John Bruening: At Any Given Moment

John Bruening is, in his own words, at any given moment a writer, editor, publisher, artist, marketer, creator, dad, and husband.

He has been a professional writer and editor since the 1980s in a variety of disciplines: journalism, magazine editing, marketing, advertising and small-press book editing. He has won two awards for feature writing (2000 and 2011) from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a co-founder and editor for Ohio-based Flinch Books, and the editor-in-chief of ARC Magazine, a quarterly publication covering the welding and fabrication culture.

Tell us a bit about your latest work…

This past April, Jim Beard and I published OCCUPIED PULP on our Flinch Books imprint. (For those who may not be familiar with Flinch, we publish novels and anthologies that span a variety of genres – adventure, mystery, horror, occult, and more – and it’s all written and packaged in the spirit of classic pulp fiction.) OCCUPIED PULP is a collection of short stories set in Allied-occupied Europe and Japan in the months immediately following the end of World War II – a time and place where the map of half the world was being redrawn and a whole new global balance of power was taking shape. The war was over, but old scores were still being settled and the geopolitical intrigue was getting into high gear. We have a great lineup of writers in this book: Will Murray, Patricia Gilliam, Bobby Nash, William Patrick Maynard and Justin Bell. In addition to co-editing the book, I also contributed a story of my own called “Searching for Benito.” Everyone on this project was on their A-game – not just the writers but also the cover artist (Adam Shaw) and the designer (Maggie Ryel). The end result is something we’re very proud of.

Just a few weeks prior to OCCUPIED PULP, Mechanoid Press issued WAR FOR MONSTER EARTH, the third and final installment in the Monster Earth trilogy originally developed several years ago by James Palmer and Jim Beard. I contributed a story to this anthology called “Titans of Tropic Fire,” which takes place in the Amazon jungle of South America. Anyone who’s been following my work for the last few years will know that stories about radioactive, fire-breathing kaiju in an apocalyptic battle for global domination is way outside of my wheelhouse. On top of that, my story had to fit into the context of a larger story arc established by an editor and five other contributing writers, so that was additionally challenging. But it felt good to stretch myself a little bit, and I think I pulled it off well enough not to embarrass myself. (Then again, the book has yet to receive many reviews, so it may be too early to tell).

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I don’t know that there was one singular event. I think it was more of an evolution. I was consuming stories at a young age from the typical sources – and some atypical ones too. In the earliest days – the late 1960s in my case – it was animated cartoons and comics (my infatuation with the latter lasted well into adulthood). Then it was paperback novels, television, and movies – including a lot of black and white B-movies and cliffhanger serials. I was even listening to recordings of old-time radio dramas, which my dad turned me onto when I was no more than 10 or 12 years old. I’m pretty sure there weren’t too many kids in the mid-1970s who had much familiarity with the golden age of radio drama.

At some point in my late teens and early twenties, I started sticking my toe in the water and writing short stories of my own. They were pretty bad, but I kept coming back to it off and on over the years. At the same time, I was starting a career in newspaper and magazine journalism, so I was writing news stories and feature articles every day from the mid-'80s onward. By the time I was in my late twenties, I took a step back and looked at everything I had been doing and I realized I was a writer. So there was no pivotal moment. It was a gradual discovery of what I was good at and what I wanted to do with it.

What inspires you to write?

Good stories. Stories about individuals or small groups of people – sometimes fictional and sometimes in the real world – who have to dig deep and harness all their inner resources to overcome impossible obstacles and impossible odds to save the day or save the world.

