This guest post appears here as part of the Drollerie Press Blog Tour.
Who I Am and What I Do
by John B. Rosenman
Hi, I’m John Rosenman. I’m sixty-eight years old, an English professor at Norfolk State University, and I’ve been writing almost my entire life. Altogether, I’ve published fourteen books, with more to follow, plus over 300 short stories in places like Galaxy, Weird Tales, Fangoria (online), Whitley Strieber’s Aliens, Hot Blood, etc. (Check out my site at www.johnrosenman.com). I write science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, and dabble in related areas. My first published novel (The Best Laugh Last, McPherson & Co.) was mainstream and cost me two jobs because of its sensitive racial subject matter. It will be republished in a year or so. My other novels are action-adventure science fiction mixed with romance, bizarre (and I hope fascinating) aliens, and a few cosmic mind-benders. Beyond Those Distant Stars, to take one example, is about a cyborg female who saves humanity from seemingly invincible aliens while trying to find love with an unfaithful pilot. Published by Mundania Press, it just won AllBooks Review Editor’s Choice Award.
I’m a child of the Golden Age of Science Fiction (the 1950s), and in my novels, I try to capture the awesome, mind-stretching wonders of the universe. So in some ways, my SF novels are a bit retro. A common plot is that the main character travels to a distant world and has amazing adventures, often getting involved in an intense romance. In A Senseless Act of Beauty (Blade Publishing), Aaron Okonkwo journeys to a distant, African-type world and gets seduced by a beautiful green alien gal. And that’s only the beginning of his problems.
What I like best about writing is the high I get from it, which is basically indescribable. When it’s clicking, and I’m writing better than ever before, I feel blessed and grateful for what I’m doing and able to do. Another great thing about writing is to find editors and readers who are moved by my vision and actually like my work and what I’m trying to accomplish in it.
But writing isn’t all joy and fulfillment. Sometimes it’s frustrating and demoralizing. Some of my worst experiences with works in progress involve the fact that they fail. No matter how hard I revise, the story just never works. Sometimes it even gets sicker, with more things going wrong with it. This is especially painful when I’m really excited about the premise or concept or make a really good start. The story has promise but for some reason can’t fulfill it. Or to be more honest, I can’t fulfill the story’s promise. Sometimes it’s all just a mystery, as with my short story, “The Great Gumball Machine.” It’s based on memories of my childhood and is steeped in nostalgia. The story should work but disintegrates in mysterious ways about halfway through.
Another bad experience involved my novel, Dax Rigby, War Correspondent. It’s SF on a distant world, and involves a young, charismatic hero. You can find a trailer for it on YouTube and elsewhere, including my website. I work with a writers group and was halfway through the novel when the group grew more critical and my inspiration flagged. There soon came a point where I didn’t know where to take the story plot-wise and otherwise. So I put the novel in mothballs for five months. Fortunately, when I returned to it, the book was reborn, and I (not too modestly) think it’s quite a success.
As for great experiences, I’ve had many. “Rounded With a Sleep,” a story which appeared in Galaxy in Sept./Oct 1994, had a rocky history that was strangely satisfying. It started off as a 3000 word story, swelled to five and six thousand words as I put in more background and local color, then went on a diet from its bloated state and ended at about 3000 words again. But it was much, much better, and to this day, I find its difficult evolution satisfying.
I’ll mention one other great experience. I wrote Inspector of the Cross 22 years ago before I had a computer. It’s about a 3000-year-old elite agent who travels on missions to distant worlds in a state of suspended animation. So everyone ages except him. When I finished the novel, I sent it around. Some publishers came close to accepting it, including Donald A. Wollheim, who critiqued it in a letter. Last summer, I dug the letter and the manuscript out and just started to retype the whole thing into my computer without even reading what I wrote way back when. I find the whole experience liberating and exciting. As I write, new possibilities have occurred to me, new dimensions and plot twists. I can hardly wait to see what I will write tomorrow, and what will occur to me on the next page that I didn’t think of when I was a much younger man.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think Inspector of the Cross will be my best book. Even if it’s not, the excitement I get from revisiting old characters and adventures has reminded me of why I started to write in the first place.
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