The fall issue of Northwest, the alumni magazine of my alma mater Northwest Missouri State University (where I earned my degree in Mass Communication in 1995) contains a short feature on yours truly. Click the article to enlarge, or the cover to browse the entire Issuu via NWMSU’s site.
The Kindle Edition of the year’s hottest collection, Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology is now available for immediate download from Amazon.com at $7.95. ePub is coming soon. Of course, you can still order it online in paperback (408 pp) from Amazon, Powell’s, or Barnes & Noble as well.
A great deal of care was put into these e-book editions, and you’ll find a wealth of bonus content, including:
With 38 stories (from authors united by their love of dark fiction), plus all the new stuff above, this thing is a beast. But navigation is easy thanks to all the linked cross-references, both within the collection, as well as to external ones for more information. We want you to learn more about these emerging and established authors.
If you like what you read, please help us get the word out, and we’d love for you to post a review at the usual places like Amazon or Goodreads, even if it’s a short one.
Visit the official site for updated news: http://warmedandbound.com
ISBN: 1613641621
ASIN: B005J3UAK8
Robb Olson and Livius Nedin from Booked were kind enough to invite me to take part in their author interview podcast series today. In fact, their last couple of weeks’ episodes have been devoted to the Warmed and Bound Sessions, speaking to my fellow contributors in this killer anthology. We talk about my story “Headshot,” the book trailer I created to promote the collection, my upcoming novel Flashover, influences, screenwriting, music, and probably some other things I’ve since forgotten. They’re an easygoing and honest duo, with excellent taste in books, so be sure to subscribe after you’ve checked out a few episodes.
UPDATE: I’d say that’s some pretty good company. . . (click to embiggen)
Episode 016: Great Writers Edit; Bad Writers Discuss Editing on a Podcast is now online, part of The Velvet Podcast series. Joining me on this panel are authors Gavin Pate (The Way to Get Here), Richard Thomas (Transubstantiate), and moderator Caleb J. Ross (Stranger Will).We discuss the editing of prose fiction, detailing our own processes, insights, pitfalls, and experiences, while discovering new methodologies and techniques for making this dreaded task more enjoyable and effective.
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To coincide with today’s release of Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, I created this promo. It’s composed of imagery inspired by stories in the collection, including original music from me. The intent is to evoke a feeling, a mood—ominous, violent, and redemptive—rather than paint specific settings or characterizations. Multi-plane animation (a.k.a. “2.5-D”) was used to breathe life into what are predominately still photos. I’m so proud to have a story included alongside so many talented and respected authors in what has to be one of the year’s best.
The paperback is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com (both at $9.09 for a limited time), and Powell’s.com, with e-books coming very soon.
UPDATE: On its release day, the paperback was BN.com’s #4 best seller, trending #1 in hottest movers! (Click to embiggen.)
My story “Headshot” will be featured in Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology, available July 22 in paperback and e-book from your favorite online bookseller.
This project has been a labor of love, born out of a reading/writing community called The Velvet (where I’m a moderator), who are united by their love of dark, visceral fiction exemplified in the works of authors Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, and Stephen Graham Jones. Many other published authors and emerging writers make up the talent pool as well, and when the time finally came to assemble a collection of their work, our editor Pela Via and admin Logan Rapp led the charge. With participation from Clevenger, Jones, and the regulars, we reached outside our community to a number of authors with similar sensibilities we respect like Brian Evenson, Craig Davidson, Matt Bell, Blake Butler, Jeremy Robert Johnson, Paul Tremblay, Vincent Louis Carrella, and others, and were delighted with their response. There’s even a short foreword by Steve Erickson, whose work is praised within our walls nearly as often as that of our founders.
Here’s a peek at the cover. Click for larger versions and to see the full list of contributors.
Visit the official Warmed and Bound site for more info and updates, be sure to “like” its Facebook page, add it to your Goodreads shelf, and I’ll be posting some related media here in the upcoming weeks.
This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. He will be guest-posting beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin and novella, As a Machine and Parts, in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb
When I was younger, I took comfort in open-ended answers from my teachers and professors. I’d ask about the serial comma rule or how to handle semi-colons and answers would vary from the dismissive (“Nobody really knows when to use the serial comma”) to the Socratic (“How do you feel you should use semi-colon?”). This level of freedom with language was something I had never experienced before. It felt good to realize just how little in this world could be definitely right or wrong.
But it got old. After graduating college I suddenly found myself having to provide actual answers. When in school, the future is a vague, ever-distant destination. Post school, the destination suddenly becomes the present. Answers are important; philosophizing about them is not. The desire for absolutes extended beyond the grammatical and into the professional. So today, for fiction writers suffering the same confusion as I have (and still do, in many respects), below is a list of absolutes. Take comfort.
