Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 150

Storm Grant: Five Things I Learned Writing Lost Boys 2.0

Trapped outside the world, unlikely hero Thaddeus Wright must partner with sexy Secret Agent Peter Pan to save a new generation of Lost Boys.

Thaddeus Wright would love to forget his childhood. A bi-racial bastard orphaned at four, he was the very definition of sin, according to the strict and disapproving grandparents who raised him. Twenty years later, Thad works with at-risk youth as both coach and counselor. Even after his grandparents’ spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child parenting, Thad just wants to help people. But when three young boys he coaches go missing, he’s the prime suspect.

Especially when he goes missing himself!

That’s when paranormal policing agency Borderless Observers Org. (BOO) sends in recent recruit Peter Batique on his first solo mission. Peter had another name once, but he’s all grown up now and looking to prove himself an adult and a capable agent. However, after a hundred years as an unruly boy in Neverland, growing up holds some pretty unique challenges for Peter.

Despite their differences, Thad and Peter must learn to work together to rescue a whole new generation of Lost Boys and take down the black market shadow dealer responsible.

USA Today gave it 5 stars, calling it “a mash-up of a detective novel, horror story and modern-day romance.”

JOSS WHEDON KNOWS!

You like Firefly? Buffy? The Avengers? I do. A. Lot. Why, you ask? (Yes, you did.) Because of the fun/fright balance. Oh, sure, the characters, the dialogue, the setting, the plotty goodness… They’re fine, too. But it’s the dark-to-light ratio—the humor vs. horror—that sucks me right in. And a lot of other people too, if box office numbers are any indication. It’s funny when Captain Tight Pants boots a guy into Serenity’s engine. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?

DRAMEDY IS A THING…

It’s a sliding scale—light and fun on one end, heart-wrenching, gut-ripping darkness on the other. With the dramedy sliding scale, the light-to-dark ratio changes. Dean Winchester gets sucked into Hell—deadly serious stuff. But he quips as he goes. Guffaw! Lightly dark or darkly light. Guardians of the Galaxy is a comedy in which thousands of people die. Constantine is dark, dark, dark… until it’s not. Lost Boys 2.0 is a tragic story that’ll make you laugh and cheer. Or it’s a funny story that’ll make you sleep with the lights on.

…AND SO IS FUN-TASY!

Whether it’s shelved in horror or romance or sci-fi, if it’s funny and it’s fantasy, it’s fun-tasy. Look, the Queen gave Sir Terry Pratchett a knighthood for being funny. Who’s going to argue with Liz? I hear she’s a huge Discworld fan.

CROSSING GENRES IS GREAT!

Let’s screw with reader expectations. With mashed-up genre books there’s something for everyone. Well, maybe not for the guy who’s allergic to vowels. I love a book that has plots within plots, unexpected twists and turns. Why take anything out of your writerly toolbox? My fave thing about Chuck’s Blue Blazes was the romantic sub-plot. “Bwa-huh?” you say? Go back and read it again.

THE SAME ONLY DIFFERENT

Writing two heroes offers different challenges, different perspectives and an entirely different dynamic. Who rescues who? (Or is that whom?) Twice the heroes, twice the testosterone, a heck of a lot more conflict.

And yet still the same writerly challenges: the characters, the dialogue, the setting, the plotty goodness…

And when all else fails, blow something up.

* * *

She’s two people, actually. Aren’t you? Storm Grant pens long and short tales. Her work spans genders and genres, offering good guys and bad puns. Her alter ego, Gina X. Grant, writes funny urban fantasy.

Storm Grant: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Lost Boys 2.0: Amazon | B&N | iTunes

Art Held Hostage: Why Sony Not Releasing “The Interview” Is Scary

You’re probably caught up to speed, but in case you aren’t:

Hackers, which may or may not be connected to North Korea, found Sony’s new film, The Interview, quite disagreeable — so much so that they hacked the unmerciful shit out of Sony (thus releasing emails and scripts and other internal company information, which our news media flocked to like a pack of starving vultures) and threatened terror attacks in the style of 9/11 if the film was released. Some big theater chains understandably capitulated, and then Sony folded like a paper airplane, too. Sony won’t even release the film on VOD. (At Time Magazine: Everything We Know About Sony, The Interview, and North Korea.)

Ha ha ha, where were those hackers when someone decided to make that new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie? Am I right, guys? Huh? Huh? Ha ha ha ha OH GODDAMNIT DON’T YOU DARE LAUGH. That was a trap. I just trapped you. You thought we were engaging in some snarky pop culture japery, didn’t you? You fool. You fool. This shit isn’t funny. As a writer? As a guy who creates things for a living? This is utterly fucking terrifying.

This proves that hackers, terrorists, and enemy nations now have a vote as to the media we make and the stories we see. That’s blood gone cold scary. This sounds like the plot of a Neal Stephenson or William Gibson novel, or worse, the plot of a novel by someone trying to emulate them. (“The sky was the color of a movie theater screen not carrying Sony’s THE INTERVIEW.”)

