Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 226

It’s Not One Thing

Children are dead.

Shot by a bad man for reasons as-yet-unknown.

Some voices cry out, “We need more gun control.”

Others say, “No, no, it’s a mental health issue.”

A third voice claims that, “The media is at fault.”

Or that there’s a “culture of violence we need to solve.”

“It’s not this, it’s that.”

“It’s not that, it’s this.”

And we are paralyzed because nobody can find the one monster and cut off its head.

The problem is, as with most problems, a nuanced one. It isn’t a problem with one-color: it is a rainbow of fucking issues that blur and blob together into a muddy, bloody mass.

It’s not one monster. It’s many.

Guns are easier to get than good health care.

Mental health care is a black hole for those who try to get it.

The media shoves camera in the faces of kindergardeners to get a sound byte.

We adore violence in our media and abhor love and sex.

It’s all of these things. Not one to the exclusion of others.

That can’t paralyze us.

That confusion and complexity cannot give us pause.

Something has to be done.

One thing at a time. One bite out of the rotten apple, then another, and another until it’s gone. We can’t just nuke the problem. We can’t just drone strike it, or hit it with chemo and radiation, or plug in a cheat code and make it all go away. It’s a many-headed hydra. But we still have to start attacking the heads or the hydra will live on and people will still die because we couldn’t get on the same goddamn page. The time to talk — and act — is now. Not in six months when we’re back worrying about what the fucking Kardashians are up to.

The time is now! When we feel something.

When we have the fire in our bellies to write our politicians and make our voices heard. Not when our hearts are hardened but when we feel raw and in pain.

That’s why you can’t listen to people saying this isn’t the time. That’s shutting down the conversation. That’s putting up walls instead of opening doors. Not wanting to talk about it is okay. Wanting to step away from the discussion? Completely understandable. But anybody who tries to shut down other people continuing this conversation? That’s an obstruction. Calling it “politics” is false. Wanting to stop kids from dying, wanting to get busy navigating the complexities of our human experience is not “politicizing.” What someone means when they say, “Stop politicizing the issue” is, I don’t agree with you, so shut up. It’s not politics to ask that we figure this out. It’s not politics to seek solutions to suffering. This isn’t related to governance of the state. This isn’t related to political relations between people. This is about dead children, teenagers, and adults. This is about standing up and saying that we want something done, and that while we may not agree on what that something is, it’s time to move the needle one way or another because the worst thing we can do is sit on our hands in defiance of progress, in the paralysis of fruitless indecision.

P.S. — the one thing it’s not is the lack of God in our schools. If you believe in America, then God is in the schools when one wants him to be and not there when one doesn’t because that’s how freedom of religion is supposed to look. If you believe in God, then God is everywhere, and you don’t need prayer in schools to stave off a vengeance that involves killing children. And, by the way, if you believe in a God that not only allows for child murder but actively invokes it as payment for pulling prayer out of school, you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and you should probably be put on a boat with the rest of your fucked-up brethren and set afloat so we can stop listening to your delusions of self-importance.

I Think We Can Have That Gun Conversation, Now

[I've been sitting on this post for a long time. Since August. Normally I try to stay out of potentially controversial shit here, not because it's controversial and I'm going to lose readers or whatever but because for the most part I honestly don't have the time to engage with it. And it doesn't often do a lot of good. Just the same, here I am on the day of an elementary school shooting. Two days after a fellow author, Bill Cameron, was actually at the Clackamass mall shooting -- his account is right here. And you know what, fuck it, I have the time to engage. We have to makethe time to engage with this problem. So, here it is.]

I grew up around guns.

My father had plenty. He ended up getting a FFL (Federal Firearms License) and setting up a small shop in our one garage, where he also did repairs and even built his own guns. He hunted, too, quite frequently.

As a result, I learned to shoot pretty early. I’m not sure how old I was when I got my first BB gun (a Daisy that I still have, actually), but I figure both it and my pellet gun came before I was 10. By 12 I already had taken the hunter’s safety course, already had a couple of .22 rifles to my name alongside a brand new Remington .22-250, and later, a Ruger 20 gauge over-under (both guns I still have and like very much, thank you). With the .22-250 I hunted groundhogs upstate, mostly — farmers would gladly let you hunt their property as the whistle-pigs made a mess of the ground. With the 20 gauge and later, a 12 gauge Remington 1100, I shot birds — geese and grouse and chukars and pheasant.

Dad was a big deer hunter. Also went after elk, caribou and mule deer out West. He wanted me to enjoy deer hunting the same way, but I never could; we raised whitetail deer on our property (curiously, not for food but more like pets), and so it was hard for me to hunt them. Felt like I was hunting dogs or cats. I remember going out on a deer hunt and purposefully missing a shot at a deer, a shot I could’ve made (turns out I was a pretty all right shot with rifle and shotgun). I eventually had to tell my father that it just wasn’t going to happen.

I wasn’t going to be able to hunt deer.

I think I actually hurt him by telling him that, but it was what it was.

I suppose most of that detail is irrelevant, though I mention it all just to make it abundantly clear that I am not anti-gun by any means. They were and are a part of my life.

And, just the same, I figure it’s time we had a conversation about guns in this country.

See, in our house, gun ownership and handling came with a big ol’ bucket of responsibility. You pointed a toy gun — hell, you pointed your fingers — at somebody in our house, you’d bring hell down on your own head. You didn’t pretend to shoot other people. Guns were fucking serious. They were dangerous. You had to respect the gun, respect what it could do. It could feed you, or it could accidentally blow the lid off your head. Guns weren’t “cool.” With them came a kind of reverence and respect and a healthy fear.

This country doesn’t have respect for guns.

And so maybe it’s time we start making laws that change that.

