Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 205

Ten Questions About iD, By Madeline Ashby

In a perfect world, we would refer to Madeline Ashby as Mad Ashby, the cantankerous Cockney bomber — or maybe Mad-Ash, the hell-warrior who stalks the smoldering wasteland of Neo-Canada. For now, we have Madeline Ashby, the bad-ass writer who’s getting a lot of great attention for her first book, vN, and is here to talk about its follow-up, iD:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?

My name is Madeline Ashby, and I’m a science fiction writer and strategic foresight consultant. That means that sometimes, I write stories for Intel Labs and The Institute for the Future, about technologies being worked on at the moment. Other times, I design marketing strategies (and write copy) for Ideas in Flight, a marketing firm in Toronto. I live there with my partner, horror writer David Nickle. And sometimes, I write books.

Give Us The 140-Character Story Pitch:

Javier is a self-replicating humanoid robot on the hunt for redemption and revenge. His only problem? His failsafe. For now.

Where Does This Story Come From?

This is the sequel to my debut novel, vN: The First Machine Dynasty. vN was about Amy, a little girl robot who eats her grandmother at kindergarten graduation, and grows to adult size. With her granny on a partition in her mind, she has to go on the run. In a prison transport truck, she meets Javier — another vN, wanted for serial replication. Javier is the protagonist of iD, which takes place directly after vN. He’s proven himself a hero in the first book, but now his new ideals get put to the test. And that leads him to question who he is, and what his relationship to humanity is — if humans are really worthy of the love he’s programmed to feel for them.

How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?

One thing you’ll notice about the protagonist of this story, Javier, is that he does things and usually only women do, in stories. In genre stories, in mainstream stories, in stories. Because Javier still has an intact failsafe, he can’t fight back against the humans who want to exploit him. That seats him right in traditional heroine territory: reduced to scheming, to seducing, to begging, like the women of Hardy and Thackeray. And frankly, things happen to Javier that usually only happen to women in genre stories. As a humanoid, people tend to objectify him. (After all, he’s quite literally an object.) People feel like they can just buy him off the shelf, that his body is inherently available for consumption. As a feminist who once wrote a thesis on anime fandom and cyborg theory, I wanted to tell that story from a man’s perspective. Not because I hate men (I don’t) but because I feel that the dominant culture in general doesn’t give men a lot of room for vulnerability. I had just written a novel about an almost invulnerable woman, and I wanted to turn that around this time. Most stories about male robots are about how cold they are, how isolated, how they struggle with the desire to be human, to be “real.” In my opinion, “real” is bullshit. I’m comfortable in my post-modernity, and I can safely tell you that authenticity is crap. I wanted to write a story about a male robot who had perfected passive aggression, who used his sexuality as a weapon, an homme fatale.

What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing iD?

First, I had to prepare myself emotionally to do it. That was hard. It’s a hard book, and a lot of hard things happen in it. I’ve written a bit about that, below.

Second, I had to put aside my Sequel Syndrome. Sequel Syndrome is a strain of Impostor Syndrome, which is the fear that everyone around you will slowly realize that you’re not really a grown-up and abandon you in disgust. Sequels are hard. There’s a lot of pressure to live up to the first book, and there’s a lot of pressure to make lightning strike twice. That’s a Herculean task, and fairly unrealistic. Not just because it’s statistically unlikely, but because it’s not how life is lived. I spoke with my therapist about this anxiety, and he reminded me that sequels can and should do something different from the first episode in a story. After all, that’s how life works if you’re doing it right. You don’t spend your life doing the same thing over and over, making the same mistakes, thinking you’re learning the lesson but never really living it. You do something different, in the second act of life. Or you should, if you learned anything from the first one.

Once I understood that, I decided to make this book as different as I could. vN took place in the summer; iD takes place in the winter. vN made a lot of pop culture references; iD makes a lot of references to classic literature. (I did a classics programme at a Jesuit university. It was about time a little of that shone through.) vN is relentlessly paced; iD is paced more like a mainstream novel. vN is a young girl’s coming-of-age story; iD is about finding the strength to step up and be a real man — even when you’ve never been a real live boy.

What Did You Learn Writing iD?

I learned that sadness is hard to sustain. I don’t know how those grimdark guys do it. Seriously. They must drink like a fifth of Jack a night. This is a sad book with a happy ending, but it’s primarily sad, and that made me scared to write it. I knew exactly what I had to do, but that didn’t make it any easier. One night, I went to bed and just started to cry about the scene I had just written. My partner rolled over and held me, thinking I’d had a nightmare. But no. I’d written the nightmare.

But looking back, I realized that I’d gone through this with another story of mine, also about Javier. The Education of Junior Number 12 was a story I wrote before finishing vN, but it acted as a sort of prequel. It was told in much the same elegiac tone, and it was hard for me to maintain. I tried to sell it, and it never took. It was too long. It was too dark. Whatever. Over the years, I picked at that story like a wound. In a Korean coffee shop over a piece of sweet potato cake, I thought I had it. On a hidden beach on Toronto’s Centre Island, I thought I had it. But I didn’t have it, not really, until one night in my rat-infested basement apartment in Little Italy, I was so frustrated with my life and the various messes I’d made that I had to take control of something, so I sliced up that piece like a late-stage serial killer. Angry Robot took what survived that night as promotional material for the book. Then it wound up in Year’s Best.

So in reality, this is just the dance I’ve always done with Javier. Hijo de puta.

What Do You Love About iD?

Personally, I think the prose is better this time around. It’s more lyrical. It’s prettier. When I look at most of my prose, it seems rather workmanlike and plain. I’d like it to have a bit more flourish. So I tried to focus on that, this time. And I think it worked. Occasionally, I would read parts of the novel aloud to my partner, and he would say: “If the rest of the book sounds like what you just read, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” I loved those moments.

What Would You Do Differently Next Time?

I would start sooner. I procrastinated, and my work suffered, and I couldn’t workshop it the way I wanted to. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to do what I had to do with this book, so I delayed. It wasn’t until I spoke with my therapist about it that I could really gird my loins and get the job done. He’s counselled a lot of writers and artists, so he totally understood Sequel Syndrome and how to work through it. Also, I was working again. When I wrote vN, I wasn’t. So I had less time and less focus with which to complete this book. Then again, I had years to write my first book, and I still ended up scrapping fifteen thousand words from that manuscript — even after it was sold to Angry Robot, which happened in the midst of separating from my husband and writing my second Master’s. The chaos was good for it. So when iD needed re-writes, I shrugged my shoulders and poured more coffee. (And drank some green juice, and took up meditation, and hired a yoga trainer to teach me how to breathe after fighting two flus in two years. Writing is terrible for the body.)

Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:

“Before him, the island was an inverted city. Her roots hung deep in the water, thick as skyscrapers. They glittered and gleamed like structures of glass and steel. At any time, he realized, Amy could have shot them up from below and made a paradise to rival any human construction. They dangled there, all the unfinished places, the filigreed towers and great crude blocks, the hanging bridges of sighs never breathed. She had held them in reserve. She had let the islanders build what they wanted, instead.”

What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

Angry Robot and I are deciding if we want to move forward with the story of the vN, into a third (or even fourth) book. I think I’d like to do one more, set in Japan. It looks like I’ll be going there next spring, so maybe I could do research while there. And maybe a collection about Javier’s iterations. He’s got so many of them, and they’ve all gone on their own adventures, so it would be interesting to see what they were up to while he was busy fucking his way up one coast and down the other.

Beyond that, I’m on Project Hieroglyph, which is an initiative put together by Arizona State University and the Center for Science and the Imagination, inspired by a Neal Stephenson talk on the need for bigger, brighter ideas in science fiction. I’m applying my previous work on the future of border security to a story about how to build new border towns that actually act as prototype spaces for employable immigrants and visa-granting companies, while remaining secure and cutting down on the pollero traffic through the Sonora desert.