Disagreeable and controversial art is an essential element of our cultural discourse.

It is vital that art — no matter who finds it uncomfortable — be allowed its day. (Yes, provided of course that the art or the creation of that art isn’t actually violating anybody’s actual rights or breaking any actual laws.) Any erosion of this freedom to make and distribute art is frightening. It sets an unholy precedent. It suggests a world where, if any one group big or small finds something you’re making disagreeable, then you shouldn’t get to tell that story — and we shouldn’t get to see, read, or hear that story.

The Great Dictator? A Clockwork Orange? Straw Dogs? Bowling for Columbine? What about books like Handmaid’s Tale — or, since it has generated controversy, Harry Potter? Or television shows like MASH, or Soap, or All in the Family? Or, drum roll please, South Park?

Imagine that one person, one group, or one nation rejected one or all of those.

And threatened not just the tellers of those stories but, in fact, the audience, too?

What’s doubly puzzling to me is some of the reactions I’m seeing online.

Well, worse things have happened this week.

Yeah, no, I know. That’s not wrong, and I dunno if you’ve noticed, but the news around the globe on a good day is a horror-spackled murderfest shit-show. CIA torture, schools attacked, police brutality, racism, rape, all of it. Are those things all worse than The Interview not being released? Sure. Yeah. Yes. But, I want you to consider a few things. First, we can be upset about more than one thing. Meaning, we can manifest and maintain anger and fear over lots of the world’s horror-spackled murderfest shit-show problems all at one horrible time. Second, this one in particular is pertinent to me, and this blog, and probably all of you because we are the tellers of stories and also the listeners of stories. Third and for me, the most important?

This cuts to the heart of a very significant issue — because all of those things we’re talking about, the police brutality, the CIA, the institutional racism and sexism and rape culture? Well, part of our way of fighting back against such horror is through our media. With news, social media, and also, through storytelling. Stories are vital cultural mechanisms. Any threat — any threat at all! — to our ability to share information and to criticize the world around us is scary.

This isn’t a freedom of speech issue, it’s a money issue.

It’s actually neither, really. This isn’t a constitutional freedom of speech issue, because all parties involved are free-thinking (if somewhat craven) companies. It’s also not a money issue because I’m fairly sure that Sony is better off releasing this than, y’know, not ever releasing it. It’s going to cost Sony over $100 million to not release a film they have already made.

(Further, this controversy has probably done more for The Interview than any actual marketing or advertising could manage. If Sony would suck it up and release this movie today on VOD, smart money says they’d make bank.)

The issue here isn’t censorship or money, the issue here is that art is under attack by an enemy entity. This isn’t your standard capitalism. This isn’t vote with your dollar where people have chosen to not go see a movie because they think it’s shitty or toxic or whatever — this is a criminal attack on a company accompanied by a terroristic threat and the company has capitulated. And… nobody seems to be doing anything about it.

The Interview isn’t art, Chuck, so who really cares? It’s tasteless.

Well, for one, obviously I care.

For two, you’re attempting to speak on the quality of the film — a film that few people have actually seen. It’s not particularly fair to excoriate the quality of movie if you haven’t seen it.

For three, who gives a hot wet shit about quality? What, we’re only supposed to make movies that everyone universally agrees are good? You get a preliminary 75% on Rotten Tomatoes or you’re denied an audience? YOU’RE EITHER PIXAR OR GTFO.

I suspect that The Interview will never be released and hung on the walls of the Louvre. For all I know, the movie sucks righteously. I wasn’t impressed with the trailers, really — that said, I’ve also liked most of what Rogen and Franco have done. I’ve seen some odd potshots against the two of them during all this. Hey, fine, you don’t like them — I do, and enjoyed Pineapple Express and This Is The End — but really, this isn’t about your feelings regarding a particular actor, writer, director, or artist. And I say “artist” in the general sense, not in the “creator of masterpieces” sense. We’re not here to debate what is good art, bad art, or art at all.

We’re here to talk about a threat to our ability to create and share art.

I’m sure if the shoe were on the other foot — if someone created a movie about assassinating a sitting US president — then we’d understand. Sony should’ve known what was going to happen — it was a bad idea.

Do you hear yourself? Seriously?

I’m not a super-big fan of blaming victims, and that’s what you’re doing here. You might as well slap a bumper sticker on your car that says I STAND WITH KIM JONG UN.

Oh, and by the way? Heard of a film called Death of a President? Detailing the fictionalized assassination of George W. Bush while George W. Bush was in office? I don’t seem to remember us burning down the UK because they made that film. I don’t recall us as a nation hacking them or threatening the creators of the film or FilmFour for releasing it.

(And let’s also recall that Kim Jong Il was killed in Team America.)

This is just like any other politically correct protest of media.

Yeah, no, you’re totally right, except for the part where a protest doesn’t hack open a company’s private data and then put a terrorist cherry on this shit-cream sundae by threatening actual harm to the audience in part referencing an actual attack that happened on our soil.

