Tim Waggoner's Blog, page 6
May 19, 2022
Exploring Perception in Dark Fiction: Guest Blog byTori Eldridge
Exploring Perception in Dark Fiction
by Tori Eldridge
Every day, people make decisions that take them toward empowerment and righteousness or toward resentment, bitterness, and despair. Not all of these choices are clearly marked like forks in a road. Some creep up on us with insidious stealth, altering our perception and twisting the truth. The micro decisions we make every day can lead us to irrevocable actions that cause our own demise. They can also raise us from literal or emotional poverty and set us on a nobler path.
In Dance Among the Flames, we meet Serafina Olegario at a vulnerable time in her life. Born in the stilt-shack slums of São Salvador, Brazil, sixteen-year-old Serafina takes her newborn son to meet her married politician lover. When commanded to do the unthinkable, she finds her strength through a supernatural force that changes the course of her tragic life. From this moment forward, every choice she makes pushes her toward the light or the dark. How the readers perceive her evolution is up to them.
It’s these gray areas of human behavior fascinate me the most.
I have yet to meet a person who is a hundred percent in the right or in the wrong. Nor have I met anyone who always acts in the best interest of others or even themselves. Although we might aspire to the most noble course of action, our past experiences and beliefs can lead us astray. Everything we have seen, heard, thought, or been taught; every joy, heartache, failure, and success; every suffering, privilege, or injustice leaves its mark and alters how we perceive.
Dark fiction takes on on a journey of discovery without judgment and let’s us see the world and ourselves in a whole new way.
“Purity was a lie made up by weak people without the guts to face the truth. There was no good or bad: There was only context and conditions. View something as bad and it was. View someone as evil and they were. Spend your life bemoaning your fate and you suffered.”
—Thoughts from Serafina Olegario in Dance Among the Flames
Could we spiral into the darkness like some of the characters we read about or write? Dark fiction gives us the privacy and context to ask: Where are the lines in the sand after the tide rises and ebbs out to sea?
Our perceptions about everything change slightly—or sometimes dramatically—from one moment to the next. This is one reason why I aspire to write every day. I never know what creative ideas my new perceptions will bring.
DANCE AMONG THE FLAMES by Tori Eldridge
From the national bestselling author of the Lily Wong thriller series comes a “stunningly original novel” (F. Paul Wilson) about a desperate mother who rises from the slums of Brazil to become a powerful wielder of Quimbanda magic. Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina’s quest begins in Brazil when she’s possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. Passion. Horror. Betrayal. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose.
“Eldridge masterfully navigates the nuances of Brazilian religious syncretism and takes a deep and daring look into the issues of colorism, class, generational trauma, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Spanning decades and generations, this is both a page-turner and an emotional powerhouse.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Tori Eldridge is the national bestselling author of the Lily Wong mystery thriller series—THE NINJA DAUGHTER, THE NINJA’S BLADE, and THE NINJA BETRAYED—nominated for the Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity Awards and winner of Suspense Magazine’s Crimson Scribe Award for Best Book of 2021. Her shorter works appear in the inaugural reboot of Weird Tales Magazine and other horror, dystopian, and literary anthologies. Her short story, “Missing on Kaua‘i” appears in the 2022 Mystery Writers of America anthology, CRIME HITS HOME. Her horror screenplay THE GIFT, which inspired DANCE AMONG THE FLAMES, earned a semi-finalist spot for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Born and raised in Honolulu, Tori’s deep interest in world culture and religions has prompted her to visit nine countries, including Brazil.
April 4, 2022
How I Try to Avoid Racism in My Writing
I wrote the following in the latest edition of my newsletter, which went out yesterday. I thought I'd post it here as well.
Recently, a small-press horror publisher posted the back cover copy of one of their forthcoming books. The story revolved around a terrorist plot to exterminate the world’s white people using a plague genetically engineered to only affect Caucasians. The plague succeeds, 98% of white folks die, and world civilization collapses. The premise seemed more than a little problematic, and the plot description made it sound even worse. When I first read it, I thought, “This sounds racist as fuck!” And I wasn’t the only one. On social media, many horror authors were appalled by the description and said so. Some vouched for the author (a white man), saying he’s a wonderful guy, has been very supportive of upcoming writers over the years, and is by no means a racist. Besides, some added, people were wrong to judge a book by the publisher’s description! Others said, “Uh, dude, that’s what cover copy is for – to help a reader decide whether or not to buy a book.” The writer and his supporters were baffled that anyone might view the premise and plot description as racist, and the publisher, perhaps unwilling to deal with the fallout over the situation, decided to close shop.
(Since I originally wrote this post, I've learned the publisher wrote the synopsis and posted it on social media without showing it to the author first.)
I’m not going to name the author, book, or publisher. If you don’t already know who they are, a couple minutes of digging on social media or Google will fill you in. I will say I’ve been acquainted with the author for years, he’s always been supportive of me, as well as many other writers. I’ve heard him described more than once as an elder statesman in horror. But does this mean he can’t be unconsciously racist? Or at the very least be tone deaf to racial issues?
Of course not. If you’re a white person raised in America – like me – you’ve grown up in a culture steeped in racism, and because this culture has been designed to privilege you, you can never be fully aware of how it’s shaped you and your attitudes. And if you decide to write about racial issues in your fiction, you’ll do so from a perspective of privilege, and even if you have the best intentions, there’s an excellent chance you’ll screw it up. We may never be able to fully transcend our acculturation, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to learn, grow, and do better.
What can you do to try to deal with these issues when it comes to writing and being part of the writing community? Some thoughts . . .
· I wrote a previous blog entry about dealing with diverse characters when writing fiction. You can find it here: https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2021/11/writing-characters-from-diverse.html
· I live in a diverse world, and I want my fiction to reflect that, but I won’t tell a story that’s not mine to tell. I won’t write a story that centers on the identity of someone from a different background than myself. I feel totally comfortable writing characters that aren’t cishet white guys like me, but only when their race/gender identity isn’t central to their role in the story.
· I examine my ideas for possible racism (and any other -isms, for that matter). If I write anything that has racial elements to it (or gender elements, LGBTQ+ elements, disability elements), I ask myself why do I want to write about these elements, what purpose do they serve in the story, and how might they be perceived by readers? My intent as a writer is important, but my executionof these ideas is far more important. It doesn’t matter what I tried to do, only what I did do. If I have any doubts about my ideas, I seek out beta readers who can let me know if my execution is flawed.
· I try to read the damn room. Thanks to years of Trumpism, racial, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-intellectual attitudes and tensions in America are high. Any story I might write which deals with these elements is likely to cause strong reactions in readers right now. I try to be mindful of this and proceed accordingly. Maybe I’ll decide to not write the story. Maybe I’ll rework it to minimize or avoid any potential negative response. Maybe I’ll write it but tread carefully.
· I listen to readers, especially people of color. This one’s more of an intention right now, since so far I haven’t received any negative feedback on my portrayal of non-white, non-cishet characters. But even if I feel I did a good job, if readers don’t think so, I intend to listen to their criticisms without being defensive. If I agree that I’ve made a mistake in my portrayals, I’ll apologize, work to repair whatever damage I may have done, and actively work to do better in the future.
· I try to be a good literary citizen and lift up people of color (and others too). All aspects of American culture have been designed to privilege white people (and straight men and abled people), so I do what I can to help level the playing field. I do this in simple ways, by sharing people’s posts on social media, by mentoring people, by being available to answer questions or blurb books, and by treating all writers – regardless of background or level of experience – as colleagues. And I’ll keep looking for ways to lift others up as long as I live.
If you’d like to see how I do with diverse characters, some of the main characters in We Will Rise (out this July) include a black woman, an Asian woman, a Muslim man in his early twenties, and a teenage trans man.
April 2, 2022
Sample Newsletter
I thought I'd post the Feb. 2022 edition of my newsletter here for folks who'd like to see what they might be getting before they subscribe. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to my newsletter here:
https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm
Welcome to the latest edition of Writing in the Dark! This time, along with all the Tim Waggoner news you can’t live without, I’ll be talking about writing tips I learned in acting class, my evolving views on content warnings, and one of the things I hate most as a reader of horror novels. Let’s get to it!
GIVEAWAY/CONTEST
Kind of an odd one this time. For Christmas, my wife got me a Bram Stoker Funko Pop figure. Trouble is, I already had one. My extra Bram needs a good home, so I’ll send it to the eleventh person who emails me at twaggon1@msn.com. US residents only for this one.
I haven’t forgotten my friends elsewhere in the world, though. For any non-US residents, I’ll send an electronic copy of my how-to-write horror book Writing in the Dark. I’ll send a copy to the first three people who email me. And tell me which format you prefer: Mobi, PDF, or ereader.
SIGNED BOOKS
I usually don’t have copies of my books for sale, but sometimes people send me books to sign (with return postage, of course) and I’m happy to do this. I’m also happy to sign stickers that you can place inside a book and send them to you. Email me at twaggon1@msn.comif you’re interested.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Novel
Review copies of my forthcoming novel Planet Havoc: Zombicide Invader are available at NetGalley! I’d appreciate it if you’d give the novel a look and leave an honest review: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/245927
Speaking of reviews, early ones for Planet Havochave been good, and Jonathan Maberry was kind enough to read an advanced copy and provide a blurb!
“PLANET HAVOC is the best of all worlds –space adventure, military SF, snarky humor, and zombies! Tim Waggoner brings the pain and all the jolts in this rollicking action horror thriller!” – Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers and KAGEN THE DAMNED
Planet Havocis due out in April and is available for preorder. Here’s a synopsis:
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous adventure.
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world. Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens, desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the galaxy?
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
My next horror novel is due out this July from Flame Tree Press!
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
You can preorder the book here:
Flame Tree Press: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/we-will-rise-isbn-9781787585249.html
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
Writing in the Dark Workbook
This is my follow-up to Writing in the Book, and as the title implies, it focuses on exercises that will help you improve your horror writing. The book’s been edited and the layout is finished, and it’s scheduled to come out in June. You can read more about it here:
https://dharlanwilson.com/books/writingdarkworkbook/
Writing Poetry in the Dark
One day when I was exchanging emails with Jennifer Barnes, my editor at Raw Dog Screaming Press who brought out Writing in the Dark, I suggested it might be cool if they brought out a book on writing horror poetry. A couple months later, Jennifer said they were indeed going to produce such a book, and would I mind if they use Writing in the Dark as part of the title. (Writing in the Dark started as the name of my blog, then became the name of this newsletter, and finally the title of my how-to-write-horror book.) I said sure, and thus history was made. Stephanie M. Wytovich, award-winning writer of poetry and fiction, edited the book, which contains essays on the craft of writing horror poetry from the best practitioners in the business such as Linda D. Addison, Michael A. Arnzen, F.J. Bergmann, Carina Bissett, Leza Cantoral, Timons Esaias, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Claire C. Holland, Jim and Janice Leach, Donna Lynch, Alessandro Manzetti, Jessica McHugh, Cynthia Pelayo, Saba Syed Razvi, Marge Simon, Christina Sng, Lucy A. Snyder, Sara Tantlinger, Joanna C. Valente, Bryan Thao Warra, and Albert Wendland.
I’m not a poet, but I appreciate good poetry, and I was thrilled when Stephanie asked me to write a foreward for the book. You can read more about the book at the link below:
A Little Aqua Book of Marine Tales eBook
This originally appeared in a limited hardcover edition as one of Borderland Press’ legendary Little Book series, but now it’s available in a more affordable eBook edition!
Kindle
NOOK Book
Sales to Apex and Night Land
After years of trying, I finally sold a story to Apex Magazine! It’s a horror story called “In the Monter’s Mouth.” I don’t yet know when it will appear, but I’ll tell you when I do. I was thrilled to sell a story reprint to Japan’s Night Land Quarterly for translation. “Cast-Offs” originally appeared in the anthology Cutting Block Partyseveral years ago.
Kolchak 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel
When I was a kid, I loved the Kolchak, the Night Stalker TV series. Cark Kolchak was a dogged everyman reporter who fought paranormal creatures only because no one else would. Kolchak’s fiftieth anniversary is coming up, and I was thrilled to be asked to contribute a story to a graphic novel celebrating Kolchak. My story depicts Kolchak’s encounter with a family of wererats. It’s called “The Nest,” and it’ll be illustrated by Clara Meath. She’s an awesome artist and you can see some of her work here: http://www.comiconart.com/artistgalleryroom.asp?artistid=223
This is a double bucket-list item for me. I’ve always wanted to write a Kolchak story and I’ve always wanted to write a script for a comic book. Now I’ve done both in one go!
You can learn more about the graphic novel at its Kickstarter link. There’s going to be an open submission period for prose stories about Kolchak too, and you can learn more at that there as well.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manbomb/kolchak-the-night-stalker-50th-anniversary?ref=c0czjg
New Blog Entries
I’ve posted a couple new Writing in the Dark blog entries since my last newsletter. “Like the Cool Kids” talks about the myth of author cliques that act as gatekeepers in traditional publishing, and “You Can’t Fire Me” discusses why writers might want to quit writing altogether and reasons why they shouldn’t. You can read the entries at the following links:
https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2022/01/like-cool-kids.html
https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2021/12/you-cant-fire-me.html
Creative Writers and the Community College
Here's a link to an article I wrote twenty years ago about creative writers finding teaching jobs at community colleges. Full-time college teaching positions may be a hell of lot scarcer these days, but much of the info still holds true, I think. So if any of you are thinking about teaching college writing courses, you might want to check it out:
The Literary Genius of Movie Novelizations
I was honored to be one of the writers interviewed for this article on writing movie novelizations.