1. Use the word “that” 97% less than you do right now. “That” is a buffer word and usually serves to clog the flow of a sentence. Find a way around it.
2. Replace almost every instance of a “to be” verb with something else. The difference between the right verb and the almost right verb is the difference between a right sentence and a wrong sentence. Go for active verbs and you will get engaged readers.
3. Avoid “(blank) of the (blank)” phrase constructions (e.g. “chicken of the sea”). These phrases usually indicate weak metaphors. Much of the time, the phrasing can be changed for better impact (e.g. “sea chicken”). Always use as few words as possible to tell a story.
4. Read only one publishing how-to book, if you must read any. No more than one. Be wary of publishers who make their money by selling tools to writers. If you’ve read a handful of Writer’s Digest how-to write, how-to query an agent, how-to submit a manuscript books, you’ve read them all (Christina Katz’s Get Known Before the Book Deal is a definite exception).
5. Follow these Twitter accounts:
6. Subscribe to these blogs:
7. Listen to these industry and career-wise author podcasts:
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajdagregorcic
I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections this year, and they always take me so much longer to get through than novels. Which I’m certain mirrors their authors’ own experiences creating them. It can be exhausting reading more than one story per sitting, even if it’s just ten pages.
Creative writing instructors often use the iceberg metaphor. Because ice is slightly less dense than water, only 10% of it is visible above the surface. Same thing with characters and their backstories and the universes they inhabit. The portion shown to the reader is merely the tip of said iceberg, but what’s hidden from view is what built up these worlds and enabled this particular story. Musicians make similar claims about subsonic vibrations or overtones that are necessary to support those notes we do hear.
It’s no surprise that when sci-fi crosses over into the mainstream, it tends to be that which isn’t bogged down with proving the feasibility of its technology. Sure, that’s part of the 90% that makes the world run, but what we care about are the characters and our ability to relate to their humanity. Battlestar Galactica, Children of Men, and Gattaca are all great examples of this approach. Viewers assume these fictional societies are functional, so let’s just get on with whatever drama makes this particular event unique in their lives, and leave those schematics and history books underwater.
Anyway, back to shorts. There’s a place for all kinds, but my favorites tend to be those that feel like a biopsy of something larger, that this view through the window could easily be expanded into a novel or even series. It’s not that they literally compact so much detail into such a small space, but that it’s implied — they give us just enough periphery so that if we turn our heads a little, we can’t see the stagehands in the wings or the seams in the set dressing. They did their homework that allows the reader to be immersed in the universe of that story, to hopefully invent some of it for themselves.
Picasso famously once doodled on a napkin for someone, who then balked at his asking price, saying (paraphrased), “But it only took you a minute!” To which he said, “No, madam, it took my whole life.” And that’s how I feel about short stories, as far as what’s on display versus the effort behind their creation. When you read a collection of these stories, you’re taking that entire journey, following a character’s arc to its conclusion, perhaps 20 or 30 times in the same space one novel would occupy. You’re meeting all new people with varying names and motives, in landscapes familiar, foreign, and alien, and in voices close, distant, or unreliable. The happenings may be on a smaller scale, on a smaller stage, but not necessarily with any less consequence. All of those elements had to be considered and conceived by the author, and processed by the reader. And so it’s one story per sitting for me.
I obsess over my sentences (in stories, not blog posts). This makes me an exceptionally-slow writer, as I don’t move on from a paragraph until it’s as polished as can be at that time. One finished page is a really solid evening for me. I prefer this meticulous method to the one most authors employ, which is to spit out a draft as quickly as possible and then spend the bulk of their time on numerous rewrites or revisions. As someone who derives more enjoyment from crafting prose than charting plot points, that’s just too much delayed gratification (I do outline in advance). My way keeps me interested because each time I close the laptop lid I feel a sense of accomplishment, that a section is “done” to the best of my ability, not put off for some future date.
I am, however, jealous of those who can draft very quickly, those whose storyteller brains work faster than their fingers can, and I would gladly attempt that method were I so endowed. Most writers excel at excuse-generation and rationalization by their nature, and with that in mind, I think I’ve recently discovered one reason for my sloth: writing at a computer.
To break out of the habits that result in stale prose, I’m always trying new experiments, be they environmental or biological or timely. One of these is to write longhand, which I do about 25% of the time in little Moleskine. I’ve noticed that I generate more words in less time this way, even though they tend to be rougher. Several months ago, in an effort to lose some el-bees, I started stationary-biking daily. Usually this requires me to crank an iPod at high BPMs and SPLs to maintain the tempo and endurance I need. A couple weeks ago I traded the iPod for my cell phone’s voice recorder, attempting to dictate a scene from my in-progress novel into it.
