Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 214

Blackbirds Flying To Other Countries

Some quick news-flavored news-bits (dip them in pot de creme!):

Blackbirds has deals to be published in brand new territories!

Panini France will publish a French edition.

Muza will publish a Polish edition.

Lubbe will publish a German edition (which comes out this month).

Other Miriam Black news is percolating, too, but those are for another day!

Tomorrow I go to America’s Hot, Moist Land-Wang (Florida) to do research for Miriam Black, Book #3 (The Cormorant), and to remind you all, I’ll be in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow at 11:30AM, Stranahan House, doing a ninja author hangout and pantsless dance-off*.

* — may include no actual dance-off and also, actual pants.

Details of that ninja author hangout right here.

(Thanks to DMLA — in particular, thanks to agents Stacia Decker and Cameron McClure.)

“Writing Is The Easy Part,” By Robert Brockway

Robert Brockway writes regularly for Cracked, penning hilarious lists and indictments of culture (pop and otherwise), which means you’re probably already familiar with his work even if you didn’t know it. Brockaway penned a guest post about what it took to drop-kick his new DIY novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, through time and space and into your face.

The first thing you should know is that I am an author with a new book out, and you should not trust me. Everything an author with a new book says to you should be regarded with the same wary eye you might cast on an unsolicited email extolling the virtues of “PENIS DEMOLISH YOUR FOE!1!!.” Yes, the content may indeed be helpful to you — it may well contain information on how to destroy other human beings with an unyielding and merciless dong — but it also contains a sinister agenda. That link to wangholocaust.cz will certainly infect you with malware in the interest of making a cheap buck, just like every word you read from an author exists to infect you with the desire to check out their awesome new novel. It’s insidious, underhanded, impure, and if you want to write for a living, it’s going to be you.

You’re going to develop Marketing Tourette’s. Apropos of nothing, you’ll find yourself spewing:

“Hey, have I told you about my new novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity? It’s about a dystopian skyscraper-city where the chief form of entertainment is a custom hallucinogen that simulates time travel and-“

Oof. Shut up.

In the abstract, writing is all about character, structure, metaphor and meaning. In reality, that’s the easy part. It’s easy because you want to do it: You want to tell your story, you want your characters to be compelling, and you want your story to impart both entertainment and meaning. And so the work, no matter how technically difficult and exhausting, comes easy. What does not come easy is finishing that book and finding out that you have to whore yourself out every single day for a paltry dozen sales.

“-the protagonist, Red, is a mixer: He assembles high-end custom drug cocktails for discerning customers, and tests new corporate prototypes on the side. After beta testing a mysterious new strain, he finds himself slipping away to-“

Stop!

If I sound bitter, I promise that’s not the case. It’s worth it, of course. If you’re lucky and persistent, you may get to write for a living, and reporting to Imagination Land without pants every morning sure beats dragging yourself into a sickly fluorescent office while being strangled by a necktie. But I’m fairly new to the publishing game, and the biggest jolt for me wasn’t how hard it was to write a book – I was mentally prepared for that – it was the realization that all those gross marketing and promotion duties fell squarely on the shoulders of the author.

“-with his disturbing and increasingly real hallucinations literally tearing him apart, Red must find the truth about this new drug, a truth that could topple the entire cit-“

GOD DAMN IT.

My first book was released via traditional publishing. They put forth a good initial marketing effort: Got me a few guest blogs, some tie-ins on a little sci-fi site, a handful of guest spots on small town morning radio shows. And all of that lasted…about a week. I have not heard a word from them since. It’s not that my publisher was bad. I spoke with other authors and that seems to be an industry standard effort – maybe even a little above. It’s just the unspoken rule that, beyond a small initial effort, all promotion (and therefore the ultimate success or failure of your book), is up to the author. I didn’t even know I had to build my own book’s website until a week before launch. I thought somebody would do that for me.

I had no idea how to build a website.

I did not know that particular skillset was part of being a writer in the modern world. I did not know I’d be staying up late looking up book bloggers and emailing them at random, trying to get reviews, pull quotes, or cross promotions. I did not know I’d be soliciting guest posts and trading feedback and researching distributor pricing schemes. And that was with a publisher. For my latest book, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, a mad, relentless charge through a post-cyberpunk nightm-

Ahem.

For my latest book, I decided to explore self-publishing. If I was going to do it all myself anyway, I might as well have complete control, right? This time I did it right. I exploited every avenue. I released Rx as an inexpensive serial novel to build momentum, and incorporated reader feedback into the final product. I held a Kickstarter to provide pre-order awards. I scoured review sites; I networked; I made contacts. I could have written an entire other book in the time I’ve spent promoting this one, and I’ve only just this month released the final version.