Madeline Ashby: Website /@MadelineAshby

iD: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

Ten Questions About A Discourse In Steel, By Paul S. Kemp

The best compliment I can pay to Paul Kemp’s first Egil & Nix book is, for me, that it gave me the sudden urge to go out and play a shitload of D&D. It’s a deeply awesome, super-fun book and I’m comfortable assuming the next in the series in just as rad. Speakawhich — here’s Paul now to talk about that very book:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

Well, I’m a proud geek, proud dad, whisky drinker, beer drinker, wine drinker (an alarming theme is beginning to emerge here), dude-who-quit-smoking-cigars-but-sometimes-still-longs-for-one (it’s only a cigar, people! Jeebus!).  I’m a RPG player, ASL fan, FPS fan, and such other nerdy acronyms as may give me credibility with the reading audience.

On the writing front, I’m somehow a multiple New York Times bestseller. You believe that shit? I write Star Wars novels, Forgotten Realms novels featuring my signature character, Erevis Cale, and I write sword and sorcery novels in my own fictional world for Angry Robot Books.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH.

A pair of rogues take a run at the Thieves’ Guild. Wit and action comes at you in a blizzard. It’s sword and sorcery, but now with 25% more sorcery! 25% more! But you must call now!

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

This book, and the Egil and Nix books generally, comes from my sweet, sweet sticky love of classic sword and sorcery and adventure fiction.  It comes from a desire to write something that might, for some reader somewhere, make them feel the same wonder and joy that I did the first time I read about Fafhrd and the Mouser, about Doc Savage, about Conan or Elric.  It comes from a desire to write something that feels like a throwback, that reads in most respects like the throwback, but that nevertheless has ‘modern’ sensibilities.  When I first read those books (and I re-read most of them once every year or so), I felt like the story was just grabbing me by the shirt, giving me a shake, and saying, “Come the fuck on, man!  There’s adventure afoot!”  Love that.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

Er, uh, because it’s the product my particular brand of whiskey-soaked, unholy manlove of Fritz Leiber’s work (give me a call from beyond, Fritzy!)? No? Then, uh, I guess I’m not sure it is, you know? Well, maybe this:

I’ve been writing a long time, sold a fair amount of books, and I’m basically at the point in my career that I truly do not care what anyone thinks of what I write.  So I can tell what I think is a gloriously fun, unabashed adventure story, and tell it without a hint of hipster irony, without so much as a knowing nod.  And I can do that because i don’t care if Locus likes it (maybe they won’t because adventure fiction, I think, is not their cup of tea), or if it gets Hugo or Nebula nominated (it probably won’t for the same reason!).  I just care about telling a story that recalls for me the sensawunda I felt when reading Leiber/Burroughs/Howard/Brackett/Younameit for the first time. There’s something pure about the storytelling in those books, something unselfconscious.  There’s a verve to it.  It elicits the same kind of feeling I had when I first saw an Imperial Star Destroyer start to fill the screen from the bottom up, chasing a tiny Tantive IV, the same kind of feeling Spielberg recaptured in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s fun storytelling, really fun. And it’s not fun with a knowing wink, or an arched eyebrow.  It’s just fucking fun.  Still has something to say, sure, but it is, first and foremost and always, a ripping tale. I’m not the only one who could do it, but I can damn sure do it and do it pretty well.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING a discourse in steel?

Oddly, none of it was hard and I don’t say that lightly. Essentially every other book i’ve written has had that bit (or bits) where it felt like getting words on the page was less fun than getting my teeth drilled, where frustration caused me to bob for apples in a vat of scotch, but not the Egil and Nix stories. Writing about these two and their adventures is nothing but an unadulterated blast and it comes easy (and now, by saying that, i’m sure the writing gods have just looked down, realized that I’m writing the third Egil and Nix book, and have decreed, “AFFLICT THAT FUCKER WITH DIFFICULTIES!”

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING a discourse in steel?

Man, that’s a good question.  How about this: If you build darkness into a character, it will come out even if you didn’t intend for it to come out when conceptualizing the story.

Also, swearing begets more swearing, until pretty much the entire book is one big expletive (albeit made-up fantasy expletives, in this case).

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT a discourse in steel?

I love Nix’s voice, of course. I like to think he’s witty and insightful and a lot of fun to read, and he and Egil play off one another very, very well.

But I really love some of the small, evocative bits that aren’t hugely important to the plot but which suggest so much about the wonder of the world – the talking, sassy magical key, the sexless flesh automaton that wanders the Low Bazaar hawking magical gewgaws for Kerfallen the Grey Mage, the magical tattoos on members of the Thieves’ Guild.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

WHAT!  THIS NOVEL IS PERFECT, SIR!  DO YOU GAINSAY THIS?

Seriously, man, that’s a tough question, since we’re our own harshest critics. How about this: I would definitely make the sucky parts less sucky!  Yeah, yeah, that’s it.  And I’d make the mediocre parts great instead!

More seriously, I’d slow down. The Egil and Nix books come at me faster than any of my other novels. I’m sure I could make small improvements throughout if I slowed the pace some.

That’s all I got, bro.  And that’s a shitty answer.  But the book’s brand new and I can’t quite bring myself to crucify it just yet.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

This bit occurs while Egil and Nix are in the midst of an assault on the fortified guild house of Dur Follin’s Thieves’ Guild. They’re there to grab a man named Channis, the Upright Man (the guildmaster). I think this captures their dynamic pretty well.

Nix shrugged. “Of course if he’s not in there, we’re fakked. We may be fakked anyway. Bit off a big piece of meat here, my friend. Makes for a hard chew. But it’s now or not. We have minutes at best, before those slubbers from the rooms below get word up here. We move fast enough, we may yet take them by surprise.

“They feel safe here,” Egil said.

“They should,” Nix said, thinking of the reinforced doors and locks.

Egil nodded. “Take the two stupidest slubbers in Dur Follin to attack the guild house.”

“Ballsiest is what you mean,” Nix said. “I can barely walk I’m swinging so low.”

Egil grinned and they hustled through empty rooms and corridors, making their way to the grand room. Presently Egil put up a hand to stop them.

“Right around this corner,” he said softly.

Nix peeked around the corner and saw two guards. They looked more bored than alert. Word of the attack hadn’t yet reached them. Nix pulled back.

“Two men, as you said,” he said to Egil.

Egil pointed. “This hallway goes around to the other side, to the doors near Channis.”

“Channis?”

“The Upright Man’s name. The boy said it.”

“Right. Aye,” Nix said, then, “I’ll take these two then get inside the room and draw eyes. You go around to the other doors, kill the guards there quick, and stand ready. When you hear the commotion inside, you get in and grab this Channis. I’ll meet you over there.”

“Good,” Egil said. “Then what?”

“What do you mean, ‘then what?’”

“We get him,” Egil said. “We tell him why he’s dying and do it. Then, how do we get clear?”

“Why’re you asking me?”

“I thought you’d have a plan.”

“Why would you think that? I’m making this up as we go. You’re the one with the map of the place in your head.”

Egil shrugged. “Hmm. I guess we’ll figure something out.”

Nix looked at him a long moment. “Shite, man. I guess we will. Here I go.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

Oh, I plan to stress over sales and my career while sitting on the couch in my underwear with a whiskey.

Oh, maybe you mean something less depressing?  In October, my next Forgotten Realms novel, THE GODBORN, book II of the Sundering, will be released. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on A CONVERSATION IN BLOOD, which is the next Egil and Nix novel (scheduled for a June 2014 release, I believe). After that, I’ll be working on another two Forgotten Realms novels and a fourth Egil and Nix book, so – busy!  And that’s a good thing.

Chuck, thanks for having me, man.  I really appreciate it.

Paul S. Kemp: Website / Facebook / @paulskemp

A Discourse In Steel: Purchase

Writing Magic

I think writing and storytelling is a kind of magic.

Maybe literally, if you believe in that sort of thing. Like, okay, when I sit down to craft a story I’m suddenly stringing together letters based on utterances which form words which form sentences which form ideas and then I mash a lot of those ideas together and they begin to create a narrative — a narrative that didn’t exist before, a lightning struck the gassy heavens and lit the skies aflame and now it’s raining Frankensteins and unicorns moment.

It’s profound, powerful, weird-ass stuff.

But I used to also feel that this magic was inviolable. Or worse, fragile. Like, this sense that it’s a nervous horse quick to spook. Or that it’s a little bridge made of glass and if you put too much weight on it you’ll hear the crinkly crackle-snap and tumble into an abyss of dead magic.

