My Fiction Site

In the right sidebar are clickable images of the covers of my novels, which will take you to their Amazon listings. Other posts will link to available free works – mostly shorter ones – and assorted thoughts on the writing of fiction.

I am available to book clubs, whether in person or via Zoom, upon request. For details, contact me at morelonhouse --at-- optonline --dot-- net

Monday, July 29, 2019

Short Cuts And Long Delays

     When I embark on a new novel-project, I’m usually tempted to look for a short cut, a quick way to “get into” the effort. Sometimes I find one. Sometimes it’s suitable. More often, it proves to be a detriment, though that might not be obvious for some time.

     The kind of temptation that’s proved least destructive to the ultimate creation is the substantial fund of short stories I’ve written over the decades, some of which prove extensible, with enough thought and effort. Love in the Time of Cinema emerged from such a story, and I’d say it worked out well. But needless to say, not all short tales lend themselves to being used in that fashion. I’m working on and with one such today, and it’s been giving me fits.

     The most destructive temptation – and I’m pleased to be able to say that it’s one I’ve successfully resisted – is the one that whispers “Just borrow this idea, add a couple of characters and a few grace notes, and call it your own!” It’s not necessarily plagiarism to do so; the narrative archetypes are few, and their skeletons can be detected in every decent story ever written. But unless he can come up with an original motif or two and frame the story around them, the writer cannot honestly call the tale his own creation.

     Yet innumerable writers copy well-trodden paths, add nothing significantly original or fresh, and publish the results. That’s the prevalent practice in fantasy today, especially “urban” fantasy. I have little respect for such “creators.” I disdain to read their “creations,” once I can discern their lineaments. But many of them are far more successful in dollars-and-cents terms than I.

     In all fairness, it’s extremely difficult to remain within the confines of a long-established, strongly patterned genre yet produce something genuinely new. The difficulty romance writers have with it gave birth to the Harlequin line, which recycles a publication back to pulp after it’s been on the shelves for a single month. The grooves are too deep. They admit of too little innovation. Such books appeal directly to the reader who wants to keep reading “my favorite story” over and over and OVER.

     The “short cut” available from such a strong, innovation-averse pattern can result in a long delay in a writer’s maturation – and no, I don’t mean “finding his voice.”


     The late Isaac Asimov, when asked the most common of all fan questions – “Where do you get your ideas?” – replied that story ideas are all around us; just reach out and grab one. They practically attack the attentive writer, for a simple reason: they’re about people struggling with problems. Usually they’re problems of the sort people have always had.

     If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’ve seen these before:

John Brunner’s Laws Of Fiction:
1. The raw material of fiction is people.
2. The essence of story is change.

     People’s problems are about the challenges they face and must surmount: from their surroundings, from their personal limitations and inhibitions, and (of course) from other people. Some problems are too trivial to produce drama – to the best of my knowledge, “He needed a clean pair of briefs and didn’t have one!” has never inspired any writer to greatness in storytelling – but there are innumerable ones that writers have used to evoke drama, heroism, and the reader’s sense of the breadth and depth of human existence. Even a barely educated person will be familiar with many such problems and their fictional exploitation.

     In a way, the reason for the speculative genres – fantasy, science fiction, and horror – is that they allow the imaginative writer to shed new light on a classic problem. Consider the problem of survival. While there’s still ample room for stories of survival against great odds in the here and now, the unique moral-ethical cast it can acquire from a science fiction setting can enable it to stimulate readers who might never have considered its complexities. Perhaps the problem is how to defend an innocent against a predator, or a predatory force. A technological motif can make such a contest vivid in a way tales of Mafia dons or serial killers cannot. Possibilities abound; reach out and grab one!

     Some short cuts can be useful as a “leg up” to prominence. For example, now and then, a precast setting, created by a successful writer, is offered to other, less well known writers as an environment in which to tell a tale and gain an expanded readership. This has become fairly common in the speculative genres. Larry Niven’s “Man-Kzin Wars” anthologies are a good example, as are George R. R. Martin’s “Wild Cards” collections. On August 6, military SF writer Tom Kratman will release an anthology of that sort, centered on his imagined colony world of Terra Nova. Our beloved Co-Conspirator Dystopic/Thales (he uses both monikers) will have a story therein, so don’t miss it. But such supports should not be regarded as reliable in perpetuity; to mature and earn personal distinction, a writer must strike out on a path he can justly call his personal creation.


     “Short cuts make long delays,” saith John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He would surely know. If you aspire to write fiction, be aware of the dangers inherent in mimicry. It can trap you as surely as quicksand, and to the same ultimate effect. A leg up here and there is one thing; walking slavishly and undeviatingly in the footsteps others have left is another. The only way to become a writer others will respect – and I don’t necessarily mean other writers, but I don’t necessarily not mean them, either – is to create your own brand from the fertile if tangled resources of your imagination, experience, and heart.

     Get busy.

Monday, July 8, 2019

Story Recipes

     I’ve made such an obsession out of originality that at times I can blind myself to the possibilities that could arise from a different perspective.

