Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 232

Irregular Creatures

Rape Versus Murder

Provocative title, I know. Not meant to be, really. I only mean to be forthright.

This is not a post about whether or not it’s okay to joke about or write about rape.

This is not a post about whether or not it’s okay to joke about or write about murder.

You may have those discussions on your own and I trust you’ll play nice.

This is about how, whenever controversy arises over a rape joke (like, say, what happened the other day with The Oatmeal), there arises the inevitable defense of, “It’s okay to joke about murder but not about rape.”

Or, more to the point, folks don’t get upset about murder jokes.

And yet, rape jokes seem to cause offense — or, worse, cause harm.

It’s complicated. And also true. It’s just like how people within certain groups can use terminology or tell jokes that those outside the groups can’t. That may seem unfair or something unbalanced, but, y’know, sorry. Grow a pair. Be great if life and art and culture were simple; they ain’t.

So, then.

Why is murder okay as a topic of humor but rape generally isn’t? (Or, if you prefer, why is murder not a trigger? Why does murder not make people upset in the same way as rape?)

Here’s the thing:

Murder is an, erm… permanent situation. It leaves behind the victims of those who knew the person. But the murder victim does not himself survive. The dead body isn’t walking on the street, poking around the Internet on his iPhone before accidentally stumbling upon someone making an “I’ll kill you!” joke. (And, for good or bad, that’s one of those first angry threats that children seem to come to — “I’ll kill you!” Something there in how we deal with mortality, but that’s a conversation for another time.)

Rape victims are still with us.

Let’s talk statistics.

In 2008, looks like the United States had 14,180 murders.

In 2005 (sorry, having a hard time finding perfectly equivalent data), the United States had 191,670 instances of sexual assault, and RAINN estimates that the number is now approximately as high as 207, 754 per year. And rape remains one of the most underreported crimes. And approximately 1 in 6 women will experience rape or attempted rape (that number is 1 in 33 for men).

Those victims of rape are still out there. And you don’t know who they are, but one in six? Hell, even one in thirty-three — that’s a fucked up number. And it means it’s pretty likely that a rape joke is going to land in the lap of someone who has been raped or who has suffered the attempt. It’s not just about upsetting those left in the wake of the crime, as you have with murder — the victims of these crimes are here. Awake. Alive. And painfully aware of what happened to them — doubly so when you fling a casual rape joke at their heads.

Rape, sexual assault and even child abuse leave living, breathing scars. Scars that re-open all too easily.

But you know what? Hey, I can argue that it’s okay to joke about non-sexual assault. Or war. Certainly the victims of those shitty awful events are still up and hanging around –

So, here’s the real reason that rape jokes are troubled territory –

Because the rape victims say so.

They get to say that. They get to feel that way. On this, they can set the cultural rules.

It’s not about right or wrong, or logic versus emotion, or arguments of oversensitivity and hypocrisy — you have the free speech to make whatever jokes you want or talk about rape in whatever way you feel is illuminating. But they get to be upset about it. And call you on it. And be hurt by it.

But consider this:

You get to not be a rape victim.

They, however, are not afforded that luxury. Ever again.

That may be the most important consideration of them all.

A Plea To All You Spoilery Bastards Out There In Spoilerland

Sunday night rolls around.

Walking Dead night. So too with Homeland.

I don’t watch the show as it airs; we’ve got a toddler who’s just gone to sleep and it doesn’t seem productive to crank up a show where there’s a lot of undead moans, human screams, and gun-bangs. I tend to watch it a day or three later while on the elliptical. (Maybe that’s my own version of Zombies, Run!)

Thing is, if I get on social media at 9pm — Facebook, Twitter, Circlehole, Sharespace, Lovebooster, or some other social media site I’m just making up — I have to duck because of a small but vocal contingent who feel like tweeting the show. Meaning, spoiling the show. Not merely talking about it or talking around it, but actively like, OH MY GOD, CARL JUST SHOT AND KILLED THE GOVERNOR WITH A HARPOON GUN or THE ZOMBIES ARE REALLY MOON VAMPIRES HOLY SHIT.

(Curiously, I don’t see anyone spoiling Homeland. Hm. That either means: fewer people watching that show or fewer TV geek-types watching and broadcasting their experience. Great show, by the way. Do not miss. The terrorists are really all moon vampires, by the way.)

Ahem. Anyway. This potential spoiler-fest goes on for a couple hours as folks catch up with the show. Hell, the last time the show had some major deaths, it went on all week. Facebook memes kept popping up: big visual punches to the face that my eyeballs simply could not avoid.

I said something about this on Twitter this past Sunday night and I got a lot of folks agreeing, but I also got some folks who were, well, let’s just go with “irritated” that I would dare to suggest that social media was all for me and not for them. One gentleman (after calling me an “asshole”) asserted that I sure seemed to care an awful lot about a TV show and weren’t there more important things to be worried about?

Well, duh. Somewhere out there is That One Thing that is The Worst And Most Important Thing To Be Worried About. I don’t know what it is but I assume it involves an alien invasion where we all get cancer from their unforgiving Martian lasers. Outside of that pinnacle of horror, everything is relative. Hangnails to TV spoilers to broken toes to heart attacks to a bevy of cancers to — well, on and on, until you get to the alien cancer invasion thing. Point is, this asshole (me) wants to make a point about TV shows and spoilers.

You can use Twitter however you want. That’s not for me to say, nor to stop you.

My point was merely, if I catch you doing it, I’ll probably unfollow you. (And, if you call me an asshole, it’s a good bet I’m going to block your ass so I don’t have to hear you jabbering at me anymore.)

Here’s why I’d first politely ask that you consider holding your tongue in terms of spoiling… well, anything within reason (and a reasonable amount of time, as set by John Q. Scalzi, Esquire): because it suggests that you’re the most important person on social media. I get it. You want to talk about what you just saw. But we all want lots of things. I want a pony. I want to punch people sometimes. I want to eat a gallon of ice cream and guzzle liquor every night. But I don’t. I don’t do a lot of things because it’d either be bad for me or bad for someone else. We don’t just follow our every id-driven impulse because: uhh, hello, selfish.

I’m just asking that you cool it on the spoilers.

