Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 237

Bad Author Behavior As A Response To Bad Author Behavior… Is Still Bad Author Behavior

So, this weekend we learned that out in Book Land exist these people– aka opportunists, aka “human vultures” — who will gladly make a buck selling good reviews of e-books even though they haven’t really read them. We learned that they can make fat bank in the process, which means we also learned that they are rolling around in the fatty grease of a robust client base. Lots of authors have plainly paid for a glowing review, which casts the entire review system (which is already of dubious value in terms of their effectiveness with readers) into a big question-mark-shaped hole. And we can all be sure that, deserved or no, this is going to reflect more prominently on self-published authors above all others, right?

Right.

(For the record, I have never once paid for a review good or bad. I’ve paid for sex from a Czech hobo, I’ve paid to have various implements removed from various orifices, I’ve paid to have those who have left me bad reviews killed in the streets like the gutless curs that they are, but I have never once paid for a review. Thank you to those who have left reviews regardless of my not giving them a big bucket of money.)

Here’s the thing: this is scummy behavior. We know that. We can all see it. There’s no integrity there. No dignity or honor or any of those other words. (Okay, admittedly, my first response was, We can pay for good reviews?! and then I started whipping out my debit card, but cooler brain cells prevailed.) More I thought about it, more it got under my skin. I was suddenly mad at both the guy who sold these reviews and the many clients of this type of service (reportedly including schlocky self-pub uber-guru John Locke with his e-book HOW TO SELL A FRAJILLION E-BOOKS AND ALSO A SMALL PORTION OF YOUR SOUL).

And then I calmed down. Because, really, who gives a shit? Assholes are assholes. They’ll always be out there. I’m not saying you can’t do something. You tweet a little snark, you point people toward the hypocrisy (“Please everybody note the scumminess of this thing”), you maybe write a blog post or contact Amazon to see what they’re going to do about it. But what you also start to see are the torches and pitchforks coming out. You start to see people leaving bad reviews in response or otherwise piling on. This happens with lots of bad author behaviors — remember that Greek Seaman self-pub author? Her meltdown was easily eclipsed by the authors who came out of the woodwork to condemn her and run her out of Publishing Town on a rail. I’m not saying she didn’t bring that kind of response upon herself. She did.

But hey, remember LendInk? The piracy witch-hunt that turned out to be no such thing?

Right. Oops.

What I’m saying is, bad author behavior in response to bad author behavior is…

…wait for it, waaaaait for it…

…still bad author behavior.

Trust me. I’ve done it. I’m not proud. But I’ve been there with a rusty pitchfork in my hand, braying for some kind of Internet Justice to be poured upon the heads of the offenders like hot tarry pitch.

But what the hell good does that do?

Here is what I’m suggesting:

Let it go.

Dwell on it for a little bit. Talk about it and continue the conversation when it’s productive. But then put it in a drawer. Lock the drawer. And get back to work.

Because all this stuff serves as a distraction and doesn’t do much to change your fate for good or bad. Whether John Locke did or did not pay for reviews matters little to my actual life. It doesn’t change the reviews I’ve gotten (or not gotten). It doesn’t change what’s in the pages of my books. It doesn’t adjust my deadlines (“Oh, you’re forming a lynch mob against that guy who sold positive e-book reviews? Here, let me move your deadline back a week, soldier”). I’m not saying we don’t have a right to be incensed. Nor should we ignore problems when they affect us or otherwise poison things about our industry.

But we should be careful not to respond to bad voodoo with more bad voodoo. Just because we see another child on the playground acting like a little ass we don’t get to do the same.

Because then the terrorists win. Or something.

My Official Worldcon Schedule (And Other Newsworthy Snidbits)

You can find the official WorldCon schedule here.

But, if you’re a bonafide bonded-and-licensed Wendigo Hunter and you’re looking for me specifically, well, then, here’s your best bets for tracking me down this upcoming weekend in Chicago:

Thursday, 8/30:

I arrive in an ornithopter whose wings are formed from the skin of the Mighty Humbaba!

Friday, 8/31:

“The New Pulp” panel with me, Adam Christopher, and Stephen Blackmoore. Ideally, we’ll be drinking. Or talking about drinking. 10:30am to noon, McCormick.

Friday, 8/31:

Mockingbird launch and book signing with fellow Angry Robot book-launchers Gwenda Bond, Kim Curran, and Adam Christopher. Starting at 7pm, The Book Cellar. They sell beer at this bookstore. Repeat: they sell beer at this bookstore. Also, it’s located in a neighborhood appropriately called “Ravenswood.” KISMET, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Saturday, 9/1:

Not much going on. Find me! Maybe we’ll do an impromptu unofficial “kaffeeklatsch,” whatever that is. I think it involves espresso and artificially intelligent Rube Goldberg devices.

Sunday, 9/2:

Reading! In which I read something! 10am – 10:30am, DuSable.

Sunday, 9/2:

Signing! In which I devalue (Er, “autograph”) your books! Or your boobs (lady- and man-boobs)! I’ll sign anything! A puppy! A handgun! Whatever! 10:30am – noon, Autograph Tables.

Monday, 9/3:

I flee the city on a horse made of fire!

Your best bets for communicating with me is via Twitter (@ChuckWendig). I’ll also be rooming with Stephen Blackmoore, which is frightening as I’m told he’s bringing one of his many clown outfits. If you find me and I’m shivering and there’s a little smudge of greasepaint on my cheek or chin, just do me the service of quietly wiping it away with a moistened thumb. Say nothing. Just nod and hold me.

Sweet Crispy Ass-Crack, It’s A Book Trailer!

Book trailer for the Miriam Black series? With me reading strings upon strings of profanity extracted from the books? YOU ASK, YOU RECEIVE. Put on your helmets and tarps.

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK BECAUSE BAD NAUGHTY NO-NO LANGUAGE.

(A second trailer will be incoming in the next day or three read by the inestimable growl of Dan O’Shea.)

Holy Shitting Shitballs, It’s Mockingbird!

So. Mockingbird releases tomorrow (next week for the UK audience).

*pause*

*freaks out, jumps up and down, throws chair through office window*

I’ll remind you that pre-ordering enters you into a contest by which you may win a buttload of my other books in hardcopy (deval… er, autographed). Email proof of pre-order to terribleminds at gmail dot com.

