has just been released as part of RuneWright publishing's latest anthology, Spirit Legends: Of Ghosts and Gods, edited by Christopher Ficco.

It was great finding a home for Shadows Lost, a story about a troubled neuroscientist who elicits an out of body experience in a research setting but doesn't find what she expects.  The tale borders science fiction, fantasy and the paranormal without settling in one genre, which was why I was so glad to find an anthology open to this type of story.

Thanks to Christopher for accepting my story in his publication.

This isn't my first published work involving a neurophysiology lab.  I was fortunate enough to be involved with an excellent neurophysiology research team at the Royal Ottawa Hospital and they offered me a co-authorship on one of the projects I worked on.  The lab experience I gained working with them was invaluable in putting together the setting for this story.

On a whim, I checked to see if I was a findable author on Amazon now that the anthology has been released.  It turns out I am, providing one is willing to accept that they misspelled my name as "Various" in the author section.

I'll bet this never happened to Stephen King. :)