It’s sometimes used as one of the reasons that people don’t outline — or worse, the reason they don’t like to edit their work. In fact, it’s used as a reason for a lot of things, this magic: the magic of the muse, the curse of writer’s block, the fickle fates of a day’s writing (sorry, just can’t make the words today, for the magic breath of the gods has not been breathed up my nethers and so my pallid flesh will not be animated to action).

I think when magic fuels you: that’s awesome.

But I think when magic hampers you: that’s really sad.

Because the magic isn’t supposed to hamstring you.

It’s supposed to fuel the work, not fuel your excuses.

If you don’t like to outline or do any kind of plotting or planning — more power to you. But let that be because that’s how your process works, not because the magic spell is so frangible, so untenable, that to merely gaze upon it will cause it to shatter. If your story is so delicate, you’re probably in deep fucking trouble, friend. It’s not a baby rabbit. You can’t scare it to death.

But I think I have a solution for what feels to me like troublesome thinking, and it involves looking at your story as a different kind of magic altogether:

Look at it like a magic trick.

A magic trick isn’t an impromptu thing: you don’t merely get on stage and let the Muse barf inspiration for the trick into your brain-bucket. You conceive of it in a fit of inspiration, like with anything — but then you practice. You know the trick intimately before it’s ever performed on stage: you’re the magician, goddamnit. Of course you know how the trick is performed.

But that doesn’t remove the fun of the trick.

Because the fun of the trick is seeing the audience react.

The fun is in the awe they feel. Their ”wow” is more important than your “wow.”

Just because you know the trick doesn’t mean the magic is dead.

50 Rantypants Snidbits Of Random Writing & Storytelling Advice

I get a lot of emails. And questions at conferences. And psychic missives sent through the galactic nebula from various superior alien species. And they ask me questions about writing and so I thought I’d drop a big ol’ compilation of writing advice — answers to many of the questions I get — here in this whopper of a post. A list of fifty. My first. (Likely my last, though I’ll also note: this list of 50 is as long as many of my lists of 25, word-wise.)

Go forth. Read. Absorb. Yell at me. Share if you like.

Oh, and –

I want you to read all of this in the sexy voice of Benedict Cumberbatch. AKA, Benderspink Umberhulk. AKA, Benneton Umbrellahat. AKA, Kennebunkport Slumberparty. AKA, Bob Benson.

Or, just read it like it’s being screamed by Animal from The Muppets.

Your call.

Let us begin.

1. Snap Your Trap And Write Some Shit

Stop talking about writing. Stop reading about writing. Stop dreaming about writing. Stop doing things that don’t qualify as writing. The thing that defines a writer is that the writer writes.

2. No, Seriously, Quit What You’re Doing Right Now And Go Write

I wasn’t fucking joking. Stop reading this post. Get out now. Go! Go. I will Taser you in the face, nipples, butthole and genitals if I see you hanging around here when you could be banging out perfectly good word count. Go right now and write. Come back here when you’re done. This entire blog will be waiting for you. Like a stalker in your shrubbery.

3. Nobody Has Any Goddamn Answers

I don’t have answers. Neil Gaiman doesn’t have answers. Jane Austen didn’t have them. Nobody has answers. We have ideas. Suggestions. Possibilities. The only writer who has answers about your writing is you. Advice is just advice. It is not an equation. It is not the instruction manual for Ikea furniture (which are admittedly super-fucking-vague anyway). You are your own Muse.

4. Think About Writing More Than You Think About Publishing

Writing and storytelling is not a means to an end. The story is the end. Publishing is just a delivery system. It isn’t that fucking exciting. It’s not a carousel. You should ask more questions about wordsmithy and story architecture than you do about query letters or e-book formatting.

5. Learn How To Put Together A Proper Fucking Sentence

If you can’t put together a cogent sentence, you’re fucked.

6. You’ve Gotta Wade Through Your Own Waste

You want to be Hercules, Boudicca, Annie Oakley, and Einstein right out of the gate. You want a perfect novel to pop out of your head fully formed like an adult-grown chicken right from the egg. Won’t happen. You’re gonna suck first. You’re gonna suck for a while. Even when you’re awesome you’re still gonna suck a little bit. This is how you get better. Wade through your own word-waste. I wrote a bunch of assy novels before I wrote one that wasn’t assy. The less you write, the more you suck. You write a lot so you can suck only a little.

7. What Other Writers Do Doesn’t Fucking Matter

It’s like kids in a classroom. Stop paying attention to Billy flicking boogers on Betty. Stop looking at Cindy’s grades. So what if Earl, Jr. keeps fondling himself and smells like weird cheese? What other writers do don’t matter. What matters is what you do. You have to write your story. They aren’t sitting at your desk, with your computer, with your coffee, with your chimpanzee manservant. You are. Own it. Fuck you. Be your own writer. Tell your own tales.

8. Any Rule Can Be Broken If You Break It Like A Fucking Boss

For every writer, a billion writing rules. Snidbits of wisdom. Chestnuts of truth. You can break all the rules. You can roast all the chestnuts. But first, you have to learn the rules. First, you gotta get good. Otherwise you’re a toddler driving a car, shooting a pistol out the window.

9. For Some Reason The Blank Page Is Scary As Hell

The first empty page always makes you want to shit your pants. It’s normal. We’re all scared.

10. Write Brave And Bold And Bloody

Fuck it. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Stop dicking around. Be brave! Be powerful! Take risks. Base-jump off Godzilla’s nut-sack. Hang-glide into the fire-vagina of Mordor. Bleed on the page. You don’t get up on stage and do a mumbly little rendition of I’m A Little Teapot. You get up there in a glittered sarong with dragon-wings on your back, with bottle-rockets taped to your inner-thighs, with the loudest, meanest, baddest-assest version of the song that fills your fucking heart. Write big. Write without fear. Write with blood, guts, madness and majesty!

11. People Will Always Be There To Tell You You Can’t Do Something

You will run a gauntlet of naysayers. Everyone has a reason why you shouldn’t even try to be a writer. You gotta run this gauntlet. Fly as a writer. Or die as something else.

12. Learn To Say “Yes” More Than You Say “No”

Early on, say yes. Take chances. Try things. All doors are open. All windows. All eyes. Take it all in. Embrace potential. You don’t know if you don’t like a food, a TV show, a bizarre sexual position, until you try it. Try it all. Learn the power of fuck yes, motherfucker.

13. But Eventually Transition To Saying “No” More Than You Say “Yes”

Eventually, though, you learn the power of “no.” As soon as you can start confidently saying “no” — and knowing why you have to say no to a job, to a book, to a style, to a POV or a genre or a format — you see your confidence as a creator begin to manifest.

14. You’re Your Own Worst Enemy

If you’re not writing, that’s your fault. It’s not anybody else’s. It’s not your wife’s fault. Not your Mom’s fault. Not your kid’s fault. It isn’t because of a job, or Big Six publishing, or Amazon, or a Muse, or Writer’s Block. You might as well blame a Yeti (who acted in collusion with a cabal of randy leprechauns). It’s all on you. Accept responsibility. Stop complaining. Fix your shit.

15. Figure Out What You Love About Stories

Realize what you love about stories, and bring that love to bear on the page. Let the audience in on that love. Your love should be viral, like cat videos or the norovirus.

16. Quit Chasing Your Voice

You will never find your voice. It isn’t a car and you aren’t a dog chasing it. It’s not a pearl in an oyster or an elk in the forest. Your voice is who you are. The way you think. The way you speak when you’re not thinking about how you speak. You are your voice. If anything it’s like a lost key. It’ll turn up just when you stop hunting for it.

17. Imagine That You’re On A First Date

I’m dating your story. It’s the first date. You have, five, ten pages to make me want that second date. Don’t waste time. After those ten pages, it’s fuck or walk. Then you’ve got the rest of the book to make me want to put a ring on it. I wanna fall in lust, then love, with your story. I want to be heartbroken when its over. I want to need it like I need a drug.

18. Get To The Fucking Point

More to the point: get to the fucking point. Your story should move like a wolf chasing a cheetah chasing a vicious line of gossip. Don’t sink us in narrative mud. Exposition murders mystery. Backstory is a boggy mire. Don’t write to waste time or fill space. Run, fuck, leap and fly.