You’ve got till (now extended) 9pm tonight to get those pre-orders into me. I’ll pick tomorrow!

You can read the first 50+ pages right here, for free:

 
Open publication – Free publishing – More chuck wendig

 

Holy Fuckity Fuck-Otters, It’s A Buncha New Mockingbird Reviews!

Kickass Litstack review:

“For those nervous about sequels, pop an Ativan and take a few cleansing breaths. Mockingbird, dare I say, is even better than its predecessor, a heady feat considering the pressure of novels written in series format. Chuck Wendig delivers on the promise he established in Blackbirds. The continuing saga of Miriam Black never lags with its hairpin plot turns and freakishly ornate imagery. It is a book that, once consumed, will leave you famished for the next installment.”

From My Bookish Ways:

“Chuck Wendig’s mind is a terrifying, twisted, fascinating thing, and thank goodness he puts this stuff down on paper for the rest of us. Darker than dark, Mockingbird will take you on a journey you won’t soon forget, so fortify your stomach and settle in, because you’re going to want to read this one in one sitting. Can’t wait for the next one!”

From Crime Fiction Lover:

“Wendig carries on where he left off in Blackbirds. All the strengths which made it so fantastic return here – great pacing, taught plotting, laugh-out-loud language, and the empathy he has with his damaged protagonist. He continues to blend genres like someone who’s written 20 novels, not just two or three. This is part horror, part urban fantasy, part thriller and part mystery. All of it, however, is good.”

From Romanceaholic:

“Holy hell, that twist!”

From Kindle-a-holic:

“Miriam is near the top of my badass list and she does it without any superpower other than her ability to touch a person and know how they die. That and she knows how to fight dirty. The last third of this book is just nonstop action-packed don’t-interrupt-me-now-I-mean-it awesome.”

From Spacetalkers From Outer Shelf:

“It almost made me late for work. It almost made me miss my bus. It sucks you in (and no, it’s not a pun, there are no vampires in it, which is perhaps another point in its favor) and does not let go. It is fast-paced and engrossing. It is pretty much everything I look for in a good urban fantasy book.”

From Amberkatze’s Book Blog:

“Mockingbird makes Blackbirds look tame. Which I didn’t think was possible. The sequel has all the dark and wonderful content of the first book but manages to be darker and even more wonderful.”

Oh, and Amanda Makepeace did this cool word-cloud from the book:

Faster, Mockingbird, Kill, Kill!

Finally, two more pieces of Blackbirds/Mockingbird fan art (and remember, there’s a fan art contest going on right now as I type this very sentence — details here):

From Maggie Carroll:

From JD Savage:

And I guess that’s it. Hope you decide to hunker down and check out Mockingbird. And if not, I’d appreciate it if you at least spread the word. Thanks, lovely readers.

NSFW: The Collected Profanity Of Blackbirds And Mockingbird (Book Trailer)

Flash Fiction Challenge: Another Random Word Challenge

Last week’s challenge: “A Smattering Of Settings“

I dig the random word challenges.

It’s interesting to see what bizarre alchemical narrative computations take the simple lead of these words and change them not only into gold but, rather, a bevy of precious metals.

And so, that’s what’s popping its head up at the hole this week.

I’ve got eight words.

I want you to pick four.

These four must be represented in the fiction you write.

The words?

Cape

Joke

Senator

Hambuger

Laser

Gloves

Funeral

Motel

(If you care to know where I get my random words: this random word generator!)

You have, as always, one week (Friday, August 31st, by noon EST) to write up to 1000 words. Post at your online space, then link back here in the comments so that we can come check it out.

Find your words, and get to slinging ink.

Doyce Testerman: The Terribleminds Interview

Okay, so, I’ve had the pleasure of Doyce’s Internet Acquaintance (also the name of a dashing new cocktail, which you should create a recipe for in the comments), and the guy’s — well, you know how you just connect with some people? You just grok the cut of the jib or whatever? That’s Doyce. He’s a great blogger. A great writer. I’ve had the pleasure of reading his newest, Hidden Things, and I blurbed the shit out of it because it’s a book right up my alley. I said, “This world of wizened wizard-men and demon clowns will lure you into the shadows, and once you meet the characters who live in those dark strange places you’ll never want to leave. The magic matters here, but it’s the human touch that really brings the book to life.” It’s a super-fun book, so go find it. Then sashay over to DoyceTesterman.com, and follow Herr Doktor Doyce on the Twitters @doycet.

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.

Once upon a time, on the edge of the Slowing Lands, there lived a widower with his only son. The boy was very lonely (as was the widower), for his father worked many hours every day, and the boy was often alone. To keep both his loneliness and boredom at bay, he often went exploring in the Forest of Anything.

In all of his wandering, he eventually came upon a road; long and broad and straight as an arrow (you can find anything in the Forest of Anything, after all). He walked along the road for many hours until he came to an enormous house on an enormous hill; it was obviously the home of a giant.

Now, the boy was no fool; he knew as well as anyone that magical journeys that lead to a giant’s front step tend to end at a giant’s front step. But he was brave and curious, and while he knew he had to be careful, he also knew he had to get inside and see what he could.

So up he climbed along a trellis on the side of the great house (he was very good at many things that young boys are good at, and climbing was one of them), and clambered into an open window on the third floor. He found himself in a closet big enough to hold his father’s entire house.

Amazing as it was, the closet was still the most boring thing the boy would see that day…

[Read the rest of this story at Doyce's site! DO IT OR YOU GET THE WATER CANNON.]

Why do you tell stories?

So this is my family during the holidays. Let’s say it’s Thanksgiving, and everyone’s already ate and had seconds and thirds and they’re waiting for that to settle down a bit before they get out the pies and ice cream. The game’s over, so the TV’s not showing much, and everyone’s got some time to kill.

I wander into the living room, and the men — my uncles, my dad and grandpa — have set up a card table, dumped the change out of their pockets and piled it up next to each of them. The cards are out and they’re playing something called ‘rap rummy’ for nickle and penny antes.

And they’re telling stories; trading them back and forth like they do the cards, hardly making eye contact except for the punchlines at the end, voices low and rumbling and just a hint of a smirk or a gravelly chuckle. I watch them, rapt, trying to make sense of the rules behind any of it (the cards or the stories), and I’ll keep trying for probably the next ten or twenty years. Today at least I give up and head into the kitchen.

