Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 166

Theoretical Author-Publisher Coalition Response To Amazon Protest

As noted earlier here today — the Howey-led petition to give Amazon a tongue-bath feels almost creepily overblown. I have lots of criticisms: It’s too long by about 3000 words. It agitates. It takes a while to get to its point. It’s established as a “petition,” which is ostensibly a tool to accomplish something. It feels like a corporation ego stroke, as if right now Amazon is sitting in a bar somewhere, sipping on a bitter cocktail, wondering why nobody likes it. (Meanwhile Hobby Lobby, that bastard, is out living it up! Though without birth control, because Jesus hates IUDs.)

Anyway.

I do not think the petition works.

I think it speaks only to its most cultish base, which is probably not ideal. I don’t think anybody speaking only to their base is particularly interesting or engaging. I prefer, as always, a moderate approach. Point your megaphones to the people who aren’t listening rather than the frothing crowd already behind you.

So, if one wanted to cobble together a more sane and sound response to the Amazon protest letter penned by some industry giants (Patterson, Preston, Patterson — wow, they sound like a legal firm), what would it, or could it, look like?

It’d be short.

It wouldn’t be a petition.

It’d go to media, but also posted on relevant blogs to increase commentary and viral transmission.

It could be co-signed by a lot of self-publisher venerables.

It might read, in fact, like this:

“We respectfully disagree with the Amazon protest letter and believe that Amazon represents one part of a diverse publishing environment. We also feel that Amazon has helped to revolutionize publishing and is working for readers and authors, not in opposition to them. Amazon continues to put books in the hands of readers all around the country — in fact, the world — and has done more good for publishing than bad.

Further, we respectfully call on all publishers to work toward more equitable royalties and deal terms for their author partners. We support authors and want to keep as many avenues for those authors open — and as advantageous — as possible to maintain the health of books and book culture.”

Then, I dunno, you’d write THE END and be happy it was under 500 words. (Actually, I think that’s about 100 words, so huzzah for brevity.) Short and sweet. Still lots one could disagree with, and I’m not putting this out as my letter — rather, I just wanted to demonstrate what a short and moderate response letter could look like. I feel like this is sharp enough, middle-of-the-road enough, and still gets the message across without sounding like it’s time to pass the Flavor-Aid around the Jonestown campfire. It doesn’t demonize anybody, doesn’t throw anybody under the bus, doesn’t elevate anybody to Empyrean pillars. Sounds (theoretically) mature. I mean, if I were really the one writing it, I’d probably throw a couple “fucks” and “poop noises” in there, just to brand it as my own, but whatever. Your mileage can and should vary.

Of course, if you’re really truly confident that self-publishing is the way forward, then I don’t know why you’d need to write this response letter at all. You’d just drive by on your blinged-out jet-skis, throwing up devil-horns and spraying the stodgy old trad-pubbers in their dinghy with a mist of Cristal. Somewhere, the news would report on graffiti seen all over the world:

AUTHOR-PUBLISHERS RULE

TRAD-PUBBERS DROOL

WOOOOOOO

*jet-ski vroom*

(If you’d like another moderate look at it — here, Scalzi puts forth: “Amazon, Hachette, Publishing, Etc. — It’s Not A Football Game, People.”)

The Petition To Paint Amazon As Underdog

Hugh Howey has a petition out for… well, I don’t know exactly what it’s for, except I think it’s like, an anti-boycott for Amazon? A love-fest for Amazon? I’m not sure.

You can find this petition here.

You have to get through a lot of text to get to what I suspect is the point of the piece:

You may be urged to boycott Amazon. But a call to boycott Amazon is unavoidably a call to boycott authors who can’t get their books into other stores. Boycotting Amazon is unavoidably a call for higher e-book prices. Boycotting Amazon is preventing us from reaching you. It is an end to our independence.

The best way to support Hachette’s authors is by showing Hachette where you prefer to get your books. Let Hachette know that you agree with Amazon that e-books should not cost more than paperbacks. Help us urge Hachette to stop hurting its own writers. Help us urge them to agree to reasonable terms with Amazon.

It is fitting that Independence Day is upon us. Amazon has done more to liberate readers and writers than any other entity since Johannes Gutenberg refined the movable type printing press. With the advent of e-books and the ability to ship paper books to your doorstep in record time and at affordable prices, Amazon is growing overall readership while liberating the voices of countless writers, adding to the diversity of literature. A large percentage of the e-books sold on Amazon are from independent authors. You have validated our decision to write and to publish. Don’t let the wealthiest of writers convince you to turn away.

We urge you to support the company that supports readers and authors. Amazon didn’t ask us to write this letter, or sign it. Amazon isn’t aware that we’re doing this. Because in the end, this isn’t about Amazon. It’s about you, the reader, and the changes you’ve helped bring about with your reading decisions. You are changing the world of books, and you are changing our lives as a result.

Below, you will see the names of writers who thank you for your support. This is only a bare fraction of the people you have touched. Happy Independence Day.

Signed, your authors.

At this point, I’m left to wonder if Independence Day is the new April Fool’s.

