Issue 50 November 2017 Flash Fiction Online November 2017

Author Aldous Huxley once wrote:

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

How true.

Recent psychological theory, however, indicates that an attitude of gratitude is enormously beneficial.

Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Gratitude Practice. All integrate gratitude as a key element in living happier, healthier lives.

Apparently, the more we practice gratitude, the healthier we become emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically.

For a quick rundown on the practice of gratitude, here’s a short article from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

This month in America, we’ll be setting a day aside solely for the expression of gratitude. Whether it be to our god, to our family, to our friends, or to nothing in particular, it is a day to reflect on the things in our lives that bring us joy, success, peace, pleasure. A day to recognize those things we often take for granted, like our god, our family, our friends, our joys, our successes, our peace, our pleasures.

What am I grateful for this year? More things than I can count. The more I ponder, the more things I recognize as true blessings in my life—from the seemingly mundane to the sublime.

19th Century English schoolmaster and poet, Folliot Sanford Pierpont, wrote the words to the beautiful hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” in 1864. I’ve grown up with the words of this hymn echoing in my ears.

For the beauty of the earth,

For the beauty of the sky

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies.

 

For the beauty of each hour

Of the day and of the night,

Hill and vale and tree and flow’r

Sun and moon and stars of light.

 

For the joy of human love,

Brother, sister, parent, child,

Friends on earth and friends above;

For all gentle thoughts and mild.

It can be difficult at times to find something to be grateful for, there is always something. And those who actively seek and ponder and reflect on those things—however simple or minuscule they may be, just might find a reason to be happier, more at peace with themselves and the world around them. Worth a try? I think so.

Shall we try? Make a list of at least ten things you’re grateful for.

Here are a few of mine

I’m grateful for good running shoes, for silver rings, for warm blankets, for a gentle husband and joyful children. I’m grateful for Star Wars and paper plates, for Altoid’s Cinnamon Mints and safety pins. I’m grateful I didn’t badly injure myself when I turned my ankle the other day. I’m grateful for early mornings—the quiet and solitude, the time for reflection, the opportunity to watch as the world turns from night to day, as the very shadow of the earth tilts its way across the sky, as the sun fades from the deep purple of midnight into indigo, then azure. I’m grateful for audio books and zippers, pencils and batteries.

And today, I’m grateful for four talented authors whose works appear on our pages this month, with stories worth being grateful for.

Rafael closed the bakery at precisely 4 pm and turned the key in the lock. In his arms, he cradled the last of the bread remaining: two baguettes and one round sourdough–all the ordinary kind. He walked up the street and around the corner to the homeless shelter, scouting, as he always did, half in and half out of the physical world.

People lay like heaps of refuse on grass and sidewalk, molding, rotting; their lives decomposing. The locked gate kept them from entering their temporary sanctuary until the appointed hour when meals and beds and blankets were given until none were left.

The demons, yetzer ra, the appetite for evil, lay with their humans: perched on their shoulders, pressed against them in intimate repose like mother and child, or with their backs resolutely turned, as though seeking escape.

But all Rafael’s magic was used for the day. There was never enough.

Rafael buzzed the gate’s intercom, heard a tired voice query him; gave his profession, rather than his name. One of the cooks came out to meet him, take his bread, wish him a good evening, not bothering to even unlock the gate.

He walked down 2^nd Ave, heading home.

Passing Christ Our Hope Catholic Church, he saw a man sitting on the steps, head hung, staring at his feet, drawing thoughtfully on a lit cigarette, looking lost. He had no demons; a thing so rare, Rafael stopped abruptly and stared. He asked, “Are you in need of anything?”

The man exhaled a slow cloud of smoke, pondering the question with more seriousness than even Rafael had intended. He answered, “More of everything, but mostly hope and compassion and grace.” He raised his head as he spoke and Rafael saw the white and black collar of his trade in faith. “So I don’t feel empty, doing the work that must be done.”

Rafael nodded but had no response. He moved on, walking home; ate, slept, rose in the dark of the night and walked back to the bakery.