My mom’s there, with my aunts and grandma. The dishes are cleared and cleaned, and they’re having coffee and ‘visiting’, which is just another way of saying they’re telling stories too. These aren’t the same — it’s not about hunting, or some farm accident that could have been horrible and turned out funny — they’re about their kids, or their family, or their husbands, or (very rarely) themselves, and it’s all a little gentler, a little kinder and nostalgic and sweet. (But still funny.)

And I listen. I soak it up. This is how my family communicates. Never answer a question straight out if you can tell a story that does it instead. Never mind if someone tells you a story you’ve already heard, because they’ve probably told it a few times since the last time you’ve heard it, and it’ll have gotten better.

I tell stories because I want to touch the world and change it. And because that’s what you do for the people you love. Or the people you like.

Or (I found out later, in a different place) even the people you don’t like, because telling a story’s better than having to actually talk to em.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

It’s great that writing is a thing you love, but you also have to treat it like a job, because it is that, if you’re ever going to be successful at it. It’s helped me to have written as part of my boring old day job for years, because I get towrite, but also have to rub some of the pixie dust and unicorn gloss off “the process” and see it for what it is. It’s a job. it’s maybe the best job, if you love it enough, but still. Jobs need you working and producing even on the days where you don’t have a deadline — not as dramatic as last-minute cram sessions, but otherwise better in all respects.

So every day, you write, and when you sit down to write, you have to put down at least less than three sentences before you’re allowed to get all precious and artistic and say “Nope, it’s not working for me right now. I’m not feeling it.”

Do that do that four times every day.

That way, even if you have a shitty, non-productive day (where none of those three-sentence groups takes off and turns into a couple thousand words), at least you got one page down.

I’m totally stealing this from Roger Zelazny, by the way, because he’s a hero of mine, and because it’s a damned good practical bit of craft.

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

“You’ve got to feel it before you write it.”

What utter horseshit. Take the story in your head, write down the Things That Happen. Try not to suck at it, yes, but mostly just get the story out there where you can work through it until it’s right.

You can’t wait for “the right mood for this scene”; if you do, you ultimately won’t write much, and most of it will be something useless that doesn’t make any sense to anyone who isn’t feeling exactly the same way you did when you wrote it. Like poetry.

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

A good character — main character, supporting character, bad guy, whatever — has to want stuff. Not need: needing something is really kind of a passive thing — they must want, and then they have to act to get what they want in a way that’s right in tune with their nature (whatever that is).

Do that, and your hero is going to be someone people believe — someone they think about even when they aren’t reading about them. Do that, and your supporting characters will make people crazy with the way they keep complicating things. Do that, and you’re going to find yourself with a bad guy that you like almost better than anyone else in the story.

Do that, and you’ll always know what the next thing to write about is going to be, because those characters will goddamn tell you.

Bonus round: Haymitch Abernathy (or really anyone), from the Hunger Games trilogy. I think one of the best things about those books is the fact that it never feels like “Katniss’s Story” as much as it feels like “the story, told from Katniss’s point of view.” The difference between the two is simply that everyone makes decisions about what they want, then acting on them, without so much as a by-your-leave from the protagonist. Kat’s POV is limited, and we’re reminded of this every time she has to deal directly with another character, because – frankly – they’ve got their own shit going on, and aren’t afraid to let her know it.

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

I really like Midnight Nation, by Joe Straczynski. It’s not a perfect story, but it’s a fun read, has a twist or two that I liked, and comes to a satisfying conclusion. It’s fair to say that it shares a bit of DNA with Hidden Things, in terms of the tone, and themes, and the “weirdness in the background”, so there’s that, too.

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

Oh come on!

… okay, fine: since I did the thing with the kid and the giant, let’s go with spindle. Check this out:

Spin-dle (spndl)n.

1.

1. A rod or pin, tapered at one end and usually weighted at the other, on which fibers are spun by hand into thread and then wound.

2. A similar rod or pin used for spinning on a spinning wheel.

2. Any of various mechanical parts that revolve or serve as axes for larger revolving parts, as in a lock, axle, phonograph turntable, or lathe.

3. Any of various long thin stationary rods, as:

1. A spike on which papers may be impaled.

2. A baluster.

4. Coastal New Jersey. See dragonfly.

v. tr.: spin-dled, spin-dling, spin-dles

1. To impale or perforate on a spindle.

v. intr.: spindle

To grow into a thin, elongated, or weak form.

That’s pretty much a whole story outline, right there.

Favorite curse word?

I’m going to have to go with “horseshit”, because I don’t use it often, and when I do, it imparts a very specific value judgement.

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

If it’s just casual backyard grilling time, I’d prefer a Magner’s Irish Cider, please. If we’re mixing drinks, then a rum and coke (hard for anyone to mess up) or a vodka gimlet (if you know how to make them worth a damn, which I don’t).

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

Robots? Shit, I’ve been training for zombies…

I’ve written or rewritten dozens if not hundreds of technical manuals since I left college, so odds are good I have the original schematics for SkyNet saved somewhere on my harddrive, from back when it was a lowly Point Of Sale kiosk at your local Diamond Shamrock.

Also, if you need a guy who can ask one of those logicboard-frying paradox questions? Well… I’m no good at that, but I know people who are, and I’ll take you to them if you let me live.

Your name sounds like it belongs to a secret agent. Were you a secret agent (and I bet you are, but we’ll pretend you’re not), what would your favorite spy gadget be?

Without a doubt, I have to go with airboat. I mean, have you seen Gator? I know it’s not technically a spy movie, and a lot of people seem to dismiss it as nothing more than a sequel, but in all honesty I really think it was the stronger film in a lot of significant ways.

Anyway. Airboat.

Or maybe one of those pens that write upside down.

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

Hidden Things comes out August 21st (details on my website ( http://doycetesterman.com/index.php/hidden-things/), or just look it up with the bookseller of your choice), so obviously that’s taking a lot of my attention right now. Between then and now I’ll be at San Diego ComicCon to do signings and talk on a panel about writing The Funny in fantasy and science fiction. I’m also “doing something” at LeakyCon in Chicago (mid-August) and visiting indy bookseller locations in Colorado for signings and readings.

In terms of the next thing after Hidden Things, there’s quite a few ways that could go, and some of that depends on conversations with my editor, so in the meantime I’m just writing for the same reasons I always have — I want to make my friends and family laugh, and I want to know how it ends.

So, then: how is Hidden Things a book only Doyce Testerman could write?

As a whole, the story comes out of a place where I’ve spent a lot of time. Not the Midwest, but the spot in your heart and your head where you think about the people you love and wonder how you will carry on if you lose them.

That sounds pretty grim, but when I wrote the first draft of the story I could look around and say “I haven’t lost anyone close to me over 20 years,” and rather than being a comfort, what came back to me was the thought that the odds I’d keep that streak going were getting smaller and smaller the longer it went on. I suppose I felt a kind of morbid fascination — first knowing that getting a tooth drilled is going to hurt, and then wondering how much.

A lot of people reading and reviewing Hidden Things talk about how it’s a mystery, or a road-trip fairy tale, or a noir-magical yarn, or a lot of other things, and they aren’t wrong — the way I see it, the reader is always going to right when they tell you what they thought a story was about — but for me, it’s a story about losing people you love (through death, estrangement, whatever) and how you deal with it (or how you don’t). That’s the stuff that’s all me.

That, and the thing with the chicken bone actually happened.

Calliope Jenkins, the protagonist of Hidden Things: she’s a tough, whip-smart protagonist. And she connects. What’s the key to making a character connect with the audience? And Calliope in particular?

You need to let character’s live. No matter how tightly-paced a story is, characters need some time to be still and be themselves if they’re ever going to be come real people to your readers. They aren’t just there to deliver clever dialogue, or ask the right questions at the right time, or die during an emotionally significant scene. Sometimes, the tough, whip-smart protagonist eat cheerios for supper and watches the travel channel. Sometimes the affable, retired homunculous pads around in old slippers and saggy pajama pants because it doesn’t feel like getting dressed yet.

The best music improv teacher I ever had used to tell me “Don’t be afraid of rests. A few beats of silence is just as important as the notes you play.” That’s pretty good advice, really, for anything.

(You didn’t ask, but Stephen King is, for my money, one of the great living masters when it comes to this — I’m not ashamed to admit that when it comes to portraying characters that feel like someone you could (and would want to) meet, he sets the bar I try to reach.)

Anyway, the point is: give your characters room and time to reveal themselves – to become whole. I know I’m getting there when I stop thinking “this character is like that person I know in real life” and find myself thinking “that person kind of reminds me of this character.”

Hidden Things borrows from several fairy tales and mythologies to form a quilt of the modern fantastic: what’s your favorite creature from myth or fairy tales?

How could I say anything but dragons? They can be anything from bestial to nigh-omnipotent — range from foolish and comical to pure, terrifying forces of nature. Any mythical creature is really just another way for humans to look at ourselves in a mirror, and dragons are wonderful because they can reflect the absolute best or the absolute worst in us, depending on how they’re used.

Like us, they can be fearsome and arrogant and horrible and destructive, but also a source of incredible wonder and joy.

Like us, their weaknesses are born out of their secrets. I love dragons.

What are your thoughts on how an author writes and handles magic in a story?

My point of view is that when it comes to magic, there pretty much two ways you can handle magic as a writer.

The first way is what I think of as the straight fantasy method. The basic approach in straight fantasy is that magic happens, it’s different than what we think of as “the normal way to do things”, but it’s basically a quantifiable thing. If the main character in The Dying Earth does a spell, it will work thusly, every time, having basically the same effect, and the person casting that spell will be x tired for y hours thereafter, or whatever. There will be some wonder and mystery to the whole thing at the beginning of the story, but over the course of the book (or book series) pretty much everything gets spelled out to the point where magic is essentially just a second set of Physics laws that only a few people know, but which everyone has to obey.

The second way is what I used to call “fairy-tale-style magic” and have since started referring to as magical realism, because it’s a poncy literary term that nevertheless seems to fit. The basic approach in this style of writing is that you don’t get the “how” behind weird stuff that happens. Why does cold iron hurt faeries? Who cares? It does, so let’s just move on. I think one of the key elements of this kind of story is that a lot of the ‘natives’ in a story like this — the Hidden Things, I guess — don’t think of magic as being anything other than The Way Things Are, and constant questions about the Hows and the Whys make them roll their eyes like you’re a kid who keeps asking why grass is green and the sky is blue. It just is, kid; shut up and eat your ice cream. More importantly — maybe most importantly — is the idea that explaining the magic takes away the magic.

As a reader, I like both approaches. If you need examples, Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series is a contemporary example of straight fantasy in a modern setting, and it appeals to a lot of people, including me, if I’m in the right mood; most of the stuff Neil Gaiman writes follows the second style.

As a writer, I’m very strongly drawn to the second style.

Some of my friends have said that this is at least partly because I have a long history of playing role-playing games, and if I want to tell a story where the rules are all laid out and specific and clear, I’ll sit down with some friends and play a game, rather than write a book. I see no reason to argue with that; they know me pretty well.

Sublime Lines From Awesome Books

So, Joe Hill, at his blog — http://joehillfiction.com/2012/08/good-lines/ — did a thing where he asked people to identify some of their favorite and most impactful sentences from books they’ve read, and I thought that was pretty rad. (Also rad, which is when Mister Joe said: “For me to really enjoy a book, I need to hear some music in the writer’s sentences. I know it shouldn’t matter. Story is more important than style… yet if I don’t like an author’s voice, if they don’t grab me with the sound and rhythms of their sentences, I can’t fall under the spell of the narrative.” Uh, hell yeah.)

Anyway.

I’m posing the same question to you.

Because I wanna know your answers.

So. Pick a sentence you love from a book — something you read years ago, something you read just the other day, whatever — and post it below in the comments.

I’ll pick a random commenter by the end of the day to get a free e-copy of BAIT DOG.

Dig it? Dug it? Do it.

Ask A Writer: “How Do I Write What The Audience Wants To Read?”

At Tumblr, Pallav asks:

“Every reader wants to read something different from a fiction author. How do you reach that place which intersects what you want to write and what the readers want to read?”

My very short, very incomplete answer: “You don’t.”

My slightly longer and still woefully incomplete answer: “You don’t, at least, not on purpose.”

My much longer and probably incomprehensible answer: “Okay, fine, you can do this on purpose but really, you shouldn’t, because doing something like this on purpose means chasing trends and writing only to a market and becoming a brand and standing on a platform and cobbling together a product rather than a story and basically just, y’know, hammering a circle peg into a square hole — so don’t.”

Now, let me explain in greater — and less gibbery-babbly-rambly — detail.

It is time to choose as a writer whether or not you are going to fill a niche, or rather, emit a barbaric yawp and headbutt the wall to make your own motherfucking you-shaped niche.

Filling a niche means:

Examining the marketplace.

Seeing that hey, pterodactyl erotica is super-hot right now. Or, maybe being a bit savvier and saying, “By scouring the publishing trends and reading these here pigeon entrails, I can surmise in an act of libriomancy that the next big trend will be ‘Mennonite spy thrillers.’”

Then finally, writing to that market: “Now I will write the novel, THE BONNET GOES BOOM, followed by its sequel, THE GINGHAM DECEPTION. Starring Mennonite super-agent, Dorcas Brubaker!”

You have crafted a product for the marketplace.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with that.

It’s a fairly solid — if a little safe — business decision. You found a need. You wrote to that need. You created a brand for yourself and shouted that brand from atop your platform. Game over. Good job.

Oh-ho-ho, but consider the following:

First, chasing trends and predicting niches seems a safe play but also ridiculously difficult. You decide, “I’m going to write that pterodactyl erotica, 50 SHRIEKS OF PREY and then make so much money I can buy my own animatronic pterodactyl that I can sex-bang in the barn,” well, fine. But you better write super-fucking-apeshit-fast, hoss. Because trends are like storms. They come in fast. Make a lot of noise, knock over some trees, and then, like that — *snaps fingers* — they’re gone until the next one rolls in. And, by the time you bring your book to market, people might be burned out on all that soft-core dino-porn.

(This is, by the way, what happens when someone says something like, Vampires are over. They don’t mean that. What they mean is, the vampire trend is over, which further means, you won’t be able to just bring any old piece-of-shit vampire novel to market in the hopes of riding this trend because the trend already galloped out of the stable, so now your vampire novel has to actually be really, actually good.)

Second, nobody wants to read a “product” written by a “brand.” If they wanted that, they’d read the back of a fucking cereal box. Nobody reads a book and says, “Shit, Bob, you know what? This was a really great product. I’m really happy they tailored it to the reading habits of my market. I am crazy loyal and love the work of Kyle Snarlbarn, Author Inc. — I love his brand. I love the way he shotguns us in the eyes with endless adverbs and descriptions of pterodactyl bondage.”

Now, here I’ll add: I’m a little bit wrong. Woefully and regrettably there actually is an audience out there who wants to read products by brands even if they don’t know that’s exactly what they want to read. Right? There are readers who will read anything that even smells like TWILIGHT. My own mother will read anything ever with the words “Robert Ludlum” on it, even if that name was scrawled in the margins of the book with a permanent marker. I had this discussion on Twitter the other day that there will always be readers who don’t give much of a shit for quality in writing or quality of storytelling. This is true in food, too — I mean, a whole helluva lot of people don’t care that McDonald’s is basically the nutritional equivalent of wasp spray, right? They don’t care that it’s less food and more product of food science. McDonald’s is a very strong brand. And they turn out a freakishly consistent product.

Is that who you want to be?

You want to be the authorial equivalent to McDonald’s?

Do you want to write for that comfortable and wildly undiscerning segment of the population?

Now, to go back to TWILIGHT and Robert Ludlum — regarding both of those, you may be saying, “Both of those were ehrmagerd holy-shit success stories, you dumb, beard-faced shit-wit.” To which I’d say, correctomundo, senor, but here I’d also point out that neither Meyer nor Ludlum appeared to be writing to fill a niche — they did not seek to write products from the POV of brands. They wrote what they wanted to fucking write. They did not embrace a pre-existing niche but instead blew their own hole in the wall with literary C4 and walked in. Others followed them; they didn’t follow others.

Like their work or not:

They wrote what they wanted to write.

Which leads me to my third point:

Writing to a market isn’t particularly engaging to you, the writer. I mean, I’m sure for some it is — and if that’s the case, may the Force be with you, Young Skywalker. But, creatively, most authors write best when they’re writing something that speaks to them as a storyteller, not something that speaks purely to a trend or market segment. You should be excited about it. It should mirror you in some way: it should call to your heart, sing your pain, inject your life onto the page. It should be organic to who you are, not artifice cobbled together to meet an unscientifically-determined, uncertain and probably temporary market segment.

I’m reading a book now that was sent to me for blurbing purposes — THE DEVIL OF ECHO LAKE, by Douglass Wynne, and the book is about a rockstar who gives up his soul for his music, and it opens right out of the gate with a very strong paragraph and ends thusly: “I sold my soul, he thought, and it fit. Like a perfect chorus summing up the verses of his life, it rhymed with the rest of him.”

I’m not saying to sell your soul.

I am saying to write the stories that rhyme with the rest of you.

Write your story. Not somebody else’s story.

The audience will be there. I don’t know how big or how small that audience will be. But they’ll be there. The magic happens when that thing that speaks to your heart also speaks to theirs — that seems awfully “lightning-strikey,” and hey, you know what? It is. But I assume you didn’t get into this thing to get rich. And you can maximize your chances by continuing to put stuff like this out there — material of both quantity and quality. You’re a lot likelier to get struck by lightning if you walk out into an open field during a storm while carrying a lightning rod.

Let your voice and your style be your brand.

Let your best work act as your platform.

Let someone else worry about the product.

Ask your own writing or storytelling question at: http://terribleminds.tumblr.com/ask

The Music Of Miriam Black: Songs For The Songbird

Been a lot of folks asking me about music lately.

What music I like, love, favorite artists, albums, songs.

And in interviews — like this one here at Amberkatze’s blog, where she is giving away a copy of Blackbirds — they ask me about the soundtrack to the book(s).

So, I thought, fuck it. You want a playlist for both Blackbirds and Mockingbird?

Done and done.