I support anybody’s right to protest media. Just as one can tell disagreeable or controversial stories, one can also — and should also! — protest the stories they find disagreeable or controversial. It’s part of the cultural discourse. But this isn’t that. Repeat: this isn’t that. This is a whole other level. This is illegal. This is violent. Not the same thing at all.

Hell, I support North Korea protesting this film. I’d get that. “WE STRONGLY OPPOSE THE RELEASE OF THIS FILM,” they could say. Sure. Fair enough. High-five, NK.

Again, though: this ain’t that.

So: what’s the solution?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Maybe there isn’t one to be found. I have no idea if the geopolitical stage is so fraught and fragile that our country will do nothing about what feels like an attack on American companies and, by proxy, our audiences and our ideals. Maybe America has made its own bed here by being so epically shitty around the globe. If the snakes are out of the can and nobody does anything about this — then? Expect more to come. Expect groups and nations weaponized by technology. Expect that your private information is now public. Assume that the stories you want to tell are now a risk. To you. To companies. To your audience.

That turns my bone marrow to an icy slush. Maybe you’re okay with it, I dunno.

All that being said –

It’s ironic, isn’t it? A troubling, too-goofy-for-satire reversal:

The Interview is a story about members of the media assassinating a North Korean leader.

But the opposite happened: because of The Interview, North Korea assassinated our media.

Welcome to the weird new world in which we live.

What The Hell’s Happening With Kindle Unlimited?

A very quick unpleasant injection of (self-)publishing prattle –

So, Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s subscription service, yeah? Those who subscribe get access to a variety of e-books that they can click and download for one monthly price. Something-something Spotify, blah-dee-dah-dee Netflix, whatever.

I like the idea as a customer, though I’ll admit a cynical sphincter-clench at the very idea of subscriptions for e-books — e-books are already so fantastically inexpensive that I can’t help the hesitation at seeing the ceiling drop even lower. I feel like Indiana Jones in a cave that’s trying to crush him. This might be my encroaching Old Man Syndrome (“NEW THINGS SCARE ME, NOW EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO USE INTERNET EXPLORER TO CHECK MYSPACE”), but I’m always hissing and spitting at anything that might undercut any author’s ability to earn a living wage.

Regardless, right now, it’s still looking like Kindle Unlimited is troubled waters.

Here’s the news:

Last month, the payout per book checked out was $1.33. A pretty steep drop from what was hovering closer to two bucks per download — which isn’t too far off base with what you’d earn from a buyer buying the book outright (er, presuming you’re in that self-publishing sweet spot of $2.99, which is already cheapy-cheapy). But $1.33 cuts that sharply — average royalties on that e-book from a purchase would be 70%, but this drops it to 44%. (Now, there’s an argument to be had that suggests broader exposure yields to greater sales and thus softens that drop — maybe even erases that drop — though I’ll also note that this is the argument some traditional publishers use to justify the 25% or less of royalty rates in that space.)

This month — and here’s a Publisher’s Lunch link but it requires a subscription, so if anybody has a better link, toss it to me — Amazon added $3.5 million to the fund, which dramatically raised the per-download-payout to, drum roll please…

$1.36.

Wait.

$1.36?!

Three cents.

Which is puzzling, really. It’s suggestive of a couple things. Either nobody’s checking out Kindle Unlimited, or they are, but Kindle Unlimited is getting tons of use across a huge array of books. To reiterate, that means either nobody is subscribing, or there are just too many books in the program getting read to make the payout viable (meaning, the money is spread thin across a glut of books and readers). Amazon puts money in the KDP fund, and nobody really knows where that money comes from or what it’s connected to — it’s a button with tangled pipes and convoluted wiring and it’s hard to know what actually affects that number. Is Amazon just making it up? Is it tied to subscribers? Is there some mad algorithm forged in the brine-pickled belly of an Elder God?

(That’s a larger issue with Amazon, I think, in terms of self-publishing: so much of what happens there is behind the curtain. They change algorithms and suddenly a bestselling self-published book drops through the floor. Discoverability and programmatic cataloging are mysterious processes there — it is all unseen alchemy. It’d be great to have a larger sense of what they’re doing, but they’re not really forthcoming with that information for self-published authors.)

Amazon added three million to bump the payout by three cents. Meaning, without that fund bump, the payout would’ve likely been significantly lower. No idea how much, because nobody’s privy to that information.

So far, at least to my untrained eyes, it seems like Kindle Unlimited is spinning its wheels a bit — I was in for a month and didn’t see a great variety of books available (and though folks seem upset by my insistence on the “shit volcano” effect, discoverability and visibility there is trending toward zero). And stranger still, they require that exclusivity arrangement to be a part of it. Exclusivity to a single retailer and distributor is usually a thing that rewards the seller in some way. If I sell my Fabulous Donglewidget to many retailers and suddenly K-Mart is like, “Nah, fuck that, we want to sell that exclusively,” then we make a deal where I benefit to hang out only on their shelves. Because being on K-Mart’s shelves is not a reward to me — it’s not a privilege. It’s to their benefit, so it has to benefit me and my Fabulous Donglewidget (note: not a euphemism for my or anybody else’s penis). Here, though, where’s the value? “JOIN OUR EXCLUSIVE PROGRAM AND LOSE MONEY PER DOWNLOAD. WERE YOU EARNING TWO DOLLARS A DOWNLOAD? NOW IT’S A DOLLAR THIRTY! FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD, AUTHOR-HUMAN.”

