Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
Same as it ever was
The new year has definitely included some ups and downs. Three of my former colleagues have passed away recently from sudden and unexpected illnesses. Two more have been stricken with very serious illnesses. In addition to my grief for them and their loved ones, I am of course distracted by thoughts of my own mortality. More than usual, I am taking comfort in words these days. The words I read and the words I write. Sometimes there is nothing to do but fill the void with words.
Remember why you write
There’s a lot of talk online these days about the business of writing — blockbuster contracts, movie tie-ins, the financial benefits of self-publishing, Kickstarters, etc. I’m certainly guilty of it myself. Unfortunately, the main reasons we write — to tell good stories, to create and to reach out to other people — often get lost in all the arguments about money. It’s the way of the world.
Sometimes, though, you get a nice reminder about why you’re doing this writing thing in the first place. My second novel, The Warhol Gang, came out in 2010. It got lovely reviews but it didn’t make me rich, and it’s kind of hard to find these days. I still like it but I haven’t thought of it in a while. I’m busy writing new books, after all. Every writer knows new books consume all your waking thoughts and even some of your sleeping ones.
Yesterday, three people mentioned The Warhol Gang to me in messages. They didn’t know one another, and it wasn’t synchronized or planned. It was just three different people who saw something in the world that reminded them of The Warhol Gang and they thought enough about it to let me know.
That is worth much more than money to me.
To write a book that stays with people, that remains alive in their memory long after they put down the book, that is what every writer strives for, I think.
I’ve taken to sending messages of thanks to writers who have made a difference to me, as I want them to know their works have been appreciated and live on with me. I also want to thank all of you, my readers, for being the people who like the sort of stories I tell. The world needs more of you.
Sometimes, it’s nice to be reminded of why you write.
Kickstarting your writing career
Every now and then, someone asks me for advice on how to get published. To which I usually respond, “If I understood how the publishing business works, I’d be making a lot more money than I am now….”
The one piece of advice I do always offer, though, is to consider self-publishing. It was once frowned upon, but it’s now an increasingly viable way for writers to get their work out there — these days it’s often called “indie publishing.” Many writers have found it to be more profitable and more immediate than traditional publishing, where it can take years just to get a rejection. My good friend Kate Tremills decided to self-publish her first novel, Messenger, because she didn’t want to play the waiting game of tradpub and it worked out well for her. She cracked the Kindle top 100 list and at one point she was ranked higher than George R.R. Martin. Others prefer the creative control that self-publishing offers. And it’s a great way to keep your backlist in print — I self-pubbed my first book, Please, when the rights reverted back to me. It continues to sell although it hasn’t been in a bookstore in years. Just head over to the blogs of Joe Konrath or Hugh Howey to read more on the indie revolution.
And sometimes writers self-publish because it seems to be the only way to get their work out there. Earlier this week, Canadian spoken word poet Shane Koyczan launched a Kickstarter for his new poetry book, saying publishers more or less don’t even bother with poetry anymore. He was asking for $15,000 — a sizeable advance for a book of poetry. He’s raised twice that in only two days — $30,000. That’s about six times the average advance a publisher pays for a book of fiction in Canada. I wrote about the Koyczan Kickstarter over at The Province.
I’m not saying you should give up on publishers and move straight to self-publishing. But you should definitely consider it as an option. All the other authors are.
A dream of a novel
A number of people have asked where I got the idea for The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. It’s a bit, um, out there, after all.
It has its origins in a poem I read in my university days: “The Dream of the Rood.” I studied it in an Old English and medieval literature class taught by Nicholas Watson when he was still at the University of Western Ontario, where I earned my BA and Master’s degrees. I started a PhD at another university but never finished it. That’s another story….
Part of the poem tells the story of Christ’s crucifixion as seen by the cross itself. It was an interesting POV, and the poem stuck with me, in the way that random bits of culture and history can. Years later, I started thinking about the poem again and the idea of the cross as the body of Christ itself suddenly came to me. And that’s where the book began.
Another shred of cultural shrapnel, Keats’s “This Living Hand,” also made its way into The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. As did the Gaudi church that figures prominently in the book’s opening scenes — and which inspired my own pilgrimage to Barcelona. (Thanks, Robert Barsky!) There are no doubt others, of course, but these are big ones for me.
So if you want to get ideas for a book, get out there and live life. And, of course, read read read and read some more.