He lay a fire in the ancient cavern of the brick oven and filled the clean stainless electric mixers with flour and salt and water and yeast; his fingers already thrumming with the day’s magic, ignored. He kneaded and then shaped the doughs: sweet for cinnamon buns; dark rye; sourdough; the simplest of French doughs for baguettes. All the ordinary kind.

Perched on a battered wooden work table in the corner, a lidded crockery pot–webbed with the fine lines of age and worn dark with the patina of many hands–stood, waiting.

The heat in the kitchen peaked and the ordinary doughs rose to puffy readiness, and the contained magic in him grew insistent. Yet, he hesitated.

He stepped outside into the grey, cool pre-dawn, wiping flour from his hands with his apron, feeling the sweat drying on his back under his white t-shirt.

Across the alley, a police officer viciously kicked a pile of rags sleeping in a doorway. The demon on the officer’s back was a monstrosity which draped around her like a cloak.

The baby in the apartment across the way screamed. Rafael looked up and saw the child’s mother on the fire escape; her fingers clasped, white-knuckled, on the railing. The woman’s demon was a frail, starved thing, but Rafael had seen the three stitched to the child’s back, waiting to be fed as the child grew. Too many who needed help. Never enough magic.

He turned away from them, went back inside, spooned flour and sprinkled salt into his old cracked bowl. Enough only for a single loaf.

He reached for the crock, opened it, inhaling the scent of the yeast–ancient and primal and comforting, edged with the sharp sourness of earthy fermentation and the tang of spells–and scooped out a handful of soft, viscous liquid. He added this and water to the bowl. The dough stuck to his fingers in wet, sucking globs, then gradually became a ruffled dough, soft as feathers falling through his fingers.

His magic was like the wild yeasts which white-washed the grapes that had made this sourdough starter long ago: ever-present, invisible and undetected until it gathered in him.

He let it flow from him now, squeezing it through the dough with the starter; feeling the dough come alive with the wild yeasts and the wild magic; feeling it elongate and collapse and shift under his touch. He kneaded it, nurturing it, until it felt ready beneath his hands; shaped it into a long baguette. A single loaf with all the day’s magic in it.

He swept the floor and wiped down the long wooden shelves, waiting for the loaves to bake. The scent of the warming bread wafted into the street, luring customers.

He opened the doors when the line grew long, even though it was too early by the clock, and served his customers through the day, changing bread for coin. The one loaf sat in solitude on the shelf.

He closed the shop at precisely 4 pm and turned the key in the lock. Cradled in his arm he held the last remaining loaf. He did not go to the shelter. He walked along 2^nd Ave. to the church. The priest was there, as before, another cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers.

Rafael cradled the paper-wrapped baguette in his arms, like a precious thing, then passed it to the priest. “This is for you,” he said, “no one else.”

“There are those who are hungry,” he replied. “Best give it to them.” He didn’t reach for it.

“I made this for you.”

The priest looked at him, met his eyes. Maybe there was just enough residual power in Rafael for the priest to understand and acquiesce. He took the bread.

The magic was not permanent, a month’s worth, maybe two. But for that time, the priest’s endless work would seem easier, more hopeful. There was never enough. But there was always some.

It rains the day my brother arrives. He steps onto Junian soil with a limp less prominent than the one I remember from childhood. And he just stands there, for a long moment, looking simultaneously lost and found. Getting soaked through.

The rain here is clear as anywhere but likes to awaken the dormant algae growing invisible on every surface. The shuttle-pad is already shimmering purple when my baby brother gets his boots wet. I stand inside the shuttleport, watching Isaac slosh about like the ten-year-old he was when I left. He uses his cane to swirl the water while I try a little not to laugh, and mostly not to cry.

* * *

I jumped star systems when I was nineteen. Jun was exotic and licking its wounds from the recent ending of a war. When my girlfriends convinced me to go, I hugged little Isaac goodbye as he stood on shaky legs, smiling up at me. Waved to my parents and escaped my own personal war. My friends stayed a week. I stayed much longer.