I don’t say this to dissuade you, or to complain about how difficult it is being an author. I worked at a gas station; I worked breaking down rundown buildings with a hammer; I even worked in customer service. I know how rough a real job can be, and I’d take writing any day.

I only say this in case you’re like I was: My conception of the modern author was somebody holed up in a romantically derelict office, banging away at a typewriter (never used a typewriter in my life, but it’s so much more authentic looking in my imagination) until they collapsed from exhaustion. And then, when it was done, they trudged to the open window and let their beautiful newborn book flutter away into publishing ether. When in reality, being a modern author is more like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. When it’s all done, you pick your beloved novel up in your arms, wade out into the angry, uncaring crowd, and kick down everything in your way until you reach the relative calm and safety of success.

Or else you get distracted, and the apathy of the oversaturated market tears that novel out of your grasp. In which case you walk back to the beginning, spend a few years pouring your heart into another book, lace up your kickin’ boots, and try to hold on a little tighter this time.

The Writer As Stowaway

I said this on Twitter but I want to say it here, too:

So, you’re sitting there as a writer and you’re getting sucker-punched by feelings of fear and doubt. You’ll find yourself face to face with uncertainty over whether or not you deserve success, and the certainty that one day you’ll be found out as an imposter and dragged out into the streets. Where hobos will pee on you.

WHERE HOBOS WILL PEE ON YOU.

I’ve got two books out soon – GODS & MONSTERS UNCLEAN SPIRITS and THE BLUE BLAZES — and this week folks are starting to get ARCs and e-ARCS of the latter of those books and all the while I’ve got that flurry of fear-bubbles in my tummy: egads they won’t like it they’ll despise it I’m going to receive hate mail people might punch me Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly will probably give me whatever the opposite of a starred review is like maybe they’ll rub a cat’s butthole on my face in public OH GODS THAT’S HOW BAD THIS BOOK IS.

I like to hope it’s a silly fear. The book is getting published. Early readers liked it. My agent let it out the door. The publisher let it in the door. How bad can it be?

But that doesn’t matter. That’s rational. Fear and doubt aren’t rational.

So, to all writers of all stripes –

We all feel this.

We all feel like stowaways on the ISS Penmonkey, sometimes.

We all feel like we don’t belong. That one day our clever ruse will be up.

It seems to lessen over time. It’s better now for me than it was ten years ago. But it’s still there. That haunting specter. That nagging goblin. That ghostly whiff of hobo urine.

Whenever you feel that sense of urgent doubt nibbling at your bowels like a gut-load of rats, know you’re not alone. Somewhere out there some other writer is feeling it. A writer yet unpublished. A mid-lister, a self-published, a Stephen King, the ghost of Marcel Proust.

We are all bound to one another by the ropes of our uncertainty.

Sharing that frequency of heebie-jeebies and jittery jangly nerves.

The best we can do is help one another dispel those fears.

Or, at times, just merely to commiserate.

“Indie First?” What Is Best In Publishing?

A brief recent history:

Salon posted an article that said, “Hey, self-publishing is masturbation.”

I responded.

Salon posted a different article by Hugh Howey that said, “Nonsense to that other thing, self-publishing is full of success stories and it’s the better option going forward.”

I responded to that, too.

Then, another thing happened: I was getting a bucketload of views from Kindle Boards (kboards?), and so I popped over there to find out what was going on and saw that some people seemed to think I was bashing Howey (I wasn’t) or bashing self-publishing (I wasn’t), and I thought, okay, I’ll say hello, I’ll try to be forthright and clarify my position which is to say, “There’s no one path up the mountain, no one best way for everybody.”

A fairly uncontroversial opinion. Very moderate. So soft it might as well be marshmallow.

Some folks over there were very nice and well-reasoned and well-intentioned. Howey himself dropped in (as he did here at the blog) and made some polite comments of disagreement. The rest presented, to my mind, a hostile vibe that tells me I probably shouldn’t go to the Kindle Boards anymore because, really, what’s the value? That’s not the hill I want to defend.

What I want to do, however, is to talk a little more about this “indie first” path — the path that Howey and others feel is the best way forward for new authors. This was also echoed a number of times at the Writer’s Digest East Conference, where I spoke this past weekend. Lots of folks were suddenly presenting self-publishing less as a standalone option and more as the new gate (kept or unkept) leading to traditional publishing. Self-publish first, they say, and get attention and audience. You can even query the published story while it sells on the digital marketplace.