Possible I’m just not seeing the value where it exists — I do not have my books enrolled. And here is a good time for any self-published authors to stop by and speak to me of their experiences, because while I’m hearing a lot of dissatisfaction from the KDP ranks, that might just be the loudest voices complaining (and remains anecdotal — aka, “artisanal data”). And I should note here that the program does make sense if you’re offering up smaller e-books: a short story priced at $0.99 earns you thirty cents on a purchase, but a dollar-thirty-ish on download from KU. That’s earning more than the actual cost of the book itself. But, if you’re selling an epic fantasy priced at $4.99 — well, the drop becomes precipitous.

I respect Amazon for being the LET’S JUST FUCK UP SOME SHIT company that they are — but I worry that they’re trying too hard. Even going so far as to competing with themselves. KDP! KDP select! Kindle Unlimited! Kindle Worlds! Amazon Publishing! Kindle Scout! I seriously cannot keep up. The Amazon ecosystem is starting to feel too jungley: choked with its own vegetation and hard to parse. (Though, again: beware my Old Man Syndrome coloring this view. GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU DAMN HOVERKIDS WITH YOUR E-COMICS AND YOUR KINDLE DRUGS.)

My advice to Amazon is, at this point, drop exclusivity for Kindle Unlimited. Though that might dilute the payouts further, I dunno — at the very least, it’ll ensure that by signing on exclusively with Amazon, a self-published author isn’t also having to pay in for the not-actually-a-privilege.

Curious to hear people’s experiences. Share and share alike, folks.

And then get off my lawn.

Nerdtivity: A Winner, And Time For You To Vote

Well, well, well.

HAPPY NERDTIVITY AND SWEET GEEKMAS TO ALL.

So, Kevin and I? We picked our favorite. So many good options but this one was like a meteorite of pure awesome striking us each in our manly mega-beards.

That up there, that’s #4 in the list, and it’s our favorite of the bunch.

Of our winning entry, Kevin says:

There is so much to love in this scene, but what makes it tops for me is the stuff in the background. The Dark Lord of the Sith is an ominous portent but he’s completely destroyed by the friendly Abominable Snowman cannonballing out of the sky. Vader’s red phallic symbol, usually held like an aggressive Viagra boner, is at half mast in deference to the joy of the Snowman. The Force is strong with him, and with so much else in this entry. Bravo!

I, too, am a huge fan of the cannonballing Bumble. Also: Xenomorph! Rocket! Jack! Slimer.

I want to live inside that Nativity. LET ME LIVE THERE.

So: Tiffany and Eric? Congratulations!

And now, it’s your turn to vote.

Here’s how this works.

You will click this link and gaze in awe at the Nerdtivity 2014 gallery.

You will choose your single favorite Nerdtivity and you will post the number of that photo (note: each photo is numbered!) in the comments below. DO NOT CHOOSE NUMBER FOUR because, duh, Kevin and I already picked that one, nyah nyah nyah. (Inevitably, one of you will vote for #4 anyway, and your vote will be disqualified because you did not read carefully enough.)

You have till Sunday night (12/21), 11:59PM EST to vote.

Then, next week, I’ll tally the votes and we’ll pick the top two winners and pick a random two winners (and those folks will win the prizes dictated in the original Nerdtivity rules post).

You can vote one time only.

And I think that’s that.

So: get to voting, nerds.

The Holiday Hellidays Stress Test Shit Show: Starring You!

(I’ll preface this by saying: I wrote this post once, WordPress logged me out right at the end, then wouldn’t save and erased the whole bloody thing. Ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha, please excuse my loud and egregious sobbing. Now I will rewrite the entire post from memory, and given that I have a memory like mouse-eaten underwear, it will probably look nothing like I originally intended.)

The holidays are fucking hard. Fuuu-huuu-huuuu-king hard.

Here’s the deal with the holidays:

All the things you have to normally do in your life? Work, kids, pets, family, bills, grocery shopping, regular shopping, chores, cleaning, repairs, masturbation, whatever — you still have to do all that, and you get the same amount of time to complete those tasks. Except now? Now you’ve got a mad-eyed elf hunkered down on your shoulder, and he’s got a holly jolly handgun pressed to your temple, and he’s like, “Oh, hey! Now you’ve also got to shop, and bake, and cook, and decorate, and don’t forget about those holiday parties, and those friends you never see, and the family you don’t like, and nope, you won’t get any more hours in your day JUST MAKE IT WORK or I’ll kill that baby reindeer over there and blame it on you.”