Armed with my camera and a splinter of high-school journalism experience, I traveled every mile of the little planet I could. I talked face-to-face with Isaac almost every day on my tablet, then our parents would get on and talk. They’d tell me what the doctors were saying. That he wouldn’t last more than a few more months.

They kept saying this every couple of months.

When the largest news organization on Jun saw my collection of post-war photos and offered me a job, just me and my camera, I took it.

* * *

The first picture I took was in a bathroom stall. Someone had scratched words into the faux wood grains of the door. Some quote about love. I had to look it up—to find it was by some long-dead Earthling author—then sent the picture to Isaac.

I didn’t ask my parent’s permission before I took the job. But I asked my brother’s.

* * *

We started communicating in this way. A picture sent across the stars. Sometimes with a note scribbled electronically along the bottom. I printed his on precious, rare paper, so I could touch something he gave me. Tacked my wall with his pictures. Not the ones I took that won me awards.

We never discussed them when we spoke face-to-face, those times when our parents would give the doctor’s verdicts. I was steadily starting to believe the people who thought they knew the most really knew the least.

I was steadily starting to fear I never went home because I was afraid I’d see him die.

* * *

When he was fourteen, he sent me a photo of his doctor’s framed M.D.

Scribbled along the bottom: When do you think they’ll give up and just tell me they don’t know anything? That I’ll live as long as I damn well want to?

I laughed so hard I couldn’t see, then cried so hard I couldn’t breathe.

* * *

At fifteen, he sent his perfect grades in school.

On the bottom: I am the god of wisdom.

* * *

When I was twenty-four, I sent a picture of my boyfriend, posed atop a mountain after a day-long hike.

What do you think?

* * *

His returning picture was of our parents together, cooking a familiar meal.

He’s not good enough for you.

I rolled my eyes when I got it. Printed and tacked it on my wall.

A few months later, it turned out he was right.

* * *

When he was seventeen (I was twenty-five), I sent him three. First: a sunset over Jun’s sun-orange-tinted turquoise sea. Second: a ghost-town left by the war, with shattered stone buildings and roughened decrepit wood houses. Third: a ten-year-old boy from the most secluded village on the planet, dressed in blue-dyed papery pants, dripping with rain that puddled purple around his bare feet.

On the bottom of the third, I wrote: Bet you aren’t this little anymore.

On the second: Not our family. Not you and me.

On the first: You need to be here.

* * *

When he was nineteen, a picture of our childhood house where he still lived. It was twilight, and hardly visible. My memories of that place weren’t strong as they should’ve been.

If I said I wanted to come be with you, would you say yes? Why would you say yes?

* * *

Yes, come be with me. I wrote on what I sent in return. A copy of the oldest photo I had of him—when he was four-years-old.

Why? Because if this war-torn planet I’ve lived on these years can be so brave, then so can I. Because I thought I ran away the first time. Because I thought I was so afraid of watching you die I didn’t watch you grow up. Because I miss you every day. And I’m still afraid, but I need you here. And I am so, so sorry.

Instead, I wrote a piece of that quote I first sent him off a trashy bathroom wall: “Love is a growing up.”

* * *

Isaac sees me when I leave the shuttleport, getting my sandals wet with purple-algae-rainwater. We stand, awkward, grinning like idiots, him leaning on the cane that helps his twenty-year-old self walk, me with my fingers wringing my shirt.

“I don’t actually remember saying you could grow this much,” I say because he’s tall. He is so tall. My head reaches his chest. Lanky too, like a cheetah pup growing into itself. He smiles and blushes. Swishes the water at his feet.

He says, “You’re pretty as I remember.”

I laugh and hug him tightly though it still rains, steadying him when he wobbles. “I’m sorry,” I tell him and feel some of the fear in me ease as he clings tighter, showing me the strength in his arms.

When he leans back, he’s smiling brighter than I’ve ever seen.

I take up my camera and snap his picture in the rain.

Two months after the last broken transmission from Earth, somewhere in the unexplored dark, we found a voice.

At first we thought it was a mass hallucination. We’d been alone in space too long. Back home, we’d be treated for space sickness and starlust, our brains scanned and studied for signs that our grey matter had deteriorated in the vacuum. We’d be swaddled in hospitals, kept barefoot and away from the night sky until we stopped dreaming of plumed nebulas and stopped thinking we could hear the music of the spheres in C minor.