WHAT I’M WORKING ON
I have sleep apnea and use a CPAP machine to help me breathe normally when I sleep. Recently, I was informed that my CPAP was recalled due to a cancer risk. My doctor told me to stop using my machine and a new one would be ordered for me. Unfortunately, that was several months ago. So many people need new machines that it’s taking a while for manufacturers to meet the demand. This means that my sleep isn’t so great right now, and during the day I’m often tired and fuzzy-headed. As you might imagine, my writing production has slowed because of this. I’m pecking away at The Atrocity Engine, the first of my new horror/urban fantasy trilogy for Aethon Books, and I have a couple stories for anthologies I need to write. Sometime soon I’ll get started on a new how-to-write book for Raw Dog Screaming Press. It hasn’t been officially announced yet, so I can’t tell you anything else about it. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a middle-grade horror novel, but I haven’t done anything about it yet.
Send all the caffeine my way, please.
THE MIND OF A HORROR WRITER
One of my pet peeves as a reader of horror fiction is when authors don’t take into account characters’ interest in strange/disturbing events. For example. I’m currently listening to Bentley Little’s The Bankon audio. I love Bentley’s fiction, and I’m enjoying the book quite a lot. But in the novel, nearly twenty people, all who work at the same bank, are found dead in a field outside town. (This happens early in the novel so my telling you isn’t really a spoiler.) One of the dead people has an obvious cause of death, but the others don’t. Weird, right? Well, not only don’t the townsfolk freak out about this much, they don’t think much about it or discuss it amongst themselves. And no one is texting back and forth about it or posting about it on social media. Worse, no news media shows up to cover this bizarre story – not even a reporter from the local town paper! I see this kind of thing happen a lot in horror. Writers seem so focused on moving their plot forward that they don’t fully consider the ramifications of the events they’re writing about. The townsfolk in The Bank would be upset about the murders and talk about them – in real life or virtually – a lot, almost to the exclusion of anything else (at least for a while). And reporters throughout the state as well as national and maybe even international media would quickly show up to cover the bizarre deaths. The media would be omnipresent in town, and they’d bug law enforcement and regular citizens alike to get interviews and sound bites. The media might not become a major aspect of the story, and they might even fade out of the story for the most part as the plot moves on, but they’d still be in background somewhere. But not having any media at all present – as well as no social media discourse about the murders – is extremely unrealistic, and their absence always throws me out of the story.
So how do I handle the issue of the media in my fiction?
· Many of my novels take place over the course of a few hours, and there often isn’t time for news media to become alerted to the weird stuff going on.
· My characters are usually so caught up in dealing with weird stuff that they don’t have time to post about it on social media.
· The situation might only impact a few characters, so the incidents aren’t known – and maybe never will be known – outside their circle.
· I might have law enforcement try to conceal the more bizarre/extreme aspects of an incident to keep news media from becoming involved (as long as they can, anyway).
· I have news media show up for a scene or two to establish their presence, but they don’t play a big role in the story.
· I’ll show someone post a message on social media or read one, send a text or receive a text, talk to someone on the phone, etc. about what’s happening. I’ll do this once or twice to show that people are upset about what’s going on, but I don’t make it a major part of the story.
· Sometimes I’ll make the news media and social media a significant aspect of the story. I may do this by having one reporter be a supporting character or even a main character. This reporter stands in for all the other media that’s present in the background. I might have characters stay in regular phone/text/social media contact with friends or family during a story (although I’ll make sure not to overdo this).
So if you write fiction where anything newsworthy happens – especially something way out of the ordinary – consider using some of the techniques above to make your story more realistic, at least in terms of how reporters and social media are presented.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PAGE
The debate about whether to include content warnings – especially in horror novels – flares up from time to time on social media. This seems to me to be something younger readers (younger as in people who haven’t hit middle age yet) who interact a lot on social media want. The concept seems of more concern to indie and self-pubbed writers than it does to traditionally published writers as well. It’s been an issue in college classrooms too, although my sense is not so much as it once was.
Some small-press publishers include content warnings with their books, some leave that up to individual authors. Some self-published authors include them, others don’t. On Twitter, the people who believe in content warnings often do so with an almost zealot-like fervor, and they’ll condemn anyone who doesn’t agree with them 100% as completely devoid of empathy for their fellow humans. And some people who don’t believe in content warnings treat those who do as if they’re immature wimps and are very condescending toward them. My guess is that, as with most things in life, those at the extreme ends of the scale are the minority, but they are the loudest and therefore get the most attention.
I have no objection to anyone using or not using content warnings in their work or to any readers who desire content warnings or who don’t. To each their own. I’ve debated for a while whether or not to include content warnings with my novels. My horror fiction often contains extreme elements, and I certainly don’t want anyone to be traumatized by reading my books. But as a reader, I’ve never felt the need for content warnings. If I want to get a heads up before I choose to read a book, I consider a book’s genre, check any reviews I can find, look for social media discussions, check the author’s website, and do a general Google search to see what’s been written about the author and the book in question. The information I need is already out there, and – better yet – it comes from a variety of sources, not just the author or publisher. How do they know what I might find upsetting in a story? I also come from a generation (I’m almost 58) that believed individuals should deal with disturbing material on their own. We assumed if people found horror upsetting, they wouldn’t read it. And if they started to read it, and it proved too much for them for whatever reasons, they’d put the book aside and choose to read something else. Plus, as a teacher, I think it’s good for people to push past their comfort levels, at least a bit, if they can. It’s how we learn and grow.
But I also know trauma survivors who will literally have flashbacks if they encounter anything in a story that triggers them. These people are aware of their limits and avoid anything that might set off a flashback, but sometimes they read (or watch) something that unexpectedly sets off a flashback anyway, but they accept this. They took a risk, it resulted in a bad outcome, and they deal with it. But these people are in their forties and older.
So many younger people are so focused on being kind to each other – which is a wonderful thing! – that they don’t want to hurt anyone, intentionally or otherwise. And of course, they don’t want to be hurt either. Who does? So content warnings might seem to them as an absolute necessity. Movies have ratings and food has a list of ingredients. Why shouldn’t fiction? they argue. Some also suggest that not providing content warnings can hurt your book sales, but I suspect that goes more for self-pubbed and indie writers than for those traditionally published (but I don’t know for sure).
So, wanting to do the right thing, I read as much as I could on content warnings, read social media posts about them, and wrote a blog on my thoughts about them, which you can find here: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2021/06/im-warning-you.html
In the time since I wrote this blog, I continued reading and thinking about content warnings, and here’s where I currently stand.
My first principle as a human is Do No Harm. I thought content warnings might help me avoid hurting anyone, but since the advent of content warnings in fiction some years ago, a number of psychological studies have been done, like this one: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/trigger-warnings-fail-to-help.html
These studies have found that content warnings do not help people, and they can actually hurt them by centering trauma as a defining characteristic of one’s personality, making it more difficult for people to deal with their trauma.
So, given the current data, if content warnings serve no useful purpose and might actually cause harm, I won’t include them in my work. I understand that some readers really want them, and that not including them might cost me sales and lose me readers, but unless new studies provide different data, I won’t risk hurting any readers.
Again, I make no judgments about readers, writers, or editors who believe content warnings should be provided in books. Everyone must do what they think is best.
Including me.
If you’d like to include content warnings in your books, though, here’s a helpful source on how to do it: https://jamigold.com/2019/08/content-warnings-how-and-what-to-include/
WRITING AND PUBLISHING TIPS
Book Recommendation: Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell
Matt Bell is a wonderful writer and teacher, and he has a craft book on revising fiction called Refuse to Be Done coming out in early March, and I highly recommend it.
Amazon
Kindle
Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/refuse-to-be-done-matt-bell/1139771041?ean=9781641293419
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/refuse-to-be-done-matt-bell/1139771041?ean=9781641293426
Matt also puts out a fantastic newsletter filled with writing tips and writing exercises. I highly recommend it as well: https://mattbell.substack.com/
WANT TO STALK ME IRL?
Here are the cons I’m planning on attending this year, Covid willing.
Stokercon. Denver, Colorado. May 12-15, 2022.
World Fantasy Convention 2022, New Orleans. Nov. 3-6, 2022.
WANT TO STALK ME VIRTUALLY?
Want to follow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Twitter: @timwaggoner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw
UNTIL NEXT TIME
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions for me or writing/publishing topics you’d like me to talk about in future newsletters – or you just want to get in touch with me – email me at twaggon1@msn.com.
March 20, 2022
Horror Writing Resources
From time to time, writers message me to ask if I have any good resources for horror writing. Eventually, I created a document that I could send to them (which saves me from typing the same email over and over). I'm always happy to help other writers, and it recently occurred to me that I should share this list here, so that anyone can access it. This resource list is current as of 3/20/2022.
Before I post it, though, I'd be remiss not to mention my two books on horror writing: Writing in the Dark and The Writing in the Dark Workbook (which should come out in late May of this year).
Writing and Networking Resources
· Market listings: Here are a couple listings for horror markets: https://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2018/05/mega-list-of-paying-markets-for-horror.html, https://blog.reedsy.com/publishers/horror/
· Agents:literary agent is the best way to approaching larger book publishers. You can find a list of agents here: Association of Authors Representatives: http://aaronline.org/
· Twitter:There’s a large horror community on Twitter, not just writers, but agents, publishers, and editors too – both small press and large press. This is a great place to connect with other horror professionals. Agents and editors periodically have weekends where they read pitches posted by writers. Here’s a link to an article about these pitch weekends: https://ericaverr.medium.com/pitching-your-book-on-twitter-fests-14a72a34fb60
· Facebook and Facebook groups:While the horror community on Facebook might be smaller than Twitter, it’s still significant. Plus, Facebook has a number of groups that are dedicated to horror writing. The Horror Writers Association also has a Facebook page that anyone can follow. You don’t have to be a member.
· The Horror Writers Association, www.horror.org: There are different levels of membership, and it’s well worth joining even at one of the lower levels. You get access to the HWA newsletter, private message board on the HWA site, and the Mentor Program. The website also has a lot of writing and publishing resources.
· Stokercon, https://www.stokercon.com/: This is the annual convention put on by the Horror Writers Association. It changes location every year, and they’ve recently added virtual components for people who don’t want to or can’t travel. Attending the convention is probably the single best way to connect to the horror community as well as network with agents, publishers, and editors. Agents and editors regularly hold pitch meeting with writers at Stokercon.
· Scares That Care, https://scaresthatcare.org/:This charitable organization presents several different weekend conferences where horror fans can meet horror professionals. This is a great place to meet and interact with fellow writers.
· World Fantasy Convention, https://www.wfc2022.org/: The World Fantasy convention focuses primarily on professional publishing in fantasy, science fiction, and horror. This is not only a great convention for connecting with writers, but it’s an excellent place for professional networking with agents, publishers, and editors.
Websites
Diversity in Horror, http://diversityhorror.blogspot.com/?m=0
Horror Writers Association, www.horror.org
International Thriller Writers Association. www.thrillerwriters.org
Jane Friedman, https://www.janefriedman.com/
Ladies of Horror Fiction, https://www.ladiesofhorrorfiction.com/
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, https://www.sfwa.org/
The Seers’ Table, https://horror.org/category/the-seers-table/
Tim’s Blog, http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
Tim’s YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TimWaggonersWritingintheDark
Women in Horror Month, https://www.womeninhorrormonth.com/
Books on Writing and Writers
Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters, Michael Tierno
Body Trauma: A Writer’s Guide to Wounds and Injuries, David W. Page
Capturing Ghosts on the Page: Writing Horror & Dark Fiction, Kaaron Warren
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel, Tom Monteleone
Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist's Personality, and Career from America's Foremost Creativity Coach, Eric Maisel
Danse Macabre, Stephen King
Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror, Stanley Wiater
Dark Thoughts on Writing, Stanley Wiater
Dark Visions: Conversations with the Masters of Horror Film, Stanley Wiater and Tanya Wiater
The Dead Stage: The Journey from Page to Stage, Dan Weatherer
End of the Road,Brian Keene
For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small-Press Publisher, Jason Sizemore
Forensics and Fiction: Clever, Intriguing, and Downright Odd Questions from Crime Writers, D.P. Lyle
Horror 101: The Way Forward, Joe Mynhardt (ed.)
Horror 201: The Silver Scream, Joe Mynhardt and Emma Audsley (eds.)
The Horror … The Horror: An Autobiography, Rick Hautala
The Horror Writer: A Study of Craft and Identity in the Horror Genre. Joe Mynhardt (ed.)
How to Write Horror Fiction, William F. Nolan
How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction, J.N. Williamson
Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side, Michael A. Arnzen
It’s Alive: Bringing Your Nightmares to Life. Joe Mynhardt and Eugene Johnson (eds.)
The Kick-Ass Writer, Chuck Wendig
Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction, Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller (eds.)
Mark My Words: Read the Submission Guidelines and Other Self-editing Tips, Lee Murray and Angelia Yuriko Smith
The Martial Art of Writing and Other Essays, Alan Baxter
Murder and Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers, D.P. Lyle
Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Teachers,Laurie Lamsen (ed.)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King
On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association, Mort Castle (ed.)
Out in the Dark: Interviews with Gay Horror Filmmakers, Actors, and Authors, Sean Abley
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. Patricia Highsmith.
