> Especially when you've done nothing for which to apologize.  We are
> still dedicated to writerly issues after all, and that one
> certainly qualifies.

I haven't followed the "rules" that others have laid down, and when
someone spends a lifetime building a list of rules, it is a threat to
order when someone else comes along and challenges the validity of
those rules.

My entrance, years ago, into WRITING, was rather turbulent. At the
time, there were no literary agents in British Columbia, as far as I
could tell. So, I decided to become a literary agent. It turns out
(hindsight being 20/20) that I wasn't a particularly good agent. But I
did try my best.

Anyway, back then, I was also editing, and writing. Well, I was young,
and proud, and bold, and ended up stepping on a few feet.

I ran a Fidonet bulletin board called OmniHost for a while.

Like an idiot, I insisted on signing my name:

Quinn Tyler Jackson,
Freelance Editors' Association of Canada (Voting Member)

(Or something like that.)

This rubbed someone the wrong way. I forget his name now. He was a
local Fidonet BBS operator.  In a private message, he threatened to
come over and beat me up. That was the first threat I ever received in
an e-format. I immediately pulled out of being a BBS operator. I
remember that I was terrified. I had never been threatened with
violence from an unseen force before.  This was ... 1991? Thereabouts.

I returned, but was very cautious. I learned also that, well, I'm not
all that important. But I still managed to piss people off. In
particular, since I had not signed an agreement to use client names in
promotion, I absolutely refused to list clients when asked. This
resulted in one member of WRITING calling me a fraud, and telling me
to "show my hand, or shut up." (He used the card playing,
"bluffing"
metaphor.)  Old-timers to WRITING will recall that I went rather
ballistic.

Things changed in my life, however, and I began to appreciate that I
came across as an ass to many ... so I mellowed a bit, and just became
one of the crowd.  Then, my wife fell very ill, and nearly died ...
and I wrote Abadoun (then called Last Breath of a Kurdish Village). My
world view changed.

When I came out of that, entered the commercial software world, and
mostly got out of writing/editing (and totally abandoned agenting, a
failure at it), I reinvented myself. The reasons I needed validation
didn't seem all that important anymore. I just wanted to support my
family.

I discovered, however, that in order to do that well, I had to have a
"public" side. I had to participate in the real world.

A writer cannot hide away from the world, and hope to make it, I told
myself. Over the years, people opened up to me, readers started
contacting me, and things moved on. But my damned pride got the better
of me, I guess. I wanted to present the "best" Quinn Tyler Jackson I
could, because that is what got me contracts. That is what people
seemed to want to read about. Readers responded to learning about
pieces of me -- even though, to them, they weren't pieces of me --
they were short stories about pieces of me that had been translated
into literary fiction.

I made the mistake of getting too wrapped up in my creations. I put
too much of me into Janus Incubus, I now realize. That 10-year-old boy
who maimed his best friend with a skeet shooter ... perhaps should
have remained in my past. But ... dammit ... readers cried when they
read that. They cried when "Mark" had his manuscript destroyed by dog
piss ... and they cried when ... and ... well, I'll admit it --
perhaps when they cried about those things, they cried both for and
with me.

And it made me dig more deeply into Quinn than I ever thought I had
the courage to dig. Janus Incubus is ugly ... it reveals things about
human nature (my manifesting of it) that are ugly. But people seemed
to fall into the dream.

And then POW. Smack right dab into the face ... not by a known
quantity, but an anonymous sniper. "Fraud. Con-artist."

I should have saw it coming. I exposed too much of myself ... and
perhaps should have been more careful.  But, as an artist, it felt
like the most honest thing I could do. I felt that NOT exposing the
human condition as I knew it was the Path of the Falsehood. Only by
digging and being honest was I being an artist, in my esthetic.

Somewhere in that is the reason the attacks still sting -- even though
it's been a while since they occurred.

I would have much rather someone read the book and said, "Grow up!"
;-) At least there'd be a dollar fifty royalties in it for me.

--
Quinn Tyler Jackson
http://members.shaw.ca/qjackson/
http://members.shaw.ca/jacksonsolutions/


--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha