Nothing of Real Importance

Dear Flippant Geckos,

Got two email rejections today. As the kids say, Woot!

Here's one of them because I don't feel like submitting it anymore.

-Matt



"The First Day" By Matt Mok


With silence. That's how it begins.

I'm thrown skyward by the blast and when I open my eyes again, I can hear nothing except the ringing in my ears. Taking in the remains of the vehicle checkpoint, disoriented, I see the aftermath of the explosion.

And then the gunfire. From flashes of fire in the night, bullets tear through our position like metal hail, kicking up the hot desert sand. Scrambling for cover behind a fallen pyramid of sandbags, I see Hernandez. He lives in a tent near mine, a wiry twig of a boy from North Carolina who likes to show off the ink on his arms. Lying in the sand, he's missing one of those arms and nearly half his face.

Another volley of automatic fire ignites my auditory senses, and I pull my head below the brim of the sandbags as bullets find their mark on the other side. I can't find my rifle, so I take Hernandez's, and start shooting wildly into the darkness at invisible assailants. A prayer escapes my lips, maybe for the last time.

Fantasy Westerns and Chair Painting

Dear Party-Crashing Chimpanzees,

Talking about two books today.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King
One Vacant Chair by Joe Coomer

I was a little disappointed in The Gunslinger, though I probably should have seen that coming. I don't like long books, and even though The Gunslinger is a short book, it is part of a much, much larger story--The Dark Tower series. The story is slow and not much happens. On top of that, I never got invested into the main character, never really cared what happened to him. The general idea is interesting. The story is about the Gunslinger, which is a title for a sort of warrior in this fantasy western type story. The world is an alternate reality to ours and this gunslinger is chasing after A Man in Black across a desert. Along the way, he meets a boy who has somehow traveled from our world to his and the pair continue onward together.

Even though I didn't love this book, I continued onward with the next one in the series. Unfortunately, even though it started with a decent amount of action, I still could not bring myself to read on. I'm not sure what it is. It might be the daunting idea that there are thousands of more pages before I would finish The Dark Tower, and for me to want to do that, I need to be entirely enraptured in a story and not just passing the time. Maybe one day I'll give it another shot.

One Vacant Chair has a sweet melodic pace to it and I rather enjoyed it. It's an atypical road trip novel featuring a middle age woman on the run from a failing marriage and her 62 year old aunt that paints chair portraits. They travel to Scotland to scatter the ashes of their recently deceased grandmother and mother, respectively, along with her disinterred husband. This is a simple novel about people and relationships and has no explosions and murders and car chase scenes. It's at times funny and sad. It is also interesting in the fact that the main character, Sarah, is written in the first person by a male author, which is not typical. It is also very well done.

-Matt

Lookit: Fire

Dear Corny-Joke-Telling Cockapoos,

Today's offering is a short little story. I'm not really sure where it goes or what to say about it, other than that the setting was inspired by Dark Days.

Happy New Year!

-Matt

"Apprentice" By Matt Mok

The boy stared at the old woman's dark wrinkled hands, his eyes affixed on the flame that glowed in them. It hovered inches above her palms, but caused no pain to appear on her wizened and freckled face. Her smile was one of serenity, of peace that belied her surroundings.

He was a stranger in the city's abandoned tunnels underneath the civilized world. Yet he was inexplicably drawn, the idea striking all at once, an incomplete thought coursing through his head. The boy had walked out the front door of his house, took two buses, and walked half an hour until he found the entrance to a place of which he had no recollection.

A hidden city had unfolded before him, a collection of shacks built from discarded poster board and sheet metal. The deeper he descended into the forsaken subway tunnels, the more elaborate the structures became. Where once there were burning trash cans for light, there were now bulbs running off stolen power. All around him, the city's vagabonds returned home with their day's spoils to canned soup heated on hotplates and coffee in collections of mismatched mugs.

The boy had realized with a start that he was lost when a man touched him on the shoulder. The boy was not from below—that was plain to see—and the man asked of his intentions. A name came to him this time, fluttering in his memory before it evaporated. "Magda," he had said. "I'm looking for Magda." The man blew into his fingerless mittens and rubbed his hands together, and after some scrutiny, had pointed the way toward the old matriarch.

He watched now as the old woman repeatedly pinched the flame off of the candle and threw it into her other hand, collecting an ever-growing liquid swirl of red and orange. When she stopped, the flame that rose from the inferno in her hands licked at the roof of her shack.

"What—"

Old Magda hushed the boy and cupped her hands together, extinguishing the fire. It reemerged within her hands in seconds, but with a cool emerald glow that made her fingers appear translucent. She opened her hands to reveal a brilliant orb of roiling green fire that seemed to be contained in an invisible sphere. The old woman bent down over it and blew softly. The boy had drawn very close by then, and could hardly feel the breath of air, but the flame went out just the same, as if doused by water.

"How…" he said, his voice dry from the heat.

Old Magda pursed her lips, smiled, and said, "My child, I will teach you."

Gold Star!

Dear Scampering Ferns,

Looks like the anthology that I was apart of won something. Woohoo!