I’m also inspired by other writers, the ones who take their craft seriously without taking themselves too seriously. And I think “craft” is the keyword here. I admire the writer who keeps putting the words on the page and keeps hammering and polishing, even during those stretches where the lightning bolt of inspiration isn’t striking. I think that’s part of the fascination of the original pulp era for me. It’s not just the stories themselves, but the people who generated them. We’re talking about writers whose livelihoods depended on cranking out the words, so they did it day after day and they rarely let up. In the process, some of them got really good at it. Not all, granted, but some. That unrelenting approach is something that inspires me.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

The gray area between the law and justice has been an interesting space to explore. I didn’t know it when I was writing the first Midnight Guardian book (Hour of Darkness), but I later realized that some of the inspiration had come from THE UNTOUCHABLES, the 1987 Brian DePalma film. The question that drives that entire movie is: How far are you willing to go and what limits (legal, ethical, moral, etc.) are you willing to test to accomplish your mission? It’s a question that comes up in the first Guardian book, and to some degree the second one. I even borrowed Sean Connery’s recurring line of dialogue in THE UNTOUCHABLES, “What are you prepared to do?” and inserted it into the second book.

If the question is about a specific time period, I’m pretty fascinated by the years between the Great Depression and World War II. It was a moment in history (if 15 or 16 years can be called a moment) when the state of the world was very precarious – first economically, and then geopolitically. Everything was uncertain and anything could happen, not just on the battlefront but here at home too. As a result, people were often forced to make hard decisions with potentially life-changing consequences. Those are the moments when the great stories emerge.

What would be your dream project?

Funny you should ask, because one of them just came my way in June when I was commissioned by Moonstone books to write a Green Hornet story for an upcoming issue of their DOUBLE SHOT magazine. This is a character who’s been all over the place since his inception in 1936: radio, comics, two cliffhanger serials in the 1940s, one season of television in the 1960s, a few short-story anthologies in the past ten or twelve years, and a feature-length film in 2011 (granted, not many Green Hornet fans are terribly enthusiastic about the last entry on that list). So I’m looking forward to making my small contribution to this 85-year legend.

Another character I’ve always been fond of is Spy Smasher, created in 1939 for Fawcett Comics by artist C.C. Beck and writer Bill Parker. Spy Smasher got the big-screen treatment in a well-crafted serial produced by Republic Pictures in 1942. Of all the serials ever made, this is probably my favorite, and I can say Spy Smasher was part of the inspiration for The Midnight Guardian. So it would be great to have the chance to go back and write a story of my own about Spy Smasher’s ongoing crusade against saboteurs in the years leading up to and during World War II.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

I started reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series shortly after I finished college in the mid-1980s. Since then, I’ve read all the books in the series at least once, and some more than once. Parker was great at writing snappy dialogue, and Spenser was the ultimate smart-ass private detective. After reading Parker for a couple years, I read Raymond Chandler’s THE  BIG SLEEP, and I realized that Parker was riffing on Chandler in some respects, so I started reading Chandler as well. A couple people (not many, but a couple) have told me that my Midnight Guardian books read a little bit like Chandler. The mere mention of my name and Chandler’s in the same sentence is laughable, but I humbly accept the compliment.

There’s also Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. McBain was great at throwing the spotlight on the often tedious and unglamorous aspects of police procedure and detective work and somehow making it all fascinating. I admire his ability to riff on various aspects of New York and Manhattan to build a city that’s completely fictional but completely believable at the same time.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be and what would you do?

Luckily, there’s nothing I’ve written (so far at least) that makes me cringe when I look back at it, but I do believe the expression that “the devil is in the details.” I tend to sweat the small stuff. There are bits and pieces of larger stories that I wish I could go back and rewrite – maybe make an opening scene a little stronger, or make a chapter a little tighter. But I think I’ve had the wisdom to recognize the really godawful stuff and keep it in the drawer where it belongs.

Writers often get asked why they write. There are a million different answers, and some of them can be fairly pretentious. I write in the hope that I’ll continue to get better at it. Unfortunately, that means I’m learning the craft and refining it in front of an audience, which can be unnerving at times. 

Where would you rank writing on the “Is it art or is it science” continuum? Why?

