“Running was an accounting of my spirit. It was my holy hour.”
Inspirational fiction isn’t exactly my MO, as many of you know. But in taking a week off to write this story last week, I found some much-needed solace from the difficult topics in my current long work-in-progress. Take a quick read, give it a thumbs up on the Reedsy page, and leave a comment. Thanks for reading.
https://blog.reedsy.com/short-story/habk5e
Maybe you’ll think I’m in need of medication when I profess my love for the writing process. If I talk about the creative process too much, I will quickly veer off topic. Besides, it might get a little woo-woo metaphysical, a little florid, a little poetical. Hell, even a little mystical.
You see, I don’t want to write about the writer’s hustle. I don’t want to admit the sheer volume of time I spend in endless social media algorithmic guessing games (AKA shamelessly self-promoting into the void). I don’t want to admit how jaded I can become at the bowing and scraping I have to do, much of which is for naught. Every time I send out a query or a short story, my dignity—indeed, my spirit—is implicitly threatened. The incessant trickle-trickle drip-drip of rejections that I have gotten over the years is enough to drive me to quit writing altogether. Why would I want to relive all those little traumas? I would much rather write about the recursive nature of writing and editing, the very cycle of creation and destruction in the process of creating worthwhile art.
See? Told you. Borderline woo-woo.
You might say I have a problem. When I hear “No” from a publisher, I reply, “Thank you! May I have another?” There’s plenty of evidence that I’m masochistic in this regard, as I have been trying to get short stories published for over twenty years (order my first published story today). And before my debut novel, The Emergent, was hybrid-published, it took nearly two decades of crafting it with elements of psychological mystery, coming-of-age, family saga, and magical realism. I must be glutton for punishment, thinking for a long while that a modern traditional publisher or agent would have accepted an unknown white hetero dude writing from at least two appropriated perspectives.
I won’t write here about all the hustle and general insanity it takes to get others to publish your work. Contact me to set up a consultation. Suffice it to say that, as an independent writer, getting my writing to market took hustle. Or delusion. Take your pick. But, being an un-agented genre-defying writer makes the hustle-delusion that much more acute.
Instead of focusing on my long line of failures in winning the approval of publishers and lit magazine editorial boards, I’d rather write about the more interesting side of the hustle: talking to folks about the woo-woo side of my writing process. You don’t need the gory details here about endless submissions. What should come across in this post is my love of writing. And trying to prove to publishers what I already know—that my writing is good or that water is wet—is a necessary evil. Once I accepted that the popularity and profit are inaccurate gauges for quality, my job as a writer became easier.
And in an ideal world, popularity and profit would not drive your artistic endeavors.
I’m not saying any of this to portray myself as something I’m not. I ain’t a bloviating egotistical writer-type, despite what my rant here may tell you. I’m simply a writer-type. No stereotypical egotism. Just a writer-type.
Better that than a typewriter. What a life. Born to get punched.
To flog a pun into a bad metaphor, being a writer-type really does mean rolling with the punches, all the small jabs along the way can slowly wear you down over years or, in my case, decades. Fortunately for me (and the folks who have heard me speak at public libraries, on podcasts, or on WHO-TV’s “Hello, Iowa”), the act of writing has never felt like a chore—even when I’m trying to repair the gaping plot holes and stumbles in poetic narratives caused by me killing my darlings. Creative writing has never been work (if it were, I should have demanded a higher wage and maybe some health bennies!). And writing has been only moderately about my quest for Steinbeck-like fame (that dude had ideas that resonated, he had ideas that he researched, wrote about, published to a wide audience, hated to discuss and defended. All this, he did for a living).
Even if you’re not like me—masochistic, self-proclaimed spiritual being intent on being moderately all Steinbeckian and shit—, a published independent writer cannot just sit back and watch their baby go out in the world. This is to say, if you watch and hope for the best, your book will easily get lost in the sea of 4 million books that are published each year. No matter how you publish—self, hybrid, or traditional—hustle after publication is the name of the game.
The decades I have been tapping away on my laptop writing my great American novel have been instructional to my inner life. It has been a spiritual practice to wake and write every morning at 5 AM to create and coax my darlings to do my bidding—or a reasonable facsimile thereof. But over the last year and a half since the release of my novel, the hustle—booking, preparing for, and travelling to attend events—has taken energy. And it takes energy to poorly conjure super-keyworded and algorithmically steroidal social media content. All this promotional energy often has usurped time for my cherished, protected one-hour process practice: my daily 5 AM communion with syntax, vocabulary, and structure.