Before I do, I’ll remind you that there exists a fan-art contest running where you can win a copy of a huge poster of either the Blackbirds or Mockingbird cover, and at the same time pre-ordering the book and mailing me the pre-order proof puts you in the running to get a big ol’ package of my physical books, signed. Details here, so make with the clicky-clicky.

Now, on with the music.

ARTIFICIAL NOCTURNE: Metric (listen)

LIFE IS SHORT: Butterfly Boucher (listen)

CONTROL: Poe (listen)

HUSTLE & CUSS: The Dead Weather (listen)

BLACK TONGUE: Yeah Yeah Yeahs (listen)

THE NURSE: White Stripes (listen)

ACID TONGUE: Jenny Lewis (listen)

DAREDEVIL: Fiona Apple (listen)

WALKING ZERO: Sneaker Pimps (listen)

ANOTHER WHITE DASH: Butterfly Boucher (listen)

FASTER, FASTER: Bree Sharp (listen)

POT KETTLE BLACK: Tilly and the Wall (listen)

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS: Sleater-Kinney (listen)

INERTIA CREEPS: Massive Attack (listen)

PHENOMENA: Yeah Yeah Yeahs (listen)

SCUMBAG BLUES: Them Crooked Vultures (listen)

BAD GIRLS: M.I.A. (listen)

BLACK SHEEP: Metric (listen)

MAN: Yeah Yeah Yeahs (listen)

LET IT DIE: Foo Fighters (listen)

GUTTERMOUTH: Bree Sharp (listen)

EVERYBODY KNOWS: Concrete Blonde (orig. Leonard Cohen) (listen)

PRETTY BIRD: Jenny Lewis (listen)

FOOL’S GOLD: Bree Sharp (listen)

TAKE ME HOME: Concrete Blonde (listen)

Sidenote: some of these directly inspired Miriam Black as a character. The Butterfly Boucher tunes, so too with Bree Sharp and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. Actually, a lot of the character’s origins beyond, well, me, come from those two Boucher songs: “Life is Short” and “Another White Dash,” then grow further out of “Guttermouth,” “Faster, Faster,” and “Fool’s Gold.” Miriam’s DNA is in those songs. (And her attitude is all Yeah Yeah Yeahs.)

If you’ve read the books, sound off –

What songs make you think of Miriam Black, and vice versa?

[link to playlist in iTunes]

Flash Fiction Challenge: A Smattering Of Settings

Last week’s challenge: “Opening Lines, Revealed.”

This week’s flash fiction challenge is quite simple:

Pick one of the following five settings/situations and write about it.

That’s it.

OH SO EASY.

The five are:

In the middle of a prison riot.

Chinatown during a hurricane.

In the Martian suburbs celebrating the Red Planet’s independence.

In a haunted mountain pass.

On the battlefield during a war between two races of mythological creature.

You have, as always, 1000 words.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Deadline is one week: 8/24, by Friday, noon, EST.

Craig Morrison: The Terribleminds Interview

So, this is an exciting flip here — the storyteller in today’s interview is none other than Funcom Montreal’s creative director, Craig Morrison. Surely by now you’ve heard of a not-so-little MMO called The Secret World? Anyway, he logged into the Giant Hallucinogenic MMO that is the terribleminds interview experience, and answered some question for us. Oh, and while you’re at it, check out this Gamasutra article where Craig talks about why MMO designers should be more concerned about the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what.’ Let the interview commence.

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.

Storytelling has always been inspiring for me because it is one of the most important things a culture can do, any culture …

***

Fireside

Vishna stared into the flames, the embers drifted upwards at irregular speeds, like all the voices of the stories, and he knew more than most. Arcing and twisting, changing pace suddenly, taking new shapes and forming new tapestries, albeit far less lucidly than they once had. Some of their subtleties escaped him these days, a plot-point could burn out before he had committed it to memory, a side character may flash too quickly to be sufficiently defined for inclusion.

That came with age.

As he tried to untangle the similar, yet distinct, voices of two of the more capricious ancient sea-song merchants, another voice interrupted, one that should not be there, a younger voice.

Loud, wanting attention, using his name, not an ember voice …

Vishna turned from the flames and allowed his eyes to focus.

“Sar Vishan, would you tell me a story?”

The boy was clearly not yet of Ember, from one of the rising castes no doubt, those with aspirations above their station. Daring to approach the fireside of a Sar. The boldness of youth. The idea of it brought a smile to Vishan’s mind.

“I suppose it would be redundant to remark that you are not supposed to be here young emberling. These flames are not for those of your cycle.”

“I know,” head bowed, “but my caste came far for this telling, and then I wanted to hear more than the tales from the blue flame. I wanted to hear your tales.”

Vishan held his stern demeanor, “Lucius and Amanda are fine tellers, and the blue flames tell the stories for your cycle for a reason emberling.”

“… but Sar,” Vishan could tell the boy wanted to reply passionately, yet hesitated. Respecting the elder. Good. His youthful enthusiasm was at least tempered with some teaching it seemed.

“Speak freely emberling. You are, after all, already here. In the circle of flame no words should be resisted.”

“I do not offer offense,” the youth replied, eyes still to the floor, “it’s just I have heard all the blue flame tales, and most of their variants.”

“No two tellings are ever identical emberling.”

“I know Sar.” The boy nodded, recounting the same line taught to every emberling, “The voice of the tale forever flows.”

“So emberling, you claim you have heard every tale?”

“Yes Sar,” The boy looked up, forgetting, his pride empowering a little impertinence, “all three hundred and sixty two tellings across all three canon, and the five hundred titled lesser verse, with countless local variants and a few regional interpretations my kin deemed sufficiently neutral.”

“Impressive for an emberling of your years. No doubt …” Vishan had to admit, the boy reminded him more than a little of a certain emberling who had impertinently followed voices many year before, “however, you disrespect Lucius and Amanda. They are my voice in the circle of blue flame, and are fine tellers.”

“No Sar,” head bowed again, “I have already attended all their tellings.”

Vishan raised an eyebrow, “Already? This telling is but only three days old.”

“I slept only when they did. Now they repeat this cycle’s cannon, and I heard all their tellings.”

“So you come here. This circle is not usually for those of your cycle, as well you know.”

“I know Sar, but I can understand these tales, I really can, and I shall seek to learn the meaning of those I cannot not.”

Vishan laughed quietly, “You understand eh emberling? You will have to forgive an old Sar. The arrogance of youth may be but a long passed memory, but I vaguely recall what it was like to have no fear of that which you cannot yet appreciate. Still your tongue, this is not a rebuke. Just promise me that if I relate a telling, to you, when I should be resting no less, that you shall never close your mind to meaning. The tales relate meaning and perspective even to those of my cycle, or even when told by a different voice.”

“I promise Sar,” The boys eyes burnt almost as brightly as the embers from the flame.

“Then we have a story to tell, sit down and we shall begin …”

Why do you tell stories?

Because I am pretty sure they would find another, less enjoyable way to get out, if I didn’t. A way that would almost certainly involve mental health professionals.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Find someone to trust for feedback and advice. On one level writing is one of the most inherently insular things you can do. Those are your words, your thoughts, your stories coming to life on the page, but you can usually take things to another level, one you may have thought you weren’t capable of, if you can find it in yourself to share some of the creation process. It’s the hardest thing in the world to do, but one of the most rewarding once you find the right person, or people, to be able to bounce things off, or get feedback from.

I guess you could argue that it is natural for someone like me to feel that way, as I come from an inherently collaborative creative medium. Very little ends up in our games that isn’t a team effort, into which many wonderfully creative people have had input … so you get very used to bouncing ideas around, and letting them grow based on that back and forth.

Oh … and read your work aloud whenever you can … I always find it incredibly beneficial to read my work aloud. That’s usually some really useful self editing right there!

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

That I should check my imagination, and that somehow writing ‘serious’ literature would make me a ‘better’ writer. I don’t feel you should ever try and dictate to anyone that they are writing the ‘wrong’ types of stories. There is of course much to be said for broadening your scope as a writer, but for me, I would hate to ever push people away from what they enjoy writing. You can develop and improve as a writer, or as a storyteller, in many different ways.

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

For me it comes back to the old adage of ‘Show don’t tell’. If a writer feels the need to tell me every waking thought of a central character, or constantly ensure I know their opinions on the events of a tale, I feel that you miss out on part of the experience with a good character. The truly great characters for me are those that can draw you into a story, and create empathy, if not always sympathy, without the author having to force feed you their inner monologue.

A good character is an audiences bridge into settings that might not be familiar to you, allowing you to identify with characters that might otherwise have been totally alien to you. The readers imagination and life experience will always influence, even if it is subtly, their relationship with your characters. You need to give that room to flourish. You almost have to leave room for me, as your reader, to create an ever so slightly different version of your character than you did when writing it.

Strong characters? Wow, so many to chose from, so many have resonated down the years, for many different reasons. Then I also like to ask an awkward question – does a character have to be an actual person? Let me explain … when asked that question its hard for me not to jump straight to those characters that first inspired me to want to create real characters myself. For me that was those found in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, although with hindsight and re-reading I often feel the strongest character there is the setting and the atmosphere that he created so brilliantly for that hot summer of 1922. It was a world I had no relation to, and no knowledge of, yet I was immediately drawn in, and fell in love with those characters almost by proxy.

My father read me The Hobbit aloud when I was a child, and that imprinted the power of storytelling upon me, but it was Fitzgerald that made me think about characters and creating them for the first time.

More recently, Aomame, the central female character of Murakami’s 1Q84, was a wonderful character. She had me in the first chapter and never let go.

How does storytelling in games differ from more conventional types?

First and foremost it is an interactive medium. That in and of itself is a huge difference. The player generally gets to be involved in the storytelling, often making choices, or branching the narrative in different ways based upon how they want to play the game. In many genres of game that means that you are often writing or creating many, many different stories, or variations on a story, to account for the possible outcomes of the scenarios in the games. Now of course some games don’t provide any real choices at all, yet still benefit from the interactivity. A game like Journey is a great example there. It is completely linear, and in game-play terms, rather straight forward, yet the storytelling is still spectacular due to the atmosphere that the designers created, and then combine with what the audience bring to the experience. So games can have all kinds of different narratives, it is really no different than there being different styles and genres of literature. Games are like that as well, the type of game defines the type of narrative you might see … even when you don’t expect it. Some would argue that even a game like Angry Birds has a narrative, of sorts at least, that plays into the appeal. Just why are those birds so angry at the poor pigs? Ok, I’m not sure many would claim it is a serious narrative, and many within games would hurl rocks at me for suggesting it, but it fascinates me as a designer. There is often narrative where you least expect it.

What’s the trick then to carrying good story across to a massive multiplayer audience? What are the pitfalls?

That’s another hurdle altogether and really comes in two important parts. With our style of games, massively multi-player online games (which all the cool kids like to refer to as ‘MMO’), it is often more important to create a believable world, so you have these two very different pressures. The first regular one of having a narrative to your game-play, and then the second of having a believable and compelling world.

In narrative terms MMOs have struggled somewhat with the traditional ‘hero’s story’ as it were because, put simply, we create a world which thousands, often hundreds of thousands or millions, of players populate. Thus it’s hard for everyone to be ‘The Chosen One’. To be honest we probably haven’t yet found the best solution as a genre for that one, and different games try to handle it in different ways. A game like World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic simply kind of ignore it and let everyone be the hero and have a world where all those players are simultaneously having the same experience. The next generation of tittles like our own The Secret World and Guild Wars 2 are trying some variations to try and make it feel more like a shared world, even if the issue is still there.

The holy grail of virtual world design would one day to be able to support player stories all being unique in a shared space, but the sheer amount of work and technology before we get there is daunting, and we aren’t there yet by a long shot. The again … I am writing this on my iPad … a device strangely like those Star trek wanted to convince me was science fiction just a few decades ago … so who knows?