The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition, Becky Siegel Spratford
The Scream Writers Handbook: How to Write a Terrifying Screenplay in 10 Bloody Steps, Thomas Fenton.
Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, Lucy A. Snyder
Southern Fried and Horrified, Ron Kelly
Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life, Nick Mamatas
Supernatural Horror in Literature, H.P. Lovecraft
Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight V. Swain
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, Benjamin Percy
To Each Their Darkness, Gary A. Braunbeck
What To Do When You Don't Have A Book Coming Out & Even More Sage Advice, Angela Slatter
Where Nightmares Come From: The Art of Storytelling in the Horror Genre.
Wide Open Fear: Collected Southern Dark Columns, Lisa L. Hannett
Wonderbook, Jeff Vandermeer
Write the Fight Right,Alan Baxter
Richard Laymon
Writers Workshop of Horror, Michael Knost (ed.)
Writers Workshop of Horror 2, Michael Knost (ed.)
Writing for Emotional Impact, Karl Iglesias
The Writing Life,Jeff Strand.
Writing Monsters, Philip Athans
Writing the Paranormal Novel, Steven Harper
Writing Horror Fiction, Guy N. Smith
Writing the Uncanny: Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction. Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst (eds.)
You Are Not Your Writing,Angela Slatter
Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Writing, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem
If you have additional horror-writing resources you'd like to share, feel free to list them in the comments.
March 4, 2022
The Long Haul
It’s my birthday month, and this year I turn fifty-eight. I started writing with the intent of making it my life’s work when I was eighteen, which means that I’ve been at this for forty years.
Forty.
Damn.
Years.
I published my first story in my college’s literary magazine in 1985 when I was twenty-one. I published my first novel in 2001 when I was thirty-six. (And I wrote a lot of unpublished stories and novels before I started publishing regularly.) The story was called “Shadow Play,” and it was a science fiction tale about a time travel device that allows you to re-experience every moment of your life. The novel was Dying for It, a work-for-hire humorous erotic mystery. During most of those years, I taught composition and creative writing classes as a part-time instructor at various colleges.
Where am I now, career-wise?
I’ve traditionally published over fifty novels and seven collections of short stories. Most of my published work is original dark fantasy and horror, along with media tie-ins. My fiction has been translated into Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, and Turkish. My articles on writing have appeared in numerous publications, such as Writer’s Digestand The Writer. I’m a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award (and have been nominated three other times as well), I’ve won the HWA’s Mentor of the Year Award, and I’ve been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award (twice), the Scribe Award (six times), and the Splatterpunk Award (once). In the fall of 1999, I started teaching as full-time tenure-track professor at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio, and after this semester, I’ll have only seven more years until I can retire from teaching with full benefits.
(If you’d like more specifics about my career, you can hit my website at www.timwaggoner.com)
So when I realized it’s my fortieth anniversary of setting out to be a writer, I thought I should write a blog to commemorate the occasion. I had no idea what to say, though. “I’ve written a hell of a long time and published stuff that some people read and liked. That’s it – let’s hit the bar!”
I thought about how I see people come into the horror writing community, become an active part of it for a few years, then vanish. I’ve seen this pattern over and over. But I’m still here. Maybe, I thought, I might be able to offer some tips on how I’ve managed to stick it out all these years. So that’s what I decided to write about.
So here – in no particular order – are some tips that might help you get through the long haul.
· Write with intention but without attachment to a specific outcome. I got this idea from writer Taylor Grant. The idea is to write with a specific intention – say, to make a great short story that presents a new take on vampires – but without being attached to any specific outcome. This way, so long as you write the story, you’ve succeeded. Whatever happens afterward – whether or not the story is published, wins awards, hell, whether or not the damn thing is any good in the first place – doesn’t matter. You wrote it, you won. Move on to writing something else. If you can manage this attitude, it can keep you from experiencing negative emotions about whatever happens to your work after you create it.
· Shoot for the moon but don't be crushed if you don't reach it. One of my earliest goals was to become famous enough as a writer to have a shelf in B. Dalton’s bookstore with my name on it. (B. Dalton is long gone, but they did have author name labels for people like Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Isaac Asimov, etc.) Even if B. Dalton’s was still around, I haven’t become famous enough to get my own name label, and I probably never will. I often see writers post on social media that in five years they plan to be making six figures from their writing, have signed a movie option, have won X amount of awards . . . Aiming for goals like these is fine. Being crushed when you (most likely) won’t achieve them – at least, not all of them – is not so fine. You might consider yourself a failure and quit writing. A career in the arts doesn’t run on a timetable. You aim for what you aim for and the results are what they are. You need to make your peace with this is you want to have a sustained career.
· Focus on helping others, on contributing to the writing community. It’s too easy to become self-obsessed when you’re a writer. After all, we spend so much time in our own heads, physically alone when we write, dreaming of the kind of success we so desperately want. But too much focus on the self can be unhealthy and lead to depression and self-loathing. Taking time to focus on others – our family, friends, colleagues – and being a good literary citizen by connecting to and helping other writers, allows us to remember that life is not always about us and our writing. Consider mentoring other writers or volunteering for a writers’ organization. Present workshops at libraries and rec centers. Offer to be a visiting writer for a school in your area. Help out and support other writers on social media. Doing any of these things will help you get out of your head, feel good about yourself, and re-energize you so you’re ready to hit the keyboard again.
· Don't make writing your entire identity.Some writers have other creative outlets, such as drawing, painting, playing a musical instrument, knitting . . . Some have hobbies that have nothing to do with producing creative work, such as birdwatching or amateur astronomy. Teaching fulfills this function for me, even if what I teach is writing. Plus, it has the benefit of helping me focus on others instead of myself. The richer your overall life is, the easier it will be to move past any writing career setbacks.
· Learn from other writers' survival stories. In my twenties, I joined the GEnie network, one of the first social media services. Many writers would post about their triumphs, hardships, failures, and how they deal with them all. I also read as many interviews with writers I could find for the same reason. I learned a ton about what might lie in store for me career-wise as the years went on, and I was able to benefit from other writers’ experiences. I still seek out other writers’ career stories to learn from them.
· Everyone wants to be a star, but if you love your craft above all, you'll be okay with whatever kind of career you have. I think a lot about supporting actors in movies, actors who have bit parts, and those who work as extras. When the credits role, I look at all the names, and I wonder if the lesser-known (or not-known-at-all) actors are happy with their careers or if they wish they were stars too, and the fact they aren’t eats at them. I hope that many of them love acting so much that they feel privileged and happy to ply their craft and improve it, even if they end up doing dinner theater or being cast in diarrhea commercials. I think the vast majority of creative careers of any kind are like those of these actors. I would love to be a writing star. Who wouldn’t? But I try to focus on my love for the craft and not worry too much about what size career I’ve got.
· Don't set stupid deadlines for yourself. In my early twenties, I vowed that if I didn’t have a novel published by the time I was thirty, I’d focus primarily on teaching and just write every once and a while. Of course, thirty came around and I didn’t have a novel out yet. However, an agent called on my thirtieth birthday and offered to represent me, so I figured that was close enough! But making a vow like this is dumb. There are too many factors in traditional publishing outside your control, and you’re more likely to fail to reach a goal on your preferred timetable than achieve it. If you’re going to set deadline-type goals for yourself, make them somewhat flexible, and don’t beat yourself up or consider yourself a failure if it’s going to take more time to get where you want to be.
· Aim for a life in writing. I tell this to students all the time. There’s so little about the publishing aspect of writing that we can control. We can aim for artistic, critical, and financial success, but there’s no guarantee how much – if any – of these things we will get. I often use a sports metaphor. Very few athletes make it to the pros or the Olympics. But there are many, many ways to be involved – to have a life – in sports. I’ve had a life in writing for forty years, and by that measure, I’m a massive success. How many people in this world manage to create a decades-long life for themselves focused entirely on the thing they love most? If you can learn to think like this, career setbacks won’t hurt so much, and they won’t stop you from writing.
· Learn to accept the limits of your control.Or at least learn to make your peace with it somehow. We can’t control the publishing industry. We can’t control how editors and readers respond to our work. We can’t control the circumstances of the world around us. And even if we do our best to stay physically and mentally healthy, we’re still going to get sick and injured at times. We need to do our best to keep working in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, and depending on what those circumstances are, we might write more or less, and we might need to take a break from writing for a bit. Instead of beating ourselves up because we can’t change our circumstances (at least not easily and swiftly), we should congratulate ourselves for adapting and adjusting as need be.
· It's a marathon not a sprint. It’s a cliché, sure, but that doesn’t make it any less true. There’s a reason it’s called a writing career.
· Envy is the writer's disease. We learn by observing others and copying them. We do it as babies and continue doing it all our lives. But if we compare ourselves to others and start wondering why we can’t do what they do, why we don’t get what they get, we eventually stew in our own jealousy and resentment and become poisoned by it. Try to focus on what you do have instead of what you don’t. It’s okay to be a little envious of other writers’ triumphs – it’s only human. But don’t let that envy grow and spread, eventually killing your love for your art.
· What's your bare minimum for success? People tend to focus on their most ambitious goals for success – making millions of dollars from their writing, being world-renowned, and winning at least one Pulitzer Prize. They see anything less than achieving these lofty goals as failure. Instead, ask yourself what’s the least amount of success that will make you happy in your writing career. Regularly publishing your work in venues large of small, traditional or indie? Having a readership (of whatever size) that appreciates your work? Continuing to develop and grow as a writer over the years? Whatever your minimum for success is, there’s a greater chance you’ll achieve it, and a smaller chance you’ll view yourself as a failure. Bonus: Anything you achieve beyond minimum success is an extra gift from the universe.
· Determine what's most important for you: the craft, artistic and critical success, popularity, money. Accept this about yourself. Your priorities as a writer can change over the years. Hell, they can change from day to day, from project to project. But once you figure out what’s most important for you to achieve in your career, the more likely you’ll be able to gauge what success means for you. I would love to be a hugely popular writer who makes a ton of money from his fiction. But evidently I don’t love the prospect that much because I’ve never taken steps toward achieving this goal. I don’t try to create bestselling work. Hell, I don’t try to make my writing as commercial as it could be. I write things because they interest me, I think they’ll be fun to do, I think I’ll learn something from doing them, and I think (or at least hope) that I’ll grow as a writer and as a person. It’s not always easy for me to remember that these are my priorities – especially when I see other writers posting on social media about their commercial successes and I begin to compare my career to theirs – but when I eventually remind myself of what I truly need from my writing career, I tell myself I’m doing all right, and I can get back to work.
· Save good words about your writing. When I run across a good review of one of my books or a positive comment someone makes about me or my writing on social media, I save it. Sometimes I add it to the list of promotional blurbs I keep, but sometimes I just take a screenshot of it with my phone. When I start to feel down about my writing career, I look at these comments and remind myself that there are people who think my writing is good and who enjoy it. I have a terrible time believing anything good about myself or my work, but reading positive comments like these helps me not listen so closely to my own self-doubts.
· Keep making. When I’ve experienced a career setback or have a lull between projects or just feel shitty about myself and my career, I tell myself that all that matters is I keep making. When I was a kid, I made stuff all the time. I drew pictures, created intricate dramatic scenarios to act out with my toys, made my own comics . . . I did these things solely for the joy of creating. These days when I have a setback, I might write something I don’t normally do, like a one-act play or a poem. I might get a new piece of artwork to hang in my office. I might read an interview with or watch a documentary about a different kind of artist – a dancer, a singer, a painter – to learn how they make what they make. Sometimes I think of myself as a maker instead of a writer, and as long as I’m making, I’m expressing the deepest, truest part of myself, and that’s what matters most.
And above all . . .
· Enjoy the ride. Writers can get caught up in all the business concerns of publishing their work to the point where they forget why they started writing in the first place. I started because I love stories of all kinds, and I wanted to make my own. I had so many ideas inside me that I had to let them out. When I started writing with an aim of making a career out of it, I began trying to consciously improve my skills, and constantly bumping up against the limits of my ability could be frustrating. But I even loved the frustrations. But when I start to focus too much on what kind of stories I should write to make money, increase my audience, or win awards – or when I get caught up in the negativity of the latest publishing drama on social media – I lose sight of the ultimate reason I write: to have fun. I write for me, to fulfill myself as an artist and a human being, and to share what I create with people who (hopefully) appreciate it. I write for all the wonderful experiences associated with it – and for all the not-so-wonderful ones that teach me more about myself. And when I start to focus too much on what I haven’t achieved yet, and may never achieve, I forget to enjoy myself. And if we can’t enjoy the creating our art and living an artistic life, what’s the point?
I’ve had so many wonderful experiences over the last forty years of my writing career. I’ve grown from a struggling beginner to a competent professional who regularly publishes. I’ve met so many wonderful people over the years – other writers, readers, editors, publishers, agents, artists, filmmakers – who love writing as much as I do. I’ve challenged myself, battled my own self-doubts and anxieties, and while I’ve learned a ton about my craft, I’ve learned far more about what it means to be Tim Waggoner.
And hopefully I’ll live a few more decades so I can learn even more.
Want to hear how other writers have made – and survived – the long haul? Then check out these books by veteran authors!
· End of the Road, Briane Keene
· Fear in a Handful of Dust, Gary A. Braunbeck
· For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small-Press Publisher, Jason Sizemore
· The Horror . . . The Horror: An Autobiography, Rick Hautala
· On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King
· Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, Lucy A. Snyder
· Southern-Fried and Horrified, Ronald Kelly
· Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life, Nick Mamatas
· A Writer Prepares, Lawrence Block
· A Writer’s Tale, Richard Laymon
· The Writing Life, Jeff Strand
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Novel
Review copies of my forthcoming novel Planet Havoc: Zombicide Invader are available at NetGalley! I’d appreciate it if you’d give the novel a look and leave an honest review: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/245927
Speaking of reviews, early ones for Planet Havochave been good, and Jonathan Maberry was kind enough to read an advanced copy and provide a blurb!
