My new collection, THE EXPERIENCE ARCADE AND OTHER STORIES, is now up for preorder at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We can now reveal the entire cover! I still get all squishy inside when I see my name on a book. It makes me feel like I was when I was ten-years old at the library, looking for which science fiction authors my book would appear between when I grew up (it was Jack Vance and A.E. Van Vogt).
My fifth collection of short stories, The Experience Arcade, will debut at World Fantasy in San Antonio in November.
The collection consists of twenty-four of the thirty-five short stories that I have sold from my write-a-story-a-week-for-a-year that I started in 2015. I’m trying some new approaches with this collection:
First, every story has a brief teaser for the readers, sort of like what Analog does for their short stories. Second, every story has a postscript for writers and teachers that talks a little bit about the thinking that went into the writing of the stories.
I don’t know if the additional material will make the book more interesting or not. I do know that when I was young, I never read introductions or epilogues. As an older reader, I find the extra information very valuable. We’ll see how the experiment in format goes.
I’m also creating a web page with support material specifically for teachers who would like to use any of the stories (or the entire collection!) in class. You can see what I’ve done so far by clicking on The Experience Arcade: A Teacher’s Guide in the menu at the top of the page.
My experience on how best to promote strong sales that I learned from my previous books isn’t very helpful, I’m afraid. My first collection, Strangers and Beggars, and my first novel, Summer of the Apocalypse, did well. The sales on the other books have been hard to graph. I can’t see a pattern, and I don’t know why some books do better than others (other than the obvious that maybe some books are just, well, better).
We will see.
I finished my two-day class called “Creative Writing for Teachers who would Like to Write” yesterday. I think it went well. I sent them this letter to the teachers today to give them some suggestions for what they can do for themselves as writers on their own (besides reading, reading, reading and writing, writing, writing).
Hi, all,
We talked a little about outside resources for writers that can help you on your journey, so I thought I could send you some specifics.
The first is writing workshops or writing retreats and conferences. A workshop would be where you meet up with other writers to share and critique each others work. A retreat is sort of like a writer’s vacation where you go to write in the company of other writers. A conference is more educational in its nature where there will be presentations during the day related to writing and/or publishing, but, depending on the conference, there can be opportunities for a professional critique of your manuscript or a chance to pitch a project to an editor.
I go to the Rainforest Writers Retreat in Washington each year. It’s easily the best five days of writing I get. It sells out quickly, but there are many other writing retreats all over the country. I also attend two or three conferences a year. Because I write science fiction, fantasy and horror, I go to conferences that focus on those genres. In the last year, I attended the World Science Fiction Convention that was in Kansas City, and MileHiCon in Denver. I will go to the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio in early November.
I don’t think I can encourage you to look into attending a retreat, workshop or conference more strongly. It would be something you are doing to both acknowledge and feed your commitment to yourself as a writer.
You might also consider looking for or forming your own writers’ critique group. You can see guidelines here: http://writersrelief.com/blog/2014/09/start-writers-group-set-success/
Retreats and Conferences:
A list of well-respected writing retreats around the world: https://thewritelife.com/writing-retreats/
Colorado writing retreats and conferences: http://writing.shawguides.com/Tag/colorado
Writing Organizations:
Another way you can help yourself is to join a writing organization. The Grand Junction area has two that I can recommend. The Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (http://rmfw.org/) and the Western Colorado Writers Forum (http://westerncoloradowriters.org/index.html). Both organize events for writers, including presentations, contests, critique groups, etc.
There are also national writing organizations that might interest you (http://writersrelief.com/writers-associations-organizations/)
If you are interested in writing for publication and are looking for markets for your work, one of the best resources is at https://duotrope.com/. They describe themselves this way: “Duotrope is a subscription-based service for writers and artists that offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art markets, a calendar of upcoming deadlines, a personal submissions tracker, and useful statistics compiled from the millions of data points we’ve gathered on the publishers we list. We have been honored as one of Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers. Also, Preditors & Editors selected us for their Truly Useful Site Award.”
I hope this helps. Have a good summer and may all your words flow easily.
Best,
Jim Van Pelt
LATE RAINFOREST REPORT. MARKETING SHORT STORIES: Joe Iriarte posted some insider information in the comment thread about his upcoming Daily Science Fiction story about his progress in selling short stories, which reminded me I wanted to do this post. I appreciate when other writers share this kind of information.
Because we had so little connectivity at the Rainforest last month, I wasn’t able to do a detailed report of the days, including my talk on the 52-Story effort. I talked about the process of writing the stories a year ago at Rainforest, the same week I wrote the last story. This year’s talk was a lot about marketing. For the last two years I’ve been hilt deep in marketing short stories, so I’m feeling pretty good about what I know of the state of the marketplace right now. Here’s what I reported to them:
Remember, everyone’s experience in selling stories is unique, so YMMV on these numbers and conclusions.