It’s an interesting shift. And not wrong or impossible.

But, is it “the best?”

Now, I’m going to quote Howey from the Kindle Boards, and in that I want to make clear that before any self-publishing acolytes get their genitals in a twirl over any of this, I am in no way bashing Howey. The guy should be celebrated. He did it his way. He tried new shit and embraced the options and powers available to the modern writer and it paid off in heaps and mounds, leaps and bounds. No one in their right mind should tell him he did anything wrong.

Hell, I did just as he did (though, erm, to far less success). My self-published writing advice? Coming to Writer’s Digest. Atlanta Burns? Coming to Skyscape Publishing.

The question for me is, does that make this approach automagically the best?

He certainly believes so. Which is not unreasonable given his success.

From kboards, Howey says:

It’s amazing that I’m being painted as an all-or-nothing Konrath disciple. Just because self-publishing is the best way to get started doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Signing away lifetime rights and control over works that could be available forever is always an option. Just an inferior one.

What I hope to see is that the changes hybrids are forcing on publishing houses will trickle down to the writers who despise us. They won’t even know it’s happening. Non-compete clauses will simply disappear. Finite terms of license will become the norm. Print and digital rights will be negotiated separately. And I won’t care one bit who causes this, only that it happens.

Some of this is pretty admirable stuff. Improving contract conditions for writers is a noble goal and — fuck yeah, let’s see that happen. Though, it should also be clear that some of this is already happening and a good agent will help ensure non-exploitative clauses. (I don’t think any agent worth the salt would allow the author to give over rights forever.) I’m also not sure what he means by “the writers who despise us” — I may be misreading but that seems to lend itself further to the Us Versus Them tribal problem in publishing. Regardless, what I want to talk about today are those two particular words above (italics his, not mine): best and inferior.

I have trouble with absolutes. They’re rarely true outside of, say, math and science. Calling something the best smacks of One True Wayism and does a good job at making authors feel stupid for choosing a path other than the superior one. It’s doubly troubling in the realm of publishing, where so many options exist right now. Which is awesome. Authors have a variety of ways to get their work “out there” — and I don’t just mean trad-pub versus self-pub. I mean, Kickstarter to query letters to slush pile to Amazon KDP to a recommendation from another author to… well, hell, my path began in freelancing pen-and-paper games and took a weird alleyway into screenwriting. Here I am now with over a dozen novels coming out.

My way was pretty rad. Totally worked for me.

Miiiight not work for you. For a whole lotta reasons.

“Worked for me” is not equivalent to “best way for all.”

So: just on the theoretical level, best and inferior sit unsettled in my tummy.

But I promised someone on Twitter that I’d write a blog post detailing specific situations where “indie first!” was not automagically going to be the best way forward — so, let’s detail it.

Here, then, are some reasons that going “indie first” is not necessarily the “best.”

First, genre can be a problem. Not every genre is doing fireworks in the self-publishing realm. Literary work? Crime? Books published in those realms sometimes go kerplunk. Consider, too, that age range is a consideration. YA (Young Adult) is not a “genre,” but studies show that while adults will read YA e-books, teens remain reluctant (though this may be changing as e-readers become cheaper or are passed along as hand-me-downs). Further, YA tends to offer larger advances than the adult market — so, going straight to traditional can pay off.

Second, not every agent or publisher is interested in your self-published book. You think you can just self-publish and start querying. And you can. But some agents and some publishers don’t want to see it. To their minds, you’ve already gone and published. This is doubly true if the self-publishing effort isn’t in some way a successful one: great cover, many good reviews, lots of sales. It looks like whatever audience you had, you burned through them already. If your book doesn’t land in the digital marketplace with energy behind it, with momentum, querying after that will not likely be successful. To clarify, it means you can self-publish a very good book that traditional publishing might have picked up had it not been for a less-than-stellar showing on, say, the Kindle marketplace.

Third, you don’t have the audience. That first Salon article was by a guy who basically tip-toed into a dark and empty room, left his book on the mantlepiece like some kind of Author Elf, and then wandered back out wondering why he didn’t become a millionaire. If you don’t have the audience and don’t have time to spend earning that audience, traditional publishing may be a smarter first step. By dint of being tradtionally published you tend to get a little energy and momentum and audience via the so-called “prestige” of that path.

Fourth, some authors have found success doing the reverse, which is to say, they use traditional publishing to build audience and then leap into that audience with self-published efforts. Not to say this is the “best” way either — but it’s one option, and for many, it’s worked.