“PLANET HAVOC is the best of all worlds –space adventure, military SF, snarky humor, and zombies! Tim Waggoner brings the pain and all the jolts in this rollicking action horror thriller!” – Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers and KAGEN THE DAMNED
Planet Havocis due out in April and is available for preorder. Here’s a synopsis:
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous adventure.
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world. Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens, desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the galaxy?
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
My next horror/dark fantasynovel is due out this July from Flame Tree Press!
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
You can preorder the book here:
Flame Tree Press: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/we-will-rise-isbn-9781787585249.html
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
A Little Aqua Book of Marine Tales eBook
This originally appeared in a limited hardcover edition as one of Borderland Press’ legendary Little Book series, but now it’s available in a more affordable eBook edition! It’s a collection of stories all centered around the theme of water. I almost drowned when I was nine, so water has played a significant role in much of my horror fiction over the years.
Kindle
NOOK Book
WANT TO STALK ME IRL?
Here are the cons I’m planning on attending this year.
Stokercon. Denver, Colorado. May 12-15, 2022.
World Fantasy Convention 2022, New Orleans. Nov. 3-6, 2022.
WANT TO STALK ME VIRTUALLY?
Want to follow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Twitter: @timwaggoner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw
January 29, 2022
Like the Cool Kids
“There are writers’ cliques in horror, and if you don’t belong to one, you can’t get published. And not only don’t they support new writers, they actively work to keep us out!”
I’ll be fifty-eight soon. I started writing and submitting fiction to publishers when I was eighteen, which means I’m coming up on my fortieth anniversary as a writer. I can’t tell you how many times during my career I’ve heard statements like the one above, and not just regarding horror but other genres too. The people making these statements believe there’s a nebulous group of professional writers who are friends and who won’t allow anyone into their closed circle. They exclusively publish each other’s stories in magazines and anthologies, and they sing the praises of each other’s work and no one else’s. Somehow, they act as gatekeepers for their entire genre, making sure that no new writers can rise to their level in publishing and become a threat to their power and prestige.
Are there writers’ cliques? I suppose it depends on what you consider a clique. There are groups of writers who’ve become friends over the years, maybe because they all started writing at the same time and have a shared history in the publishing industry. Or maybe they’re friends because they met each other and hung out at various conventions over the years. Or maybe they’re fans of each other’s work and became connected that way. Often, it’s a combination of all these things. And yes, if any of the writers edit a magazine or anthology, they’re more likely to invite their friends to submit because they know the quality of their writing and that they’ll be easy to work with. But do these groups really act as genre gatekeepers, repelling any new writers who dare to challenge their supremacy?
Not that I’ve seen in the last four decades.
“Sure you’d say that, Tim,” you might be thinking. “You’ve been writing and publishing for a long time now. You are one of the cool kids.”
Allow me to laugh my ass off for a few minutes before I go on.
. . .
Okay, I’m back <wipes away tears of hilarity>.
I’ve never felt like an insider of any kind during my life, and while I’m friends with a lot of writers, these friendships in and of themselves haven’t furthered my career. I’ve gotten encouragement, advice, and support from these friendships – I mean, isn’t that what friends do for each other? – and sure, there’s a certain amount of networking that goes on, but it’s not as if any of us know The Big Secret to having insanely massive success as a writer. If we did, we’d take advantage of this secret ourselves and be swimming in cash like Unca Scrooge in his money bin. Whatever success I’ve achieved in my career has come two ways: 1) Writing regularly and constantly striving to become better at my craft and 2) Persisting in the face of rejections, self-doubt, poor reviews, and career setbacks. So when I get invited to submit to an anthology or when a friend tells me about a writing opportunity that’s not common knowledge, it’s because I’m a skilled writer with a long track record of publication. I’ve taught college writing classes for almost as long as I’ve been writing, and I’ve liked the vast majority of students that I’ve had over the years. But the ones I’ve recommended for various writing opportunities have been the ones with the most skill, not the ones I liked the most.
In my experience, there’s no such thing as all-powerful cabals of writers who work to keep newer writers from rising to their exalted level. So why do newer writers continue to believe in such cabals, and why do rumors about their existence pop up again and again throughout the years? I don’t know for certain, but you likely won’t be surprised to learn I have a few theories.
1) A need for control. So much of a writer’s career when it comes to publishing is beyond our control. It’s difficult to believe that luck plays a gigantic role in which writers go on to big careers. We can’t control luck (although we can prepare ourselves to take advantage of whatever luck comes our way). And we sure don’t want to believe that our writing, while (hopefully) good, isn’t good enough for us to climb the ladder of success much farther than where we’re at currently. It’s far easier to blame someone, anyone, for our lack of major success. Blaming people gives us something specific to focus on rather than something abstract, like luck, and if some cabal of writers is out to get us, it’s because we must be a threat to them, which means we must be as good a writer as they are, if not better. Not only is the fantasy of the sinister writing cabal more emotionally satisfying, it allows us to control the narrative of our career, giving us a villain to counter the hero we so desperately want to see ourselves as.
2) Envy.We often admire those writers we see in our imaginary cabal, and we wish we could be part of their circle. We want them to recognize us as an equal and anoint us a True Writer, worthy of being one of the cool kids. If we believe there’s an inside, it hurts to think we’re on the outside and may always be.
3) Social media. We see writers post successes on social media all the time, and often these successes demonstrate that these writers are leveling up in their careers. Major book contracts. Critical acclaim. Award wins. Film adaptations. It’s only natural for us to wonder when we’ll get these things, and we fear that we may never get them. It can begin to seem that every writer aside from us is having fantastic success all the time, but this is an illusion. We pay more attention to these announcements than when someone posts that they managed to write 500 words today. Writers with major success are few and far between compared to all the writers chugging away, writing and hoping, day after day.
4) Belief that relationships in the writing community should be transactional. We supported a writer when they were starting out, engaged with them on social media, commented on their posts, retweeted announcements about their book releases . . . and when they start to have success, they don’t reach down and lift us up to their level. We can become angry, even bitter. We say they’ve forgotten where they came from, that they’ve turned their back on the people who helped them when they were coming up.
5) Career expectations warped by society’s view of success. American culture says you’re not a true success unless you become mega famous and mega rich (and it doesn’t hurt to be mega beautiful, either). If society has been ramming this definition of success down your throat all your life, you end up believing it, even if you don’t realize it. So whatever success we doachieve is like cold, bitter ashes in our mouth. Because it’s not – and can never be – enough.
6) We overestimate our writing ability. A lot of us fear that we’re not good enough writers, but many of us believe we are fucking AWESOME! Not only that, but our writing is so much better than the shit more successful writers crap out. How can they be such big hits when we’re not? We come to believe that something is seriously wrong with publishing when such a profound injustice can occur. The only way someone as talented as us isn’t successful yet has to be because someone is purposefully keeping us down.
So if there aren’t any sinister cabals preventing your success, and belonging to a clique won’t help your career in any appreciable way, how can you, all by your lonesome, do the things that these mythical cabals are said to do?
1) Continue improving as a writer. Whatever success we get in the publishing world comes from the quality of our work. Sometimes that means literary excellence, sometimes it means our work is entertaining, sometimes it means our work fits the needs of the current market, and sometimes it’s all three. But the quality of our work is the only thing that we can really control, and while we may not all have the capability of becoming Pulitzer Prize winners, we can all improve.
2) Find a niche that works for you. One of the reasons writers achieve success is that they’re recognized as producing a certain kind of work: literary horror, humorous romance, fast-paced thrillers . . . If you can find a specialty that works for you – one you enjoy and that readers respond to – you’re more likely to find some measure of success, even if you never become a bestseller. And don’t just write typical genre fare. Write the stories only you can tell. Look at the most successful authors in your field. None of them are the same. They have their own voices, visions, and themes. You should too.
3) Try writing something different. On the other hand, maybe you already have a specialty and your career isn’t going anywhere. Maybe you should experiment a bit, try writing some other stuff, and see if maybe a different genre/niche might work better for you career-wise. For example, John Jakes started out writing science fiction before becoming a bestseller writing historical fiction. Lawrence Block wrote soft-core erotica as a young author before turning to mystery fiction. Maybe you just need a change.
4) Make connections with people for the right reasons. When I first started going to conventions, I read articles and books on networking and tried to employ the techniques I learned. I felt awkward, and more importantly, I felt like I was trying to cynically use people to further my own career. I said fuck it, I’m just going to be myself and if I make connections with people, it’ll be because I like them and they like me, not because I read some goddamn business book filled with networking techniques. I don’t try to force connections, and I don’t expect those connections to lead to anything other than my getting to know some great people. If those connections end up benefitting my career, it's a nice bonus.
5) Support others without expecting any support in return. I regularly like, comment, and share other authors’ social media posts, but I don’t expect them to do anything for me in return. If they do, I appreciate it, but my support doesn’t come with a price. If writers email me asking for advice, I give it without considering how they’ll repay me. Expecting one-to-one reciprocity for your support and not getting it will only lead to anger and resentment on your part. Understand this: No one owes you anything for your support. Your support should be freely given without any expectation of reward. If it isn’t, it’s not truly support. It’s merely you trying to use others for career advancement.
6) Understand that other writers can’t work miracles for you. Sometimes when I hear a new writer wonder why more successful writers don’t help them, I think, “What the hell do you think we can do for you?” We can’t work magic and transform you into a wildly successful author. We can recommend you to agents and editors, but we can’t make them take you on. I’ve recommended a number of writers over the years – some of them well-published professionals – and very few of those recommendations have paid off for them. I’ve taught probably thousands of students over the years, and only a small percentage of them have gone on to any kind of writing career. Plus, we can’t help everyone who wants our help. If we tried, we’d never have time to write anything of our own. I help newer writers by teaching classes and workshops, as well as mentoring writers through the Horror Writers Association’s mentoring program. I also write this blog, put publishing and writing tips in my newsletter, and record videos about writing and publishing for my YouTube channel. And I’ve written two books on writing horror: Writing in the Dark and The Writing in the Dark Workbook (which is forthcoming). Sure, these things promote my work, but they also allow me to give advice to many writers at once. I do what I can, where I can, how I can, and I choose how much or how little of it to do at any given time for my health and my sanity.
7) Forget society’s definition of success. If you buy into the American myth that mega success is the only real success, you’ll always believe yourself to be a failure, no matter how much writing success you have.
8) Have realistic expectations about a writing career. Recently, Laird Barron posted on Twitter that “Every day, art Twitter expresses shock and amazement that most artists live and die in obscurity.” This is the painful truth of living a life in the arts, and you need to make your peace with it. Very few people on Earth read for pleasure, and many of them probably don’t enjoy the kind of fiction you prefer to write. Even the biggest flop of a movie has millions of more viewers than your fiction will have readers (maybe in your entire career). Learn that it’s okay to have a small audience that gets your stuff and enjoys it. Learn to appreciate the experiences you gain from a life in writing. Realize that writers you consider masters today will be forgotten soon after they die – just as most of us likely will. Try not to let this get you down. Appreciate the moments as you live them, write for today, enjoy your life and career, and let tomorrow take care of itself.
9) Make peace with not having much control. You can rage about not having control or you can accept it, but you will never get control over every aspect of your writing career. If you accept this, your life will be a hell of a lot easier and more enjoyable.
10) Understand it’s all a crapshoot in the end. There is nothing you can purposefully do to ensure that you have mega success as a writer. NOTHING. No one is trying to keep you from succeeding. The odds of any big success in the arts are so slim as to be almost nonexistent. That doesn’t mean your shouldn’t try to take your career as far as you can in the time you have – you should! But your primariy concern should be producing good work and sharing it with the world (even if it’s an extremely small percentage of the world). Your life won’t be worth more if you’re one of the few lucky ones and achieve mega success, and it won’t be worth less if your success is minimal. Be ready to take advantage if and when luck comes your way, but in the meantime, just keep writing. And for fuck’s sake, try to enjoy the journey.
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Novel
Advance reviews of Planet Havoc have been good, and Jonathan Maberry was kind enough to read an advanced copy and provide a blurb!
“PLANET HAVOC is the best of all worlds –space adventure, military SF, snarky humor, and zombies! Tim Waggoner brings the pain and all the jolts in this rollicking action horror thriller!” – Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers and KAGEN THE DAMNED
Planet Havocis due out in April and is available for preorder.
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous adventure from the bestselling game, Zombicide: Invader
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world. Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens, desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the galaxy?
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
My next horror novel is due out this July from Flame Tree Press!
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
You can preorder the book here:
Flame Tree Press: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/we-will-rise-isbn-9781787585249.html
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
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December 28, 2021
You Can't Fire Me!
The other day I read a post on social media from someone announcing their retirement from writing. This wasn’t one of those attention-seeking posts that writers sometimes make, where they saythey want to quit writing, but what they’re really doing is fishing for reassurance. “No, don’t quit! We love your writing and we love yoooooouuuuuu!” The post I’m talking about was a serious announcement of how the person’s life circumstances had changed and they no longer found satisfaction in writing. The person had started a new job that offered opportunities for being creative in different ways than writing fiction, and they felt very positive about their new direction in life.
