I’m a writer. That’s what I do. That’s what my whole mind is organized around. Even when I’m creating comics or drawing pictures, I put some kind of an inherent story into it. I’ve been doing this as long as I can remember.

Many times I’ve flirted with the idea of going pro, but various things have held me back, usually starting with “money” and moving on from there. But I think it’s time to start heading that way. There are several factors informing this decision:

1. First and foremost, people like my work! Which I’m very grateful for, of course. More than one publisher has told me, “You write it, whatever it is, I’ll publish it.” That’s… well, for a writer, that’s huge. In books where my stories have appeared, they’ve been singled out for special mention. It would seem, judging purely by external evidence, that my writing doesn’t suck. I should really be doing something with that.
2. Second, I’m not getting any younger. I spent the first half of my life waiting for better days, stalling for time, or “looking for the opportune moment.” But I’m running out of wiggle room. If I’m going to do it, I need to do it now before it’s no longer an option. Fortunately, my age is an asset rather than a liability here: I’ve had some life experiences now. I’ve seen things, man, seen some horrible things! Surely this must add depth to my work. And besides, many well-known and popular writers started later than I am… Rex Stout started publishing Nero Wolfe stories when he was 45. If they can do it, I can do it.
3. Third, I don’t want to stagnate, creatively. I need to take on new challenges. Writing for free and publishing on the web for anyone and everyone to see is fun, but convincing people to pay you to write? That takes some mad skillz. It’s time for me to level up!

There are things I will have to do in order to make this venture succeed. Most obviously, I need to actually write, more. A lot more. I can’t just quietly putter away at a story for months or years and then leave it in a drawer any more, I need to start, write, and finish things. If an idea doesn’t pan out, I need to shelve it and move on to the next one instead of dithering around on it trying to make it go.

Also, I need to work with a plan. I need to identify markets I want to be in, and go after them. I need to make contacts in the circles I want to be known in, and find ways to be of value there. I am very grateful for the “carte blanche” publishers I’ve mentioned above and I fully intend to work with them, but they are not by themselves enough to make a career, and they don’t cover all the genres I’m interested in working in. I need to find editors and agents and production people and cover artists for works I plan to publish myself. I need to learn the biz hardcore, get serious about accounting and taxes and all the annoying crap that writers hate to deal with but will die if they don’t. I need to make that part of my day-to-day writing activity, instead of something I just turn to reluctantly when I’m forced to.

I have been laying the groundwork for this for a while, actually. One of my writing rules since the end of Suburban Jungle has been, “Know how you’re going to get paid for this.” Every story I’ve written since then (not counting Brigid and Greg Fictionlets, which have a special dispensation) has had a business plan attached, and they’ve all been for money. Not always a lot of money, granted, but the point is that I’ve stopped giving away the store.

So, that’s where I’m headed at the moment. It’s an exciting thing to be really, actually, finally-and-I-mean-it-this-time doing it, but it’s also intimidating. Hiding behind “the day job” has given me something to blame my failures on for all these years. Thinking of myself (and referring to myself) as a professional writer, and treating it like a job instead of a hobby, means that if it goes Pfft! I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.

-The Gneech

I recently finished and submitted a new Michael Macbeth: Paranormal Consultant story to an upcoming anthology; it hasn’t been accepted yet (although I’m hopeful), so I won’t say more than that about the specifics, but I do want to talk about the form a bit.

Michael is that hoary old chestnut, a psychic (mystic, what-have-you) detective, a concept that’s been around, sorta quietly lurking, since at least the pulps of the 1930s if not before. The character type has enjoyed a recent resurgence with the popularity of such things as Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the “weirdening” of Sherlock Holmes in several recent adaptations and anthologies, and so forth. And of course Kolchak, while not a psychic himself, was a Marlowe-style private eye in a world of horror and monsters, so he fits right in.

This is a genre that I am comfortable in, and in which I will probably be writing no small amount of stories in the not-too-distant future. Whether they feature Michael, or another character, or possibly several different ones, is yet to be seen. However, I have recently come to a conclusion about the genre: the perfect psychic detective story has already been written. That story is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

I’m not going to go into why here, well except for the bit about use of language. Oh, and depth of theme. Not to mention the tight plot and nifty twists. And atmosphere. The point is, with all due respect to Mr. Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, Gail Carriger, Seanan McGuire, Charlaine Harris, and all the way back to Seabury Quinn, there will never be another psychic detective story that reaches the pure ideal of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. This is my own personal opinion of course, but anyone claiming otherwise is objectively wrong. Even Douglas Adams couldn’t do it! There’s a reason The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul took him so much effort, and The Salmon of Doubt was never finished. After Dirk Gently, Adams had nowhere to go but down, and he knew it.

