Interactive Blog and April's Published Story

Short and simple this time:

1.  My short story, "The Zombie's Lament," is in an anthology of short zombie stories (that is, short stories about zombies, not stories about short zombies).  The anthology is called Black Chaos II, and it's published by Big Pulp.  Please see my published works blog for more information.  There'll be a contest to win a free copy of this book after its release.

2.  I've started a blog, called Approximate Word Count (see the tab above or just click here), to push me, motivate me, or prod me to write more words, more frequently.  The premise is simple: When I write, I state my [see title].  On Sundays I post my word count for the week.  A friend of mine has joined in.  You'll notice from yesterday's entry that she roundly kicked my butt.  To the point of shaming me, really.  But that's okay, because now I'm motivated to write at least as many words as she did last week.  (She says that it was a bad week for her, so I expect to get my butt kicked again this week, but the point here is simply to be productive and to produce.)  So please feel free to join us on that blog, if you're a serious writer--or, at least, serious about your writing.  Email me (see email above) if you want the rules.  If not, join us and just leave your approximate word count!  Welcome!

3.  Ted Cruz announced he will run for president.  Calls of congratulations came from every single comic in the country--and quite a few Democrats.

Making Money Writing and Secret Windows

Photo: Hardcover art, from the book's Wikipedia site.  (Go there to see the Contents page; one chapter is called "Great Hookers I Have Known," but if you remember your remedial writing days, you'll see right through that.)  I read the paperback with the building on the cover.  This cover is terrible and just a little creepy.  But it's what Wikipedia had.  The building cover is better.

Described as "a companion book to On Writing," this volume reads more as a long interview with King, done over maybe 10 to 12 years, with a couple of never-before-seen stories thrown in. 

It is worth your time.

I put off reading this for awhile because I thought it was, frankly, a cheap attempt to cash-in on his On Writing success.  But that didn't turn out to be the case.  This book is actually much different.  On Writing is, as its title says, at least mostly memoir.  Part writing tutorial, part memoir, is how I speak of it.  But Secret Windows is a book of questions King doesn't answer in On Writing, and as such is, as I said, more of a long interview, over 10-12 years, on a variety of topics--much of them, surprisingly, not about writing, per se.

This book is more for writers, in some ways, than On Writing is.  While that book is mostly memoir and sometimes a writing primer, this one is about the more minute parts of the business.  Did you know that King got an agent to hawk his novels and short stories?  I didn't, because agents don't sell short stories anymore--well, unless you're a Stephen King level writer, that is.  Then they'll be more than happy to sell your underwear or shopping list, just to keep you happy--and their client.  But for you and me, they won't sell our short stories today.  We'd have to do that for ourselves. (I know, because I do.)

Did you know that King sent out a query to agents before he'd finished his manuscript for Carrie?  I didn't, because that's a huge no-no today--and must've been then, too.  Because writers, like everyone else, won't finish something when they say they will, and agents know this.  So they all say--today and, I'm sure, then--that you have to finish the manuscript, perfect it, and then solicit them.  King was more ballsy than that.  He pitched them when he was almost done with his manuscript--for Carrie, I think--and his selling point was the huge list--I'm talking 20 or more here--of short stories he'd sold and been paid well for in just two years.  At $200 per story, times 20 stories--that's $400.  10% of that is $40, so 15% of that is $60.  Many agents in 1974 would take $60 to send out a couple of quick letters to publishers about a client's work.  It would take them about an hour, maybe.  If that.  Probably half an hour.  $60 p/h, max, in 1974 would sound good.  The bottom line is: King essentially was ballsy enough to say to these prospective agents: "Even with my short story sales, I can make money for you."  And then, more importantly, he finished his novel manuscript, just as he said he would.  That's good business, and that turns on agents, too.

So what's to be learned from this?  Be ballsy.  But also be productive, so you have something to be ballsy about.  And then, be good at the business, and finish the manuscript when you say you will.  Lost in all the millions Stephen King makes is that he has always produced, even pre-Carrie, and at a very high level of both quality (ie--it'll sell) and production.  In other words, he's always been bankable, and very good at the business.

You won't learn this kind of thing from On Writing.

You will from Secret Windows.

If you dream of a writing career like I do, you should read it.  And read On Writing, too, of course.