After reading this, I started thinking about another writer, one who’d messaged me a while ago saying that they were going to quit writing. They’d suffered a great deal of loss in a short span of time and no longer felt they could continue producing fiction. This writer was a critical success in the horror field, but – like the vast majority of us – hadn’t gotten rich off their writing. It had been a while since I’d checked in with this writer, so I decided to take a look at some of their recent social media posts to see how they were doing. I was glad to see that they’d finished and submitted a new novel in the last month.
And this got me thinking about Ronald Kelly. Ron sold his first horror novel to Zebra Books in 1989, during the legendary 80’s horror boom, and he published seven more novels with Zebra before the horror market collapsed in 1996. Discouraged, he retired from writing for ten years. But fans and fellow writers continued reaching out to him via social media during this time, telling him how much they enjoyed his work and urging him to begin writing again. Eventually, he did, and now he’s regularly publishing in the small press and greatly enjoying his career resurgence. Here’s a link to Ron’s website if you’d like to learn more about him and check out some of his work: https://www.ronaldkelly.com/
I started writing fiction seriously, with the intention of making it my life’s work, forty years ago. I’ve also taught college writing courses for thirty-five years, the last twenty-three as a full-time tenured professor. While my writing brings in a decent amount of extra money each year, if I quit tomorrow, it would have little economic impact on me. My day job provides me with regular income and health benefits, as well as retirement benefits. (And assuming that society doesn’t collapse into a Mad Max-type hellscape soon, I’ll be able to retire in seven years.) The only reason for me to write is because I want to. I’ve published a lot of stuff in the last four decades of my career: fifty-one novels, seven short story collections, ten novellas, and too many articles to count. I’ve won three Bram Stoker Awards, been a finalist for three more Stokers, been a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, a multiple finalist for the Scribe Award, and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. Isn’t that enough for one career? And while I’ve worked toward mainstream success throughout the last forty years, I haven’t achieved it, and I doubt I’ll suddenly break out as a bestselling author at this point. My freshman comp teacher in college, Pam Doyle, urged me to take my writing as far as I could. Maybe I’ve done that, and there is no farther for me to go.
Don’t worry. I’m not planning on quitting anytime soon. I still have four books that I’ve contracted to write, and I’ve always said that I need to write the same way I need to breathe. I don’t think I could quit if I wanted to. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about quitting sometimes. Hell, I’ve probably thought about it, to one degree of seriousness or another, hundreds of times over the years.
Quitting is viewed as one of the worst things you can do in American culture. It’s giving up, showing weakness, proving you don’t have what it takes to keep going, to keep fighting. But quitting writing – for whatever length of time – isn’t necessarily bad. As a matter of fact, it could be exactly what you need.
Why You Should Quit Writing (or at Least Take a Break)
1) You’re not enjoying yourself. Writing isn’t always fun and games, of course. There’s a lot of hard work involved, not just in terms of craft but in terms of developing psychological resilience (to rejections, bad reviews, poor sales, etc.) But somewhere along the way, you should be getting some satisfaction from the process, and if you aren’t, why do it? Writing might not always make you happy, but in the end, it should leave you feeling fulfilled.
2) You find writing and publishing emotionally and perhaps even physically destructive. Maybe the writing and publishing process provokes strong negative emotions in you – anxiety, depression, self-loathing, etc. Maybe you’re giving up sleep to write, giving up exercise, giving up time for your loved ones. Instead of writing feeding you, it’s draining you. If you can’t find a way to deal with these negative emotions, and they keep getting worse, maybe it’s a sign that a writing career – or at least the way you’re currently approaching your career – isn’t for you.
3) You’ve explored writing enough to satisfy yourself. Often, creative people try out a lot of different types of art – writing, painting, music – at different times in their life. They’re explorers more than they are careerists, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re an explorer, you might write and publish for several years, learn what you need to from it, then move on to trying out another art form. When you do this, you’re not quitting writing; you’re graduating from it and moving on.
4) You want/need to put your efforts toward other areas of your life. Got children? The younger they are, the more they need you to be present for them, and the more of your energy they’ll take (the little vampires). You may not have anything left over for writing, and that’s okay. This is exactly how it should be. Maybe work heats up and you have to pull extra shifts. Maybe your job is downsized and you need to go back to school for retraining. Maybe your marriage is having issues and you and your spouse need to go into couple’s counseling. Maybe you or a loved one is facing a serious medical issue. Whatever the case, it’s okay to put writing on hold to deal with what needs to be dealt with. You’re not a quitter; your priorities just need to shift for a while.
Why You Shouldn’t Quit Writing
1) Your work is valued (by someone, somewhere). Maybe you don’t have a zillion readers and aren’t getting rich from your writing, but someone out there will read it and enjoy it. It might even change their lives in ways you’ll never know. Your art is a contribution to the world, and the world is a better place because your work is in it.
2) You find writing meaningful. If the act of writing, of creating, of making something that didn’t exist before, which would never exist all if it wasn’t for you, is meaningful to you, and you find deep satisfaction in that meaning, then that’s an excellent reason to keep writing despite all the difficulties you might encounter. Instead of thinking of yourself as a writer, think of yourself as a meaning-maker.
3) Writing leads to personal growth for you. Writing can stretch your mind creatively and intellectually, and publishing and connecting with a community of writers can help you grow as both an artist and a human being. If you find this growth valuable, it’s a good reason to keep writing.
4) You’re still having fun. If you’re enjoying yourself as a writer, why stop? Maybe you can only afford to put a small amount of your time and energy into your writing, but if it enhances your life, why quit entirely?
5) You’ll be (more) miserable if you stop. Maybe the more difficult aspects of writing and publishing get you down (maybe a lotsometimes), but you know if you quit entirely, you’ll feel even worse. Why would you do that to yourself?
Ways of Avoiding Feeling Like You Should Quit
1) Learn to deal with rejection. If you’re doing traditional publishing, you’re going to get rejected by editors and agents – especially when you’re first starting out – and you need to learn how to keep going despite these rejections. There are tons of books, articles, websites, and YouTube videos that give advice on how to deal with rejection, and authors often talk about how they deal with rejection in interviews or on social media. Learn as much as you can about how others deal with rejection so you can too.
2) Learn to deal with indifference. You write something, publish it (traditionally or indie), and the world responds with a massive shrug. This can be far worse than getting a ton of bad reviews. Bad reviews are at least some kind of response. There’s nothing worse for an artist than the feeling that their work is invisible. It happens, though, and you have to be able to ignore it and move on.
3) Learn to deal with setbacks. Bad reviews, poor sales, your publisher going out of business before your book or story can be released, bad agents, bad editors, financial problems . . . Writers can experience all kinds of setbacks (just like we can in every other aspect of life), and they can derail us if we can’t find a way to deal with them.
4) Learn to recognize the signs of burnout. People on social media are always touting how important it is to be “grinding” 24/7, and if you’re aren’t, they say you’re not working hard enough, you’re not serious about your career. Fuck those people. Sure, working hard is important, but if you overwork yourself and burn out, you may stop writing altogether. I’ve seen it happen to writers a lot over the years. Slown down, take breaks, take vacations, rest and relax. You need to take care of your whole self in order to keep writing.
5) Understand it’s okay to work at your own pace. This is another bit of advice when it comes to “grinding.” Find out what pace works for you and don’t be afraid to adjust it as necessary as time goes on.
6) It’s okay to take breaks – sometimes long ones. Need to stop writing for a few days? A few weeks? Months? Years? It’s easy to get down on yourself for taking a break, easy to feel like a failure. But a break can be an important part of a person’s overall creative process and creative life. If you really need to take time off from writing, do it. Your writing will be there when you come back to it.
7) Limit your time on social media. I see people – especially younger writers – giving and reinforcing a lot of bad advice on social media. (The all-important, never-ending “grind” is an example.) Plus, it’s easy to get discouraged when you see other writers having more success than you, having more sales, better reviews, movie deals, awards, showing up on best-of-the-year lists . . . Envy is the writer’s disease, and you have to be careful not to contract it. So if you find yourself becoming depressed and feeling bad about yourself as a writer after spending time on social media, limit your exposure to it.
8) Don’t read reviews. There will inevitably be readers who think what you write is the worst piece of shit ever produced in the history of the human race, and they won’t be shy about posting their opinion on Twitter, Amazon, and Goodreads. If you find bad reviews shake your confidence, stay away from all reviews of your work. At a conference, I once heard the science fiction writer Mike Resnick say, “I never argue with people’s opinions about my work,” and I adopted this attitude. It helps me remember that any review – whether from an established critic or a random reader – is still just an opinion.
9) Do read reviews. On the other hand, reading positive reviews can make you feel like your work is appreciated, boost your confidence, and give you energy to keep on writing. The trick is to read only good reviews, so if you start reading a review, and you discover it’s a negative one, you have to stop reading it immediately and stop yourself from returning to it, which is far easier said than done. Some writers have friends who copy positive reviews they find and send them to the writer. This way, you’ll only see the positive ones. (And you can do this for your writer friends too.)
10) Switch things up. If you’re getting sick of writing fiction, try writing a poem or an article. Or if you rather slam your hand in a car door than write another horror story, try writing science fiction. Work on a novel instead of a short story, or vice versa. Create a presentation for a workshop. Make a YouTube video. The old saying, “A change is as a good as a rest” applies here.
11) Collect positive feedback on your work, and read it when you need it. I keep a list of blurbs that other writers have given me along with quotes from positive reviews. When I’m feeling down about myself and my writing, I sometimes read over these quotes to remind me that there are people who find value in my work. If I see someone post something positive about my work on social media, I sometimes take a screen grab of it, and when I’m feeling down, I’ll pull up the image on my phone and read it.
12) Look back at how far you’ve come. When I’m feeling down, sometimes I read over my bibliography to remind myself of how much work I’ve published over the years. I keep author copies on shelves in my office, and I can turn around in my chair and look at them whenever I need to remind myself that I’ve come a long way from that eighteen-year-old who decided he wanted to be a writer so long ago.
13) Understand what kind of success you really need. I’ve read more than one article by literary writers who claim to be failures because their first novels weren’t huge critical and financial successes. I’m always like, “My dude, the audience for literary fiction is small already, and most books that are bestsellers are entertainment-based popular fiction anyway. Don’t get so down on yourself.” Most of us will never write a bestselling novel or become rich from our writing or win tons of awards and achieve widespread critical acclaim. If we set the bar for success too high, we’re bound to fail, over and over, and it’s only natural that we may come to feel like losers and want to quit writing. Having high goals is great, but ask yourself not what your highest goals for success are, but what your bottom line for success is. What’s the least amount of success you need in order to keep writing year after year? This way, while you may shoot for higher levels of success, you know that you’re already enough of a success to keep going.
14) Write with intention but without attachment to a specific outcome. This is a Zen concept I learned from the writer Taylor Grant. You create a piece of writing with intention – say, to make it the best, most entertaining story you’re capable of at this moment in time – and when it’s finished, you’ve accomplished your intention. Whatever happens after that doesn’t matter. Publish the story, don’t publish it. Win awards for it or don’t. This is the problem the literary writers I mentioned above had. They wrote their debut novels with attachment to a specific outcome – financial and critical success of a certain kind – and so when that outcome didn’t occur, they considered themselves failures. Having attachment to a specific outcome sets you up for failure. This doesn’t mean that the outcome you desire won’t happen; it just means that you’re aren’t attached to it happening. You can enjoy the desired outcome if it occurs, but you won’t be emotionally devastated if it doesn’t. I suspect a lot of people who quit writing do so because they’re too attached to specific outcomes in their careers.
Whenever I talk about dealing with the emotionally difficult aspects of living a creative life, I recommend people read Eric Maisel’s books. He’s a psychologist who specializes in helping creatives, and he’s written a number of incredibly useful books on dealing with the ups and down of being an artist. My favorite is Creativity for Life. Here’s Eric’s website if you’d like to check out his resources: https://ericmaisel.com/
The most important thing to remember about writing and publishing is that they are expressions of who you are. They are not you. You – the complete individual – is more important than any one thing you do or don’t do. Your writing should first and foremost serve you, and if it isn’t, it’s okay to make a change, take a break, or leave it behind, whether for a short interval or for the rest of your life. You need to do what’s best for you. Selfishly, I hope you’ll keep writing or, after a break, come back to it. I want to read as much good work as I can before I die. But the most important thing is that you’re happy and healthy, whatever that means for you.
Department of Shameless Self-Promotion
Planet Havoc: Zombicide Invader
If you’re a fan of my novel Alien: Prototype, then you should love this one! It’s an original adventure set in the Zombicide Invader universe. It’s due out in April and is available for preorder.
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous adventure from the bestselling game, Zombicide: Invader
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world. Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens, desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the galaxy?
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
We Will Rise, my next horror novel for Flame Tree Press, is due out in July 2022 and is available for preorder.
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
You can preorder the book here:
Flame Tree Press: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/we-will-rise-isbn-9781787585249.html
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
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December 23, 2021
Do You Fear What I Fear?
Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in the December HWA NY Galactic Terrors Reading Series. When James Chambers initally asked me to read, he wanted to know if I had any Christmas-themed horror stories. I only had one -- "The Anti-Claus" -- and I planned on reading it. Then several days before the reading, Jim sent an email with details of the reading, including the fact that the readings were supposed to be ten minutes in length. I realized "The Anti-Claus" was too long, so rather than abridge it or read an excerpt, I decided to write a new story. I wrote it the afternoon before the reading, making sure to keep it short enough that it would fit the ten-minute slot. People seemed to like the story well enough, so I thought I'd share it here for you to read. Happy Holidays!
