First Piece Published--Feeling Remembered.

 by Thomas Kies

As I was walking Annie, our dog, one morning, I thought about the first piece of fiction that I was lucky enough to have published back in 1979.  It was a short story called Fast Dancing Detroit Style.  No, it wasn’t a mystery story.  It was horror—an erotic ghost story. I was paid $250, I was 26 at the time and I thought I was hot as a box of matches.

After all.  I’d been published in Cavalier magazine, the same publication where Stephen King got his start. With the same editor that he worked with, Maurice DeWalt.  

And yes, Cavalier was a men’s magazine that featured some of the top writers of the time, but it was also filled with full frontal nude women.  I remember proudly telling my father about being published and a couple of days later he phoned me to tell me how humiliating it had been to go into an adult bookstore to buy the magazine. I’m not sure he ever told me if he liked the story or not.  

Cavalier was launched by Fawcett Publications in 1952.  The original format was to feature novels and novelettes by Fawcett’s Gold Medal authors like Richard Prather and Micky Spillane. During the 1960s, the magazine featured such writers as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Coover, Richard Gehman, Garson Kanin, Paul Krassner, John D. MacDonald, Albert Moravia, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Shelton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Theodore Sturgeon and Colin Wilson.

Film critic Manny Farber had a monthly column in the 1960s. Stephen King was a contributor during the 1970s, and his stories were also featured in Cavalier Yearbook.

I followed up my first published story with more horror only to be turned down by Mr. DeWalt saying, “These are too much like Stephen King.”  Okay…I guess that’s not bad.  

I tried other magazines, mostly “pulp publications” like Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, Weird Tales, Analog, and Strange Tales.  The cover pages, by the way, often featured illustrations of scantily clad women in the clutches of space aliens.  

I even submitted short stores to Playboy (no luck there) and Omni, a glossy four-color magazine devoted to both science fiction and science fact.  The editor was Ben Bova.  He was the author of over 120 books on science and science fiction, had won the Hugo Award six times, and was the president of the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. 

He sent me a personal rejection letter on one of my submissions with a handwritten note that said, “,,,keep at it.  You’re a good writer.”  

That was in the 70s and 80s and I was raising a family and working full time at the Elmira Star-Gazette. I wrote short stories in my spare time on my manual typewriter at my desk tucked away on the porch.  On the wall next to my desk was a corkboard where I kept the rejections slips.  

Back then, you’d submit stories by hardcopy via the mail accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope so that if your story was rejected, you’d at least hear back with a pre-printed slip of paper saying that they were sorry they couldn’t respond personally and that your story just wasn’t right for their publication. 

So, I found my copy of Cavalier from 44 years ago that I tucked away in a closet and reread my erotic horror story.  Could I have improved upon it?  Sure.

But you know, I enjoyed reading it.  Almost as much as I did when it first arrived in my mailbox a lifetime ago. But I think I'll stick with mysteries. 

More on Plotters versus Pantsers

I thoroughly enjoyed Warren Easley’s guest blog about outliners versus pantsers.

Full disclosure, my wife and I had dinner with Warren and his wife, Marge, in Arizona while we were at the Poisoned Pen Press/SoHo Press Mystery conference last September.  They’re delightful people and Warren is an outstanding writer.

His blog made me evaluate what kind of writer I am…a planner or someone who flies by the seat of his pants.  I think I’m a little of both.

When I start a book, I try to write a slam-bang, grab em’ by the throat first chapter.  I don’t have a clue what the book will be about or who the bad guy is.  I will work on that first chapter over and over and over.  In my newest book, Graveyard Bay, I wrote the first chapter easily fifty times until I found what I was looking for.

Graveyard Bay was my biggest challenge so far.  My second Geneva Chase mystery, Darkness Lane, ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.  Geneva’s been entrusted with a notebook that incriminates nefarious Russian mobsters.  The third book had to be a complicated chess game on how that notebook both helps her and puts her in terrifying danger.

Another disclosure, the ARCs for Graveyard Bay are out.  This is the part that makes me really nervous.  That means the book is out for review. Fingers crossed. Oh, and the book launches September 10.

Once the first chapter is done, I move on to the second chapter, and then the one after that.

At some point, however, I have to write down the characters and what I think they’re up to.  There are blind alleys, twists, turns, plot threads that will have to be accounted for.

But even at that, the book is a journey for me.  As such, some of the plot twists and character dialogue is unexpected. I like that writing a novel is as much an adventure for me as I hope it will be when someone reads it.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King argues that he can tell whether or not a book was written using an outline. He thinks such books feel somehow "staler" than books that are written the "true way," which is by the seat of your pants, never knowing what will happen next.

William Blundell in his book The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, he said, “I’m a strong opponent of outlining.  It’s deciding in advance what the story will be, and then just bolting the whole thing together like something out of a hardware store.”

Ray Bradbury said, “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.”

So, as I await the September launch of Graveyard Bay and I prepare for Thrillerfest in just a couple of weeks, I’ve gotten the green light by my editor to continue working on Shadow Hill after she’s looked over the first hundred pages.

I’m twelve chapters along and, yes, I’m already taking notes of the untied threads I’ve left and blind alleys that Geneva is going to have to explore before I figure out who the heck the bad guy or gal might be.  www.thomaskiesauthor.com