Let’s face it: the fairy tale never happens like that in real life. So if it’s not naïveté, then it’s compliant escapism; and what a sad commentary on a life, that one would need such callow, fanciful stories to avoid being present in it.

I enjoy the commonality and compatibility in my current relationship. (Wait. Current relationship makes it sound temporary. It’s not. Let me give that another go: I enjoy the commonality and compatibility with my love, my life, my lovely wife. (Better).

Anyway, we have this ritual of reading every night before sleep, if not also in blocks of time during the day. As authors, that ritual would be expected.

I like it. A lot.

Anyway, Last night we were settled in with our books, holding hands between page turning, as usual, and I wanted to tell her how much I was enjoying my book, so politely asked about hers first.

“What are you reading?”

“It’s about a vampire private investigator,” she said. “I don’t recall the title…”

 I offered, “Sucking Dick?”

This got me an irrepressible guffaw.

I donned the cloak of maturity enough to let that go and told her how pleased I was with the Michael Stark book I was reading. This is important only because I rarely enjoy the fiction I find these days… or the few authors I’ve come across that don’t bore me or aggravate me (like recent discoveries of Michael Robotham, Nelson DeMille).  I have, in fact, developed a zero-tolerance for all the tripe out there, especially since the onset of indie publishing, which has compounded the number of authors who can now publish themselves, but shouldn’t. It’s so difficult to chop through the underbrush of hackneyed formulas, stilted, uninteresting dialogue and purple prose. I wince at the deplorable disregard for the basic skills a writer must nurture, confronted too often with atrocious spelling, horrible grammar, sloppy mechanics and punctuation, and the specter of writers unacquainted with concepts like story arc, characterization, and plotting. Oh why do so many these days think they can write a book just because they are titillated by the idea of it and not because writing is a part of their core identity, and they care about the craft and are willing to do the hard work? When will they understand what an insult it is to writers who have spent the last 10 or 20 years paying their dues, writing and rewriting, honing their skills and studiously applying what they continue to learn?

…and perhaps more to the point, how did I become such a literary contrarian?

(Take a breath)

Probably, there is no singular path for an authentic writer to have taken. Each of our histories is as diverse as the books we write. The one common denominator for all writers, though, seems to be a love of books and reading.

When I was younger, I was a voracious reader – I devoured everything I could wrap my fingers around. Yet, perhaps oddly, I have no memory of being read to by either of my parents. I have no beloved childhood classics burned in my brain and recalled fondly as a bonding exercise with mommy or daddy. In fact, I read most of that genre during one of my stints in college when I took a Children’s Literature course. From that experience, I can say I loved The Velveteen Rabbit, Dr. Seuss (et al), Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are), and Alice in Wonderland, among others that escape me at the moment.

My earliest memories of reading were perhaps preteen years. I read the Chronicles of Narnia and all of Madeleine L’Engle’s books (and later enjoyed a written correspondence with her for a while; back when people still sent letters via snail mail).

I was also a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs– mostly the Tarzan series and the John Carter on Mars series– as well as Robert A. Heinlein (Though, regrettably, never exchanged letters with either). All of these books shared a genre of adventure, and that’s what my mind craved. I wanted to escape, I suppose, from my hum-drum life.

For some inexplicable reason I then moved into a catalog of cheesy romance books– Harlequin, Silhouette, and the like. Perhaps out of some peer pressure, perhaps as a means of at last viewing myself as a romantic creature headed for sexual exploration.

Looking back on it now, I can see that it served to keep me in my puerile, late-bloomer stage a little too long. I finally outgrew those types of books, when I started pursuing the vocation of writing seriously and with the single-minded focus of a true passion and identity; I realized the only thing those bodice-rippers had taught me was jejune thinking and to write badly. I understand young girls or teenagers reading and enjoying that genre; what I don’t understand, hindsight having such impeccable vision, is how grown, ostensibly mature women continue to make those bodice-rippers their primary literary interest.

In one dictionary, this romance genre is defined as: a novel dealing with idealized events remote from everyday life.

Let’s face it: the fairy tale never happens like that in real life. So if it’s not naïveté, then it’s compliant escapism; and what a sad commentary on a life, that one would need such callow, fanciful stories to avoid being present in it. First of all, if your life is so terrible that you need an escape from it—any escape, no matter how paltry—then it’s time to recreate your life. Shallowness, ignorance and vapidity has done little to advance the human species, and quite a bit to keep it rooted in those ideas that could bring about our demise as a civilization. The whole point of maturity is to evolve into a more knowledgeable, wise and sophisticated being. If that’s not your goal, then you are merely taking up space needed by those who are actually contributing something worthwhile to the collective whole. Caustic? You bet. I make no apologies for expecting the best out of the human race. I never understood the free pass for any other than children, animals, or those with brain damage.

