on the cover: Joseph Larkin www.josephlarkinart.com

It's a good question . In many parts of the world, this Winter has been among the more mild. Is it El Niño? Is it Global Warming? We think it might be the super-hot artwork from this issue's cover artist, Joseph Larkin. To find out, we asked him what it was all about: "I attempt to create an impression whose primary objective is to show the viewer a glimpse into other worlds; sometimes Utopian, other times dark and formidable, always possible if not entirely likely. The rooms, landscapes, and skies are often places I have seen filtered through the meat grinder of a rabid imagination or floating in the thick primal fluid of dreams. I commonly populate these environments with souls capable of the dooms of loneliness, pride for its own sake, the appreciation of beauty, the fear of the unknown and the joy of love. I delineate the human face and form as often as I do for their beauty, variation, and unlimited expressive potential. Their ability to sing a song to which anyone can understand the lyrics is often the fulcrum of my attempts at emphatic communication. The inclusion of other animals in the images serve as a reminder of our ancient human origins, and as homage to the other creatures that we share the world with today. We are not their betters, just another species among them, capable of existing in harmony if we choose them as family rather than as biological subordinates. The foundation of my work is submerged in symbolism - mythological, literary, and personal. Upon this foundation I construct an order of visions that are meant to show my feelings of our world and the results of my blind meanderings into the small places. So what of art, then? Art is not a privilege exclusive to the elite ranks of so-called artists. It is for, in, and because of everyone. Paintings, sculptures and songs are bought and sold but art is not a commodity, art is not a servant to any purpose. The artist is the servant to Art. It has never been a mere expression of the creative microcosm and it is not limited to a succession of gimmicks, periods, or dated movements. Art is a living, throbbing pulse that screams in cadence in every living thing in the universe, it is insanity and healing. Art is the Truth." You can see more of Larkin's art on his website www.josephlarkinart.com and on deviantART.

I am sure you have heard the lament before; "artwork made by using a computer requires less talent than artwork made by traditional means". Most of you probably already know the inherent falseness of this statement but should you find yourself in need of an analogy, I offer the following:

Talent is not merely resigned to technique, seductive as it may be.
I would say that seeing any of the Abstract Expressionist works done by Jackson Pollock made using not paint and canvas but instead, light and silver halide is very talented. This is not to say photography of existing paintings but rather abstract expressionist work done using a camera. To most people familiar with both Pollock's work and photography in general, this is would be an obvious feat of some skill. But there are reason we use the medium we do. Superficially it can be said that cameras are good at making photographs and pencils are good at making pencil drawings. What we should say is, people are the ones who are actually good at making these things, the camera or the pencil are just tools available to the artist. All that can be successfully argued is that there are different techniques. There are those who say it takes more talent to render a pencil drawing, presumable of the same scene as it does to render that scene with a camera. I ask, does writing a novel by hand using a pen require more talent than writing a novel using a computer keyboard or is it really just more fascinating to wonder why someone, with modern tools available would choose to spend more time using traditional means to do something the traditional way?

Really, all that you can say definitively is that it comes down to a matter of choice, and available resources. While it is true that not everyone has access to a computer and there are even those who find that using a pen to write is, for them, more efficient, this in no way equates causally, to an inconsistency of the content. Differences result from the intent of the novelist making the work, and therein lies the real estimation of talent. Ultimately, regardless of the methods and mechanics of writing, the goal is to read the novel. How it was made and how it will be reprinted or distributed are incidental compared to the content that it contains. The message that it sends, the story that it tells, these are the actual factors we are interested in dedicating time to considering. There are novels written in many different languages, many unintelligible to ourselves because we have never had the benefit of learning those particular languages. Should we dismiss these works in tongues foreign to us simply because we do not know the letterforms of the languages in which they were originally written? And, is it wiser to base our estimation of the talent of the author upon what language the novel is written in or upon the meaning of content?