First, the background. Two years ago I decided to try Ray Bradbury’s challenge to write a story a week for a year. I’ve seen other people do it, although most of them were writing pretty short pieces. I averaged 3,595 words per story, and 186,937 words total. I submitted the first of the stories a couple weeks after I started the challenge. My process generally was to finish the first draft of the story in a week, and then rethink, rewrite and polish the story over the next week while I was writing that week’s story. At my peak, I had over thirty stories circulating at the same time.
I found markets through Ralan, The Submission Grinder, and notifications or 
invitations for markets on my FB feed.
As of today, two years and a month after starting the project, here are the numbers for the project:
– 33 of the 52 stories have sold
– 6 stories sold to the first market I sent them to
– 125 submissions for stories that sold to the 2nd or subsequent markets
– 149 submissions of the stories that have not sold
– 280 submissions total
– 1 sale for every 8.48 submissions
– 10 rejections is the most any of the sold stories suffered
– 12 rejections is the most for any of the unsold (so far)
– 26 rejections from one unnamed pro market that rejects quickly–this is a market I’ve never cracked
– 3 other markets I’ve never cracked rejected 29 stories between the three of them
– Several stories sold to markets that were new to me
– 12 of the 33 sold to pro-paying markets
– 2 of the submissions resulted in a request for a rewrite
– 1/5 of the rejections were personal.
CONCLUSIONS:
– I was able to find places to submit all the stories pretty much all the time. If there are that many markets, then the short story marketplace is robust. The Submission Grinder lists 25 markets in science fiction that will pay six cents or more per word. There are many more, beautifully done, semi-pro magazines that I’m proud to submit to who pay less.
– This is an old lesson, but if you are going to write short stories and submit them on spec, you have to be thick-skinned. I have been submitting stories seriously since the 80s. I’ve sold 145 stories, been a finalist for the Nebula, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. I’ve appeared in several Year’s Best collections. I think I’m doing okay, but I’m still rejected at an 8 to 1 ratio. Mike Resnick doesn’t suffer from this ratio, I’ll bet, but there’s only one Mike.
– On a side note, if you want to sell more of what you write and be rejected less often (and as a whole be paid better for it), write non-fiction. Unfortunately, I like what I like. Writing on spec is what I do.
– Submitting is way faster now that almost all markets take electronic submissions, but it still takes time. Knowing the marketplace, Submitting in the correct form, keeping correspondence professional, etc. is a part of the process and it isn’t instantaneous.
– I think if you regularly use Ralan and the Submission Grinder, you should send them donations. I also pay for NPR. If I’m getting value from someone, I owe them that.
– Submitting regularly is how you learn the market. It’s also how you develop relationships with editors. I’d been submitting to George Scithers for several years before he bought something from me. Because I kept submitting, he started sending personal rejects. After a while, we had a healthy pen-pal relationship. I sent 5,000-word long letters in the form of a short story, and he sent back a page with a sentence or two that was personal. Still, I felt a connection. I’m not into writing science fiction just to sell the things. I like that I meet other people, some of them whose contributions to the field are awesome. Communicating with the people who have provided so much reading enjoyment to me and others is fulfilling all by itself.
Locus has announced that Ed Bryant passed away in his sleep. Damn. Ed was the first real pro writer I met, and his friendship and encouragement has buoyed me ever since.
I met Ed sometime in the early 80s. He was a pro-writer guest at a writing conference at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs. This was the first writing conference that I had ever attended, and I was pretty nervous about submitting a manuscript for Ed to read. When our scheduled time arrived, though, I felt confident. After all, I was a long-time reader and an English teacher. Surely my short story would shine with my inner talent! What Ed said to open our discussion was, “If I tell you up front that this is unmitigated shit, then everything I say afterwards will sound better, right?”
He decided by the end of the thirty minutes that the story wasn’t quite “unmitigated,” but it still was terrible.
I was miffed by the critique, so I rushed to the nearest bookstore and bought the only Ed Bryant book they had, CINNABAR. My figuring was that when I read his work, I’d find out what a hack he was. But CINNABAR was brilliant. And he was absolutely right about my story.
Once I started going to conventions in the mid-90s, I ran into him all the time. He always bought my latest book and had me autograph it. He even came to a couple of my readings when I was in Denver. When we went to Chicon in 2000, we convinced each other that we both had to have an expensive, black bomber jacket with the Chicon logo on it. I saw him wearing his last year.
Ed was way kinder than he had to be. Like many other people, certainly everyone who attended MileHiCon and saw him regularly, I will miss him. His contribution to science fiction and fandom was huge.
It has been a good publishing year for me, and I have a bigger list of stories than I normally have that are eligible for awards. Despite the awkwardness of sounding like I might hope that someone maybe could consider something I’ve written for an award, I’ve compiled a list of what appeared in 2016. “In Memoriam,” Abyss & Apex, Jan. 2016.
