by your standards or anothers? for example, have you ever really plumbed and expounded on the more depraved facets of your character? for example, a messy break up moving one to pen a misogynistic piece, an exploration and expression of your sexuality finding its way onto paper and fit only for hiding, etc. im looking for the de sades, masochs, nins and millers that have written pieces they would be ashamed to have be discovered, and or something that absolutely could not find a home in any sort of journals, chapbook or what have you. im talking fiction pieces, not memoirs or journal entries that will remain private by its very nature.
i myself have written two pieces like that. one of which was self published, the other which is being published in denmark, thus likely, and happily, finding itself outside of the financial means of my friends and acquaintances. i do fear judgment, however, and only gift friends, the true freex only, with a copy of the self published work, and am consciously refraining from painting myself into a sadean corner, instead pursuing, as i was before, purely literary works.
finally, literary officers of the third reich, please spare me. my phone prevents me from capitalizing and using certain punctuation marks.
I have recently written the outline for an autobiographical collection of memoirish stories that would fit this bill you're describing, but I have been told by those very close to me not to try to pass it around unless I label it fiction - for my, and their, own good.
I imagine labelling it as non-fiction would help the sales, but might be troublesome in the end.
- good thinking with the disclaimer at the end. I know I can be a grammar/punct. nazi when in a bad mood.
I've never written a whole piece like that, but I had written a chapter about two years ago about a porn star. It was pretty, as my ex girlfriend put it, 'Goddamn fucking sexually depraved.' I tried to find it, but the only line I can remember is: 'The camera so close I could see my cervix on the monitor.' Or something to that effect.
I'm curious as to what made YOUR two pieces unpublishable (or nearly unpublishable, I guess, as they both got out there in one way or another)?
I can't imagine there are any topics that are too taboo to be published outside of those that are simply glorifying things like child abuse/child pornography/child molestation. Outside of that, I think pretty much anything can get accepted.
The only other reason I could think of why something might not get published would be due to the writing quality as opposed to the subject matter.
I would imagine there are things we've written/could write but would personally not want out there as they would damage us or our relationships or the like.
American Psycho was published. I think after that, anything could be published.
Amen to that.
A child called, it?
Wasn't that child's actual name Dave? And isn't Strange Photon's actual name...Dave?
American Psycho was published. I think after that, anything could be published.
True that. Even now I'd be hard pressed to I think of a book that has disgusted me more.
You stole my thunder, Utah, was just about to make that connection!
But, no, not the same Dave.
One of my exes spent over a decade in jail for a murder he was convicted of when he was 15. Several of my friends expressed concern whle we were dating that he'd hurt me and it was always this sexual violence concern they had. Anyways, I wrote a story about our relationship where the details of the murder were changed (to protect the not-so-innocent) and I gave it the gruesome, sexually violent ending I expected all my friends were imagining. I sold it to a UK publication a few days ago.
Outside of bestiality and child abuse, there's a market for everything, I think. And good call from Moon. Anything goes thanks to American Psycho.
im not able to say that the self published piece is unpublishable by a proper imprint because i have tried and failed, the issue is that i am unsure as to where to submit it. well, i did submit it to anobium in chicago, but it has been quote unquote in progress for months. there was a period when i was listening to harsh noise and power electronics nightly while writing and entertaining arguably violent and sadistic sexual compulsions in fantasies and in actuality over another who enjoyed it, and what i wrote was in that vein. for anyone authentically interested, theres a link in my profile that would be better posted in the whore thread than here to a blog i use purely for promotion, and click on the purchase to tab to read a description for the roses of sodom so i dont have to make this stupid post longer than it is.
also, for those of you who didnt bat an eye or whose stomach made not one turn at de sades most awful writings, it may be worth looking into chicago author peter sotos. i highly enjoy the guy and am a light collector of his rarer works, but it is a marvel that that man has been able to publish his works through a myriad of publishers for the last fifteen to twenty years. if you are able to find excerpts online, i defy you to read them.
lastly, of course risking hurting a relative, loved one or a friend is always a risk when writing fiction, which, as should be obvious to us all, is a patchwork of lived experience and stolen influence, but i want to confine this thread solely to sexual, deplorable, and so called taboo writings.
Bryan Howie got a bestiality piece published.
i suppose now unpublishable becomes an ill fitting word. maybe publishable with a bit of trouble.
I'd say Haunted is pretty fucked too.
I once wrote a poem that my teacher wouldn't allow into a workshop. Looking back on it, it's sort of embarrassing.
I kind of think it has gone the other direction; I see more shocking stories then I do ones that are 'normal' for the genre they are in. I did have one idea for a satire that I didn't want to write, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be published.
I did have one story that was so transgressive I couldn't get anyone to pick it up.
Of course, its transgression was that it was written poorly.
BOOM goes the dynamite.
Of course, its transgression was that it was written poorly.
- I'm thinking that you inadvertently used that hideously grotesque picture of Rosie as your author picture.
I did have one story that was so transgressive I couldn't get anyone to pick it up.
Was this the story written on a slab of concrete in your own excrement, or the story written on rotten baby seal flesh with rattlesnake venom? Or the one you wrote with an electron microscope out of H.I.V. on a sheet of anthrax?
I wouldn't pick any of those up...
It was the transgender skidmark fetish erotica I co-wrote with Ron Paul.
There is one story I haven't had the guts to read at a live reading yet. It was published in a very cool anthology.
@Utah - I'm calling b.s. Ron Paul would never let you co-write his transgender skidmark fetish erotica.
Jack,I always say do the very thing you're most afraid/embarrassed/nervous to do. Only through such actions can the biggest successes be birthed.
Plus, now I'm curious to know what this unspeakable story is!
I was probably about the time Ron Paul and I interviewed him for a story we were working on.
I wrote a really unpublishable piece this one time.
It was about a boy who fell in love with a girl. She turned him down. So he decided to rape and murder her.
BUT!!!!!What happened after that was, see, he was stopped before he could do it by his own conscience. Then he let his conscience take him to a therapist, who helped him discover the reasons for his anger. Together, this young man and his therapist delveed deep into what was, essentially, a rather mundane past — mundane because it didn't involve molestation, ultra-violence or shocking sexual escapades with trannies. It was all about his feelings of inadequacy when his older sister got good grades, etc. After four months of therapy, the young man felt better and decided to work as an accountant, like his dad. The end.
What made this novel so unpublishable was the fact that the reading public wanted transgressive fiction.
They wanted their books so edgy and unpublishable, so extreme and totally wacky, that something truly shocking happened:
What had been publishable became unpublishable. What had been unpublishable turned publishable.
But it was too late. I'd given up. I'd become an accountant.