I didn’t exit the birth canal with superior intelligence or the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. In fact, my family was of the mind that one did not need higher education, and should just “go get a job.” Nonetheless, I had access to the ideas of those more discerning and intellectual, and paid attention to the messages they shared—mostly by way of the printed word. I decided early on that I wanted more from my life than the little one-horse town with its blue collar sensibility could provide. I looked at the precedents set by relatives and peers and pronounced them abhorrent. I stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back at me, and I spun on my heel and sprinted in the opposite direction. I wanted education. I wanted experience. I wanted to suck the marrow out of the world instead of letting it suck the marrow out of me.  I can’t say that my quest was a resounding success, but I certainly reached a point beyond that fate, having done my fair share of sucking.

I’m old enough to say that information was not so easily accessed back then. Books were the reason I made any progress at all. Not just any book, but good books.

In those younger, avid reader days, my idea of a perfect weekend was going to one of those quaint used bookshops with whatever allowance or income I had, and spending five hours touching books, gazing at covers,  reading blurbs and, I admit, like some atypical addict, sniffing the pages. This olfactory sentimentality has been compromised somewhat by our electronic readers. It’s just not the same,  using a Nook or Kindle. One would have to carry a screen cloth to rub off the nose prints, without ever enjoying the maudlin comfort of that book-smell. Just the smell of …what? technology? At least paper cuts are less common. Although I have to say I was rather proud of my paper cuts. I had something to show for turning all those pages. It made me feel purposeful. A badge of literary accomplishment sequestered inside a Band-Aid.

Now, with our lighted reading devices, we can cease the quest for a proper reading lamp. Especially as you get older and those lamps are next to a bed shared with a lover or spouse…some bed-mates don’t appreciate the glare of the incandescent or fluorescent bulb, nor the ritualized nightly reading, especially after a session of lovemaking; it somehow offends their sensibilities that instead of basking in the afterglow of their amorous ministrations, you are instead basking in the glow of a lamp, continuing your bibliophilic devotionals while they lie there with a pillow over their face, feeling somehow slighted. These are the bed-mates who never enjoyed a prolonged position in my bed, it seems. They simply HAD TO understand the status of books in my life. And if not, then sayonara amigo, thanks for letting me defile you for a while…

{Guiding the tangent digression Sport Utility Vehicle back on the Stay-Focused Highway}

Over those college years in my 20’s and 30’s, throughout and around 8 years of higher education, I jammed information and facts into my head with all the fervor of true autodidact and student of life. I gained more practical experience by being often on the yearbook staff, and also worked as a reporter for several newspapers, as a newsletter editor, desktop publisher, in-house graphic artist/label designer; I was a Managing Editor for a small women’s press in Connecticut; I studied under a Bible scholar when I wanted to understand Christianity, religion and the Bible. I held several positions as a technical writer (to include a stint with Raytheon Corporate Jets, where I was in charge of creating sales, technical presentations and documents for $10 million corporate aircraft), and almost from the start, I was an Indie Author and publisher, since I was not impressed with what traditional publishers offered, nor was I at all interested in what the medium and small presses could provide. I could much more effectively publish myself and maintain creative and quality control that way. So I learned about formatting, typesetting, cover design, marketing.

All these experiences only deepened my love of learning and inevitably led to a quest for what was true, what was knowable, and what was unknown. My periodic forays into fiction-reading ultimately disappointed me. I suppose I just chose the wrong authors, but for whatever reason, I became chagrined and disillusioned with novels and novelists, even though I continued to write novels myself.

I do believe that the whole paradigm of traditional publishing will come crashing to the ground soon. It’s already losing serious altitude. They will have to reinvent themselves, change their business model, or die. Mainstream publishers will have to address the fact that authors can reach readers without their help, and keep a larger portion of the Profit Pie, as well.

Just as Indie Authors like myself have to compete with writers who are still neophytes, yet able to publish anyway, so do publishers have to get with the program and realize that there are indeed talented writers out there who have yet to make any bestseller list, or garner any blurbs in the New York Times or Publisher’s Weekly, lauding them as a “fresh new voice in the Esoteric Apocalyptic Adventure genre.”

Which brings me back to Michael Stark. Sort of. I’ve been enjoying his serialized novel, The Island. It’s delicious. Every last page. I go to sleep thinking about his book, and wake up thinking about it. And while I’m reading I am jealous, wishing I had written it. I’m getting a callous on my finger turning digital pages. It’s so refreshing to discover a writer who knows how to tell a compelling story, has a masterful command of language and nuance, and character development and plotting, and still manages to take a rather glutted genre and breathe new life into it. All this, seemingly without the misplaced hubris found in so many Indie authors these days. This guy is the real deal, and I hope he offers a stack of other books for me to read soon, because he has now sufficiently whetted my literary appetite, and I will want to follow his career with all the enthusiasm of that young girl who thrilled at Heinlein and Burroughs all those years ago.