“Orphaned,” Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show #52, Sept. 2016
“Maybe if One Person Less,” Daily Science Fiction, Oct. 21, 2016
“Zoo Hack,” Perihelion, May 2016
“Mars, Aphids and Your Cheating Heart,” Interzone #264, 2016
“The Silk Silvered Skulls of Millen Mir,” Triangulation: Beneath the Surface anthology, 2016
“No One is so Fierce,” Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, 2016
“The Lawn Fairy War,” See the Elephant, 2016
“Titan Descansos,” Alien Artifacts, Sept. 2016
“The Continuing Saga of Tom Corbett: Space Cadet,” Analog, Dec. 2016
“Writing Advice,” Daily Science Fiction, July 22, 2016
“We Have Always Lived in the Hamlet,” Lightships and Sabers, 2016
“Falling Out of Downey,” Grand Valley Magazine, 2016
“Death of a Starship Poet,” Analog, July/August 2016
“The Heated Door,” Silent Screams, 2016
“The Lies,” Daily Science Fiction, Jan. 19, 2016
“Neoteric Urban Archaeology,” The Best of Both Worlds, 2016
“Three Paintings,” Asimov’s, April/May 2016
LEARNING FROM THE MASTERS: THE USE OF “I” IN FIRST PERSON NARRATION: About every third story of mine is in first person. It’s good for voice pieces, and sometimes making the character the narrator feels like the best choice, but when revision comes around, my manuscripts are flooded with “I”s. Ton of them, which bothers me, so the first revision step is to cut them down. Really, five “I” uses in a single paragraph is amateurish. So, tonight, while preparing for tomorrow’s 9th grade class, I reread Truman Capote’s beautiful “A Christmas Memory,” which is 4,800 words long and written in first person. In all those words, the narrator only refers to himself with “I” about twenty-five times. He’s 163 words into the story before it appears the first time. Some student papers will have twenty-five “I”s in the first 250 words, and my own first drafts are hardly better.
The pronoun shows up more often than that in Capote’s piece, but the other uses are in dialogue from the character’s “friend,” his elderly cousin. It’s admirable restraint, and a true lesson in handling first person narration.
Most of the time when I sell a story, the magazine asks for a bio to go along with it. Writing a bio sucks, so I have a sort of harmless, generic bio that I’ve used a bunch of times. However, I’m doing a reading for the Colorado Mesa University Poet’s and Writer’s series next week, and the coordinator asked for a bio. I almost sent him the generic one, but a mood swept me and I sent this instead. I wish I could get into this kind of mood more often.
James Van Pelt grew up watching Sci Fi Flix and Creature Features Friday and Saturday nights. He gave literature a chance when he discovered Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” in the middle of the 4th grade literature textbook, a tome that was otherwise filled with the most forgettable prose ever contained between two covers. No wonder so many kids don’t like reading. He wrote poetry first because he heard Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” read out loud. He took his love for language and the fantastic to the University of California at Davis where he earned a masters degree in Creative Writing. His mentor’s parting words to Jim were, “I don’t think you’ll have any luck in publishing. You’re too literary for the popular magazines and too genre for the literary ones.” Since then, Jim has sold 140 short stories to the literary and genre magazines and published four short story collections and two novels. He’s been a finalist for the Nebula Award and been nominated for Pushcart prizes. All Jim can conclude from this is that his university mentor didn’t understand the publishing world very well. He semi-retired from teaching high school English two years ago and has since devoted himself to really trying to get the hang of this writing thing.
WHY I LIKE A WELL-WRITTEN SONG LYRIC: When I teach Creative Writing (actually, almost all writing), I often preach the primacy of image. Most kids don’t get it. They want to talk about abstractions with abstractions. Every sentence they build contains a linking verb in its weak heart. Their utterances are vague and pallid and sickly. When I show them the good stuff, they don’t see it.
Bruce Springsteen brought these thoughts up today. Look at how imagery carries this song, one of my favorite pop pieces. Start the video and read along. He gets a ton of mileage from bicycle spokes, a rubber ball, the various lights and a bit of dialogue.
GIRLS IN THEIR SUMMER CLOTHES
Well, the streetlights shine down on Blessing Avenue
Lovers they walk by, holding hands two by two
A breeze crosses the porch, bicycle spokes spin ’round
My jackets on, I’m out the door
And tonight I’m gonna burn this town down
The girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by
A kids rubber ball smacks
Off the gutter ‘neath the lamp light
Big bank clock chimes
Off go the sleepy front porch lights
Downtown the stores alight as the evening’s underway
Things been a little tight
But I know they’re gonna turn my way
And the girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by
Frankie’s diner, an old friend on the edge of town
The neon sign spinning round
Like a cross over the lost and found
The fluorescent lights flick over Pop’s Grill
Shaniqua brings the coffee and asks “Fill?” and says “Penny for your thoughts now my boy, Bill”
She went away, she cut me like a knife
Hello beautiful thing, maybe you could save my life
In just a glance, down here on magic street
Loves a fool’s dance
And I ain’t got much sense, but I still got my feet
The girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by
The girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by
I will be speaking on the “Panel of Geek Gurus” panel from 2:00 to 3:00 on Saturday, Oct. 8 from 2:00 to 3:00. Last year was the first time for this one-day event, and it was a lot of fun! Tons of people in costumes. I’ll need to add this to my resume: James Van Pelt, Geek Guru.
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