Rob Boffard's Blog, page 3

My cancer scare

(Yes, those cookies have nothing to do with cancer. Did you seriously think I was going to put a picture of cancer up there? I just wanted an image to put at the top of the blog, and I like cookies. Side note: do not ever, ever, ever Google “cancer cookies”.)

To be clear: I do not have cancer. Or at least, I am 99% sure I don’t.

For the past couple of weeks, that number has been quite a bit lower. I’m not normally the kind of person to start freaking out about this kind of thing – I come from a family of doctors, and am inclined to wait for an actual medical professional to pass judgement before I start panicking. But when a dental professional peers into your mouth and starts saying things like “Not a good sign” and “Oral surgeon” and “Pathologist” and “Biopsy”, it’s very hard not to start imagining the worst, even when there’s no good reason to do so.

Let me backtrack. In July, my wife and I went down to Portland, to do things like drink beer and wander around huge Japanese gardens and visit the best bookstore on the planet, so I could sign stock and write my name on their signature pillar, next to Neil Gaiman and Robin Hobb (yay!). While we were down there, I noticed a very tiny apthous ulcer on the tip of my tongue.

You’ve probably had these before. They’re those little open spots you get on the inside of your mouth, green ringed with red. They are annoying and sore, but usually go away after a while. I’d had plenty on my lower lip, but never one on my tongue. All the same, I didn’t give it much thought. I figured it was just one of those things.

Except, it didn’t go away. Over the next two weeks, it mutated, going from a tiny green dot to a smooth, fire-engine-red wound the size of a shirt button. It was alternately tender and painful, and completely numb. As I packed for a trip to the UK, I tried to calm myself down. I’d injured it somehow, irritated the area. It would fix itself. But over the next few days, it just got worse. And whenever I drunk whiskey, the wound would sting like a motherfucker.

Halfway through the trip, I caved, and went to see a dentist – an Egyptian guy in Baker Street with an impenetrable accent and a receptionist who had great taste in hip-hop. He asked if I ground my teeth at night. I told him I did, and that although I had a mouthguard, I was a little bit forgetful when it came to using it. He told me that the most likely cause was that I was biting my tongue while I slept. Use the mouthguard, he said (or at least, I think he said – he really did have a serious accent) and it should heal in a few days.

He was, it must be said, extremely thorough. He checked for lumps. He did a full nose-around in my gums and throat. None found. But when he got to the base of my neck, he paused. “Your thyroid is very swollen,” he said.

“Is it?” I replied. Up until that point, I hadn’t even known that I had a thyroid.

“Yes. You must get that looked at by your GP.”

I wore the guard. I cleaned my mouth thrice daily with antiseptic mouthwash. I tried Bonjela, which covered the wound in a horrid-tasting liquid plaster. Nothing worked. If anything, it got worse: more inflamed, a little more angry. What was this thing? Why the hell had it taken up residence in my mouth?

I have, you may not be entirely surprised to hear, an overactive imagination. And now, it started to grind itself into action. Was my throat tighter, or was I just imagining it? My saliva felt a little thicker, swallowing more noticeable. True, the doc hadn’t found any lumps, but what if…

You’re probably smirking by now. And trust me, I cringed just writing that. But that’s the thing about worst case scenarios. They have a way of taking hold, and being very difficult to dislodge.

My mom, a former GP (now an ass-kicking physical rehab specialist), did her own examination and managed to calm the waters for a little. But the wound didn’t get better. Back in Vancouver, I hustled to my own dentist, hoping once and for all to find out what this thing was, and how I could kill it. I’d already been to get my blood tested, hoping to track down the source of my overactive thyroid, and although it would be a few days before I got the results, I was still mighty keen to get rid of my bloody little passenger.

Which is where I was told I might need a biopsy, and that I’d need to see an oral surgeon. Also, that there was significant tissue loss in the area, including total loss of taste buds. They took photos, they shone ultraviolet light on it, and I was given a stern lecture not to eat anything acidic, or drink any alcohol.

By now, my tongue had developed a gnarly white coating – another symptom to add to the growing list. “It’s plaque,” the dentist said. “You need to brush your tongue with toothpaste.”

I did, I assured her. Always had.

“Are you drinking enough water?”

That too. I am far too obsessive about drinking water, constantly refilling a bottle on my desk. It’s the kind of thing that, were I fool enough to work in an actual office, would get me roundly mocked.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said. But she looked worried. And let me just tell you, hearing a medical person say “It’s probably nothing” while looking nervous is right up there with “You can still live a normal life” and “You’ll get used to it over time” in the absolutely-not-reassuring-at-all stakes.

By now, I was vacillating between indignation and outright, bone-gripping panic. Indignation, because getting any kind of mouth cancer would be the the most crushing kind of unfair: I’d never smoked (short of a few joints and the odd cigar, spaced over a period of about fifteen years), and I was hardly what you’d call a heavy drinker. Panic, because I knew what mouth cancer could do.

That’s the problem with living with the Internet. Stephen King, in 11/22/63, quoted an old proverb from somewhere: “Look not through a knothole, lest ye be vexed.” I might have resisted self-diagnosis, but I still looked through that knothole, because I’m an imbecile, and what I found scared the bejesus out of me. Lost speech. Lost salivary glands. Inability to eat solid foods. Inability to swallow at all. Radiation and chemo, turning the mouth into one giant burn site, making it impossible to ever eat spicy food or drink alcohol ever again. I consoled myself with the fact that if I did have mouth cancer, I might just lose the tip of my tongue.

Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have panicked. But I’m a writer, an introverted worrier, so it came with the territory.

And by the way, you have no idea how much you miss acid in your food until it’s taken away from you. Lemon. Pepper. Spices. Chilli. Tomato. Fresh fruit. Vinegar. Orange juice. Honey. Ketchup. Soy sauce. I adore food, and cooking, and to have these snatched away was a blow. I scrambled, hunting down recipes, obsessing over pH levels, already missing the bitter tang of a cold beer and the hot hit of whiskey, munching on plain yoghurt and jacking every one of my meals with as many herbs as I could.

I am not, by the way, bitching about this. It sucked, but I was and still am keenly aware that I was receiving excellent medical care, far more than most people on this planet could ever hope for. Moreover, I was in the position of being able to shop, to pick and choose my meals. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. All the same, the thought that kept running through my head was: Please don’t let this be a preview of what’s coming down the pike.

I could still – thank the Pope and Buddha and Luke Skywalker – drink coffee, as long as it was polluted with enough milk to raise the pH to acceptable levels.

As my date with the oral surgeon drew near, I found myself in gritted-teeth mode, no pun intended, blocking out everything else. I was fine. I was normal. I would get through this. And everyday, I’d look at the insult to my tongue. I had no idea if the no-acid diet was helping, and the more I looked, the glummer I got.

The oral surgeon was in North Vancouver, a motherly Iranian woman – and by the way, why is it that all dentists in this city are from Iran? My regular dentist, her assistant, the other doctor in her practice, and now this oral surgeon. Was there some kind of mass dental exodus from the country? Were there, even now, people wandering the streets of Tehran, nursing toothaches that would never heal? I’m not complaining, you understand; I’m just curious*. These were the thoughts I tried to calm myself down with as I sat in her chair, waiting to see what she’d find.

She quickly established three things:

It was almost certainly not cancer. Tongue cancer, she said, almost always occurred on the sides of the tongue, and there were no indications of that anywhere, or lumps in my neck and jaw. She did a basic dye test, which added to this hypothesis: there was no sign of cancerous cells. I wouldn’t 100% know without a biopsy, but it was highly unlikely.
My teeth were very rough from grinding – including the bottom teeth, which weren’t shielded at night by a gum guard. I had almost certainly been abrading my tongue against them – a fact backed up when she pointed out a pattern of small abrasions along the sides of my tongue.
I needed a new mouth guard (my current one was quite old) and I needed to get my teeth sanded down.

She also said that I could start eating and drinking as I usually did. A quick call to the blood lab got my thyroid test results back, which were approximately normal. I still don’t know why my thyroid is enlarged, but it looked like I was (mostly) in the clear

I walked out of there on legs that were a good deal shakier than they should have been, finally sitting down on a bench in the building lobby. Jesus fucking Christ.

In hindsight, it was laughable. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then chances are it’s a duck that’s been rubbing its tongue against the inside of its rough, sandpapery beak. A regular ulcer had been continually aggravated over time, not allowed to heal properly, and I’d been going crazy over nothing. The rough bottom teeth were the missing piece of the puzzle.

The first pull of beer, an hour later, felt like Beyonce was dancing on my tastebuds.