I suspect that you’d probably not like it if, an hour before the show aired, I called you up and spoiled the shit out of the show for you. Would that be a thing you’d like? *ring ring* “HELLO I AM FROM THE FUTURE MICHONNE IS ACTUALLY A NINJA ROBOT AND ALL THE SHOW IS A DELUSION OF HER DAMAGED PROGRAMMING HA HA HA HA IT’S A REALLY COOL REVEAL TOO.”

See? Not awesome.

Do spoilers actually ruin the show? No. Of course not. A show is the sum of many moments big and small, subtle and overt — but while spoilers do not ruin the show they do ruin certain big moments. Because a spoiler is just a data point. It reveals narrative information without any narrative aplomb: meaning, it exists outside the mode of the storyteller telling that story. It’s just some info-puke that bypasses all the tension and plot and character building up to that moment. A storyteller crafts big moments – spoilworthy moments — in a way to maximize impact. They are the narrative equivalent of a bomb being dropped; the entire episode has often been designed to lead to and showcase that holy shitfuck event.

But then along comes Yelly McSpoilerface who cares nothing for the storyteller intent nor for the rest of the audience watching it.

It’s the TV equivalent of trolling.

You want to talk about the show, I get it.

And it was pointed out on Facebook that television has become strongly focused on the “second screen experience,” meaning, while the show is on, an invested and active audience talks about it. But there exist ways to do that without pissing on those really cool moments. While the “second screen experience” is a thing, so too is the fact that a lot of folks watch the television show at their convenience (DVR, iTunes, etc) and not at the appointed 9PM hour (and don’t forget: other time zones).

You want to talk about it? Find a forum online. Something that’s not the equivalent of “The entire public breadth of the Internet.” Or, if you must be on Twitter or Facebook, talk about things in a way that doesn’t actually specify what happened — I mean, if you’re trying to talk to people who are watching the show at the same time, one assumes they’ll understand when you say, “HOLY TURDBALLS I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY JUST DID THAT.” Right? You have ways of being considerate to others, and that’s what this is about.

Be considerate to other fans. And to a larger, more abstract degree, to the storytellers, too.

Again, you don’t have to do this. You can tell me to go chug a bucket of monkey jizz (SPOILER WARNING: ew). That’s fine. Like I told folks Sunday night, you can use social media however the fuck you want. You can spoil stories. You can be a human spam-bot. You can use it as a platform for your ugliest prejudicial epithets. But it doesn’t mean I have to keep following you if you do choose to use it that way.

25 Things I’d Like To Say To My 18-Year-Old Self

I often describe this website as me yelling at myself from 18 years ago. It’s as true as it is not, I suppose — certainly the blog is also me yelling at me from last week, or from two weeks hence. I like to yell at Past, Present and Future Me and, by proxy, yell at you, too. So, seemed a good time to write a more direct version of that, which is this list. It’s in part about writing but also about a lot of other things. And the secret is, it’s just as much me yelling at myself now to stay vigilant about this stuff as it is about any teenage asshole version of myself. So, crack my skull with an ice hammer, and let’s see what’s inside!

1. This Shit’s Gonna Take A While

Soooooo. You want to be a writer, right? Mm. You’re vibrating over there. So eager. Ready to have all your atoms disassociate and reform you into the complete and total package. You’re like a squirrel with ants all up in his butthole — just itchy to get moving. I have bad news, lad. This thing you want to do? This “writing” thing? Yeah, it takes a long time. This isn’t a microwaved burrito. It’s smoked pork shoulder. A writing career is a long, slow roast. Hunker down for the long haul. Know that you’ll get there. But you gotta settle in. Tame your impatience. At the very least, conquer it with the stubbornness of an old, cantankerous donkey.

2. Kick The Muse

The Muse ain’t your boss, big guy. She doesn’t push you around. In fact, most times, she’s the one who needs a kick. If you sit around and wait for her to show up, you’ll find that the words come only in fits of incontinence: a dribbled splash here, an unexpected pants-stain there. Your Fairy Wordmother dances for you, so shoot at her feet to get her shimmying and shaking. Listen, there might be magic in this writing and storytelling thing. But with that magic, you can either be its slave — or its sorcerer. You can be the one worshipping and appeasing, or you can be the one with the spellbook and the wand. You’re either it’s dog, or its master. The sooner you figure that out, the happier you’re going to be.

3. Focus Up, Motherfucker

You’re a kid, so I’ll afford you some measure of distraction, but eventually you need to stop digesting entertainment and start dishing it out. And not just entertainment, but stuff that digs past the topsoil and into deeper, richer layers of earth (more on that later). For now, slow up on the video games and the MUSHing and the sex… ah, right, you’re 18. You’re trying to have sex all the time, aren’t you? You’d bang a set of dressers if the light was right. All I’m saying is: comes a point when you need to hunker down and focus up. Put away shiny things. Rubber meets road. No, not that kind of rubber. What are you, 12? Jesus.

4. Some People Will Weigh You Down

One of the harder lessons to learn is that some of the people you want in your life are sadly not good for you — these are people you think of as friends or girlfriends or even family. Their best interests are not your own. They don’t mean to, but they’ll drag you down. They’ll point your nose in the wrong direction. You deserve better. And frankly, so do they. Sometimes relationships don’t work out like you think they should. You can’t force it. You just have to cut the rope and float away from one another. Maybe one day you float back into each other’s little patch of seawater. Most likely, you don’t. You’ll both be healthier for it.

5. Anger Only Gets You So Far

Sure, sure, you’re all pissed off at the world. You’re all fire and vinegar, all swinging fists and stompy boots. GRUMPY WASPS AND THIRD-STAGE SYPHILIS. Anger will get you moving — it’s like the first blast from a rocket booster. You want to spite those who said you couldn’t do it? You want to blacken the eye of the world to prove that you deserve to be here? That feeling will carry you for a while. But it’s not sustainable. And it’s not healthy. And — *checks your hands* — sometimes when you don’t have ways of processing how you feel, you punch lockers and fuck up your knuckle. Or you break things. Or you let that anger sit and ferment until it’s just a gutful of acid sadness. Let the anger go. It’s hollow fuel. It’s empty carbs.

5. Shame Is A Half-Ass Motivator

Like anger, shame actually fucking works. It does. Those twin serpents of shame and guilt chasing you down will move your ass forward — it works because you feel bad and you don’t want to feel bad anymore, so you make motions to counter it. But shame is a broken ladder. It’ll get you halfway there but the rest of the rungs are snapped. It’s because “not feeling bad” as a motivation is just enough to get you off the ground and out of the mud but that’s it. You need something bigger, something better, as motivation. You need to want to feel good, not just want to avoid feeling bad. Victory is rarely the product of avoiding internal misery.

6. Mistakes Have Value

You’re going to fuck up a lot. No, no, don’t get pissy — remember, I AM FUTURE YOU. (And yes, we have hoverboards and teleporters in the year 2012. And sex-robots and cyborg dildo attachments.) Here’s the thing: we are the culmination of our successes but our successes are the culmination of our mistakes. Mistakes and failures beget success because we learn from them. Success is a slim margin — a narrow door — and everything outside that door is considered error. And that’s okay. My toddler knows how to walk now — oh, right, you have a kid but we’ll get to him — and the act of getting up and noodling around on those two pudgy cake-pillars he calls legs only happened through lots and lots of experimentation. Translation: he fell a lot. Still does. Into everything. You’d think he was drunk. He looks like Baby Fight Club most days. Point is: you need to fall. Falling is how we learn to walk. It’s painful, but the pain is instructive.

7. Walk Before You Run, Dumdum

Ah! Yes. Speaking of walking — you fall, then you walk, then you run. In that order. (And after that, you earn your cyborg leg-pistons and you can jump over buildings. MAN 2012 IS PRETTY RAD.) This translates to writing: to your gravest disappointment you cannot just spring forth fully formed out of Athena’s head and write a masterpiece novel that will get you a six-figure advance. You will not at age 18, or 20, or 25, or even 36, be the cherub-cheeked darling of the literary world. You’ve got to take this thing in order. You can’t short circuit the skills you need to learn. So-called “overnight sensations” are like icebergs: you only see the tiny peak above water. Below the surface lies an epic glacial mountain representing all the months and years spent pushing the peak above the slushy sea.

8. Figure Out What Actually Fucking Matters

Some shit really matters. A lot really, really doesn’t. Everything can’t matter equally. The loss of a parent does not equal a fight on the Internet. The look in your kid’s eyes does not equal a bad review of one of your books (yes, yes, calm down, you actually get to be a paid professional writer, stop wetting your Iron Man underoos.) You’re going to be a lot happier when you start figuring this out.

9. Wow, You’re An Entitled Little Cockbite, Aren’t You?

Hey, whoa, don’t get lippy with me, kid. I’m willing to forsake a couple of my teeth to knock yours out right now. I got bad news, sport: see this pile of shit with twigs and bugs in it? The world doesn’t even owe you this much. You are not the center of any orbit, elliptical or otherwise. I sound like such an old man but dude, listen, things you accomplish are far better than things that are handed to you. Your first publication (soon!) will be the product of you putting ego aside and listening to some editorial notes and putting in the fucking work. It’s not their job to publish your potential. They don’t owe you a bucket for your word-barf. It’s your job to earn that space. And it’ll feel like the angels are giving you a full-body massage with their thousand genderless eye-nipple mammaries when they do. (Hey, read the Bible, angels are freaky as fuck.)

10. Mister Right, You Ain’t

You’re not right all the time. In fact, every year that passes my estimation of how often you’re right goes down by about… three percent, so at this stage I figure you’re — er, I’m — er, we’re? — in the neighborhood of 40% correct most times (and that number’s shrinking). More importantly, you don’t need to be right all the time. Yours is not the only way. Further, convincing folks of the validity of your argument is not best done with a 2×4 studded with rusty nails. It’s best done with a hand-job using a velvet glove. …okay, hey, shut up, things get kind of weird in your early 20s. Don’t tell your eventual wife about the glove.

11. Only You Can Fix You

You are at or near the point where feeling fucked-up — meaning, depressed or angry or having that hive of bees you call a brain freak out — seems like a badge of honor, like it’s justification to demand things from the world in a Fiona Apple-style THIS WORLD IS BULLSHIT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME STUPID HUMANS meltdown, but it’s not. The way you feel is not unique. And it’s not the world’s fault. Only you can fix you. Stop inflicting yourself on others. Like a weapon, or a disease, or a humpy terrier. I know, “fixing yourself” is easier said than done, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good excuse not to do it. Everything is easier said than done. Suck it up, Strawberry Shortcake. Get right with your head to get right with the world. (Be advised that this remains an ongoing process of maintenance and repair.)

12. You Must Leave The Idea Of Art Behind

For a long time you’re going to hold up the idea of “art” as a defense for… well, all kinds of dippy shit. Don’t like an edit? Art. Don’t want to learn how to write an outline? Art. Want to get naked in the college gazebo while guzzling Irish whiskey and singing AND I WOULD WALK FIVE HUNDRED MILES –? Art. Not an excuse. Set it aside. Focus on craft. Focus on skill. You want to think raw talent and the defense of art are everything and then you want to hold up James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and be all like, “Look! None of the rules apply here!” but here, let me squeeze that blister – You’re not James Joyce, knucklehead. You’re an 18-year-old dumbfuck with a self-importance problem. Splurch.

13. (But Don’t Worry, You’ll Get Back There)

Eventually you’ll figure out that writing isn’t this beast with a single face. You’ll see that writing is craft, and storytelling is something bigger, weirder, stranger. You’ll find the art again, like a sunset through a chemical haze. But it won’t be a thing you can control and it won’t be a defense for anything. It’ll be a thing that has its own measure of skill and talent. It’ll be a thing that other people see better than you. It’ll be a thing that is less ART in all caps and more “an art” all in gentle, unassuming lowercase. You’ll find poetry in language that doesn’t need to be called that to survive. You’ll find that you learn the rules to know when to break them, and you need to break the rules to learn why we have them in the first place.