That said, all the hustle has led to fulfillment; by year’s end, I will have done twenty events. As a result, I have gotten to be a little Steinbeckian, chatting with folks about researching my novel, discussing its overt and subversive themes, and defending my artistic vision.
Still on the fence about reading the The Emergent? Or have you read it and want to know what someone else thinks? The novel got a good review in the local arts & culture magazine, Little Village. Take a read here.
I would say the book giveaway on Goodreads was a success. I want to share a little secret about the United States Postal Service. If you are sending hard copies of your books out to patrons, contests, and book fairs in the US, save money by using the book rate. When you go to the post office, just ask your packages to be sent using media mail for a ~50% savings. Slightly slower delivery speed than with regular mail, but well worth it if you have a little extra time.
“A woman’s bold reckoning with memory, and pursuit of all its drifting pieces. The Emergent is just that – an aching recognition of how family narratives persist, holding us in their loving embrace, or imprisonment.”
–Marc Palmieri, author of She Danced with Lightning
“The Emergent is a tale of blood, loss, family, and departures that orbits a continent, its casualties, and its letdowns. It is a story for those of us who will never be sure if we only imagined that hand at the shoreline reaching for us.”
–Salar Abdoh, author of Out of Mesopotamia
“The Emergent is a haunting first-person narrative about young Kat’s shattered family and their complex histories. The title of this sensitive, evocative novel says it all: life is about our emergent selves and the stories we tell and hear along the way.”
–Susan Shillinglaw, author of A Journey Into Steinbeck’s California
“For a novel that moves so swiftly from one American coast to the other, and back again, interestingly it is the obscure neighborhoods of San José that inform the soul of Holmberg’s polyphony of a novel, The Emergent. As a Californian I love this book. I love it because it’s the California I know but almost never read about. In this way, I see it on the bookshelf between Helena María Viramontes’ little masterpiece Under the Feet of Jesus, and Leonard Gardner’s beautiful Fat City. It’s that good.”
–George McCormick, author of Inland Empire
“Holmberg has created a compelling and thoughtful novel that is a beautifully crafted and complex narrative. The Emergent causes one to wonder if they will be bystanders in life, or if they’ll jump in–allowing the mysterious mosaic of life to create something fascinating.”
–Emily Keefer, author of The Stars on Vita Felice
“The Emergent is more than just a family history — it’s Kat’s attempt at finding her own voice and defining herself on her own terms, crafting her identity by choosing what details of her life should make up the person she has become. Kat’s account of what appears as a family history spanning generations succeeds at holding the reader at bay much more effectively than can be [fully] understood until the novel reaches its close.”
–Kelsey Conrad, Little Village Magazine
“The Emergent is not to be rushed through, if you can help it. Each paragraph is lovingly crafted, and I deeply enjoyed Kat’s Holden Caulfield-like alienation. As I read, I began wondering how real any of our ideas about our personal histories are.”
–Tim Gerstmar, author of The Gunfighters
“The Emergent is a modern The Outsiders, a gritty look into the subcultures of America.”
–Wally Jones, author of Sam the Chosen
“… If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
Thus says the famous miser in Dickens’ 1843 novella. And it is in the gloom embodied by this statement that the creators of the recent BBC production must have taken their inspiration. The paces that Scrooge is put through have the clear intention of boiling him in all the consequences of his own exploitive and inhumane practices.
For the first time in my life, I have read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Throughout my childhood, I experienced this story mostly through watching my uncle play Marley or Scrooge or Bob Cratchit in a variety of on-stage productions. I was also well-acquainted with Dickens’ famous ghost story through the 1984 production with George C. Scott as Scrooge.
Reading the story in its original form was rewarding in its own way—e.g. the vivid descriptions of the sights and sounds of Scrooge’s little pocket of London in the 1840s were a gift to the numerous stage and screen directors who have treated the story over the years. But what was truly rewarding upon finishing the novella yesterday evening was watching the 2019 production of the tale, starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge. The show was originally presented as a 3-part miniseries. But since my Christmas shopping and wrapping was done, I watched the entire 2 hours 53 minutes in one sitting. And it immediately occurred to me that this ain’t your mother’s A Christmas Carol.