19. Less Is Nearly Always More

Use as few words as you can. Use as little plot as you are able.

20. Stop Fucking Describing Everything

Pages of description make me want to go back in time and punch you as a baby. Except I can’t because you’ve bored me so much I fell asleep. Description is key. You need it. But you only need so much of it. Let the audience do some work. I know what a chair, a tree, a dude, a dildo all look like. I’ve got memory and imagination. The noun is enough. Describe those things that break the status quo. Describe only those things the audience can’t already know.

21. The Truth About Those Motherfucking Adverbs

Adverbs are not your enemy. Examples of adverbs include: “Quickly,” “There,” “Upstairs,” “Too,” “Yesterday,” “Only,” “Abruptly.” That list goes on and on: adverbs of time, place, manner, extent. The goal, as with all words, is to use them correctly and to not bludgeon your reader about the head and neck with them. An adverb, like an adjective, is a spice. It can highlight a meal. Or it can kill it with too much flavor.

22. Note The Shape Of Question Marks

It’s not a coincidence that question marks are shaped like fish-hooks. We are pulled through fiction by mystery. We want to solve for X. We want to fill in the variables. (Weirdest come-on line ever: “Hey, baby, I wanna fill in your variables. Let’s solve for X, sexypants.”)

23. Your First Job Is To Entertain But It Is Not Your Last Job

Entertainment is job number one. The enemy of entertainment is boredom and the moment your story bores me I’m off like a toddler looking for a loaded revolver and the keys to Daddy’s minivan. But entertainment is just the start. A guy who can fart the alphabet is ‘entertaining.’ You should aspire to do more. Like, say, for instance…

24. Make Me Feel, Make Me Think

The best two things your story can do is to stir my emotions and to challenge my assumptions. Make me feel something (rage! lust! love! grief!). Make me think something (what is the nature of evil? what is the enemy of empathy? what happens if I sneeze while I’m ejaculating?).

25. Assume Your Reader Is Smart

The audience knows when you’re talking down to them. Even kids are smarter than you think.

26. Play Harder

The story is your sandbox. Play. Build. Have fun. If you’re not having any fun, we won’t either. Just don’t eat the cat turds. Every sandbox has cat turds. It’s science fact.

27. Work Harder

Not to say every day is going to be a fucking fun-a-palooza filled where it rains cookies and you construct your own magical dance-ponies. Some days it’s just about working your fingers to bony, bloody nubs — about chewing words, spitting them out, smashing them together. When play fails, you gotta pull the magic from the story like pulling nails from boards with your teeth.

28. Art Harder

Think about your story. Think about your art. Go elbow deep. Get into the guts like you’re trying to birth a humpback whale. Art is a kind of madness. Story is messy, weird, gory, greasy, hard to grasp. But always try. We’re all flying blind. We’re all feeling around in the wet-slick dark for the baby whale. Reach further. Think more. Art harder, motherfuckers.

29. Slow Your Roll, Speedy McGee

Embody patience. The worst thing you can do for your story is pull it out of the oven before it’s done cooking. Don’t quit early. Don’t publish thirty seconds after you typed the last word. Don’t query a stinker. Stories — like wine, brisket, romance and bondage games — need time.

30. Edit Till It’s Right

People ask how many edits or rewrites you need to do, as if there’s a magical number requirement — you edit three times and ding! The E-Z Bake oven pops open and a hot fresh story pops out. You edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite until it’s done. Until it’s right.

31. But Quit Before It’s Perfect

Fuck perfect. You’re a terrible judge of your own work. You’re all wrapped up in it like a sausage in a pancake. Perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good; it’s an impossible predictor, a meaningless pinnacle desired by the divinely-obsessed. Aiming for perfection is just another way to make sure you never finish what you begin. Choose a time and a place to stop. Then stop.

32. Write What You Know

Your life is a tally of experiences. Traumas. True loves. Hallucinations. Opinions. You once ate a spider. You once broke your femur. You once had sex with a dude and/or lady dressed up like a panda bear. You’d be a fucking dipshit not to mine your own life for the authenticity it provides.

33. But Don’t Write Only What You Know

Your life is a tally of your experiences but your fiction needn’t be. ‘Write what you know’ is not a proclamation to write only what you know. You are capable of writing beyond the walls of your own Plexiglas enclosure. Writing and storytelling is a good excuse to try to know more.

34. The Three C’s (creativity, clarity, confidence)

Creativity: Watch me pull a Pegasus out of thin air. Clarity: I will convey the Pegasus clearly and completely so that I am understood. Confidence: I am the god of this place and the Pegasus does whatever the fuck I want it to do. These are your Three C’s. Write with these in mind and nothing will stop you. Except maybe a bear. Because bears are dicks.

35. So Fucking Awkward

A lack of clarity in your writing leads to you not being understood. It can lead to your phrasing sounding awkward — meaning, your prose is clumsy and confusing, stumbling about like a wine-sodden orangutan dressed like Queen Elizabeth. (You may choose which version of Elizabeth inhabits the canvas resting upon your mental easel.)

36. All Things Serve The Character

Character is everything. Character choices create the plot. Characters build the architecture of the story. Characters have and transmit ideas. Characters shape and reflect the thematic argument. The characters form the bloody beating heart of your work.

37. What The Fuck Does Your Character Want?

If I don’t know what the character wants — love! revenge! liquor! cats! — within the first ten pages, then my investment in them is going to be as strong as piss-soaked toilet paper.

38. Whip Me Beat Me Love Me Hate Me

You must punish and reward the characters in your story — which by proxy punishes and rewards the audience reading or watching your story. Err toward more punishment than reward. Which, let’s be honest, is more fun for you anyway. (Looking at you, George R. R. Martin.)

39. The Audience Is Always Wrong

The audience thinks it knows what it wants but it’s wrong. The audience thinks it wants the protagonist to lead a charmed life. To get the girl, the money, the boat, the goat. But such ceaseless pleasure and la-dee-da-dee bullshit is boring as tacos made from cardboard and styrofoam. The audience thinks it wants a jelly donut but it really wants a smack in the mouth. The audience wants pleasure but what they really need is the struggle to find pleasure.

40. Conflict Diamonds

Conflict is the engine of your fiction. Without conflict, a story is just a flatline. And a flatline means your story is fucking DOA. Cold on the slab, toe tag, time of death.

41. Formless Fucking Blob

Another danger is a story has no shape at all: more a formless paramecium blob rather than a flat-line. The story doesn’t hang together. It’s mushy. Gushy. Poopy. If you can’t conceive of how story has shape, has architecture, has bones that connect at joints that pull with muscles and tendons while sealed in a tight swaddling of skin, then what the fuck? Think about it. Find the shape. Sculpt the story to it.

42. Brake And Accelerate

Know what speeds your story up and what slows it down. Dialogue is lubricant: frictionless. Description is grit: friction-filled. Action is a coked-up jackrabbit; exposition is a tired sloth. Short chapters are a bottle rocket; long chapters are a big boat. A story is the slowness of alcohol with the swiftness of meth; sometimes a story needs oxygen to breathe. Sometimes a story needs oxygen to light things on fire. Tension/recoil. Momentum/restriction. Green light. Red light.

43. Goddamnit, Pick A POV And Stick With It

First person, fine. Third person, whatever. Second person — well, you’ve got big balls and/or meaty labia to be trying that one, but whatever. Pick a POV and stick to it.

44. See Also: Pick Your Fucking Tense Already

Stop drifting in and out of narrative tense. It makes Story Jesus shoot puppies with lightning.

45. The Secret

The secret to writing is so simple it tickles: Write as much as you can. As fast as you can. Finish your shit. Hit your deadlines. Try very hard not to suck. That’s it.  That’s my secret. Don’t tell anyone or I’ll charge you with espionage and shit in your fish tank.

46. Read Your Work Aloud

We read with our eyes but words are for the ears. We sound them out in our heads. Reading your work aloud lets you catch the bumps and divots and puffy bits of scar tissue. It lets you hear awkwardness, the uncertainty, the fractured confidence, the fuzzy confusion.

