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David
Kubicek
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To paraphrase Mark Twain when his
obituary was published prematurely: The reports of my death
have been greatly exaggerated. I have noticed that some
directories on the Web put the dates 1944-1990 in
parentheses after my name (For example: here and here
). Where those dates came from, I don't know.
Neither of them is correct. Nineteen forty-four is a
little bit before my time, and since I am writing this in
2010, the 1990 date appears to be a little off as well. Unless
you believe in vampires.
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Your
Cliffs Notes says you have an M.A. degree, but your Bio says
you have a B.A. Which is correct? |
My Bio. The
Cliffs Notes credit is an error. It began as an oversight when the
first edition was printed. I had been doing some copy-editing for
Cliffs. I mentioned to the editor that I'd written an
undergraduate thesis on Ray Bradbury. He asked if he could read
it, so I gave him a copy. Some time later he asked me to write a
study guide on Willa Cather's My Antonia. More time passed while I
wrote it and Cliffs prepared it for publication. During that time
the editor apparently had forgotten that I'd written an
undergraduate thesis; the thesis was as long as and written
in as great of depth as many masters theses. So without confirming
my education with me, he put M.A. after my name. After the Notes
was published, I corrected him, but the company was sold to
Wiley Publishing, Inc., before a second printing came out, so it
was never corrected and may never be as long as the study guide is
in print.
The Cliffs
Notes is also credited to Susan Van Kirk and Mildred Bennett. Who
are they?
Mildred
Bennett was a Cather scholar. She wrote the original Cliffs Notes
on My Antonia (in 1964, believe). The
editor at Cliffs asked me to update it and turn it into a
more thorough study guide. I used very little, if any,
of Mildred Bennett's original in the rewrite. I don't know
who Susan Van Kirk is. She was added to the title page after
Cliffs was sold to Wiley. I've looked over the Wiley
edition, and the only difference I can see is the addition of a
Review section at the end.
How do you feel about
censorship?
I'm against it. In fact, it is
one of my hot buttons. Years ago I belonged to a local Toastmasters group. Toastmasters
devotes a section of each meeting to Table Topics, during which a
member is called on and asked a question. The member must then
deliver a two-minute extemporaneous speech on that topic, and at
then end of the meeting one of them receives a Best Table Topics
certificate. One time I was asked about censorship, and I ranted
and raved for two minutes. It was the only time that I won Best
Table Topics. But there is an upside to censorship: when a book is
banned, there is often a surge in sales, which makes authors,
agents, and publishers happy.
Has any of your work been banned?
Nothing with my name on it, as far as I
know. There was a movement by some local Moms
to persuade ShopKo to remove from its shelves
a true crime book that I ghost-wrote. Whether that
ever happened, I don't know. Since my monetary involvement was for
a flat fee, I didn't experience upsurge in royalties (although
that would have been sweet; the first printing [in hardcover, no
less] sold out in three days).
October Dreams, a horror anthology Jeff
Mason and I edited, encountered a few bumps, most likely because
of the profanity and graphic violence in some of the stories.
Possible evidence of this came in the form of a canceled radio
interview and two copies returned with a letter scolding me
for the language and suggesting that next time I publish
something more wholsome. I found out later that the letter had
come from the aunt of an author who had a story in the book;
somehow she had been laboring under the impression that he wrote
children's stories.
Why did you start a publishing
Company?
In 1986 or '87, when the farm
crisis was in full swing, I asked a local publisher if he would be
interested in publishing an anthology of farm stories. He
green-lighted the project and encouraged me to collect the stories.
It took about a year and a half to put the collection together, but
the publisher suggested that his company didn't have broad enough
distribution to publish this book (which was true; at that time to
company was a small mom and pop operation), so I took it
to Media Publishing, a company I sometimes worked with. Jerry
Kromberg headed up the firm, but declined to publish the book
because Media didn't publish fiction. He said, however, if I wanted
to publish it myself, he would give me as much help as needed. So I
formed Kubicek & Associates, and in eight months we released
The Pelican in the Desert: And Other Stories of the Family
Farm. The book had a so-so review in Publishers Weekly
and was used for several semesters in a University of Nebraska
English class. Two of the stories ("Settling In" by Marjorie Saiser
and my own story, "Ball of Fire," were nominated for the
Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses). Pelican sold steadily,
but didn't burn up any best seller lists, which probably was due to
its regional appeal.
