Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 245

Blackbirds Giveaway

So, I’m the luckiest writer-boy in the world.

As you’ll note here, Angry Robot failed to notice the curious blue powder I drizzled into their drinks and, as such, were bombed into such a stupor that they decided to re-up with me for another two books. I know, right? What’s wrong with them? Whatever the case, that means that you’ll see a new book from me called The Blue Blazes, and a third (!) Miriam Black book, The Cormorant.

Somewhere in the last year, seems I’ve built for myself a career as a novelist. Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Double Dead, Gods & Monsters, Dinocalypse Now, Beyond Dinocalypse, Dinocalypse Forever, Heartland Book One, Book Two, Book Three, Blue Blazes, The Cormorant, and of course, Bait Dog. It’s like I fell into a big bucket of sweet, sweet story-juice. This in addition to all the other ink I sling.

I’m going to be a busy dude.

And, again, to clarify: lucky, lucky, lucky.

As such, I feel like giving away some copies of Blackbirds.

To win, go to Twitter.

There you will play the, “Tell the world how you die” game.

Play on fear, play on fantasies, be real, be funny, be sad, whatever you want.

In a single tweet, tell the world how you think you’ll die.

Here’s the second — and very important — part.

You must use the hashtag:

#carpetnoodle

Okay? Tag your tweet with that hashtag or I just plum won’t see it.

(And that hashtag will make sense only to those who have read the book.)

I will pick three winners. Three favorites.

The most favoritest will get a signed copy of the book mailed to them.

The other two will receive unsigned copies.

(All mass market paperbacks.)

Open only to those in America, if you please. (International shipping is a bear.)

I’ll accept these until 10PM EST tonight (5/17). At which point I’ll announce the winners shortly thereafter.

Go forth and tweet your doom! #carpetnoodle

Recipe: Faux Pho

This isn’t a recipe for pho.

I mean, it is? But it isn’t.

Shut up.

Pho, as you may know, is a very popular Vietnamese noodle soup. It’s popular because it’s fucking awesome and will blow your face open with comfort and deliciousness. True, one would not normally associate “face blown open” with “comfort,” but hey, life is some complex shit.

You’re just going to have to make peace with your gods on this one.

Pho is generally not pronounced as you suspect — “FOE” — but rather like you gave up in the middle of this already short word — “FUH.” (It comes originally from the French, “pot-au-feu,” which translated means “face-exploding-fire-soup-comfort.”) Though, I guess regional variants in Vietnam have it pronounced differently. For our mileage, you can call it whatever the hell you want. Foe. Fuh. Foo. Puh-hoe. Dave.

I don’t care.

Because this isn’t really authentic pho. This is the “I don’t have a lot of goddamn time to buy beef knuckle and make my own beef broth nor do I feel like roasting and grinding my own spice mixture because I have kids and a dog and two jobs and who else is going to make all this meth and oh god the kids have killed and eaten another mailman” version. Right? Right.

We’re just trying to get you into the realm of a passable faux-pho.

Here’s what you’re going to do. Put your oven on, mmm, really high. Like, 450. You could even use your broiler or the grill for this if you’re so inclined. You’re going to roast some vegetables. No, you’re not going to put them up on stage and make crass jokes about them. Different kind of roast. This is the “char on high heat” roast because roasting brings out flavor blah blah bloo bloo.

Onto a cookie sheet goes: one sliced sweet onion, one sliced knob (heh, “knob”) of ginger, and one chopped carrot. Put them in the 450 oven for… ~20 minutes, make sure it’s starting to get dark and delicious.

Now, into a pot goes: four cups of veggie stock. Homemade if you prefer, or just buy the low-sodium stuff from the store. Best you care to procure, I’d say. You could also use beef stock for this if that makes your nipples stand at attention. Hell, use whatever liquid you want. This is a very customizable recipe, so — dirty mop water? Bear urine? Yak stock? Dead mailman gall? Whatever you want. Go nuts.

Put some spices all up in there. What spices, you ask? Coriander seed. Star anise. Clove. Cinnamon. You can put them in whole if you so choose (and if you have them whole, you could go against what I said earlier and just roast ‘em to bring out their flavor YOU TRAITOR), but let’s assume you’re not some cocky gourmet and you have the “I bought this in a jar and it’s all powdery and snortable” version. (Sidenote: do not snort or try to eat teaspoon of cinnamon. Yes, ha ha ha, what a YouTube video that will make when your lungs are on fire and you’re dying in an emergency room, dum-dum.)

You won’t need a lot of these, because these spices go a long way.

So, my thoroughly unscientific measurements:

One generous pinch of each. Into the broth, not your nose. Weirdo.

Oh, and if you really wanna short-cut this: just use a tablespoon of Chinese five-spice.

Also: add a single bay leaf to the stock. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.

Finally, throw into the pot a tablespoon of fish sauce. Fish sauce is totally grody on its own — it smells like corpse-feet. We once accidentally broke a bottle of fish-sauce on the front stoop of our rented condo the day we were moving out? I bet it still smells like someone died there. But! Once it merges with a dish, fish sauce becomes umami-licious.

Now: into the pot go your charred onion, ginger, and carrot. Set to a boil, then simmer for one half-hour. But don’t just stand there and stare into its turbid depths. THAT WAY MADNESS LIES. Next thing you know you’ll be clad in only a pair of stainy tighty-whities on the side of a highway, one Jack Russell terrier under each arm, your nostrils crusted with coriander dust.

Sidenote: I sometimes like to add chopped mushroom in there, too.

Here, then, is a point of some contention — you would usually soak some rice noodles at the same time, later adding them to the soup. In my experience you can just soak them right in the soup. Drop the dry noodles right in there. They’ll absorb deliciousness. “Absorb deliciousness” sounds like the mandate of an insane kitchen robot. “ABSORB DELICIOUSNESS,” the Dalek Sous Chef screams!

I dunno. Stop looking at me.

It’s time to talk meat.

Once again, you have some customization options here.

You could use stew beef (which is the fake name I travel under — go to any hotel and ask them if “Stewart Beef” is staying there, and then I’ll pop out of a nearby potted plant and tranq you in the face). But for me, stew beef is too tough and going to need time to really break down.

You could use ground beef — sirloin or chuck — and in a pinch, this actually works fine. IF YOU’RE A LOSER. (No, seriously, it actually does work regardless of your losery status. I’ve done it.)