47. You Are Not Alone

Writing seems solitary. It isn’t. Hire editors. Gather readers. Bring audience. Learn from other writers. We all go through the same shit: so commiserate. Gather around the social media water cooler. You’re not a spider starving in its web. You’re part of an ecosystem.

48. Your Laziness Angers Me

Lazy cliches. Lazy constructions. Cheap stereotypes. Tawdry narrative crutches. You don’t edit. You find excuses not to write. Fuck that. Fuck you! You have no excuses. You can always do better. Why be satisfied with easy? Why answer your own indolence with reward? Grit those teeth. Get mad. Fuck passive. Be active. Kick your own ass up and down the block like an empty soup can. Didn’t I tell you to finish your shit? FINISH YOUR SHIT.

49. No, Really, You Have No Excuses

Other people have done what you’re claiming you can’t do. People who have it worse. Or who have more kids. Or another job. You want to ask me how you do it: you just do. You extract words like teeth. You spill them on the table like dice from a Yahtzee cup. You carve a path through the words, through the story, through the industry with a machete made from your own desire and doubt, carved from your femur and scented with your blood. You write even a little bit a day, you’ll get there. You can’t manage that, then don’t even talk to me. Whaddya want me to do? Shove my hand up your ass, work you like a puppet? You wanna write, write. Otherwise: shoo.

50. The Only Way Out Is Through, Motherfuckers

Write or die. Run or fall. Swim or drown. The best thing you can do for all the problems and all the questions is to write your way through it. And when you’re not writing your way through it, read other books, find out how they did it. Then go back to the page and write some more. I know, I know: I said this already. But it bears repeating — hell, it bears you tattooing backwards on your forehead so you can read it in the mirror: SHUT UP AND WRITE. That is the prime motherfucking directive. Do you accept the mission? Then embark. Explore. Attempt. Create.

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Tired Tropes?

Here’s today’s question:

In storytelling, you get certain tropes — earmarks of genre, of format, of style, of author — that either happen naturally or are evoked forcibly to be a part of the story.

(You can find a major warehouse of these tropes at TVtropes.org.)

So, let me ask you:

What tropes are you tired of seeing?

What tropes in storytelling are too toxic? Too predictable? Or too damn boring?

Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Roll Of The Dice

Last week’s challenge: “Bad Dads.”

Once again, get out your d20s and d10s (or just click on over to the random number generator) because it’s time to randomly choose the aspects of your flash fiction. The instructions are as follows:

On the subgenre table below, pick two subgenres. Mash them sonsa-bitches up into one story. Then, roll once from the subsequent two lists (Must Feature and Must Also Feature). Then, write 1000 words or so of your flash fiction story. Post at your space. Link back here.

Due by next Friday, June 28th, noon EST.

Subgenre

Grimdark Fantasy
Post-Apocalyptic
Techno-Thriller
Paranormal Romance
Alternate History
Superhero
Comedy
Southern Gothic
Nanopunk
Haunted House
Dying Earth
Conspiracy Thriller
Sword & Sorcery
Noir
Grindhouse
Magical Realism
Picaresque
Erotica
Dieselpunk
Occult Detective

Must Feature

A dead enemy’s revenge
A hidden compartment
A bottle of rare liquid
A powerful weapon
A mythological bird
A locked door
A disturbing diary
An ancient book
A dying wish
A forbidden love

Must Also Feature

A mysterious stranger
A perilous journey
A key made of bone
A troublesome dog
A dual personality
A pool of blood
A secret room
A broken heart
A tremendous reward
A massive feast

Ten Questions About The Daedalus Incident, By Michael J. Martinez

Huzzah, yay, and hooray — Mike Martinez was one of the authors caught in the recent Night Shade to Skyhorse transition, and it’s nice to see his eagerly-awaited book start to reach those eagerly awaiting hands. Here’s Mike to talk about The Daedalus Incident:

Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?

Nobody of consequence, really. But since that won’t really bring the readers to the yard, I’ll give it a shot. I’m a husband, father, homebrewer and, most germane to this question, a professional writer for the past two decades. The first 15 years were spent in journalism, and the last five or so have been in the corporate world. The nice thing about the latter is that it finally gave me the time to see whether writing a novel was something I could actually do, or if the notion was pure hubris. The Daedalus Incident is the result.

Give Us The 140-Character Story Pitch:

Future Mars mining colony is invaded by another dimension in which the historic Age of Sail takes place in space. Evil looms. Adventure ensues.

Where Does This Story Come From?

Ten years ago, in the depths of the dot-com messiness, I was involuntarily between jobs. I would trek to the local Starbucks each day to have a cup of coffee, get online, look for work and stay out of my wife’s hair. The Starbucks was next to a Blockbuster video store, and one day I walked past to see a poster for Treasure Planet. I was immediately enraptured by the notion of ships sailing between stars and planets. I rented the movie – and was wholly disappointed. Then I thought: I can do this better. I can make a fully realized universe that can include the romance and action of the Age of Sail, combined with the zing-pow of space opera. It was downhill from there.

How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?

In a lot of ways, The Daedalus Incident is the distillation of pretty much everything I love about genre fiction and pop culture. There’s hard science-fiction and a great deal of swashbuckling adventure, with a little bit of magic in the form of alchemy. It’s cerebral and emotional at the same time. Also, I simply like stories that hearken back to a time when heroes weren’t horribly flawed criminals bent on vengeance, or lost souls haunted by death and demons. I wanted a story where everyday people could rise to the occasion when the chips are down, and do so out of a simple sense of right and wrong and duty. In the quest to create ever-more complex scenarios and wild settings, I think genre fiction can occasionally forget about those ordinary people. I wanted to bring that back. And having told other people’s real-life stories for 20 years, I figured I was somewhat qualified to tell this one. Again with the hubris.

What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing The Daedalus Incident?

A lot of my writing was informed by my journalism work. Throughout my career, I’ve spent a long time trying to understand people and their motivations, and seeing how folks react to problems and crises. That’s great for journalism, but frankly, doesn’t work as well for fiction. Getting the right amount of action and derring-do into the book was most certainly a hurdle. Real people sit down and hash it out, whereas heroes – ordinary or not – have the gumption to get up and do something. It was definitely a mindset adjustment. “More mayhem” became a mantra. I may work that into a coat of arms some day.

What Did You Learn Writing The Daedalus Incident?

The biggest thing for me was getting over the wall of self-doubt. Journalism is one thing, but a novel is a completely different beast. I don’t get all precious about writing as some sort of spiritual journey of artistic discovery, but I take a lot of pride in my work. In fact, I hate not being good at something. So it was a very personal challenge to even attempt to write a novel, let alone go through the process of getting a literary agent and getting a publisher, all without knowing if I was good enough. In the end, I learned I could indeed do it. Honestly, everything else is gravy after that.

What Do You Love About The Daedalus Incident?

I love that it’s unapologetically old-school space opera-slash-fantasy adventure. Yes, there are themes in there you can talk about, from corporatism to colonialism to personal responsibility and duty. But I’d like to think that nobody’s being beaten over the head with it. Maybe you think about those things later, or they simply stay in your subconscious. But really, I love that I wrote the kind of big adventure I grew up reading as a kid. Plus, I crashed a freakin’ frigate into the planet Mars. Who’s done that?

What Would You Do Differently Next Time?

While I was writing it, I sometimes wondered what kind of work I would produce if I had any kind of training or coursework in fiction writing. I don’t know if the end result would be better or worse, but it would be different. I imagine I may have left a few things on the table, but I also would like to think my unconventional approach may have allowed for some other benefits. Either way, I figure if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I do wish I wrote a better first draft and didn’t need so many revisions, but for a rookie, I think I did all right. No regrets here.

Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:

I was pretty much going to punt on this question until I remembered this florid, over-the-top paragraph, where the protagonist, young Lt. Thomas Weatherby, steps up into the role he’s destined for. It’s also a little homage to all those great, rousing speeches in naval literature. It’s not quite indicative of the entire book, but I like it. Cue the rousing music:

James looked down at the deck, nodding but unwilling to meet Weatherby’s eyes. The other men looked on, seemingly wanting more. Weatherby took a deep breath, turning to address them. “I know you have fought hard, and fought well. But there is a fight left to us still,” he said. “What’s more, there’s likely little glory, and no rich prize.” Weatherby raised his voice as he continued. “But it is still a fight, nonetheless, perhaps the most important of our lives. There is a madman loose, one who would see an ancient terror awakened upon us all. And so it falls to us, to we simple men, to step forward as one, to stand tall against whatever darkness this sorcerer may conjure. So we must try, and if Daedalus must fall from the skies at last…we shall try to land her squarely upon whatever evil we find!”