At first, I was discouraged by this. But upon reflection, I found it strangely liberating: the pressure’s off. The competition is already won. I never have to worry about trying to write the best psychic detective story ever written, because it’s already been done. All I need to worry about is writing the best psychic detective story I can write. Of course it won’t be as good as Dirk Gently, because that can’t be done. I wouldn’t feel any guilt or pressure about not being able to fly and shoot lasers from my eyes, for the same reason.

All that said… if I could manage to write a book that was “kinda sorta nearly as good as some of the bits in Dirk Gently,” I’d be totally happy with that.

-The Gneech

“So I have this shaving cream…” said Greg.

“Promising start to a conversation,” replied Brigid.

“Hush, let me finish my sentence,” said Greg. “So I have this shaving cream, marketed specifically and in bold letters ‘For Men!’ which, for some inexplicable reason, is this day-glo neon blue color.”

“What, like gel toothpaste blue?” said Brigid.

“Yeah, pretty much like that,” replied Greg. “And I can’t help but wonder, what are the thought processes that led to this? I mean, did they have a focus group, where a bunch of guys came together and said, ‘Yeah, I really like this shaving cream, but I wish it was more comic-book-radiation-leak colored!’ or what?”

Brigid smirked. “Well obviously, day-glo neon blue is a very masculine color. Shaving cream for women is all pastel pink. All of it. No exceptions.”

“And it’s not like the color is even indicated on the packaging!” said Greg, warming to the topic. “So how can it be a marketing element? You don’t discover that it’s the color of something you’d never want on your face until after you’ve bought and opened it. Therefore, it has to be intended to get guys to buy that same shaving cream again. ‘I remember that shaving cream, it was neon blue! I’m getting that one!’”

“Maybe they’re depending on the fact that guys are, overall, a bunch of idiots.”

“Or the marketing team are all a bunch of idiots themselves.”

“They’re probably guys, aren’t they?” said Brigid.

“You’ve got me there,” said Greg.

-The Gneech

<-- previous B&G

In the middle of the Earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire
but there’s an even braver one who lives just up the road
but he kept his adventures secret so his family wouldn’t know, oh!

Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
with a lowbrow country drawl
Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
the actual bravest hobbit of them all

Now hobbits are peaceloving folks y’know
“Keep your adventures in the closet and on the down low!”
But Killmo had some dwarf friends traveling to and fro
and dragons kept eating up his buddies so they had to go

So Killmo strapped on his sword and mail
He couldn’t find a helmet so he used an old pail
He had to keep it secret so he found a way to ‘morph:
Killmo put on some false whiskers and became a dwarf, oh!

Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
with a lowbrow country drawl
Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
the actual bravest hobbit of them all

Killmo was a better fighter than you might think
He killed so many dragons that they’re all but extinct
He was toasted and rewarded by all his dwarf pals
And found out that it’s true what they say about dwarf gals, oh!

Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
with a lowbrow country drawl
Killmo, Killmo Dwaggins
the actual bravest hobbit of them all

“I was over hipsters before being over hipsters was cool,” said Greg.

“No, no, stop right there,” said Brigid. “That’s too obvious. Too cliché. You’re just phoning it in, now.”

“Aw, c’mon,” said Greg. “Do you realize how hard it is to be have just the right amount of world-weary cool while still maintaining a kind of innocent charm? It’s not easy, what I do!”

“Well it’s too late now,” said Brigid. “You just blew the whole thing. Toss it and start over.”

“Um…” Greg shrugged. “No idea. I got nothing.”

“So you’re going for straight-up nihilism, now?”

“A-ha! I’ve got it!” said Greg, and cleared his throat. “Being a coffee-loving hipster is hard. I just burned my mouth because I drank my coffee before it was cool.”

Brigid just stared at Greg, flatly. “Go back to phoning it in,” she finally said.

-The Gneech

<-- previous B&G
next B&G –>

Sleestak, Skeksi, Tellarites
Morloks eating trilobites
Wormhole, portal, dimensional rift
Klaatu barada, catch my drift?
Ghostly creatures of living gas
this planet is forbidden; none shall pass!
Atlantis, Lemuria, the land of Mu
Autotrepanation is bad juju
Frozen in time and lost in space
in a vinyl playset with a carrying case
Shoggoths quiver, phantoms creep
androids dream of electric sheep
It can happen here! Watch the skies!
Search a thousand years for the girl with green eyes
’cause when the worlds collide and Mars attacks?
It’s just a show, so just relax.

-The Gneech