You could use short ribs, which will take a lot of preparation before hand to braise those short ribs so they’re not leathery bricks of sad-making dead cow.

You could freeze a steak (flank, sirloin, or any preferred cut) for 10 minutes then bring it out and very thinly slice it against the grain. I’m fond of this, but your mileage may vary.

You could also consider: mailman meat. POSTAL WORKER FATBACK. Mmmm.

You could use a combination of all of these. Whatever tickles your taint.

You want to cook the meat in the broth for as long as it takes for the meat to become delicious. The raw steak should be added just before serving (or those at the table could add it themselves).

Now comes the thing that really helps to seal the faux pho deal.

The condiments.

You will want some combination of the following available: mint leaves, cilantro leaves, basil leaves, parsley leaves, sliced green onion, bean sprouts, garlic, sriracha sauce, hoisin sauce, lime slices.

You want to know what I do? Of course you do. Just nod and stop trying to bite through the gag.

I take the following:

Buncha cilantro. Buncha basil. Bit of raw garlic.

I put them into a blender or food processor with:

A half-cup of olive oil. And the juice of one lime.

Then I blend it into a chimichurri-esque slurry.

Then I add that to each bowl of soup with a generous splurch of sriracha sauce. (Or, you could try what for me has begun to replace sriracha: gochujiang sauce. Which I love so much I wanna slather it on my body.)

Then I eat.

And my face explodes with comfort and delight.

25 Ways To Earn Your Audience

I keep noodling on the idea of how you earn — not build, necessarily, but earn — your audience as a creative type. I’m not sure I have all (or any of) the answers, but here’s a good shot at it. Note that this list isn’t meant to be a bunch of checkboxes — you don’t need to do all of these (or even any of them, beyond the first). It’s just meant to offer thoughts and options. Use what you like. Discard the rest.

1. It’s All About The Story

Normally this is the type of thing I’d put as the capstone #25 entry — “Oh, duh, by the way, none of this matters if you write a real turd-bomb of a book” — but it’s too important to put last because for all I know you people will fall asleep around #14. So, let’s deal with it here and now: your best and most noble path to audience-earning is by having something awesome (or many awesome somethings) to give them. Tell the best story you can tell. Above all the social media posturing and bullshit brand-building and stabs at outreach, you need a great “thing” (book, movie, comic, whatever) to be the core of your authorial ecosystem. Tell a great story. Achieve optimal awesomeness. Build audience on the back of your skill and talent and devotion. You can ignore everything else on this list. Do not ignore this one.

2. Swift Cellular Division

The days of writing One Single Thing every year and standing on that single thing as if it were a mighty marble pedestal are long gone. (And, if you ask me, have been gone for a lot longer than everybody says — unless, of course, you’re a bestselling author.) Nowadays, it pays to write a lot. Spackle shut the gaps in your resume. Bridge any chasm in your schedule. This doesn’t mean write badly. It doesn’t mean “churn out endless strings of talentless sputum.” It just means to be generative. ABW: Always Be Writing. Take more shots at the goal for greater likelihood of hitting the goal. One book is less likely to find an audience than three. Put that coffee down. Coffee is for generative penmonkeys only. (Homework: read this article.)

3. Painting With Shotguns

The power of creative diversity will serve you well. The audience doesn’t come to you. You go to the audience. “One book is less likely to find an audience than three?” Correction: “One book is less likely to find an audience than two books, a comic, a blog, a short story collection, a porn movie, various napkin doodles, a celebrity chef trading card set, and hip anonymous graffiti.” Joss Whedon didn’t just write Buffy. He wrote films. And comics. And a webseries. The guy is all over the map. Diversity in nature helps a species survive. So too will it help the tribe of storytellers survive.

4. Sharing Is Caring, Or Some Bullshit Like That

Make your work easy to share. This is triply true for newer storytellers: don’t hide your work behind a wall. Make sure your work is widely available. Don’t make it difficult to pass around. I have little doubt that there’s a strategy where making your story a truly rare bird can serve you — scarcity suggests value and mystery, after all — but the smart play for creative types just setting out is to get your work into as many hands as possible with as little trouble as you can offer. This is true for veteran storytellers, too. Comedian Louis C.K. made it very fucking easy to get his new comedy special on the web. And that served him well both financially and in terms of earning him new audience while rewarding the existing audience.

5. Value At Multiple Tiers

Your nascent audience doesn’t want to have to take out a home equity loan to try your untested work. If you’re a new author and your first book comes out and the e-book is $12.99, well, good luck to you. More to the point: you’re probably fucking fucked (you poor fucker). Now, that might not be in your control, so here’s what you do: have multiple expressions of your awesomeness available at a variety of value tiers. Have something free. Have something out there for a buck or three. Make sure folks can sample your work and still support you should they choose to do so. Be like the drug dealer: first taste is cheap or free, baby.

6. Build The Sandbox

I think I hate the “sandbox” metaphor because, I gotta say, I did not like sandboxes as a kid. What, like I want gritty sand in my asscrack? Hey, great, my Yoda figure’s limbs don’t move well now because he’s got sand in his plastic armpits. Oh, look, Tootsie roll! *nom nom nom* OH GOD CATSHIT. Anyway, as a metaphor I suppose it holds up, so let’s stick with it — these days the audience has a greater percentage of prime movers and participants, people who want to be more involved, who don’t want to just be baby birds waiting for Momma Bird to regurgitate new content into their open gullets. They want some participation in… well, something. The story. The characters. The creation. The author. Needn’t be all of the above, but something is better than nothing. Let them in. Let them invest emotionally and intellectually.

7. Sometimes It’s Just About Not Discouraging

Even if you don’t want to encourage — damn sure don’t discourage. Authors who bristle against fan-fiction are authors who don’t appreciate how wonderful it is to have an active and engaged audience.

8. Be You

(Ignore the fact that rhymes with “pee yoo!”) The best audience isn’t just an audience that exists around a single work but rather, an ecosystem that connects to the creator. The audience that hangs with a creator will follow said creator from work to work. That means who you are as a storyteller matters — this is not to suggest that you need to be the center of a cult of personality but rather the humble creator of many things. You’re the hub of your creative life, with spokes leading to many creative expressions rather than just one. Put yourself out there. And be you. Be authentic. Don’t just be a “creator.” You’re not a marketing mouthpiece. You’re a human. For all the good and the bad.