What other books have
you published, and how well did they sell?
We
published five trade paperback books between 1988 and 1990:
Pelican in the Desert, The Forgotten Pilgrimage of Jesus:
Sojourn in the Land of the Wise Men (Compiled by James F.
Forcucci), How Do You Do It?: Ask the Kids (Edited by
Reba Pierce Cunningham, October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror
(which Jeff Mason and I edited; Jeff, also a talented artist,
created the cover illustration and 10 pen and ink drawings for the
interior), and The War Letters: A Young WWII Naval Officer
Writes Home (by John B. Davis). How Do You Do It?
and October Dreams received excellent reviews in
Booklist, and their first printings sold out within a few
months - Baker & Taylor (a huge distributor) ordered books by
the box load. The Forgotten
Pilgrimage sold steadily (we even sold foreign rights
to a Mexican publisher) and is still in print
in simpler edition sold by Issana
Press
. The War Letters was the only book to
tank. I shut down the publishing shortly after that, but not because
War Letters tanked.
Why did you
publish an anthology of horror stories?
Jeff Mason, a young artist working with K&A, and I
both love horror stories, but we were frustrated that among the
plethora of anthologies of original horror stories being published,
not many of them were up to our standards. We thought we could do
better, so we began collecting the stories. We ended up receiving
about 240 submissions per month from all over the U.S. as well as
from Canada, England, France, and Australia. One of the stories
(Scott Yost's "Mr. Sandman") was included in Karl Edward Wagner's
Best Horror Stories of the Year XVIII. We had intended
OD to be the first in a series of annual horror
anthologies, and we began collecting stories for the second book.
But OD was our most expensive book, and I was cooling on
the publishing process, so OD2 never materialized.
Why did you shut down your
publishing company?
Two reasons:Cost and Lack of writing time.
Production costs for a paper book are high.
Wholesalers and distributors often demand up to 90 days to pay
for their orders, which means that if a book sells well, the
publisher will have to order a second printing before much
money for the first comes in. That happened for two of our
books, October Dreams and How Do You Do It? Ask the
Kids. So by the the fifth book, I was getting tired of the
process.
The second reason I called it quits was that in
the two years I'd run the company, I'd done lots of editing of books
we were publishing but had only written one story (3,500 words), and
that was out of necessity; I wrote "Ball of Fire" because I needed a
story for Pelican (I was publishing the thing, damn it, and
I wanted one of my own stories included; fortunately, I didn't have
to write a horror story for October Dreams because I already had one).
So I decided to leave publishing and return to writing.
Why did you become a writer?
I didn't have much choice in the
matter. My grandmother told me that when I was four or five I would
tell her intricate stories, each one about an animal getting caught
in a trap and how it escaped. I don't remember that. I do remember,
however, that I first started writing stories when I was about 10.
When I was a senior in high school thought it might be kind of cool
to get the stories published. So I went down to the local magazine
stand to find some magazines to send my stories to. What I found was
Writer's Digest, and the whole
writing thing happened.
Where do
you get your ideas?
Everywhere. There is literally no place that
can't suggest an idea. I get ideas
from reading, from the newspaper, from watching people, from
anything. For example, I was at Godfather's Pizza with a friend who
told me that the last time she was there, a man had come in and sat
at the next table. He ordered four beers, set one in front of
himself and the other three around the table, and he carried on a
conversation with his three imaginary friends. I went home and wrote
"Two
Coffees ," a 900-word short-short that has
been published twice. I even got an idea for a story when
I went in to have my gall bladder x-rayed.
Which writers influenced you
most?
Ray Bradbury was seed from which my
writing grew. I read The Martian Chronicles, then
quickly devoured everything else I could find that had been
written by that amazing author. Ernest Hemingway and John
Steinbeck. I learned a lot about novel structure from Stephen King's
work. Before I'd discovered King I had written a novel, but it was
so bad that the garbage collector rejected it.
Do you offer writing/editing
services?
No. I
have done some of this in the distant past, but I do no writing for
hire now. I work strictly on my own projects.
I have a great idea for a
novel; will you write it, and we can split the profits
50/50?
No,
for two main reasons:
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If you want someone else to
write your novel, your idea probably isn't publishable; a professional writer cannot write a
publishable novel from an unpublishable idea without changing it
so much that it becomes totally that writer's book, and under
those circumstances, why should he split the profits?
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There probablywill be no profits. In
fact, you will most likely lose money on the project.
Professional publishers won't be fighting to get their hands on
your book; they're pretty savvy about what will sell. You may be
tempted to pay a vanity press to publish your book, but that may
not a good idea. The vanity press's profit will be built into the
contract, making it cost twice as much as if you published it
yourself (which you shouldn't do unless you thoroughly understand
the pre-publication and the post-publication [marketing] process),
and vanity presses usually have a separate contract for marketing
(which will cost you even more money). You could, of course,
decline the marketing contract, but then you would have a thousand
or two thousand (or however many copies of your book make up your
first run) in your garage.
There is one exception to the "no vanity press"
suggestion. Many companies offer print-on-demand services.
These generally are much less expensive than doing a press run of
1,000 or 2,500 copies that will take up space in your garage until
you can sell them. The print-on-demand company does the set-up work
but only prints the books as the orders come in. Rule number one
above still stands, though. You must market your book and readers
must order it or sales will be skimpy.
Where can I find your writing?
The Cliffs Notes ofMy Antonia is
the only one of my books still in print.Amazon.com usually has copies of
The Pelican in the Desert and October Dreams: A Harvest
of Horror. Sometimes copies will show up on Ebay. My short short " Two
Coffees " is on this Website. Samples of my newspaper work
are
here andhere.
Have you written any screenplays?
I've written three screenplays one one
teleplay, all as yet unproduced, but they have been read by some
significant production companies such as Amblin Entertainment and
the NBC story department.
What are you working on
now?
A young adult dystopian novel which was
inspired by my novelette, "A Friend of the Family," which was
published in Space
and Time
. The two main characters in
that story were the doctor (who was the viewpoint character) and the
teenage girl. I started wondering how the story would look if told
from the girl's point of view. As it turns out, the original story
has been radically altered. Only the dysfunctional future world and
a few of the characters remain, and their goals have changed from
the original.
What's your advice to beginning writers?
There are three steps:
Read voraciously. Read everything,
fiction and nonfiction. Especially read what you want to write
(e.g., if you want to write short stories, read short stories; if
you want to write commercial novels, read commercial novels).
Learn to write by reading everything you can about the
process - books, blogs, everything. Then practice until you get
it right. Build a stable of Beta Readers, friends and acquaintances
who will read you work and give you honest feedback. The
key work here is honest. Your Beta Readers don't have to be
writers themselves, but they need to be able to tell you what they
like and what they don't like and maybe give you some suggestions as
how you can improve the story. Revise what you write; strive to
say the most in the fewest number of words. In longhand, copy your
favorite stories; this will give you a sense of how a story flows, a
sense of a story's rhythms.
Marketing your work is
as important as writing it. Many writes don't put enough emphasis on
marketing. Keep your work circulating. Never let a
publishable story or novel languish gathering dust in a closet.
Learn how to write a query; take as much care with it as you take
with your novel.
Build an online
presence, or platform. Create a professional-looking Website; either
find someone to build it for you or, if you have some HTML
savvy, build one yourself. If you decide to build a Website, enroll
in an online class in XHTML and CSS (cascading style sheets).
Check out my article on Website Design and
Hosting. Also, start a
Blog. Remember that both your Website and your Blog must be dynamic,
not static, to keep people coming back. Make them interactive,
especially your blog, by inviting reader comments. For specific help
with creating your platform, visit the links on the
Resources
page.
I've always
liked Hemingway's advice on writing: "Write as well as you can,
and finish what you start."
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