14. You Will Leave A Wake Of Word Corpses

Behind you will be a miles-long heap of story wreckage. You’ll litter the earth with carcasses of manuscripts finished and unfinished. They will be mostly a steaming trail of eye-watering, nose-blistering manure. This will sadden and frustrate you. Don’t let it. Accept that in each were things you learned that carried you to the next one (“Oh, don’t write a novel in all caps? Interesting“). But also realize that there will come an evacuate your bowels or unplug the fecal vacuum moment (we don’t have toilets in the future, we have vacuums that siphon the waste from your body), a moment when you need to stop flicking your dick and get things done.

15. Creativity Is A Muscle

Creativity is not some external force. It is not the breath of the gods breathed into your mouth. It is neither gift nor entitlement. It’s an intellectual muscle. It needs flexing. It needs exercise. Discipline yields creativity. Whenever you put thought to words and words to page, you’re taking that muscle and making it bigger. (And when you do, you should squint and tell people, “Who bought a ticket to the gun show?” and then tap the center of your forehead and stare at them menacingly.) If you want to think of it as a more magical thing, go for it — think of it as stimulating the elf gland. There. See? Now it’s magical! Because elves!

16. Work Is Not A Four-Lettered Word

*receives whisper from an advisor* Oh, yeah, I guess it is a four-letter word. Fine, whatever. PEDANT. Don’t look at me that way — yes, you’re still kind of an idiot 18 years later. Point is, at this time in your life there is a very strong disconnect between “work” and “creativity.” You associate writing and storytelling with pleasure and desire rather than difficulty and effort. That’ll fuck you up for a while because as soon as a story reveals its inevitable difficulty or feels no longer “fun,” you’ll abandon it like a colicky infant in a cardboard box marked FREE COOKIES. This thing you want to do isn’t easy. Gird your loins. Which is Bible-speak for “protect your genitals from the flurry of karate crotch-kicks life will deliver to your junk drawer.”

17. Happiness Is A Many-Faced Beast, Actually

They say that the Romans had a lot of words for love and Eskimos have a lot of words for snow and Klingons have a lot of words for “why the fuck are you actually learning Klingon,” but writers — and perhaps humans of all intellectual configurations — should compile a great many words for happiness. Writing is happiness for me at this age, but that’s because I modified my definition. At your age, you powder-bottomed squall-baby, you’re upset whenever it doesn’t make you happy at that moment. You’re like a goldfish, unable to remember yesterday or gaze forward to tomorrow. Fuck that. You’re aiming for a deeper, longer happiness. A pervasive satisfaction. That only comes with prolonged effort. It only comes through learning and doing. It comes through finishing what you begin, good or bad.

18. Your Voice Is In There, Somewhere

You will for a long time copy the voices of the writers you admire. Lansdale, McCammon, Brite, Hobb, Denton, Moore. You’ll worry about what they did or do more than what you should do. You’ll try to sound like them. You’ll try to mimic what you love and emulate their success. Eventually you’ll stop. If I could convince you to stop sooner, I would, but maybe you can’t. Maybe it only comes with time and the confidence and instinct born of great effort. But here’s a tip: your voice is your voice. It’s who you are. It’s how you speak. It’s how you think and what you believe. The harder you try, the deeper it hides. It’s a sneaky little fucker. Stop trying. It’ll come out to play all on its own.

19. People Die

Sorry to get morose and bring this disco party to a record-scratching halt, but people die. People you love. People you know. And I don’t mean this in a poetic, Gothy-romancey emo-bullshit way. I mean, people die badly, without much poetry, and one day they’re there and the next they’re not. And that’s fucked up. But it’s also very, very important. Because you will realize that life is not permanent. The impermanence of the flesh is why life actually matters. Yesterday and today won’t ever happen again. Own that. Make progress. Do awesome things. SEIZE THE CARP. No matter how hard that fucking fish wriggles.

20. But Ideas Don’t Have To

People die but who they are and the ideas that form their lives and experiences most certainly do not need to expire. It’s why we write. It’s why we tell stories. Words are idea containers. Stories are our experiences committed to ears and eyes and minds. Books are the best grave markers because they contain so much more than the dates of our births and deaths. That’s why what you write should matter. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck around and waste time merely trying to entertain. Put yourself onto the page. Bleed into the story. Embrace the Viking immortality of having your ideas live forever.

21. Never Confuse Fear With Instinct

Okay, listen. Life is full of these binary pivot points, right? Where you can choose to do something or remain the same. Sometimes, remaining the same is the right choice: there will come a point where you will think about giving up writing because certain dissenting voices in your life suggest it’s the practical thing. But your instinct will tell you that you can really do this, that this shit is real. Sometimes, though, fear masquerades as instinct. It’s good instinct to say, “I’m not going to try to ramp this jet-ski over that feeding frenzy of hammerhead sharks even though it’d be awesome.” It’s bad fear to say, “I’m not going to seize this opportunity because, frankly, it scares me and gives me a rollicking case of the spiritual pee-shivers.”

22. You Have Died Of Dysentery

See? It’s a settlers joke. An Oregon Trail joke. Right? Old school. High-five! … no? No high-five. Whatever. Fuck you. Philistine. THE JOKE IS, don’t settle. Every year presents brand new opportunities to settle for less, to hunker down and get a “real job,” to quit pursuing that which you so desire. Nope. Mm-mm. Don’t do it. Fuck settling. Ride that unicorn to the end of the rainbow, motherfucker. Like I said: life is short. Fear is powerful. Fortify your spine. Cement your genital stamina. Build an exoskeleton of calcified confidence. Do. Not. Settle. That way lies a doorway to regret. It’s a door that locks and has no key.

23. Grow Up

Growing up means taking responsibility for who you are, what you want, and what you’ve done and will do. But growing up is also about knowing when to power down the adult side and let the crazy T-Rex that is your childish side loose on those poor goats in the goat paddock.

24. Haters Gonna Hate, But Diggers Gonna Dig

Haters are everywhere. Even inside in the form of self-hatred, and it’s that self-hatred that magnifies the hate of others. Don’t let that worm into the heart of the apple. Because just there shall be haters, you’ll also have the power of an engaged audience, of people who dig what you’re doing. You will find the audience. They will find you. You’ll arrive together in an orgiastic lovesplosion greased up with the heady lubricant and giddy froth of storytelling. Dismiss hate. Embrace love. Fuck pants.