9. Um, Unless “You” Are A “Total Dick”

If you’re a total asshole, then it might be wise to sew that shut and instead just… make up a persona. Or have a computer do it for you. Maybe an AI? Hell, hire a person to be the public non-asshole face-of-you. This is probably bad advice because I can name a handful of total dickhole writers who do really well. They are true to themselves and are, in fact, totally authentic fuckheads who happen to sell a lot of books. I’m just trying to prevent there from being more jerks and jackasses in the world, thanks. Is that so wrong?

10. Be A Fountain, Not A Drain

Put differently: be a fountain, not a drain. Take all that negative shit, throw it in a picnic basket, duct tape it shut and feed it to a starving bear. The world is home to enough rank and rancid human flatulence that you don’t need to add to it. An audience is likely to respond to negativity in a negative way — is that who you want to be? Fuck that. Go positive. Talk about the things you love rather than the things you hate. Voicing your insecurities and fears and sorrows is okay from time to time but soon as it starts to overwhelm, you’re just going to start bumming people out. Who wants to engage with a sad, simpering panda?

11. Have Opinions

Some authors are all afraid of having opinions. That by saying they vote Democrat or go to Church every Sunday or they prefer Carolina barbecue over Texas barbecue that they’ll collapse their delicate little author platform (which is clearly made of fragile bird bones) and end up alienating the audience. I urinate on the head of that idea. Your audience is way tougher than you think. And if they’re willing to abandon you because you’re going to vote for Ron Paul or didn’t like The Avengers then they were probably going to ditch you anyway.Opinions are fine. They make you human. Why sterilize yourself and your beliefs? The key to having an opinion is obeying Wheaton’s Law: don’t be a dick and a corollary, Wendig’s Tenet, don’t have and/or offer crazy-person opinions. “I think all the Jews should be sent to the moon” is not a sane position, so maybe you just want to button that one up and go away.

12. The Passion Of The Penmonkey

To add onto that last point: reveal your passion to the world. Be passionate about your story. About other stories. About… well, whatever the fuck it is that makes your grapefruit squirt. That energy is infectious. And don’t you want to infect the audience with your own special brand of syphil… uhhh, “passion?”

13. Engagement and Interaction

Very simply: talk to people. Social media — though I’m starting to hate that phrase and I think we should call it something like the “digital conversation matrix” or maybe just “THE CYBERORGY” (all caps necessary) — is a great place in which to be you and interact with folks and be more than just a mouthpiece for your work. The audience wants to feel connected to you. Like with those freaky tentacular hair-braids in Avatar. Get out there. Hang out. Be you. Interact. Engage. Get sloppy in the CYBERORGY.

14. Head’s Up: Social Media Is Not Your Priority

Special attention must be made: social media is a side dish, it is not your main burrito. See #1 on this list.

15. Fuck The Numbers

Just as I exhort you to be a human being and not an author carved out of marble, I suggest you look at all those with whom you interact on social media as people, too. They’re not resources. They’re not a number. They’re not “followers” — yes, fine, they might be called that, but (excepting a few camouflaged spam-bots hell-bent on dissecting your life and, one day, your actual body) they’re people. Sure, as you gaze out over an audience the heads and faces start to blur together in as if in a a pointillist painting, but remember that the audience is made up of people. AND PEOPLE ARE DELICIOUS. Uhh. I mean, people are really cool.

16. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

An earnest plea to your existing audience to help you find and earn new audience would not go remiss, provided you’re not a total shit-cock about it.

17. Share Knowledge

As you learn things about the process, share them with others. Free exchange of information is awesome — if I may toot the horn of one of my publishers, this is why Evil Hat gets a lot of love and continues to find new fans. Evil Hat shares all the data they can manage. It’s insightful and compelling and human. This doesn’t mean being a pedant about it — “Here are my experiences” is a lot different than “YOU’RE WRONG AND HERE’S WHY, LACKWIT.” It just means being open and honest. It means being useful. We like useful people. We like folks who will walk out onto the ice floe naked and report back with their findings. “Day Three: Testicles have crawled up inside my trachea. Seals have eaten my feet. Send cookies.”

18. Shake Hands, Kiss Babies

The real world is awesome. They call it “meatspace” because you can go out there and eat meat. You can even hunt and kill your own sources of meat. And, while out there, you are encouraged to share meat with other human beings. Kiss some hands and shake some babies. Face-to-face interaction is probably worth more than that you get over social media. And, if someone responds poorly to your physical presence, kill them. They then become meat which you may eat and share with other humans. Mmm. Long pork.

19. Embrace Feedback

Reviews, critiques, commentary, conversation — feedback is good even when it’s bad. When it’s bad, all you have to do is ignore or. Or politely say, “I’ll consider that!” and in the privacy of your own home print out the feedback and urinate on it with wanton disregard. When it’s good, it’s fucking stellar, and connects you all the more deeply to the audience. The audience is now a part of your feedback loop, like or or not.

20. Do Set Boundaries

That feedback loop is not absolute. I’m not a strong believer in creative integrity as an indestructible, indefatigable “thing” — but, I recognize that being a single-minded creator requires some ego. Further, the reality is that once something is “out there” it is what it is and there ain’t poop-squat you can do about it. So, you have to know when to turn off comments or back away from social media or just set personal and unspoken boundaries for yourself. Just because we interact with our audience doesn’t mean we are subject to their stompy boots and groping hands. I mean, unless you’re into that sort of thing.

21. Be Generous With Time And Tale

Put yourself and your work out there. To reviewers. To interviewers. To that hobo on the street who will run up to bike messengers and beat them about the head and neck with your book.

22. Foster Other Creative Types

You’re not a lone author batting back the tides with his magnum opus novel. You’re not the only creator who’s ever wanted to write a movie or ink a comic book. Other creative types are out there. And you love them. They’re why you do what you do — I’m a writer because other writers have given me so much and shown me the way. Like that time Stephen King and I went fishing down at the creek and he taught me how to bait a hook and then afterward we made out under the willow tree and we both fought a giant spider in the sewers. Or something. I may be misremembering. Point is, you have peers in the creative realm and you’re also audience yourself — so, forge the community foster other creators. Don’t just bring people to your tent. Point them to other tents, too.

