On Robot Workers

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

In 1986 I got a job working from 5pm to 11pm as a proofreader for a company that typeset books for textbook publishers and university presses. In 2009, a French publisher offered to translate and publish The Painting and the City and Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed.

What, you ask, is the connection?

Curiosity.

The typesetting company was a factory, typesetters, proofreaders, and paste-up artists* worked in a production line of very small cubicles.

*Paste-up artists were people who took the type (which was a form of developed film, on Kodak paper), and pasted it onto boards (also called mechanicals) that had been printed with page dimensions showing in non-reproducing blue.

Most people did their specific jobs without thinking much about how things worked in the rest of the company. Sometimes people were moved into other jobs, often because they weren’t doing their job well.

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Occasional Notes On Writing

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Everyone who writes has their own reasons for doing it, their own way of doing it, their own justification for what and how they do it. What I think is crap and hack is produced by people who believe in what they’re doing.

Note: when I say “writing” I’m talking about writing fiction because that’s what I do.

I went to Clarion West a number of years ago. For anyone who doesn’t know, Clarion is a six-week intensive workshop for science fiction/fantasy/horror. A different writer comes in each week to teach. Participants try to write a new story each week to present to the group for critique. It was mostly a good experience for me. But at my Clarion there was pressure to write things that conformed to the tastes of editors at the big genre magazines, things that would sell to those editors. People who wrote traditional genre were more likely expected to succeed than those who didn’t.

That way of thinking interfered with my development. After the workshop it took me a while to understand what I wanted to do. I wanted to write things that came from me, that were uniquely me (and get them published). I can’t write for a market. I don’t want to write for a market. Theme anthologies?  Forget it.

Persevering with my own vision hasn’t been easy. Trends and fads come and go, writers pick up on them, get books published, etc. None of that is for me unless by accident.

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New Springdale Novel

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler


There are days to be endured, days to be celebrated, and the rest, the mundane many that shove us onward through time and space. Every morning I wake up and wonder which kind today will be. The key is to anticipate the unendurable. I’ve yet to manage that. But I survive. Most people do. The unendurable days pass like all the rest, even if they appear to take longer.

This is the beginning of chapter one of the novel I’ve been working on. It’s preceded by a prologue that I’ll post sometime. I first conceived it as another novella set in Springdale, first encountered in In Springdale Town. But after setting it aside to work on a story I decided it had enough to be a novel. Presently called New Springdale Novel.

Posted in In Springdale Town, Writing | 3 Comments

First French Review

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Which is, well, in French.  Google translate gets some of it.  I liked this bit: “Robert Freeman Wexler cleanses your eyes and makes you more alive than you did before opening his novel.”

Posted in Reviews, The Painting and the City | 7 Comments

French Edition Here

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Posted in The Painting and the City | 1 Comment

New Interview

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Up now at Book Spot Central. In which I talk about various things related to The Painting and the City.

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New P&C Review

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Larry from OF Blog of the Fallen has posted a very positive review here.

Also, Brendan Connell recently finished an interview with me that will be posted at Fantasy Book Spot in the next few weeks.

Posted in Reviews, The Painting and the City | 1 Comment

Stark Folk Interview

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

It’s time for another installment in the Laconic Writer Central (LWC) sporadic interview series, this time with Brady Burkett of the Stark Folk Band. Stark Folk’s second album Well Oiled came out this month, following the self-title debut from 2008.  Both are available on cd and vinyl from Old3C Records and digitally on iTunes. The band is a collaboration between Burkett and Ryan Shaffer, plus other musicians to fill out the sound.

LWC: Let’s start with some history. When did you and Ryan start working together?

BB: Ryan is from the same hometown as I am. Brookville, Ohio. We vaguely knew each other, like people do in small towns, but we didn’t really connect until I was riding in the back seat of his black, tinted-window Z-24, talking about getting a band together as well as the debauchery we were looking forward to getting into that night. At the time I wasn’t even living in Columbus. I think Ryan was on break from his freshman year at Ohio State.

Also, I didn’t own a guitar or any other instrument. But, I knew I wanted to be in a band, make music, and create something, anything. I figured Ryan did too because he seemed really into the idea of creating art and all that. We were young and full of energy around it, so when I moved to Columbus during the late summer of ’96 it was on!

LWC: Stark Folk grew out these collaborations. What were the early incarnations like?

BB: Yeah, Stark Folk grew out of the A Landscape Yesterday project, starting from the first moment I picked up a guitar, learned a few chords, tried writing songs and recording. We had an actual four-piece band at one point, but it never really came together.

We got together in 2000–2001 to mix several tapes of recordings, the first one dating back actually to 1995 before I lived in Columbus. We used the fancy equipment in the basement of the Ohio Capital Building (Ryan had an internship there) to expedite the long process of getting the recordings CD-ready. They eventually became the A Landscape Yesterday: For Seasons 1996-2001 collection, which is available upon request. There are about 40 or so songs there.

There were also various other projects that we both were involved with from time to time in Columbus. Ryan once banged around in a band called The Dirty Tricks and I played animal drums in a wild upbeat three-piece called Liu Mang. All of it has informed where we are now, which for once really makes sense to me.

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Posted in Music | 4 Comments

New Story

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

I forgot to post that I finished a new piece last week, a 13,000 word novelette. It’s the first story I’ve finished in a long time. It still needs a title though.

The art comes from an article here about giant tree-size fungus from the Devonian. It’s “A rendering of Prototaxites as it may have looked during the early Devonian Period, approximately 400 million years ago. Painting by Mary Parrish, National Museum of Natural History.”

Giant fungus do appear in the story.

Posted in Writing | 2 Comments

Painting and the City—French Cover

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Robert Freeman Wexler

Here’s the cover for the French edition, which uses one of my favorite Jason Van Hollander’s Schuyler journal illustrations on the front.

Posted in The Painting and the City | 5 Comments