But there was no more Earth, and we were lost, limping along to a semi-terraformed planet we were supposed to be studying and would now be colonizing. We’d taken to talking each other away from the airlock when the stars started looking like houses in the distance and confirming reality as a matter of course. We might all lose our minds, but probably not at the same time.

“Does this taste like banana?” Lucinda asked, chewing on a freeze-dried ration. And we’d all nod.

“I hear someone breathing out there,” Antin murmured, standing at one of the portholes. And we’d all say no, it’s only rock and plasma, come away from there, look at us instead.

So when Carl found the signal and the voice crackled through the speakers, he asked, “Do you hear a voice?”

“Yes,” said Jane, and Lucinda, and then one by one we all confirmed that we did hear a voice. Muttering, male, half-covered in static. We all bent close to the speakers.

The voice coughed, and paused, and Lucinda covered her mouth.

Breath rattled. More words.

“It’s Russian,” Antin whispered. None of the rest of us spoke it. Hardly anyone in the space programs did anymore. Russia died at the beginning of the slow end. He swayed in time with the enunciation. “He says he’s lost. Over and over. He’s lost.”

He grabbed the mic before the rest of us could stop him and broadcast out into the black. “Zdravstvujtye? Zdravstvujtye?“

A pause. We held our breath, our hearts waiting for the next word to start beating again. It had been so long since we’d savored the sound of a stranger’s voice.

He began again. The same pattern.

“It’s a recording,” Carl said. He had tears in his eyes. One ended up in his mustache, a shimmer in the energy-efficient lighting.

We let the voice play all night, damn the fuel reserves, damn the razor-thin margins between death and life on a barely-habitable planet.

* * *

The next day, we found the ship. Late twentieth century as near as anyone could guess. Our scanners were calibrated for geological identifications only. We didn’t know what trick of folding space brought it here. The hull was pitted with burn marks and long scratches from debris. It was just big enough for one person who wasn’t claustrophobic.

Matt and Amal volunteered to go aboard. Amal was forty, probably too old to have children when we made landfall. Matt insisted. We could have debated the impact their possible deaths would have on our as-yet-hypothetical colony, but none of the rest of us wanted to stop them. We helped them put on the suits and tethers.

“It’s cold,” Amal said when she made it aboard. Her chattering teeth made the radio pop. “There he is. Look.”

They had a camera and we tumbled over each other in a mess of arms and legs and sweating palms to get close to the screen. Lucinda and Regan–who loved each other so secretly that even they didn’t know it yet–held onto each other’s forearms so tight that Lucinda had waning moon scars from Regan’s nails for the rest of her life. Antin’s mouth twitched, and we all knew he was aching for the cigarettes he’d given up to see the stars.

Amal held the camera up to where the cosmonaut’s eyes used to be. He’d been handsome. He had a vintage face out of the days of Hugo Boss and ships caught in the orbit of a single planet.

“Do you know who he is?” Carl asked.

Antin shook his head. His hands still didn’t know what to do. “There were so many lost in the early days. When my mother was a child, her class listened to the audio of Vladimir Komarov sobbing.”

Matt’s breath was the rush of the ocean half-remembered. In and out and in and out. “I don’t want to die up here like that.”

Amal touched the dead man’s cheek with one gloved finger. With all the air gone, he was a facsimile of human still, even after these hundreds of years. “Hush. We won’t die. Think of everything that aligned for you to be here, at the right moment and the right velocity, at the same time as he is. We are in the presence of a miracle. Of a universal astronomical improbability. No one is going to die.”

“I don’t believe in signs,” Lucinda said from the deck of our ship, with her arms still bleeding in Regan’s hands. She didn’t mean it.

Matt went to his knees. Amal smoothed her other hand over his helmet and it would have been comforting had they not been separated by six layers of Mylar and mysterious alloys. She kept her other hand on the cosmonaut, and for a moment the dead Earth and the new were separated by only a touch.