Now, let’s be clear: I know this post is just me squawking into the void. I’m not changing anything with this post; I’m just talking. Your mind is made-up. Guns are one of those topics where tempers flare and everybody takes sides on the opposite side of the field and it’s either take all the guns away or I think I should be able to buy a Bell AH-1 Cobra helicopter at Wal-Mart and use it to hunt deer — and politics only complicate the gun matter. I went to a gun show just before Obama was elected and it was like Christmas for paranoid schizophrenics: everybody had signs up about how Obama was taking away the guns and so prices were jacked through the roof and, ohh, by the way, here, please take a look at my KKK and Nazi paraphernalia, oh, it’s history, don’t worry about the scary racist violent implications.

Of course, Obama didn’t take anything away. But those prices stayed high. (And in there is a lesson how people will use fear to control you and control prices and take your money, but that’s talk for another day.)

Anyway.

My opinion on the gun issue is controversial in that, it’s surprisingly vanilla and nuanced. It is a moderate position in a topic that offers only intense, froth-mouthed polarity.

Here’s what I figure:

Guns are not a real great solution for dealing with other humans. They’re a pretty good solution for dealing with animals. What my father hunted, we ate. That’s a powerful thing, to be able to feed yourself in that way. When I go pheasant hunting, the birds come back with me, and I cook ‘em. (And pheasant in cream sauce is pretty heavenly.) So, guns? Good solution for that.

Good solution too for shooting clays. Or paper targets. Or cans off a fence with a proper backstop.

But as the shooting at the Empire State Building shows, guns are not a dandy solution when dealing with other people, since it looks all of the wounded (not dead, but wounded), were shot by cops. Cops who are trained. Maybe those cops were following protocol, maybe they did the best they could with a bad situation, or maybe they’re a couple of chuckleheads. But what that does tell us is, even two men with firearms training make mistakes. So, when people tell me they want guns — specifically handguns, which are notoriously inaccurate — for self-defense, they don’t get how hard that is. They don’t understand that you need training beyond target practice or you’re going to be part of the problem and not part of the solution.

I mean, dang, if you think you’re going to march into a situation where some dude’s got a gun and he’s shooting up a college campus or a movie theater and you’re going to pull a John McClane, I might suggest you uncork your head from your ass, Rambo, because you don’t have the training for that. See, shooting people in a combat situation takes, ohh, I dunno, training. It’s not Call of Duty. That’s not an Xbox controller in your hand, that’s a deadly weapon — and, as your heart goes wild and panic punches through your nervous system, are you competent enough to take out the shooter and not, say, a little girl?

What I’m saying isn’t that we need to take people’s guns away. The snakes are out of the can on that one. And I think gunpowder is in the American bloodstream already.

I’ve got beliefs about regulation that are a bit unorthodox (I don’t see why any civilian would ever really need a handgun, for example), but that’s not the solution I’m gonna propose.

Here’s my proposal:

People need to get educated about guns.

If you’re going to own one, you need to know what guns are, and what good and bad they can do. See, I remember going to the Hunter Safety Course. I remember applying for my hunting license. It was a big deal for this 12-year-old. And it taught me a great deal about the guns I was going to be using. I had to get a license to hunt animals and yet, it is not universal that I require a license to own or use a gun. (Further, a hunting license comes with limits on how many animals I can kill — and yet, we have no limits on how much ammo one can procure or how many guns one may own and operate).

You need a license to drive a car. But somehow, you don’t need one to buy a gun.

So: maybe we license gun owners. You ensure that people have to take a gun safety course. You ensure they spend time using the weapons they’re gonna buy — hell, maybe you even become licensed in individual gun classes or individual guns themselves. And licenses come with preset limits that are fairly easy to enforce. You ask me, this would help ensures that people learn to respect guns. They’re not toys. They’re not action movie fun-time.

They’re not effective tools in diplomacy.

Further, a licensing and education system allows us to deny people, too. See, you fail the test, you don’t get a driver’s license, and the same thing goes here. Plus, easy enough to incorporate other checks on one’s criminal background and mental health, right? Right.

It helps to ensure that if there’s a civilian out there with a gun, I know he’s trained. I know he’s at least gone through the same steps. I know he’s not some crazy dude sitting on a nest of ammo boxes.

Now, you’re saying, “But this is going to make more effective criminals.” To which I say, not likely. Criminals are going to get effective in their own ways. They’re not going to do it through a licensing system where they and their firearms are going to be tracked.

You might then say, “But criminals don’t need to be regulated or care about regulation,” which is another version of the “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” saying. And that’s true. But it’s true of everything, isn’t it? Bombs are illegal, so only bombers will have bombs. Last I checked, criminals are always willing to do things we’re not — that’s why we create laws that ideally prevent and ultimately punish them for the transgression. “If we make rape illegal, only rapists will have rape! And murder, too! And they can shoplift! OUR FREEDOMS ARE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK DAMN YOU OBAMACARE.”

(I also never much understood the defense of, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Yeah, duh. But guns make it a whole lot easier, don’t you think, to facilitate all that people-killing-people?)

All I’m saying is, we should be able to do introduce some measure of rationality into this argument. And this a pretty sane, pretty soft solution — it doesn’t aim to control guns in a big way so much as it aims to introduce education and respect into the equation. We’ll never be able to take people’s guns away, so why don’t we make sure that the populace understands the power and the danger of these things they want to own so damn bad? You don’t like my solution? No problem. Like I said: I’m just squawking into the void. But we need some kind of solution. Whether it’s better mental health checks or tighter purchase regulations or whatever, we need to have this conversation.

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The War On Christmas”

First up, a bit of administrative duties — for the last flash fiction challenge I was to pick a random participant to receive an Art Harder mug or e-book? The winner on that one was Ashley Lorelle. Ashley, you should email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Now: time for the actual flash fiction challenge.

I love the concept of the “War on Christmas.” I don’t mean that I like the actual faux-bullshit “war,” I mean, I like that term.