Then you have more sandbox worlds, like that of EVE Online, where players make their own story-lines, but that is not so much creating a narrative as creating a situation where your players can create one. I think people can, and often do, argue about whether that really is a ‘created’ game narrative or not, as it is certainly not written by the developers, but is often totally compelling. So in those cases the storytelling comes from the players, because the developers created the possibility for that to happen, which brings us to the second important element

World building on the other hand often becomes more important than it can be in traditional literature, because with a game people can see … with their own eyes … what you create. It sounds simple, but it has a huge influence on the creative process. With books the audience is often ‘filling in the blanks’ as to background and how a place looks or feels. A game, like in television or movies, has to actually show the world. What’s more, is that in our genre, the camera isn’t as controlled or scripted as it might be in a movie, or even a mainstream computer game. The players are generally free to poke around and look behind stuff. Look behind stuff. It’s the stuff of artists nightmares! No getting away with the equivalent of a dressed movie set. That means that said stuff actually has to have a behind.

That can be extended on a kind of meta level too, in that players find these worlds more engaging if they can relate to the world you have created in different ways, and actually learn about it if they want to. What culture does it come from? What are the rules of this place? It’s actually a lot of fun, and part of the process I enjoy the most. You have to ask yourself questions, to figure out what something would look like in your setting. What would it sound like? How big would it be? Where would it be? You end up having to answer those questions and many more that you couldn’t have imagined before starting out. You find that as you answer all those questions you are slowly building up the world that you are creating, slowly but surely crafting same texture into things, and then starting to cast some shadows into the contours of your setting.

Recommend a game with your idea of killer storytelling:

The aforementioned Journey will pull at your heart strings better than most. It is an experience better left unspoiled until you play it, so just go try it! The entire game can be played inside four hours … four well spent hours.

In terms of more traditional narratives I am a sucker for the two Portal games. Valve have always done a great job with their narrative design, even if the silent protagonist thing isn’t to everyone’s tastes, and for me they really nailed it with the Portal games. People usually jump to mention a Bioware title, or the Rockstar games, when asked that question, but for me Valve are all too often unfairly overlooked in that regard. Those two games have such great voice acting, wonderful dialog, a twist or two before then end, are perfectly paced, never outstaying their welcome. They really are wonderful experiences from a narrative point of view. The writing merges perfectly with the game-play and the world design, and that is where the true genius lies. Nothing feels forced, and it all flows beautifully from start to finish … and at its center it has a wonderfully unhinged robotic AI with a wicked sense of humor … can you ask for more than that? Wait, yup, they thought of that too. The second game then ups the ante by adding a liberal dose of JK Simmons, I have yet to watch or play anything that wasn’t improved by a liberal dose of JK Simmons.

Sell us on The Secret World. Hell, even better, sell us on the game’s story. Why should we play? What will we see?

The team behind the game, lead by Ragnar Tørnquist, who is probably one of the best writers working in games, and has an insanely talented writing team, have crafted a fantastic world and mythos. It weaves modern myths, legends, and conspiracies into this amazing canvass that they have painted with some really memorable characters, plots and story-lines. The tag line we used to sell the concept from an early stage was ‘everything is true’, so in The Secret World you’ll find ghosts, zombies, werewolves, vampires, conspiracy theories, and it’s bursting at the seams with ancient secrets waiting to be revealed. This is a modern game inspired by modern storytelling, you are more likely to see a nod to Neil Gaiman or Josh Whedon than you are Tolkien in this one.

I am however completely and unashamedly biased, so best let someone else tell you! My favorite review so far has to be from the guys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun (great site by the way, if you follow games and don’t read them, correct that right now!) who said in opening “The Secret World is an excellent, intelligent and literate pop song with a thudding, repetitive ear-worm of a chorus”

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

1Q84 that I just mentioned, is a great read. One of my favorites in recent memory, closely followed by China Miéville’s Embassytown. With both I think I am giving away the fact that I am drawn to narratives that don’t rely on constant exposition to craft their worlds. I kind of like having to piece together the details myself as I go along, or get dragged along by a masterfully crafted narrative, slowly having things revealed to me, or even those that rely on the reader to pull some of it together.

Also, if anyone still wants, or needs, evidence that comics can tell stories quite unlike any other medium, you simply have to pick up Daytripper by by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. The most inventive piece of storytelling I have come across in some time. Even if you don’t ‘do’ comics, pick it up, trust me, you won’t regret it … not one little bit. Don’t read up on what it is about, just buy it, read it, treasure it, and you will, as I am doing here, evangelize the experience to others.

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

Just one? Hmmm, for some reason the word ornery got stuck in my mind when my wife challenged me to use it during a writing challenge some time back. It’s a good word. I almost seek out opportunities to use it now. Curse words? I am fascinated by curse words in languages other than my own for some reason, I tend to find myself swearing to myself in French rather than English, no idea why, maybe that’s my minds way of censoring itself, in the same way your mother might use the word ‘sugar’ rather than ‘shit’ when you were a child … or maybe that was just my mother …

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

An Irish Whiskey that goes by the name of Middleton, sweet, and all kinds of awesome.

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

I don’t know, depending on what we did to cause it, as it would invariably be our fault! I might be tempted to try and reason with the robots, and find some kind of logical loophole that would grant some of us amnesty from whatever wrath we had invoked. If working with software all this time has taught me anything, it’s that if humans originally made the robots, then there WILL be a logical loophole somewhere in the code!

If there really wasn’t, then I guess I would most likely be the annoyingly optimistic one with a plan. You know, the one that is invariably going to come to a foul, yet noble, end sometime before the third act.

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

The beauty of working with an online genre of games is that we are never done, and our medium is young! We get to create more stories, more characters, and even long term, more worlds. Ultimately I look forward to the next opportunity to create another world, and bring it to life for others to experience. With Age of Conan still rolling out new adventures, and The Secret World launching soon, we are also hard at work working on what kind of a world we create next. For me that is the best part of the process, creating game worlds. Whether it is deciding how to treat a license, as we do with Conan, or creating something from scratch, we get to build and create these incredibly visceral worlds. Worlds that hundreds of thousands (and occasionally millions if you are really lucky) of gamers get to experience, and they then bring their own stories to your world.

You almost feel a little like a proud parent in that regard. What we do is only part of the storytelling that takes place in these games, because each and every player is bringing in another chapter and character, anything from a would-be legend to a background character, they all contribute to the tapestry of stories that populate our worlds and make them unique. In many ways we provide an avenue through which others can tell stories, both intentionally and inadvertently.

I love the medium, and have faith that we have barely scratched the surface of its potential in terms of both telling stories, and empowering our players to tell theirs. It’s such a young medium, we still have much to learn.