23. Don’t Wrassle Gators If You’re Not A Good Gator Wrassler

What I mean is, don’t try to be something you’re not. If you’re not good in public, for fuck’s sake, don’t go out in public. If writing guest blogs is not your thing… well, maybe don’t write a guest blog. Again, this isn’t a list where you need to check off every box. These are just options. Avoid those that plunge you into a churning pool of discomfort. You don’t want to lose audience more audience than you earn.

24. Take Your Time

Earning your audience won’t happen overnight. You don’t plant a single seed and expect to see a lush garden grown up by morning. This takes time and work and patience and, y’know, you earn the attention of other fine humans one set of eyeballs at a time. It’s why you put yourself out there again and again.

25. Have Fun, For Fuck’s Sake

If it feels like what you’re doing is some kind of onerous, odious chore, I’m going to tune out. OMG A THOUSAND SISYPHEAN MISERIES, you cry, wailing and gnashing your teeth with every grumpy tweet and every miserably-written short story. Hey. Relax. Enjoy yourself. This isn’t supposed to be torture. You should have fun for two reasons: first, because, people can sense when you’re just phoning it in or worse, when you’re just a mope. Second, because fun is fun. Do you hate fun? Why? I like writing. I like putting my work out there. I like interacting with people in person and online. If you don’t like these things? Don’t do them! Why would you punish yourself like that? It’s like watching you stand there stuffing your face full of candy you hate. “Mmmphh these Swedish fish are so gross grrpphmble oh god stupid gross Necco wafers mmmphhchewchewchew I hate myself so bad right now.” Don’t put yourself through that. And don’t put your (potential) audience through that, either.

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Bing Bing Bing Bing Bang, Popcorn!

And, boom. Publishers Weekly broke the news:

I’m pleased to announce that my Heartland young adult “cornpunk” trilogy — starting with the book known presently as POPCORN — will be published by Amazon Children’s Publishing. From the article:

Marilyn Brigham at Amazon’s Children’s Publishing bought world rights, for six figures at auction, to Chuck Wendig’s Heartland trilogy. Agent Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency brokered the deal. The series follows a 17-year-old who discovers a secret garden full of rare vegetables in a world where the government only allows the growing of genetically modified corn.

I wrote the first draft of this book last year just after my son was born, and thanks to the mighty wisdom of my agent (and fellow Team Decker author Joelle Charbonneau) was able to cycle it through a couple very robust edits. And, around one year later, it went out on submission and — after tangoing with a few publishers — ended up in very good hands. I’m very excited, totally over the moon, dizzy with disbelief.

I’m told that grown men don’t squee.

But I think it’s time we did.

EEEEEEEEE.

*swoons*

*falls down cellar steps, breaks ankle*

Full piece here at Publisher’s Weekly.

Other News

Hey, remember Double Dead? Remember that cantankerous old vampire, Coburn — the one vampire in a land of zombies? Mmmyeah, well, he’s back. The e-novella sequel to that book has arrived. It’s called Bad Blood and you can find it at Amazon or B&N, baby. Ketamine cult! Angry children! Lots of zombies! The hills of San Francisco! Alcatraz! And maybe, just maybe, more vampires. Check it, won’t you?

And I feel compelled to again mention Dinocalypse Now — two-fisted jetpack kilt-wearing-ape Atlantean magic psychic dinosaur fun! Click here to pre-order print or to get the e-book (which is available now).

I guest over at the Vodka O’ Clock podcast where I say inappropriate things about the Easter Bunny.

Blackbirds is now rocking 48 very kind reviews at Amazon, and also has garnered another bevy of lovely reviews scattered like knucklebones across the web (links at the bottom of this post). Also, keep your eyes out later this week — I’ll be giving away three copies of the book (print) in a little contest. If you have read the book and feel so inclined to leave another review somewhere, I’d be very gracious. So gracious, in fact, that I will take you for a ride to the moon in my unicorn Lamborghini which is made of dodo bones and smells like cupcakes baked in an angel’s mind and oh hey I think the acid is kicking in.

More Blackbirds Reviews!

http://www.theeloquentpage.co.uk/2012/05/01/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2012/04/24/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig-review/

http://notjustnonsense.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://amberkatze.blogspot.com/2012/05/65-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/2012/05/rabid-reads-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://lilyelement.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-blackbirds.html

http://allthingsurbanfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://a-fantastical-librarian.blogspot.com/2012/05/chuck-wendig-blackbirds.html

http://eyewryte.blogspot.com/2012/05/blackbirds-miriam-black-1-by-chuck.html

http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/2012/05/10/book-review-blackbirds/

http://whirlingnerdish.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://muchlovedbooks.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://thefoundingfields.com/2012/05/miriam-black-blackbirds-chuck-wending-book-review-bane-kings/

http://www.elizabethawhite.com/2012/05/09/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/

http://bwmathews.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/book-review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig-angry-robot-books/

http://popculturenerd.com/2012/05/08/book-review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig

http://bunnycates.com/reading/2012/05/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/

http://scotspec.blogspot.com/2012/05/book-review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

http://www.thenovelblog.com/tnbReviews.aspx?id=1435

http://www.erikreads.com/Book%20Reviews/2012/05/03/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/

http://damosays.com/journal/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/

 

On The Privilege Of Being A Writer

My mother’s father was a coal miner. (Died of black lung.)

My father’s father was a farmer. Sun up to sun down.

My father worked 4AM to 4PM in a chemical-rich pigment factory.

My mother cleaned houses. Day in, day out, back-breaking work.

I am a writer. I sit in a fairly comfy office chair put words down on screens and on paper and I tell stories. And outside my window is a pretty forest and lots of sunlight and my walls are a bright and optimistic green. I have a terrier who sometimes warms my feet (or tries to kill me with her intestinal miasma).

It’s pretty cushy business, this writing gig.

Now, here’s the thing. I don’t think that what I do is not work. It is hard work. It is real work. Stories matter. Art matters. What we do is a craft and it takes some mad combination of skill and talent to both survive and thrive, and I’m not going to take that away from myself or any other hardworking ass-busting wordsmith out there. It can be mentally exhausting. It can leave me worn and tattered and gutted like a rotten stump. Some days the words run free like rabbits. Others are like pulling teeth out of a rabid dog.

