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NOTE: To my regular readers, today I am pleased to bring you a guest post from Harding McFadden. I hope you enjoy his piece about his writer's journey! -SB
Can We Chat for
a While?
by Harding
McFadden
I wrote my first
“book” when I was about eight years old: a twelve-page beast of a thing with
knights, evil kings, elves, robots, and a large red self-destruct button
inspired by some old Iron Maiden album cover and watching the first Terminator
at too young an age. I was so proud of
the thing. I even begged my oldest
sister to take it to school with her to type it up and print it out, so that I
could proudly give copies over to everyone I knew, which amounted to family too
polite to turn me down. I look back on
it now and cringe. It’s terrible.
By the time I
was seventeen I was submitting short stories to magazines. This synced up perfectly with the worst bout
of insomnia that I’ve ever had to deal with.
One, maybe two, hours of sleep a night, for weeks on end with one
terrible weekend-long crash. At the end
of one of these, with the crash in sight and the room spinning, I decided to
sit down in front of my typewriter and kick out a little story. At two or three in the morning, as my folks
later informed me. The end result was a
short story (less than a thousand pages) that I titled “Mr. Peabody and the
Headless Boy,” which, I will test until the day I die, is the single best thing
I’ve ever written.
Very proud of
this little gem, I submitted it. Much to
my chagrin, no one was interested.
Fantasy and Science Fiction?
Nope. Analog? Nada. Weird Tales?
My personal favorite: “Bleak, incoherent, and hard to follow.” I still have that rejection letter in a box
in my attic.
Long story
short: it hasn’t seen the light of day, unless you happen to be a good friend,
or relative. Until later this year, but
more on that later.
Like so many
folks, I guess, I’ve dreamed of writing a novel since first putting pen to
paper. There’ve been plenty of false
starts. A crime novel that let me know
inside of the first chapter just how little I know about law enforcement. A horror western that I wrote a detailed
outline for, along with the first two-fifths of, amounting to about 120 pages,
and which I fully intend to finish one day.
But the novel, as a form of artistic expression, has forever
eluded me.
I think it was
Koontz who said that agents dislike working with short story writers, as they
see them as amateurs, unable to give them the 100,000 words that they are
looking for. So, that’s me: the
perpetual amateur, with delusions of grandeur.
However, I will always defend those delusions, as what in the name of
God are the good of delusions of mediocrity?
So, two hundred
short stories, twelve sales, later, I am looking at the author’s proof of my
second book. How did I get here?
About ten years
back I decided to attempt an intellectual exercise: to outline a long story,
with a defined beginning, middle, and end.
A science fiction epic for readers of all ages, full of action,
adventure, heroes, villains, and concepts on a grand scale. Much to my shock I spent the following decade
doing just that: outlining. The
result? A long story, told over many smaller
volumes and related short stories, that in my head is called The Last War.
When my friend
Chester Haas—cowriter on the first volume of this long story—finished up our
little book, we were proud of the finished product. When those beta readers that we dropped it on
went through the roof for it, our pride grew by leaps and bounds. When I read it to my two awe inspiring
daughters and they told me they liked it, I was through the roof. But, as the old saying goes: pride goeth
before the fall.
No agent wanted
to touch the thing. “Too short,” and
“too offensive” were phrases that were thrown our way. I still don’t understand this last, but then
again it takes a lot to offend me.
In my youth I
was prone to depression and anxiety, at least in small bursts. These feelings reared their ugly heads once
again when it started to look like our work would amount to nothing, with
family and close friends being the only folks to read something that I’d had a
hand in writing, yet again.
Enter Sarah A.
Hoyt.
A
well-established and talented writer in her own right, Mrs. Hoyt did me the
honor a few months back of accepting my friend request on Facebook (let this be
a lesson to you folks out there: yes, writers are just people, but some are
fine examples of humanity, and Mrs. Hoyt is one such). Full disclosure: upon friending her, I’d yet
to read one of her many works of fiction, having only been exposed to her
articles in places like L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise. Yet, those articles were so incredible that I
found, and still find, myself sneaking them out with each and every new issue
published. So she’s a good writer, but
here’s what’s made me a fan for life: when I sent her a message, she answered.
I asked her,
very selfishly I admit, if she had any advice for someone trying to get
started, and in no time flat she got back to me offering many sage words of
advice, arguably the most important of which were: “Go indie, young writer, go
indie.”
Such a simple
thing, words given by a stranger that meant more than those given by most folks
that I’ve known in the flesh much longer, and they changed the way I was
looking at this. Sure, it would be nice
to be walking through a brick and mortar book store and see something that I’ve
written up on the shelves, but that’s just ago.
The fine folks at my local library have taken pity on my need to feed
the green-eyes monster and have everything that I’ve every had published up on
their shelves, listed, not by editor, but by my name, so that I can drive down
the M-rack whenever I want and bask in those few slim volumes whenever I’m
feeling down. So, brick and mortar be
damned.
And so, last
November my first book, The Children’s War, was published on Amazon
Kindle, with an absolutely incredible cover by Mrs. Katherine Derstein.
When I first
held it in my ready little hands, I could have cried. As has been pointed out to me endlessly: yes,
it was self-published. I am no less
proud. Couldn’t care less. It’s out there, for the reading public to
enjoy or hate to their heart’s content, as I’d always imagined it being.
One down.
Coming up in
late-February or mid-March will be the second book, The Great First
Impressions Trip, again with an incredible cover, this one put together by
the great Dr. Victor Koman, out of the kindness of his heart, and another great
writer who happens also to be a good
fella. Coming soon (another three or
four months) will be The Judas Hymn, a collection of my published short
stories, along with a dozen others (including the previously mentioned “Mr.
Peabody and the Headless Boy”) featuring a downright off-putting cover by
Xander Van Hawley. After that? Lord, lots more.
You see, I’ve
got a big story to tell, and it is my sincere wish to tell it well.
I guess it’s
getting past time to wrap this up. I’ve pimped
the books to annoyance. I’ve thanked those folks that’ve helped me, when I in
no way deserved their help (add to that list Samantha Bryant who, when I asked
if I could write a guest blog for her said “Yes.”) All that is left is to thank you, whoever
took a few minutes out of your busy day to read these ramblings from a poor
beggar, asking for your business. I hope
that you enjoyed our time together.
__________________________
Check out The Children's War here!
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