It’s a tectonic stress test. Your ground shakes. Your schedule shudders and buckles.

Not to mention all the other issues that come into play.

Got food issues? Ha ha ha, sucker. Enjoy not being able to eat 78% of the things on every table that you encounter. “ENJOY YOUR GLUTEN-FREE, SUGAR-FREE, NUT-FREE PROCESSED KALE SLURRY, YOU MUTANT,” your relatives cry as they eat cheesecake stuffed with a smaller cheesecake stuffed with a core of pure molten gulten. (“Mölten Glüten” is the name of my Scandinavian foodie metal band, by the way.)

Got weight issues? Oh, man, yeah, sorry. Here, just eat this tub of SUGARFAT ELF BUTTER, you’ll surely feel better, at least until you look in the mirror and all the body issues you’ve ever had will haunt you like the ghosts that terrorized Ebeneezer Scrooge — and it’s a problem that replicates itself, too, because you feel shitty about the way you look so you eat food that makes you look worse and then you go to see friends or family where inevitably someone says something totally inappropriately horrible (“OH YOU’RE LOOKING NICE AND CHUNKY THIS YEAR — NO, NO, I MEAN YOU LOOK HEALTHY, LIKE A GIRTHY, WELL-FED BEEFALO”), and then you just wanna go and bury your entire face in pie for the remainder of your days.

Got money issues? You poor fucker. We’re bombarded with deals like it’s war-time and sale flyers are propaganda papers dropped on our bombed-out mental cities with the singular goal of destroying our very will so that we buy more silly shit, and yet people can’t afford said silly shit and so like with the weight issue it’s a replicating cycle, isn’t it? Your credit card starts burning a hole in your pants like the One Ring in a hobbit’s pocket. Your credit card is a shovel and you dig yourself into a deeper hole and you can’t get yourself out of the hole because ha ha ha debt is fine, don’t worry about it, surely Santa will pay it off OH WAIT SANTA ISN’T FUCKING REAL.

Got grief? Of course you do. Everyone does. (Especially Charlie Brown!) We have relationships that have failed us. We have friendships that crumbled like a weeks-old scone. We’ve lost loved ones — hell, my father died in 2007 just days before Christmas. That gives the holidays an added, fucked-up dimension — like we’re all looking through a wintry window, except the window isn’t frosted over with snow and ice, but rather, slicked over with a faint sheen of crystallized grief. No time of the year is this grief more keenly felt — it distorts everything, just slightly.

What’s my point?

I guess it’s this: cut folks a little slack. You don’t know what they’re going through. We all have this secret, sub rosa frequency of stress and sadness and it’s a song you hear more strongly during the holidays — just be aware of that. The holidays can be a hard row to hoe for those of us in the best of circumstances, so: ease off the throttle a bit and as they say in that song: let it go. (Sidenote: I think I am the last person in North America to not have seen Frozen. I’m like the Omega Man, but of wintry Disney musical cartoons.)

This also means you have to cut yourself a little slack, too. Do your best and just let the holidays wash over you. It’s very easy to say — “Don’t fret!” — but seriously? Give yourself a break. Things aren’t going to be perfect. That house won’t be clean as you want it. Your work might take a hit. You don’t have to bake a thousand cookies and those cookies you do bake don’t have to be perfect.

And I recognize this is way easier said than done, but it’s worth a look at the holidays. Find the things you love about the holidays and also look at those things that stress you right the fuck out, and then try to cut out the stressful stuff while cleaving to the awesome stuff. Even cutting out a few stressors can make a huge, huge difference.

Just be nice. Be nice to yourself and to everyone else. It’s a happy time of year, but it can be a hellish one, too. Let’s all get through it together. Now: join with me as we go on the annual NOG-SODDEN ELF HUNT. Because this elf is a right bastard. Now mount up and let’s roll.

Your Own Year-End Wrap-Up

It’s that time.

That time where I want you to dig deep, grit your teeth, and pick your absolute FAVORITE THINGS OF THE YEAR. In each, you will pick one favorite thing — not three, not two. I want you to imagine that someone is dangling you over a pit, and in the pit is this goose. This goose will hurt you if you do not play by the rules. He’ll hurt you, your family, your friends. This is not a nice goose.

So: play by the rules.

Here, then, are the questions. Answer ‘em in the comments as you see fit.

1) Favorite novel of the year?

2) Favorite non-fiction book of the year?

3) Favorite short story of the year?

4) Favorite movie of the year?

5) Favorite TV show of the year?

6) Favorite song of the year?

7) Favorite album?

8) Favorite video game?

9) Favorite app?

10) Favorite [something else] of the year?

(Number ten is deliberately vague. Favorite toy? YouTube video? Movie trailer? Favorite meal? Friend? Sexual experience? Favorite planet, dog, tree, serial killer, time-traveling robot — ?! Your choice.)

Tiny Little Tiddle Drops Of Newsy-Woozy Booky Bits

Ahem.