 

Senecal
(originally published June 2003)

by Rebecca Brock (www.horrorhack.com)

The "R" Word

You know what word I’m talking about.
You’ve finished up your short story (or poem or manuscript) and you’re finally ready to send it out into the world. You’ve done your research and found a magazine or publisher that sounds perfect for you, you’ve written your cover letter, and you’re ready to send your baby out to strangers. It’s terrifying but exhilarating and you’re already daydreaming about what you’ll do to celebrate your publication.

So you send it out. And you wait. And you wait. And then you get the e-mail you’ve been waiting for.

“Thank you for submitting your work. Unfortunately…”

That’s pretty much all you need to read. Once you hit that word “unfortunately,” you know what’s coming next.
The big kiss off. The “thanks but no thanks.” You, my friend, have experienced the moment every writer dreads.

You have been…rejected.

No matter how long you’ve been a writer, it’s never easy to accept a rejection. Even though well-meaning friends and loved ones assure that it’s not personal, that they’re just rejecting the story and not you, that getting published all depends on timing, blah blah blah, it’s still hard not to feel as if you’ve done something wrong. Even if you’re your own biggest fan, rejection can throw quite the monkey wrench into the machinery of your self-confidence.

I received my very first rejection bitch-slap when I was 17 years old. I had written a horror novel and submitted it to my favorite publisher, Zebra. Those were the stone ages, when manuscripts had to be mailed—actually mailed—to publishers, and the wait time for an answer could be months and months (but only if you remembered to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope). It was an agony of anticipation.

And then one day I finally received my answer. My SASE came back to me, battered and creased, but in one piece. And just as thick as the day I sent my first three chapters to them. My hands trembled as I opened the flap. My heart pounded as I tried to keep my hopes grounded, even though a tiny part of me dared to hope. I slid the letter out of the envelope…my eyes scanned the page…and there it was: “Thank you, but…”

For writers, that’s the equivalent of hearing, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” Or the ever popular, “I like you as a friend.”
Rejection sucks. There’s just no other way to say it. I plugged along for years after that first rejection, sending out queries, typing and retyping the first three chapters of my novels. Every time I would send one out with the quiet hope that maybe this one would hit. Maybe I’d find the right editor at the right time. Maybe somebody would actually like my writing. And writing was an expensive business back in the eighties. Each query would cost something like five bucks for the round trip, and for a college student, that was sometimes hard to come by.

The worst part was the absolute coldness of the rejection letters. Those terrible form letters all followed the same humorless template. There was no inkling that anyone actually read my submission; instead, I imagined it sat in a slush pile until the editor decided to clean his or her office. I read Writer’s Digest and The Writer religiously, and I took some solace in their blandly encouraging articles. The first promising sign, the articles said, was if an editor actually took the time to write a personal note on the rejection. It meant you were cracking the ceiling that keeps unknown writers from the lofty heights of “The Published Ones.”

I didn’t think that was true, until the day I received a note from Dave Silva, who was editing The Horror Show magazine at the time.
The story wasn’t quite right, but he thought I had a strong voice and encouraged me to submit the story to another magazine.
That was the kick in the butt that I needed. Somebody read my story! Somebody who wasn’t related to me by blood and therefore obliged to like my writing actually liked my writing! It was the best rejection letter I had ever received in my life. It gave my vague sense of hope that perhaps I would one day be published a sense of concrete reality. It could happen, if I worked for it. It really could.
And eventually, it did.

Nowadays, there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of outlets for writers to find publication. The Internet has made it so much easier to research guidelines and submit stories and communicate with editors. The world that had once seemed as distant as the moon to me is now as close as a mouse click.

And yet…rejection still lurks around every corner, waiting to knock the breath out of the most confident of writers. I still feel the cold hand of that bitch-slap every once in a while, and it ain’t fun. That never changes.

My parents were always supportive of my writing, and I’ll share one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received from them with you guys. Always remember that your writing is not going to please everyone. There are going to be people who love your stuff. There will be people who merely like it, and there will be people who absolutely hate your writing. You can’t please everyone, so don’t kill yourself by trying. All you’re obligated to do is please yourself.