25. Love Is Your Jetpack

Love, love, love. It’s everything, man. The love of your fans, the love of books, the love of and from your wife, the love seen in and felt for that spark of wonder in your child’s eyes, the love of dogs and friends and characters and ideas and other writers and other stories and love love motherfucking love. Love, as they say, will save the day. It will carry you. It will save you. I know, you’re 18, you’re cynical as fuck, black-coffee-bitter like you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t seen shit, kid. Go ahead and mock. One day, you’ll see. You’ll feel it. You’ll receive it as the unexpected frequency that it is. And it’ll give you reason to keep on keepin’ on.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

In Which My Toddler Helps Me Think Of “Character” In A New Way

Our son, the one we call “B-Dub,” thinks of the people in his life abstractly.

Example: if he sees a magazine ad featuring the car you drive, he’ll point to it and say your name. If he sees a spot on the floor where one of the dogs likes to lie down, he’ll say that dog’s name. But it can be even more abstract, to the point where it takes us time to figure out what the connection is —  like it’s a little bit of a puzzle. He pointed to a picture at one point of very grungy, work-dirty hands and said, “Pop-Pop,” and it’s not like his grandfather is some kind of filth-caked, rail-riding hobo. But — but — his Pop-Pop is in fact often working outside. In the literal sense, he’s frequently getting his hands dirty.

Sometimes it’ll be a color. Or an image. Or a sound.

But he’ll associate people with things both concrete and abstract.

And I thought, what a darling way to help us writery-types conceive of character.

We’re used to writing out descriptions of character — we may in our notes list a series of traits (selfish, two kids, has a pet monkey despite being allergic to monkey bites, is a zombie, obsessed with Law & Order: SVU). But it’s interesting to instead — or, more appropriately, in addition to — conjure a series of images that call to mind that character for you.

Say, ten images. Or however many you need to find the character in there.

A cigarette burning on a porch rail.

A copy of a 1970s-era MAD magazine. Shoes with clayey mud clinging to the treads.

A cup of coffee so lightened with cream it might as well be milk.

A monkey bite on the Achilles’ heel.

An infected nipple that looks like a human face.

Whatever, etcetera, blah blah blah.

Some of the images can be literal. Some more figurative or at the least more distant from the character’s actual present-day existence. What do the images mean? What do they say about the character?

Show, Don’t Tell is a piece of advice that’s mostly right and occasionally very wrong, but we generally think of it in terms of the end result — we put the practice into the prose. But here it we could put the practice into the practice, meaning, we can show ourselves rather than tell ourselves all the little pieces that go into the stories we want to share. It’s a good way to think visually and abstractly instead of textually and literally.

Hell, you could even cut images out of magazines and hang them on a corkboard.

I have a corkboard in my office.

Of course, it’s covered in images cut out from TIGER BEAT magazine.

Don’t judge me.

Don’t you dare judge me.

I guess it’s time to take down my spread of sexy Star Trek boy-toy, Wil Wheaton.

Flash Fiction Challenge: “The Last 1000 Words Of An Non-Existent Novel”

This challenge is a strange one. It came to me (IN A DREAM okay not really in a dream) and I thought, “Well, that’s a bit curious, innit?” So, I figured I’d float it, see who grabbed hold.

I want you to write the last 1000 words of a non-existent novel.

In other words: “the ending.”

Now, you can be a bit meta with this — the ending in your mind may be a tidying up, a denouement, or you may instead choose to write a climactic end moment before imaginarily closing the curtains.

Also, those 1000 words are a loose set of guidelines. Could be 500, could be 1500 — whatever you need.

So, get to writing, folks.

I’ll send a random participant an ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER mug, provided you’re in the United States. If you’re international, I’ll send you an e-book. Or naked pictures of myself rubbing food into my beard, whatever you prefer.

Your deadline is noon EST, Friday, December 7th.

Now let’s bring this utterly fake book inside your head to a close.

Terribleminds Merch: Mug And Shirt, Motherfuckers

It’s time to do a test run on some merch, see if it’s worth doing this in a bigger way (posters, hats, dildo cozies, hunting vests, chainsaws, Blu-Rays, Manta Rays, moon carvings). So, here’s the deal.

This sale only goes until tonight, say, 8pm EST.

I’m going to sell a mug.

And I’m going to sell a shirt.

This is what goes on the mug:

Or, the inverse:

The t-shirt on the other hand, looks like this, and has the terribleminds logo on the back:

The shirt comes in adult sizes: S, M, L, XL, 2X, 3X. Men’s or Women’s. (2X and 3X is $5.00 more.)

EDIT: For some reason the XL option isn’t showing up on the actual drop-down button? (Making and editing Paypal buttons is a bite in the scrotum.) If you order, either add a note to the invoice asking for XL or send me an email at terribleminds at gmail dot com.

The Penmonkey design is by the glorious Amy Houser.

The mug is $20. ($15 + shipping)

The shirt is $25. ($20 + shipping)

I have a Certified Penmonkey t-shirt and a mug (though not yet an Art Harder mug) and both are very nice.

Order through Paypal below.

Shipping right now only to the United States, please. (If there’s a real response to this and it’s worth the time, I’ll blow that out and include international territories. Diggit? Duggit? Good.)

Price includes shipping.

They will be ordered today and arrive ~10 days.

Questions? Drop ‘em in the comments.

Sale now over! Thanks all for checking it out.

Why My Brain Is Goo, And Other Updates

Yesterday, I crossed the finish line on The Blue Blazes, my next Angry Robot novel in which I write about the conflict between the criminal underworld and the Holy Shit There Are Monsters Living Beneath Our Feet Actual Underworld. The man in the middle is Mookie Pearl, big thug, bad dad, and ugly motherfucker, who finds both sides playing against the middle — and in the middle is the entire population of New York City.

It’s just shy of 100,000 words, my longest novel yet.

I wrote 10,500 words yesterday alone.

The book took me a little under two months to write.

I have no idea if it’s total ass or not. You stare at a painting long enough, eventually, it’s just a blobby mess of colors. That’s the book to me, right now: just an array of words, their quality and context unknown.