There’s still a slight chance that it’s cancer, but it’s very, very minimal. A new guard and some sanding down of the gnashers should heal it. I’ll report back, but in the meantime, a big thank you to the numerous dentists who peered inside my mouth – Doctors Habib, Mansuripur, and Taleghani – even the unnamed hygienist who forbade me from eating food that tasted good (she is unnamed because she never introduced herself, not ‘cos I’m bitter). And by the way, if you grind your teeth, go and get a damn mouthguard fitted. Unlike me, remember to wear it. Doing otherwise is just not worth the aggravation.

* By the way, here’s the answer about Iranian dentists.

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy ever.

“Constant violence and escalating stakes keep the story moving forward at a bone-jarring pace.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilarating and guaranteed to keep you hooked until the very last page.” – Glamour Magazine

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT

Short Story Review: Konstantine Paradias / Julie Novakova (Starship Sofa)

Welcome to my new weekly post, where I’ll be reviewing short stories. There are thousands and thousands of them available – in magazines, podcasts, online anthologies, with hundreds more dropping every month. Every week, I’ll listen to and/or read one or two so you don’t have to. It won’t just be scifi either; I’m completely genre agnostic, and will go for any story that piques my interest.

This week: a woman who is to spaceships what the horse whisperer was to horses, and what happens when time travel goes even more wrong than normal…

How You Ruined Everything

One of the things I will never, ever do is write about time travel.

There is no subject area more fraught with potential fuck-ups than this one. Take even a hesitant step into the past or the future, and you risk invoking the kind of time paradoxes and plot holes that make you want to go and have a nice lie down somewhere, preferably until someone else has figured it out for you. As someone who is concerned with how plots and stories work, and how to write them without making the reader go, “Wait, what?”, it’s just not worth it. If I want to tie myself in knots, there are easier ways to do it.

And there are very, very few time travel stories that actually work. Of all the recent ones I’ve encountered, only the movie Looper makes a good fist of it, managing to distract you from the bizarre potential paradoxes by wrapping them up in one hell of a story. Even Stephen King’s 11/22/63, a book which I am perhaps unreasonably devoted to, gets past the problem of time paradoxes by simply pretending that they aren’t a thing. Seriously: when his main character Jake, charged with going back in time to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, asks his mentor what would happen if he killed his grandfather, the man looks at him and says, “Why the fuck would you want to do that?” And from there, the matter is closed.

When a writer like Stephen King sidles past time travel like that, as if merely looking in its direction would provoke it to wake up and take a snarling lunge, you know you’re in a subject area that you need serious cojones to tackle.

So I was dubious when I came across How You Ruined Everything by Konstantine Paradias, a story on the excellent and venerable StarShipSofa podcast, which is closing on 500 episodes. I shouldn’t have felt that way. After all, I am unacquainted with the size of Mr Paradias’ cojones.

It’s a time travel story, all right, but instead of trying to solve the bazillion paradoxes, Paradias just makes fun of them. After all, if you’re going to break the universe and the space-time continuum, you may as well have a laugh doing it.

What follows is an absolutely hysterical time travel story, told in the second person and phrased as a rundown of how you managed to screw up just about everything. It’s absolutely wonderful. Not only does Paradias write exceptionally well, but there’s a real sense that he’s as surprised about what happens as you are. It’s very doubtful that he sat down at his computer one day and decided to write a story that involved Nazis, hippies, velociraptors, killer robots and shovel murders, all at the same time. Or if he did, then he absolutely nailed it. The 45-minute-long story is a delight, often hysterically funny, and well worth your time.

It helps that Jonathan Sharp, the narrator, fully commits to the absurdity of the story. He’s having just as much fun as the author, and he’s helped along by some able sound editing and effects. Paradias and Sharp are an almost perfect pairing, And I can only hope that they do this again.

If you’re a diehard scifi fan, there’s a risk that you might find this a little too trivial – too light and airy a morsel for your palate. In which case, I have two things to say to you: one, seriously? And two: perhaps you’ll enjoy the next story, even if I didn’t.

The Ship Whisperer

The Ship Whisperer is an intriguing idea, a hard-as-nails translated scifi story from Czech author Julie Novakova. She’s got some serious chops, which include being an actual evolutionary biologist and winning the Aeronautilus Award (the Czech Hugo) three times, so I was excited to hear this story.

The concept hooks the attention from the outset: the tale of not only a sentient starship, but the person charged with controlling, soothing, talking to, and maintaining it. The first-person story, told from the whisperer’s perspective, takes place as the crew investigate a black dwarf star – a theoretical celestial object, made from a star which has cooled to a virtually inert state.

If you like your science and your cosmology, you’ll find a lot to love here. It’s dense and rich with information: a thick, kludgy chocolate brownie, heavy with detail. The writing is crisp and clear, and although I don’t really consider myself able to accurately judge such things (I spent four days at a hip-hop festival outside Prague a few years ago, but I was high as hell most of the time, and don’t remember a lot of Czech), I thought the translation was solid.

But for all its scientific street cred, there’s no doubt that the story has some major flaws. For one thing, it should have been a novel. There’s too much happening, too many earth-shattering conversations and events that are summarised in a few sentences, passed by at lightspeed while you struggle to keep up. The characters are engaging enough, but we’re just not given enough time with any of them.

Doyen of Czech fiction she may be, but Novakova whiffled this one. Had this been a book, she would have smashed it out the park. As it is, it’s playing chess when the listener just wants a quick game of checkers. Or Czechers, as the case may be.

It isn’t helped by some pretty appalling narration. Remember that videogame Portal? The one with the psychotic AI that wants to murder you by making you do physics puzzles? That robot, GLaDOS, had a very distinctive voice that sounded like this:

In the context of the game, it made perfect sense. In the context of what should be a straight-up narration, it is deeply, almost hysterically annoying. Juliana Erickson’s voice is a crazed monotone, with a pitch that is so robotic that it’s almost tempting to believe that the folks at the podcast deliberately tried to put her voice through some kind of filter.

It doesn’t work. At all. And combined with a story that is hard to enjoy, even for the most devoted fan of hard science fiction, I’d say you can probably steer clear of this one. On the other hand, there’s a time machine to steal…

How You Ruined Everything by Konstantine Paradias. Published on Starship Sofa, 1 August 2017 (Audio, 45 mins)

The Ship Whisperer by Julie Novakova. Published on Starship Sofa, 9 August 2017 (Audio, 45 mins)

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy ever.

“Constant violence and escalating stakes keep the story moving forward at a bone-jarring pace.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilarating and guaranteed to keep you hooked until the very last page.” – Glamour Magazine

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT

Epic Book Rap Pt. 3 is out!

The kind of shit I do between books…

Beat by Ben Hayze: Soundcloud / IG

Titles namechecked:

Illuminae – Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

Gemina – Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

Alight – Scott Sigler

Alive – Scott Sigler

Fireman – Joe Hill

Sockpuppet – Matthew Blakstad

Forsaken Skies – D. Nolan Clark

Voodoo Killings – Kristi Charish

A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers

Rise of Io – Wes Chu

Who’s Afraid? – Maria Lewis

Who’s Afraid Too? – Maria Lewis

The Malice – Peter Newman

Behind the Throne – K.B. Wagers

The Golem and the Djinni – Helene Wecker

A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms – George RR Martin

Poison City – Paul Crilley

The Ghost Brigades – John Scalzi

Ninefox Gambit – Yoon Ha Lee

The Story of Your Life – Ted Chiang

The Obelisk Gate – N.K. Jemisin

Nevernight – Jay Kristoff

Fellside – M.R. Carey

Aftermath: Empire’s End – Chuck Wendig

A Gathering of Shadows – V.E. Schwab

The Sudden Appearance of Hope – Claire North

Sleeping Giants – Sylvain Neuvel

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

Golden Son – Pierce Brown

Morning Star – Pierce Brown

Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy – Edited by

Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak

Runtime – S.B. Divya

Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu

Revenger – Alastair Reynolds

New York 2140 – Kim Stanley Robinson

Infernal – Mark De Jager

The Fall of the House of Cabal – Jonathan L. Howard

Carter and Lovecraft – Jonathan L. Howard

Exo – Fonda Lee

Kings of the Wyld – Nicholas Eames

Starborn – Lucy Hounsom

Saturn Run – John Sandford and Ctein

When Not To Write

A few months ago, I had a conversation with my publisher that went something like this (I may or may not be paraphrasing):

Publisher: Rob – good news! The Outer Earth series did well enough for us to offer you another three-book deal.

Rob: Huzzah! Splendiferous! Frabjous day! I shall forward my other manuscripts immediately for your consideration.