Fifth, you’re not going to be a capable or interested self-publisher. Not everybody wants to self-publish. Not everybody is going to be good at it. Despite claims to the contrary, the skill-sets necessary to do traditional and to do DIY are not mirror images (I’ve done both, trust me, it ain’t the same enchilada). Self-publishing is equivalent to running a small business. You’re an entrepreneur as much as an author. Some authors are going to take to this like a monkey to a banana. Some authors won’t be good at it or just find the idea of hiring editors and designers abhorrent. Best for someone? Most definitely. Best for everyone? Most certainly not.

Sixth, you’re going to be a great self-publisher. Self-publishing can be its own reward. “Indie first” presupposes that now self-publishing is a gate into traditional, but some folks just want to do it all themselves. For them, “indie first” also means “indie last, too.”

Seventh, because you’re uncomfortable with the financial risk. Writing and publishing is always a risk, but self-pub and trad-pub offer different flavors of risk. Self-pub is largely financial: you might spend $500 on cover, editing, design, marketing. And it is possible you will never see that money back. Despite what some have suggested, the traditional path is more a risk to time than it is directly to money — there’s little to no money actually put out, and so the risk of losing that money is nil. The result of the traditional process is either “I spend no money and get no money,” or, “I spend no money and I get somewhere north of $5000.” This is not to say going traditional first is best, but it may be ideal for the risk averse.

Eighth, because you want to be traditionally-published first and only. Preference matters. The parameters of happiness and satisfaction are not universal across all of authordom. When you say something is best, you’re speaking in terms so simplistic they’re meaningless. Best how? Best for money? Readership? Respect? Happiness? Everybody has a different metric and so, if your goal is to get the agent, go to a publisher and get on some bookshelves, well, then go that way. Go that way first. Don’t dick around with self-publishing. Chase the dream you want to chase, not the dream other people tell you is best. It’s your life, not theirs. Really, at the end of the day, “because it’s what I fucking want, goddamnit,” is the best metric of them all.

We’re possibly on the cusp of a golden age for writers. We have so many paths up the mountain. Let’s celebrate that. Let’s cheerlead not one option but all the options — and let’s embrace the fact that each path has strengths and weaknesses that’ll suit some authors and repel others. We don’t need to shut down or shout down options. We don’t need to suggest one way is superior. Or that others should feel inferior for their choices.

We can walk the middle road on this. We can take the nuanced, moderate approach and reject solipsism and tribalism and realize that what works for one is not a guarantee for all and that anybody who digs their way into the industry and follows their goals using the tools that suit them should be celebrated. Are you writing? Are you telling the stories you want to tell? Have you studied your options and found the path that suits you? Then high-five yourself, go eat some ice cream, and don’t let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

As always:

Art harder, motherfuckers.

Play nice in the comments or I’ll bring out the orbital laser. This is not a Cheerocracy.

Romance Me, Baby

I don’t read romance. Nor do I read erotica.

I should, though.

You read the work of, say, Delilah Dawson?

Or Karina Cooper?

Or Tiffany Reisz?

They’re damn fine writers.

And they’re writing damn fine books.

Books that are, by genre taxonomy, romance or erotica.

See, it’s starting to occur to me that in a lot of ways even books that are “one genre” should really have labels where the genre components are broken out like ingredients. Horror is a genre. So is mystery. And yet, so many books contain both horror and mystery in some percentage. Further, some books contain romance and erotica (love and sex, baby) in some percentage. These aren’t mere categorizations; these are storytelling components.

Anyway. So.

I’m writing the second book in my YA trilogy.

And it has a lot more romance than the first book.

It even has some sexytimes.

So, I want to read more romance. And erotica.

And you’re going to tell me what to read.

Make recommendations. Excellent writing. Good story. Romance and/or erotica.

Make with the books. *slaps own ass then feels embarrassed about it*

 

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Kick-Ass Opening Line

Last week’s challenge: “The Secret Door.”

I love a good opening line.

You lead with a great first line in a story, man, that’s just hooks you right away, doesn’t it? It’s like a key to a door. Opens up the world and your interest in it lickety-split.

So, that’s what I want from you.

I want you to write one opening line.

And then I’ll pick three.

And if those three people are in the United States, I’ll send them a copy of my book, The Blue Blazes, when it comes out. If you’re in the UK or anywhere else across the big wide world, you may have to settle for a digital copy, but I’ll make sure to get you one just the same.

Now, some rules:

A line means one sentence, not two, not three.

You get one entry, not two, not three.