If you'd like to listen to me read the story, you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RvjF--x8uc
And if you'd like to read "The Anti-Claus" (which I posted last year) you can do so here: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-anti-claus.html
DO YOU FEAR WHAT I FEAR?
BY TIM WAGGONER
“Mommy, Santa’s real, isn’t he?”
You gaze upon the Christmas tree – antique glass-spun ornaments, blinking multicolored lights, gold garland, silver tinsel, mound of presents beneath. You’re so caught up in the beauty of the sight, are luxuriating in it, that it takes you several seconds to realize that Lucas has spoken. You look down at your son and put a hand on his shoulder. Lucas is wearing the new pajamas he got last night – a Christmas-Eve tradition from when you were a child. His PJ’s are red and dotted with tiny white snowmen, the cloth soft and warm to your touch.
You smile. “Whatever would make you ask such a thing?”
“Some kids at school were talking about it at lunch the other day. They said believing in Santa is babyish, and that everybody knows moms and dads are really the ones who give the presents.”
His eyes beg you to tell him what he wants to hear.
Your smile falters. When you were Lucas’ age, or near to it, you asked your mother the same question.
I guess you’re old enough to know the truth now, your mother said. You feel your jaw clench in anger, and you force yourself to relax. This is Christmas morning, after all, a time for happy feelings only.
“Of course Santa’s real,” you say. “Never doubt it.”
Lucas grins. “Can I start passing out presents now?”
It’s tradition in your family that no one starts opening presents until everyone has theirs, and then you take turns opening them one by one. Lucas loves to be the present-passer-outer, not only because he gets to handle all the presents, but so he can make the process go faster.
“Sure,” you say.
Lucas whoops, runs to the tree, sits down, and grabs the first present closest to him.
“This one’s Dad’s . . .” He pushes it aside, grabs another. “This one’s Mom’s . . . Yay! Here’s one of mine!”
As Lucus continues sorting presents, your husband comes over and slips an arm around your waist.
“I love seeing him excited like this,” Kenny says. Like you, he’s wearing a robe – Christmas-red like Lucas’ PJ’s – and he’s also wearing a Santa hat, just as he does every year. He holds a coffee mug with a cartoon reindeer on the side, and he brings it to his lips and takes a sip. He grins then. “Almost as much as I love seeing you get excited.”
Your mug has a cartoon Santa struggling to stuff himself down a chimney. You added eggnog-flavored creamer to your coffee, and when you take a sip, you sigh with pleasure.
It’s true. When it comes to Christmas, you always make sure to do it up right. The outside of your house is festooned with Christmas lights. A fire crackles in the fireplace, and Christmas stockings hang from the hearth. On the mantle, a scented candle burns, filling the air with the delicious scent of apple cinnamon, alongside it several nutcrackers and an Elf on the Shelf. The TV is tuned to a station that plays nonstop Christmas music, and there are holiday-scented soaps in each of the bathrooms. Tins of Christmas cookies sit on the kitchen counter, along with homemade fudge and packages of candy canes. Later, after you’ve finished opening presents, you’ll put the ham in the oven and start working on the side dishes while Lucas plays happily – and no doubt noisily – with his Christmas loot.
Life doesn’t get any better than this. This is exactly how Christmas should be – perfect in every detail.
You hear a soft cracking sound, like glass breaking, and Lucus cries out.
“Ow!”
He raises his right hand, looks at the back of it, then holds it out to you.
“Mommy? What happened?”
You pull away from Kenny and hurry over to your son. You put your mug on the coffee table, kneel, take Lucas’ wrist, and bring his hand close to your face to examine it. A thin line runs from the base of his pinky all the way to his thumb. At first you think he’s somehow cut himself, but there’s no blood. You press your index finger against the line – no, the crack – near his thumb. You’re careful not to press too hard, but the skin gives way beneath your finger anyway, fragile as eggshell. Lucas cries out again, yanks his hand away from you, and cradles it to his chest. He fixes you with an accusing glare.
“That hurt, Mommy!’
“I’m . . . I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Your stomach flips and you fear you’re going to vomit eggnog-flavored coffee. This can’t be happening, can’t be real. People don’t just, just break.
The scent of apple cinnamon grows thicker then, becoming cloying and overwhelming, like rotted fruit. The fire sputters, flares bright, and then dies. Acrid smoke curls from the charred log, and the stink of it burns the back of your throat. The music on the TV slows down, the singer’s voice – Bing Crosby’s, you think – becomes deep and distorted, and the lyrics to the familiar carol change, become sinister. The tree lights begin blinking frantically, their pattern erratic, and then one by one they burst with sharp little pops, until the tree is dark. The garland falls apart, pieces drifting to the floor like autumn leaves, and the tinsel shrivels and turns black. The spun-glass ornaments – which have been in your family for generations – lose their luster, become dull and dingy before crumbling away to nothing. The tree itself turns brown and dry, branches curling inward like the legs of a dying spider. The presents’ wrapping paper fades, tears in numerous places, bows and ribbons fraying. You know that if you go into the kitchen, you’ll find the Christmas treats you made spoiled, the ham in the refrigerator rotten and rank.
This isn’t happening, you tell yourself. I won’t let it happen.
“Let’s open our presents!”
You try to sound happy, enthusiastic – try to sound joyful, goddamn it – but your tone is strained and manic.
You grab the first present you see, not caring if it’s yours or not, and try to unwrap it. But its substance has become soft as a rotting melon, and your fingers break the surface and sink inside. With a cry of disgust, you pull your hands free, fingers now covered with viscous, foul-smelling muck. You shake them hard, trying to get the shit off of you, but it clings stubbornly to your skin.
“Mommy, I’m scared.”
You look at Lucas, see that his face, neck, and hands are fissured with dozens of cracks now. One of his eyes is bisected by a crack, and several of his teeth have fallen out and rest in his lap. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, but before he can speak again, he falls apart. His body collapses in on itself – his pajamas too – with a rustling sound like insect carapaces rubbing together – becoming a pile of shards no thicker or sturdier than the ornaments’ spun glass. No blood, no organs, no skeleton . . . Lucas was absolutely empty inside.
“No,” you say, then louder, “No!”
You feel Kenny’s hand come down lightly on your shoulder.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says.
His hand slips away, and you hear the dry rustling of his body falling apart like Lucas’. You glance over your shoulder at the pile of paper-thin shards that was once your husband, and you begin to cry.
When you were a child, you loved Christmas more than anything, but when your mother told you the truth about Santa, something died inside you. Christmas was never the same after that, and what was more, you learned that you couldn’t trust your parents. They lied to you about Santa, and if they could lie about that, what else might they lie to you about? And if they – the two people who were supposed to love you more than anyone in the world – couldn’t be trusted, how could you trust anyone?
The house melts around you like a washed-out painting, and for a moment your vision blurs. When it clears, you’re no longer crying. You’re looking at a small room with four blank walls. The place is furnished with an old couch, an equally old easy chair, a small flatscreen TV set atop a wooden stand – which is playing quite normal-sounding Christmas music – and a coffee table. Your Santa mug rests on its surface, half full of eggnog-flavored coffee. It’s Christmas morning, this is your apartment, and you are alone.
You’ve been that way for most of your life. You had no friends growing up – you never trusted anyone enough to let them get close to you – and you kept to yourself in college for the same reason. After you graduated and starting working at the bank, you tried going on a few dates, but nothing ever came of them. As the years passed, you tried to convince yourself that your mother had done you a favor by telling you about Santa. An ugly truth is better than a pretty illusion, you’d think, but you’ve never been able to bring yourself to fully believe it. And somewhere along the way, you came to realize that your life didn’t have to be empty, not if you didn’t want it to be. Not if you believed. And in the end, isn’t that what Christmas is all about – belief? Problem is, you can get started just fine, but you have trouble keeping it going. Your mother’s voice always breaks through and ruins everything. Sometimes you’re afraid you’ll never be free of your mother’s voice, that you’re fated to always be alone, living within the prison of your own distrust.
“No,” you whisper. “It won’t be like that. I won’t let it.”
You close your eyes tight, furrow your brow, ball your hands into fists, and concentrate.
This time it’ll last. This time it’ll be forever.
After several moments, you hear the sound of a fire crackling, inhale the lovely rich scent of apple cinnamon.
You open your eyes and smile.
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November 18, 2021
Writing Characters From Diverse Backgrounds
Before we begin, the topic for this blog is about the changing ways I’ve explored gender, sexual, racial, and societal diversity in my writing throughout the years. Just in case this post attracts the attention of hate-trolls who are against all those things, let me make something perfectly clear. Racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, antisemites, Islamophobes, Nazis, MAGA-heads – anyone who doesn’t believe that all human beings are equal, that difference should be celebrated instead of vilified, that what unites us is more important that what divides us, that we can all make a better world if we work together – should fuck off into the sun. I don’t give a shit what you think about anything, least of all what you think of this post or what you think of me.
Now that that’s out of the way . . .
I’m a fifty-seven-year-old cishet white guy who grew up in a small town in Southwestern Ohio, I lived in Columbus – the state’s capitol city – for nine years, and before that briefly in Illinois and Indiana. But I’ve always considered SW Ohio my home, for better or worse, and I live in the region today, and have for the last couple decades. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that there wasn’t a great deal of diversity in my hometown when I was growing up. One of my classmates was Asian, but her parents were white, so I assumed she was adopted. One of my best friends was gay, but he didn’t come out to me until we were in college. (My favorite cousin was gay too, but I didn’t learn this until I was well into adulthood.) There were only Christian churches in town, and either you attended one or you didn’t. (I didn’t.) That was the extent of religious diversity. All of the teachers I had were white, and the only thing that clearly set them apart from the majority of people in my town was the fact they’d all gone to college.
It wasn’t until I went to college myself that I experienced real diversity, meeting people from many different backgrounds and cultures. My bachelor’s degree is in secondary education, and I student taught at a high school with a predominately African-American population. After I got my master’s degree, I began teaching college writing classes as an adjunct, and my colleagues and students were diverse, and it’s been that way for the last thirty years of my teaching career, the last twenty-two of which I’ve spent at an urban community college.
From the moment I began college, I’ve lived in a diverse world, and I’ve attempted to reflect that in my writing. But the discourse in the writing community about how and when to incorporate diverse characters in fiction has changed a great deal over the years. These changes have prompted me to think more deeply about how I deal with diversity in my work or, because I am a middle-aged cishet white man, if I even should try.
I don’t remember the first time I consciously decided to include elements of diversity in a story. It probably was sometime in my twenties. I wrote a short story about a character encountering God, who manifested as a young African-American boy with a prosthetic leg. In the end, the boy gives his leg to the main character. Why, I’m not sure. I remember that the ending was supposed to be symbolic, but damned if I can remember symbolic of what, exactly. I purposely chose this manifestation of God by contemplating what a majority white society might least expect an all-powerful deity to be. Someone young, disabled, from a race that wasn’t regarded as fully equal by a white majority, I decided. The story wasn’t very good, and I don’t think I ever submitted it anywhere.
I started out writing fantasy novels set in imaginary lands (all unpublished), so real-world diversity wasn’t an issue for me then. I attempted a couple mystery novels that were also never published, but I don’t remember consciously thinking about diversity when I wrote them. It was sometime in the mid-nineties when I wrote The Harmony Society that I first began purposely creating a (slightly) diverse cast of characters, and I continued doing so in the books I wrote from that point on. I portrayed diversity simply back then. I began alternating the genders of the main characters in my stories. Since over half the human race are women, I decided I should reflect that in my work. Characters’ additional backgrounds might be indicated by description or by their surname, or perhaps by a comment they made, but I didn’t go into great detail about issues related to their race, gender identity, sexuality, religious beliefs, political affiliations, etc. My stories were about people encountering bizarre and dangerous things, and I wrote my characters as individuals focused on dealing with those things. I wasn’t writing in-depth character studies. Online discourse was in its infancy back then, and if my readers had any thoughts about how I handled diversity in my work, I never knew it.
The first time I encountered someone telling me that I couldn’t write from a character’s viewpoint because of my background – in this case, my gender – was in a grad school creative writing class in the late eighties. I’d written a story called “Huntress,” about a succubus who finds herself no longer able to regard humans as merely food, and who will eventually starve to death. I wrote the story in first person, and at one point, the narrator explains that she can manifest as either gender, but taking on the appearance of a woman generally makes it easier for her to attract prey. After I read the story aloud to the class, one of the other students – a woman whose name I can’t remember – told me that because I was male, I couldn’t write from a woman’s point of view. That my character was a genderless inhuman creature evidently didn’t matter. I didn’t dismiss my classmate’s comment, though. I spent the next week thinking about the issue. Then during a following class, the student read a story she’d written from a boy’s viewpoint. When I asked her why she thought it was okay that she write from a boy’s perspective when she believed men shouldn’t write from a woman’s perspective, she said, “I’m a woman. We’re so sensitive that we can understand anyone’s point of view.”
It would’ve been easy for me to dismiss her comment on “Huntress” after that, but I didn’t. I thought about it from time to time. Such a comment inevitably brings up the issue of whether writers can ethically write anything but strict autobiography. Fiction is lying (although since it’s labeled as fiction, it’s lying without intent to deceive). But how far can an author ethically go beyond their own lived experience when writing fiction? There is no easy answer for this, of course. But it’s a question that I’ve returned to over the years, both as a writer and teacher of writing.
