Oh boy! I’m very pleased to share that my story “Home” is in the new February issue of Nightmare Magazine. Subscribers already have it but if you don’t subscribe you can buy the issue right nowor wait for it to be published on the website later in the month.
I really need to update my webpage! I’m behind but it’s in the queue, I promise. For now, if you see this and you wonder “hey where can I get all of Erik’s demented fictions and etceteras?” check out About Erik.
A handful of other quick updates before I go back to the writing cave:
I have launched a newsletter, PDX Write Week, that compiles a weekly list of literary or writing events like readings, workshops, or signings in the Portland, OR area. It’s free! It’s a great way to support writers! You can sign up here: bit/ly.pdxwriteweek. Tell your friends!
I’m proud to say that I am now leading a team of intrepid social media posters for the Willamette Writers Buzz Team. This means when you see me posting too much on Twitter, it’s for the community and not– as one can be forgiven for assuming– wasting time. Willamette Writers is a great organization and you should check them out and follow all their social medias and stuff.
I am working through revisions on my current novel right now with Plans and Schemes for unleashing it forthcoming. Stay tuned.
Finally, I’m thrilled to be assisting NY Times bestseller and all-around brilliant writer Chelsea Cain in running a writing retreat NEXT WEEK in Maui. Aloha!
It’s Crooked v.2 launch day! You can get a copy here! Also, my esteemed and very clever editor, Jessie Kwak, put together this sweet quiz you can use that gives you an idea which of the 18 (!!!) amazing science fiction crime stories you should start with. If you pick Guardians of the Galaxy, then Reservoir Dogs, then Fear & Loathing you end up with my story, “Terminal Sunset.” Which, yeah, that tracks.
A couple other quick hits. First, I have updated my About Erik page because that thing hadn’t been updated in almost 9 years. Second, the About Erik page notes something I want to call out: I am a writing mentor at Working Title. That means I give editorial feedback and creative coaching in a variety of forms. I’ve been doing this with a growing stable of writing mentees for much of 2022 but I neglected to mention it on my personal webpage because oops! We’ll be doing a lot of cool stuff leading up to and through NaNoWriMo so stay tuned!
Expect more news imminently! I am launching newsletter things! I am plotting! There are schemes!
I have been a very busy writer this summer and I have news!
First up, this weekend at WorldCon in Chicago the Zombies Need Brains anthology NOIR — which contains my story “Blackhole Suicide!” — will be properly and festively launched with a party and a reading. I’m pleased to say that with some careful manipulation of schedule dynamics and financing I will be in attendance, reading and signing at some of these events. (With apologies to the wonderful Chicago people I know outside of the con — I’m afraid I will be in and out, jetlagged and generally useless). WorldCon attendees should check out the events and say hi! Details here!
Second, I am excited (and very remiss in announcing here) that I was accepted into the Viable Paradise workshop in Martha’s Vineyard this October. For a week I will study and learn from incredible authors and editors and commune with eldritch forces far beyond the capacity of human minds to comprehend. Viable Paradise is a fellowship that I am honored and excited to join with a pedigree that includes some of my favorite writers and people. Future award-winning bestselling badasses will be my classmates and dark gods in the briny depths shall gurgle my name. Good times!
News item number three is that I get to be in a *&%!ing awesome space crime anthology edited by glitter boot superstar Jessie Kwak. Crooked v.2! I’m one of the “…And More’ writers up there on that cover and I gotta say the other writers involved are intimidating and very cool. It’s a gang I am insanely excited to run with. The story I have in there, “Terminal Sunset” is a lean mean pressure cooker of a job on the edge of going very wrong starring a young Kate Hadon (aka the protagonist of “Blackhole Suicide” and other Things TBA). Hadon has less than four hours before the planet she’s on is incinerated by solar storms and a lousy soon-to-be-ex boyfriend to double-cross. Featuring a dog! And ice cream! And the first meeting between Hadon and a future friend and co-conspirator! It’s taut. It’s tense. It can be pre-ordered soon! Watch this space (and the website linked above)! I will be talking A LOT more about this!
Fourthly, I want to crow about a sale I recently made to Nightmare Magazine. This is a dream market for me and as much as I love writing sci fi with face kicking and ample hijinks, deep dark horror is an undying (undead?) passion. I spent more of my youth reading horror novels than fantasy or science fiction and it remains my first love. I don’t know when my story, “Home”, will appear yet but when I do…
…I am preparing Bigger Things (or maybe just more Consistent Things) for updating readers on my goings-on! Did you know I’m doing editorial consulting/mentoring? And I am doing more cool stuff within the writing community? I have so much to tell you about in fact, that I will be launching a newsletter soon, giving this website a much-needed facelift, and leveraging some of my anemic author social medias more. Coming soon! A writer with a proper communication strategy.