Model and 16-year old boy Arrested and Charged with Insulting Turkey's President

 

 

 

1st Photo, from a site's article I've pasted rather than linked because you should read it, is from http://www.bustle.com/articles/66565-ex-miss-turkey-merve-buyuksarac-faces-prosecution-for-quoting-from-a-poem-on-instagram

2nd Photo: Former Ms. Turkey, Merve Büyüksaraç, from The London Telegraph, at this website, pasted here instead of linked, because you should really read it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11433974/Former-Miss-Turkey-faces-prison-for-insulting-Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan.html

Right now there's another brimming totalitarian regime in the making.  It's in Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has briefly imprisoned this woman, and who has officially charged her with the crime of criticizing and insulting him.  Ms. Büyüksaraç copied a poem to her Instagram account that over 900,000 other Turkey citizens had shared--yet she has been the only one to be charged with a crime for it.  If convicted, she could serve up to 2 years in prison.

According to the article linked above, "Ms Büyüksaraç shared a quote from the satirical The Master's Poem - in which verses from the Turkish national anthem are used to criticise Mr Erdoğan.

The 26-year-old said she "may have quoted a poem" believed to be from Uykusuz, a Turkish satirical magazine, but soon deleted it after a friend warned her she could have committed a crime."

I am currently looking for this poem, which may also have a different title.  I searched for about 1/2 hour online, to no avail.  If anyone can find it, please comment and let me know so I can put it here as a show of solidarity and of freedom of speech.  (It's okay if it's in a language we can't read; it's the point that counts here.) 

During his time in power, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also:

--blocked Twitter and YouTube for a month, last year

According to the linked article:  "The decision to block Twitter in March 2014 came after audio recordings allegedly revealed corruption among those close to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the then Turkish prime minister. They had been widely shared on Twitter. It was a tense period ahead of the country's local elections and despite the outrage and upset the ban caused, the leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the majority of votes. Mr Erdoğan became president in August."

--charged a 16-year old boy with the same crime.  According to this site, "In a case that attracted wide attention, teenage schoolboy Mehmet Emin Altunses will go on trial on March 6 on charges of insulting the president in a speech in the conservative Anatolian city of Konya."  In a more specific article, from The Guardian, a Pulitzer-prize winning paper: "The 16-year-old student, Mehmet Emin Altunses, was taken away from his school on Wednesday and jailed for making a speech during a student protest in which he reportedly said Erdoğan was regarded as the “thieving owner of the illegal palace”."

--built the "palace" the boy referred to.  This palace--home of Turkey's President, not king--is "the world's biggest palace" and is outlined in this article:

"It boasts 1,000 rooms and has a total floor area of 3.1 million square feet. This makes it four times the size of Versailles, home of the lavish Louis XIV, the “Sun King” of France. Buckingham Palace only has 775 rooms. In Turkish, it's called the Ak Saray - White Palace - and, as the Telegraph's David Blair points out, the "quixotic architectural style seems to cross the Ottoman and Seljuk traditions with that of a modern Chinese railway station". Then there's the silk wallpaper.
The former Turkish prime minister also spent £115 million on a new presidential jet."

The palace looks like this inside (and that's the man you're reading about):

--ordered armed policemen to stand outside a newspaper's office and inspect copies to make sure it did not publish what the government considered a dangerous photo from Paris's magazine Charlie Hebdo.  That magazine had itself come under attack by extremists, and many of its writers and other employees had been shot and killed.  Consider this quote, from express.co.uk:

"Delivery trucks leaving the offices of Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, based in Istanbul, were stopped by police after the publication revealed plans to publish cartoons from the French weekly.
The trucks were only allowed to pass after armed officers confirmed the French magazines' controversial front cover not been included in the newspaper."

And the photos from that site:

I say that any country that tells armed policemen to stand outside of a newspaper's office is not a free country, and it does not have freedom of speech.  Any country that restricts internet and social media access to its citizens is not a free country.  Any country that arrests a former model for sharing a post that over 900,000 other Turkish citizens had also shared is not a free country.  Any country that arrests a 16-year old boy from his classroom because he had the nerve to question the ultra-lavish abode of his non-monarchy, is not a free country.  This is odd, because Turkey actually is a free, non-secular (for now) country.  Its leader is a president, not a king or religious leader.

But for how long?