A few flares shot up in the darkness, here –

Two new anthologies have landed, each containing a short story of mine.

First up: Dangerous Games, from Solaris, a SFF anthology about playing games. Features my story, “Big Man.” (A story about road rage, highway races, and the expectations of masculinity.) Features stories by Hilary Monahan, Pat Cadigan, Lavie Tidhar, Nik Vincent, and more. (Particularly exciting being in an anthology with Pat Cadigan — really, she was my introduction to cyberpunk way back when, so sharing pages with her? So cool.) Edited by Jon Oliver.

Second up: Trouble in the Heartland, an anthology of crime stories, each with a title based on a Bruce Springsteen song. Features my story, “Queen of the Supermarket.” (A story about a man’s obsession with a supermarket checkout girl.) Features some of my favorite crime writers: Hilary Davidson, Chris Holm, Todd Robinson, and oh, holy shit, Dennis Lehane. Note that some of the proceeds for this anthology go toward the Bob Woodruff Foundation, helping injured veterans. (Note: not related to my own Heartland young adult series.) Edited by Joe Clifford.

Dangerous Games: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

Trouble in the Heartland: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

(Also a good time to remind you that both of my Heartland books — Under the Empyrean Sky and Blightborn are both two bucks a piece for your Kindle till the end of December.)

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Randomized Title Rears Its Head

Last week’s challenge: Holiday Horror!

I love the random title challenge.

I love it so much I wanna hug it.

I wanna hug it so much it explodes.

Anyway.

Way it works is this: you pick one from the two columns of 20 either by using a d20 die or a random number generator, and smooshing the word from Column One with the word from Column Two gets you a title. (You can modify that title slightly by putting “The” in front of it or making the title plural or possessive in some way.) You write the story — we’ll say 1500 words max this time around. Then you post it at your online space and drop a link here so we can all read it. Due by next Friday, noon EST.

Get it? Got it? Great.

Column One

Skyborn
Murderer’s
Cocktail
Night
Dead
Obliterated
Heaven’s
Thirteenth
White
Armored
Wrong
Daniel’s
A Song For
Screaming
The Oathkeeper’s
The Day of the
Bleeding
God’s Own
Ghostly
Endless

Column Two

Inkwell
Treasure
Waitress
Keeper
Bird
Corps
Traveler
Padlock
Comet
Elf
Starfish
Medallion
Absinthe
Rats
Reason
Crusade
Nebula
Screwdriver
Snowflake
Forge

Amy K. Nichols: Five Things I Learned Writing Now That You’re Here

One minute Danny was running from the cops, and the next, he jolted awake in an unfamiliar body—his own, but different. Somehow, he’s crossed into a parallel universe. Now his friends are his enemies, his parents are long dead, and studious Eevee is not the mysterious femme fatale he once kissed back home. Then again, this Eevee—a girl who’d rather land an internship at NASA than a date to the prom—may be his only hope of getting home. 

Eevee tells herself she’s only helping him in the name of quantum physics, but there’s something undeniably fascinating about this boy from another dimension . . . a boy who makes her question who she is, and who she might be in another place and time. 

SOMETIMES WRITING LOOKS A LOT LIKE STARING AT THE WALL

I used to do contract work in writing, graphic design, web design, you-name-it, and again and again I ran into this quandary: should I count the time I spend thinking about a project as billable hours? Because it isn’t like you just sit down at the computer, press some keys and poof! Here’s a website! Or poof! Here’s a new company logo! No. The reality is, there’s all this time where you’re just sitting there, staring at the wall. Sometimes you might doodle on a legal pad or sticky note or the back of a pizza box, but mostly, you’re just thinking. All the hard work is happening up in your head.

It’s the same when it comes to writing stories. There’s a lot of staring at the wall, or off into space. Your children or your partner walk in and see the far-off look in your eye and think you’ve gone catatonic…and in a way you have, except really you’re up there in your brain, hacking through the thorny brambles of character arcs and plot twists. While it looks highly unproductive to others—particularly that client that doesn’t want to pay much for his website—staring into space is an essential part of the creative process. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the most difficult parts, too. Often front-loaded at the beginning of a project, it can feel a lot like procrastination. Like, you have this novel to revise on a deadline, and the first whole day or so, you’re just sitting there, staring out the window. But here’s what I’ve learned: it’s okay. Stare out the window until your eyes dry out and shrivel up like raisins if that’s what it takes to find the story.