Put your entry in the comments below.

I’ll pick three of my favorites by the close of Thursday the 11th (11:59PM) and then the following challenge next Friday will be for you folks to pick one of the three opening lines and write a story based on it. Which means you also might want to take a gander at these suggestions:

Shorter is better than longer.

Try too to keep in mind that you’re writing an opening line for other stories; the trick is to write something engaging while still writing a line that could apply to a great many styles and genres of story. Something that appeals and hooks in this case not just readers but other writers, too.

You’re writing lines for potential, is my point.

That’s how I’ll pick my favorites. Based on their potential to make interesting stories.

So! You’ve got a little less than one week.

One opening line. Let’s see what you’ve got.

 

Self-Publishing Is The Blah Blah And Floo-Dee-Doo And Poop Noise

Forgive me if I sound a little exasperated.

Hugh Howey wrote a thing at Salon and it’s a very interesting article and you should go read it. It is, in my probably-not-that-humble opinion, a fascinating mix of artistic wisdom and business fantasy where anecdotal evidence once more becomes artisanal data and we are told that because you can meet 100 very successful self-published authors that is now officially the way to go and oh, by the way, it’s totally the future of all publishing ever.

I distrust fortune-tellers, to be honest.

Mostly because it’s made-up horseshit.

Further, you can’t just canvass a handful of successful people and immediately declare that their success draws the map to the One Shining Path Up Authornuts Mountain. If I talk to 20 traditionally-published bestselling thriller authors, they’re going to say, “Write a thriller, get published by the Big Five.” If I talk to 100 self-published successes, they’re going to say, “Self-publish everything.” If I talk to 100 self-published failures, they’re going to say, “Fuck that noise, I lost my shirt.” If I talk to 100 dentists, they’re going to say, “You should be a dentist, dumb-ass, NOW LET ME EAT YOUR TEETH,” then he’ll eat my teeth because my dentist is actually some kind of teeth-eating monster, but whatever, that’s a story for another time.

Here’s the thing: Howey’s by all reports a very nice guy. And obviously smart as hell. And more than a little lucky. His article is well-written and buried in there is a strong cry to bolster craft and for you, the writer, to write first and foremost for the love of writing.

To which I say: fuck. yeah.

But, he also says stuff like:

But what is becoming more apparent with every passing day is that you have a better chance of paying a bill or two through self-publishing than you do through any other means of publication.

Italics his, not mine.

I self-publish. I do pretty well at it with a number of books (and for those asking, I will have another writing book out within the next three-four months, alongside a book of recipes and essays and Search Term Bingo called Revelations of the Bacon Angel).

I traditionally-publish. I do pretty well at that, too, I think, and actually over the last two years have well-eclipsed anything I made self-publishing.

Just the same, I don’t think one is better than the other.

So, here’s my response, which you already know because I’ve said it a hundred times before but fuck it, I’m nothing if not a fan of reiterating my own bleating and barfing:

Hey, self-publishing is cool!

Traditional publishing is cool, too!

Both have strengths. And also weaknesses.

Not everybody is fit to be their own publisher.

Not everyone is fit to deal with a traditional publisher.

Something-something Kickstarter! And Amazon! And literary agents! And small presses! And big presses! And this genre and that genre! And Wattpad and Book Country and Goodreads and Bookish and Twitter and iBooks and Smashwords and Simon & Schuster and Barnes & Noble and blargh and flargh and zippity-motherfucking-doo-dah!

The reason we don’t put all our eggs in one basket is because broken goddamn eggs!

No one way exists!

Try lots of shit!

Leverage one thing against another thing!

Don’t join cults!

Self-publishing isn’t The Future, it’s One Possible Future!

Educate and inspire instead of segregating and pointing fingers!

Beware easy answers!

This isn’t a war! Nobody has to win!

Write your ass off!

Art harder!

Exclamation points!

Words!

Nap!

*zzzz*

In Which I Am Infinitely Bioshocked (Beware: Spoiler Jelly Within)

This is not going to be a particularly cogent post.

It will, however, be a spoiler-filled one.

So, warning: when you bite into this donut, SPOILER JELLY GONNA COME OUT.

That’s also what I call my semen, by the way. Spoiler Jelly. When we conceived of our son, I yelled to my wife, “Spoiler Alert: YOU’RE PREGNANT!” Then I did the Konami Contra Code and flew away on a rocketship made of Pac-Man corpses.

I’m lying about all that.

Still, I think I’ve given enough space, but once more for good measure:

SPOILER.

WARNING.