I don’t know exactly why Mega-Company Amazon needs a… petition of support? I like Amazon well enough, and as my publisher they’ve been aces. I don’t boycott them — but I also try to diversify my buying habits in the same way I try to diversify my reading and writing and publishing habits. But I also recognize that Amazon has received a lot of criticism for the way it does business (as have many big publishers, to be clear), and further, puts out an e-book environment where you do not really own your e-books. I’ve also read some contracts from Amazon that are bad or worse than some of the contracts you get from big publishers. This isn’t meant to suggest that Amazon is an Evil Monster (I note the laziness of that too-easy thinking here, in an earlier post one month ago today). It’s just meant to suggest –

Well, we don’t need a fucking petition to support them.

They’re not an underdog.

They’re not your savior.

This petition reads like they’re beatific saints descending from crepuscular rays to upend cornucopias of food atop the heads of the homeless. If I didn’t know who wrote it, I’d legit think it was straight-up satire.

I respect Hugh’s interest in supporting the environment that clearly supports him. But this is deeply, weirdly, head-scratchingly absurd. This is, what, a boycott against the boycott? A love letter to a company? I don’t even know. At this point I’m having trouble reading it as anything other than a missive from Bizarro-World.

Some quick thoughts on bits from the petition:

“Petition by: Your Writers.”

No. I don’t support petitions like this. You shouldn’t support a petition like this even as a self-published author. I will scream this in your ear as long as I can: diversify diversify diversify. Amazon is not your mother. It’s not your god. It’s a company. Does good things. Does bad things. *shakes head so hard blood comes out of ears*

“To Thank Our Readers”

Thanking readers is nowhere to be found in this petition.

It is a petition thanking Amazon.

Not even individual people at Amazon.

Just… Amazon. Like, the entity.

“By what is being reported in the media, it may seem like Amazon is restricting what readers can access. It may seem that they are marginalizing authors.”

They are. This is literally true. You might believe that this is a good move in the long run — and you could make an argument that supports Amazon in this, just as you could make one in reverse. But this is literally actually true, not like, spin by the Giant Publishing Machine.

“All the complaints about Amazon should be directed at Hachette.”

All of them? Including complaints about warehouse conditions? Hey, last week they fucked up an order of Transformers and sent it to — well, honestly, I dunno, but now I know who to send my complaints to. HEY HACHETTE: AMAZON’S PRIME SHIPPING DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK LIKE THEY SAY IT DOES. ASSHOLES.

More seriously, some arguments have noted that Hachette has maybe earned this spanking from Amazon. Certainly some publishers have helped feed the beast that is Amazon and have done poorly by their authors. I agree with that. This is not really the way to achieve parity and to improve things, by my mileage.

“High e-book prices are not good for readers, and they aren’t good for writers.”

I agree. But isn’t this how the market works? They charge too much and… people don’t buy it, so they’re forced to be competitive? Hasn’t that already happened? Perhaps I’m being naive here.

“Amazon pays writers nearly six times what publishers pay us.”

Yes, and I am all for publishers paying authors more. But it’s also worth considering that Amazon is literally not your publisher. (I mean, they’re mine, but as Skyscape.) Amazon does very little for you except act as a receptacle for your book. Which might be genius. Which might be dogshit. They literally don’t care. It’s a socket and into it you can shove diamonds, candy, cat feces, bezoars, babies, whatever. The reason they don’t take a lot of that coin is because… they don’t do anything for you. Like edit. Market. Distribute physical copies. So on, so forth. Some authors want that, some don’t. The trick isn’t going ALL-IN with Amazon, the trick is demanding better from all publishers, all companies. The trick is to support authors, not corporations. People over corporate entities. (This feels particularly tone deaf considering the CORPORATIONS HAVE OPINIONS shift with Hobby Lobby. Petitions in sympathy of companies is cuckoo banana sundae.)

“Hachette is looking out for their own interests, not the interests of writers or readers.”

And Amazon is not Mother Theresa tending to lepers.

Like, I can’t –

I don’t even?

What is happening?

Listen.

Here’s how you thank Amazon:

Buy shit from them.

Here’s how you thank authors:

Buy their books.

Here’s how you don’t thank Amazon:

Buy elsewhere.

Here’s how authors thank readers:

Just, like, thank them. Thank them in person. Over email. Over the social media frequency. Offer deals when you can. Help get your books in their hands. Be awesome to them. Don’t write weird petitions to them that aren’t really to them at all.

You don’t aim your high-five for readers at Amazon.

Vote with your dollar. But please, seriously, don’t sign any weird petitions like this. Howey’s deservedly a bookworld superstar, so I suspect he’ll get all the signatures he needs — though for what effect, I have no idea, as this petition feels like a hollow stroke-job that accomplishes absolutely nothing except blowing a blush of hot, fragrant breath toward Amazon and away from authors and readers. This feels like shilling — uncomfortable, in-the-bag, straight-up-shilling.

My message to Hugh would be: I prefer it when you advocate for authors, not for companies. Hugh has been increasingly “all-in” with Amazon — and this is counter to how many authors have been successful with author-publishing. It doesn’t feel instructive. It feels deliberately cozy with the other side of Big Publishing. (And anybody who thinks Amazon isn’t just its own version of Big Publishing has lost their mind.) Like I said before: I’m happy with my experiences with Amazon. I agree they have changed the face of publishing, in many ways for the awesome, in some ways for the whoa what the fuck. They have been a wonderful publisher for my work. But — c’mon. C’mon.

C’MON.

Okay, this petition really is satire, right?

Yes? Maybe?

Help Fund My Robot Army (And Other News-Dipped Love-Nuggets)

The Kickstarted anthology of SFF short stories framed as Kickstarter campaigns is out!