Publisher: Great. If you could just look over the contr – wait, what do you, manuscripts? Manuscripts, plural?

Rob: The other books I’ve written, of course. What else?

Publisher: Are we talking about ones you wrote in the run up to the ones we just published? Like before you turned pro? That’s great, Rob, but we’re not really interested in –

Rob: What? No, I wrote these last year.

Publisher: Jesus. It’s only been six months since your last book came out. How many are we talking here?

Rob: (Thinking hard) Two…yeah, definitely two finished first drafts. I’ve got a third which is almost done, too, if you can wait a few days.

Publisher: (Muffled weeping)

Rob: You alright?

Publisher: Erm…look, just send us what you’ve got, and we’ll get back to you.

Rob: Wait! What do I do until then?

Rob: …Hello?

So this is the problem I have – no fault of my publisher Orbit, who have a collective patience that is virtually infinite, or my saintly agent, who has discovered that working with me means 3AM emails along the lines of “Hey! Ed! I finished another book! Did you read the one I sent last week yet?” I write too damn fast for my own good. This isn’t me bragging. It’s just the truth. 1500-2000 words a day, every weekday, gets you lots of books in a reasonably short space of time. Not necessarily good books – we are talking rough-as-shit unfinished first drafts here – but still: books. Ones I can sell, and have published, at some indeterminate point in the future. I’m not saying that every book I write is going to be an instantly-sellable, automatic-publisher-YES, but I write pretty good, and so I usually send what I’ve written to the Professionals (read: agent and editor) for a look-see. But it takes time to read something, especially a rough first draft with a zillion errors. It takes even longer if you’re trying to read it critically, which these folks absolutely have to do if it’s going to be any good. Bottom line: the speed at which I write means I have to spend a lot of time waiting around.

Which led me to an interesting question. See, we, as writers, have it drilled into us from a thousand different sources that we must never stop writing. Write every day! As much as you can! Go go go! Even if you have writer’s block, you should be writing! A shopping list, a paragraph about your dog, anything! And if you’re not writing, you should be thinking about writing! It’s a calling. DOOOO IIIIIIIT!!!

But what if there are times where it makes sense to not write?

The Thing About Momentum

My situation right now is a perfect example. Having signed a new three-book deal with Orbit (Huzzah! Splendiferous! Etc.) I’m now waiting for edit notes on the first of those books, and waiting to hear if my pitch for a new series has been accepted. I am waiting – and for once, it makes no sense for me to do what I normally do, which is to bury myself in a new project.

The reason for this is momentum. Momentum is my drug, my little glass bottle of goodness which I use to fuel myself. If I start a book, and know I can keep going right until the last, tortured keyboard stroke, happy Rob is happy. But the problem is, I know that at some point in the next few days/weeks, I’m either going to have to dive into edit notes, or begin planning the first book in a new series. If I start a different project now, both of those things – which are classed Priority One, in the panicked control centre of my brain – will bring it to a screeching, shuddering halt. And when that happens: Game over, man. Game over!

Theoretically, I could use the month or two of idle time on a project that could be completed before the edit notes and/or series request comes parachuting in, bayonetting the guards and knocking over my communication towers. But on what? And why? For what purpose? Because I don’t know when this is going to happen. Any novella or short story I knock out could be interrupted at any time, and anyway, I’m a book guy. Novellas don’t really hold any interest for me beyond the purely academic. You could argue that every bit of writing makes you better, that it keeps the blade sharp and the mind lubricated. But when you write as much as I do, faffing about with short stories and the like just makes me annoyed. Contrary to popular belief, all writing is not equal. If writing novels is what I love and am good at, why would I waste time polishing skill sets, like short story writing, that I don’t especially enjoy and am unlikely to ever rely on in a serious way? Yes, I know, adaptability, changing climates, yadda yadda. Bite me. I like books. And books take time, energy, and – yup – momentum.

So, that question again: what do you do when it makes sense not to write?

Eat All The Scones

Now, I don’t do writing advice. Never have, never will. Every bit of it, beyond the whole ‘read lots, write lots’ thing, is snake oil. I can only tell you what I’m doing about this – besides writing this blog. I’ve decided to use this time to work on the parts of being a pro novelist that I’m not good at. Things like social media, which I still treat like an unexploded bomb. Things like this website – it looks great, but it’s a mess behind the scenes, with plenty of clunky metadata. Things like finding out: what do the mega-successful ones do? What can I use? What are they doing that I could cannibalise, ripping a chunk off with my teeth and stealing away into the –

Um. Anyway. I might be good at creating insane rollercoasters out of words on a page, but there are parts of being a pro writer that I just suck at. If I can use the downtime I have to work on those things, make myself better at the craft of selling books, then I’d consider it time well-spent. Better that than a three-quarters-finished novella about sentient scones, or whatever, that I will discover on my hard drive in a years’ time (when I’m doing this insane process again) and quietly cringe at.

(Note to self: include a sentient scone in 20 th anniversary edition of TRACER.)

This doesn’t mean simply increasing my presence on social media. What I’m currently doing isn’t really working, so right now, it’s all about finding out what does, and doing that. It’s about talking to the ones doing it full-time – which is my ultimate goal, even though I have an amazing day job that not only pays well but gives me time and space to write – and finding out what worked for them, and if it might possibly work for me.

Bottom Line

If you take one thing away from this, it’s that being a writer doesn’t mean you have to write all the time. Writing is the foundation of everything we do, and it makes sense to build a helluva strong foundation, but it’s not the only thing. Neglect the other stuff, and you’ll end up shivering in the cold while your roof and walls sail off into the distance, caught by the winds of fate as they…sorry, got a little carried away there.

Point is: there are multiple angles to this thing. Try to see them all. And if you see living scones, take photos.

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy ever.

A huge space station orbits the Earth, holding the last of humanity. It’s broken, rusted, falling apart. We’ve wrecked our planet, and now we have to live with the consequences: a new home that’s dirty, overcrowded and inescapable. What’s more, there’s a madman hiding on the station. He’s about to unleash chaos. And when he does, there’ll be nowhere left to run.

“Constant violence and escalating stakes keep the story moving forward at a bone-jarring pace, especially in the climax, where revelations and betrayals follow each other as quickly, and as dizzyingly, as Riley vaults down stairwells.” – Kirkus Reviews

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT










.et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .et_bloom_form_content { background-color: #ffffff !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .et_bloom_form_container .et_bloom_form_header { background-color: #d2232a !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .carrot_edge .et_bloom_form_content:before { border-top-color: #d2232a !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .carrot_edge.et_bloom_form_right .et_bloom_form_content:before, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .carrot_edge.et_bloom_form_left .et_bloom_form_content:before { border-top-color: transparent !important; border-left-color: #d2232a !important; }
@media only screen and ( max-width: 767px ) {.et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .carrot_edge.et_bloom_form_right .et_bloom_form_content:before, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .carrot_edge.et_bloom_form_left .et_bloom_form_content:before { border-top-color: #d2232a !important; border-left-color: transparent !important; }
}.et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .et_bloom_form_content button { background-color: #d2232a !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .et_bloom_border_solid { border-color: #911616 !important } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 .et_bloom_form_content button { background-color: #d2232a !important; } .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 h2, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 h2 span, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 h2 strong { font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, Lucida, sans-serif; }.et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 p, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 p span, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 p strong, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 form input, .et_bloom .et_bloom_optin_2 form button span { font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, Lucida, sans-serif; }







Hey there. I made something for you.

It's a free audiobook - and you can download it right now.

Get my book now!





Boom! Thank you. Check your email.

I’m at Creative Ink! Come say hi.

Hey! Everybody! I’m doing convention stuff!

Creative Ink is a badass con for writers, held every year in Vancouver. It hosts people like multiple-Hugo-winner Robert J. Sawyer, among others, and it’s always worth going to.

If you’re in BC around that time, come on down. I’m doing crazy shit, breaking things, getting drunk. And by that I mean: doing panels and talks and behaving myself. Obviously.

Friday Night
Author Reading – 9.20pm 

This is a whole night of author readings, not just from me (as awesome as that would be) but from writers like Kristi Charish, Kristene Perron and KT Wagner. Come down. Laugh at my inept pronunciation and fumbled jokes!

Saturday
12:00pm  – Writing the Future (Panel)

Barb Ferrer (M), Rob Boffard, Michele Fogal, Sadiq Somjee, Tom Wright

How do you create a credible near future? What things are likely to change, what will stay the same? How do you incorporate changes in the environment, economy, politics and culture into a believable future?