SOMETIMES REVISIONS WILL TURN YOU INTO A FERAL, FOUL-SMELLING CREATURE OF THE NIGHT

It was around the time I got to the line edits stage of Now That You’re Here that I just resigned myself to the fact that for the next month I would be holed up in my writing cave, staring at the walls (see item above) and mumbling unintelligibly to myself while my family and friends—heck, the world—carried on without me. I had a story to rewrite. Bye-bye, social life! My real friends will be there when I’m done. Food? I’ll just survive on the crumbs in the bottom of the Dorito bag that’s been sitting on my desk since forever. Hygiene? No one will see me, squirreled away in this cave anyway. Sleep? Who has time for sleep when there are deadlines to be met?! When I heard the children’s voices outside the door asking, “What’s that smell?” I decided maybe I could spare a little time to shower. I’M KIDDING. It wasn’t that bad. (Almost.) But seriously, going through revisions can be utterly transformative. Maybe I just had super tight turnaround times and bad time management skills, but I found that in order to get revisions done without losing my mind, I had to lose myself to the work. I learned how to eat, sleep, and breathe revisions until revisions were done. Then I emerged from my writing cave, bleary-eyed and babbling, held the finished manuscript aloft and declared, “It is done!” My family gathered around me, weeping tears of joy (or perhaps crying in reaction to my stench) and asked me to never, ever write a novel again.

SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO THROW THE WHOLE THING IN THE TRASH

I’m convinced there’s a point in every creative project where everything looks like a big pile of dog doo and all you’re doing is poking it with a stick. I call this the Ugly Phase. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing a novel or sculpting a statue from clay, there’s a point where you decide (sometimes out loud, for everyone to hear) that this is the worst thing you’ve ever made and it should be burned with fire. This isn’t right, you think. The vision you had for this story was so much prettier than the dreck you’re now spewing onto the page. In fact, you’re this close to calling up the Big Publishing Company and telling them they can have their advance back because obviously you’re a fraud who can’t really create anything except ugly piles of poo. My husband always laughs at me when I reach the Ugly Phase. He reminds me how I always hate what I’m creating while I’m creating it, and that before long I will stand back and declare, ‘Look! I’ve made a swan!’ (He always says that part in a high-pitched Monty Python-esque voice while flouncing his hands around. I interpret this as the signal to punch him.) But the thing is, he’s right. I do always say the thing I’m creating is garbage because in that moment—for me—it is garbage, and as such it should be carried out unceremoniously and tossed into a bin. Except…

SOMETIMES YOU GET THAT ONE IDEA THAT TURNS EVERYTHING INTO KITTENS AND RAINBOWS

Just when you think you can’t poke the stinking pile of poo with your little stick anymore, kablam! Your head explodes with the perfect idea that catapults you through revisions, right across the finish line. Your fingers fly over the keys, trying to keep up with the words buzzing through your brain. It’s as if you’ve plugged right into the source of all the mysteries of the universe and every word gracing the page is made of the stuff of stars. Honest-to-goodness star-stuff, shooting right out of your brain through your fingertips to the page. It’s magical. It’s kittens and rainbows. You begin to hear the voices of your agent, your editor, your mother, telling you that this is the best thing ever and you deserve to eat all of the chocolate in the world.

SOMETIMES YOU’LL WONDER IF IT’S WORTH IT

There were times when I was working on Now That You’re Here that I wondered if it was worth it. Spending time away from friends and family. Living a sort of dual existence, with one foot in the real world and the other in my fictional one. Wracking my brain for ideas. Wringing out my heart for every drop of emotion. All the while, trying to keep the fear of failure at bay. It was grueling. Far more grueling than I ever imagined. But I learned that I’m stronger than I imagined, too. It turns out I was up to the task, even though I doubted myself along the way.

I know there are some reading this who are hoping to be published, and you’re gobbling up all the writing stories and advice you can find because there’s something about imagining it that makes it feel a little bit closer, a little more possible. I’ve been there, and I know there are a lot of voices telling you how hard the journey can be (including my own voice in this post). But if you hear nothing else, please hear this: it’s worth it. It’s worth the solitude and the effort and the long nights. It’s worth the lack of showering and living off Doritos and missing coffee with your friends. And when you emerge from your writing cave, hold your manuscript aloft and declare, “It is done!”, you’re going to find you’re strong enough to make the journey, too.

* * *

Amy K. Nichols lives on the edge of the Phoenix desert with her husband and children. In the evenings, she enjoys sitting outside, counting bats and naming stars. Sometimes she names the bats. NOW THAT YOU’RE HERE is her first novel. Visit her online at amyknichols.com.

Amy K. Nichols: Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr

Now That You’re Here: Amazon | Indiebound | B&N | Goodreads 

Elf On The Shelf: Santa’s Secret Police

Fuck you, Elf on the Shelf.

I know your game.

Oh, hey, sure, you’re just a little elf, precious and twee. Big eyes and long limbs and that jaunty fucking cap. Sitting there on the shelf, or the counter, or riding the dog like a mount into battle.

Harmless! Fun! Elfy!

Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha!

You piece of shit.

Listen, I was already a little dubious of Santa. Big jolly white gent. Lives in total isolation at the extreme north — the very frozen nipple of the globe. He’s a madman with a workshop. He’s got a mythological workforce — perky elves and flying reindeer and, I dunno, probably a couple Yeti and maybe a Kardashian or three. And sure, sure, he’s a little over-interested in children, but hey, whatever. A lot of mythological beings are. Tooth Fairy, Boogeyman, Captain Kangaroo, Halloween Dave. (What, you guys don’t celebrate Halloween Dave in your part of the world? Halloween Dave, who rides in on a carriage made of rat bones and who throws honey-slick figs to all the girls and boys? Who smells like toffee and hides in your toilet tank? No? Whatever.)