My expectations were low, even though I understand that a physical activity or some routine task can be an excellent creative kickstarter for writers, something to keep the lower-level brain functions distracted so that the good stuff can sneak out undetected. This has rarely worked for me before, as I’m hyper-focused and thus a lousy multitasker, no matter how menial the chore. Plus, my brain is always spinning with music even in complete silence, looping movie dialogue, or anything else our modern overstimulated senses consume. To my surprise, though, after about ten minutes, the singing voices faded and the scene began coming together a line at a time — winded though it was — a few hundred words over the course of 40 minutes and 11-some miles, with no drop-off in pace like I experience whenever trying to read instead of headbang.
Of course, biking is probably better for brainstorming or outlining than actual prose, because the phrases I come up with are quite rough. It usually takes me a couple of evenings to polish and expand upon what I transcribed after those 40 minutes. Also, I doubt it would be very effective when working with a blank slate, so I need to first know what the scene’s and characters’ objectives are before I begin.
Anyway, the point of this post is that I think I figured out why dictation and longhand allow me to create more in less time. It’s because of the visual factor. On the computer, below and/or above the blinking cursor, I’ve usually got at least 10 other perfectly-legible typed lines of sharp text at about the equivalent of 24-point type (12 pt at 200% zoom) competing for my attention. The urge to revise these is constant, especially when waiting for inspiration to strike on the current sentence. With dictation, your mind is only in the moment. There are no visual/textual distractions at all, and I’m not rewinding the recorder between lines. And with longhand, my cursive is just illegible enough to serve as the equivalent of a blur filter, keeping my attention on the current line and not any premature nostalgia for those that came before.
So give it a try next time you’re in a rut. Change your location, or your schedule, or your diet … or in this case, your medium. Step out of your comfort zone and forget about everything else you wrote before this sentence.
Today as I sat on a park bench scribbling in a Moleskine and trying not to appear suspicious (difficult for a single male my age), irony washed over me as I flashed back to the book I’d read earlier this week, Stranger Will by Caleb J Ross. One element of the story features a cult of aspiring “strangers” who work shifts dressed as bums on benches just like these adjacent to a school playground as part of their indoctrination, while the specially-chosen children in their eyeline learn life lessons of their own from their shared leader, Mrs. Rose. She’s a charismatic Tyler Durden type (both mentor and antagonist) with utopian dreams but dystopian methods who guides our William through the not-so-traumatic experience of losing his unborn child.
That William never wanted to bring a child into this awful world to begin with—even in his fiancée’s last trimester—will make most readers squirm. The point is repeatedly driven home as Will derives much of his outlook from his experiences as a crime-scene cleaner, but these are also what lends the novel its unique quality: the more flawed the character, the greater the possible arc for redemption. We are so repulsed by his refusal to praise the miracle of Life, until we meet other kindred spirits who put his own beliefs in perspective and challenge him to embrace greater ideals. At this point Will becomes more identifiable and sympathetic as he befriends a child at the park who sparks the conflict within him.
While the themes and literary devices employed in the book are reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk’s early work (it’s also the May selection for discussion at Chuck’s site’s book club), the prose stylings are pure Ross. Dark, disturbing imagery combined with great sensory detail and a grotesque wink now and then. We smell the toxic chemicals of his trade that infuse Will’s entire existence, from wardrobe to vehicle to house. His infected dog bite that festers throughout the story has us scratching at our own arm. He does a masterful job of putting the reader in Will’s head, especially given that the story is written in third-person (a fact I had to verify just now, so close is the point of view to the protag). This is not a beach read; bring it to the doctor’s office or stash it wherever you hide your smokes from your old lady. Discuss it with your friends via carrier pigeon.
As for criticisms, Otherworld Publications is a young press, evident in some editorial errors like typos and such, and hopefully they’ll correct these in future editions. Also, sometimes the cult ideologies that pervade the narrative seem to be in direct opposition to one another, though I think this is probably true to the spirit of those who subscribe to such belief systems, and having that debate play out actually helps us see the conflicts more clearly.
Caleb will be writing a guest post here next month as part of his Tour for Strange blog tour. In the meantime, pick up Stranger Will for yourself, as well as an e-book of last year’s fantastic story collection, Charactered Pieces. Next up for him is another novel, I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin (Black Coffee Press), and a novella, As a Machine and Parts (Aqueous Books), both of which I’ve had the pleasure of reading and pimping thusly.