1:00pm  – No Spoilers Allowed (Panel)

Brenda Carre (M), Rob Boffard, Neil Enock, Randy McCharles

Sometimes, we don’t want our readers to know who the bad guy is until near the end of the story. How do you effectively hide your villain? How can you do it with them in plain view, without the reader catching on, yet when they are revealed, it makes sense?

4:00pm  – Easter Eggs (Panel)

Adam Dreece (M), Rob Boffard, Frank Talaber, Andrea Westaway 

Wait, she didn’t really put that in there, did she? What hidden secrets and nuggets are actually embedded in the stories? Is it a good idea? Or can it distract from the story and compromise your entire endeavour?

Sunday
10:00am – Creative book promotion strategies – what works, and what doesn’t, with Rob Boffard (Presentation)

I’m giving a talk! Whoop! Selling books can be tricky – especially when every other author is trying to do the same. What can you do to creatively promote your book, and set you apart from the crowd? From ridiculous publicity stunts to deep-dives into data to figure out what readers want, this talk will break down what makes a good promo strategy. Books don’t become successes by themselves, and this talk will help you take the next step in your publishing career.

1:00pm – Valuing Your Work (Panel)

Brenda Carre (M), Samantha Beiko, Rob Boffard, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Are you a professional writer? Or do you aspire to be a professional writer? That means working for money, not just for fame and glory. Join a group of professional writers to learn more about turning your words into money. What kind of paying work is available to writers? How much can you or should you charge? And when is it okay not to charge for your work?

2:00pm – Build an Empire On the Fly (Panel)

Brenda Carre (M), Roxanne Barbour, Rob Boffard, Bevan Thomas, Sadiq Somjee

Our panelists will create an empire from the ground up. They’ll design everything they can think of: geography, races, culture, laws, history, etc, while our moderator will toss problems (like insurgent dissidents and earthquakes) their way. An artist will be on hand to sketch scenarios and to contribute to the discussion.

5:00pm – Plot Twists (Panel)

Barb Ferrer (M), Mel Anastasiou, Rob Boffard, Trevor Melanson

We love to read them, we love to include them in our stories, but how to do them successfully?

4 space-based TV shows you need to watch right now

Every so often, some journalist or producer gets it into their heads that I have something to say about science fiction/space/explosions, shoots rope-traps into me, and pins me down for an interview. I enjoy doing them (although I don’t enjoy the rope traps – guys, I have email) and occasionally, the questions are actually pretty cool. One of them, recently, even threw me for a bit of a loop.

The question was: if a producer walked through the door right now, what would you like to have offer you: to make your book in to a movie, or a TV show?

Five years ago, the answer would be movie. Straightaway, no question. Now? It’s a lot tougher. There’s so much more fantastic TV being made (although I don’t know if we can call it TV any more, given that most of us are watching Netflix on our iPads) that it’s not obvious choice. In the end, I picked movie, but it was not easy. Also, if any producers are reading this, I would like it noted that I am open to any and all deals on any and all mediums, up to and including wax cylinders.

In the spirit of the thing, here are four killer new shows that are set in space. If you’re interested in starships, future settings and really big explosions, you should probably check them out.

The Expanse

Where: Syfy

Current Seasons: 2

Best For: fans of sprawling space opera

The Expanse is a monster. It’s one of Syfy’s biggest productions yet, based on the book series by writing duo James S.A. Corey (who, full disclosure, I share a publisher with). And really, what’s not to like about this? You have colonies all across the solar system, tensions between Earth and Mars and everyone else, ice freighters, battleships, humongous explosions and some fantastic actors to go along with it. Thomas Jane – better known as The Punisher – stars as an interstellar detective out to track down a missing person, and it’s shaping up to be an absolutely incredible show.

It’s on its second season, and has pulled in huge legions of devoted fans – me included. Here’s hoping it makes it off cable and onto streaming services soon, because I hate having to pirate shit.

Killjoys

Where: Space CA/Syfy (US)

Current Seasons: 2

Best For: Firefly fans

Look, I miss Mal Reynolds too. But we have to accept that he isn’t coming back. But even though that fact has left legions of Firefly fans with blue balls, there’s a series that might do the trick. It’s called Killjoys, and it’s about a trio of bickering bounty hunters trying desperately to remain neutral in the middle of a multi-planetary war.

This is a Canadian-made series (hooray!), although Syfy inevitably picked it up for the States. It’s reasonably brainless fun, but it’s still worth watching – and the guys behind Orphan Black made it, so it’s got some pedigree. By the way, I’m aware that this is a bit of a Marmite series, in that you either love it or hate it. Me? I think it’s awesome, with some great characters and fun setups.

Dark Matter

Where: Space / Syfy (UK), Netflix (Various)

Current Seasons: 2

Best for: People who like really, really long space voyages

Another Canadian made show, this time featuring six people who wake up on a starship with no idea of where they are going or what they’re supposed to be doing. Of course, things take a dark turn within about ten seconds of the opening sequence. If you miss the worlds of the Alien movies, with their rusty, derelict starships, but really feel that what they needed was very large samurai swords, then this is the perfect series for you.

I’ve only watched the first season of this – it’s taken a while for it to make it onto Netflix here in the great frozen north – but I bloody loved the first season. I absolutely fell in love with the characters, even the milquetoast One, and the twists consistently hit me hard. The Android is also one the most hysterically brilliant TV robots I’ve ever seen. This is my favorite space-based show right now not named The Expanse. WATCH IT.

Ascension

Where: Syfy/Netflix

Current Seasons: 1

Best for: Mad Men junkies

This is a bit of a weird one. The deal is that in the 1960s, the US government under Kennedy decided to launch a covert space mission, just in case the Russkies really did hit the big red button. This mission, which was designed to preserve the human race, had six hundred people on board, all of which are on a mission to colonise the planet near Proxima Centauri.

Of course, Season 1 ended on a massive cliffhanger, and of course…they cancelled it. I have never sworn so loudly. Critics weren’t wild about it, but honestly, I got a real kick out of it. It’s 1960s styling and fantastic performances mean that it’s definitely worth checking out – if, as I said, you can deal with never finding out what actually happened (sigh). And again: this is a Canadian series. Which brings us to…

What we can learn from these series:

1. All good sci-fi shows are made in Canada.

2. Every trailer for a new show must begin with establishing shot of an implausibly bright star field and a dangerous-looking ship.

3. Samurai swords make everything better.

4. It’s only a matter of time before multi-planetary combat becomes passé and we start seeing solar systems or galaxies squaring off.

5. The appetite for space-based action has never been higher. And on that note…

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy around

I can’t provide all the links to every store on every continent, but trust me: your favourite retailer probably has it. For now, here are the Amazon links – they’ll take you to the right store for your country.

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT

15 Freelancing Tips That Will Change Your Life

Over the past couple of years, two weird things happened to me.

The first is that I started doing a lot less freelancing, after almost a decade of doing it every single damn day. That’s what happen if you write a book series that people seem to like. Felt kind of weird to leave it behind, too – like a drunk friend who you’ve dropped off, who you can see fumbling their keys in the door, and you’re not entirely sure you want to drive away in case they somehow contrive to burn the house down.

The second is that the number of emails and tweets I got asking for freelance advice skyrocketed. I have no idea if this is some sort of condition, triggered when you turn thirty, but suddenly people were regarding me as an O.G. freelancer. Never mind that I still consider myself a five-year-old, professionally – I was getting advice requests. Loads of them.

So what I thought I’d do is put down a few key things I’ve learnt over a decade of freelancing. You should trust me, because I did it in multiple countries, for publications like The Guardian, Wired Magazine, and the BBC. I’ve won a couple of awards for my work, and have managed to sustain myself by writing full-time for the better part of that decade. So I know what I’m talking about, and these fifteen tips all contain things that anybody starting out will need to know. Or at least, they’re things I wish I’d known before I started out.

Oh, and I drew badly in a notebook to head up each pro tip. You’re welcome.

1. A good story is worth a thousand hours of networking

One of the biggest concerns new freelancers seem to have is their own personal brand. They place as much emphasis on developing their online presence and crafting their persona and visiting industry events as they do on actually… Well, you know, doing journalism.

And that’s fine. To a point. But do you want to know the way to an editor’s heart? Do you want to know what will get you commissions and bylines and money? Hint: it’s got absolutely nothing to do with how many Twitter followers you have.

I’m talking about a story. A good story. One that is interesting, and current, and which can only be told by you. One which you alone have the angle on. If you are trying to take on a new client, or pitch a piece to a publication, this is the surest way in. Find a story that excites you, and which you think will excite them too.