What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

What, you think I’ve planned this? I’m tickled I got this far. Thankfully, my agent Sara Megibow (fantastic advocate and a good human besides) has been on this from day one, and as I’ve had hare-brained ideas, she’s been channeling them appropriately. Currently, I’m serializing a novella, The Gravity of the Affair, on my site at www.michaeljmartinez.net. It’s the same setting as Daedalus, and gives a nice little intro to that world while telling the story of a young man who would ultimately become Britain’s greatest naval hero. And I’m hopeful that my new publishing overlords at Skyhorse think I’m worth a few more books in the Daedalus setting. I’m nowhere near done playing in this particular sandbox.

–

Michael J. Martinez: Website / @mikemartinez72

The Daedalus Incident (digital now, print July): Amazon / Kobo / Complete List

Ten Questions About Crash, By Guy Haley

I am disappointed to learn that Guy Haley did not work on an actual death ray. That being said, I am happy to learn that his new book is out, and that he’d like to tell you about it. Drum roll please — Guy Haley!

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I’m Guy Haley, part-boggart, part man, all English. I grew up in a burrow under the Yorkshire moors, not far from where Heathcliff used to tramp; although I’d have been under his feet. He’d have never seen me coming. They never do. I used to steal the teeth of travellers and sell them for charms at the fairy market before I got a job writing. Silly humans. I smell of peat and damp earth.

Some of that is a lie, here’s some truth: I’m a journalist/magazine editor-turned-author. I worked on SFX magazine, Games Workshop’s White Dwarf and then Death Ray (it was a magazine, not an actual death ray). When Death Ray went bust, I took up writing full-time. I’ve written seven books for Angry Robot, Solaris, and the Black Library, plus a bunch of short stories, with more on the way. I also write articles, a blog http://guyhaley.wordpress.com review, copyedit books and other stuff. Y’know… Things. Articulate, no?

I come from the north of England and live in its south, not that will make much sense to those over the pond, but it’s important to me. I have a massive dog. I love SF and fantasy, always have, always will. I have far too many toy soldiers, a four-year-old son, four brothers, and a half-Swedish wife. Did I mention I have a massive dog? I have a massive dog. He is called Dr Magnus the Malamute and he is my friend. I wander the hills with him and pretend to be Aragorn. That’s about it.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH.

An interstellar colony effort goes spectacularly wrong. The few survivors are forced to battle against a hostile alien world and each other. (Whoop! 140 on the nose!)

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

My novel Champion of Mars was very well received by Solaris, so I asked if they’d like to see some more pitches. They said yes. I sent them four or five that I had pre-brewed in my brain; they chose what became Crash. That made me panic, as it was the least developed.

The inspiration’s a combination of lots of different things, but key among them are: the current rise and entrenchment of the new plutocracy of the super-rich, the (hopeful) inevitability of mankind’s spread into space, my musings on hierarchies in society, and my deep and abiding love of stories involving crashing and/or messed-up colony ships that create all kinds of problems for the poor souls who survive. Oh, and this quote from Kenneth Boulding, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist.”

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

I had an idea a while ago for a series of books that explored a whole bunch of diverse human colonies that had been separated for centuries, after disaster struck a large colony fleet some time in the very distant past. My daydreamy concept followed how the colonies had survived, how they had developed, how they got back in touch with each other, the tensions this contact engendered and the threat they find themselves facing in the stars. Crash – sort of – explores how this universe (currently lodged only in my noggin) came about. Although I must say it’s very much become a hard SF standalone. You don’t have to live in my head to enjoy it, and that would be impossible anyway. Crash is its own thing totally, a book about power, and parenthood, and the persistence of the species. It would be nice, however, to spool up the stardrives on my space opera, so go and buy Crash.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING CRASH?

For my early books, I was asked to submit very detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. I did so grudgingly. Planning in detail is not my natural bent, I much prefer to wing it. Although, thinking about it, this may not be the truth any more. It’s probably a yearning for my carefree youth when I was very workshy, and a hope writing was more Bohemian than it actually is. Everything professional I’ve been involved in has needed planning, and I tend to be quite meticulous about it. I never was as a teen, and it still takes me ages to sit down to start planning, but planning is a big part of me now. So, I’m lying to myself. But “Free!” I thought, “Free to spread my creative wings.”

Or, you know, just be lazy. Anyhoo, turns out Guy Haley writing a not-planned novel takes twice as long, twice as much panic and twice as much beer as Guy Haley writing a planned novel. This book was hard; the hardest I’ve done yet, I think. Mostly down to the not-planning thing.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING CRASH?

Plan my next novel.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT CRASH?

I liked the organic nature of it, the way that the ideas grew and twined around each other and layered up like some melancholy Russian symphony. I liked that the characters didn’t do what I wanted to and did their own thing all the time. One got pregnant, another turned out to be far nicer than I thought he would. Maybe they would have been less free had I nailed their feet to iron wheels and sent them spinning along the tram-lines of a plan, maybe not. What I like most about writing full stop (or period, you Amerikaners, you) is that it’s not entirely dissimilar to reading. You get to discover a story, much as you do when you read someone else’s book. At its very best, writing is like channelling a real world only you can see, and you become more of a chronicler than a creator. Or does that sound crazy? Do I sound crazy? I sound crazy, don’t I?

Most of all, I love that it has a really big spaceship falling out of the sky. I love spaceship crashes, and I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time lavishing detail on the fiery plummet of the ESS Adam Mickiewicz, to pleasing effect. Plus all the alien ecology stuff. That was loads of fun!

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

Man, this is the toughest question. Which is your favourite child? Do you have a preferred eyeball? Hard – really, really hard. It’s like something an evil drug baron or a Nazi would ask you before cruelly deleting said paragraph.

But, let’s go for the opening paragraph (okay, technically two, but the first is one sentence):

At first Dariusz Szczecinski was dead, then he was not.

Machines hurried him to life more quickly than they should. Preservative fluids were sucked from his circulatory system with undue haste, warmed blood pumped into its place. Mechanisms whose own time was shortly to come ran slapdash checks; the provenance of emergency. High percentiles were lowered, risks were taken that would not ordinarily have been taken. For long seconds the essence of Dariusz hung upon the fences that separate the living from the dead.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

Also out this month I have my second novel for The Black Library, Skarsnik, about the the eponymous Goblin King, the Warhammer world’s most devious greenskin. I love goblins. Really, I do. I’ve been playing Warhammer since I was ten, and this was a cool project for me.

The Black Library has way long lead-in times, so I’ve written another novel for BL – The Death of Integrity – since I finished Skarsnik, and am currently writing my fourth, which I can literally tell you nothing about or they’ll cut my favourite paragraphs off. Besides that, I’m mucking around with short stories and waiting on the go-ahead for a couple more original novels.

Guy Haley: Blog / @GuyHaley

Crash: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

On The Subject Of Diversifying Your Bookshelves

Out of all the points I made during last week’s No-No-Misogyny-Fest (it’s like Lilith Fair!), I think the one that maybe generated the most conversation — pointed at me, anyway — was the notion that you might want to read more books by women.

A lot of the response was interesting. Some reasonable, some maybe not so much. Some folks felt they were gender-blind and didn’t want to read books with the gender of the author in mind. Some resented the idea that I was oppressing their bookshelves, as if I were personally coming to their houses and forcing some kind of literary affirmative action upon them (NEEDS MORE JANE AUSTEN). Some folks felt I was suggesting you should grab books by women regardless of quality or content or genre — just, y’know, run to Barnes & Noble and say, “I NEED CHICK BOOKS, STAT” and start grabbing books by them pesky lady-authors off the shelves and into your motorized book cart.

(What, you don’t take a motorized book cart with you to the store? Amateur.)