Okay.

Let’s get into it.

So, you know by now there’s this game. Bioshock: Infinite. It’s a sequel (not really, which will soon be apparent) to what is certainly one of my favorite games of all time: Bioshock.

I finished it last night.

My head’s still twerkin’ it against the walls of my skull.

I mean, I think I know what happened. The game ends up being a lot more about quantum mechanics and alternate realities and — in a way, the very nature of experiencing story and narrative through the particular and peculiar lens of playing a game — than you’d think. On the surface it seems like a game that’s about racism and nationalism, about prejudice and religious zealotry. And it is. In part.

But all that’s just a ruse.

It’s a game about choices.

Those choices are expressed by the obvious decisions you make as a player inhabiting a character and also as the myriad realities (which are just a shift from the reality you begin with) opened and explored by Elizabeth, your “ward” through the story.

For a long time I played the game looking for what I hoped were literal connections to the narrative of Bioshock: you find all these little moments and aspects reminiscent of that first game, and to a degree, the second. Elizabeth has the vibe of a Little Sister, and of course has her own version of the Big Daddy in the form of the very fucking big Songbird until you soon start to realize that in a sense you’re her Big Daddy (B.D. = Booker DeWitt), a thought evoked even more during moments like when you help Elizabeth scamper up into a vent (in that case to kill Daisy). Further, it becomes all the more clear when you realize hey, you’re her real Daddy, not just her protector (but give it a minute, we’ll get into that).

You’ll find other things, too: the falling/fallen city above the world instead of below it. Tonics and automated security and vigors and Plasmids and on and on. Plus, the protagonist of Bioshock is a child seemingly created out of Andrew Ryan’s genetic structure and Elizabeth is seemingly a child created from the genetic structure of Comstock and both are “special” and are potentially secretly controlled at the outset. Further, in Bioshock 2 Sofia Lamb has a daughter, Eleanor Lamb, who helps the Big Daddy protagonist of that game (albeit at a distance), not unlike how Elizabeth (also called The Lamb) helps Booker DeWitt inside Infinite.

So, my head was spinning: is Elizabeth somehow connected to the Big Daddy program? Does she change her name and go on to be a part of Rapture? Is she Sofia? How does it connect?

Then you find out: it doesn’t connect. Not in a straight narrative line.

You get to the end and realize not only is Elizabeth your daughter but that all these narrative hooks you’re finding aren’t literal connections but rather thematic bridges — constants in the quantum game of “constants and variables” — that show you these games are connected not so much by plot chronology so much as by the abstraction of multiple realities. Realities expressed by choices. Realities where things change less than you’d think, even though the trappings are different. Where the constants outweigh the variables.

And that’s what’s fucked up. That’s what’s got my head all goofy like a kinked-up garden hose. Bioshock is about choice: the Ayn Randian individualist genius-fed ethic versus the collectivist altruism of, say, Sofia Lamb. The protagonist, Jack, has the choice of how to deal with the Little Sisters (which is admittedly a little blunt and obvious, one of those classic videogame moral choices of “Feed the orphan or kick him to death”), and those choices add up to a different ending depending on how you played.

Infinite has no alternate endings.

And it has no real choice.

And at first, that’s frustrating. (From a gameplay perspective, it still is.) Narratively, though, it adds up: all the choices Booker DeWitt thinks he has — and you think you have as a player — are hollow. It all goes the same way. You always become Comstock in one reality and, as Comstock, always go to your other weaker self in another reality to buy your own daughter back so she can become the Lamb. And though there exists the razzle-dazzle of infinite lighthouses and myriad realities, you see that it always goes down the same way, a way expressed by Sofia Lamb way back in Bioshock 2:

“For every choice, there is an echo. With each act, we change the world. One man chose a city, free of law and God. But others chose corruption. And so the city fell. If the world were reborn in your image, would it be paradise, or perdition?“

Choices and echoes of choices. Choice and change still goes the same way: cities fall. Machine men still walk. Men still augment with tonics and Plasmids and Vigors. Paradise becomes perdition. Opposing forces still clash. Men are still revealed to be selfish and blood-thirsty.

Power corrupts. Mankind is lost.

And so choice is revealed to be an illusion.

At the end of the game you even have a scene where Elizabeth stands over her own crib as the Lutece “brother” (not actually a brother but an alternate world version of the Lutece “sister”) and tells you, essentially, that no matter what you think you’re going to do, at the end of the day you have no choice: like in nearly any video game you’re on rails, you poor motherfucker, and you’re going to hand the baby over because otherwise the game won’t progress.