     No, I’m not talking about exploiting the enormous commercial possibilities from hopping onto one of the current “hot” bandwagons and showing the world what a real storyteller can do with it. What I have in mind is more what a creative cook does when he seeks a new approach to the preparation of some basic item.

     Even the most creative cooks don’t invent entirely new ingredients. They work with what God has given us: the minerals, plants, and animals that already inhabit the Earth. They look for new combinations of those things that might prove pleasing to the palate. I have no doubt that an adventurous cook would need to discard the results of many unsatisfactory experiments...always assuming he didn’t face the severe choice of eating them himself or starving to death. But when he finally hits on something both new and genuinely pleasant, he presents it to the world with pride as his creation. It is legitimately his even though, as with “the figure in the marble” a sculptor seeks to reveal with his chisel, it was always there to be found by anyone sufficiently determined to seek it out.

     Recently there have been some impressive breakthroughs of this sort. E. William Brown’s “Daniel Black” and “Alice Long” novels come to mind, as do Margaret Ball’s “Center for Applied Topology” series and her recent novel Salt Magic. The “atomic” elements that underpin those creations have been around for a while, but the way Brown and Ball assembled them, in each case previously untried, made them into something new and fresh – i.e., original.

     By contrast, I rack my brain for completely original “atomic” ideas around which to craft my stories. As that organ already has sixty-seven years of wear and tear on it, it doesn’t produce such things simply for the asking. It involves a process that takes time and the convergence of a variety of stimuli (usually including copious amounts of port or sherry). All the same, now and then I find one, and – wonder of wonders! — it manages to sustain a tale. To those who’ve wondered why my books are so widely spaced in time, that’s half the answer; the other half is the agonizing difficulty, as Ernest Hemingway once put it, of “getting the words right.”

     Since the release of The Wise and the Mad, which concludes the “Futanari Saga,” I’ve been casting about for another genuinely new idea, something that would take me in a completely new direction. I haven’t found one, and it’s been giving me fits. At intervals I’ve wondered whether I might have shot my wad. So as of yesterday evening, the pain from that frustration, liberally sauced from a freshly opened bottle of Villa Bellangelo’s exquisite “Elizabeth” port, has me thinking about the “recipe” approach instead.


     J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, considered to be the bedrock for fantasy of its kind, was actually derived from the Arthurian legend, albeit with a twist. King Arthur had his magical artifact – Excalibur, “the sword of power” – and a villain to defeat: Mordred, the son of Arthur’s half-sister Morgawse, who desired the throne of Britain for his own. Tolkien adapted the Arthurian pattern by exchanging Excalibur, a weapon loyal to Arthur’s hand, for the One Ring, a wholly malevolent creation of Sauron.

     Because Tolkien worked with a richly imagined world with an intricate backstory, populated by a variety of creatures with special characteristics, the relative simplicity of his “plot drivers” was no impediment to the telling of a long, persistently gripping story. The combination of those drivers with that elaborate backdrop, largely derived from Catholic theocosmogony, and with Tolkien’s gifts for storytelling made his tale a new creation that’s enthralled readers for decades. It continues to be the iconic work in its genre, against which all other works of “high” or medieval fantasy are judged.

     C. S. Lewis wanted to spin a tale from the Arthurian loom but wanted to emphasize the Christian elements and set it in modern Britain. His Space Trilogy has some explicitly Arthurian elements, notably his use of Merlin as a character in That Hideous Strength and his elevation of his protagonist Dr. Elwin Ransom to “Pendragon of Logres,” Logres is an ancient name for Britain in the Arthurian tales. Lewis transformed it into a mystical society whose function is to keep political Britain on the moral straight and narrow. Note, however, that the revived Merlin takes the place of Excalibur as the critical magical “artifact.”

     The patterns these two master talespinners created from Arthurian elements are so compelling that the great majority of their successors in the realm of “high” fantasy have proved unable to depart from them. There have been a few exceptions, notably Orson Scott Card’s “Alvin Maker” series. However, the Arthurian / Tolkienian pattern continues to exhibit a tractor-beam-like effect on writers who approach “high” fantasy today. It suggested to me that the vein might be “played out”...or it did until this very morning.


     I resisted suggestions that I try fantasy until I had the inspirations that produced a handful of short stories: “The Object of His Affection” and “The Warm Lands,” my two magic-based fantasies, and “Foundling” and “Class Action,” my two vampire stories. Paradoxically, these relatively minor expositions are more popular with my readers –i f I go by email feedback, at least – than all the rest of my fiction taken together. I’ve received many, many requests for continuations and “sequels” in each of those “worlds”...and have been unable to produce them. The original ideas in them fought being extended into longer tales, and I could not find new ideas that would supplement them compatibly.

     But as of this morning, owing to the cooking analogy from the first segment, one of those tales has gripped me afresh. I’ve found ways to combine well-worn elements used by other writers to create a wholly new “recipe.” At least, I can’t think of any existing work that follows the pattern I have in mind. So with dedication, perseverance, and a spot of luck, some, at least, of those aforementioned vainly importuning readers will have something to gratify their yearnings, later this year or early in 2020. Beyond that, deponent sayeth no more...for the present!