I think it’s good. Or at least okay. I know it has some problems I look forward to fixing in the next draft or two. Hopefully you’ll dig it — it’s a little more straight-up urban fantasy for me. High-action, lots of criminal goings-on, lots of weird monsters you won’t find elsewhere — no vampires or werewolves or vampwolves or wizardvamps or sexy succubi, but you will find gobbos, trog-bodies, cankerpedes, roach-rats, milk-spiders, Snakefaces, Vollrath, and the Hungry Ones. And a strange man named “Candlefly.”

The character of Mookie Pearl, by the way, comes out of a short story I wrote called “Charcuterie” that will (er, hopefully) one day be published in this anthology right here. (At this rate, I’m almost wondering if the novel will be out before the short story.)

I’ve heard some awesome news on the cover that will tickle your pink parts as it did mine.

You can, at present, pre-order the novel (which you could apparently do even before I finished it) over at Amazon and BN.com. I’ll assume the date of May 28th is pretty firm? Good stuff.

Holy Crap, io9 Reviews Mockingbird

“All those plot gears do not turn in a wholly straightforward way. What appears to be a simple “find the serial killer” story at first delves down a few blind alleys before unraveling in a bizarre and stunning way. And even when the story does move in a linear manner, it’s highly entertaining.”

That, from Ed Grabianowski’s review of Mockingbird over at io9!

I know the first Blackbirds review was fairly influential for getting people into that book — I heard from a lot of people who told me that review was how they heard about the book and why they bought it. Hopefully this review will do similarly. Check it out, if you’re so inclined.

Interviews

I have a new batch of interviews I have to get caught up on now that I’m done writing Blue Blazes (and I move into editing Heartland, Book One, and writing Beyond Dinocalypse) — though, I’m thinking that after this batch I might change how interviews are handled here. They’re a fairly small thing but even still, they require just that much extra work from me to write up a second round of questions and read as much of the originating author’s source material as I can muster — I ultimately find that with the writing and blogging I already do, it’s a tricky sitch to force myself back to the computer to go that extra couple of inches.

I’m noodling turning interviews into something more along the lines of what you get with Scalzi’s Whatever — a series of ten questions, say, about a given upcoming release (book, game, film, comic, etc) and the storyteller behind that release. Same questions for everybody, no follow-ups. Thoughts? The other solution would be to have authors write a guest post, instead — something tied to the unofficial mission statement here of talking about story and process and all that jazz, but I think the interview is a greater chance to bring the funny? Fuck, I dunno. Comments, questions, complaints, prayer requests, death threats?

In Which I Slather Myself With Homemade Ice Cream

I have an ice cream maker now, ho ho ho.

(That, written on my t-shirt not in blood but smeary chocolate.)

I made Nutella ice cream as my first attempt and it was guhhh drool sputter.

So good.

Recipe here, except I substituted cream for the milk and added an egg yolk.

Now it’s your turn to give me ice cream recipes and ideas.

Soon, A Merch Test

I will soon sell a few selected pieces of merchandise for a limited time.

Just to see if it’s viable.

Eyes peeled, terribleminders.

Here’s How You Flush Your NaNoWriMo Efforts Down The Crapper

National Novel Writing Month does not matter.

Not now. Not that it’s (almost) over.

It mattered before, sure.

It’s what stuck you in the ass with a stinging thistle. It’s what got your crap-can out of bed to pound keys and make the morning word sauce. It lit the fire. It sent the smoke signals whirling up into the sky.

Good. Great. Excellent.

Now it’s gone and — what?

Now: it’s artifice. Seeds on the wind. A placebo drug with a real effect.

I did an unofficial uncounted version of NaNoWriMo this month — not because I felt like playing along but because I had 30k written in the latter half of October and needed another 50k to finish a novel for deadline. So, quite conveniently, I had the proper word count to slot into November. (For the record, I’ve since written over 50k, as the novel’s running a hair longer than expected.)

Here’s how I could fuck that all up:

I could assume that November is the only authorized time to write a novel.

I could take the 50k I wrote and be done with it.

I could stop writing beyond the margin of the event.

I could leave the manuscript as the smoldering pile of word puke that it probably is.

I could choose to save it from the fires of a scorching edit.

I could choose to keep it away from agents and publishers and readers.

I could let it lay like a half-a-fish on a sun-baked dock. Rotting. Drawing flies.

I could let it be game over, goodbye.

The point is, writing is never about that one segment of time in which you write the first draft. It’s certainly never about 50k, which barely counts as a novel in most practical instances (here is where you chime in and tell me about all those novels that were only 50,000 words long and I say yes, yes, that’s true, but those are the exception rather than the rule, but thanks so much for playing).

Simply put, writing is rarely about writing.

Writing is about thinking. And planning. And rethinking and replanning. Writing is about rewriting. Writing is about breaking it all apart and putting it back together again. Writing is about running it through the gauntlet. It’s about editing. About criticizing. Writing is about the craft of putting one word after the other and then stacking them atop one another. Writing is about the art of the story. Writing is about the crass and unpleasant dance of commerce. Writing is about you first, and the audience ever after. Writing is about sharpening the words and honing the tale until it is as sharp as a thumbtack.

Writing is about more than that one month.

Writing is about more than the first draft.

Your work continues. Hell, the work just begins. You fought the first battle of a very long war.

Fuck winning. Hell with losing. This isn’t over by a long shot.

So: here’s what I’m asking you:

How’d it go?

And what’s next? Do you have more to write?

Then what? What’s your plan?

How Chuck Wendig Writes A Novel

This year, I’ve written — *checks psychic spreadsheet* — four novels. Bait Dog, Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, Dinocalypse Now, and (finishing up this week), The Blue Blazes. I also wrote a novella, Bad Blood, which includes the next appearance of everybody’s favorite vampire-in-Zombieland, Coburn.

By this year I also have — *consults little man who lives in my mind* — five novels out in the world. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Dinocalypse Now, and Bait Dog. (I apparently like ‘b’ and ‘d’ words. Eventually I’ll write one giant magnum opus called Blackdead Dinodog: The Baited Blood of Bad Bluebird.)

