I read a fascinating comment by non-fiction author and publisher Bruce Gehweiler, co-author of Breaking Into Fiction Writing!, in a short article in Space and Time magazine. He said, “A universal truth that I have learned is that it is easier to get published by supplying a publisher with what they need, than by trying to find a home for your original work.”

I had never thought of it that way, but all my limited experience with the business of publishing suggests that he’s right. It’s not art; it’s commerce. Decisions are not made for artistic reasons; they’re made, especially in these inceasingly lean economic times, for business ones. Whatever the suits think will sell gets published, and whatever they don’t think will sell doesn’t. They are often wrong, of course, about things on both ends of that equation, but that’s the defining principle.

But it’s also the exact opposite of what the hodres of hopeful writers out there are doing. They have their own worlds and characters, in some cases captivatingly original and in many others numbingly trite. They do yearn to be published, but I think most of that drive is to see their original material in print, not merely to publish anything they might write.

Even though I recognize the business realities, my own first reaction as a writer, as a strong proponant of originality, was dismissive. My original worlds are a huge part of my fiction. Developing their cool visuals and their interesting societies is one of the main reasons that I enjoy writing (and reading). The themes in my fiction often emerge organically from those worlds and the characters. I rarely do well with writing exercises where I’m supposed to take a setting or a theme from someone else and incorporate into a world or a story. I just don’t think in that way.

So am I writing for myself and not to get published? I certainly want my own stuff published, and I’m quite pleased that some of it has been. I do take commercial and appeal considerations into account while writing. But I don’t know that my interest or my writing process would hold while doing work that wasn’t largely original.

We’ll see if I ever get the opportunity to find out. After all, Robert Jordan did get his start with Conan novels, and it would certainly be great fun to write a D&D novel–umber hulks and Drow and shambling mounds, oh my!

I saw a History Channel documentary a few weeks ago on the July 20th 1944 bomb plot to kill Hitler. I knew the basic story as a kid–Claus von Stauffenberg was an aristocratic, combat-wounded army officer who led the plot and was executed when it failed. This program had general documentary and interviews with a few original plotters and a few wives, and lots of plotters’ daughters, sons, and grandsons.

It started with a summary of the Nazis taking over in the depression after WWI, then turning Germany into a police state, including the anti-Jew policies. They showed some excerpts from propaganda films that were freakin’ scary. There were a handful of resistance groups even in that era–politicians, leftist students, elitist aristocrats, army officers–but none ever amounted to much.

Resistance efforts picked up as the war did. One July 20th plotter said his captain overheard two drunk SS men on a train bragging that they’d killed 250,000 Jews in their sector and were coming to cleanse his. I knew the Final Solution was not made public at the time, but I’d always suspected some word had to have gotten out.

The plotters cited that as a secondary motivation, but mostly said they mostly driven by the strain of the war on the country and the general murderousness of the police state. By1943 the different resistance groups started meeting together and agreed that Hitler couldn’t just be arrested; he had to be assassinated. Several attempts by army officers failed because of bad luck with logistics or fuses.

Stauffenberg was an aristocrat, a devout Catholic who’d served on Rommel’s staff in Africa. Motivated by love for his concept of an honorable Germany, he was dead set that Hitler must die but annoyed that the plotting generals hadn’t gotten it done. So he took over as a main instigator. A major part of the plot was using the army reserves to take over after Hitler was dead, code-named Valkyrie, so they could seize other Nazi leaders and overthrow the regime.

Then the program described the failed plot. The army reserve commander had been a lukewarm plotter; after the bomb failed, he arrested Stauffenberg and four others and had them executed immediately. Others were arrested at their estates; many killed themselves. The surviving plotters were tried in a sham trial and hung.

They did not mention Rommel at all. I read as a kid that Rommel was told of the plot but was not involved, and that Hitler forced him to kill himself afterwards. Knowing that Stauffenberg was on Rommel’s staff in Africa would make sense if I have that right.

The program also talked about the descendants of the plotters and reaction in postwar Germany, which still considered the plotters traitors even then. A monument was erected in Berlin in 1952 on the spot where Stauffenberg and the four others were shot, and the attitude toward the plotters warmed in modern times toward regarding them as heroes.

I find the sociology behind the whole thing fascinating–the motivations behind racism, noblesse oblige, duty, betrayal, execution, and the social reaction to all of it. As a writer, I think those kinds of complex motivations are what make great characters.

And of course this documentary had director Bryan Singer pimping the new movie about Stauffenberg, with clips of Tom Cruise in the lead role. He looks to me to have about 1% of the kwan necessary to play a man like that. I’ll stick with the documentary, thanks.

I’ve been swamped lately with stuff for BCS and I lost nine days to a nasty cold, but I heard a few days ago that Space and Time magazine is buying my short story “Ebb.” Which is awesome.

This one has a long and tortured history, which may be why I feel relieved as much as jubilant. It’s a damn good story, if I do say so myself–not brilliant but definitely quite good. It’s one of my odd hybrids of fantasy and real science–a fantasy setting built around 100% accurate science, but with pre-tech characters who don’t understand that science and therefore don’t expound about it. It’s also one of my most literary pieces, with an unreliable narrator. Several pro editors loved it but had the ending go completely over their heads, and several amateur editors had the science in the setting go completely over theirs (cf. my rant on SF/F writers and editors not knowing basic science).

So I’m glad the story has found a home, and I’m delighted that it will be in Space and Time. They’re getting lots of buzz lately in the indie press world, including a story nominated for the WSFA Small Press Award this past fall. I met their publisher Hildy Silverman at Capclave and enjoyed talking to her. They’re specifically interested in subgenre hybrid stories and this one clearly fits the bill.

So maybe this was kharma? Maybe it was a good story finally winning out on its own merits? Maybe it was the right story at the right place at the right time? Who knows. Selling stories is such an inscrutable process, as I’m seeing again from the other side editing BCS. Ours is not to question why, as the poet laureate said. Meanwhile I think I will buy myself a subscription to Space and Time and see what else has caught their eye.

I’m still knee-deep in stuff for my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including licensing new cover art and finalizing our first audio fiction podcast. It was great at Capclave two weekends ago to see some F/SF editors I had met over the summer at ReaderCon and to meet several more.

Now if I could only find the time to write a bit myself….