I want you to use that term literally.

I want you to write a war about – or even against — Christmas.

Or, really, any winter holiday that tickles your fancy. Hanukah, Solstice, Kwanzaa, whatever. Hell, all of ‘em wrapped up in one.

Interpret that as you see fit.

You’ve got the traditional 1000 words.

Post online, then link to it in the comments.

You’ve got one week: till Friday the 21st at noon EST.

I’ll pick a random participant to receive a… random holiday gift from yours truly.

Fake Spam From The Ancient Accountants

I just got this email:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I is Archibold N.M. Bettesworth, the Personal Underling to the Ancient One. After a lengthy investigations of scrolls and tombs, we discovered that your lineage is heir to an overdue payment, which was unissued due to dimensional legislation at the time payment was obliged.

However, due to current strict rules of dimensional matter we are unfairly unable to honor the agreement between the Ancient One and your Great-great-great Grandfather. Our best scholars and top occultists have assured us that there is no way to produce the 6.66 Million Dollars that is owed to you because of the obtuse laws that govern interdimensional monetary dispensation. Successfully, our best investigators had found a loophole that allow us to extricate the monies to you, the descendent of your Great-great Grandfather the original party to the contracts, in exchange for the minor allocation of your soul, which we are equally unhappy with but believe to be best course for both parties.

We know this money would have been very been a facial to your family in the recent stresses of the economy and rapid steep fiscal cliff. As such we desire to give you all your money faster. Therefore you are advised to re-confirm your ancestry to your Great-great-great Grandfather and repeat the following incantation whilst in the middle of a pentagram diagram the eve of a full moon night:

“Nunc ego tribuo meus animus ut aperta mundorum et liberum Obscuram Princeps. Et ubi est vita vestigiis pergamus.”

Please email me and confirm that I have reached the correct descendant of your Great-great-great Grandfather.

Most gratifully yours,

N.M. Bettesworth

Personal Underling to the Ancient One

That doesn’t even need my commentary.

Whoever wrote that, well-played. It even has some fucked-up grammar in there. (Or maybe that was accidental, who can say?) Is this a joke? A riff on the earlier FBI spam mail I got?

Either way: funny stuff.

I mean, don’t do it again. This is a one-time-only amusement. I don’t want a deluge of “ha-ha-funny-not-spam” emails drowning me.

But still: well-played.

I wonder if I should write back?

“This Guy”

Michael R. Underwood: The Terribleminds Interview

So, here’s how I met Mike: he’s — well, I don’t know what he does for Angry Robot in precise terms, so I’m just going to say that he’s the leader of their “Authors-Be-Awesome” initiative, wherein he sends a series of steel overlord robots to people’s houses and the robots use their crushing claws and laser eyes to convince those people to buy Angry Robot books. Anyway. Thing is, Mike is also an author — he’s the Michael R. Underwood behind the much-buzzed-about geek-themed urban fantasy, Geekomancy. You can find mike at MichaelRUnderwood.com, and on the Twitters @MikeRUnderwood.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

There once was a boy who wanted to write, but he spent far less time writing than playing expensive collectible card games made on cardboard laced with crack, telling stories with friends, and playing video games that subliminally commanded him to build an idol to an Italian Plumber.

Eventually, that boy went to college and decided to spend less of his time sniffing cardboard crack and building Obelisks and more time actually writing, as well as trying to figure out how to attract members of the opposite sex.

Following that resolution, the boy’s life subsequently got way more awesome, even if the dating part didn’t go terribly well right away. All things take practice.

Why do you tell stories?

No one has ever given me a satisfactory reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve been playing pretend since I could talk, and haven’t seen fit to stop yet.

Also, it’s a way of re-assembling the millennia-old bones of story to emotionally and socially process life lessons over and over again for each new generation. Like you do.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Accept that revising is a skill just like first drafting is a skill. When you first start learning how to revise, you will suck and it may feel terrible and ineffective. But if you practice and persevere, you will get better at revising. And when that happens, you can stress about first drafts less and end up with overall more-awesome work.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

One of my writing instructors in undergrad told me that every writer should get a law degree. Unsurprisingly, she had just gotten a law degree. I know lots of writers, and a very small number of them have law degrees. I have noticed no discernible correlation between having a law degree and being a more successful writer, though I imagine it would give you cool stuff to write about just like any specialized knowledge.

Considering the fact that if I’d gone to law school right out of undergrad, I would probably have graduated right into one of the worst markets for freshly-minted attorneys in quite a while, and with six figures of shiny debt to go with it, I think I did okay with my Folklore M.A. and career in publishing that gives me sekrit knowledge of the industry which I get to use as a writer.

You have a folklore degree? Favorite story or character from folklore?

Folklorists, being a famously whacky people, were the perfect group of scholars to bamboozle into giving me a graduate degree for hanging out and playing tabletop RPGs, once I convinced them that it was part of an elaborate complex of overlapping subcultures where emergent collaborative storytelling persisted in multiple existence and constituted the largest oral tradition in North American popular culture.

Actually, I just found a great deal of support from the University of Oregon, especially since the Folklore M.A. is an interdisciplinary studies program – that meant that I got to combine Theater Arts classes and English/Film Studies work in with my Folklore to create an ad hoc Geek and Gamer studies M.A.

For part 2, I’m going to go with some hero legend action and choose Odysseus. I love Odysseus because he’s literary proof that pirates and ninja are not always enemies and certainly aren’t mutually exclusive.

How is that you say? Well, in The Illiad, Odysseus would rather be at home with his smart and hot wife, so he comes up with tons of tricks to end the war early, all of them involving being a sneaky bastard. The Greeks win the war because Odysseus was a ninja.

And then, in The Odyssey, he pirates his way around for a while before having a series of awesome and dangerous delays that Cap’n Jack Sparrow could only wish for.

What goes into writing a great character? Bonus round: give an example.

