M.J. Preston: A Random History of Moi

By M.J. Preston

So what do we have here? A baring of souls. A memoir? Call it what you will, but it is what the title says. M.J. Preston: A Random History of Moi. In coming blogs, I am going to be candid about my life as it relates in some form or other to my writing. I promise not to be too stuffy or explicit. I can’t promise I won’t throw you the odd red herring, or joke in the hope of painting a smile across your face.

Okay, enough with the preface, let’s go.

I got into the writing gig in 1974. That same year I started reading books that were much more adult than you’d expect a nine-year-old kid to be reading. I was into books like Peter Benchley’s JAWS and David Morrell’s thriller, FIRST BLOOD. I didn’t understand every word in those novels, but the more I read, the better my comprehension became. 

In 1974, Tobe Hooper released the controversial movie about a grave robbing serial killer family extravaganza called: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. That year an unknown author named Stephen King published a book called: CARRIE with Double Day Publishing.  There were no such things as home computers or smartphones back then. Googling was something you didn’t want to get caught doing in 74. That was when my long-suffering as an aspiring author started. For years, I had to endure writing my stories with either a pencil or pen. Even at the tender age of nine, I wanted a typewriter, asked for one, two Christmas’ in a row, but didn’t get one until I was eleven.

In 1976, I got my first Olivetti manual, and I know my mother had to save for this gift because our family didn’t have a lot of dough. Often, times were tough, as my mother and my stepfather struggled financially throughout my pre-teens years. My stepfather was a European immigrant who was a hardworking, honest guy with a zeal for the use of profanity that had almost a poetic ring, which my close friends sometimes parodied. He worked as a logger. Seasonal work that paid well, but was dangerous, and prone to layoff because of fire season and winter shutdown.  Some times my mother worked two jobs as my stepfather worked under the table to try and squirrel away a few bucks. And that’s my long-winded writer way of telling you that typewriter meant the world to me when it came into my possession. Not only did I understand that hard work and sacrifice, coupled with parental love, had delivered this magnificent beast to me. 

But there was also something else.

At the age of eleven, I was about to unleash my imagination. No longer would I be writing with pencil or pen on paper, I  would instead deliver my brilliance by pounding the keys against that black-over-red ribbon. And thank goodness, because my penmanship sucked then and it sucks now. 

I wrote piles of stories and compositions, and I’m sure I plagiarized the heck out of everything I saw and read. But as I continued writing fiction and even penning a few letters to the editor, I began to understand that I needed to find my voice. So I went for originality, and I wrote outlandish stories that included satanic demons and giant ants. Yes, together. There might even have been freshwater great white sharks and piranha’s in that same story, as I recall. Yes, they were coexisting.

I know, it’s funny to look back on now. But that was my first attempt at a book in my youth, but not my last. I think it was fourteen pages. I was under the influence of a decade that talked about mutually assured nuclear destruction. I’d seen both film adaptions of Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND. First, with Vincent Price in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and Charlton Heston as THE OMEGA MAN. Eventually, I grabbed that Matheson paperback and dog eared it to death. 

Then I began writing dystopian stories set in a not too distant future. 

I recall the title of one story was: THE 1990 CRUCIFIXION.

Here’s the setup

After a limited nuclear war takes out most of the world, two buddies that are camping return to the civilized world only to find it uncivilized.  For reasons I can’t now explain, one of them is outed as the Messiah, and humans being humans do what is most unsavory. 

They crucify him. 

Hence the title. 

And yes, I know it sounds silly because it was, but that was also when the magic was the most potent when the ideas churned out like crazy little Roger Corman vignettes, but with an even tinier budget.

God love Roger Corman; he made entertaining movies.

I continued to write, I took a shot and publishing in magazines, receiving the first of many rejection slips around 1979. Honestly, I wasn’t deterred in the least. I kept submitting, and they piled up from Twilight Zone Magazine, from Night Cry, and even Chatelaine and RedBook. I’ve been turned down by the best of them, including Playboy and Omni. I understood early on that rejection is part of the game, so I kept writing and kept submitting, I sold my first story to a forgotten little literary magazine for five contributor copies.

I attempted writing a novel called: THINGS TO COME. 

This story was another heavily influenced “end of the world vehicle” that, unfortunately, would not be completed. It, along with those rejection slips and my literary contributor copies, would disappear from my life in a misplaced box, but they served as a stepping stone in making me a better writer. I kept writing, even after I joined the military lugging along an IBM electric, my mother had bought me on my 17^th birthday. Influenced or not, that was when my muse was a doppelganger of ideas.

Working on The Equinox  winter 1987

I started my first novel, THE EQUINOX, on that electric IBM, and that first draft would fall silent in the darkness of a moving box for over a decade and a half, possibly two because I don’t remember the exact year I started it. Thankfully it didn’t end up in the same box with my rejection slips.

So, this is where it all began and stopped when I paused for numerous years, but only in fiction. I continued with military reportage for our military paper. It maybe didn’t seem like much, but I kept writing, and unable to lug along my 300 lb IBM electric, I was reduced to again putting pen to paper.

Even though my fiction was on pause, I knew that writing was what I was supposed to do. 

So, I kept writing, and fate found me.

That’s enough for now, but next time I’ll tell you a bit more.

Come and Find Me!

M.J. Preston