(There’s even an earlier conversation with the Luteces at the start and the end of the game about how you, the protagonist, “doesn’t row,” which one wonders if that’s because you don’t have the ability as a video game character to row. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.)

The very, very end of the game is a knife in the ribs, really — as opposed to the ending of the first Bioshock, which literally had me cheering and tearing up — where you realize that there may be one last choice to make and that choice is to kill Comstock at the time of his birth, and that’s when you realize that his “birth” was the literal “born again” moment of a baptism where the persona Booker DeWitt is washed away and Comstock emerges. (This is one point of the game that I don’t quite understand — all the quantum dickery afoot tends to be explained by machines and theory and sci-fi wizardry, but the seemingly literal rebirth of the baptismal moment must be entirely mystical. Unless it’s less literal than I had imagined?)

So, there at the end the one choice is to kill yourself.

Or, to die by the hands of Many Elizabeths, all of whom drown you together and then disappear one by one until only one remains (and there I’m left to wonder if even that one Elizabeth flickers out of existence). It is again evocative of the endings of the previous two games: potential death, several Little Sisters, the culmination of a journey, the aspect of water. (There’s a scene after the credits that maybe confuses this a little, or maybe instead just suggests it’s all going to replay again and again and even death cannot stop the snake eating his own tail.)

Tricky stuff.

Great game.

Amazing story. Strong acting. Killer writing.

Art direction was profound and perhaps the prettiest I’d ever seen in a game. Though sometimes a lack of interactivity (can’t crack glass with your Sky Hook, if you step in front of a lit projector it shows no shadow, etc) were a bit puzzling surprising how incredible the scenery was.

Gameplay felt incredibly well balanced, if a little old-school. Greater variety in how to approach enemies would’ve been welcome, I think.

The “bad guy motivations” of racism and nationalism and religious zealotry got a little muddy and obvious — it’s on par with making the Nazis the bad guy, though then that gets appropriately and wonderfully more complicated as the downtrodden rise up and become as bad as the oppressors. (Though that may be making a controversial statement, one that could be interpreted poorly though it’s certainly bound up with the themes of the game.)

(Also a tiny part of me wonders what the game would look like without the violence. Still first-person, but driven more by mystery and adventure, not “kill these dudes.”)

The lack of choice is wildly appropriate given the story, but just the same I felt like Infinite was missing that kind of player assertion, if only from a “personal satisfaction” standpoint. As a player inhabiting a character, you want to feel like what you do matters, and the first two games had alternate endings and this one, ennh, didn’t. Again, appropriate to the story they’re telling and thematically on-point, but that’s not always satisfying. If we are to assume that there are constants and variables I would’ve liked to have seen these variables still be a… well, a constant. (The first two games focus on mercy as the choice and I miss that here.)

So, that’s that.

Love to hear your thoughts if you got ‘em.

Ten Questions About Sharp, By Alex Hughes

Alex Hughes was here not too long ago answering a whole different set of questions about herself and her first book, Clean, and now she’s back in the darkened corridors of terribleminds, inc. to answer ten more questions about the second in the series: Clean.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

(Waves.) Hi, I’m Alex. I’m a hopeless nerd, science geek, history buff, major foodie, and I write things. Sometimes people read these things and like them.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

A telepath and ex-addict helps the police in future Atlanta solve crimes. This time, the victim is one of his old students.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

Sharp is the second book in the Mindspace Investigations series. I knew when I finished Clean (the first book) that I wasn’t done with the character yet. There were consequences from some of his choices that had to play out in the real world (vague only to avoid spoilers). Plus I wanted to see what would happen if he was under more pressure from different sources. And the Guild. We definitely needed to see more from the Telepath’s Guild and Enforcement–who by the way, is investigating Adam.

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

Where else are you going to find physics-based telepathy, addiction, an interesting war in the backstory, a grumpy workaholic love interest, and a Telepaths’ Guild in the same book? I mean, obviously. Plus there’s a murder investigation, and a new character, Michael, who’s recently been promoted to detective and dealing with two very strange coworkers. It’s a story only I could have written because–well, because I wrote it. Enough said.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING SHARP?

Learning to write on a deadline. I also attempted to write on an outline, which did not work out as well as I’d hoped. I ended up throwing out 15,000 words, many of which eventually became the novella Payoff (also available for purchase; it works much better as a shorter story). Then I wrote on another outline, threw that out, and started over with my original ideas and process. I also blocked out nine books total in broad terms so I’d know where the story was going, which took up time most people would have used writing. But, as my writers’ group knows, I find the sheer panic of an impending deadline to be very focusing. I turned in the book a little early, even.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING SHARP?

Writing books is hard. The second book in a series is even harder; you have to be as amazing as the first one, but also new. Oh, and that deadline thing? Changes everything. You can’t sit and think about a scene’s “heart” for three days in a row; you have to write the next damn scene. This is both a wonderful and terrible thing.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT SHARP?

I love the subplot with Jacob and how Cherabino asks for help. I love the interactions between Adam and Kara in the book. And I love what Michael does for the dynamic of the team. Plus the villain(s) in this one is (are) a lot more interesting. [Again, vagueness to avoid spoilers, sorry.] And the cool science moments are pretty cool.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Do a little less writing under the sheer panic of the impending deadline, stop trying to do the outline thing which isn’t me at all, and relax. This writing thing is hard, but it’s also super fun.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

This answer changes depending on the day you ask me. Today it’s a cool science moment:

As we waited for the local TCO officer to show, I watched the Sigmacrete heal itself. The nanoid cells moved too slowly for the eye to pick up, but you looked away for a moment and came back, and a piece of the interstate’s long skid damage had filled in. A tiny piece, sure, less than the width of a thumbnail, but over time, the deep grooves were getting narrower and narrower, less and less deep. It was fun to watch, or try to.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

Try Cool Stuff. Write More In the Series. Write More Not in the Series. Be Bold, Be Fearless, Be Me. With plenty of capitalization.

Alex Hughes: Website

Sharp: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

When Self-Publishing Is Just Screaming Into The Void

So, I read this article: “I’m A Self-Publishing Failure.”

It’s funny enough.

Pokes a bit of fun at author expectations.

Ha-ha, another Salon article where the writer didn’t suddenly strike it rich.

Except, there’s a deeper thread of something here.

And it’s something that isn’t maybe so nice, or maybe so right.

“Self-publishing is the literary world’s version of masturbation, except the results are quite often less thrilling, and you usually end up with a mess.”

Here’s the thing. I don’t know who John Winters is. I’m sure he’s nice. He seems to write well. But contained within this article are a few very important lessons for potential self-publishers:

First, you can’t just be a writer. Self-publishing is… gasp, not the same thing as writing. This fellow took his unpublished work, hit the publish button, and then leaned back and waited for the trap-door to open above his head and spill a fluttering rain of sweet, sweet cash on his naked body. Yeah, whoa, buddy, you actually have to commit more work than that. I assume this is his book to buy (and it seems to have appeared on Amazon the same day as this article, so I’m not sure what that means or says), and the cover is… ehhh, okay, and sure, yes, he went ahead and bought a little advertising and did a video — but that leads me to my next point:

You can’t just self-publish into the void. Self-publishing is a bit like Kickstarter in that it helps if you’re already talking to someone. Meaning, you have a robust social media network or author friends or an audience built off of… blogging or short fiction or other novels or puppet shows starring your genitals in various costumes, whatever. Here’s what this guy did: he seems to have wandered out, plunked his book down in the middle of a grassy field, then wandered away and waited for the fans to come screaming from the four Cardinal directions to scoop up his book and make him rich. Minimal promotion, minimal anything, just publication and — once again, the trap-door opens and BOOSH it’s raining money, motherfuckers. I’m not saying this is impossible, but it’s woefully fucking unlikely.

Frankly, this is difficult to do with even a traditionally-published novel. But there lies the third lesson: if you don’t have the publishing chops and don’t have any kind of inbuilt audience or signal boost, then traditional publishing is a smarter path. I don’t mean this universally, I just mean that self-publishing successfully takes a certain kind of reach and/or work ethic that doesn’t fit well with some folks. A publisher has that reach and that ethic (in theory) to carry your book forward in ways you could not or were not willing to explore.

Final note: self-publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. I feel like we all know this, and yet day in and day out you see authors who just keep expecting to up and quit their day jobs because they self-published one thing and one thing not well.

This is not me dinging self-publishing. You can do it and you can do it well –

Case in point, Marko Kloos with his novel, Terms of Enlistment.

Marko decided to do much as John Winters had done, and he put his book up on the marketplace and now, only a few weeks later, it has 100+ reviews, keeps dipping into the Kindle Top 100, is #1 in Military Sci-Fi, and is all in all just rocking it. He did this by writing first a good book, but also because Marko has a small but potent audience already. He has people who are willing to signal boost for him. That gets the ball rolling.

Marko is doing it right.

John Winters is just, as he says, masturbating.