Because here’s the thing about editors. They LOVE good story ideas. A story or angle that they haven’t thought of yet, and which they can commission, makes them look good. A big part of being an editor is generating leads, and coming up with unique approaches that will satisfy their readership and their bosses. Giving them a good story will do both, in a way that 10,000 Twitter followers won’t even come close to.

Of course, that doesn’t actually cover how to pitch a story in the first place.

2. A (reasonably) foolproof method of pitching

The single most common question I get asked by newbie freelancers is how one actually pitches a story.

Here’s the thing. It’s really easy. Even if you’ve never met the editor, and he or she has absolutely no idea who you are.

I’d go as far as to say that there is actually a very simple formula for pitching a story to your average editor. I’m not saying this will work 100% of the time…but in a decade of doing it, I’ve found it to be the single most reliable way of pitching a story. It’s worked again and again and again.

The formula goes like this:
Dig up the email address of the relevant editor. This takes a little work, but it’s not actually that hard to figure out.
Write them an email. Your email should contain the following things: a very short intro of who you are and if you’ve written for anybody else; a headline for your story that neatly sums it up; a two-paragraph story pitch; a sign-off that asks for a response.
Send.
Wait.
After one week, send a follow up email.
After two weeks, call the publication, and ask for a decision or an update.
If you don’t have a decision after three weeks, pitch the story somewhere else.

Really, that’s it. And if you think it sounds complicated, then let’s apply it to battlefield conditions, with an actual story that I pitched and had commissioned.

In around 2010, I was living in London, and going to a lot of hip hop gigs. I’d recently been fired from the music magazine, where I covered them professionally, and since I didn’t actually know what else to do with my time, I kept going. Besides, hip-hop is awesome.

While I was doing this, I noticed that the same people kept appearing outside the clubs, all across London. They weren’t, despite my first reaction, selling drugs. They were selling albums. The same people, all the time. Yeah, this was the age of CDs and iPods. I’m fucking old, OK?

Here’s the email I sent to the music editor of The Guardian, after a little more research. Note that at this time, I’d been published, but in no publication that would impress him.

Dear [Name Redacted or he’ll kill me]

I’m a freelance journalist, and I have a feature story I think you’ll be interested in.

The rap sellers who brave the elements to sell their music.

They’re a familiar sight to anyone who visits a rap gig in the UK. Groups of young men, arms bulging with CDs, walking the lines outside clubs and selling their music directly to the fans. They come out in all weather, and stay till the early hours, before going to their regular jobs the next day. They’re armed with MP3 players so punters can preview their songs, and free promo CDs for those who say no.

These groups include people like Rhyme Asylum and Unusual Suspects, and I want to profile them for The Guardian first. What makes them adopt this selling method? What challenges do they encounter? Are there rivalries? I believe this story highlights a part of the industry that hasn’t been covered before, and I think your readers will really enjoy it.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Rob Boffard

Let’s break this down.

The story contains an interesting angle, asks questions, is clearly something that hasn’t been covered before (hint: before you pitch something, make sure someone hasn’t written about it elsewhere). It’s also very obviously a story that didn’t get fed to me by a PR person. It shows that I have a familiarity with the London hip-hop scene, and the club scene, and that I have an idea who the major players in the story will be.

It lays out the angle and the approach in two concise paragraphs – which, coincidentally, also show that I have the ability to write a story, or at least a narrative, in a short space of time. It does everything I need it to do. The salutation and the sign-off are short and polite, and the headline, while not amazing (mostly because I’m terrible at headlines) gets the point across.

I’ve also made it clear – I want to profile them for The Guardian first – that he’s got this as an exclusive now, but it won’t be for long. If I don’t hear from him, I’ll take it somewhere else. Worse: if he doesn’t act fast, another publication might run the same story. We’re not in the scoop-based world of news desks here, but all the same, he’d rather avoid pointed conversations with his boss as to why the competition has all the best ideas.

I didn’t know the editor I pitched it to. He didn’t know me. But after a follow-up email, he commissioned me, and told me to go ahead. That pitch became this story, and The Guardian became one of my best clients (and they did a great job with the piece). Every pitch I sent had the exact same format and goals.

I’m not joking when I say that this was probably the most important pitch email I ever sent. Writing for The Guardian opened A LOT of doors. Never underestimate how a well-crafted pitch email can work for you.

3. Know your field

Admittedly, this piece of advice comes from a guy who has written about everything and anything, from rapping mob bosses to acoustic drought technology. But it really, really helps if you know the field you’re writing about.

You have to immerse yourself in it. You have to get out from behind your desk, go and talk to people, know the players – and the people who aren’t players, but want to be. Be nice to everyone. Get numbers. Get email addresses. Get the hell off Twitter. Get a PGP key and make it easy for people to give you tips.

Look, I was never a news journalist. I was never very good at it. But one of the reasons that I survived and thrived as a freelancer for a decade is because I knew what I was talking about. When it came to something like hip-hop, nobody could touch me. I knew the music and the industry deep.

4. Have multiple clients – and know their value

Another one of the reasons why I killed it as a freelancer: I was a fucking mercenary.

I am absolutely unashamed of it. I wrote for anyone and everyone. Obviously, I didn’t write for publications with odious political views, or those which had a terrible reputation – I did have some standards. But what I mean is that I totally slept around. From the very start, I courted multiple clients, found multiple stories, and never took my eyes off the fact that an editor, no matter how nice, could only pay me so much.

This is the one big advantage freelancers have over wage slaves. If one of your clients goes bust: well, it sucks, but you should very easily be able to switch your efforts to the dozen others you have already. A client who doesn’t pay you should not completely derail your life, mostly because you already have plenty more in the pipeline. Above all, be ruthless. If an editor is taking too long to get back to you on a pitch, or you’re not satisfied with the rate you’re getting, take it elsewhere. Seriously. I know you have relationship with that editor and you send each other cute GIFs and make random, funny subtweets about each other, but in this case, fuck him. You got a story, it’s got to be told, and you need to get paid for it. If he won’t shit, then he needs to get off the pot.

To be clear: I’m not saying you should treat clients badly, or pitch the same story to multiple locations. I’m just saying you should act like a cigar-chewing, bearded, baseball-capped merc with an offshore account and a tattoo that says COME AT ME BRO. Even if you’re a skinny-jeans-wearing hipster from Brooklyn.

And by the way, let’s just talk about client value for a minute. Pop quiz. Who is more valuable: an international publication with a giant masthead, that pays you once a year after you’ve gone through a byzantine invoicing process, or a smaller site that can hit you with regular work and pay you promptly?

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t go after the big magazines or websites. Freelance careers are built on the bylines you can get in reputable publications. But unless you’re Ed Caesar or Taffy Brodesser-Akner, you aren’t going to be getting these every single month.

It would be nice if we were all Taffy Brodesser-Akner, but we are not. I’m certainly not, which is just as well, as I’m not sure my wife wants to share a bed with Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

For most freelancers, myself included, the bulk of your revenue comes from smaller, less exciting jobs. I wish it was the other way round, but at a time when the entire media is going through the equivalent of an ongoing Cascadia fault rupture, it isn’t.

The lesson here is that you need to learn to value certain clients, and you need to know which clients are going to get your time. One of my most valuable clients over the years was a music magazine who let me write for them on a monthly basis, but could only pay me three months after the print run, after they themselves had been paid. Now initially, that was a giant pain in the arse – but they were commissioning me to write for them every month, for reasonable amounts, and they paid like clockwork. So that meant that after the initial three month period, I was getting a regular income from them every single month. If I was still writing for them today, and decided to stop, I would still be getting paid three months down the line.

That is an extremely valuable client to have. That is far more valuable than writing for, I don’t know, Slate or Salon, who would probably pay you a decent sum for a piece once or twice a year. Again, I’m not saying you shouldn’t write for Slate or Salon or whatever – just that you should know who gets your time. The mid-sized and little guys can be immensely valuable.

Oh, and when you’re hunting for new clients, don’t neglect places like Craigslist. You think I’m joking? The single most lucrative client I’ve ever had came from a Craigslist posting. Not only have they paid me thousands and thousands of dollars over the years, and become some of my closest and friendliest colleagues, but they also hold the all-time record for fast invoice payment. Thirty seconds. I sent a PayPal invoice, went to take a slash, and came back to find that I’d been paid in full. Nobody is beating that. Not ever.

5. Act like a pro

So you’re the newest, greenest, rosy-cheeked rube in freelancing. You have no idea what you’re doing, and you don’t want to piss anyone off, and you really want to make friends.