In the next year I am slated to write and/or publish — *polls the bacterial choir that lives inside my colonic labyrinth* — seven more books. Got the three books of my young adult cornpunk Heartland trilogy, got two more books in the Dinocalypse Spirit of the Century universe, have another Atlanta Burns book (Harum Scarum) and the third Miriam Black book (The Cormorant).

I do not list these things as a humble-brag (though, make no mistake, it is a humble-brag, because I am a proud peacock over here), but only to note that somehow, I fell face first into a novel-writing gig. And further to note that, maybe it’s time I wrote a post on exactly how this motherfucker right here — *points to me and the squirming bundle of sentient cilia I call a ‘beard’* — writes a book.

That’s not to say this is how you should write a book. I’m just putting out these breadcrumbs — you may choose another path through this dark forest of novel-writing. People ask me how I do it, so here’s my answer.

This is going to be a long post, so get some tea and bolster your fortitude.

The Idea Skirts Past My Orbital Defenses

The question for writers should never be, “How do you get your ideas?” but rather, “How do you shut them up to get a night’s sleep?” My mind is a moon colony constantly being pelted by little fiery asteroid-ideas. Ideas are not my problem: they fill up the ol’ brain-bucket pretty quick.

The problem is figuring out which ideas are:

a) interesting to me beyond the moment in which they are conceived

b) potentially interesting to other humans who are not me

c) potentially interesting to the giant amorphous blob known as the “publishing industry”

d) about a character in a world and not just a world

and de actionable, meaning, an idea that suggests a book I’m actually capable of writing.

If an idea checks each check-box with a jaunty slash, then I write that sonofabitch down. I write it down on my phone at first (sometimes using voice recognition if I’m driving or walking or playing racquetball or hunting humans for sport), and then later I dump it into a file I’ve created that’s meant to be a storehouse of such potential ideas. For the record, this dump file now looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves and shelves of crates and boxes, each a mystery container whose story remains untold.

I Barf Up A Blob Of Incoherent Thoughts

Once I’m ready to take the idea beyond that core seed of an idea (“Wouldn’t it be crazy if a cat was president?!”), I fish it out of its swampy mud-hole and hoist it into the light.

Then I start writing. Nothing concrete. Rarely anything that’s actual story. Mostly just notes and thoughts. And a lot of questions. What kind of cat is it? Is the cat a good president or a bad president? Will the cat have nuclear codes? Will the press discover the cat’s cocaine addiction (SEE YOU THOUGHT IT’D BE CATNIP BUT NOOOO THE CAT IS A LITTLE BLOW-MONKEY) and will that damage re-election chances?

The notes taken at this stage are almost stream-of-consciousness. Sentence fragments, mis-spelled words, grocery list thoughts interspersed in the middle, whatever. It’s just to ruminate on the idea. And it’s also to test the idea in a way. Is there more here than than initial idea? A great many ideas are dead seeds planned in fallow ground — they won’t grow a good goddamn thing. So, this stage of the game is very much about seeing if this thing has legs. Will it walk? Can it run?

The Critical Questions

I ask myself a handful of “cardinal” questions –

What is it about?

The answer to this isn’t about plot. It’s about the deeper, weirder answer. Like, if we were out in the jungle high on some kind of jaguar gland, I’d grab the idea by the shoulders and say, “No, man, what are you really about?” This is me starting to skirt around the idea of theme — the argument I want this story to make.

Why the hell do I want to write this?

If the answer is, “Because it’ll get published,” then fuck that. If the answer is, “Because it’s popular right now and will earn me big money,” then fuck that, too. If the answer is, “Because it’s cool,” then — drum roll please — fuck that. I need more. The answer has to be meaningful to me before anyone else.

Why will anybody care?

Some ideas are for me and for me only. I’d love to one day write them but if I think they’re too personal or too abstract to bring to an audience, I won’t bother. It has to be both a thing that’s meaningful to me and a thing that I hope will be meaningful to the audience, too. This isn’t the type of answer I can really predict; I do not live inside the collective hive-mind that is the aggregated audience. But I can generally spot a story that lives and dies with my own interest in it.

Who The Fuck Are These People?

Characters are the way through every story. As such, they are the most important component of a story — and it’s quite likely by now I’ve already got one or a few characters in mind for the story. Now it’s time to really hammer them into a gory, sticky paste and see what secret truths lie contained in those piles of steampunk gears and sloppy viscera.

Once again I look for some of the same things I looked for earlier: I’ll turn to a series of insane rambling notes turns into a test to see if these characters are interesting and readable. (Fuck likable.)

Just as I need to know what a story is about, I also need to know who a character is. And in the same way the answer must go deeper than, “He’s a cat who gets elected president of the United States.” Again the jaguar-gland shaman grabs me and shakes me and says, “No, man, who is the character really?”

Then the questions of, why do I dig this character?

Why do I think anyone would want to read this character?

What makes the character compelling?

Then: I suss out the characters wants, needs, and fears. What does the character need to keep going? What does the character want — whether consciously or unconsciously? What will drive him as a goal throughout this story? And finally, what does he fear? Obstacles in a character’s path are critical, and some of those obstacles must be bound up with the character’s fears.

Finally, I do a little three-beat character arc for the character. Three words or sentences that are meant to indicate the state of the character across the story — beginning, middle, and end.

Poor cat down on his luck wants to see a change in this country –> elected president, way over his kitty head –> once again a poor cat but now knows the intimate details of the democratic process and oh did I mention he nuked the middle of our own country into oblivion.

The three beats could be fairly succinct — consider the simple mythic arc of Maiden –> Mother — > Crone. Or, as per the vampire in Double Dead, Predator –> Protector –> Penitent. When conceiving of Miriam Black’s arc in Mockingbird my only three notes were: Selfish Vulture –> Pecking Crow –> Reluctant Raptor.

I Write A Pitch

At this point, I write a preliminary pitch. First a logline, meaning, a single sentence that sums the story up. (“A cat is elevated from poverty and is elected president only to learn that cats shouldn’t ever serve in public office because cats are assholes.”) Some call this the “elevator pitch.”