I’d like to unpack this a little, which means you may have to sit through a little redundancy. (It only stings for a moment.) It’s like this:

First, I’m talking more to writers than readers. Not to say this isn’t a valuable thought exercise for readers, too — but my feeling is that writers should be well-read.

Second, this isn’t about making your bookshelves a perfect Pie Chart reflecting the population diversity found in this country or any other. Further, you don’t need to make your shelves the United Fucking Nations, either. This isn’t about rigorous, enforced heterogenization.

Third, and this bears repeating: nobody is actually making you do this. Cool your nipples, twitchypants. Nobody’s burning your White Dude books. I have lots of White Dude books and, you know, hey, I like them just fine. You want a bookshelf full of nothing but Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series in various formats and incarnations, more power to you.

Fourth, nobody’s saying you shouldn’t care about story or genre or content or the things you usually care about. This is about the very safe assumption that the type of books you like to read are probably written by both men and women.

Fifth, reading a book by a woman won’t turn your sperm into a slushy, sterile granita.

Sixth, and finally, this isn’t about feeling shame over your bookshelves.

I’ll retell the story here because, hey, whatever, IT’S MY BLOG I’LL DO WHAT I WANT TO, but it’s like this: about three or so years ago, before I actually had my own novel on the shelves, someone asked me who my favorite women authors were. And I was like, “Robin Hobb, Poppy Z. Brite,” and then I probably mumbled a third name because I couldn’t really think of that many. And when I went back to look at my shelves, it was pretty obvious why. My favorite authors were mostly dudes. And my not-favorite authors were mostly dudes, too.

And I thought, gee, that’s kinda sad. And maybe a little troubling. I always thought of myself as gender-blind, which seemed like such a good thing. Except, gender-blindness goes both ways — it means I might be blind to the other gender. I had an unconscious bias toward reading White Dude books. Which is maybe not the worst thing in the world…

…but it made me a little uncomfortable.

So, I set out on a purposeful mission to read more women authors.

Not some specific percentage — just, y’know, READ MORE OF THEM.

And it wasn’t just some crazy hair-on-fire grab-all-the-books-by-women — it was trying to find out what people liked or what I might like in the genres I preferred to read. And again, it led me to a wealth of wonderful writers — Lauren Beukes, Erin Morgenstern, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Kim Curran, N.K. Jemisin, Delilah Dawson, Cherie Priest, Gail Simone, etc.etc. — I’m forgetting some and had a long day at the zoo where I rode emus and stole lemurs and so you’ll forgive me if my brain is tired.

Point is, I’m much happier having discovered a wealth of great writers that I had possibly been unconsciously relegating to my White Dude blind spot. Maybe you won’t be, I dunno. But this isn’t about some neat little ratio, some nicely diverse percentage so that your bookshelves look good to your liberal hipster friends. It’s just about reading more widely, more completely. There is genuine value in reading beyond your comfort zone and outside your echo chamber — we sometimes should make an effort to read books by people with different experiences than us. That’s true whether it’s genre or gender or sexual orientation or race or whatever. (Non-fiction is particularly good for this.) No harm in trying, right?

Then again, maybe you already do this. And if so: high-five, what’s the problem?

All of this is, of course, IMHO, YMMV, you do what you like. I’m not your Dad.

The end.

*rides off on an emu with a lemur as a hat*

(See also: today’s guest post by Karina Cooper which covers similar ground.)

The Silent Majority: Fear of Sexism is a Misogynist’s Best Friend

Like I said last week, I think part of the role of men in the discussions against sexism and misogyny is to be a signal booster — to help get the word of others out. Karina Cooper — author of the Dark Mission and St. Croix Chronicles books — said she wanted to continue the conversation about women in writing and publishing and the SFF genre, so here she is to talk more about what it means to stay silent in fights like this one:

Can I assume y’all know the history of the USA?  Can I go into this comfortable with the understanding that you’re familiar with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s? Is that, I don’t know, a safe thing to assume?

I have to tell you, I’m just not sure. But because I’m not your mom and I’m not whatever teacher you probably ignored in school, I’ll spare you the summary. You don’t want to hear it from me, anyway. If you’re legitimately clueless, go do some reading. Yes, it’s Wikipedia—I’m not willing to strain anyone’s higher thought processes just yet.

Fast forward forty-five years. We’re still struggling with racial prejudice, but it is widely understood that a man who says, “I strongly believe darker-skinned people will lower the quality of this product” is tantamount to labeling himself the white supremacist fuckless wonder that he is. We have seen evidence of this just recently, yes?

So, that in mind: Would one of these rabid, woman-hating trollskins explain to me how “girls are making sci-fi worse” is any different? I mean, aside from the obvious, which is that one involves people with different color skin than yours and the other is naturally more inclusive, since it involves people of all color… who just happen to have vaginas.

Maybe you, dear reader, missed the memo. If you’ve been absent from the internet for the past forever, here’s a quick refresher: some people think women shouldn’t be writing “real” books, playing or designing “real games,” or speaking about anything at all. Some people, a great many outspoken people, are convinced sexism doesn’t exist.

Guess what? We have always been fighting this fight.

No Girls Allowed

For decades, women and people of color have been barred from the SF/F community due to, I don’t know, some perceived fear of cooties—or a petrifying fear of change. The people refusing them entry—primarily white men—routinely forced authors who weren’t white men to hide behind pseudonyms, behind false biographies, and refused to publish stories that attempted to feature anyone other than white men as heroes.

In the year 2013, this has not changed all that much. It’s not “PC” to bar people of color anymore, but they certainly continue to have a litany of problems going on—usually couched in more subversive terms involving “quality” and “experience.”

The issues women are having, however, seems to come straight out of the lexicon the civil rights movement deemed incorrect for public use—it’s like watching a particularly surreal episode of Mad Men, only everyone’s in jeans and on the internet. For example, in order to get any “credit” (from men, the dominating force in the literary world), women are forced to hide behind initials, or crowbarred into the romance or chicklit genres “where they belong.” They are groped by famous male colleagues, and they are ignored or jeered at on panels.

“But wait, there are all kinds of women published!” you might point out, and you’d be right. There are all kinds of women published. There are all kinds of women in the gaming field. Those who work hard are extremely well-respected, too, for—oh, wait. No, they aren’t. Really, anywhere.

You know what we ladies who are authors and gamers get? Unending amounts of shit from dickstroking mouthbreathers, an avalanche of vile abuse spewed from internet communities filled with spermslugs convinced that they are God’s gift to all who earn their attention. That they, in their tiny little worlds with their tragic lack of a loving orifice that doesn’t come shrink-wrapped in plastic, are the rightful inheritors of multi-million dollar industries—the keyholders to future generations’ creativity and imagination.

And you know what? They are right.

Despite the fact that female gamers make up 47% of the gaming community, despite the fact that women are award-winning authors, we are threatened with rape and violence if we dare to speak up about how we’re treated, by troglodytes so afraid of change that they’ll shout as loud as they possibly can just to get the rest of the world to shut up. They are so awful, so offensive, that the rest of the world looks away with a knowing, “Don’t feed the trolls.” They see the reprehensible behaviors of these soggy foreskins, say with feeling, “Aren’t you glad that’s not me?” and go about their merry days as if that takes care of that—and that, babies, is why it’s working.

Because the only way to avoid feeding the trolls is to be silent—and these trolls are growing up to run your world.

Proud and Not So Loud

If you’d be so kind, take a look at this reasonable and extremely logical post by Chris F. Holm—a fine author in his own right—and you’ll see he promotes two sound concepts. The second is the most important: be kind to one another, punctuated by a Vonnegut quote that has me calling everyone “babies” when I’m feeling philosophical. But a glance down to the comments mirrors what’s being said in Der Wendighosten’s G+ page: it’s so much better to read a book because of genre, quality, and style than it is to read a book because of gender, and so choosing a book because of gender is just another form of sexism.

Naturally, no one reading a book for quality is a bigot—you certainly can’t be blamed for any prejudice when you’re not paying any attention to the gender, color, or lifestyle of the author. And certainly, being told what and what not to read, for any reason, is anathema to cultivators of book libraries around the world.

