Muse's Success

Does anyone write anything that is not fanatsy/supernatural/horror/sci-fi?

I’ve just clicked Browse Stories and the list is is a bit depressing. Nothing against these genres, you understand, cut my teeth on Asimov and Simak, etc. etc. But.

When JRR Tolkien was teaching at Oxford one of his great friends was Hugo Dyson, another English lecturer. Hugo was a member of the Inklings group, along with CS Lewis and others, but did not think much of The Lord of the Rings. He used to lie on a sofa with a glass of whisky balanced on his chest and whenever an elf came into the story everyone could hear him muttering: "Oh f**k, not another elf."

I know the feeling.

I write some teen fiction, doesn’t involve any of those.

I’m sure there are a couple of romance novels, but most of those you need to put up with a highly sexual content or homosexual themes.

Thank you. I won’t say what a relief because your writing is obviously not intended to be a relief - very powerful themes and attacked, as you say in your FAQ, head on.

Your writing is fluent and literate, but I come away with a feeling that it is unfinished - do you get that when you are working on it? A bit fragmented and episodic. Perhaps this is a feature of online writing. Being a generation (or two) older than you I have always written for paper, which means that you reach a sort of finality with a story, usually after many re-writes and much cutting. With a lot of online fiction (not yours) the authors seem to be writing chapter 5 with no idea about what’s going to happen in chapter 10. I think this is a mistake, because the shape of a narrative can add considerably to its impact. It’s not enough to give graphic names to issues and themes - the reader need to feeel that he/she is moving through them, heading for a destination of some kind.

On a practical note, do you ever get any donations? I’ve never earned a penny through my button (although of course that may mean that the stories are rubbish).

My writing is very unfinished. I presume you are talking about Out of the Darkness, so indeed, it is choppy in nature. I started writing a couple of short stories way back in highschool, and then decided that they could be made into a longer length novel. I knew where the novel was going to end, but I had almost no idea of the beginning (I have a better idea now, but no time in which to write it in). This prompted me to keep the episodic fragments. I also felt that these contributed to the overall fragmented nature of the girl’s life.

I have never gotten any donations. As my site is currently inactive, any money I get is those 1c/per day ads of Project Wonderful. Thankfully I’m not trying to make a living out of my writing, it is an escape and pleasure for me.

Thank you for your comments also :) I often wonder whether my writing is too uncomfortable for people to stomach at all.

(And if you were talking about The Inheritance: Afflictions, that has a definite plan on where it is going, but I wrote myself into a little bit of a corner, so when I get the time, will be re-writing and changing parts of the novel.)

Ned, if you haven’t already, check out the works of Cheeseburger Brown and Jeremy Shipp.  I’m a fan of Mr Brown’s amazing stories. http://muses-success.info/browse/view/the-bikes-of-new-york

Mr Shipp is too out there for my tastes, but definitely different and worth a read. http://www.jeremycshipp.com/

Jim Zoetewey’s "Legion of Nothing" is good, http://muses-success.sorrowfulunfounded.com/browse/view/the-legion-of-nothing/, as is anything by M.C.A Hogarth. http://www.stardancer.org/

I’ve heard Newton’s Sleep is good, but haven’t read it yet. http://muses-success.sorrowfulunfounded.com/browse/view/newtons-sleep/

No elves in sight!

Cheers,
M.