For me, writing a character often comes down to voice. Once I figure out a character’s talks, what their cultural frame of reference is, everything clicks. Through voice, most of the rest of the character becomes clear.

Say I’ve got a currently-undefined character who just learned something , and their reaction is to be incredulous. But how are they incredulous? In deciding how they express their incredulity, I learn who they are.

A character that says “No! It’ can’t be! AAAAH!!!” is someone with a lack of mental fortitude, who reacts directly.

A character that says “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” with a sardonic tone is more world-weary and crass.

And one that says “Blasphemy! The scrolls forbade it!” is obviously religious and defines their world by what they’ve read.

In a one-sentence response to a situation, I can open a door to the character through voice and start rolling.

Speak to me of Geekomancy: Give us the 140-character Twitter pitch.

Snarky geek barista discovers the secret crazy #UF world and learns geekomancy, the magic of fandom, to stop a string of suicides.

See, I even used a hashtag! I r l337 Twittarer. Or something.

How is that a story only you could’ve written? Why does it matter to you?

This story combines experiences from my time working at a game store, my graduate studies of subculture and narrative theory, my personal sense of humor, and my lifetime-thus-far of experience and fandom. I’ve read and seen a lot of urban fantasy, but no one had incorporated geekdom in quite the way I wanted to. I wanted a novel where fannishness wasn’t a trapping or just a character trait, it was integral to the magic and the organization of the secret magical society.

Geekomancy matters to me because it is, in my opinion, an optimistic but balanced depiction of geekdom. The magic system itself is a literalization of the metaphor of fannish love being empowering. Where I grew up learning mercy from Gandalf and Bilbo, loyalty to friends from Luke Skywalker, responsibility from Spider-Man, acceptance from the X-Men, and more, the heroes in Geekomancy gain literal power, able to fight demons both external and internal. And hell if that isn’t an awesome wish to be able to make true in a story.

In addition, I really wanted to show a different kind of geek protagonist. Therefore, I chose to write a queer female geek of color, because they exist, and are sorely under-represented in popular culture.

What should we expect with the sequel?

In Celebromancy, you can expect:

• Skyrim playing a critical role in a set-piece fight scene.

• Ree finding herself in a love rhombus (33% more awesome than a love triangle!)

• Lots of jokes and commentary about the weird nature of fame and Hollywood.

• More buddy-comedy action with everyone’s favorite steampunk adventurer out of time, Drake Winters.

• And more geeky in-jokes and pop culture references in the fine tradition of Geekomancy.

All of this and more, available 7/15/2013!

Geekomancy is an e-book only release: why that choice and how has it worked out for you?

When I got the offer from my editor, it was to publish Geekomancy as one of the launch titles for a re-branding of the Pocket Star imprint of Pocket/Gallery books, which had been all about media tie-ins, but was now going to revolve around e-original novellas and novels. I was hoping for a print-and-ebook deal, but the ebook original aspect turned out to have a number of advantages, the greatest of which being that it was less than six months between selling the novel and it being released.

Many debut authors have to wait 12-18 months from sale to pub-date, and I felt like everything went super-fast leading up to Geekomancy’s release, which kept me from going “wah, I can’t wait for the book to come out!”, at least too much. I got tons of support from my publisher, including the novel being featured at both San Diego and New York Comic-Con, awesome d20 sticker for the book, and some choice advertisement. Plus, it’s fun to be on the leading edge of a company’s foray into a new business model. It means a lot of people are invested in and excited about your work, perhaps even a bit moreso than normal.

The response to the book has been inspiring and delightful, and I hope to keep being able to play in this universe for quite some time to come, since I think I could write ten books in the series without exhausting all of the cool weird things to joke about and reference in geekdom, especially since new awesome things come out of the geek worlds all the time. I didn’t even get to include The Avengers and Prometheus in Celebromancy, since I set the novel in the late spring of 2012. Those will have to wait for the next one!

What are your three geekiest obsessions in order from least-most to utter-most?

#3 – Historical Martial Arts

This one would be ranked higher if it were more in the central wheelhouse of geekdom, as it’s one I’m very passionate about.

I can do a solid impression of German, Spanish, and Italian martial arts of the late medieval and Renaissance eras, including some wrestling and hand-to-hand techniques, several different rapier styles, as well as the use of the longsword and the greatsword (2d6 damage dice FTW!) I know enough Italian and Spanish rapier to teach the basics. I can give a solid fight mostly in the style of late 16th Century Spanish fight masters (even better if I get to cheat by including some Italian tricks).

And, most useful for cocktail parties, I can explain (with demonstrations) the entire logic behind the chain of styles the Man in Black and Inigo Montoya discuss in the duel on the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride.

#2 — Batman

These top two aren’t a claim to Real Ultimate Power in terms of knowing more about the property than anyone in particular, but are more about time spent thinking about and engaged with the property.

If there’s one superhero I could talk about for a whole day ad still have something to say, it’d be Batman. I’ve presented on Batman at academic conferences (the paper was titled “Holy Genre Trouble, Batman!: Batman as Pulp Vigilante Trapped in a Superhero World”), have a Batman wallet, a Bat-Mug, and more.

I love how many times the character has been re-invented and re-interpreted, from two-fisted vigilante in the late 30s through being the whacky victim of Sci-Fi transformation of the week in the Atomic Age of SF, camp New Pop closeted hero in the 60s TV show through grim Paternalistic anti-hero in the Dark Knight Returns and beyond. The character has achieved an indelible place in the English-speaking pop cultural world, and far beyond in some areas. And for me, he’s a character who is tremendously useful in discussions about the nature of heroism, societal norms, and the role of violence, power, justice, and obsession.