The easiest way to mark yourself out as a pro, from the get go, has nothing to do with your actual stories or output. It’s to do with how you conduct yourself. It’s about doing things that separate you from the herd.

Like insisting on a 50% kill fee, right up front. That’s a fee you get paid if you produce satisfactory work that isn’t published.

Like asking about sidebars, photos, links in the copy. Who’s responsible for those? What credits do you need to get? Do they want you to take photos, and if so, will you be paid extra? (Please say yes. Thank you.)

Like establishing upfront the number of rounds of edits you’ll be required to do – and whether adding in any extra copy beyond that required of a simple edit for clarity will get you more money. (Please say yes. Thank you.)

Like establishing a publication date early on – and getting on their case if it slips.

Like invoicing – how, to whom, when by, and payment terms. BEFORE you start working.

And on that note:

6. What about contracts?

OK, firstly, this isn’t legal advice. Any fuckups you make are your own. I’m a writer, not a lawyer.

In theory, you should ALWAYS get a contract. It protects you, it protects your client. It’s a good thing. The contract should be clear and simple and easy to understand. You should not have to hire a legal professional to vet them.

But. And it’s a big but.

For a lot of clients, I didn’t operate with contracts. My agreement with them was written, over email, but that was it. Had things gone south, technically, I wouldn’t have been able to fight it. Fortunately, things never went south – I was always paid, even if the story didn’t work out. And for a lot of pros, that’s the reality of the industry. Many agreements are informal. Don’t be surprised if it happens to you – although honestly, having a contract is always better.

Look, I’m not going to spend ages breaking down rights and moral obligations and the like. There are plenty of resources for that, like this one. You could also do worse than get yourself a standard, boilerplate writing contract. I used this one for years, modifying it for each client. Feel free to utilise.

BUT AGAIN BIG BIG BIG DISCLAIMER I AM NOT A LAWYER I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING YOU DO. CONTRACT IS OFFERED AS IS. GET A LEGAL PROFESSIONAL TO CHECK IT OUT OR PSYCHOTIC GIBBONS WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN.

Phew. OK.

7. Never miss deadlines

Come on guys. Jesus. It’s not that hard.

You’d think this is obvious, but so many freelancers are lazy, or stupid, or both. Deadlines get missed, and then these chuckalucks act all surprised when nobody wants their stuff anymore.

Never. Not ever. Not even once. You meet your damn deadline, no matter what. If you absolutely have to miss a deadline, or the story has exploded, or you have exploded – let your editor know before the deadline. WAY before. And you’d better have a damn good excuse. Like. “My grandma murdered my parents and is now being hauled off my the cops and I have to save my younger brother and the world from a nuke with Donald Trump’s face on it” good.

This is the single simplest thing to get right, and you would be amazed at how many people cock it up.

8. Make editors’ lives easy

Editors. They are harassed, underpaid, overworked, stressed, ears angled for even a whisper of layoff rumours, inboxes overflowing, PRs trying to corner them to pitch them their client’s new vacuum cleaner solution. Poor bastards. Pity them. Help them.

And by help them, I mean, be the person who always shows up.

Respond to questions in a timely fashion. Make sure the nitty-gritty stuff – the grammar, the headings and subheadings, adhering to house format, the photo credits – is all shipshape. Be polite. Be friendly. Above all, deliver good stories, and report them to the best of your ability. Be a credit to your profession. Grow wings. Fly. Swoop down on lesser journalists and gut them with your talons.

Just checking you were still paying attention. But seriously: outside of delivering good pitches, one of the best ways to get editors onside is to be the nicest, most helpful person you can. Onside editors equal pitches, which equals more money. Onside editors, when the chips are down and they need something done, will think of you first. That’s money in your pocket.

And would sending them a bottle of whiskey at Christmas really be that much of a stretch? (Please say yes. Thank y –  I mean NO. Please say no. It isn’t a stretch. Send them a damn bottle.)

9. Admit mistakes. Fix them quickly.

They happen, more often than you’d think.

I used to do a lot of pro audio writing – as in, articles for people who mix music and do sound design, which is something I have a background in. I wrote for some pretty heavy hitters, and for years, they were some of my most lucrative clients. Good guys, too: always paid fairly, paid like clockwork, pleasure to deal with.

But sometimes, I’d fuck up.

See, doing this kind of writing involves a lot of technical knowledge. I am not, as a rule, a details guy. It’s not that I’m lazy – I just have a zillion things going on in a brain that never seems to shut down, so I’d miss stuff. Occasionally, I’d miss stuff that would sneak through into publication, and then readers would notice.

Boy, they’d notice.

More than once, I got a giant bollocking from my editors. And it wasn’t just the audio folks. With Wired Magazine, I once submitted what was (I thought) a very cool piece on a South African entrepreneur, who had figured out a way to get music to people in the townships who didn’t have smartphones, doing it via text message. Or at least, that’s what I thought was the case. In reality, the person behind it had stopped doing that ages ago, and I’d been too enthused with the story to notice. It was only after it was published that he pointed out, not without a little confusion, that he had started offering song downloads using mobile data, and hadn’t done it by text for years.

Well, fuck. That was embarrassing. I had to go back to the editors, make a humble apology, and tell them I wouldn’t be invoicing them for the piece. To their great credit, they let me continue writing for them, and said they were happy to publish a corrected piece. I went on to write many more stories for them – and let me tell you, every single one of those pieces got triple and quadruple checked. Had I not apologised, immediately offered to correct the mistake, and declined to invoice, they wouldn’t have worked with me again. Instead, they got someone who owned up to responsibility, and allowed them to save a little bit of money while still publishing a (corrected) story. And anyway, we’re not talking about saving kids from Donald Trump nukes. The world didn’t end when I had a brainfart on that story.

So when you screw up – and you will – apologise, and offer to fix it straight away.

10. Get an accountant

One of the things that continually confuses me is when fellow freelancers say “I don’t make enough money to pay an accountant.”

These people are totally fine with doing their own taxes every year. They seem to think that they are being responsible and frugal by spending hours and hours filling out revenue forms – hours that could best be used actually, you know, pitching stories and finding work.

What these folks fail to understand is that an accountant isn’t just there to do a job you don’t like doing. He or she is there to save you money. A good accountant should pay for themselves – if they are doing their job, they will save you far more money than you spend on them.

I went for years doing my own taxes myself. In the year I finally decided to get an accountant, it was a goddamn revelation. He highlighted things I didn’t even know I could claim, things I would never even have thought of. Did you know, for instance, that if you live in the UK you can claim for the laptop you use to do your job, as long as you bought it in the past seven years and haven’t claimed for it previously? Neither did I.

In his first year, my accountant – a quiet chap from a reputable firm in London – saved me around £3000. His total bill? £400. Obviously the savings were less in the following years, but I still use the guy – every year, he helps me keep the maximum amount possible. He is still, after five years, an expense I have no trouble handling. He literally pays for himself.

Guys: this is a no brainer. Get an accountant. Get. An. Accountant. Unless you earn absolutely dick-all, it’s the best decision you’ll ever make. You’ll still have to keep track of income and expenses, but that’s just spreadsheeting. Let your numbers person figure out the hard shit.

11. An easy way to save money

OK, so this isn’t really for my guys in the US. But if you live in somewhere like the UK or Canada, consider this a handy bonus tip.

In these countries, you have a personal allowance before you start to get taxed – usually around $10,000 / £9,000. Any money you earn before that is not subject to tax.

When I first began freelancing, I tried to be as diligent as possible, from the very beginning, about putting money away for tax. Every single payment I received, I took a chunk of it, and put it in a savings account, ready to be (grudgingly, it must be said) sent to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

When tax time came, I diligently filled out the form…and stopped, confused. I was paying far less tax than I thought I would have to. You’ve already got the punchline: the personal allowance. In my very first full year of freelancing, I earned around £22,000 (not a particularly good year, but then again, I was just starting out). Except, I wasn’t paying tax on the full amount. I was paying tax on £13,000, before expenses were taken into account.

After I paid my tax, I had a reasonably substantial amount left over. Free savings. I could literally put that away in my bank account, and forget about it. I did. And have done so every year.

The beauty of this tip is that you don’t actually need to do anything you’re not doing anyway. Just take tax off every single payment you receive, and stash it somewhere. When it comes to tax time, you’ll have a handy surplus.

I fully admit: this might not work if you have debts to pay off, or if you are really struggling and need the money. But if you’re making a decent living, this is an extremely handy way to put away some cash in savings every year. And remember, I’m a writer, not an accountant or tax lawyer, so use this tip at your own risk.

12. Don’t stand for late payment

Since we’re on the subject of money, I want to talk about getting paid.

You can’t go three clicks online without tripping over freelance horror stories. Clients who pay late. Clients who won’t pay. Clients who pay only half of what they were supposed to. Clients who give you excuse after excuse after excuse. Four- or five-figure jobs that never materialise.

Every time I read these, I breathe a little sigh of relief. I have been so lucky. I can count the number of clients who have screwed me on one hand and still have room for a pinky ring.

That being said, there have been a few occasions where payment hasn’t appeared, and I’ve needed to get angry. So here’s my advice on this particular topic. A client gets exactly one strike and one strike only. I don’t care if they’re the motherfucking New Yorker.

Payment terms should be agreed before the job starts, and if they can’t or won’t adhere to it, they get a polite but very firm email asking for immediate payment. The next email escalates things, tacking on late fees (I usually charge 20% per week), and even – in one case I had to deal with – threatening Small Claims Court. The goal here is to make enough noise that it’s easier to just pay you to make you go away. And if you’re worried that this will harm your relationship with the client… Well, they’re not exactly paying you anyway, are they?

13. Budgeting – and accepting the rollercoaster

This is apparently the money-themed part of this particular diatribe. Don’t worry. Only a few more tips left.

There are two parts to this one. The first is that you need to budget. You need to budget. It’s an absolute necessity. It doesn’t matter how you do it – I find a Google Docs spreadsheet works perfectly well. But you need to know what money is coming in, and from whom, and what you’re doing with it. I tried to run my budget at least three months in advance, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do longer.

But: your budget has to be flexible. The thing about freelancing, which you probably realised already, is that you’re never quite sure exactly how much money you’re going to make in a given month. I’ve had months where I’ve cleared £4000 – after tax. I’ve had months where I’ve cleared £400. I had one memorable month, shortly after I first started, where I earned about £22. You can do a bit of projecting, to some extent, but if you’re going to stick this out you have to be comfortable with the fact that your financial life is going to be a bit of a rollercoaster. The general idea is to try and save as much as you can in the good times, to help get you through the bad.

In a way, I sort of became addicted to the rollercoaster. It kept me hungry. It always kept me looking for the next story. If you think it doesn’t sound fun, if you’re even a little bit worried about not having a regular income every month… Then maybe you need to rethink whether freelancing is for you.

By the way: can I address, really quickly, the question of how much you should be paid?

It’s a tricky one, mostly because markets and publications differ so wildly, and despite there being various freelance unions out there, there’s no real agreed fee. At the start of my career, I charged around 10p (UK pence) per word, so a 1000 word story got me £100. If that sounds low, remember that it was 2009, and my word rate immediately got a big bump when The Guardian (who, bless their organically-farmed cotton socks, are completely open about their payment terms and publish them on their website) paid me three times that for the same amount.

These days, I tend to sit at around 20-25p per word for a story, although often I’ve negotiated a flat fee that is much higher – like I said, this kind of thing fluctuates wildly, and negotiating your fee is a skill you’re going to have to learn. One thing I’ve never done is charged a client by the hour, mostly because it’s never clear at the start how long a particular story is going to have to take. A client is not going to be best pleased if you charge them for the ten hours you spent hunting down an interviewee whose comments didn’t make it into the final piece. So don’t worry too much about hourly rate. Go for a per word rate, or a flat fee.

14. Never write for free

Hoo boy. Here we go.

But the exposure! But the portfolio! But it’s a really big publication and it will get my name out there! But I’m only a student and no one will pay me to write for them because I haven’t written for anybody yet! But I don’t know what I’m doing and they said they’d mentor me! But –

Ugh. No. Fuck no. This is like missing deadlines: not ever, not even once.

I will just – just – about accept a full-time student writing for free. If you’re doing a university journalism course, it’s not outside the realm of accepted practice to spend a few weeks doing a work experience gig somewhere, although God knows this alone has enough problems, especially if you come from a family without the money to support you. I would certainly be happy to see this practice eliminated, although I do understand the logic behind it.

But after you get out? After you have your degree? You are absolutely forbidden to write for free. You are a professional, you are good at what you do, and no outlet, no matter how small, should expect you to cover their light bill. If they cannot pay you, they are simply not worth your time. End of. Whether you’ve got one piece published or a thousand, your job is simple: treat your work with the value it deserves.

Some outlets work on a revenue share scheme: so if your post gets a certain number of shares and likes, you get a share of the revenue. I despise that sort of thing. It’s like paying someone using a loophole. I’ve never done it, and would never do it, but more and more outlets are starting to utilise it. If someone does pitch this to you as recompense for your work, make sure you know exactly how much the average payout is for a particular piece, and get them to show you success stories. If they have a thousand articles on their site but only one or two success stories? Move on.

Every journalist who refuses to write for free is another pile of dirt thrown on the coffin of this shitty, scummy idea that writers should be in poverty. Fuck that.

15. Working from home is awesome…until it isn’t

I was genetically created to be the perfect organism for working from home.

I am much more productive when there is no one around. I get a lot more done if I can stomp across my living room, muttering to myself, while insultingly loud dub music is playing in the background. I frequently work in attire that is vastly unacceptable to the majority of people. On the few occasions where I have had to work in an office, I have been repeatedly brought up for my slovenly appearance and tendency to snort loudly. Also farting. But that’s another story.

However much or however little money I make, freelancing from the privacy of my own home really agrees with me.

But even then, there are times when I find myself climbing the walls. Occasionally, I long for human contact. The late afternoons tend to be the worst, when I slowly realise that I haven’t got nearly enough done, and my list for the next day is filling up ridiculously fast, and I feel like a bit of a failure. This wouldn’t happen, I tried myself, if I’d only go and work in an office again. Or in a co-working space.

Fortunately, I know myself reasonably well. The feeling soon passes.

You… I don’t know you. I don’t know how well you’d cope with being on your own for hours at the time. I think the key is to not be surprised when being on your own becomes a challenge. Do what you gotta do. If that includes going to a coffee shop or going for a walk or a wank or whatever, then do it. Just be warned that at some point in your freelancing career, you are going to regret working for yourself.

I’ll tell you one thing it’s given me: discipline. Needing to write to actually put food on the table is an incredible motivator to get things done. Whenever I speak about my books to people, they often express amazement that I was able to sit down and write them at all, saying they’d never have the discipline. My response is very simple. I learned discipline over a decade, because if I didn’t have it, I didn’t eat. That thing sort of works its way into your bones.

One last little tip before you finish this long-ass article and go get some lunch. Remember to stop working. My wife actually had to hold an intervention in the early days, when I was staying at my desk for ten, twelve, fifteen hours at a time. No job, no gig, no matter how lucrative or important, is worth your free time, your health and happiness. Striking a balance is hard, but you have to do it.

Now go. Away with you. Start pitching.

New Rapped Book Review! The Rise of Io, by Wesley Chu

So I know this week was a total shitshow that more or less plunged us headlong down the dark timeline, but hey, I made a thing. It’s a new rapped book review! Of a Wesley Chu novel! That is really worth reading!

Ella Patel – thief, con-artist and smuggler – is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One night, on the border of a demilitarized zone run by the body-swapping alien invaders, she happens upon a man and woman being chased by a group of assailants. The man freezes, leaving the woman to fight off five attackers at once, before succumbing. As she dies, to both Ella and the man’s surprise, the sparkling light that rises from the woman enters Ella, instead of the man. She soon realizes she’s been inhabited by Io, a low-ranking Quasing who was involved in some of the worst decisions in history. Now Ella must now help the alien presence to complete her mission and investigate a rash of murders in the border states that maintain the frail peace.

With the Prophus assigned to help her seemingly wanting to stab her in the back, and the enemy Genjix hunting her, Ella must also deal with Io’s annoying inferiority complex. To top it all off, Ella thinks the damn alien voice in her head is trying to get her killed. And if you can’t trust the voices in your head, who can you trust?

Have fun! If you liked it, check out the other three rapped reviews I’ve done previously, below.

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy around

I can’t provide all the links to every store on every continent, but trust me: your favourite retailer probably has it. For now, here are the Amazon links – they’ll take you to the right store for your country.

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT

6 Unbelievably Beautiful Music Studios

I’m a big music studio guy. Put me in a chair in front of lights and dials and faders and knobs, and I’m happier than Donald Trump reading a new Hillary emails headline. Although I’ve made a career out of writing scithemfi, my roots were in sound engineering, and it’s something I did successfully for a very long time – long enough to know that while studios can be intimidating, they can also be immensely beautiful spaces.

I used to do quite a bit of writing for professional audio magazines, including the wonderful MusicTech. Editor Andy Jones and his crew let me pump out some fun features for them over the years, and although I don’t do too much writing for them any more (thanks to a regular gig with The Master Switch) I still have a lot of love for them. For my money, they put out the best and most readable audio magazine on the planet.

Their Facebook game is on fire, too. They’ve known for a while the creative music spaces can be a lot of fun, and with the hashtag #showoffyourstudio, they made it easy for their audience to post beguiling photos of their workspaces. I’m a total junkie for it – you can find it here, but I’ve collected six of my favourite ones below. I’ve included the original captions and links, so you can see who took them. They are well worth checking out.

We’re in awe at this amazing shot of Skrillex mixing his Recess album in the acclaimed confines of the Strongroom London. We’d love to pop through for a visit one day…

Dana Sullivan sent us this shot of classy, well ordered studio setup featuring a range of great kit #showoffyourstudio #studiolife

A classic #showoffyourstudio submission from RE Neon, Love the lighting…#studiolife #producerlife

Another amazing shot from the studio of Sinisha Golemac. Words fail us – it’s absolutely spectacular! #showoffyourstudio #studiolife

Here’s the first of two shots of the studio of Mark Dwane, fantastic lighting and a jaw-dropping collection of hardware. #showoffyourstudio #studiolife

Do you think Grysza Em has enough acoustic treatment? #showoffyourstudio #studiolife#acoustics #producer #producerlife

















Read the most explosive scifi trilogy around

I can’t provide all the links to every store on every continent, but trust me: your favourite retailer probably has it. For now, here are the Amazon links – they’ll take you to the right store for your country.

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT

6 comic books that Netflix would absolutely smash

Do you like Jon Bernthal? Do you like hairy men? Are you excited by the idea of a hairy Jon Bernthal? Then you’re in luck, because a very hairy Jon Bernthal is coming to Netflix. He did so well in the second season of Daredevil as Frank Castle that they’re giving him his very own show. Which is awesome, because while I might not feel one way or another about hairy men, I fully approve of Jon Bernthal blowing things up and grunting.

Netflix isn’t just doubling down on new comic book-based series. It’s tripling, quadrupling, and sextupling down. (Is sextupling even a word? Who knows! Who cares! Netflix is doing it!). Their partnership with Marvel is giving all sorts of weird and wonderful fringe characters from the world of comic books time in the spotlight. Not just Daredevil, but Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, the aformentioned Punisher… What I’m saying is, ten years ago, if you’d told me that Jessica Jones would have her own series with David Tennant playing the villain, my first question would have been “Who the hell is Jessica Jones?”

It helps that the folks at Netflix are really, really good at this. They make superb TV. And they do smart things, like insisting that women direct Jessica Jones, and that Luke Cage be, you know, a show that is both about black people and written and directed by them. And this isn’t even touching on their other amazing series: Stranger Things, Making A Murderer, the amazing BoJack Horseman, Orange Is The New Black…

They seem to know they’re onto a good thing. They’ve just committed another $800m to creating new content, which makes authors like me prick their ears up. But on the assumption that it’s bad form to promo your own work, I got at least five comic book series that would make INCREDIBLE television. You’re welcome.

1. The Runaways

Created by: Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona

Publisher: Marvel

I have a real soft spot for this series, despite the fact that most of it appears to be written and drawn by one-armed chimpanzees. The idea is simple: what if, as a teenager, you and your best friends discovered that your parents were all super villains? What if you decided to go on the run… And soon discovered that you had powers yourself?

Yes, I’m well aware that this series is now being produced on Hulu, with Marvel’s blessing, but it’s been in development hell for so long that I’m genuinely not sure that it’s actually going to make it out. I’d be much happier if Netflix used some of that $800m to steal it back. Because really, it’s got bucket-loads of potential. You have at least six diverse young superheroes, ranging from superstrong ten-year-old Molly to teenage witch Nico, and they’re all battling their parents, and they ride around in a freaking frog robot, for God’s sake, and if you can’t see Netflix smashing this, you need to go dunk your head in a bucket of cold water.

Oh, I almost forgot. They hang around with a sentient velociraptor from the 87th century. Just thought you should know.

2. The Authority

Created by: Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch

Publisher: DC

Everybody always talks about the relationship between Apollo and Midnighter being the best example of a gay relationship in comics, and don’t get me wrong: a show about these two (one of whom has the powers of the sun, the other of whom is unbeatable in a fight) would be mint. But why stop there? If you’ve got all that money to play around with, then why not do a show about the team they’re a part of?

You’d have the advantage of making the single maddest TV show in history. Madder than Preacher, madder than American Horror Story, madder than bloody Hemlock Grove.

Don’t believe me? Imagine a team of superheroes who protect the entire universe (and often others, too) all while living in a sentient shift-ship that occupies every space in reality at once. They all die and come back at least once every issue. Usually, their enemies include Gods, aliens, secret agents, alternate versions of themselves, and, on one occasion, alternate versions of themselves who also happened to be alien secret agents with Godlike powers. One of them can talk to cities, and can quite literally take out a bad guy with an Empire State Building to the face. Their most powerful member is a shaman with a predilection for horse porn. I swear I’m not making any of this up. This is the actual comic book, and its glorious.

Netflix: make this happen. Only you can do it. No one else has the chutzpah.

3. Transmetropolitan

Created by: Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Publisher: Vertigo/Helix

The only indication we’ve had that this absolutely loony Warren Ellis series might make it to the screen is a rumour from 2014. But seriously: Right now, Tim Roth isn’t doing anything, right? I’m pretty sure we can convince him to go completely bald, get himself a bunch of tattoos, dress in black pants and a suit jacket AND NOTHING ELSE, and wear coloured glasses with different shaped lenses.

If this isn’t making any sense, go and read up on Transmetropolitan, which is the story of what would happen if Hunter S. Thompson lived in the future. We are way, way overdue for a story about a gleeful, drug-taking, bowel-loosening-gun-wielding reporter who owns a three-eyed cat. Just saying.

4. Y: The Last Man

Created by: Bryan K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra

Publisher: Vertigo

Come on, already! What does it take? Whose dick do I have to suck to get this made?

Bryan K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s amazing story of what happens when all but one man on Earth dies has been in development hell since 2010. Since 2015, the chaps at FX have been doing something with it, but no one really knows what.

I genuinely don’t understand this. We’re talking about one of the best comic books ever made, with a huge, diehard, devoted audience. It’s the kind of thing that is just begging for Netflix money, for Danai Gurira to get to play Agent 355, for Tom Holland to ditch Spiderman and join up as Yorick (the titular Last Man).

I would love to see any and all of the entries on this list get made, but this is really the only one I’d sell a kidney for. Oh, and we already have a fan-film proof of concept.

5. The Sculptor

Created by: Scott McCloud

Publisher: First Second Books

And now for something that doesn’t involve insane superheroes, global plagues, sentient spaceships and copious amounts of drugs.

Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor is a beautiful, simple story about what happens when an artist is given supernatural talent…but only two hundred days to live. It’s an unusual choice, I grant you, but Netflix has shown that it can do thoughtful and slow-moving (just look at some of the sequences in Jessica Jones), and I can’t imagine a cooler pick than this one. If nothing else, it would mean that more people get to experience this book, which is probably one of the best ever created.

6. Saga

Created by: Fiona Staples and Bryan K. Vaughan

Publisher: Image Comics

Jesus. I really, really want this to be made, but I’m not even sure Netflix’s $800m can cover it. It’s the kind of thing even a Hollywood studio might blink a few times at. It’s a multi-year, multi-galaxy story with multiple different lifeforms and set pieces that all require a giant cock-ton of CGI. On top of that, you absolutely have to get the casting right. The series lives and dies by the relationship between lovers Alana and Marko, as well as their daughter Hazel, and if you don’t pick the exact right people, the whole thing could fall apart. Not to mention the fact that you have to cast all of them at different ages.

The only way I could see this happening is if it was an animated series. Which would be fine by me, as long as you can get Fiona Staples to draw it and Bryan K. Vaughan to write it. It’s the kind of thing that could only work on TV, thanks to its freewheeling style and gigantic cast of characters, and right now, the only place with even remotely the required amount of money to throw around is…you don’t even need me to say.

I lied earlier: I will sell a kidney to get this done. Yes, I know I’ve already sold one to help make Y: The Last Man. I don’t care. I can die happy, knowing I made the world a better place.

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy around

I can’t provide all the links to every store on every continent, but trust me: your favourite retailer probably has it. For now, here are the Amazon links – they’ll take you to the right store for your country.

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT