We’re in the process of moving books from one room to another, organizing the library and the backstock and, well, our lives, really.

I’m moving my overstock of everything that I’ve published in fiction, anyway.  It’s impossible for me to do so with non-fiction, since I didn’t start at the beginning of my career.  Heaven knows what I’ve lost or misplaced or simply forgotten.

In my writing office, I have one copy of every story and novel that I’ve published, in order of publication.  (Or in the order in which I received contributors copies.)  The stuff I’m moving now are the extra copies.  The 48 copies of a novel from the U.S. or the 10 copies of a magazine.

What I’m noticing, however, is that I’ll often pick up an issue of a magazine and think, “Did I have a story in there?”  Realize I’ve published hundreds of short stories over my career.  The novel covers I remember, but not all the magazine covers.

Except for the magazine covers from my first 2 years of publishing fiction.  Those I know as well as I know my friends.

What I realized is simple, really:  In those days, a short story publication was an event.  And well it should have been, considering how long it took me to sell my first short story.  But somewhere in the early 1990s, after about four years of steady short story sales, I stopped staring happily at the covers.  I still recall my first cover stories (heck, all of my cover stories), but not every cover of every issue of every magazine I’ve appeared in. 

It’s the same with anthologies.  With two writers in the house, sometimes our overstock gets mixed up.  More than once, as I’m doing this move, I’ve checked the contents to make certain that the book I’m putting in my pile is one with my story inside.  Inevitably it is.  But I am amazed at how much I have forgotten.

I never thought it possible, even though I knew it was possible.  At my very first World Science Fiction Convention, I had a book signing with Fred Pohl and Jack Williamson.  I have no idea why, but the con had scheduled the three of us together.  (Thank heavens we knew each other–Fred and Jack were two of my instructors at the workshop where I met Dean.)  They had lines that extended through the door, into the corridor and around the corner.  I had no line at all.  In that hour, the only person who came to see me was some guy who wanted his picture taken with “a Locus covergirl”  (My picture had recently been on Locus Magazine’s cover.)

But Fred and Jack signed and signed and signed.  And often, they would pick up a magazine or a book and squint at it.  A few times one of them would say, “Ah, yes.  I’d forgotten that story.”  And I remember thinking, “How can you forget a story?”

I haven’t forgotten any stories.  But I have forgotten what the publications they first appeared in look like.  I find that startling–and reassuring at the same time.  Because it simply confirms what I’ve always said:  Writing is my job.  Do you remember what you did at work 15 years ago?  I often remember the content of a story, but not where it appeared or what (if anything) I wrote it for.

It’s quite fun to put everything in order–and not in the order it was received.  The magazines are going in date order.  The anthologies are alphabetical by title (because I’ll never remember how to find them by editor).  I’m not overwhelmed yet, but I figure it’s only a matter of time….

My husband, Dean Wesley Smith, is doing a fantastic series on how to set goals.  I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but I’ve been reading the blogs, and they’re getting better and better.  If you ever thought of writing and are having trouble applying butt to chair, read these.  You can find them here.

As usual, the month is getting away from me.  Last month, I missed the Dated Essay.  I remembered this time, but only because of Stephen King.  

I’m reading his latest collection of short stories (some will appear in next month’s recommended reading), and it got me thinking about the books (and stories) of his that I’ve enjoyed in the past.  I wrote an entire editorial about one of them for F&SF 12 years ago.  (12 years!  Wow!)

Here’s the editorial.  What’s dated?  Not a lot.  In fact, the last line is prescient.  I still think King is one of our very best writers.  But let’s see…it’s no longer possible to buy the book in pieces.  (Unless you go to a used bookstore.)  And of course, I’m not editing. But other than that….

Editorial

By the time you read this, the frenzy will be over.  The excitement has already died down as I write this editorial in September of 1996.  But since I have just written a series that discusses the problems with publishing, I feel I should discuss one of its successes.

Stephen King’s The Green Mile.

I’ve always had great admiration for King.  He is arguably our best storyteller, one of our best stylists (when he choses to be), and  in some ways, the man who can tap into our national subconscious.  Given his tremendous success at such a young age, he could have stopped writing altogether, or continued writing tried and true horror novels in the vein of Carrie or The Shining.  Instead, each book has taken risks.  Sometimes the risks work.  Sometimes they don’t.

The Green Mile works.

As I write this, King has six books on the bestseller list, and an article in yesterday’s newspaper claims he will have eight on the list by week’s end, a record that, as the newspaper says, “no one is disputing.”

Those six books are all sections of The Green Mile.

For those of you who managed to avoid bookstores, airports, and grocery checkout lines since April, The Green Mile is a novel published in six parts.  It is a well-plotted meditation on death, dying, and survival set in part in two prisons: Cold Mountain Penitentiary during the thirties, and a nursing home in 1996.  The narrator, one Paul Edgecombe, is witness to magical happenings on Death Row in Cold Mountain, the place where men wait before they walk “the green mile” to the electric chair.  Edgecombe, who writes of the events of the past as memoir from his room in the nursing home, has a reason for writing now.  And that reason King wisely refuses to reveal until Part Six.

I suspect The Green Mile will work well as a single volume novel, but I feel sad for those of you who waited to read the book all at once.  You’ve missed something.  As King says in his introduction to the whole series:

…in a story which is published in installments, the writer gains an ascendancy over the reader which he or she cannot otherwise enjoy: simply put, Constant Reader, you cannot flip ahead and see how matters turn out.

You also cannot stay up all night to finish the book.  That was my frustration.  I picked up The Two Dead Girls, the first installment of The Green Mile, on the day it came out partly because I was intrigued, and partly because I am a big King fan.  I liked the idea of the experiment, and I expected a Perils of Pauline cliff-hanger novel that would leave Our Hero on the brink of some disaster at the end of part one.

Instead I read a subtle cliff-hanger, one based on characterization and the promise of suspense to come.  I found that I couldn’t shake the story during that month (which is just amazing considering how much I read), and I felt deep frustration at my inability to finish the book on my schedule.  At the end of April, I was in our local bookstore on the day Part Two, The Mouse on the Mile, arrived.  I read that section within two hours, and was alternately frustrated and pleased that I was enjoying the series so much.

I’ve spoken to other readers who’ve had the same experience, and we all agree that part of the joy of the series was the loss of control, the forced savoring of the novel, the willingness to read at someone else’s pace.  Had The Green Mile been bad or even mediocre, the experiment would have failed.  Because it was so good, it worked beyond all expectations.

The publisher, Signet, expected this series to be a gimmick, a loss leader for King’s future books.  The novel sold (and continues to sell) beyond expectation.  I know other novels in installments will follow: John Saul has just signed up to do one.  But a serialized novel is, as King says, a precarious balancing act, a chance for critics to beat you up (or praise you) six times for the same work.  It is, in my opinion, something only our best storytellers, our best stylists, can pull off with any degree of success.

My hat’s off to Stephen King.  He walked the wire with flare and panache.

And gave me a most marvelous reading experience, one that I will savour for years to come.

I had more time for leisure reading in November (although not too much), but didn’t find a lot of novels to my taste.  In fact, I sent two to the used bookstore after 50 pages.  The writing in both was lovely, but the characters in one were so unlikeable as to be impossible to read about.  In the other, there was no main character—at least that I could find.  So off it went.  Too many books, too little time.

After I finished Mystery Writers of America anthology, The Blue Religion, I realized I hadn’t achieved one of my goals this year.  I hadn’t read every issue of the mystery magazines.  Since I’d already read May of 2008, I figured I had a head start on Ellery Queen, so I decided to finish those.  It’s December as I’m writing this, and I’m still reading.  But I am enjoying.

Some good articles in here as well and a wonderful novel, as well as a truly excellent creative nonfiction book.

November, 2008

Allyn, Doug, “Pig Party,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March/April, 2008.  A rather stunning evocation of college life.  A bartender and a reporter go undercover at a frat party, called a “Pig Party,” because the boys bring the ugliest girls they can find.  Things do not go as anyone expects.  A sad and somewhat shocking tale, by one of our best mystery short story writers.

Buentello, John, “A Certain Recollection,” The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, 2008.  “A Certain Recollection” is an amazing short story written from the point of view of a retired detective with Alzheimer’s.  Even though we’re in the detective’s POV for the entire story and he is confused, we are not.  We know what’s going on in his mind, what’s happening in the real world, and what he’s managing to accomplish.    A stunning story, well told.

Carhart, Thad, The Piano Shop on The Left Bank, Random House, 2000.    I discovered this book on top of a pile of old books that our local bookstore owner was going to donate to the library.  He let me take it for free.  Clearly, I didn’t pay enough for it. 

This serendipitous introduction to a wonderful book actually suits the book itself.  The Piano Shop on The Left Bank is a magic shop story, even though it’s nonfiction.  Thad Carhart lived in Paris and walked past this dingy shop every day as he walked his children to school.  One day, he went inside—and his life changed.

Truly, the story follows magic shop tropes.  The owner possesses knowledge that will make Carhart’s life better, and introduces him to a magical heretofore unknown (and unknowable) world.  The Parisian neighborhood, usually not open to strangers, particularly foreigners, gets revealed here bit by bit.  So too does a fascinating cast of characters, from Luc the store’s owner to the drunken piano tuner to the elderly man no one knows who stops in the shop one afternoon, plays a flawless (and extremely difficult) Scarlatti sonata, and then leaves, never to be seen again.

If you want to read a delightful book about music, Paris, or the magic in everyday things, pick up The Piano Shop on the Left Bank.