The dialogue then becomes something like this: “Of course sexism is bad, that’s why I’m not interested in reading or acquiring books by women just because they’re women—I don’t want to be sexist!” And so the person justifying this pats themselves on the back for being an evolved being, shares some companionable nods with others like them, and lives a happy life knowing they aren’t misogynistic or prejudiced or bigoted. Which is a lovely ideal, but have you finished reading about the civil rights movement yet?

As I recall from my education in the subject, I don’t believe any of the civil rights supporters were saying things like, “Well, naturally, racial prejudice is bad, that’s why I’m not interested in showing people of color any favoritism by shopping at black-owned stores just because they’re black-owned.” In fact, I’ll wager this sort of thing was often said by white people unwilling to make the effort—or to accept the nature of equality at all.

Can you imagine how the civil rights movement would have stalled without open and deliberate support by everyone who claimed to be so open-minded?

I admire Chris a great deal, and hope to one day live the philosophy he shares, but I obviously disagree with him on various executions—primarily, that grace and dignity will see us through the unending amounts of abuse we receive. As far as I’m concerned, centuries of grace and dignity has landed women in this mess. Like my feminist forbears, it’s time to burn a few “foundation garments:” starting with the concept that the silence of good people is any support at all.

More Than a Dream

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech was not one of waiting—though it was of dignity (okay, point for Chris). Where other revolutionaries and civil rights leaders pushed for violence, King pushed for the power and passion of speech—of “soul” force to meet overwhelming force. And he called on everyone to do it. He spoke of freedoms of color, of class, of religion.

King and the movement supporters pushed for active inclusion—standing side by side with the very same people who wanted them pushed down. He did not stop at penning dignified notes, he did not wait for the power of words to make it through the communities threatening him and those like him with violence. He gathered like-minded folks, that included the powerful voices of white supporters—political and otherwise—to help make it happen, to add their voices to his. To  bloody well say something.

Active inclusion, babies. It’s about one person—maybe you?—making the choice to pick up a book by a woman author and giving it a chance, and then treating that book like you would any other book. If you like it, pass it on with glowing recommendations—not because of how the author looks in a bathing suit, or what her genitals might be, but because it’s a good book. If you don’t like it, reasoning why, and have that discussion with your fellow readers.

It means that though you might make it a point to pick up a book because it’s written by a woman, a person of color, a man, an LGBTQ author, you’re passing it on and talking about it because it’s good. Because the author moved you. Because regardless of why you originally grabbed it, the book made you feel.

It’s about adding your voice to support women in gaming, women in writing, women anywhere—just like we would for anyone else. Because if you think this isn’t about you—if you think that I’m only talking to the sad little boys lodged in their circle jerking internet communities, convinced that “cocksucker” is an insult while desperately hoping to meet a real life woman they don’t have to threaten to rape to get some—you are sadly mistaken.

There are literally thousands of men ready and waiting to be unleashed on women like me. Men and boys who make a game of rape threats and violence, who will be spooged out of whatever black hole they dribble from, screaming that I am a threat—that I don’t deserve to live, that I should be raped into silence, that I’m just a bitch and should shut up. These are the same assholes raising boys who think it’s okay to call an eight year old girl a “cunt.”

But I know—I know—that there are thousands more of men and women who are remaining silent, because they know they aren’t among the trolls, that they’re not sexist, that they don’t want to be sexist. And because they know that, they’re content to simply be.

“Simply being” is not enough.

The Loudest Voices Shape the World

We like to look back at history and say things like, “Gandhi had it right.” We like to suggest that the best way to evoke change is to live quietly, live by example. To quote an erroneous and useless bit of drivel: “be the change you want to see in the world.” They fling this around like it’s gold and fail to remember that part of being that change is taking the opportunity to make a difference, not sit back and “not engage.” We like to think that passive protests, protests without deeds or words, are a thing of peaceful power.

We are wrong. Even Gandhi believed in refusing to bow one’s head—even at the cost of one’s life. And he wasn’t alone; or did you forget the thousands who supported him?

As long as good people are willing to remain silent—to look the other way, shrug and laugh and say, “It’s just trolls,” then people like me are forced to write things like this. As long as people are content to passively protest sexism just by not engaging in it, people like me will continue to feel unsafe at cons,  on the street, at parties and in bars, in the movie theater, and—thanks to the pervasive abuse, in our own homes. (Side note: the first person to suggest that there’s no reason to be “that hysterical” gets a goddamn boot in the back of a Volkswagen.)

In the industry I work in, I found that when authors—primarily men, but not always—thought I was a reader, they were all too happy to talk with me about various sci-fi and fantasy subjects, geek hobbies, and the like. As soon as the dreaded, “What do you do?” question cropped up, I’d answer, “Oh, I write romance!” That shut the conversation down. At the nicest, I received a very sweet(ly condescending), “That’s great, honey, good luck with that.” At the worst, a laugh and, “Oh, Christ.”

So I learned how to talk about what I write in ways that don’t use the word “romance”. I spoke of action and adventure, crazy conspiracies, love and loss, blood and murder. At least three different times, men have asked me with great interest where they could acquire my books. When they realized Avon was the publisher, I was given eerily similar versions of: “Oh, I thought it was a real book.”

I have been forced to endure painfully personal questions about my sex life, my fantasies, any regrets that I’m married to a single man and can’t really experience all that’s out there to write about it—“write what you know,” to this day, remains one of my most violent rage triggers.

You know what I don’t hear? Anyone asking George R. R. Martin if the rape sequences in Game of Thrones is based on personal experience. I don’t hear anyone credible asking John Scalzi if the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award is a real award, anyway.  I don’t hear anyone critiquing Jim C. Hines for his outfit, Neil Gaiman for his lack of makeup of hair products. No one is asking Chuck if the sex in Blackbird is a fantasy of his—or if his spouse is laying him regularly.

You know what I’m asked? If I write “aggressive men” in my books, and if that’s because I have a secret fantasy of being raped. I have been asked if I write myself into all my heroines, because I just want a man to save me—or dominate me. I’m asked if my husband supports me by helping me “block out my sex scenes”. I’m asked if he’s “okay” with me being a writer—as if it’s a personal hobby or darling quirk. One fellow laughed when he heard how crazy my deadlines can be, expressing concern that I’m not “putting out” enough for my husband to make his tolerance of my writing worth it.

You know what I’m not asked? If men can put their hands on me—which they then proceed to do. Why? Because the pervasive mentality is that men write and women “engage in a hobby.” That we’re there to “spruce up the place,” to be “token girls,” to give an appearance of inclusion without having to actually commit. I am a piece of decorative furniture, there to give the audience—comprised of men and women, because money is money, no matter the wallet it comes from—something nice to look at. “Look, ladies, here’s one of you sitting among us real authors! Guys, don’t worry about her, we won’t ask her anything too tough.”

That’s the atmosphere that needs to change. Just as Chuck is not your toy—not your “token beard” to be admired, not your manmeat waiting with bated breath to be told how nice he looks in a swim suit—neither am I. Neither are any of the women writing and reading and gaming in this industry.

We Need Your Help

Change does not happen in a vacuum. For every person refusing to go out of your way to give a book written by a woman a chance, that’s a voice held in check, silent against the hatred and oppression barring our way.

We don’t need gender-blindness, we need awareness. We need help. Not talking about it, not acknowledging the problem, only feeds the same trolls hammering us down. As long as good men and women remain silent, convinced they’re not part of the problem, we don’t have the support we need to stand up to the misogynists shouting us down.

One day, we all will be on a level playing field, and then we can afford to be blind. One day,  women will be recognized for the qualities of their work and not the qualities of their bodies, one day people of color will be referenced first by their accomplishments and not by their heritage, one day LGBTQ people will be lauded for their achievements and not what they do in the bedroom—but this is not that day.

My plea: Give books written by women and games by and featuring women a chance. Give them the same chance you’d give a new genre, a new type of story, a game in general. Maybe you’re picking it up because it’s in your favorite genre and it’s written by a woman, maybe you’re reading it because some old guy said it was trash and because it’s written by a woman. Whatever the reason, let the motive for passing it on be this: it’s a damn good book or game, and you’d like to see more women who create like this get the same opportunities men already have to share it.

This isn’t about wars on the internet. It’s about acceptance—going a little further to give people struggling against obvious and sometimes violent oppression a helping hand. Where will it start, if not with you?