Just the same, I think it’s important to find a little perspective. A little… appreciation. Because being a writer — being allowed to earn a living doing what I do — is obscenely delightful, unwholesome in its privilege. I’m a lucky fuck. I’m lucky I don’t have to wreck my body and break my bones and come home dirty and pissed off and ruined doing something I don’t want to do. I’m not saying that there’s not room for complaints. Or room for improvement or examination or a place to talk about our struggles and our fears. But I think from time to time it’s a good idea to stop and sit back and say, “At least I’m not castrating llamas or mopping up the floor at a porn store.” I think it’s a good idea sometimes to say, “This thing we do, it’s pretty great and we’re pretty lucky to be able to do it.” Because it is. And we are.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Over The Top Pulp Insanity

Last week’s challenge: “Must Love Dinosaurs.”

So, Dinocalypse Now is out and so too is the e-novella sequel to Double Dead (called Bad Blood, featuring the continuing adventures of Coburn the vampire in a zombiepocalypse), I feel like I want to stick in the realm of “over the top pulp” — between the two books I throw at the audience everything from jet-packs to kilted gorilla professors to Ketamine cults to zombie-hunting orphans to shark-men to… well, the list goes on. That further calls to mind those images online where a robot Abe Lincoln is shooting fire out of his eyes at a giant city-destroying brain-in-a-jar, and the sky is filled with F-16s fighting pterodactyls and…

Well, you get the point.

Crazy pulp shiznit.

Because it’s awesome.

So!

Your task this week is to go apeshit.

To go moonbat.

To go cuh-razy with the over-the-top pulp weirdness.

Whatever that means to you — “pulp insanity” — just run with it. For up to 1000 words. You know the drill: post at your space, link back here so we can all see it. You’ve got a week. Due by noon, Friday, May 18th.

On The General Weirdness Of Having “Fans”

(Thursday interviews will return next week, I promise!)

I’ve noticed something over the last year.

I have fans.

I don’t say this to brag — I certainly don’t know that I deserve to have fans and I know of many great writers who do. But the fact remains that a number of people over the last year have identified themselves to me (via e-mail or tweet or even in-person) as “fans.”

Not readers. Not my “audience.” Not… y’know, people who just follow the blog.

Fans.

It bakes the noodle, it does. What the hell did I do to deserve fans? And just to be clear, I don’t use “fans” as a pejorative — I consider it a somewhat exalted (and certainly lucky) state to have your audience interact with you as more than just a passive audience and as an active and interested fanbase.

Readers help make a book. Fans help make a writer’s career.

So, this is not me looking down on fans but rather, looking up in wide-eyed weird-ass wonder.

Part of the reason this is crystallizing for me is this Guardian article yesterday.

The article, by Damien Walter, asserts that (from the article’s title): “Fandom matters: writers must respect their followers or pay with their careers.” It’s for many authors a rough and troubling assertion — in it is the suggestion that the book (or movie or comic or whatever) is not enough (and, taken to an illogical degree, may not even matter). I don’t know that I’m willing to say that a good book isn’t enough, nor would I put it all on the line to say that you need to have a fanbase or your work will be born into this world DOA.

You’ll also note that, to my shock and awe, I am name-checked in the article. (Thanks, Damien!) Specifically in regards to this blog right here and the success of the next Atlanta Burns book, Bait Dog.

What I will say is that, having fans really really helps. Because you have people who identify with you, who join with your… I dunno, your creative ecosystem, let’s call it. Again, these aren’t readers of a single book or viewers of a single television show. They’re folks who will follow you from project to project, regardless of what it is. I know that I’m a fan of certain creators (a quick-and-dirty list: Robin Hobb, David Fincher, Robert McCammon, Joe Lansdale, Christopher Moore, Jane Espenson) that whatever the hell they do, I’m there. I’m there with a big shit-eating grin and a tub of popcorn and a big wad of whatever money they want. I’m there because I love their work. I’m there because I dig them as creators, too — I think they’re interesting on a level beyond just the work they put out as auteurs.

You might say, “Well, what’s different now? This isn’t new.” And it’s not that the phenomenon is new — I’m sure Aeneas and Homer each had fanbase of which to speak (“I FUCKING LOVE SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS DUDE”). But the opportunity to engage with audiences and earn fans (note that keyword: “earn”) is bigger, now. You can in fact earn those fans long before you have a proper “[insert commercial creative project here]” to release. You have Twitter. And blogs. And Kickstarter. And all kinds of as-yet-unforeseen grottos and cubbyholes online in which to earn those fans one at a time (and that’s how they come to you, I think, slowly, over time). That’s what’s different. Our connectedness makes finding an audience and interacting with them easier and weirder and harder all in equal measure.

And it does mean that there’s an increasing burden to be more than just an author or a filmmaker or a [insert your creative title of choice here]. It means that you may find advantage in doing more than just creating your work in darkness and delivering it out of shadow while remaining hidden. Audience are becoming increasingly interactive. It’s the author’s job — or at least one of the author’s potential jobs — to meet the audience in the playspace, in the sandbox, in the fucking Holodeck that is a growing fandom.

As to how you do that? Well. I suppose that’s a post for another time and I haven’t yet gotten my slippery mind tentacles around it. But I know it involves engagement, authenticity and diversity. And I know that at the heart of the thing it’s still about creating the best damn thing (book or movie or comic or game or animated GIF or pornstache or sentient nano-hive) you can create.

Oh, and just so we’re clear: you guys out there? Who read this blog? And my books? And my insane half-drunk Twitter feed? And who bring me dead chipmunks and chocolates?

YOU RULE.

Thank you.

Thinking About Stories

As writers and storytellers, we spend a great deal of time in our own heads. We’re like tigers pacing the inside of our cages, or madmen pinballing between the walls of our padded room. We do so much work in our own mental head-caves, trying to create light and meaning out of the darkness, and nobody really talks about that. A lot of people online talk about writing — myself among them, of course — but it’s not very often I see talk devoted toward all the goddamn thinking we do.

It occurs to me now that it’s a damn worthy topic.

Shit, long before you start banging out an outline or a treatment, long before you start barfing up ink on the page or the screen, you sit and… well, you let the story tumble around inside your head. Characters. Plot. Odd ideas that don’t play together (yet). Metaphors that live in the space between sizzling spark plug synapses. The storyteller’s internal psychic life is the life is a little kid, right? It’s like your brain is a child. Bringing toys together, seeing which ones play well together, seeing which ones literally fit together. LEGO and GI Joe and some Silly Putty and a cheap plastic unicorn and Mommy’s hairbrush and Daddy’s Browning Buck Mark .22. target pistol and a roll of duct tape and so on and so forth.