Here’s a link to the full text of Dream of the Rood, if you’re interested.
In other projects….
While I’ve been busy writing the sequel to The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, I’ve also written another novel. Exhibit A:
That’s right, no pen name for this one. What could it be? Oh, it’s a mystery….
Earth, we have a problem
I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading lately. Between writing and trying to parent a three-year-old boy (note the “trying”), I’ve had little time to read. I think I may have to schedule an hour each day, like they used to do in elementary school back in the day. My mind is feeling malnourished, as if I have some form of literary scurvy.
I did recently manage to finish one of the strangest books I’ve ever read though: Tony Burgess’s The n-Body Problem. I posted a little review of it over at The Province. If you like crazy, insane zombie stories, then this is the book for you!
Also, is it a coincidence that I developed the man flu the day after I posted the review?
A sad farewell to Innsmouth Magazine
I’m kind of depressed to read that Innsmouth Magazine is calling it a day — and not only because they published my story “We Are All Ghosts.” Innsmouth Magazine was one of the smartest mags around, printing stories that were likely too weird to be printed anywhere else. The editors say the sales just weren’t there to support it anymore. I don’t know if people have had their fill of Lovecraftian stories — I haven’t! — or if it’s just the mysterious, eldritch forces of the market at work, but either way it’s a bad day for literature. It’s the loss of a great market for me as a writer, but more importantly, it’s the loss of a great magazine for me as a reader.
The one good piece of news to come out of this is that Innsmouth books will continue to publish collections and anthologies. So there is still hope in a hopeless world.
Keep up to date on Innsmouth news by following editor and writer Silvia Morena-Garcia over at her blog.
ia ia ia ia indeed!
A little Cross news
OK, I’ve been AWOL here for a little while because of, well, life. You know how it goes.
A lot of you have been asking about the sequel to The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. I’ve finished a working draft of it and submitted it to the publisher. It’s called The Dead Hamlets, and it involves the haunting of a certain Shakespeare play. Hopefully there’ll be more news on that soon.
I’ve also got part of the third Cross book written and I’d like to finish that next. It’s about the end of the world, so I’d like to publish it before the real apocalypse happens.
Here’s the first few paragraphs from The Dead Hamlets, just to tease you:
I lost the angel Baal on a dark and stormy night in Berlin. Some might say the weather was a sign of things to come, or maybe a sign of things past. But if there was one thing I’d learned over the ages, it was that the weather was usually just the weather. Usually. So instead of killing Baal and getting drunk on his grace, I found a bar on a quiet street and got drunk on regular spirits instead. It wasn’t the same, but I’d learned to make do.
Make that drunker. I hadn’t been sober in months, not since the Barcelona Incident. The less said about that, the better. Let’s just say if I didn’t have a reason to kill angels before, I had one now.
If I had been sober, Baal might not have been able to lose me in the crowd at Potsdamer Platz, disappearing like he was just another person. Sure, he looked like a regular person most of the time, just another mortal hurrying his life away to the grave. But appearances can be deceiving. Take me, for instance. I look like one of you too, but I’m not. I wish I were. So do the angels. But if wishes were stars, the heavens would be on fire.
I wasn’t any more sober than I am mortal, so I lost Baal in the rain and the crowd. Which meant I’d thrown away the money I’d paid to the priest who had come to me in Spain with Baal’s location. It wasn’t the first time drink had cost me dearly. I’ve lost fortunes over the centuries, thanks to my bad decisions. It wouldn’t be the last time either. There’s no way I’m going to spend the rest of eternity sober, not with the sort of things that happen to me on a regular basis.
I told myself that it didn’t matter as I stumbled out of the rain and into the bar. I’d find Baal again, or I’d find some other angel to kill. There were always other angels to kill. Not as many of them as there used to be, granted, because I’d hunted down my fair share of them over the centuries. But there were enough seraphim left to get me through a few more Dark Ages. God had made a lot of spares.
I hope you get to read the rest soon.
Probably my last reading of the year
Just a reminder I’ll be reading at the ChiSeries Vancouver event Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Detail are on my Appearances page.
The continuing adventures of Cross
Last week I finished the second draft of the new Cross book, which is kind of a ghost story. That’s about all I can say about it for the moment. It still needs some more work, so I’m sitting down right now to start the third draft. Hopefully, I’ll have a copy I can present to my agent before Christmas. OK, enough procrastination….
peter darbyshire 