Several years ago, I began seeing people commenting on social media that it was the responsibility of white cishet male writers to use their platforms to promote diversity, that by doing so we would be doing our part to help make the world a better place. I had no illusions that I would have any great impact by doing this. I’m a minor writer (if that) with a small audience, but I’d already been working to promote diversity in my work, and naturally I wanted to do my part to make the world better, so I decided to strengthen the ways I portrayed diversity in my stories. I began making the cast of characters in my novels more diverse, and while I didn’t base stories on their backgrounds, I began allowing their backgrounds to become part of the story. In The Forever House, for example, one of the characters is bisexual, and her husband struggles with this, fearing he can never be enough for her emotionally or sexually. Another character is a MAGA type, but he’s married to a woman of Chinese descent and they have a biracial daughter. He’s absolutely blind to how he’s still racist even though he loves his wife and child.
The next novel I wrote, Your Turn to Suffer, also had a diverse cast, but the plot focused more on the main character and her experience, so the other character’s backgrounds didn’t figure into the story much. Her ex-boyfriend was bisexual, cut currently in a “guy phase.” Her current boyfriend was Asian. Another character was trans, but since she was transformed into an evil being during the course of the story, my editor asked me to make her cis to avoid appearing as if I was implying that trans people were evil. There was only one line in the story that indicated the character was trans, and since her gender identity wasn’t integral to the plot, I cut that line. I thought my editor might be being overcautious, but the online discourse regarding diversity issues at the time was often incendiary, so I couldn’t fault him for his caution.
At this time, the advice for authors wishing to write diverse characters was Do Your Research. Talk to people from backgrounds you want to write about. Read articles and blogs written by them, read novels they wrote, learn as much as you can so you can write your characters from a place of knowledge and respect.
So that’s what I tried to do.
The next novel I wrote after that is the one that’s coming out from Flame Tree Press in July 2022. We Will Rise is the story of what happens when ghosts suddenly appear all around the world and begin killing the living. (The cover is at the top of this entry, in case you didn’t notice.) I was still seeing people online urging white cishet male writers to use our platforms to support diversity, so I decided to make my cast of characters even more diverse this time. My characters included an African-American mother who recently suffered a miscarriage, a teenage transman whose fundamentalist Christian parents are struggling to understand him, a young Muslim man in college, and a woman paramedic of Vietnamese descent. The story focuses on them trying to survive the ghost apocalypse, but their backgrounds are, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the character, part of the story.
I finished the novel in the winter of 2020, and around that time the online discourse regarding diversity issues in fiction changed again. Some people said that writers shouldn’t write about any characters who differed significantly from themselves, that by doing so you were appropriating someone else’s story, one that – because they came from a specific background – they were far more qualified to tell. Some went so far as to say that you shouldn’t write about any characters who were different from you in any way (at least in terms of major characters). Much of this discourse was aimed at white people. White people appropriating others’ stories was, they said, continuing a long, damaging, and traumatic tradition of colonization. People began talking about Own Voices stories, fiction written by authors who shared an identity with the characters or were part of the culture they were writing about. Own Voices stories came from a place of deep authenticity, they said, making them more effective works of art. Some white people argued that writing fiction relied on imagination and empathy, and that a skilled writer could write about anyone or anything. Artists of any background should not be limited in the stories they were allowed to tell, they said. In response, some reiterated the points I’ve already mentioned, while others pointed out that, if a white cishet writer included an African-American trans main character in a novel, the company that published the book could claim they’d brought out a diverse work, as if they’d fulfilled their current quota for diversity, and they would have no need of another for a while. This book would be published, possibly taking the place of one that had been actually written by an African-American trans writer. Since the number of novels by white cishet writers far outnumbered those published by writers of other backgrounds, white cishet writers should “stay in their own lane” and not take opportunities away from others.
Just like the feedback I’d gotten from my classmate in grad school, I took in all this discourse and thought deeply about it. I considered pulling We Will Rise from publication. During the course of my career, I never consciously attempted to tell a story about someone from a background different than mine that delved into what it meantto be a person from that background, a story that was about their identity and experiences in society. And while I didn’t go into that kind of depth in We Will Rise, the characters’ diverse backgrounds are part of the story, and I worried that maybe I’d gone a bit too far. I informed my editor of my concerns, and I hired a sensitivity reader. She thought I’d done a good job with my characters in We Will Rise, so I submitted the book. I figured if there were any problems, my editor would let me know. I haven’t gotten editorial feedback on the book yet, but I should soon.
Am I nervous about how We Will Rise will be received? A little. But it’s the book I wrote, and once it’s out there, I’ll accept whatever consequences may come my way for writing it.
I wrote five more novels after We Will Rise, three originals and two tie-ins. I’d continued thinking about the best way to deal – or not deal – with diversity in my stories. The selfish, fearful part of me wondered if I should just write about cishet white people from Southwestern Ohio from now simply to avoid being attacked on social media and labeled a cultural appropriator. The less-selfish, less-fearful part of me wondered if that by writing only about people like me, I’d make more room for Own Voices writers to get published. I wanted to do the right thing, but what was the right thing?
One point I saw made numerous times online really got me thinking. Paraphrased, it went something like this: “We appreciate you trying to help us, white cishet folks, but it’s important we speak for ourselves. The best thing you can do is stay quiet, step aside, let us speak, and support us while we do.” Was my urge to help born from a place of privilege? By trying to help, was I unknowingly patronizing others? White savior to the rescue!
I decided to write my next original novels with less emphasis on diversity and see how I felt about how they turned out. I didn’t emphasize diversity other than indicating background by a character’s surname, and only very occasionally by appearance or something they said about their identity. (I couldn’t bring myself to cut outall indications of diversity from my work.) The three novels I wrote this way feel emptier to me than my previous ones. Lesser, somehow. But that may just be my perception of them. It’ll be a while before any of these books are published, so it’ll be some time before I see how readers respond to them. Or if they notice the toned-down diversity at all.
So if I were to advise writers – especially those of similar backgrounds to mine – how to deal with diverse characters in their work, what would I say right now?
It’s your story.
Write whatever you want in whatever way you want, and to hell with readers’ potential response. But if you do, don’t be surprised if some folks react negatively to your stories.
Don’t be an asshole.
Don’t deal with diversity in a purposefully negative way in an attempt to gain attention for yourself as an “edgy” writer. You’re not being edgy. You’re just being a hateful jerk.
Artistic freedom is real, but . . .
But so is artistic responsibility. We can create in a wild, white-hot frenzy, but once our work is finished, we should look it over with a cold, appraising eye and make sure it says what we want it to. And more importantly, that it doesn’t say things we don’t want it to.
Ask yourself these vital questions.
Is this your story to tell? Why do you want to tell this story? Can someone else tell it better? What benefit is there to you telling this story instead of someone else? (I saw a number of people posting these questions online. I’m not sure who originally came up with them, and a Google search didn’t reveal the author. Just know I didn’t develop them.) As a middle-aged white guy, I might become fascinated with telling the story of what it’s like for a Hispanic preteen lesbian to grow up in modern-day Miami, Florida. But could someone else tell that story better? Of course they could. I would never try to tell this story because it’s centered around a very specific lived experience, one I do not and could not ever have, and no amount of imagination or empathy on my part would help me do a good job writing it.
Do no harm.
At the very least, artists should try to avoid causing harm with their work. Does your story perpetuate harmful stereotypes? Are you appropriating someone else’s story? Are you taking the place of a writer better equipped to tell this story because of their cultural background and lived experience? If you make a mistake that results in harm, own up to it, apologize, promise to do better, and – most importantly – keep that promise.
Be a good casting director.
If you were making a movie, and there were roles in the script that could be filled by actors from any background, you could cast people in those roles, and their diversity would be visually apparent, even if it has no bearing on the actual story. You can do the same in your fiction. Maybe your main character is named Robert Martin. Any reason why he couldn’t be Robert Xi or Robert Vasquez or Roberta Martin? As long as the story isn’t about diving into issues of racial, gender, sexual, cultural, and religious identity, then many of your characters could be “played” by an “actor” of any background. A story like John Carpenter’s The Thing would remain the same regardless of the gender or race of the characters. All that matters is that the characters are human and must deal with a horrible situation.
The conversation is ongoing. Keep listening.
The discourse about how writers should approach issues of diversity in their work is ongoing. Listen to the conversation. Resist the temptation to be defensive, to jump in and mansplain, whitesplain, cishetsplain, or do any splaining of any kind. Listen, think about what you heard, and make changes to how you approach your work accordingly.
There is no right answer and there never will be.
People on social media love to state points in melodramatic absolutes. If you don’t do exactly what I say you should in exactly the way I think you should, you’re an evil monster and you should die choking on your own blood. Of course, people would like to have easy answers and clear direction when it comes to navigating complex issues, but there aren’t any. We can only do the best we can at a particular moment in time, and be open to further change the more we learn and grow.
So what are you going to do in the future, Tim?
At the moment, I have three novels I’m contracted to write, all part of a dark urban fantasy series about a secret organization dedicated to slowing the inexorable progression of entropy. (Trust me; it’s more fun than it sounds.) The employees are diverse, but because of the kind of story it is, their backgrounds don’t matter to the plot. Therefore, I can act as a casting director and have my characters be anything I want in terms or race, gender, sexuality, etc. Their personalities and the actions they take when fighting the bad guys are what matter the most. This casting director approach is one that I intend to keep using in my fiction.
Will I ever write a novel like We Will Rise again, one that delves into the characters’ backgrounds more? I don’t know. As I said earlier, the conversation is still happening, and I’m still listening and thinking.
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
We Will Rise
Curious how I handled my diverse characters in this book? Then you’re in luck, as it’s now available for preorder! Here’s the official description along with ordering links:
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
Halloween Kills: The Official Novelization
My novelization of Halloween Kills came out last month, and so far, readers seem to dig it. If you loved the movie – or if you hated it and want to see if the book is better – snag a copy!
Amazon Paperback
Amazon Kindle
Audible
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/halloween-kills-tim-waggoner/1139229840?ean=9781789096019
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/halloween-kills-tim-waggoner/1139229840?ean=9781789096194
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Invader Novel
This is an original tie-in adventure set in the Zombicide Invader universe. If you like action-packed stories of mercenaries and soldiers battling ravenous zombie-aliens, this is the book you’ve been waiting for! It comes out in April, and it’s available for preorder.
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
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October 30, 2021
We'll Fix It in the Edit
I’ve been traditionally publishing my writing for nearly thirty years now, and in that time, I’ve worked with a lot of different editors. I mean a lot. It’s not always fun. I think most writers would like to submit their work to an editor and be told that not only is it going to be published, it’s brilliant and perfect and doesn’t need a single thing changed. (I know I do!) But a good editor can make your work better, what a friend of mine once referred to as “polishing the diamond.” A bad editor, though, can be a nightmare to work with. Luckily, almost all of the editors I’ve worked with over the years have been good ones, and even the ones that were less-than-good weren’t that bad (although it may not have seemed that way to me at the time). Let’s talk about the different kinds of editors you might encounter in traditional publishing along with strategies for working with them. (I suspect much of this information will also apply to self-published writers who hire freelance editors to get their work in shape, but as I’ve never gone that route myself, I don’t know for sure. So if you’re a self-published writer, take the following information for whatever it’s worth.)
First off, traditional publishing is a collaborative venture. The writer collaborates with a publisher, and together they bring the writer’s work to the public for mutual artistic and commercial benefit. Both parties have a vested interest in making the work the best it can possibly be, but they don’t always agree on the ways to accomplish this goal. Every editing experience is an artistic negotiation, and compromise is necessary on both sides. If you’re going to go the trad publishing route, you need to accept this. You’re choosing to collaborate, and if you’re not okay with that, then self-publishing is a better path for you. Collaboration does not mean an editor is your boss and you have to do everything they say, but the reverse is also true. Editors are not your employees. You’re partners, and you both need to approach the writer-editor relationship as such.
The vast majority of editors I’ve worked with have helped improve my work, in ways both large and small. In my experience, a good editor should possess the following qualities:
· A deep understanding of narrative and how different narrative elements work together in a story.
· Expertise in the genre of a writer’s work.
· An ability to understand what the writer is trying to accomplish with their story.
· An ability to figure out the best way to help the writer accomplish their goals.
· Strong language skills. (Although much if not all of the grammar and sentence-level editing may be left to a copyeditor.)
· An ability to balance the writer’s concerns with those of the magazine or publishing house.
· A clear understanding of the dividing line between the writer’s job and theirs.
· An ability to communicate clearly and succinctly about what they think should be changed in a manuscript.
· Knowing how not to be overly prescriptive. If they think there’s too much exposition in a scene, they’ll say “Cut back on the exposition here” and leave you to figure out exactly how to do that since you’re the writer.
· Having realistic expectations of how much work a writer can accomplish in a given time.
Here are some different types of editors I’ve encountered during the course of my career. Although maybe I should say different editor experiences, since my working relationship with a specific editor could’ve been very different from that of a different writer. Also keep in mind that an individual editor can fit into multiple categories.
The Non-Editor
This is an editor that doesn’t do anything with your manuscript. It goes straight to a copyeditor or, sometimes, straight to print without any editing whatsoever. This may sound great – no changes to make! – but this editor isn’t helping to improve your story, and your work may be published with errors, some small, some large.
The Minimalist
This editor only makes a small number of suggestions, and they’re often on the micro level, dealing with small plot and character inconsistencies and unclear phrasing. If they spot a big problem, they’ll let you know, though. Maybe this editor is too busy to do a more in-depth edit, or maybe your story is just that good!
I’m the Editor So I Have to Suggest Changes, Whether or Not They’re Needed
This type of editor suggests changes because they think they have to, regardless of whether a manuscript needs those changes. They feel they have to do this to justify their job. These suggestions are often arbitrary and don’t necessarily make the story better, just different.
The Brainstormer
This editor believes a story should be a joint creation of theirs and the writer, that editor and writer are true partners. They like to collaborate in the early stages of a story’s creation, helping to shape it, but after that they’ll step back into a more traditional editorial role. This is especially true with media tie-ins, which by their nature are more highly collaborative.
The Would-Be Collaborator
This type of editor is also a brainstormer, but they continue trying to be a co-writer on both macro and micro levels throughout the entire process of getting a story ready for publication. This can be super frustrating, especially when the two of you have different ideas of how the story should be written. The worst version of this type of editor is the one that actually rewrites some of your prose without asking permission or even telling you that they’re doing it. Luckily, this extreme type of Would-Be Collaborator is rare.
The Frustrated Writer
This type of editor tells you how they’d write the story rather than helping to improve the story you’ve already written. This is because they’d rather be a writer than an editor, and they may eventually leave editing to give writing a shot (while perhaps still freelance editing as well). This is one of the worst types of editors to work with because they aren’t acting in an editor’s role. Instead, they’re trying to force you to accept them as a co-writer, or worse, as the “boss” writer to whom you must defer. I don’t believe these editors are consciously aware of what they’re doing, but that doesn’t make them any easier to work with.
The New Editor
This is someone so new at their job that they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. They’re learning as they go, experiencing growing pains along the way, and you get to experience those pains along with them. There’s not much you can do except have patience. New editors won’t tell you they’re inexperienced. They want you to have confidence in them, and they don’t want you to ignore their suggestions because they’re new, so you may have to figure out for yourself that you’re working with someone who’s new to the job.
The Editor with Unrealistic Expectations
“I need you to rewrite the entire book from beginning to end. Can you get a new draft to me in two weeks?” This could be the sign of someone who’s a new editor and doesn’t have much, if any, experience at how long major revisions can take. Or it can be a sign of an editor that pushes writers to get revisions in as fast as possible to make their job easier.
The Overworked Editor
This editor is doing the job of three or more people. While they want to give you their best efforts, they’re exhausted and their focused is scattered. They may give you only a cursory edit and take a while – maybe a long while – to get to you about questions.
The Editor Who Takes Forever to Give You Feedback and Needs Changes Tomorrow
This could be because they’re also an Overworked Editor, but it could be that they’re simply a procrastinator or not a good judge of how much work they can accomplish in a specific timeframe, and they’ve gotten behind. Or they might be having personal issues that have slowed their productivity. Whatever the reason, they wait until the last minute to get changes to you and push you to finish them ASAP.
The Editor Who Gives You Contradictory Feedback
For example, I was once working on a pitch for a novella about a beloved TV character. The editor told me they liked the character to be portrayed somewhat humorously, as he sometimes was shown in his series. When I sent in a proposal, the same editor told me that the character should be portrayed seriously, and I should rework the proposal. At that point, I was out. Contradictory feedback from an editor is a huge red flag for me. I don’t want to waste my time giving an editor what they say they want only to have them turn around and tell me that wasn’t what they wanted in the first place.
The Editor Who Changes Their Mind
This editor makes a suggestion, you implement it, and then once they see the new text, they decide that change doesn’t work after all and want to you revise it again, a different way this time. If they do this a lot, it can mean a great deal of rewriting on your part. I once pitched a proposal for a Star Trek novel to an editor. They loved it but asked for revision after revision after revision, until the story concept bore little resemblance to what I’d originally pitched, and then they decided the new concept wasn’t working and cancelled the project.
The Editor Who Can’t Make Up Their Mind
This can be an editor who’s very indecisive by nature, or they can also be an Editor Who Gives Contradictory Feedback or an Editor Who Changes Their Mind. These editors can’t effectively guide writers because they can’t decide where they want to take the manuscript.
The Editor Who Doesn’t Know What They Want
This editor knows that something about your story should be different, but they’re damned if they can tell you what it is. They may ask you to take another pass at the manuscript in the hope that you’ll somehow magically fix what’s bothering them, but of course there’s no guarantee it’ll work.
The Editor Who Thinks They Are the God of Literature
These are editors with ego, people who consider themselves experts on literature and storytelling, and who believe they could write your story better than you, if they were to lower themselves to actually produce writing. They often look upon writers as lesser beings who only exist to provide raw, rough material for them to shape into a sparkling masterpiece. I’ve managed avoid working with editors like this so far, but I know they’re out there. Hopefully, I can manage to keep avoiding them for the rest of my career.
The Editor That Doesn’t Get Your Work
I can write some damn weird stuff, especially in my short fiction. A lot of this work is experimental in nature and can be very surreal and symbolic. I’ve occasionally had editors commission a story from me, but when they get it, they don’t understand it. (This always makes me wonder why they asked me to do a story for them in the first place. Weren’t they familiar with the kind of weird-ass horror/dark fantasy I often write?) These editors try to get me to turn my bizarre story into an ordinary prosaic one with clear cause and effect, etc. Sometimes making a few strategic changes satisfies them, and when it doesn’t, I offer to write a new story. I won’t turn one of my weird stories into a mundane one for them, though. I’ll look for a different market for it.
Too Many Editors
It’s rare, but sometimes you get multiple editors working on your manuscript. This is especially true when writing tie-in fiction, when someone representing the IP holder also weighs in on your work. The different editors can have different opinions about what changes to make, and you may end up with a lot of suggestions and no idea which ones to take and which to reject.
The Editor That Can’t Clearly Communicate What They Want
This editor knows what they want but they are unable to state it in a way that is 100% clear. If you ask for clarification, they usually can give it to you, though.
The Editor That Can’t Succinctly Communicate What They Want
This editor will write you a long, detailed paragraph to tell you that you should delete a sentence in your manuscript. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly what the editor wants when you read these unnecessarily detailed suggestions.
The Editor that Overcommunicates and Overwhelms
This editor bombards you with so much feedback that you may not be able to figure out what to do with it and may feel overwhelmed. This type of editor is often one who also can’t communicate clearly and succinctly, and they’re often new at their job. They haven’t learned how to be clear and succinct yet (and maybe they never will). I’ve had a few editors like this, ones who will send me a long bulleted list of changes, numerous track changes comments in the manuscript, and long, chapter-by-chapter breakdowns of what needs to be fixed. It can be a nightmare trying to sort through this mess and figure out what you need to do to revise your manuscript.
Tips for Working with Editors
· Everything’s negotiable. Editors make suggestions; they don’t deliver commandments. If you don’t agree with an editor’s suggestion, you can try to find a different way to solve the problem that’s been identified. Or you can try to brainstorm a different solution together.
· Don’t ignore suggestions because you’re lazy or stubborn. No one told you to traditionally publish. You sought out such a relationship. You wanted to work with an editor, so work with them.
· Don’t assume an adversarial stance. The editor isn’t your enemy (even if it feels that way sometimes). The editor is your ally, and they care as much about your story as you do. (At least, they should.)
· Pick and choose your battles. I had a friend who once had a knock-down drag-out with an editor over the use of a semicolon in a story. You don’t want your working relationship with an editor to be one of constant conflict, especially over small stuff. If you have to dig in your heels and refuse to make a change, it should be over something important to your story, something you feel will significantly damage the story if it’s changed.
· Ask for clarification. If an editor’s suggestion isn’t clear, ask them to explain it more fully.
· Try to figure out what they’re really saying. I had a tie-in editor once tell me that fantasy novels shouldn’t contain humor in them. I knew this was bullshit, but I also knew the comment had to come from somewhere. Eventually, I figured out that two characters I created for comic relief were too silly for the editor. I toned down the silliness, and the editor was satisfied. Always look for the comment behind the comment, one even the editor might not be aware of.
· Don’t procrastinate. It’s too easy to put off revisions because then you don’t want to do them. It’s like being a student who doesn’t want to start working on a paper. Get started on your revisions as soon as you can and work steadily on them until you’re finished.
· Figure out how not to be overwhelmed and stressed. Make a revision plan for yourself. Work on making the easiest changes first. Keep your revision sessions short. Take breaks (especially if you find yourself starting to get frustrated and angry).
· Don’t make your editor’s life more difficult. Don’t make your editor miserable by constantly arguing with them, and don’t constantly bug them for more feedback and clarification. They have other work to do besides babysitting you as you revise.
· Accept reasonable deadlines for revision. If the revision deadline the editor requests doesn’t seem doable to you, try to negotiate a different deadline. Both of you might have to compromise, but hopefully together you’ll find a deadline that will work.
· Don’t submit changes too early. If you do something fast for an editor, they’ll expect it just as fast the next time, if not faster. Turning in revisions at the deadline is fine. Turn them in a day or two early if you want, but don’t turn them in weeks early, even if you can get them done in that time.
· If you need more time to do your revisions, ask. You might not get it. Maybe your book already has a place in the publisher’s production schedule. But it never hurts to ask. Just don’t wait until the last minute to ask for extra time. Ask as soon as you think you may need an extension, but be prepared to finish your revisions by the originally deadline if necessary.
Good editors are worth their weight in gold, but even the best editors aren’t perfect. Remember your editor is a human being too, and do your best to find a collaborative working style that’s effective for you both. Don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself, though. Remember, the editor isn’t a boss and you’re not an employee. The two of you are creative and business partners, and you both should behave as such.
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
Halloween Kills: The Official Movie Novelization Out Now
My novelization of the latest movie in the saga of Michael Myers – Halloween Kills – came out in the USA this week. It’ll be another week or so before it’s available in the UK. For some reason, the Audible version dropped a week early, so some fans got a chance to check out the book early. I had a blast writing this, and after waiting a year-and-a-half for the book’s release, I’m anxious to learn what people think it of it. The film’s reviews have been mixed, but so far the response to my novelization has been mostly positive and enthusiastic. So if you saw the movie and loved it, this book is for you, and if you hated the movie, then the book is really for you, since it fills in a lot of the gaps in the story. Ordering links are below.
Minutes after Laurie Strode, her daughter Karen, and granddaughter Allyson left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie’s basement, Laurie is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor.
But when Michael manages to free himself from Laurie’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes. As Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. But as a group of other survivors of Michael’s first rampage decide to take matters into their own hands, a vigilante mob forms that sets out to hunt Michael down. Evil dies tonight.
Amazon Paperback
Amazon Kindle
Audible
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/halloween-kills-tim-waggoner/1139229840?ean=9781789096019
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/halloween-kills-tim-waggoner/1139229840?ean=9781789096194
Planet Havoc: A Zombicide Invader Novel
I just finished edits on this novel – an original adventure set in the Zombicide Invader universe – this week. The book will be out in April, and it’s available for preorder now. If you like action-packed stories of mercenaries and soldiers battling ravenous zombie-aliens, this is the book you’ve been waiting for!
Scoundrels and soldiers band together to survive the onslaught of alien-zombies spreading across the galaxy in this riotous adventure from the bestselling game, Zombicide: Invader
A deserted R&D facility tempts the hungry new Guild, Leviathan, into sending a team to plunder its valuable research. The base was abandoned after a neighboring planet was devastated by an outbreak of Xenos – alien zombies – but that was a whole planet away... When the Guild ship is attacked by a quarantine patrol, both ships crash onto the deserted world. Only it isn’t as deserted as they hope: a murderous new Xeno threat awakens, desperate to escape the planet. Can the crews cooperate to destroy this new foe? Or will they be forced to sacrifice their ships and lives to protect the galaxy?
Kindle
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081248
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/planet-havoc-tim-waggoner/1140135739?ean=9781839081255
We Will Rise
My next original horror/dark fantasy novel for Flame Tree Press is due out this July and is now available for preorder. No cover image yet, but I’ll share one when I get it. If you enjoy my dark surreal horror, you’ll like this tale of a city plagued by a ghost apocalypse. Here’s a synopsis:
In Echo Hill, Ohio, the dead begin to reappear, manifesting in various forms, from classic ghosts and poltergeists, to physical undead and bizarre apparitions for which there is no name. These malign spirits attack the living, tormenting and ultimately killing them in order to add more recruits to their spectral ranks.
A group of survivors come together after the initial attack, all plagued by different ghostly apparitions of their own. Can they make it out of Echo Hill alive? And if so, will they still be sane? Or will they die and join the ranks of the vengeful dead?
Amazon Paperback
Kindle
Amazon Hardcover
Barnes & Noble Paperback
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585225
NOOK Book
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585263
Barnes & Noble Hardcover
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-will-rise-tim-waggoner/1140376625?ean=9781787585249
Writing Workshops
Want to take a writing workshop with me? A couple of my workshop presentations have been recorded and are available to watch on YouTube:
The Art of Suspense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGhI0iMiz80&t=21s
Done to Death – Avoiding Cliches in Horror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0egC7wvVLc
WANT TO STALK ME IRL?
Right now, the only face-to-face convention I’m going to is Stokercon in May. I’ll be doing a workshop or two for Horror University, although nothing specific has been scheduled yet, and I’m sure I’ll be doing some panels too. If you’re going, I look forward to seeing you there!
Stokercon. Denver, Colorado. May 12-15, 2022.
WANT TO STALK ME VIRTUALLY?
Want to follow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Twitter: @timwaggoner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw