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY is now stomping around, demanding your attention.

It features a passel of amazing authors — Mur Lafferty! Tobias Buckell! Kat Howard! Seanan McGuire! Veronica Belmont! Scott Sigler! Jonathan Howard! So many authors, too many to list (check out the table of contents to see all the wonderful what-the-fuckery going on in this book). Edited by the inimitable John Joseph Adams

Oh, and apparently I’m in the book, too. Who knew?

(Spoiler warning: I totally knew.)

I wrote a story about a woman who wants to become a lioness.

So maybe check that out.

You can find some of the stories free right here.

You can nab the e-book at:

Amazon

Thanks to JJA for having me in the anthology!

What Else Is Going On?

The Blightborn pre-order to win a Kindle Paperwhite contest is ongoing until the end of the month. The e-book is pre-orderable for $3.99. Details on the contest here!

If you want to request a review copy of Blightborn — you can now do so through Netgalley.

I also just finished writing the third book this week – The Harvest (tentative title). Had a 9k last day, book ended up just shy of 100,000 words. (The first book was around 70k, second book is around 120k, for comparison.) I’m really excited about it, though man, ending a proper trilogy is hard. You wanna cram so much in there but you also don’t want it to read like you’re cramming so much in there. You want to satisfy the story hungers, but you don’t want to force-feed, either.

(Now I move onto finishing Zeroes, and then… well, who knows?)

Blackbirds is still a hair cheaper than usual right now — paperback at $6.89 at Amazon, or $6.90 at B&N. People always ask me what book of mine to start with, since I’ve been fortunate enough to have a handful of books out in a fairly short time — and I always say that they might as well start with Blackbirds, provided they don’t mind reading adult fiction. (If they’re more into YA, then obviously — hey, start with some of my YA stuff, instead.) You can also grab Blackbirds at Powells, through Indiebound.

I have other news I wanna announce soon, but I caaaaaaan’t yet. *vibrates*

Oh! Finally, you’ll find that my Angry Robot editor, Lee Harris — who is now moving onto the digital imagination emporium that is Tor.com’s new imprint —  said something very nice about me and other authors in the Washington Post:

Pressed to named some of his favorite authors, Harris mentions Chuck Wendig, “one of the most exciting new talents out there”; Kameron Hurley, whose “God’s War” “shows how good a debut novel really can be; and Ramsey Campbell, “the best author working in the horror genre for decades.”

Considering shorter fiction, he praises Joe Hill, Robert Shearman, Catherynne M. Valente, Kij Johnson, Aliette de Bodard, N.K. Jemisin. “And there are so many others,” he says. “It’s a very exciting time to be working in genre.”

Thank you, Lee! And congrats to him for his move.

Alyx Dellamonica: Five Things I Learned Writing Child Of A Hidden Sea

Child of A Hidden Sea is the story of a 24-year-old videographer from San Francisco who goes looking for her birth parents and discovers they come from another world. When Sophie Hansa interrupts an attack on her newfound aunt, she ends up on that world, and finds a place filled with not only intrigue but magic.

Stormwrack is almost entirely covered by ocean, and populated by people from tiny island nations, each with its own microclimate and form of government. There are democracies, military dictatorships, kingdoms, and even barely-reformed pirate cooperatives… and each country uses a form of magic based on the unique natural resources of its home island. Stormwrack is a treasure-trove of new species and scientific questions, in other words, things she could research forever… but everyone seems to want Sophie to leave, and as quickly and as quietly as possible.

1. Even when I set out to write a book that isn’t too talky, I still write a pretty talky book

My books are–I think anyone would agree–dialog-heavy. Some of this comes of being such a fan of mystery fiction. In mysteries, the detective usually needs to pry information out of suspects and witnesses by interviewing them. They then go to other people–experts, friends, reporters–and talk about what they’ve learned, juggling the facts until they figure out what it all means.

Seriously! Pull up a standard piece of mystery TV and do something else while it’s on. There’s probably a pile of ironing in your laundry closet. You’ll be surprised how little you have to actually look at the television, especially compared with something visually splendid, like Game of Thrones.

I had meant for Child of a Hidden Sea, with all its action and swashbuckling and sailing around, to be less talky than my previous two novels, Indigo Springs and Blue Magic. In those, the characters are trying to figure out how magic works with no information whatsoever.

In the end, it didn’t really work out that way. I suppose this vindicates my belief that whatever you already are, you should be that thing emphatically. Blabbermouth protagonists for the win!

2. Huge cities composed of hundreds of seagoing vessels are terribly hard to get around.

The capital city of Stormwrack is a massive collection of sailing ships, some magical, called the Fleet of Nations. Basically, 250 countries have each sent their best ship to serve a in an international peacekeeping navy.

Added to that are civilian camp followers: merchants, manufacturers, hangers on, fishers, you name it. If you imagine each vessel is a city block, and then think about the logistics of getting from your apartment to the courthouse, it is a bit of a nightmare.

On the one hand, it didn’t take much imagination to come up with the idea of a fleet of ferries that would sail routes between the big ships and a second fleet of flying taxis, magical hang gliders, essentially, to ply the skies. The real technical challenge as a writer is in keeping all the scrambling around from getting boring or repetitive.

3. Other things about Age of Sail technology

Travel times are very slow. Communications are very slow. Nothing can unfold at a pace even remotely resembling the one we all move at now. Time crunches are very different things in a book like this.

4. Some fantasy readers assume that the minute you go to a world with magic, all technology stops working.

This is a bit of feedback that caught me off-guard. My working assumption is that if you have fire and the wheel still works, some technology will too.

I can see, in retrospect, that a line might be drawn between purely mechanical objects and electronic things. (Though I can’t really say–how different would the laws of nature have to be to make the transistor or silicon chip fail without rendering the planet unfit for carbon-based life?) In theory in a portal fantasy where electronic technology stops, you could take a Model T car through and it would run. How about a gun? An old camera? That’s simply chemistry and optics.

I did in an earlier draft of the book consider having Sophie import a mechanical camera to Stormwrack instead of her digital SLR. My thinking was that the batteries wouldn’t run out and the chip wouldn’t need to be taken to her home in San Francisco for unloading. But developing chemicals and darkrooms are not easily come by, when you were improvising on a world whose capital city is a bunch of sailing ships full of people uninterested in photography.

5. I may be more of a pantser than I thought

I set out to write most of my novels with a pretty decent outline. It’s not pretty, but there’s something written out saying what I plan to do with the character and the story. In a series (and this is true of my short fiction series as well) my writerbrain seems to be okay with creating interesting story problems for myself on the assumption, the blithe, blithe assumption, that I will eventually figure out the answer. In fact, this has worked out okay for me so far, but it means I spend a lot of time pondering little unanswered questions, things I desperately need to figure out.

A little tiny example: cats, on Stormwrack, are cursed. Because they are such an effective predator and because so many island nations have species that would be extinguished if cats got loose in their microclimate, someone has laid an inscription on the entire race of cats. It confines them to their native habitats and to sailing ships. If they leave one or the other, they die. (There’s a way to move them from ship to ship.)

Because because of the way magic works in this universe, this means that the race of cats must have a name, and someone found it out. Do I know that name? Do I know who figured it out, and how?

Nope, not a clue.

Often the way I go about answering these little questions is by writing a short story. In theory, my future holds a story entitled “The True Name of Catkind,” or perhaps, “It’s Pronounced Meeooow, Dammit.” It will almost certainly be a very talky story.

* * *

A. M. Dellamonica has recently moved to Toronto, Canada, after 22 years in Vancouver.  In addition to writing, she studies yoga and takes thousands of digital photographs. She is a graduate of Clarion West and teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

Dellamonica’s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her most recent book, Child of a Hidden Sea, has just been released by Tor Books. She is the author of over thirty short stories in a variety of genres: they can be found on Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and in numerous print magazines and anthologies. Her website is at.

Alyx Dellamonica: Website | Twitter

Child of a Hidden Sea: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

Slaw. Slaaaaaaaw. (Slaw.)

Today, at the Holy Taco Church, I give you a recipe for:

TEQUILA SLAW.

It is, par usual, a recipe that spits in the eye of God and Good Taste.

It is a NSFW recipe.

Which seems to be my modus operandi.

Tequila slaw could go well with (hat-tip to Delilah): BBQ pork sliders.

Or, it could go well with fish tacos.

In them.

On them.

Around them.

In your mouth at the same time as them.

Now, though, I beseech you for a recipe. A little quid pro quo, Clarice. I have some family coming this weekend and am thinking about various cold salad products — noodle salad, potato salad, carrot salad, salad salad, slaw (slaaaaaw), etc.etc.

Nice side dishes. Cold.

So: care to share some? YOUR TURN.

What Writers Should Know About Panels At Cons & Conferences

You’re a writer, so maybe you go to conventions and conferences.

Winter has relinquished its icy grip. The Day God has grown angry, which means the year has yielded to summer. And that means it is now con season.

Which means you will, at a con, either:

a) go to a panel

or

b) be on a panel.

Which leads to the question of, what makes good panel etiquette?

As always, this means I have thinky juice. If it is a topic — really, any topic will do, from breeding bears to drinking beers to bedazzling beards (aka “beard-azzling”) — then I will have thoughts because I am deluded enough to believe that my opinion matters. (Spoiler alert: it don’t).

So: let’s talk about panels and the things you might wanna know.

1. You Are Not A Walking Talking Advertisement

Some writers will go to panels, and they will set up what looks like some kind of storefront, some library-shaped battlement. They will place their books all around them. They will put up signs and business cards and pull the little clicky-cord on a neon sign behind them. And then they will proceed, during the answer to every question, to say things like WELL IN MY BOOK even when it is woefully irrelevant to the query queried.

Listen: you are an advertisement for your book. Not all that extra fiddly marketing shit. Not the castle of books you built around you. Not the mobile of postcards or the pinata shaped like your protagonist or the ventriloquist dummy who interrupts every other speaker to say BUY MY BOOK.

Just say cool stuff. Be honest, earnest, helpful, funny if you can manage it. As with social media, be the very best version of yourself. Talk about your book, in brief, when it is relevant.

You are not a Spam-Bot that uploaded itself to reality out of the Matrix.

2. Panels Do Sell Books

If you’re an author: being funny, engaging or informative on a panel can sell books. I’ve done it. I’ve seen others do it. People walk up, and having been unfamiliar with you, they say: “I liked you on your panel, ‘Gender Memetics and Gun Control in Sword & Sorcery Fiction,’” and then you chat with them and they buy your book. It’s amazing. They don’t buy it because you threw your book at their faces during the panel. “My answer to that question is –”

*throws book-shaped fastball into audience member’s face, breaking their nose*

If you’re an audience member: hey, when you go to a panel, and you dig what some of the authors are saying, at least consider buying a book. It’s not a requirement. It’s not the price of admission. But maybe kinda sorta pleeeeaaaase consider it? That is, in part, what we as authors are hoping you’ll do. If we can’t sell books, we can’t go to cons in the first place.

3. Equal Time, Motherfuckers

Do not dominate the proceedings.

I know. You have shit to say. This is your time to shine, you crazy diamond.

It is. It really is. They’ve passed you the mic. The audience is captive. Maybe you’re on the panel. Maybe you’re asking a question from the audience. But please, let me caution you:

Keep it brief.

Not so brief you stammer out some blurted burp of information:

URBAN FANTASY AHHH LOS ANGELES INTERSTITIAL UHH I THINK EPIC FANTASY IS ROTHFUSS *flings sweat-slick microphone to the next author*

But brief enough so that you get to the point and execute on the question at hand.

Translation: don’t make it all about you.

A panel is, what, maybe 50 minutes? The river needs to move. It can’t get dammed up with too much garbage. Make a case. Present information. Move on. Let all the authors speak. If you blather on for 17 minutes about “reverse worldbuilding in the splatterpunk genre,” then the moderator might just move onto the next question.

A good moderator will skip your chatty ass next time, hoss.

It’s up to you to watch the clock. Set your phone in front of you, run a stopwatch display.

4. The Celebrity Effect

Sometimes a panel will have what you might think of as a “heavy-hitter.” Some major bestselling author like Patrick Scalzi or Seanan Patrick Hearnethfuss, and you need to recognize that a lot of the people in the audience are there to see the heavy-hitting bestselling author. They just are.

That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Usually.

If you’re on a panel with an author of such Deep-Seated Bad-Assery, that’s an opportunity to talk to that author’s audience for a minute. They get to share that with you, and you get to share stuff with that audience. It’s a nice coming together moment, and also means you might be speaking to a larger audience than you might normally rate.

I have heard horror stories where the Celebrity Author is aware of his own status and proceeds to do exactly what I told you not to do, which is Dominate The Proceedings. Thankfully, I’ve yet to experience this, but, seriously, I’ve heard tales. Horror stories. It is what it is, I guess.

5. The Fine Art Of Moderating

Moderators: this is an important job. I know — you’re not being paid for this gig, I get it. You’re a volunteer. I am sympathetic. But about… at least 25% of the moderators I see are not precisely ideal, and a kick-ass moderator is the key to a kick-ass panel. You’re equal parts carnival barker and pitch-man and fight ref. You need to steer the discussion. You need to give equal time to participants. You need to be amusing all your own and know how to ask the questions the audience wants to hear. You are a juggler-of-chainsaws. I don’t envy your role, but you were given the wheel just the same: don’t steer us off the cliff, kay?

Speak up. Move the discussion along. Visit with all the speakers.

And, Cardinal Sin time? Do not take up more time than the panelists by answering your own questions. I’ve watched panels like this. I sat on one, once. Ugh. The moderator has a book — or just has feelings — and asks questions only to answer them himself, first or last, taking up scads of time away from the panelists. No, no, no, ew, no.

It’d be like watching a referee suddenly jump in the game to score a goal unit with the ball.

Stop that.

Just… stop it.

(One of my favorite moderators ever: Patrick Hester. He of SFSignal and Functional Nerds. He of the Scrivener Wisdom. Great dude. Amazing moderator, aware of his role at every moment.)

6. The Diversity Tango

A lot of panels end up being a bunch of dudes. White dudes. And, hey, that’s fine, as long as the panel is called “WHAT STRAIGHT WHITE DUDES THINK ABOUT MILITARY SCI-FI,” but if it’s not, then that’s a smoldering hunk of buffalo dooky. The best are when panels about diversity are completely non-diverse (“HEY PANEL OF WHITE GENTLEMEN, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT LADIES AND POC IN FICTION? YOUR OPINIONS ON THIS SUBJECT ARE VITAL”).

It is your job, as audience and authors, to look at the panel composition beforehand and contact the cons/conferences to demand they do better. And the cons may respond with some fol-de-rol about how there aren’t any women who write this genre or any people-of-color who write that genre, and then your job is to write them with a list of names who do.

Listen, stuff like this is hard, but it’s important. We have to get a little agitated, a little angry, to make changes in this space. Change is happening, but it requires action.

As the government says in order to make us more paranoid:

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING

SAY SOMETHING

7. A Note To Dudes

Sometimes, I have noticed an effect where men at panels talk over the women at panels.

It’s like they’re just waiting for them ladies to shut up so they can get to their point.

Don’t do this.

I mean, nobody should do this to anybody, but it seems of particular prevalence in this direction.

Oh, and if you sexually harass someone during that panel, you should be Tasered. (I mean, obviously, don’t sexually harass anyone anywhere, but on a panel? Really? Ugh.)

8. How To Be In The Audience And Ask Questions

If your goal as an audience member is to get up to the mic and then say:

“My opinion about Victorian dragons is that –”

*15 minute diatribe ensues*

You’re a bad audience member.

*swats you with phone book*

Stop that. Your job is to ask questions.

You are not a panelist.