But nobody really tells you how to do that.

Now, the easy argument — and this is true to a point — is that nobody can tell you how to think. You already know how to do that. And you can never really know how anybody else thinks because you’ll never really be inside their head (unless you have some bizarre-o psychic ability, which is why I wear a tinfoil top hat just in case ha ha ha foiled you, get it, foiled you? shut up). Just the same, I think it’s worth talking about what goes on upstairs. How you do it. How you can do it better, or at least differently.

So, I’m going to start a series of short(er) blog posts here at Ye Olde Websyte, thinking about thinking, talking about thinking, and thinking about talking about thinking. Or something. I just got a nosebleed.

Let’s start today about how you prime yourself for all that thinkery-doo.

I mean, the great thing about being a storyteller is you carry around atop your shoulders a space that is equal parts bookstore and theater and video game console and evolving drug trip on exotic hallucinogens. Right? It’s why we’re never really bored. Because whether we’re sitting at the DMV or waiting in line at the bank or sitting on Death Row for our inevitable execution, we have a big story-machine betwixt our ears.

But just the same, you can, I think, foster and encourage your brain to do what it needs to do.

The easiest thing is to perform tasks — Think-Time Tasks — where you find your mind more easily wanders afield. Right? Ideally such tasks are places that bring with them a sense of rote maneuvering, of routine, offering something almost like sensory deprivation. Mowing the lawn. Taking a walk. Taking a shower. Methodically dismembering a corpse you stole from the graveyard. Activities that allow you to… zone out, to retreat comfortably into your own head. The bank line, the DMV, those are less comfortable retreats because, well, they’re shitty. The DMV is a Sisyphean hell-mountain. The bank is dull droll doldroms (say that 5,782 times fast). But actions you choose, actions in which you find comfort, those open the doors to perception without you having to jimmy the lock.

You also have as an option certain… chemical enhancements. Caffeine does wonders for getting the old synapses to fire. Maybe a little chocolate here and there. And, of course, there’s the idea that a little bit of alcohol can help foment your creativity (from this article: “Sudden, intuitive insights into tricky word-association problems occurred more frequently when men were intoxicated but not legally drunk…” and “A moderate alcoholic high loosens a person’s focus of attention, making it easier to find connections among remotely related ideas…”). You could also quaff some hallucinogenic potion and battle the Monkey King for supremacy over his golden pile of dung, but that might be taking it a mile too far.

Also: you can set your brain like a slow-cooker. No, really. Throw in some ideas and questions — like so many chopped onions and carrots and hunks of raw meat — and then go to bed. Don’t try to think about it. Do something else. Let your brain wander elsewhere. In the morning, you might be surprised to find the simmering pot that is your brainpan now contains a delicious umami broth of insight and possibility where before you had only the raw ingredients.

So, the question for this first “thinking about stories” post is — how do you foster and encourage your brain to do the weird mental loop-de-loops necessary to noodle on stories?

What’s your secret?

25 Things Writers Should Know About Creating Mystery

1. Your Story Must Be An Incomplete Equation

A complete equation is 4 + 5 = 9. It’s simple. Clean. And it’s already resolved. Stories are not simple. They are not clean. And we most certainly don’t want to read stories that have already been resolved. We read stories that evolve and evade as we read them. Their uncertainty feels present — though we know the story will finish by its end, a good story lets us — or demands that we — forget that. A good story traps us in the moment and compels us by its incompleteness. The equation then becomes X + 5 = 9, and we are driven to solve for X. It is the X that haunts us. It is the emptiness of that variable we hope to fill.

2. Every Story Is A Mystery Story

This isn’t a list about murder mysteries. This is a list about every story out there. All stories need unanswered questions. All stories demand mysteries to engage our desperate need to know. We flip the little obsessive dipswitches in the circuit boards of our reader’s mind by presenting enigmas and perplexities. Why is our lead character so damaged? What’s in the strange mirrored box? How will they escape the den of ninja grizzlies? Storytelling is in many ways the act of positing questions and then exploring the permutations of that question before finally giving in and providing an answer.

3. Your Story Is The Opposite Of The News

A news story is upfront. Tells the facts. “Woman wins the Moon Lottery.” “Man sodomized by a zoo tapir.” “New Jersey smells like musty tampons, says mayor.” (Musty Tampons was my nickname in an old Steve Winwood cover band.) A journalist is tasked to answer the cardinal questions (the five W’s and the one H): who, what, where, when, why, and how. But your job as a storyteller is to make the audience ask these questions and then bark a sinister laugh as you choose not to answer them all. Oh, you answer some of them. But one or two remain open, empty. Unanswered variables. Incomplete equations.

4. Leaving Out The Egg

Put differently, have you heard the one about Betty Crocker and the Egg? Well, run quick and edu-ma-cate yourselves. The point is, the audience wants to do work. Needs to do work. They want to bring part of themselves to the table. They want to help you fill in the blanks because that is human nature. Maybe it’s ego and selfishness, or maybe it’s a kind of selflessness. Doesn’t matter where it comes from, it only matters that when you leave pieces out of the story, the audience will try to bring those things in. And once you do that you drop the cage on ‘em and now you’ve got dinner an engaged member of the audience.

5. The Characters Are Your Coal Mine Canary

Not every mystery is a worthy one. Not every question deserves to be answered. How do you know? Well. You never really know, but a good test is finding out what mysteries engage your characters — if it’s a mystery the characters care about, and the audience cares about the characters, by proxy they will care about the mystery at hand, as well. This is why arbitrary mysteries — mysteries that exist for their own sake and no other — fail. Mysteries are anchored to character motivation. They affect the stakes on the table. But not the steaks on the table. Because those are mine. I bought those. LAY OFF MY MEAT, BEEF-THIEF.

6. The Power Of “What The Fuck?!” Compels Us

A good ol’ big-ass mystery is a meteor that punches a hole in that once-complete equation we were talking about. Many stories thrive on One Big Question (think: What Is The Matrix, or, Why Are These Transformers So Racist?), and that’s okay, because sometimes that’s a hole the audience wants to fall into. But know that such a mystery is not enough. You still need a cogent plot, strong characters, and a unifying theme to serve as a throughline. An epic HOLY CRAP WTF mystery can feel hollow and without substance should those other elements not exist. Mystery by itself is not enough.