Connelly, Michael, editor, The Blue Religion, Little, Brown, 2008.  This entire anthology is good, with several stand-outs that have their own listing in this Recommended Reading list.  Find it.  You’ll enjoy it.

Connelly, Michael, “Father’s Day,” The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, 2008.  I read this story with one eye half open.  Connelly never shies away from difficult subjects and he tackles a big one here:  a child dies “forgotten” by his father in an overheated car.  While such cases are usually homicides, they’re generally of the negligent kind.  (And I usually don’t read about them, even the true ones [the horrible ones] that show up in the newspaper.)  Connelly caught me on the first sentence—“The victim’s tiny body was left alone in the emergency room”—and held me all the way to the upsetting ending.  His L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch handled the case, and even the hard-bitten Bosch feels his way through this one.  Extremely good.

Frederickson, Jack, “A Change in His Heart,” The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, 2008.  When I started this story, I didn’t like it.  I didn’t care for the characters and I wasn’t sure about the set-up.  But something in the prose kept me reading.  Midway through, I realized I was enjoying the piece, even though I didn’t care for anyone I was reading about.  By the end, I thought it was one of the best stories I’d read this year.  The characters had to be unsympathetic for the story to work as well as it did.   (Gradually, one character become extremely sympathetic.) An excellent story about someone getting his comeuppance—and in a rather startling way.

Goodman, Carol, The Night Villa, Ballantine Books, 2008. I have liked all six of Carol Goodman’s novels.  She writes a literate gothic of the type that Phyllis Whitney used to write.  Of course, the books aren’t marketed that way.  They’re marketed mainstream, with literary covers.

I picked up the first, The Lake of Dead Languages, because of the marvelous title (something she hasn’t duplicated since), and found it to be the sort of book I’d been craving but no one was writing.  Her heroines are always literate, often teachers/professors/writers, and always interesting.  Usually their field of study factors into the book.   The books themselves follow a predictable pattern—one man seems untrustworthy, but is trustworthy, and one man isn’t trustworthy, but is somehow appealing—but even that’s comforting.

In The Night Villa, Goodman takes us to Capri where Sophie Chase, the protagonist, is studying documents found in a dig near Mount Vesuvius.  She translates the documents for us, giving us parallel storylines of a slave girl and scholar days before Vesuvius erupts (and buries the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum), as well as the story of Sophie herself who, just before she left, survived a shooting at the university where she teaches.

The historical details are fascinating, and threaten to overwhelm the modern tale.  The setting is equally fascinating.  Oddly enough, I started this novel just before researching Ancient Rome for a large project, so everything dovetailed beautifully.  It was as if she made the dry historical texts I’ve been reading come to vivid life.  Rarely does my leisure reading and my research come together in this way, and that added to my pleasure in the volume.

King, Laurie R., “The Fool,” The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, 2008.  King uses characters from other stories for this one, and I still don’t feel lost. The most compelling character is the title character, a homeless man who speaks in quotations.  How she managed to write this and pull it off, I have no idea, but it’s marvelous.  Apparently this character has appeared in other stories, and now I’m going to go look for them.

Le Carré, John, “The Madness of Spies,” The New Yorker, September 29, 2008.  A bleak personal essay on an aspect of Le Carré’s personal history as a spy before he became a bestselling novelist.  Slowly, Le Carré realized that a number of the people he was working with were delusional.  He explains how he came to these conclusions and what impact (if any) this may have had on history.

He has this lovely passage a few paragraphs from the end, “Faith in spies is mystical, fuelled by fantasy and halfway to religion.” The entire essay deals with the way that faith gets in the way of dealing with the realities of paranoia and madness that lie at the heart of the spying game.

The essay is interesting to writers, of course, because he describes how he tried to debunk the faith in spies in a few of his novels and how he failed.  He also talks about which bits and pieces of his past he used in various stories.  Fascinating stuff, and timely too.

Resnick, Mike, “Article of Faith,” Jim Baen’s Universe, October, 2008.  Mike’s stories are always good, but every year, he writes one that just blows me away.  “Article of Faith” is that story.  (Okay, he had one other, back in the early part of the year—see early Recommended Reading lists.)  Mike let me read this one before it hit Baen’s Universe, so I’ve been waiting to tell folks about it.  Yes, it’s a robot story, but it’s a powerful one.  Go look it up—and then subscribe!

Those of you who read my July ‘08 Ellery Queen story, “The Secret Lives of Cats,” might find this news story interesting.  It’s from a Seattle newspaper.  Check it out here.  I got the idea for my story from a German inventor who posted his cat’s photos online.  He also posted a way to make a camera that the cats will wear.  Of course, I’ve lost that link, but clearly these folks saw it and were inspired by it.  (Although, considering the last line of the article, maybe they were inspired by my story…<VBG>)