I know. It’s hard. YOU HAVE OPINIONS. Now is not the time. People paid to be here. They are sitting in the audience waiting to hear the wisdom — sometimes, “wisdom” — of the gathered participants. You are not a participant. If you didn’t show up, you know what would happen? Literally nothing. They’d still open the doors. No one would say, “Hey, where’s Dave, that guy who wants to bore us with his lecture about steampunk appetizers?”

9. Self-Publishing Isn’t Usually Represented

Usually, the only time you’ll see a strong author-publisher presence is when it’s a panel on self-publishing. This is both a shame and somewhat understandable. 

It’s a shame because, hey, lots of great self-publishers out there. They have lots of vital things to say about their experiences. Excluding them means to exclude their POV.

It’s understandable because the rotten apples in the self-publishing bushel have made it hard to include those authors, even the good ones, because of the sheer weight of self-published shit-slurry that gets flung through the door once you open it. By which I mean, once you open to self-published authors, you will be besieged by them. And often not the good ones. Anybody who published any dungbucket on their own suddenly wants to sit on every panel, and given that cons and conferences are often volunteer-run — it’s just too much. (Being a hybrid author is usually a good way to end-run around such wariness and forbiddance.)

10. “I Don’t Know” Is A Perfectly Valid Response

You don’t have to answer a question.

No, really.

If you aren’t prepared to answer it — it’s okay to shrug and be all like, “Man, I have no idea.” It’s doubly okay to then pass the mic to someone else who you feel is more qualified. “I think Anastasia Smock would have a better answer since she wrote about incontinent pirates in the third book of the Scumbeard Cycle, THE WEE-WEE SEA.” Equal time matters, but also deferring to experts and not filling up space with hot breathy irrelevance has value, too.

11. Communicate With Panelists And Moderators Early

If given a chance, chat with the panelists beforehand — maybe even over email a week or two before the event — just to get comfortable with folks. Moderator, too — it’s better to talk about the panel long in advance rather than, like, 30 seconds before: “DON’T ASK ME ABOUT TOPICS RELATED TO BIRTH CONTROL, PONIES, LIGHTNING STORMS, ACAI JUICE, ABORTION, TERMINATORS, AND INCONTINENT PIRATES.”

12. Get To Your Panels A Little Early

Don’t be that sloppy fool who comes in like, ten minutes after everything has begun, making a racket, eating a sandwich noisily. This is true of authors and audience members. Come in. Sit down. Panel starts when the panel starts.

13. Project Your Voice

You won’t always have a microphone. Make yourself heard. Speak with confidence –

Or, at least, clarity.

People came to hear you and the others.

They didn’t pay to watch you stare at your hands and mumble.

14. Pay Attention

Don’t be fucking around with Flappy Bird on your phone while others are talking. Listen. Respond. Ask questions of your own. This is a dialogue, not a “tune out until it’s your turn to speak” event.

15. My Favorite Thing About Panels…

… is when the moderator is no longer necessary. No harm no foul against the moderator, but the coolest moment in a panel (and more rare than you might prefer) is when all the participants evolve the straight-up Q&A into an outright discussion. Folks ping-ponging back and forth in conversation rather than reading rote-feeling responses one after the other?

That is priceless, and what all panels should aspire to, in my humble, worthless opinion.

* * *

500 Ways To Write Harder aims to deliver a volley of micro-burst idea bombs and advisory missiles straight to your frontal penmonkey cortex. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? This book contains a high-voltage dose of information about outlining, plot twists, writer’s block, antagonists, writing conferences, self-publishing, and more.

All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.com, one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (as named by Writer’s Digest).

Buy ($2.99) at:

Amazon

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Direct from terribleminds

Or: Part of a $20 e-book bundle!

Reading Rainbow Was The Best Babysitter I Ever Had

And right now, the Kickstarter is counting down.

If they get five million dollars — and they’re close — they outreach to 7500 classrooms (up from 1500). That sounds like a worthy goal to me. They’ve got new rewards cooked up and under 48 hours left to get to the stretch goal.

So: consider pledging?

Conversations With The Toddler

This is an actual conversation I had with the toddler the other day as we stood at the bottom of our driveway in his ride-on pick-up truck. He got out of his truck, went to the side of the driveway and into the woods, then decided he was going to pee in the weeds.

B-Dub: I’m peeing.

Me: I see that.

B-Dub: *walks back with his pants not entirely pulled up*

Me: You forgot something.

B-Dub:  *sees what he forgot* Oh ha ha ha.

Me: You need to put Mister Winky back in his house.

B-Dub: I need to put Mister Winky in my butt!

Me: That’s not how that works. Besides, your butt is in the back, your winky is in the front.

B-Dub: Mister Winky and the Butt are neighbors.

Me: Y… yes.

B-Dub: Does Mister Winky have a dog?

Me: Uh. What?

B-Dub: Mister Winky has a dog! And he keeps it in my butt. A BUTT DOG.

B-Dub: *cracks up for like, five minutes straight*

B-Dub: *laughing dies down*

B-Dub: …butt dog.

And, scene.

* * *

Your turn. If you have kids or have ever met one of these tiny little randos, feel free to share with us something completely hilarious / cuckoo bananapants / disturbing that this children has said, or some conversation you’ve had with them. I think every parent has these, so, y’know. SHARE.

Hollywood Wants To Put An End To Our Foolish Human “Cities”

I have detected an insidious plot.

Hollywood hates our cities.