Oh how novel, a blog post! Not a social media thingy or a newsletter whatsit but an old fashioned straight out of 2007 web page update. Wild.
I have two things to share with you, oh denizens of 2007 and the rest of you luddite sociopaths that can still look at text on a webpage without a TikTok eel party or quick emoji reacts.
We’ll begin, obviously, with the adorable kitten of it all: Space Toucans 9Livez. “But wait!” you say out loud to yourself for some reason you should really be a little bit self conscious about, “what is this Space Toucans business, Erik?” Space Toucans is the all-new not-really-different-between-the-covers name for the Space Cocaine anthology series. (I’ve promoted this before. I was in two prior volumes.) We decided if we called it Space Toucans and still filled it with vulgar stories already illegal in certain states, that would make web searching and promotions and all that a little less awkward and DEA-scrutiny-earning. I have a lovely story in this volume that I read at our launch party with a funny voice. People laughed! I have proof. Get your copy today! If you want a signed special edition from me personally, I can hook you up. Email me! (Ask your grandparents how that works.)
Next up is the Zombies Need Brain anthology, NOIR! I have a story in that one that I’m very proud of called “Blackhole Suicide.” Like all good stories it’s about PTSD, party drugs, space farmers and a badass with cool guns that flirts with a robot while investigating a murder. More of my patented anti-capitalism and feelings propaganda. Fun fact! This story serves as a tease for a novel I’m polishing right now and, fickle publishing gremlins willing, will soon be double-tapping into your eye holes. Tell your friends!
You never really know what your story is about until you finish writing it and sometimes not even then. Sometimes you don’t figure it out for years.
In 2015 I signed with a literary agent and I thought “here we go!” I’d been studying, writing, hustling for my whole adult life. I had a manuscript I was very proud of and a whole lot of optimism. Over the next few years I wrote two more books and my agent submitted all three of them to editors. We got some positive notes but nothing sold. Ultimately, in 2018 my agent left the business and, with three books that were effectively dead to publishers and no agent, I almost quit writing. I poured everything I had into the work that didn’t sell, into the proposals, and the grace I needed to survive rejection. I was crushed.
A couple weeks ago Kelly Sue DeConnick was a guest instructor for the Bad Dream Factory writing workshop masterminded by Chuck Palahniuk and Chelsea Cain that I’m privileged to be the TA for. Someone asked her advice on coming up with ideas. She said, (and I’m paraphrasing here, so apologies for not capturing her full Kelly Sue-ness), that ideas aren’t the limiting factor. What you really need as a writer, what’s really in short supply, is time and courage. I’d never heard it phrased quite like that before and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. In 2018, my courage was gone. I still had ideas, still put in the time, still wrote, but I was missing something.
At the bottom of my courage, I made a choice to start again with the fundamentals. I had a certain comfort level with novels as a form. I’d written 8 books before the one that got me an agent and 10 total by 2018. None of them got cover art or shelf space at Barnes and Noble but I at least knew I could throw hours and hard work into my keyboard and make something novel shaped out of it. What I was less sure of were short stories. I’d written some in college but rarely since. My agent said short stories were a waste of time but when he was gone and I was starting over, I committed to short fiction. I felt like it might be a good way to rediscover my love of writing and a way to connect with the speculative fiction community at a time when I felt most isolated. I tried out a few ideas that didn’t come together and ultimately stuck on this one about a lonely traveler in an empty world that finds a hint that someone else is out there.
In retrospect, the subtext isn’t even a little bit subtle.
With “Merely Players” I wrote my loneliness, my sense of purposelessness after that “here we go!” crashed into “what do I do now?” Jester, the main character, is an actor without a stage or an audience. He’s a comedian in a world without laughter and he asks himself, is he even alive if he doesn’t do what he’s meant to do? The same issues I grappled with as a discouraged writer in 2018. Jester scours the desolate landscape of my post apocalyptic world for batteries like I scoured my reserves for the courage I was missing.
I included an adorable dog sidekick because who doesn’t appreciate an adorable dog sidekick and I used Christmas as a counterpoint to the grim post apocalyptic reality Jester inhabits. What I didn’t know writing “Merely Players” is how much more it resonated with me– and maybe for readers– in a post-Covid world. Jester marvels at all the useless strip mall commerce that’s left behind when all the people he misses are long gone. Quarantined through 2020, I mirrored these same feelings. I would have gladly traded the boxes of old CDs in my office for a night laughing with old friends.