-Matt

Admitting That You're A Dreamer

Dear Pasty Centaurs,

Admitting you have a problem is generally regarded as the first step to recuperation.

To writers, I think admittance is the scary blind leap that we all take, or will have to take.

And what is there to admit? Well, that we're dreamers, that we write, and even though we enjoy it in itself, we hope for the day when it isn't just a hobby and we are published. And I don't mean published online or published in a journal, although both are still very significant accomplishments. I mean having a book that anyone can pick up at a book store or Amazon.

But really, sometimes the first step is to admit that we write at all. You see, even though the population of people that actually read seems to be a very select group, I suspect that many of them fiddle with the notion that they, too, can write a novel. They have ideas that stir them from a restless night. They look at publication industry, literary agent, and author blogs. They look at advice from others on business cards, writing synopses, writing queries, building websites, and building web social platforms. All this with one guarded thought in mind: that you could write a book.

But will you admit to anyone? Will you even admit that you write?

The fact of the matter is that not many people read, and even less write, so the thought of telling people that you write seems like a conversation ender.

Who cares? Why? Really, that's nice.

Some will show true interest, if only through the kindness of their hearts. And then will ask if it's a hobby you have had for a long time. I think most will say that yes, it is a hobby (myself included).

So why would I do that? Why would I say that it's only a hobby when the secret is that I hope that I am good enough (at least one day) to be published? How many of us wonder what it might be like to be able to derive our entire incomes from writing (extremely rare and difficult to manage when attained, I know)? But we'll say it's a hobby because it gets us off the hook.

We've already admitted that we write. Phew! Let's let it go at that.

I think if a writer claims that writing is just a hobby, that they harbor no secret desire for publication, I would wager just about anything that they're lying. 90% of them, at the very least.

If we claim to have higher aspirations, two possible reactions may occur (or that we're afraid will occur):

1. Your friend/relative/acquaintance/person sitting next to you on the subway will have a much higher regard for your writing talent for you do and ask if you've written anything that might have read. Failing that, have you written something that will be coming out soon? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then we're left feeling foolish and grasping for justification for your claim to the title, WRITER.

2. Your friend/relative/acquaintance/person sitting next to you on the subway will have no regard for your writing talent and think: Who cares? Why? Really, that's nice.

And then every time they ask you again about your writing, you will (most likely) tell them there's no news. Sure, you've written, workshopped, improved, but you're still unagented and not much closer to having your book on a shelf.

It really is a dream. Thousands of people try to write a novel and fail. The probability that you, an anonymous writer, will be published is astronomically small. Why?

Well, first you need a finished manuscript and it has to be good. It has to be the best work you've ever done. It has to be edited to the umpteenth degree. Any less is a waste of your time. This step in itself can take a LONG time because your first draft will suck. Your first edited and revised novel will not be your best.

Next, you learn to write a clear and efficient query letter after an exhaustive literary agent search. The agents will read the queries and say no thanks to most of them. If one of them asks for a partial, thank your lucky stars.

Okay, you've sent out full manuscripts for review. The chances of an agent then offering representation is even lower. If I had to guess, and this would be a very uninformed guess based on unofficial numbers, the chance of someone securing representation (with a VERY GOOD manuscript) would be 1%. And I'm sure that is an extremely generous number. It's probably a fraction of a fraction of that when you think of all the hopefuls out there.

After some strategy sessions and more revisions, I imagine the agent will try to sell your manuscript. I think, here, after all the vetting, your chances are becoming a little better of being published as long as you have partnered up with a reputable agent who has a good eye for talent and is a good judge of what's selling at the moment. Even then, it will be months, it not years, before it gets sold, then revised some more, then sold and marketed (the marketing will also be your job as well).

So, at least for me, this is what goes on in my head if someone finds out that I write, then starts asking follow up questions. Because if I tell them I want to write a book, it will be a year (if I'm extremely talented and lucky) before I can point to something in my hand and say, "Hey, I told you so."

This has been a rant (with numerous grammatical and spelling errors, no doubt) without any real resolution, I'm afraid. I guess my point is this: If you're not ready to admit to your dream to others, at least admit it yourself. Yes, you're insane, but so what?

-Matt

Two Quick Ones

Dear Ill-tempered Marmosets,

Couple more books I've read recently:

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
A Shortage of Engineers by Robert Grossbach

As it has been the trend lately, the first one is another book by King. The Eyes of the Dragon departs from any of his work that I have read so far--in that it is a fantasy. Not fantasy as in little boy has powers like in The Shining, but actual Lord of the Rings-type fantasy with dragons and princes and kings and magicians. I'd say that this is so far my second favorite Stephen King book, behind Salem's Lot. It's a story of a wrongly imprisoned prince trying to retake his rightful place on the throne. Like most of his work, King really has a knack for character development. The story is very good here, but it's not anything new. The characters are what you fall in love with.

A Shortage of Engineers was a blast, if just a little true to real life for me. It's a funny look at the life of an engineer at a defense company and it'll leave you in stitches. It pokes fun at all the things office workers have to deal with, but in this case, with a closer eye on what makes us engineers tick in these work environments and the crazy administrivia that gets foisted onto us. A fun read. But probably more so because it mirrors my work life so much.

-Matt