Suffice it to say that this version leans all the way into the ghost story and goes even further to depict the absolute horrors of human misery at the hands of imperialism, a legacy the British and American audiences still grapple with—hopefully in meaningful ways. In a stroke of genius, Steven Knight (writer) takes great liberty at filling in the novella’s ambiguity about Scrooge’s past and present business exploits; the result is a stunning frankness about the depravity of humanity.
The themes starkly depicted in the 2019 rendition—exploitation, unsafe labor practices, unethical business practices, the consequences of unfettered capitalism, slavery, and sexual coercion—would have made Dickens both proud and appalled: Dickens would have applauded the 2019 production’s way of speaking truth to power; paradoxically, Dickens would have loathed to see that the themes he treated throughout his literary career are just as relevant today.
Could you survive on just three days of Christmas?
This year, putting up the tree and a few lights kept getting bumped down the list of priorities. Professional concerns and artistic pursuits have taken precedence. And now, three days before the big day, there will be no lights, no tree.
And, dare I say, no stress, no FOMO.
It helps that there’s snow on the ground and a -30 wind chill; these things serve as a reminder to slow down, to hibernate, and reflect on the things that I have. I can, in fact, do that without the glow of Christmas lights. But today I will probably watch the first 30 minutes of Empire Strikes Back and the first two installments of the Die Hard franchise to get me in the spirit. And perhaps I’ll re-read the passage in The Emergent that fairly well sums up the expectation and disappointment of the season…the melancholy satisfaction, if you will.
“…I could relate to Alma’s desire to flee the sinking feeling she always had throughout most of December. We somehow became infused with the same sense that something fantastic was supposed to happen. But the alternately high-spirited and depressing tunes of the season led us to conclude that the hope in the season was all an illusion.” –Kat Campos, The Emergent
Masochism is a writer’s catechism. You voluntarily subject yourself to likely devastation that is not unlike that of your first middle school heartbreak.
Receiving rejection notices from literary agents or literary journals never gets easier. It’s all part of the process, but the stories your mind tells you after each form letter are truly dark and try to convince you to stop writing, to stop fooling yourself. Those thoughts are summed up like this (click image below for more of these poems):
But after all the years and dozens of rejections, I still find a way to use the ruins of each hope to kindle the fire that powers me onward.
“Unknowns can be handled in two ways. You can stay on the beach and watch, imagining what
might—but probably won’t—happen. Or you can offer up your mere physical existence for the
chance to be a part of something bigger than yourself.”
These are among the last words that Kat hears from her lifelong friend, Alma. The Emergent opens at the dawn of the internet era, and nineteen-year-old Silicon Valley native Kat is alone.
Haunted, she wonders if her actions drove Alma-and the rest of her family-away. Soon after
Alma’s disappearance, Kat finds herself in New York City with a new companion. In an apparent attempt to understand why she ended up across the continent, Kat relates her family’s story. Set in places like the shores of Oakland after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Depression-era farming communities of California’s Central Valley, and cold-war Santa Clara Valley, the family history and its ghosts also seem to shroud who Kat really is. But a series of mysterious injuries compel Kat to reveal more about herself. Will these revelations save Kat from her past? Or will they forever define her future?
Contact the author for a full tip sheet and to discuss speaking engagements.
Variant: a dystopian prelude (a very short chapter from my dark satire-in-progress)
Julius’s niece is dead after following the advice of Our Dear Leader (ODL).
The armies in the north are gearing up, their leaders salivating at our weakened defenses and superior, unused medical resources. A whole division of our troops in that region ingested a cocktail of over-the-counter cleaning supplies a couple days ago. And radio silence from ODL, the man who said such an injection could be a good idea. “Whaddya have to lose?”
ODL is a man whose power is derived from his association with and intimidation of scientists who found the “sociopath” gene. A decade ago, he won office on the idea that he—and he alone—could rid the country of sociopathy.
Were it not for Bliss, Julius might have voted for ODL all those years ago. But his wife’s constant raging brought on sweat, chills, fever, headache, dry mouth, and shallow breathing. Anxiety like this overwhelmed any vague fear Julius had about The Sickness.