* * *

We stripped the old ship for precious metals and spare parts, liquefied the body for the carbon. Our fuel reserves rose above the margin of error. We collected the ice crystals from the interior and thrilled at the taste of unfiltered water. It tasted like dust and dirt and everything else we wouldn’t see again for months.

We kept the recording. Matt played it when we dimmed the lights for nighttime. A voice in the dark, the last stranger, who found us all this way from home.

Previously published in Daily Science Fiction, 2017. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

On moonless nights during the winter of 1917, they meet in the bomb crater.

A few hours before dawn, the soldiers climb over their sandbags and crawl, staying low and quiet (the trench sentries are paid off in dry socks and cigarettes). Loops of barbed wire glint like fangs in the glow of distant flares, but the steel is snipped in places so they can wriggle through, like toddlers intent on reaching sweets hidden away in a pantry.

Crossing the scarred, lifeless terrain of No Man’s Land, they drop down into the crater from opposite sides:

Three men from the German trenches.

Four men from the British camp.

One by one, they gather around the secret table.

Their wives and mothers back home would never call it a table. It has no legs, after all. But then the backpacks every soldier carries have no legs either, and yet in the barracks, these bags are called “Fido” because they’re made from dog-skin.

So it’s a table. A stack of large, rectangular wooden planks: duckboards pried up from the muddy bottom of the trenches and dragged across a land of corpses to the crater. In France’s rainy months, it becomes a sort of soggy raft, but it is November now, and the table is fancy with frost, like elegant reliefs in desks back home.

“Hello,” the Germans begin, and the British respond with a “Guten tag,” which makes the group laugh because it is not afternoon—it’s as black and cold and cratered as the surface of the moon must be.

Out comes the knockwurst and schnitzel and sauerbraten from the Germans, and biscuits and cheese and chocolate from the British. The food is broken off with numb fingers and passed into hungry mouths. Percy has even brought a deck of cards! Everyone likes Percy. Somehow the mud seems reluctant to cling to his uniform, and he smells slightly less vile. While every soldier carries a veritable bazaar in his backpack, it is Percy who somehow bears the best things—his harness of creature comforts would be the envy of an Ottoman merchant-king. Today he has brought twice-baked gingerbread sent from home (his wife jokingly calls it “ship’s biscuit”). He owns a fancy pocket-watch, too, which he shares with the men so they can examine its baroque loveliness by the glow of their cigarettes.

The Germans have beer in small canteens, and the English carry rations of rum. Their Rule of Secret Dinner is to whisper, always whisper, lest their comrades manning the machineguns on either side of No Man’s Land mistake their voices for an enemy advance. The Secret Dinner is therefore marked by muffled laughter and muted translations. They talk of girls loved, places visited, memories cherished. No one discusses the trenches. The trenches, like their voices, don’t exist outside the crater.

Karl reads aloud the latest pages he has written—the men are like quiet children as they listen to the latest escapades of Gertrud (she has escaped her pirate captors, and is now disguising herself as a slave-girl in the Sultan’s harem!)

James and Frederick play chess, but it quickly becomes an argument like a hiss of dueling serpents. The bishops that Frederick carved are too similar to rooks; James finds his whole strategy in tatters when Frederick moves a “rook” diagonally on the table’s etched checkerboard. In disgust, James slaps the little wooden warriors into the mud. Frederick sighs and promises he will make his bishops more unique; the men chime in with plenty of suggestions, ultimately advising their German Michelangelo to give breasts to the bishops, and there is instant agreement from both camps that yes, this is precisely what chess has needed all along.

Percy’s pocket-watch completes its tour and returns to him. He inspects it by the remaining glow of his cigarette, and sighs.

“It is time,” he announces.

No one moves right away. Percy’s announcement is not an order—Lord knows the men have had enough of orders. But the sentry shifts will be changing soon.

The men stand and embrace in darkness; the firefly-like glow of cigarettes are ground underfoot one by one. The men re-divide into their respective groups, wriggling back to their respective trenches.

As Percy returns to the British line, he is intercepted by a sentry officer.