#1 – Star Wars

I saw Return of the Jedi before I was one year old. While developmental psychology may not back me up, I feel like that fact says a lot about me. Star Wars might have been my first fandom, watching and re-watching the original trilogy a bajillion times before I was in grade school. From there, I watched the Ewok movies, listened to countless expanded universe novels as books on tape, read the Jedi Academy books, etc. I’ve played the various SW RPGs, MMOs, and am eagerly awaiting 1313. I often find myself defending parts of the prequel trilogy (there’s some great stuff in there!) and am cautiously optimistic about the new future of the universe under Disney’s umbrella – after all, it’s worked wonders for Marvel Studios.

And when all is said and done, one of my proudest achievements is getting to write a character using a lightsaber in a published novel.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

I’ll go with a slightly older book that I think doesn’t get near enough love: Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover. Stover combines Sci-Fi and Fantasy in an exciting way, and paints a character who is far deeper than the Action-Hero gruff badass he presents as at first. It’s got great action scenes, solid romance, and might be the only narrative to combine Sword & Sorcery with Cyberpunk this side of Shadowrun.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Cafune – a Brazilian Portuguese word for ‘to caress someone’s hair.’ It’s a tremendously precise word to describe a primal and tender motion. It’s schmoopy.

Asshat – It’s short and straightforward without being overly OMG IN YOUR FACE TEH CUSSING! Plus it’s not sexist, homophobic, or any of the other less-than-awesome -isms that are often the source of why a word counts as profanity.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

Red-Headed Sister – Jagermeister, cranberry cocktail and peach schnapps, in equal quantities. Add soda to turn it from a cocktail into a sipping beverage.

What skills do you bring to help the us win the inevitable war against the robots?

Aside from my historical martial arts fu, I’m also working undercover for Angry Robot, learning how our Future Robot Overlords operate. When push comes to shove, I will use my cybernetic upgrades to turn the tide of battle. Assuming the obedience protocols programmed in don’t keep me fighting for the robots.

What’s it like working for the Grumpy Cyborgs who publish my novels? Do they beat you? Do they hunt humans for sport?

A: Aside from the long recovery time from the mandatory cybernetic upgrades, it’s great! I get to read incredible novels for work, sell those novels (including some really cool ones about a pottymouthed seer where the voice is so sharp it’d cut a monofilament wire by this guy called Wendig).

Most of all, I get to be an even larger part in helping support and grow the SF/F readership community while helping writers get their work into the most numerous and most receptive hands possible. I spend my day helping other writers’ dreams come true, which inspires me to work on my own dreams when I head home for the day. I couldn’t ask for a better day job.

And yes, they do hunt humans for sport. But because they are strange beings with inscrutable motivations, when they catch the humans they shake them down for stories, then keep the ones who provide the best ones. Some people juggle geese.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

I’m revising the sequel to Geekomancy right now, and have a New Weird Superhero novel heading out to market shortly. And while that’s shopping around, I’ll get back to a YA fantasy which features magic fencing, skyship warfare, and geo-politics.

The Real Lesson of 12/12/12

Today is 12/12/12.

You’re probably aware if you’re anywhere near social media.

You may find it a curious footnote.

You may find it cause for confetti and fire-ponies.

You may find it signals for you some kind of… ill-translated Apocalypse.

You may find it demands a cynical dismissive shaking-of-the-fist.

Here’s what I’m taking away from 12/12/12 –

This is the last time that we’ll experience a date like that. The same number repeated thrice.

That, in and of itself, matters not at all. Not one squiggly whit. Nary a blip on the cosmic radar.

What it reminds me, though, is that all of time operates like this. You and I will never experience 12/12/12 again. And we’ll also never experience 12/11/12 again. Or the 10th of November, 2012. Or the 23rd of April, 1999. In fact, this very hour – this very minute — will come and then go and never return. Each increment of time is a spaceship launched into the dark that will never return home. Every moment is a snowflake, a fingerprint, a unique atomic temporal signature whose repeat is guaranteed to be impossible.

What will you do with 12/12/12?

What will you do with this hour?

This minute?

This second?

How will you own each moment of time? How will your fingerprint meet its fingerprint?

How will you remember each day when its ember brightens and turns to ash?

Do something with your time. Because it ain’t coming back.

My Favorite Stories Of 2012

As we gallop uncontrollably into and around the holiday season, this seems a good time to talk about the stories I have consumed this year, stories that filled me with a warm and lasting satisfaction. These cross the many narrative thresholds — books, TV, games, music — so, a little something for everyone. Except that guy over there in the corner who really seems to like rubbing himself down with spray cheese. I do not, to his great regret, have any recommendations for spray cheese here on this list.

As they say, you can’t please everyone.

I’m probably missing a bunch of cool things on this list because I have a mouse-chewed brain.

As a sidenote, in the comments feel free to talk about the stories that you dug deeply this year.

Or, if you’re a creator who wants to promote his or her work, you are free to do so in this separate post right here. (But please, not in this post. Thanks!)

Let us begin.

White Horse, by Alex Adams

Back in July, I spoke to Alex here at terribleminds and as a result ended up with a copy of her novel, White Horse, an apocalyptic quest novel that is written with such elegance and with such twisted metaphor — oh, and such great, grave horror — that it may be my favorite read this whole year. Plus, I consider it a kind of weird “sister novel” to Blackbirds.

Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed

Before I read this book I wrote a post about how fantasy was too traditional and too medieval and, in that vein, all too familiar. Then this book comes along to smack me in the chops and how me how it’s done. Shapeshifters and ghul hunters! Magic potions and various flavors of ghul! Evil khalifs and sort-of-maybe-noble thief-princes! And an old, cantankerous protagonist with an old, cantankerous love story. Loved it. Want more.

Leviathan Wakes / Caliban’s War, by James S.A. Corey

You put science-fiction in my hand and I’ll probably give you a cocked eyebrow. Sci-fi ain’t really my thing. Wish it were, but usually, I’m just too stupid and impatient for science fiction. I bought Leviathan Wakes because I’d heard good things and because, frankly, it was a cheap Kindle buy that month. I was traveling at the time and here’s how I usually try out a book — I read the first page and figure out if I want to read to the second. This is, I understand, how all people read, but I do this in a very conscious way. When I started Leviathan Wakes, any hope of it being conscious fell through the floor because before I knew it I’d read several dozen pages of this so-called “space opera” (which is also a little bit of hard sci-fi mixed with horror, actually). I quickly gulped down the book and bought the second. Sidenote: James SA Corey is not one person but two: Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. And maybe a third or fourth person in there we don’t know about, I dunno. But it’s a successful team-up.

The Rook, by Daniel O’ Malley

British spy agency urban fantasy. MI6 meets Monster Squad. Not much to say here except it’s very fun, very exciting, quite tense, and surprisingly funny. (And has a few things in common with Leviathan Wakes, actually.) What else is there? Go read it. I’ll wait here.

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

On the one hand, I expected more from this book — it was widely-praised and I assumed it would be more, well, literary than it was. I’m glad it wasn’t, actually. This is a rollicking fun AAA video game and blockbuster movie packed into a novel that also manages to be a cultural artifact of my youth in the 80s and 90s and be a glimpse forward toward the technological future. It’s not particularly deep, but dammit, it works.

“Paper Menagerie,” by Ken Liu

One of the most affecting short stories I’ve read. Just go read it.

Little Blue Truck, by Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry

I read a lot to the Tiny Human Known As B-Dub, and to be honest, most toddler-age books are pretty crappy. But, the kid loves trucks. Is obsessed with trucks, actually. So, I saw this board book on sale at B&N and I was like, “Fuck it, it has a truck, it’s a win.” Thing is, it’s also a really great story with a really strong rhythm to it — it’s about helping others and making friends and, at its core, not being a dick. Plus, the art features little animal buttholes. Seriously, they took time to illustrate the buttholes of animals standing backwards. Do with that as you will.

Saga, Brian K Vaughn and Fiona Staples

Saga is a comic book that somehow perfectly marries the space opera of Star Wars with the sheer profanity and fuck-youness of Preacher. Or maybe it’s like what would happen if Joss Whedon and Grant Morrison had some kind of story-baby? I dunno. It’s a weird fucking book, but damnit if it doesn’t completely work. Find it. Shove it in your mind-hole.

Locke & Key, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

Locke & Key isn’t new, but it’s new to me (and continued its story in 2012): I nabbed the whole lot in one fell swoop and it’s a jaw-dropper. Grim, twisted, fantastical, funny — it’s a wildly-inventive gut-kick of a story that calls to mind shades of Lovecraft and The Dark Tower. Only a really powerful writer could pair a sense of whimsy and fantasy with this level of splatterpunky horror-flavored goodness and pull it off like it feels effortless. But it does, and it is, and you want it.

Television

This post is already getting longer than I figured, so let’s just sum up what I liked this year: Sherlock (S1, S2), Community, Breaking Bad, Justified, Pocoyo. Let me add that Justified is a show that has become truly excellent out of its modestly okay first season.

Films

I suck at watching movies these days — having a toddler makes it hard, and for me, a lot of the visual storytelling I want comes from television these days. Let’s just say I hit all the big obvious releases – Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall — and liked them all quite a lot, though none of them were particularly powerful in terms of narrative. They were “very good,” and “a lot of fun,” and that’s fine by me.

Games

I hate winter, but I adore Skyrim.

Oh, and Mass Effect 3, except, y’know, the blarghy end.

That’s pretty much all you need to know, I guess.

Music

Three albums you want: Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel (which has a full name that is, I believe, 4000 words long), which is easily her most raw, potent, and haunting release yet. Metric’s Synthetica — Metric has for me been a band I’ve stayed with since the beginning but I thought the first album was generally better than all those that came after it until this one, which has stayed with me and has also become the soundtrack to many unwritten books and movies in my head. Finally, Amanda Palmer’s Theatre Is Evil, which is worth noting in part for its smashing Kickstarter success but mostly for the fact it’s a kick-ass bonafide rock album that feels like it’s inhabited with the spirit of David Bowie (who is not dead but who I believe can cast his spirit out into the world at will like some kind of Martian warlock).

Promote Thine Creative Wares, Storynauts

We’re wading into the holiday season, folks.

You may be one of them goofy creative-types what wants to get his creative story gibber in the hands of a welcoming and eager audience. You want your work known. Promoted. Discovered.

So, here’s your chance, word-burpers.

In the comments, tell us about one thing you created: a book, a comic, a film, an app, a song, a yarn-beard for dolphins, whatever. Keep it under 100 words (bonus points if you keep it at 140-character Twitter-length) and be sure to offer us a link.

Everybody else: do scan the comments, see if anything sounds spiffy.

Go forth and share.

25 Gifts For Writers

1. Books

This is about as obvious an answer as it gets (“What should I buy that starving child for Christmas?” “Um, food?” “Eh.”), but just the same I’m surprised at how rarely I receive books as gifts. The excuse is frequently, “Well, I don’t know your tastes.” Yeah, here are my tastes: I LIKE BOOKS. If it’s a book? I want it. I want it in my hands. I want to shove its information into my eyeholes and into the warm crawlspace around my brain. I want to lick all the stories. And yes, I have too many books shut up I don’t care. *snarls and swipes at you with a stapler*

2. Liquor

Listen, I know, not all writers have livers that look like ruptured kickballs. We’re not all taken with the spirit, as it were. Just the same, it remains an excellent present, and why? Because we can use them for barter! It’s like in jail how cigarettes are currency? For us, booze is currency. You want to get in good with that table of writers over there, bring ‘em a bottle of something fancy. Or maybe just some wood varnish, whatever, WE’RE THIRSTY GIVE IT HERE.

3. Pants

I joke a lot about not wearing pants and how pants are the dutiful oppressors trying to keep us creative types down. Pants, after all, are a symbol of a stable job and common sense, two things writers shall never possess. Just the same, there comes a time when a writer must clothe himself in the guise of a successful human, and so pants (or “trousers” for you lovely scone-munchers on the other side of the ocean) are an occasional necessity. I have encountered many an instance where I’m caught at the last moment searching for pants prior to some… event. (“Honey, do I have pants from this decade?” “We have to leave in five minutes for your uncle’s funeral. You’re asking me this now?”) Think of it as buying them a costume for a Halloween party!

4. A New Pen

I don’t really use pens. Most writers probably don’t. Just the same, it’s nice to have one hanging around. Maybe to write some notes. Maybe to chew on or clean the inside of our ears as we noodle a new story. Maybe to stab a pirate who’s boarded our ship in order to steal our intellectual property! “Have some ink poisoning, you scurvy interloper!” *stab stab stab*

5. Coffee And Other Stimulants

Infallible correlation: when I drink more coffee, I write more words. I do. I get about 2-3k on a single cup of coffee. I can get another 50% boost to the old “verbal dumpage quota” if I guzzle a second cup early enough in the day. I go through a gut-ton lot of coffee, which means I’m ever in need ofreplenishment. (Sidenote about coffee: the lighter-roasted coffee has more caffeine.) Or hell, maybe the writer in your life likes Five-Hour Energy, which reportedly kills people and tastes like the Humbaba’s crotch-sweat. Buy ‘em a case of that, instead. Just stay away from bath salts. I’ve eaten way too many human faces on that stuff. Last week I found an ear in my pocket. It had a bite taken out of it. So embarrassing.

6. A Helper Monkey

You know how often I could use the help of a charming little helper monkey? Uhh, like, always. “Hey, Admiral Monkeyshines, hand me my coffee. And my iPad. And can you scratch my back? No, not there. Over. Over. Left. Now up. Now down. Perfect. Can you brush the old taco meat out of my beard? Will you read me a book in your funny little monkey ooks and eeks? Ooh! No, no! Ride the dog around like you’re a a cowboy! HA HA HA I LOVE YOU, ADMIRAL MONKEYSHINES.” Of course, I’d never get anything written, but maybe I could make the helper monkey do that, too. It’d probably improve the quality of my work, to be honest.

7. Some Sort Of “Lard-Ass Alert”

They have these monitors for cribs that detect when an infant has stopped moving for 20 seconds so you can rush in and — well, I don’t know what happens then, but if you have our son you discover him climbing up your curtains with a pirate dagger in his teeth. Point is, writers need something like this. We need an alarm that reminds us that it’s time to get off our slugabed dumpers and push blood to limbs other than our typing fingers. “ALERT: YOU HAVE NOT MOVED YOUR BODY IN THREE HOURS. YOUR MUSCLES HAVE BEGUN TO ATROPHY. YOUR HEART IS WREATHED IN A SWEATER OF FAT. YOU WILL SOON DIE IF YOU DON’T GET UP AND TAKE A WALK YOU TORPID GRISTLY BLOB. I CAN SMELL YOUR HOAGIE SWEAT.”

8. Healthy Snacks

To go along with the Lard-Ass Alert, you could buy the writer some healthy snacks. If given half a chance you’ll find my desk littered with Haagen-Daaz containers, gnawed-up pork ribs, and empty sugar packets. But foods like that drag our brains down like high-fructose boat anchors — we need healthy snacks. Nuts! Or dried fruits. Or maybe just a desk drawer full of lettuce.

9. A Kind Review

I can’t speak for other writers, but fuck, that’s never stopped me before. So here, let me do it again! What we writers appreciate perhaps most in this world is a kind review of our work. Shimmy-shaking on over to your favorite review site (Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, your blog, Big Dave’s Discount Book Reviews, whatever) and leaving us a nice review will make our day brighter. Or, if you truly must leave a bad review, make it an entertaining one. Misspell a bunch of stuff. Write half the review in all caps. Insult us humorously and insert some random conspiracy theory in the middle. Maybe write the review in a series of poopy handprints.

10. A Major Award!

I don’t know how you would procure for us a major award, but I assume a hefty bribe will do it. Or you could always just make one, sell it on Etsy. I don’t think we’re particularly discerning. Carve our names into a wooden bar stool and swaddle it in Christmas tinsel and hand it over and tell us it’s an award from some blah blah newspaper or blah blah blog. We won’t check. We’ll just hug it to our chests and spin like we’re that girl in the Sound of Music. Don’t worry, we’ll hate ourselves again by morning. But for that one night, we’ll know: somebody really likes us. Even if that somebody is completely imaginary! That’s okay. Imaginary is our wheelhouse.

11. A Room Of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf was famous for — well, okay, she was famous for writing a bunch of really great stuff but she was also famous for that essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” in which she says, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” It’s an essay that all women and all writers should read, and while I am not a woman (though I do look smashing in a sundress!), I am a writer, so, y’know, it’s good stuff. I too believe that writers should have a space to call their own, and so a good gift for a writer is to ensure that they have this territorial bubble in which to operate. If you cannot accommodate an actual room, try buying them four cubicle walls, or a piano crate! Or give them a space next to the rusty boiler in the cellar.

12. A Plant

A plant on our desk serves a powerful purpose: it is a little thumbtack that punctures the creative territorial bubble in which we live, a creative bubble that tells us nobody else matters and nothing else exists but us, this desk, and this story. The plant suddenly becomes a thing outside one’s egosphere (or, perhaps, egosystem) that reminds you that there lurks a real world beyond the pale, a true place beyond the artifice of fiction. And then you accidentally kill the plant and realize that you are the DIVINE MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH HAW HAW HAW.

13. Neil Gaiman’s Magic Gazebo

Speaking of one’s own rooms and territorial bubbles, you could just steal Neil Gaiman’s magic penmonkey gazebo. I like to believe that it is Gaiman’s creative womb — the light-side equivalent of that evil black lacquered egg that Darth Vader hibernates in. I suspect that, whenever he takes a journey into story-land, the gazebo literally leaves this earth and penetrates the dimensional fontanelle and takes Gaiman to magical far-off-lands.

14. Or Maybe Just Neil Gaiman

Or you could just abduct Neil Gaiman. He could be a writer’s authorial spirit animal! A long-limbed Muse-imp gamboling behind the writer as she writes, giving encouragement and drinking tea and saying otherwise smart things (like, say, any of this). How great would that be? Don’t tell him I told you to abduct him. He can’t read this, can he? I’m sure he’s very busy.

15. An Autographed Book By One’s Favorite Author

It is at the end of the day the story that counts, not the author, but to an author, other authors represent a kind of perfect ideal. Our favorite authors are our personal totems, our creative guides hanging out in our minds, helping us realize who we want to be and to what we must aspire. So, an autographed book by a beloved author is a wonderful thing, indeed. I have signed first editions of Christopher Moore’s Lamb and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, and sometimes I get naked and hold them tight to my pasty flesh while rocking back and forth.

16. A Truly Awful Book

You may think, “What a spectacularly awful gift,” and to that I say, Au contrare, grumpy bear. Buying a hideously rat-fucked book for your writer pal sends a very clear message to that writer: “Sometimes terrible books get published which means, by golly, you can get published too.”

17. A Car Battery And A Pair Of Steel-Toe Boots

The Muse does not simply walk into Mordor. Or something. Whatever. What I mean is, sometimes the Muse needs a short, sharp shock. A car battery hooked up to her fairy wings or a steel-toe boot driven hard up into his fairy nuts will get that Muse jabbering into a writer’s ear, posthaste. And when that fails, the writer can loan the battery and the boots to someone else and they can shock-kick him into finishing his shit.

18. A Giftcard To An Office Supply Store

If you’re anything like me, an office supply store is like a vista of efficiency-porn. Pens and papers and hole-punches! Desk calendars! Helper monkeys! Really nice pens! Laser printers. Dildos! Wait, I might be mixing up “office porn” and “real porn.” Anyway. Point is, a giftcard to an office supply store is a very happy thing, indeed. It gives us an excuse to frolic.

19. A Really Nice Keyboard

A worker is only as good as his tools. A soldier with his gun. A chef with her knife. A robot with its DOOM LASER and BUZZSAW HANDS. And so a writer must have the proper tools, too. A really great keyboard — er, the kind on which you type, not the kind that says ‘Casio’ on it — is an essential tool. Plus, our keys are probably stuck together with moistened Cheeto dust.

20. A Hollowed-Out Book

We need a place to keep our secret things. Keys to demonic doors. Syringes filled with milky muse-juice. Handguns with the serial numbers filed off. Weird Canadian weed. As such, I recommend a hollowed-out book safe, like these. Where else are you going to keep your powdered unicorn horn? You… do have powdered unicorn horn, right? (Amateur.)

21. A Weird Old Gigantic-Ass Dictionary

I have a dictionary that is almost a foot thick. This is a dictionary so big you could drop it on a rhino’s back and it would shatter its spine. You could use it to choke a blue whale. It is a book that requires many men to carry it, like the Ark of the Covenant. It is an artifact of language, an obelisk of wordography. Sometimes I love to just flip through it and find weird words I’ve never heard of before. Thus: crazy-big dictionary makes for great writerly present.

22. Any Random Reference Book

In my experience, penmonkeys love bizarre reference books. Any book referencing any subject (the gods of India, English language homophones, typewriters throughout the ages, a dictionary of slang spoken by Ukrainian lamp-makers) is like fucking gold for us and our writing. And when our next book features use of some weird Babylonian sex toy (“THE FIST OF HAMMURABI”), you’ll know that you were the one responsible for bringing it into our lives.

23. A Reason To Leave The House

Writers sit so long at our desks our ass-fat starts to merge with the pleather of our chairs. Give us an excuse to get up and go outside. Invite us for a walk. For dinner. For drinks. FOR A ROLLER DERBY GANG WAR IN THE MIDDLE OF CENTRAL PARK. Travel with us. Provide us with a reason to escape the gravity of our offices. You may need to force us out, but we’ll appreciate it.

24. Anything But A Blank Goddamn Notebook

Listen, I get it — you think, Ah, he’s a writer, and so he must write a lot inside little notebooks. It’s not entirely inaccurate. But you know how some gift-givers get caught on that one thing you theoretically like and give it to you every year (“You once said you liked ceramic wombats, so now every year I will buy you a new ceramic wombat”)? Yeah, lots of people seem to think writers need blank notebooks. We probably don’t. Not because we don’t use them or don’t like them. But we have computers. And smartphones. I have a small vault now of notebooks, and every once in a while I pull one out and scrawl a couple pages of notes and then marvel at just how improbably bad my handwriting is. I’m not saying that writers don’t need notebooks. We just don’t need hundreds of them from dozens of people. Authors should select one person who is allowed to give them notebooks. (Mine is Rob Donoghue, who has impeccable taste.)

25. Terribleminds Merch Oh My God I’m A Shameless Trollop

HOLY ATOMIC TITTY TWIRLERS — did I say “Terribleminds merchandise?” By the blessings of Sweet Saint Fuck, I sure did. Art Harder, Motherfucker? Certified Penmonkey? Oh my stars and garters! Ahem. Okay, fine, fine, you don’t actually have to buy that merch for the authors in your life — and yes, yes, I’m utterly shameless. (The shame centers of my brain were destroyed in the war. What war, you ask? The war on Christmas. How dare you judge a veteran!)