And you know all those horrible, self-doubting, unpleasant feelings you have when you get a rejection letter? Those are your dues, baby. If you can’t thicken your skin and be able to take rejection, then you may need to re-evaluate your ambitions. No one comes straight out of the gates with a best-seller. Writers who claim to have dashed off a manuscript and sold it to the first publisher they approached are either juiced into the publishing world or full of crap. Personally, I go with the crap option.

If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to accept the fact that you’re going to be rejected at one point or another. It’s not the end of the world. More advice from my parents: give yourself an hour to feel sorry for yourself, or feel pissed off, or feel depressed about your hopeless desire to be a published writer. Wallow in it. Cry and sob and rend your garments if that floats your boat. Be a tortured artist for sixty whole minutes and wail about how no one understands your genius.

Then get over it and go write something else.

You see…that’s the secret: always go write something else. You’re a writer, for God’s sake. So go write.
That’ll show those mean old editors.

Look for more from Rebecca in future issues. You can contact her at pbwriter_at_hotmail.com.

This installment of Artiscopic focuses on Inge Vandormael, an artist and member of the prestigious art group "Breed" whose work is characterized by an acute awareness of the natural order of living things.

What drives you to make the work that you make? I’m mostly driven by questions that keep me occupied in daily life. What awaits us after our life is over here on earth? How do we undergo our transformation from a pupa to a full grown butterfly to a life unknown? Is our path on earth stippled out before we even take our first breath? Do we rise from the ashes, or does life end once we have released our last breath? Is there something as a higher power, or is that just a creation by human kind, to have something to fall back on in difficult times? Or we finite or infinite creatures? Immortality. Mortality. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Those are the keywords.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a few things at the moment, some with deadlines, others just for my own enjoyment.
I have two traditional paintings to finish by the end of February. Unfortunately I am the worst procrastinator you have ever encountered. The work gets always done in time, but always last minute. I’m also working on my half of two Exquisite Corpses, which is a surprisingly fun project to work on. In between the projects already mentioned, I’m currently working on a new series, called “Mortality Triumphs”.
Art is a never ending story.

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How do you feel about artwork that is made using digital tools? My jaw constantly drops when I'm viewing digital artwork. I'm truly amazed by what artists are able to create digitally. Certain digital works are very hard to detect as such, they have a very traditional art look to them. I for one have ventured into the digital art medium, mainly by coloring other artists work, but something seems to be missing. I miss the physical aspect of painting. I like to touch my paintbrushes, mix my paint, and enjoy seeing a painting take form on paper or canvas.

Where do you think the work you've made will be 100 years from now? In a perfect world, my works would be spread all over the world, hang on living room, bedroom, and even bathroom walls. But since we live in a world that’s far from perfect, I would like to think that some of my work would be owned by friends and some fellow artists. Oh wait, did you say 100 years? Well, that’s a whole other story. I hope my work will be recycled, and be used to create a supersonic toilet bowl. Now that would make me feel special.

Ology refers to "the study of". What is your Ology?

Painting would be the obvious answer. I like to study other artists' works, visit museums and art galleries, browse the art section in book stores. I enjoy having discussions with friends about art, and the effect it has on life around us.

You can see more of Vandormael 's work at: alexiou.deviantart.com

The Book of Clav ...coming 2007 from Omnibucket "The scents of people around me are noxious with toxic overload. And the din of the voices is a blanket keeping me inside, a wall blocking comprehension. I consult CLAV's book frequently now, almost obsessively. Every page is a glimpse at the beauty of what could have been and another excuse to never try anything again. But it has to end. It obviously can't go on like this or it'll end up in suicide and that just doesn't' suit my tastes. Neither the person I thought I was before nor the horror of the "me" that I am left with now. So what then? Perhaps it's time to give the book to someone else." "This is sure to be another hit from Omnibucket, a group that has a rocketing reputation for putting out the most amazing work around." --Fernando Weatherall, General Publications. Etc.