“How was your evening with the Hun?” the man asks.

“Very good, sir.”

“Are they still reduced by two sentries?”

“Yes, sir. Heinrich and Wilhem were shifted out before replacements from Berlin could arrive.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Heinrich came down with trench foot, sir. Poor fellow will lose some toes, from the sounds of it.”

“He’s the rugby player, yes?”

“Yes, sir. Apparently he was quite good.”

“Is quite good,” the officer corrects him. “Until he loses the toes, we should say he is still good. And Wilhem?”

“Some kind of fever. Perhaps from the rats.” Percy hesitates, glancing to the folded orders in his superior’s gloved hand. “Are we going over the top, sir?”

The officer stares into the darkness beyond the parapet sandbags, as if trying to see the enemy trenches. Or perhaps to see beyond them, to another time and place. “Poor Heinrich. And Wilhem. They sound like good men.”

“They are.”

“Our orders are to attempt to capture the enemy trench if at all possible.”

Percy swallows hard. “I see, sir.”

The officer gives a hard look. “It’s just too bad that new replacements arrived for Heinrich and Wilhem before we could enact these orders. How many did you say?”

“Sir?” Percy blinks. “Ah, five replacements. Fresh, young soldiers up from Berlin. Just itching for a fight. If I may be so bold, the odds are not with us.”

“Agreed. Damn shame, too. I must regrettably conclude that it will not be possible to go over the top.”

Percy gives a brisk salute.

The officer puts his arm around his shoulder. “Did Gertrud escape the pirates?”

“She did indeed, sir!”

“Wonderful!” the officer smiles. “Give me the full report.”

Last month I talked about the first three of fourteen novels I wrote before I got a traditional book deal.

None of them are published or will be. They’re me learning by doing before I set down to actually write novels as the main goal of my profession. Surely, once I did make novels my focus the world of publishing, which is fair and respects hard work and dedication, would reward me for my efforts.

Barf.

Instead, I tried to switch gears and become an indie author

“Oh, so were you one of those people whose Kindle sales were so awesome the NYC gatekeepers of publishing courted you for the audience you generated?”

HAHAHAHA! While you’re dreaming I’d like a pony!

Well, I had books published on Kindle. And they did buy me a little rep. But while Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking and others became part of a hyper-inflated dialog about ebooks DESTROYING bookstores and starting a REVOLUTION in publishing, I found myself burnt out and broken right before the very goddamn worst year of my life.

The kind of year that makes you scream FXXK WRITING.

Between 2009-2010, I wrote five novels.

Two were YA, including a re-draft of my “Karate Kid with Wizards” novel from 2003. Two were horror/dark fantasy. One was a crime thriller. I sent these suckers out to agents and editors, as ya do, while I kept writing novels. The goal was to turn these into a successful writing career for me and my then family. 

Whatever caught fire first would be my career path.

Didn’t care if it was YA or crime or fantasy. I figured diversification was smart.

Much of my other thinking was ten-pounds of stupid in a five-pound bag.

A couple things happened in my head. I almost refused to write “for the market.” Instead, I tried to market what I had done as similar to work that was moderately successful. I had a visceral and near sickening sense of authorial integrity: I would write what I wanted and for reasons I was never clear on the market would want it, eventually. Bending my will to reflect the current interests and works of the marketplace made me physically ill. So you can imagine my surprise when my crime novel set in the world of pro wrestling, full of insane villains, BDSM madams, and horror violence, all with a punk-rock sensibility, received zero interest from anyone. Yet, in my mind, I thought DEATH MATCH was my most commercial project! A novel with a Bukowski-esque hero with pork chop sideburns and a Johnny Cash belt buckle solving sick and twisted crimes in a cartoon-esque landscape of sex and violence was me making a compromise.

Clearly, something was crooked in my brainstem.

Finally, in 2011, a new agent liked my YA stuff and was keen on the history side of my house. I signed with them. But as is often the case, our mutual enthusiasms soon soured and we decided to go our separate ways in 2012. I was back to having NOTHING published after two years of work. I’d done an MA on Novels and had no degree!