In early 2019 after polishing and sitting on “Merely Players” for several months– call me the Cowardly Lion, Kelly Sue– I finally submitted it. It was my first ever short story submission (in college, I wrote for classes not sale) and I picked the publisher I thought was most likely to reject it in a day or two so I could just get it over with. That didn’t happen. The story made the second round and I found myself awkwardly not mentioning that to the publication editor at a cocktail party at Norwescon. I finally got my rejection and submitted it to the two next publications on my list and they passed quickly and efficiently. I used it in my application for a writing workshop that I got waitlisted for and even though any writer not completely out of batteries might have taken that as a sign that it was a good story that just hit tough competition, I was not that kind of writer and with my battery light blinking red stopped submitting it anywhere. I decided it was probably a terrible story after all and I was a terrible writer after all and wallowed in ridiculous self pity. I worked on other stories and other submissions with limited confidence but effectively gave up on “Merely Players.”
Quick aside: don’t do this. Believe in your work and keep trying. I was a Sad Writer Dwelling in Darkness. The character in my story had more courage than I could manage then. Jester, I’m sure, would have offered me a song and dance and given me a hug.
I mentioned my truly self-destructive and not at all logical defeatist attitude about submitting short stories to my friend Luke and he told me I might try, you know, submitting a story to more than 3 places before I gave up and listened to Concrete Blonde in Self Pity Town. I figured I’d show him how foolish that kind of thinking was and sent off “Merely Players” to Escape Pod in October of 2020. I got the acceptance not long after. It was picked to be the Christmas story for 2021 so I needed to be patient for a very long year but that patience has delivered me an extraordinary gift.
People read the ending of “Merely Players” different ways. In the end does Jester find his audience or do his batteries just run out? I intend that answer to be a personal one, different for each reader, but for me right now listening to the incredible narrator Karlo Yeager Rodriguez bring this story that so transparently mirrors my writing journey over the last 3 years to life, I think Jester has just enough courage to get his happily ever after.
And I think maybe I found the courage to move on too.
This silly, sweet, sad story that will almost certainly never mean as much to anyone else as it means to me wouldn’t be possible without Divya, Mur, and Ben at Escape Pod plucking it out of slush and making it shine or without Karlo who I think might understand a little something about little dogs. Recognition also to my wife who still cries when she reads or hears it, my dog who has tolerated years of nicknames, and my friend Luke who was right. Thanks also to Chuck and Chelsea for taking in a stray Cowardly Lion and to Kelly Sue for helping me finally see what my own story was really about.
Merry Christmas to you and yours and cheers to 2022, may it give us what we all deserve. The trick, my friends, is leaning.
Real quick website update! First off, here’s a holiday card for you! Second, maybe check out the Ink to Film podcast? I was just a guest and we talked about the Green Knight! You can look them up “Ink to Film” or here are some links!
Third, this is a really cool thing for me! My first professional short story sale to Escape Pod dropped today! It’s a Christmas story! There’s a dog! It might make you sad!
December is a great month to fill your stocking up with stories I’ve written! You can, right now from the comfort of your wherever-you-are, order a fresh copy of Buckmxn Journal 007 featuring my all-new ode to one of my favorite musicians and traumatizing children in amusement parks, Either Or (for Elliott) right here! You can also get volumes 2 AND 3 of Space Cocaine including, yes it’s true, stories by me! Finally, and this one is very exciting, I have a story that will be running on Escape Pod on December 23rd! My story, Merely Players, narrated by a professional beamed straight to your listening devices!
Happy holidays to all of you and stay tuned for the New Year! I’m sure it will be a Hell of a ride.
Most writers have lots of experiences in critique groups or workshops but not all of these experiences are awesome and helpful. Sometimes changing your approach as a participant can make them more awesome and helpful though. So for what it’s worth, here’s my workshop manifesto (part 1).
Tip: Set Your Expectations Appropriately
Workshops can really vary in format, intention, mood, snacks, etc. If you go into a workshop expecting one thing (cookies) and get a different thing (cupcakes) you might be disappointed. I recommend doing your homework. Read up on everything the workshop or group organizers say about it. If it applies, ask former participants. Go into the experience meeting the workshop on the workshop’s terms. After you’ve participated in some, let’s arbitrarily say four workshops or groups, you will have a better sense of what works well and what doesn’t for you.