Consider, if you will, that in the following films (and there may be more) over the last ten or so years, one or several cities are prominently and obviously destroyed, frequently in the third act, sometimes due to some kind of invasion:

Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers Dark of the Moon, Transformers Age of Extinction, the LEGO Movie, Godzilla, Pacific Rim, Cloverfield, Avengers, World War Z, War of the Worlds, 2012, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Wait, maybe not that last one.

Other films (Dark Knight Rises, Chronicle, the last Matrix movie) are city-destruction-adjacent.

I am left to conclude that Hollywood — acting as a self-aware hive-mind that has perhaps grown disgusted with our enjoyment of its leavings — is warning us that it will soon punch, kick and ‘asplode one or several major cities. It will headbutt holes in dark buildings. Because it angers.

IT ANGERS.

Okay, maybe not.

But I do find this interesting — I always love looking back over prior decades of film and trying to suss out, just what the fuck were people thinking? What fears and desires drove our entertainment needs? In 100 years we’ll look at the decade between 2030-2040 and ask, “What did all the orgies mean? Why all the robot goats? And all those shots of old men pooping in bowler hats. WEIRD.”

Seems that in the last decade, we’ve been afraid of the destruction of our cities.

Global warming? Maybe. Certainly some hints of that, whispered in any of the films that have nature at the heart of our metropolitan eradication, right?

Probably, though, this is the legacy of 9/11 — particularly since a lot of the films center around an invading force that fucks up our shit. Aliens, a lot of the time — even those we may not think of as aliens (Transformers, Kryptonians). And the new “Khan” is something of a terrorist, is he not? Makes sense, then, that this is the ghost of that day haunting our entertainment almost mindlessly at this point. We’re still a nation that remembers those buildings come down and, let’s be honest, it’s been a bit of a cultural splinter in the heel of our foot since then — stands to figure that it would bleed out all over our screen.

Or maybe we just get big boners when we watch buildings go boom.

Whatever the reason, for my mileage it’s growing increasingly boring.

Especially since they all look the same.

DARK SLATE-BLUE SKY

DARK ALIEN SHIPS THAT ARE JAGGED

CHUNKS TAKEN OUT OF DARK BUILDINGS

SOME GREY-BLUE LASER BEAM THING THAT’S ALSO SORTA DARK SOMEHOW

PYOOOOOOOOOO

BOOSH

DEBRIS

SCREAMING

DARKNESS

(And, if it’s a Michael Bay film, you can add in: SPACE SHUTTLE / ARMY GUYS / JETS OVERHEAD/ “JOKES” THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE “FUNNY” / MALE GAZE / GLISTENING SWEAT / EXPLOSIONS / MORE EXPLOSIONS / ASTRONAUTS.)

It all feels very cut and paste. You could take scenes from Man of Steel, intersperse them into Transformers, maybe grab one from the newest Thor, and nobody would know the difference. And jeez, maybe that’s what it is. Maybe once someone created these CGI assets, they’re just passing them around like a joint in a dorm room — “You want Chicago getting destroyed? I’ll just give you the thumb drive, Spielberg. It’s been in like, six other movies by now, so whatevs.”

What does this say about us, as an audience?

Maybe something. Maybe nothing.

What does it say for filmmakers of Big Budget Plotstravaganzas?

Time to actually find some original content, methinks.

I mean, how about a giant space ape who arrives and builds cities where we don’t want them? Huh? Howzabout that? BOOM. This is why I should be allowed to write movies.

Or maybe “shouldn’t.”

Probably that, yeah.

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder’s Ten Magical Eye-Stalks

When I was a kid, I loved reading D&D so much (I hadn’t yet played it yet) that when I heard the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I thought the saying literally meant like, an actual D&D Beholder monster — you know, the big floating one-eyed volleyball with all the phallic eye-stalks? For some reason, I assumed the Beholder was the arbiter of beauty, which I found somewhat ironic given that the Beholder was one ugly motherfucker. But maybe that, I thought, was the point. Maybe that said something about the subjective nature of beauty: if such a grotesque monster was the keeper of the ideal, maybe beauty was a wildly moving target?

And now, with a little perspective, I have come to believe that someone out there thinks the Beholder is pretty. I mean, even in its ugliness the creature is a marvel of monstrousness — beautiful in its horror, elegant in the calculations of its nightmare fuel. One assumes that other Beholders think Beholders are fucking hot. Right? A Beholder sees another Beholder across the room and licks its razor-fang teeth while rancid-smelling saliva patters at the ground beneath it. Its eye-stalks bulge and stiffen. Its crevices weep with excitement.

This is a post more about our idea of beauty than it is about the D&D Monster Manual, by the way.

Anyway, that weird preamble leads me to this blog post — “Not Everyone Is Beautiful” — which is one of those posts I’ve seen ping-ponging around Facebook. Facebook seems to be where I get my rage from these days (seriously, it’s like a neverending well of fresh, clean scowl juice).

So, here I am.

The title of that post makes its point clear.

Not everyone is beautiful.

Okay.

That idea, and the post that supports it, is at least half-bullshit.

I understand its point, somewhat, and at the core of its argument, I agree: beauty, physical beauty, is given way too much priority. In fact, let’s fast-forward to the end of the post:

I want to tell you something, whoever you are. I don’t know if you’re beautiful, funny, smart, friendly, musical, caring, diligent, athletic, or anything else about you. All I know is this:

You are valuable.