“You cannot vote for him, Jules,” she had said ten years ago, her dinner getting cold. “Don’t be fooled by all the free coverage the media is giving him. I mean, listen to this fucking idiot prattle on incessantly. It’s the same thing every single time! It’s not news. It’s indoctrination.”
Bliss brought up a video on her phone of ODL at one of his recent election rallies. The future dictator screamed, “The illness—people call it The Sickness—of socioplathy [sic] inflicts one in every 25 people. And it’s a terrible terrible terrible disease that is coming for you and your kids. It’s Lizzie, a great doctor of medical, who determined all this. A great person; we have a very great friendship; Lizzie always tells me what I want to hear. I really like her. I know…we know, right Lizzie?…we know some great people, great great great wonderful people, who say they’re able to detect socioplarthy [sic].”
“Did you know?” Bliss shouted as she scrolled through social media for another example. “Did you know ODL’s followers think he is a brilliant clairvoyant? What the actual fuck is going on?! The goddamned lunatic says he is able to use his ‘immense intuition’—whatever the hell that means—to determine who has The Sickness.”
According to ODL, alarmingly high rates of The Sickness supposedly existed in people who wear glasses, read books, or write newspaper articles. Of course, this idea got massive pushback in the media, playing into ODL’s trap; the dissenting thinker-writer types (and those who wore glasses) were the first to be attacked, abducted, and disappeared after the election.
“These campaign rallies,” Bliss continued as she swiped up again and again on her screen. “These rallies are recruiting tools for CC squads. Christ & Country squads! Can you believe that shit?! I’m telling you, they’re going to start rounding up people like me…and you; guilt by association. And what if we have a baby? Who knows what those animals would do to our baby. Just listen to this.”
Again, she shoved the screen in Julius’ face. ODL said, “Once we know who’s socioplarthic [sic], we can do something about it. And it’s gonna be so great you’re not even gonna believe it. We’re gonna get rid of these dangerous dangerous dangerous people, the sylviaplathics [sic]. Lots of smart people are saying this is what we should do, some of the smartest people with the biggest you-know-whats.”
After his election, ODL and his cold-blooded devotees hunted down “the infected,” employing the very same extreme ruthlessness known in the most extreme cases of sociopathy. Without a trace of irony, CC squads crisscrossed the country gleefully chanting “89% of slaughter is laughter” while efficiently taking the supposed sociopaths out of the population. Through the success of re-education camps, conversion therapy, and deportation—but mostly through wholesale butchery —ODL triumphantly, and with little physical resistance, attained total and lifetime rule of the country.
The plucky band of late night hosts, saved by celebrity, soon were the only voices of opposition. So long as they didn’t fade from memory like a movie star with a dreadful agent, the hosts were protected by their popularity. And the kettles of civil unrest that they had kept simmering for years were now at a low steady boil. Now, the late night hosts’ millions of fans have come to believe that the spread of highly contagious, air-borne sociopathic variant to be a hoax, that the resulting national quarantine is part of an ODL power grab.
“This damned hypocrite!” Bliss yells at the screen, diverting her thoughts from much more local and personal tragedies. “He’s shameless, as usual. It doesn’t matter to his followers if he’s breaking his own quarantine decrees. He’s touring these huge indoor stadiums, spouting this new theory. Didn’t I say he would come for the babies? Ten years ago, I said this would happen. Have you heard this shit, Jules?”
Her screen thrust in his face, Julius has no choice but to watch.
ODL shouts, screams, slavers to the adoring fans, “They say the novel sickness is a disease that infects little babies in the womb; and until now nobody had a way of knowing until much much much later, who had socio…socioplithy [sic]. They still say one in every 25 people is a socioplith [sic]. But some great people—people I know, great people, people who love me—great great great people are saying there’s a way to detect socioplicthy [sic] in the womb. Orange you glad you know that now?”
It is this kind of rhetoric that distracts even me, the demi-god: a semi-omnipresent, semi-omniscient, semi-omnipotent, or however it is you want to semi-classify me. I find myself distracted from this demi-epic about Julius.
His niece, Frenchie, died just the other day after a lethal cocktail of Tide Pods dissolved in bleach and a deep huff of aerosol disinfectant. She didn’t even get tasty Kool-Aid or shiny Nikes out of it.
nick holmberg 