Don’t I mean “The Gangster Way?” With the growth over the last two decades or more of popularization of organized and street crime, I have decided to title this new short story in the spirit of that movement. It is amazing how much we have popularized the world of the gangster. We have an entire music industry built around songs dedicated to its drugs, violence, and abusive dehumanization of people. We have novels and television shows built around its culture and perceived prosperity.

Inner city teachers fight with the gangster image and with the street gangs whose “soldiers” sit in their classrooms (some who are not even teenagers yet)—if they come to school. Some parents and many community leaders try new things to steer America’s future talent away from that world. Yet, we still see our youth being “jumped in.” Despite all these efforts, the US military have tried to break the gangs whose soldier’s enlist “to serve Uncle Sam.” Sometimes it works, other times these gang bangers feed the street war with military arms. What all these social institutions are really against is the idea that these youth only have two routes in life: “Work the corner selling drugs, or work the corner restaurant washing dishes.”

The short story, “The Gangsta Way” is intended to look at two sides of the war on gangs and organized crime. One aspect is the gangster and his culture of abuse and violence. The other is not just the normal police officer or “strike team” meant to wrestle the gang off the street. The other side is the police officer who fights the gangs in the shadows and the darkness. These polices officers are intelligence officers. They conduct surveillance. They go undercover. They are spies. These officers live in even more danger than any clandestine officer counterpart that spies in a foreign land—for they are in the cities where they live.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for the latest updates and blogs about the stories I am working on.

The time is approaching fast. No story is ever complete. A writer will write and rewrite and revise, losing himself in the revisions and re-imaginations of a story, but there must come a time when he must send his story into the harsh publishing world. Like a good parent, the writer has done everything that they know how to do to make the story the best it can be to survive the world outside.

Publishers will not view a story in the same eyes as the writer. Actually, they better not. It is the publisher’s job to pick the best stories out of the mountain of submissions on their desks to make the best magazine or e-zine they can to bring in the readers and the customers to buy their product. They have to look at a story with a jaundice eye and carefully risk their business’s reputation on the stories they select.

I have enjoyed writing “The Last Friend,” and exploring the question of how the emotional dynamic of a person changes when their career crosses with the emotional attachment for someone. Despite my enjoyment, I must never delude myself into thinking that because I liked a story, everyone will. It is the writer’s job to appeal to their audience, to produce a story that can be enjoyed and can sell the magazine or e-zine it is printed in. Our work is art, but we would be fools to forget that there is a business side to it. It is with the reader and the editor in mind that I rework my stories into a draft they would be happy to read.

The time is approaching fast. This weekend I send “The Last Friend” into the world and see if I have really done my job right.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on what I am writing and other news.

I am putting a delay on any submission of “The Tower.” I have finished reading the rough draft and I can tell it needs to be rewritten. There are usable parts and the general plot will remain the same.

In a blog entry I made in Coffee with David, I made a comment about how I run into some people who think that it is easy to write a book, get published, and live wealthy. Facing a total rewrite would put some hesitation and fear into them—or would act as a much needed glass of ice water thrown in the face. Writing fiction is an art. As an artesian, I never want to feel like I do not need to work at this craft very hard. Imagination and story craft are as the muscles in your arm: if you do not put strain on them, they will not build; if you do not use them, they will atrophy.

In writing, most of the real work of story craft we do is in the rewrite. I wonder what Frank Hubert felt when he rewrote Dune? Personally, I am glad he did. His son released the original story and I read it. It was good, but not anywhere as powerful as the novel we know became. I will be spending next week rewriting “The Tower” to create a more powerful story.

Thank you and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com

Sometimes a cliché becomes a cliché because it is true. Such is the case with writing. You may have heard it said that the real work of writing comes in the rewrite. If you have ever questioned the validity of this cliché, then you have never looked at your work with a jaundice eye.

While I am not a Hemingway fan, I agree with him about the art of writing. He said when he accepted his Nobel prize for literature: “How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.” As I write this entry, I have two new short stories in first draft. One is “The Last Friend” and the other is “The Tower.” It is not hard for me to fall in love with these two stories, as I am the one who told them. When I allow myself to step back and look at them carefully, I know they need improvement and they need to be pushed further toward the edge of where I can stretch myself and my writing to go from being an OK or good story to something that will satisfy the reader and not be forgotten.

It is off to work on the rewrites of “The Last Friend” this week and then put it back in the drawer. In the mean time, I will also be plotting the new fantasy I described in my last entry. I have titled it “Dance of Death.”

For more about my stories, please visit www.davidalanlucas.com