You are important.

You are interesting.

You are worth loving.

So forget about “beautiful”. It’s become an ugly word anyway.

That’s great! Well-done, sir! I agree.

That’s a killer end to that post, and is just, aww. It gives my tummy a tickle of warmth and possibility. Unfortunately, you have to slog through some less… erm, agreeable stuff to get there.

Everyone is not beautiful. Some people have tumors the size of a second head growing out of their ears. Some people have skin like the Michelin man. Some people lose fingers, legs, or eyes in horrific assembly-line machine accidents. People have warts and blemishes and hair loss and dead teeth and lazy eyes and cleft palates and third nipples and unibrows.

YES HA HA HA THE DEFORMED AND DISABLED CANNOT BE BEAUTIFUL

THEY ARE UGLY AND SHOULD JUST ACCEPT THAT

I MEAN JEEZ

whoa, wait, wut.

Holy crap, really?

A cleft palate takes you off the beauty list?

My father was missing a finger.

Hair loss? Hair loss? I’m going bald. Uh-oh.

(And a third nipple is just one more nipple to love, I’ll have you know.)

He goes onto say:

There are plenty of people that are not physically appealing to look at, the primary and most widely used meaning of the word “beautiful”. So why do we use the word as a catch-all for any sort of positive attribute?

Nobody says, “Everybody is a good listener.” Nobody says, “Everyone is athletic to somebody.” Nobody says, “You are an amazing writer, whether you know it or not.” I keep waiting, but they never say it.

But then later:

But the fact is, we don’t own the word. The world owns the word, and to the world, “beauty” is physical attractiveness and nothing more. To use “beautiful” in our wider, deeper, more important meaning only confuses the issue. It sends our young women horrible mixed messages, telling them that everyone is beautiful, and sending them into despair when the boys flock after someone with a thinner waistline and a wider bust.

Which is all a bit of a mixed message, innit?

“Why do we use ‘beautiful’ to mean more than it does, except also, we can’t, because the world thinks it means one thing and now we’re trying to shoehorn it to meaning another, so it’s the world’s fault, but it’s also our fault for trying to redefine it and, uhhnnngh –”

BOOM.

*skull fragments like grenade shrapnel*

Athleticism is measurable. So is one’s writing skill. Not perfectly so — these things always have a whole lotta wiggle room. Beauty, though? Beauty has no meaningful measure. Even if you were to believe that beauty is only a physical standard, it’s a target moving so erratically it might as well be taped to the back of a meth-addicted terrier chasing a coked-up squirrel. What I think is beautiful isn’t what you think is beautiful. That’s not scary; that’s amazing.

And the beauty of the word ‘beautiful’ (see what I did there) is that we are perfectly allowed to use that word to describe things that have nothing to do with corporeal attractiveness. We can use that word “beautiful” to refer to poems, songs, meals, bowel movements, sex toys, tweets, whatever the futzing fuck we want. It can describe experiences. Moments. Sounds. Ideas. Thus proving it is one of those wonderful Swiss Army words — it has variable utility. 

I recognize that the point of the dude’s post is that, hey, beauty is an unreasonable standard. But it’s the solution — “stop saying everyone is beautiful” — with which I disagree.

Maybe not everyone is beautiful.

I’m not going to say that about Hitler, you know? And that has nothing to do with his physical aspects (though that little poop-smear of a mustache would disqualify him anyway, I think).

But most of us really are beautiful.

And someone will find us that way.

They’ll look at our love handles and weirdly-shaped toes and the constellation of funky moles across the expanse of our backs, and they’ll find us beautiful. Regardless of cleft palates or tumors or nipples-in-excess-of-expectation. And if they don’t find us beautiful for the things that we have — if they cannot look past blemishes and weird toes and the occasional disability — then hey, fuck ‘em. (I mean in the condemn them to hell way, not in the have sex with them way.)

It’s not just that we’re all beautiful. We’re also all awkward, and uneven, and ill-shaped, and weird in some fashion. Yes, we all have zits, moles, lumps, bumps, cellulite, stretch marks, odd teeth, weird fingers, hangnails, ingrown hairs, ingrown toenails, and so on, and so forth. You can’t Photoshop reality (and those poor souls that try often end up mutating themselves with plastic surgery into something resembling cat people). And on the inside, we all have bad thoughts and self-doubt and things we’re not good at doing. If I try to put together IKEA furniture, I will end up either a) accidentally swallowing the allen wrench and having it perforate my bowels or b) going blind with rage and spree-killing half of my neighborhood. Every IKEA thing I build is like: “Why are the shelves upside down? Did you put a hole in the drywall? This is supposed to be a shelf and it looks like a sacrificial wicker man, instead.”

We’re all beautiful.

And we’re all not beautiful, too.

And that’s fucking beautiful, man.

I don’t want to see this sentiment lost. I don’t want us to turn away from the idea that we’re all beautiful, because the unfair standard that the post talks about? This is how we get shut of it. We escape it by recognizing the standard is bullshit but also by recognizing that we all meet the qualification in some way. We escape the standard set by the larger media through social media: it’s here we can introduce and champion the idea that, hey, fuck that shit, George. We really all do have something to write home about. We all get to be beautiful to someone.

You, dear reader –?

You’re beautiful. And you over there. And over there.

Even you, D&D Beholder. Even you.

I mean –

Except Hitler.

Because Hitler.