Lunatic Writer's Blog

Back to the Moon, please!

2/21/2013

As most of you know, my novel, Lunatics, is still waiting in the wings to be picked up by some interested publisher. But the clock is ticking... Come on, guys, do you really want to lose me to the great Ba'al of Literature--Self Publishing?

Most of the action in Lunatics takes place inside the moon's Copernicus Crater in 1974, during the Apollo XX mission (which, alas, men with very little vision decided to cancel.) Yet all was not lost as the Apollo program ended. Several interesting probes have revisited the moon since, though no humans, of course. Presently orbiting the moon is the magnificent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which, for the last several years, has been taking thousands upon thousands of ultra-high resolution images of the moon, in preparation for our return there.

Below is a view of the central peak of Tycho Crater, very similar in form to the central Peak of Copernicus Crater. A geologically complex and geographically stunning location.
How could one not want to go there?

Stunning image or what?

My wife and I visited the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lab in Phoenix, Arizona a couple of years ago. I even arranged for a guided tour. I will never forget the sadness in the voice of the scientist who led the tour when he reflected on the fact that all this magnificent reconnaissance work, creating images with a resolution of less than one metre in some cases, might all be for naught.

George Bush had proposed a new and ambitious program to return astronauts to the moon, and, with that announcement, the community of lunar scientists jumped for joy. But as Bush's administration ended, so did their lunar dreams...

Make moon landings, not war...

0 Comments

Lunatics Update

11/16/2012

1 Comment

Publishers who have rejected the manuscript: 7

Publishers who have not yet responded: 7

Mental health of author (/10): 7

1 Comment

Getting Started with Big Ledge

11/4/2012

0 Comments

from the play, Sproule's Folly: Sproule with Lily Langtry.

Big Ledge and the Murder at the Bluebell Mine

“How did you get your idea for writing this book?” This is a question often put to authors. Somewhat to my surprise, my answer to this question would be almost the same for both Lunatics, which I finished last year, and Big Ledge which I’m currently working on.

In both cases, the books were not born of inspirational moments. Rather they emerged more as a response to long nagging ghosts. The character of Wernher von Braun had haunted me for several years. Since the time I followed up a footnote about him while working on my play Gravity. Soon I was obsessed. I wrote an audio play about von Braun, then an unproduced stage play. Finally I realized only a novel provided a format big enough to deal with this larger-than-life character. The Lunatics story is about much more than just von Braun but its original impetus certainly owes much to the feeling I’d long had, that I just hadn’t finished with the man.

A similar tale might be told of Big Ledge whose central character is Robert E. Sproule, an American miner, hanged in 1886 for the murder of Thomas Hammill. This murder took place very close to where I live, near the present day village of Riondel on the east shore of Kootenay Lake. I pass by it at least a dozen times a year along the highway on the west shore. From there, sometimes from the comfort of the Ainsworth Hot Springs, I gaze across the four miles of cold water to the lead-laden promontory and marvel to think, even today, a hundred-and-twenty years later, the landscape hasn’t changed much. It would take little imagination to see a miner’s campfire burning in the distance, or to see the wake of a Flatbow canoe pulling in to shore, or hear the sounds of steel picks clanging against galena ore.

I look across at the site of the Bluebell Mine and remind myself that this is where it all happened, amid this now peaceful demi-paradise. The early years of the 1880’s marked the moment the first steamboats plied the lake, the first trains skirted its shores, the first log cabins and first towns made their appearance. It was the end of the Age of Innocence as English, Canadian and American interests all collided at once in this undeveloped land full of promise.

Sproule was hanged on circumstantial evidence, despite appeals and petitions from far and wide. He went to the gallows still professing his innocence. His voice still haunts me. That moment of history still haunts me: that crucial pivot in time when the future may diverge in a thousand different directions (as it does in the beginning of the writing process). I can’t rest till I feel I’ve let Sproule have his final say. And, to be fair, I want other characters have their say too.

Big Ledge is a tale of murder, greed, perjury, disappointment and even fantasy. In its retelling, I hope to finally exorcise some of its ghosts.

0 Comments

Still Waiting...

11/4/2012

0 Comments

Submitting your work can be discouraging--enough to make one grow negligent about blogging! (Mea culpa.) Still, it must be less stressful than the constant auditioning which actors must do (just ask my daughter) where you must stare rejection in the face on a daily basis. As an author, you can at least fantasize, for as long as the reading phase takes, that your work has been well received.

Over time, I am growing a little more thick-skinned. There are a hundred good reasons why a publisher may not choose your work, many of which do not reflect on your worth as a writer. Much as it is in the actor’s world, where sometimes they’re looking for a very particular “look”, or the director has imagined a particular voice quality which you don’t have, or the producer would feel safer going with a well-known name, factors entirely out of your control are likely to decide your fate.

Nonetheless, rejection, even the spaced-out, more distant rejections a writer must endure, do take a toll. I find I must allow myself several months between submissions—time enough to the let the echoing rings of rejection fade before I send my stuff out again.

Here's how Lunatics has so far fared: I sent off my first manuscript to a Canadian publisher in November, 2011. To this date I have not heard back or even received an acknowledgement that the publisher has received my work. I KNOW small publishing houses are busy, but a couple of sentences in an email? How hard can it be? I will count this one as a rejection.

A friend suggested I might find more satisfaction from American publishers. Certainly I’ve found more courtesy. Several acknowledged the receipt of my manuscript by email, and two have since informed me that Lunatics doesn’t meet their “requirements” at this time.

(And probably not later either, I suspect.)

So far then, I’ve had three official rejections of out thirteen submissions. Six of my submissions were sent out only in October of 2012, so the wind hasn’t been taken out of my sails completely… And, in the meantime, my novella, Eta Carinae, HAS been accepted for publication. Hurrah for Vagabondage Press!

Of course, just waiting to hear back from publishers is a recipe for insanity. There can be no better remedy than to start a brand new novel, and so I have. And this time, it's a murder story. Based on a true one. Set in the mining camps of British Columbia in the 1880s. Working title: Big Ledge.

0 Comments

Forward>>

Back to the Moon, please!

Stunning image or what?

Lunatics Update

Getting Started with Big Ledge

Still Waiting...

Author

Categories

Archives

Back to the Moon, please!

Stunning image or what?

Lunatics Update

Getting Started with Big Ledge

Still Waiting...

​Author

Categories

Archives

Author