Then I write a longer pitch — under 500 words — that acts like a bigger, blown-out version of back-cover text for the book. Hits key concepts and the larger story without giving much away. In part because I don’t have much to give away — I don’t necessarily have the total story in mind by this point. I’m writing this for me in order to boil the thing down as a simple referential document.

Building Something Out Of Nothing

The Miriam Black books didn’t take much in terms of research or worldbuilding. On the other hand, The Blue Blazes required a good bit of that — but even here I did as little of it as I could manage. Meaning, I did just enough work to get me to the starting line. I know my own crazy habits and I’ll get buried in details if I let myself (“I just spent two weeks reading about the sexual habits of housecats”), so I do the work that needs to be done now. The rest can come as I write, or even in a second (third, fourth, thirty-seventh) draft.

Alpha And Omega

I figure out what I want to be the beginning of the story. And then I figure out its end.

Some folks hate to figure out the ending, because they like to be surprised. (To me this is the same dilemma of whether or not you want to know the sex of your baby before it’s born — to me, it’s still a surprise if I learn that fact at 20 weeks and that gives me another 20 weeks to figure out what kind of clothes to buy the little critter.) To me, the need for pragmatism outweighs my bullshit need for magic while writing. A houseplant survives on water — an actual thing based in reality, not the whimsy of unicorn dreams.

Here’s why I like to have the beginning and the ending in mind: because as I write, my eventual outline will fail me. It just will. No plan survives contact with the enemy and eventually I’ll be somewhere in the middle of the book, spinning wildly in the swampy mire of my own fiction not sure exactly what to do next. And when that happens I will look to the ending and I will say, “I need to go there,” and then I will march the story toward that point and eventually get the outline (which by now may require modification) back on track.

For me a novel is essentially a lesson in drunk driving (DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE THIS IS A METAPHOR): it’s me starting at the beginning and then revving the engine and speeding sloppily and swerving dramatically toward what I’ve conceived to be the ending.

The end doesn’t need to actually remain in place — I can change it as I go.

But it’s a good thing to have in mind as I begin.

Oh! I also like to have some degree of parity between beginning and the end, some elemental or thematic or even physical aspect that links the two together across the space-time-continuum that is the rest of the story. (In the Mookie Pearl short story, “Charcuterie,” it begins and ends with him pulling up at the bar with his friend and boss, Werth. Hint, hint, the novel may have a similar book-end.)

I Start Building The Skeleton One Bone At A Time

Time to outline.

I do not have a single way I outline.

In fact, every book has suffered a different outline than the former.

Generally speaking, I first figure out a four-act structure — beginning, middle 1, middle 2, ending. Two acts lead to a critical plot-changing or escalating midpoint, which then carries us to another two acts.

Then I figure out tentpole moments (aka SHIT THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN OR THE WHOLE TENT FALLS DOWN AND SMOTHERS US ALL UNDER ITS COLORFUL FABRIC) and then I write the key story beats that get me from one tentpole to the next and to the next after that.

Sometimes I hammer out critical story structure beats I hope to hit (a reversal of fortune, a key betrayal, a battle scene). I’m also always on the look out for at least one HOLY SHIT NO HE DIDN’T moment — some jaw-dropping pants-crapping event or revelation in the narrative that sticks you in the ribs with a story shiv. I like those moments. One of my favorite things is obliterating reader expectations in one fell swoop.

Sometimes This Stuff Lives In A Folder For Months, Years, Epochs

This might seem like the perfect time for me to jump into the story with a speargun and a wetsuit, but that’s not necessarily gonna happen. The Blue Blazes sat at this stage for many months until a gap opened up in my schedule (and, not coincidentally, this gap is just before my deadline to turn the book into my grumpy cyborg masters). Sometimes this stuff incubates in a folder for a while until the time comes.

The God Of The Ancient Grid Calls To Me

Spreadsheets. Used to hate the very idea. Now, I am married to them.

One spreadsheet I particularly require is the one that keeps all my writing schedule on it. I don’t use a calendar — I use Excel. I have the whole year planned out in terms of when my deadlines are and where the books slot in. (Then I also identify gaps and, ideally, figure out how to best use those gaps.)

I always assume I’ll write 2000 words a day and no more than that — by which I mean, that’s what I put on the spreadsheet. That’s 10k a week and, if I’m writing an 80k novel, that’s eight weeks or roughly two months. Now, I tend to write more than that, particularly if it’s a book I’m really feeling (Mockingbird was written in a month), but that then leaves me some padding, which is great.

As I write, I’ll also note in the spreadsheet “real daily word count” versus the 2k “projected” and that’ll show me if I did more or less (and by what amount). Most days are more, but inevitably I’ll have those days where I write less due to the vagaries of human existence (toddler meltdown, holiday, sick day, sentient cat swarm). That’ll give me a far better SITREP as I’m on the ground crawling through the word-trenches.

#amwritingmotherfucker

Then I write.

Nothing fancy here.

I write. I write with my head down. I write linearly, first page to the last page. I write without listening to the doubting voice that tells me I’m a total asshole for even trying this. I write without regard to safety or sanity. I write with the freedom to suck and the hope that I don’t. I write to finish the shit that I started.

Next Pass

I do a pass before I give it to anybody. If I have a lot of time, I’ll do a robust pass and take a lot of notes (almost a truncated process of what I’ve already gone through). If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll do a Hail Mary pass and run through it with a manic gleam in my eye and a clumsily-swiping word scalpel.

The Agent Pass

The agent is wise. I’m very fortunate to have an agent who was a former editor and who is a smart, smart story-thinker. So, she gets a pass. A very important pass, indeed.

The Editor / Publisher Pass

Turns out, the publisher has, y’know, opinions on the work. That said, my work has at present not undergone any epic changes from a publisher — the draft I send them has by and large been the draft you see in your hands when it’s published. This is, in part, because the agent pass is often a robust one (Heartland, Book One was rewritten many times over the course of a year before submission and by its end, ~50% of the book was drastically rewritten.) And in part, I hope, because I’m not totally shitty.

The Hands Of The Gods

Then it goes out into the world. Outside my control.

It lives. It lands. Hopefully you like it. Maybe you don’t.

But what’s done is done.

And then it’s onto the next one.

Writing forward. Always writing forward.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING: $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY: $4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY: $2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF