I’ve been around a while. My first story was published in 1963 and my first novel in 1967. The great majority of my experience is with traditional print publication. The newfangled Internet and its myriad magical offspring are a bit beyond my comfort zone. Sometimes I can find a Web site and assimilate its offerings, but sometimes it turns out to be a welter of confusion, demanding things like Flash, which never worked on my systems, or some more esoteric process I can’t even remember or pronounce, let alone use. I am after all 74 years old, and my synapses are hardening nicely, thank you. Reports of my demise constantly circulate like eager vultures, so far exaggerated or unfounded, but the birds evidently still hope. Maybe they know something I am in denial about.

How, then, did I ever get intimate with a young and hot outfit like Cobblestone? There’s a story there. There’s always a story; I have earned my living for two score years writing stories, so naturally that’s how I see it. To a hammer, everything else looks like a nail.

Because my reputation is in traditional print, and in my heyday my books really have been read by millions, I get a good deal of fan mail. In fact about one third of my working time the past 30 years has been taken by that correspondence. To me, every reader is a feeling person, and a letter deserves an answer. Yes, not every successful writer answers his fan mail. I suspect the majority do not, though I understand that Romance writers generally do. Good for them. But when I got into the Internet I realized that the potential for reader response was far greater, and the deluge could bury me. For one thing, it seems that half my readers are aspiring authors, and they all want me to tell them exactly how I did it, so they can do it too. But for some reason they are not quite satisfied with my answer that I earned my college BA in Creative Writing in 1956, and submitted stories for eight years until finally I got lucky and sold one. Yes, lucky; a writer may have infinite talent, but luck still will play about a 50% chance in his success. That, and hard work for a decade or so, can do it, though there is no assurance. Talent, persistence, and luck: there’s the formula. But my readers seem to lack the patience for that chancy route. As one told me, “You don’t understand. I need the money now.” No use telling him to write for the sheer satisfaction of the artistry of it, without any assurance of commercial success. Reality was clearly not his strong suit.

Still, I don’t enjoy educating aspiring writers about the one-to-one hundred odds against them that traditional print offers. Just getting a piece read by an editor is a long shot. So I looked for a more satisfactory answer. And there was electronic publishing. There the odds against a new writer may be only ten to one¬I don’t think hard statistics exist¬and if he chooses to go to self publishing, the odds are one to one. So I started a list of electronic publishers and related services, so that I would have that satisfactory answer to offer. It also helped that I could do it, making frank comments, without fear of losing my livelihood by getting blacklisted by publishers who don’t want ugly truths known. I was blacklisted for six years in the 1980s, essentially for truth telling, and I came out of it with an attitude like that of an abused pit bull dog. The whole of electronic publishing could vanish into a black hole and it really wouldn’t affect my livelihood. I list the publishers, and I describe anonymous feedback by writers who do have to fear blacklisting, and I make corrections when it turns out¬oh horror!–that a publisher actually has the right of it. Thus the truth emerges, in due course. So yes, my ongoing survey is a source of ugly interactions, but no, it would take a lawsuit to stifle it. No one with any sense would ever get into a court of law against me, because I have the will and the means and a certain saliva-dripping eagerness to take it to them and they know it. I have been there and done that with traditional print outfits, and always won my case. Meanwhile my Survey does help new writers find prospects.

So what has all this to do with Cobblestone and me? Patience, I’m getting there. I published a complaint against Cobblestone, and that got proprietor Sable Grey on my tail. And I backed off, because this was one of those rare occasions when the publisher did have the right of it. The complaint had been about editing, and this publisher has strict but reasonable standards. Since then Sable and I have had an intermittent dialogue, not confined to editing or publishing, and I have to say I rather like her.

So when she mentioned starting up a Wicked new line with material that might push beyond the limits of other publishers, small wheels rotated in my ossifying cranium. My participation in electronic publishing can best be described as dabbling. What is it like to actually be an electronic author? It is information that might help me get my bearings for my comments on these publishers. As it happens, I keep a big file of ideas¬I never throw away an idea!–and a week or so before I had summarized an intriguing one I expected never to write, because it was a bit beyond the pale. But maybe for this venue it would do. So I mentioned it to Sable, and it did not freak her out. That was a positive sign. So in three days, writing at white-hot speed, I wrote the approximately 10,000 word “Knave” and submitted it to Cobblestone. The rest is minor history.

I have now been through the Cobblestone editing process. I have dealt with copyeditors for over forty years, and I think I know about as much about the effective use of the English language as any writer does. Whoever said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds surely had copyeditors in mind. My story went through several copyediting drafts, and a fair number of changes were made. It didn’t help that at this time I was suffering from the side effects of the bone-thickening medication Reclast, which put me into a fever for eighteen days and for a time wiped out my physical and mental resources. I am now recovering, though am not yet back to 100%. At one point I simply told ye copy ed to do it her way, because I lacked the concentration to do it myself. But I have to say that the revisions did make sense. In what way is this editing inferior to that of traditional print publication? In no way.

I won’t say much about the story itself. This is a blog about the background of its genesis, not a description. You can read “Knave” at your leisure, or not, as you choose. It is phrased as a young man’s erotic encounters with the four queens represented by a standard deck of cards. The Queen of Clubs governs all golf clubs, everywhere; she does things on the greens with golf balls that few women would do in a darkened bedroom. The Queen of Diamonds works in a vault filled with money, gold, and precious stones, and she has a rounded diamond dildo that¬never mind. The Queen of Spades is an expert gardener, and she does things with carrots and turnips that hardly relate to nutrition. But the intriguing one is the Queen of Hearts, who has a very special way of making love that not every man can compass. That’s what put this story into the dubious category.