Tip: Discomfort Can be Good
I never advocate putting yourself in a position that feels unsafe personally or creatively but there’s a lot of space between unsafe and being cozy in your comfort zone. If your goal with a workshop or critique group is to improve your writing, approaching it from an all-new angle can shake up or affirm your creative instincts. By necessity so much of the writing process is internal. A group allows you to “road test” your act like a stand up comedian or musician. Sometimes you want a new crowd for that sort of thing. You might find that you can expand your work to be more accessible to more people that way.
Tip: This Isn’t Mandatory
To be clear, workshopping/critiquing is never required. You can write your glorious amazing words without ever getting notes or criticisms (constructive or no) from anyone. You can write for yourself. You can attend groups that are purely about support. That’s great and essential! My process involves sharing my roughest work with only people who will love and support it first (my wife, number one superfan) before I introduce it to anyone. There were points in my writing development when all I needed was a cheer squad, not a red pen. There are pieces of writing that are still too tender for me to subject them to anyone else’s approval or disapproval and that’s valid as fuck.
Also, a tangential point: a lot of writing events start or end up in bars but not all writers drink. I don’t drink much and almost never when I’m in training for a running event. It’s awkward sometimes but there are usually other people ordering sodas. We share meaningful, sober looks. There are also people who just don’t go into bars for all sorts of reasons. I’m tremendously sensitive to cigarette smoke and I have to leave events sometimes if I’m somewhere with smokers (usually patios these days). You need to remember that your health comes first and anyone or any group that pressures you to do things that aren’t healthy for you is not a good fit. Setting boundaries is important and if anyone ever gives you a hard time about it they are telling you to GTFO.
Tip: Don’t be an Asshole
As mentioned, workshops vary a lot. Some devote a lot of time to each writer giving their feedback verbally or in writing, some are primarily about the thoughts of a teacher or workshop organizer. Some get into a groove of cutting straight to the criticism. Some do a “compliment sandwich” approach (say something nice, something critical, something nice again). Whatever works for the writers, the workshop, the organizers, the most important golden rule for behavior is just don’t be mean. If you are giving your thoughts on something, keep it focused on the page not the person. Try to put yourself in the other writer’s place. What would help you? What would hurt you? Just, be cool. Don’t monopolize the conversation. Don’t speak over others. Behave like a grown up decent person who can social. The process is stressful enough already. Being a big ego meanie know-it-all is just uncouth and uncalled for. This may seem like real basic kindergarten advice but a truly unfortunate number of writers believe workshops and critique groups are places to demonstrate how much they know and how great they are and <big eye roll>, that’s not it at all. Groups like this exist to help. They exist to teach, demonstrate, and encourage. It is not and never will be your duty to brutally break down another writer and remake them Robocop style into your vision. You will find some writers and some pieces need more help than others and it may be tough to say or express all of the things you think need attention. That’s okay. Offer what you can in good faith when you can, with respect and patience, and you get the gold star.
Tip: Workshops are NOT All About You
I think there are four stages of workshop/critique engagement. In the first stage you are focused primarily on how your work, your precious words, will be received and what guidance you will get. That occupies most of your time and seems like the biggest priority. You wait for your turn, almost tuning everything else out until the focus is on you. Then you get to stage two and realize that other writer’s work and the feedback they receive really helps you learn your craft. Sometimes someone will use a device you were thinking of using or have used but haven’t brought in and you can get a sense of how well it goes over. Sometimes you learn a new trick. The third stage is when you learn enough about writing that what you see in other writer’s work and your thoughts help both of you. It’s a great big ah ha! moment when this first happens. Explaining a thing to another person sometimes (often even) improves your understanding and appreciation of that thing. A lot of writers think this is the ultimate stage, the goal. I don’t. Stage four is when you learn enough about yourself and about writing and enough about other writers that you can see the story from their perspective and give them insights to help them get what they want. It’s an easy trap to tell all writers to write more like the way you write but what you really want to do is tell all writers to be more like the unique writers they truly are. I love so many writers (as a reader, a friend, a critique partner) that write things I would never write in ways I would never write them. There are some universal concepts in storytelling, I blog about them sometimes, but there is more room for personal and unique expression and vision than you might think. When I read a story I want to understand the story the way the writer understands it, not the way I would tell it, and I do my best to get out of the way, suppress my own biases, and tell them how to get there. That’s workshop magic.
Tip: Come Back to My Blog for More Tips (Probably)
I could just go on and on about workshops and writing and the great big creative hug I want to give the whole world but we’ve all got stuff to do right? So, I’ll leave you with just these tips for now. Maybe there will be a sequel. Maybe even in 3D! Good luck with your words and your writers’ groups. Try to take a break to look at otters. Stay hydrated.
Erik Grove. Writer. Portland, OR 