During that YA year, I was getting impatient with the publishing world not giving me the career I needed and thought I deserved (talk about entitlement!).

And thus I became a sucker for hype on ebooks.

For over a year, the success of a handful of ebook authors was captivating the publishing world while bookstores like Borders were filing for bankruptcy, and medium and pulp presses like Dorchester and their horror imprint Leisure Books were either folding or turning into corrupt and abusive organizations. Fuck mainstream publishing, said the few, the future is ebooks for everyone!

I decided, “what the hell? Why not become a Kindle sensation?” I was a productive mutherfucker, and people liked series books . . . let’s take that dark crime thriller no one would touch and make it into a series! The goal was to experiment and see what would happen.

So, friends helped edit, make a cover, and format the book.

On August 21^st, 2011, DEATH MATCH was released for free to thousands of Kindle subscribers.

The goal was to get ‘em hooked and then they’d buy the rest of the series, which I was writing at mach speed. Once I generated fandom for DEATH MATCH, CON JOB and DICE ROLL, the money from Spar Battersea’s adventures in the worlds of pop culture would finally crack me into the world of professional novelists.

Nothing of the sort happened. Yet there was some good fallout.

Two of my favorite authors, Laird Barron and the late Lucius Shepard, read DEATH MATCH, liked it, and provided blurbs. The fact that these senior writers whose careers and work inspired me to be a better writer enjoyed the novel at all was amazing, and I still chuckle when I read Shep’s thoughts.

“Fast, breezy and barbarous, Death Match is a fine, innovative noir from an exciting new writer. Reading the book is like eating a corn dog while watching a lard fire run through a greasy-spoon, it’s both tasty and nasty.”

Though Laird’s was just as great.

“Death Match is a rock ‘em sock ‘em addition to the noir canon. Gritty, relentless, and wry as hell, Ridler brings the pain.”

Plus, as I sought reviews and interviews, I caught notice of a review site SpineTingler who listed DEATH MATCH as one of the best pro-wrestling novels of all time. Rare company, to be sure, but I was grateful they dug it.

Yet, I was no closer to an actual career than when I’d started.

One dead-end school of thought from the endless stream of advice on how to “make it” in ebooks was PRODUCTION. Keep making more books. Push ‘em out. Hell, make those novels 70 pages and release them weekly. Anything to get more product out there will help generate fresh fans and so on.

So, I transformed my first novel from 2009 into a Kindle book.

BLOOD AND SAWDUST, about a runaway kid and a fat vampire in an underground fight club tournament, was based on one of the first short stories I ever wrote that had my “voice” as a writer. It’s full of insane violence, deadly and beautiful women, bad jokes, and sympathetic characters. It was rejected by dozens of agents and publishers because, back then, vampires were largely “pretty” and mine were Fugos with Fangs and Combovers. So, why not Kindle it?

Good reviews followed, but not a career.

So, I wrote another vampire novel, this time set in an entertainment-based dystopia with two people of color in the lead and pretty white people as the bad guys. Based on a short story I wrote for an anthology (where I got “longlisted” for Ellen Datlow’s Years Best Horror for the first time), A TRIUMPH FOR SAKURA was a dystopian action tale that spoke about racism and Dean of Canadian vampire fic Nancy Kilpatrick said the novel was “Hunger Games, Fight Club, and True Blood rolled into one bloody good novel.”

I received more fan letters from this piece than anything else I’ve done. But no career.

And yet, I kept producing. I kept churning.

One agent said I should write a thriller with a strong female character. I did, then was told, “men read thrillers and they won’t read about a strong female lead!” I outlined a thriller with a right-wing hero that made me sick and abandoned before everything I wrote seemed dead and lifeless.

Burnout hit.

It was 2013. It had been four years and eight books. I had no agent. I had no Kindle career. I had no novels published or wanted by the mainstream or small press.

I was still a failure to myself and my family.

As this reality ate into me, three things happened within months of each other.

I became unemployed, my marriage ended, and my mother was killed by four kinds of cancer.

As I scrambled to reclaim my life and recover my sanity, I said “Fuck writing.”

And doing so gave me my current career.