At the end of the day, though, I knew that Santa was a good guy.

Or maybe even, one of the Good Guys.

He’s a pretty selfless dude, that Santa. He hides in his Fortress of Solitude all year around, manically and maniacally forging toys for all the little children. Dolls, horses, soldiers, robots, spaceships. (Point of trivia: a young Fedora-ed Santa Claus actually invented Minecraft. True story!) He gets nothing out of it. He’s old and fat. Then he spends one day of the year in some kind of peppermint-flavored nocturnal emission, just exploding toys all over the world. Going house to house, leaving toys. Sure, okay, it’s kind of a home invasion, but he rarely demands recompense outside a cookie and maybe a carrot for Rudolph (though one year I did find that a stash of pornography was conspicuously missing). And yeah, he kinda steals parenting thunder a little bit because it’s not Mom and Dad who got Little Billy that really nice bike, it was Santa WINK WINK.

But Santa? You could trust Santa.

And way back when, Santa had a counterpart. Old Saint Nick was a little like the God of Christmas, and he had his opposite, the Krampus. It was Krampus who worried about if kids were good or not. Santa just had a list. He didn’t make it. You were on it or you weren’t — it was the Krampus who showed up, shoved the naughty little kids in a bag and then, I dunno, ate them or fed them to the reindeer or something. (I’m a little fuzzy on the Krampus mythology.)

But over time, a whiff of the morality police crept into the Santa myth, didn’t it? It was no longer about a guy selflessly bringing joy to the world but suddenly a less-than-jolly jerk determining what kids trigger the proper morality clauses in order to get gifts instead of coal lumps. WHICH LIST ARE YOU ON, his voice booms. ARE YOU NAUGHTY. OR YOU ARE NICE.

And now?

Now?

We have Elf on the Shelf.

He is an elf, which you — the parent — name. The theoretical elf sits somewhere in your house, and you move him every night while the child is asleep in order to give the illusion that there is an actual holy shit elf moving around at night like some kind of goblin. The kid doesn’t know what the elf is up to. Stealing his breath, probably. Drinking Mommy and Daddy’s liquor, maybe. Probably some tricksy elf bullshit is my best guess. I mean, who can sleep comfortably when some long-limbed polar elf is gamboling about your house, climbing through the heating ducts, hiding in drain holes, licking all the candy canes hanging from the tree? I mean, god, do you see how he looks? Sitting there all prim and precious like he’s blissfully taking an elf dump on your human valuables? “I’m pooping on your jewelry!” he seems to be saying. Tee hee hee! Tickle tickle!

But that’s not the corker.

No, no, no. The corker is: the elf spies on your children.

That is his entire purpose.

He’s not here to make friends, this elf. He’s not on vacation. He’s not gonna help you with laundry or start the dishwasher. The elf actually says in the (originally self-published) book:

“I watch and report on all that you do! The word will get out if you broke a rule!”

Holy shit.

Hooooooly shit.

You guys? The Elf on the Shelf is Santa’s secret police. Santa literally puts him your home — as the story goes — so that said elf can gather data on your child and report this data back to Santa in order to determine your child’s moral fitness. Mortal fitness that then theoretically determines what presents your child is qualified to get.

I mean, at least the Krampus was different from Santa. He was Santa’s opposite — the Satanic adversary to Jolly Old Saint Nick. The Elf on the Shelf works for Santa. He is an agent of the North Pole. Promoted out of the workshop where he ruined his little elven fingers making iPhones and Bart Simpson t-shirts and allowed to out out into the wild. Into kid’s homes.

To spy. To surveil. To watch.

How amazingly perfect is that, though, in this modern American age? How fitting. We once thought our benevolent patron — Santa, America, to-may-to, to-mah-to — in his red, white and sometimes-blue was here to help us. That he was on our side. But now we know: the big man’s got an agenda. He has his secret police. He has his elven wiretap. Our children now live in a surveillance state that extends out and penetrates even this joyous holiday with its fiber optic microphones. Our authorities are not to be trusted. They’re always listening. They’re always judging. (What’s next? Police elves stabbing unarmed misfit toys with sharpened candy canes? Torture of insubordinate parents sanctioned by the Department of Holly Jolly Security and performed in various black site igloos around the globe? A secret team of workshop hobs using Santa-tech to spy on and dox their pixie girlfriends?)

Don’t do wrong, or we’ll know.

We can do wrong, the elves say. You’re the wrongdoers.

You can’t stop us. We are the bosses of you.

We’re here. We’re watching. We’re providing data to Big Santa.

Well, not in this house, you pajama-pants-clad, apple-cheeked little turdgoblin.

You will find no Elf on the Shelf in this home.

Screw you, Santa Surveillance State. Screw you.

*gives the Mockingjay gesture*