This circles back to something I mentioned earlier. I tend to think of writing as “art versus craft” rather than “art versus science.” And in the context of that equation, I’m probably 25 percent art and 75 percent craft. I do get the occasional lightning bolt between the eyes that leaves me feeling like I just connected with something greater than myself, but I also spend a lot of time just typing one word and then another and then another to get to the end of the chapter or the end of the book.

There’s a great quote by Jack London about the relationship between hard work and inspiration. It often gets truncated to the point where it loses some of its impact, but the entire quote is: “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration. Light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.” This, to me, is what it’s all about. On those days when you don’t feel all that inspired, you just have to keep writing regardless. Because if you do, something good will inevitably emerge.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Plotting. Setting the characters and circumstances in motion to make a compelling story that comes to a logical and satisfying conclusion. I try to map a lot of it out at the front end of the process, so that when the writing starts, it’s a little easier (not easy, but easier) to get where I want to go without getting hung up on detours that go nowhere. So in the great plotter-versus-pantser debate, I’m definitely in the former camp. I have nothing but respect for those in the latter, but if I don’t have some kind of plan going into the process, I’m afraid I would wander aimlessly in the desert for years.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

I’ve made a conscious effort in recent years to expand my creative circle and get to know more writers. The mere fact that some of these folks have reciprocated my efforts to establish relationships and friendships is a form of inspiration and encouragement all its own.

I mentioned Jim Beard earlier. He’s definitely a writer and definitely a friend. But he’s also my publishing partner, which means that if he and I are going to run a business, I have to get my share of the writing and editing projects done in a timely way and to a certain standard of quality. So he creates a layer of accountability that I might not have otherwise.

There are others. William Patrick Maynard has always been supportive, and he’s been good at the occasional pep talk in those moments when my stamina and/or confidence start to wane a little bit. Just being connected to friends who work hard at the craft – regardless of where they are in terms of their own creative development – is something that rubs off and makes me better.

What does literary success look like to you?

Would I love to be on someone’s bestseller list? Sure. But until that happens, I guess my version of success would be a combination of consistent output and a consistent readership. In other words, if I’m writing and publishing on a regular basis – something new at least once or twice a year, and something always in the pipeline – and if there’s a readership that’s interested in coming back for each new piece of work and spending the time (and yes, the money) to read it, then I guess I’m doing something right.

It feels weird to say this, but retirement is less than ten years away. But when I say “retirement,” I’m merely talking about the time when I stop punching someone else’s clock and start punching my own. The writing will continue long after that transition. I plan to do some version of this for as long as I can breathe, and when I can’t anymore, I hope to leave behind a substantial body of work for others to enjoy after I’m gone. That sounds like success to me.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

There are things I can talk about and things that are still under wraps for the time being.

Flinch Books will publish another anthology around the fall of this year. The collection will include ten stories in all, and I’m co-editing the project and writing the introduction. At the moment, I can’t offer specific details about the genre or the lineup of writers, but I imagine we’ll be able to say more by late summer.

In addition, I’ve written a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure for the third issue of PULP REALITY, published by Charles F. Millhouse at Stormgate Press. I’m currently working with Damian Aviles, an artist based in Mexico City, to develop some illustrations for the story. PULP REALITY #3 should be available late this year – around November or December.

I already mentioned the Green Hornet story for Moonstone. I’m not certain of the publication date, but I’m inclined to say it will be before the end of 2021.

The third Midnight Guardian novel is also in the works, but the timing on this one has been a little tricky. The story has a holiday setting and theme, so the original plan was to publish it in early November of this year. However, it was pretty obvious by mid-year that the projects listed above were going to eat up all of my bandwidth over the next few months, so the Next Midnight Guardian novel will publish in November 2022.

One project that isn’t necessarily writing but certainly writing-related: I’ve been trying for more than a year to put the finishing touches on my website and get it online. It’s way overdue, so I’ve made it a priority to get that finished this summer – which is one more reason why the next novel has been pushed back.

So regarding your earlier question about what success looks like: Having a steady stream of projects in the pipeline can be challenging, but I consider it a sign that I’m doing something right.

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