7. A Warm Quilt Of Small Mysteries

Instead of one big mystery, consider instead (or in addition) a series of smaller mysteries: little mini-arcs that rise on the question mark and fall toward the answer. A character needs her keys but cannot find them (where are they, and what will she do if she cannot find them?). Someone has been vandalizing the shops around town (who, and why?). The mayor claims New Jersey smells like musty tampons (why does it smell and what does the mayor hope to gain and how does he know what musty tampons smell like?).

8. Sometimes Not A Question But An Incorrect Answer

A tiny point, but one worth mentioning: sometimes creating mystery is not an act of asking a question but the deed of providing a clearly incorrect answer. Let the audience seek the truth by showing them a lie.

9. Sue Spence And The Mystery Squad

To create suspense and invoke tension, offer the audience a mystery. An unanswered question, a lingering puzzle, a nagging cipher — the longer it goes unanswered, the greater that bezoar of tension grows.

10. It Kills The Vampire Or It Gets The Hose Again

A mystery must have stakes — we must know why it exists, and what it means for it to go unanswered. Tying in conditions of consequence to unsolved mysteries is critical — if the character doesn’t find her keys, she can’t get to the hospital, if she can’t get to the hospital, she won’t learn the identity of the man who saved her from that busload of pterodactyls, if she can’t uncover his identity, she won’t learn why she’s being hunted by that busload of pterodactyls. The audience must feel that the mystery has weight and meaning and pterodactyls. Okay, maybe not so much with the pterodactyls.

11. Colonel Exposition Did It, In The Foyer, With A Heavy Lead Pipe

Exposition is the mystery-killer. Exposition is an explanation. Sometimes it’s necessary, and this isn’t a screed against exposition so much as it is a plea for you to understand that exposition shines a light in dark spaces and, sometimes, it’s best to leave those spaces dark. Well-lit clearly-defined spaces become dull for the audience. The audience must not be left comfortable. They should be forced to stare at those dark corners for as long as they can stand it. The light of exposition expels the shadows of mystery.

12. Be Like Tantric Fuckmaster, Sting

Tantric sex is reportedly about withholding “the Big O” (or if you like your orgasm references more Elizabethan, “the little death”) as long as possible in order to maximize the tsunami power of your lusty eruptions. Masturbate and “arrive” on your computer monitor after 45 seconds, you feel a crushing sense of wasted potential, then shamefully wander downstairs to eat half a sleeve of refrigerated cookie dough. Ah! But if you take seven hours to pop your cork, it feels like you accomplished something. Apply this to your story. By withholding information about the plot or the characters, you create a deeper satisfaction upon finally answering the mystery. For the record, I will now refer to ejaculation as “answering the mystery.” At the point of sexual climax I will proclaim loudly: “I AM ANSWERING YOUR MYSTERY.”

13. The Longer The Mystery Persists, The More Satisfying The Answer Must Be

All that being said, you shouldn’t drag out mysteries if their resolution isn’t satisfying. You can’t spend 300 pages or two hours just to get to, OMG THE KEYS WERE IN HER SHOE THE WHOLE TIME. *crash of thunder* The longer you let a mystery hang out there, the more satisfying the mystery — and its resolution — must be. How to gauge this? Hey, you just gotta go with your guttyworks.

14. Plot And Character: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Mysteries are often tied to plot or character. (What is the Matrix? is a plot-driven question, for instance.) Ideally, though, mysteries are wound through both. Plot, after all, is like Soylent Green — it’s made of people. A murder mystery operates best when the death is tied to the characters at hand (and nothing is less satisfying than the murderer revealed to be some random jerkoff we’ve never met — “It was the Census taker! Oh noes! …wait, the fucking Census guy did it? Goddamnit.”).

15. The Quantum Entanglement Between Question And Conflict

Conflict and mystery go hand in hand. The very nature of conflict offers a situation whose outcome is in flux — we do not know what will happen and so conflict is emblazoned by a big ol’ question mark. Conflicts that are easily resolved are like mysteries that are easily resolved: major poop noise. PPPPBT.

16. Narrative Rejiggering

You can create mystery by breaking the traditional narrative flow and pulling apart the pieces, then rearranging them in whatever order gives you maximum mystery and maximum payoff. If we see part of the ending at the beginning, we glimpse changed circumstances and seek to unravel the complex knot you just dropped in our lap. If we come in toward the middle we want to know what got us here and where we’re going. Part of storytelling is the tension and recoil release of question versus answer, and changing the flow of the narrative can do a great deal toward tightening the questions and super-charging the revelation of the answers. (Homework assignment: go watch the film 21 Grams for a good example of this.)

17. Those Cagey Fuckers

Characters can be cagey fuckers, and that — thankfully, blessedly — creates mystery for readers. Characters do not make the right decisions all the time. Nor should they. A character fails to tell others the truth about what’s going on? A character who obfuscates or lies? A character who tries to cover something up? All this goes a long way toward creating mystery in the audience. Which is a total win, if you ask me. You know what else is a win? Cupcakes. Please send me some cupcakes or I’ll blow up your house. Kay, thanks, bye.

18. The Labyrinth At The Core Of The Human Heart

The greatest mysteries lurk at the center of human experience, inside the emotional tangle where the Minotaur of our worst inclinations lives. (Whoa. I need to stop with the peyote buttons.) Seriously, though, a character’s motivations and fears (and you as the author guarding those elements or at least withholding some components of them) provide the most profound payoff in terms of offering and then answering mysteries. Each character should be a mystery — not a cipher, not an endless unsolvable puzzle — but rather a question to be answered. Don’t tell us everything. Hold back. Ease off the stick, Stroker Ace.

19. Creating Mystery In The Edit

Uh oh, spaghetti-o. Maybe your first draft doesn’t have enough gooshy mysterious plasm for you and the readers? Easy-peasy stung-by-beesy! Think of your edit like a Jenga tower. Reach in. Grab a block. Yank it out. If the whole thing still stands — you’re good to go. Keep doing this. Pull pieces out. Withhold. Retreat. Release and reveal as late as you can. The edit is a great place to massage mystery and create whole new moist vaginal pockets of uncertainty in your tale.

20. One Answer Can Create More Questions

Mysteries can be like The Hydra — chop off one head, nine more sprout in its place. This is a good thing… mmnnnyeah, to a point. Eventually, there comes a moment when you end up letting more snakes out of the bag than you can properly kill. (Example: the TV show Lost.) We have to get a sense that this isn’t some explosive Pandora’s puzzle box, some infinitely-replicating Rube Goldberg mystery machine that produces ten new questions for every one answer offered. You have to know when to stop releasing snakes and just start killing those slithery sumbitches. Er, not literally. Put down the machete, psycho.

21. You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here

Mysteries and endings. A tricky subject. My essential advice: answer all mysteries by the ending. Every last one of ‘em. The audience wants those answers. The introduction of a mystery is an unofficial promise to answer that question. But. But! Sometimes, that’s just not in the cards. (See: Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid, which is a story as much about the subject of mystery as it is about the mysteries present in the story.) Sometimes it’s good to leave folks hanging on things. Because when you do that it’s like the book is still open. The story is ongoing. They remain a part of it — entrenched and unable to escape. MOO HOO HA HA HA. (But only savvy storytellers need apply!)

22. The Dangers Of The MacGuffin

Hitchcock rocked the MacGuffin — the MacGuffin being the mysterious-and-frankly-not-all-that-important-by-itself-item that drives the plot and urges the characters forward. The MacGuffin is a mystery potentially never answered and, if turned about in the hands of a clumsy muffinhead of a storyteller, it feels like what it ultimately is: artifice. Best way to think of a MacGuffin is not as a plot driver but rather as a focus point for the mysteries and conflicts and worst inclinations of the characters who seek it. It’s like a magnet for bad juju.

23. It’s The Reason Jaws Worked

A late-in-the-list sidenote: mystery is why Jaws worked. That robot shark was acting up, being an asshole, and they couldn’t use him like they wanted to. As such, the script called for a greater deal of mystery in the first and second acts — what the shark was, how big, what it could do, why it wanted to do it. Spielberg had to pull away which in turn left us with questions which in turn made us feel like scared little ninnies who suddenly became afraid to drop a flip-flop in a fucking puddle from that point forward. Mystery — unintentional as it was — made that movie.

24. “Guess What?”

That’s how the stories we tell to friends and loved ones and co-workers often begin, isn’t it? “Guess what?” We begin with a question. We lead with that — because that’s the fishhook in the cheek of the audience. And the way we tell the story is like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs — not whole loaves, just crumbs — for the listener to follow. We say things to get attention, to lead the audience in with us — “Man, Jenkins fucked up bad today!” — and the listener is all like “WHOA WHAT’D THAT ASSHOLE JENKINS DO NOW?” As Admiral Ackbar would say: “It’s a trap!” Oh, but what a wonderful trap storytelling is.

25. Bondage & Discipline

Being a storyteller like BDSM: you need to find a partner — in this case, the audience — who is willing to trust you with (and stick with me here) a complete lack of trust. They’re willing to say: “I trust that I can’t trust you,” and then they let you perform whatever deviant manipulations you care to visit upon body, heart and mind. Same thing with creating mystery in your story: mystery is one way you show the audience that they can’t trust you but, at the same time, that they trust in this implicit lack of trust. They know the questions you pose will be troubling. They know that the answers will have consequences they did not imagine. But they trust in you to answer these mysteries, to manipulate without making them feel manipulated, to not leave them hanging upside-down with a ball-gag in their mouth and a My Little Pony-branded buttplug up their… well, no need to be redundant. You and the audience have a contract (though no safe-word): they trust that you cannot be trusted. Mystery is one of the sexy tools on your sexy Bondage Batman tool-belt. What? You don’t have a sexy Bondage Batman tool-belt? Amateur.

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Four Books I Want You To Read

Real quick post — here’s five books I think you should go find. And buy. And read. And rub on your body in slow, concentric circles. And then film it and put it on YouTube.

(For the record, I have Amazon links here because I’m lazy, but please search these books out at the venue of your choice — indie bookstore, library, B&N, whatever and wherever.)

(Also for the record, these are authors I know and/or have met — while you’re free to take my opinions with a grain of salt, please believe me I wouldn’t pimp the work unless I was a super-fan.)

So You Created A Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide To Time Travel

Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch. Buy at Amazon.

Met these two gents at the LA Book Fest. I hadn’t heard of their book at the time, but they were kind enough to ensure I got a copy — here’s the thing, I didn’t actually intend to chew through this book like a squirrel chewing through attic insulation, but fuck it, too bad, too late. This book — in the vein of the The Zombie Survival Guide — is fuuuu-huuu-cking funny. (“In a hand-to-hand skirmish, a Viking will overpower you. Know any off-color jokes? Now’s the time, as a Viking’s sense of humor is one of his major weaknesses. They are also vulnerable to dynamite, if you happen to have any.”) I got it yesterday and sat here at my desk just mowing through it. The do’s and do not’s of time travel laid bare in a hilarious (and often insane) dissection. Not just for time travel fans but a fun examination of sci-fi tropes across the board.

Lucky Bastard

S. G. Browne. Buy at Amazon.

I confess that I’m only halfway through this book but again it’s a story I did not expect to gulp down so fast — see, I’m a slow reader. It’s just the way I am, I don’t fly through books so much as creep my way page by page like a stalker in your shrubbery. But here, Browne’s not-so-hard-boiled (“over-easy”) luck poaching (yes, he poaches luck) detective makes for charming and hilarious reading. There’s a Christopher Moore-y vibe going here if Moore wrote crime fiction. (Speakawhich, I need to read Moore’s newest. I also need to mow the lawn and clean the kitchen but I think I’d rather read books. DON’T JUDGE ME.)

All The Young Warriors

Anthony Neil Smith. Buy at Amazon.

Okay, listen. I like Smith. I like his work. But his work isn’t for everybody — Octavia from Choke On Your Lies is not an easy character to like (though I found her easy to love). But this book? This book is for everybody. This book is fucking incredible. This is Smith’s breakout work, featuring a pair of Somali-Americans who kill a cop’s pregnant girlfriend and then head to Somalia to fight in “the war,” leaving the cop behind. The cop, Bleeker, pairs up with one of the boys’ fathers in an unlikely pact of alliance and revenge — a journey which takes them through the underbelly of the Twin Cities and, eventually, to Somalia. It’s a brutal book, but funny, too, and like with all my favorite books beneath the scabs and the the rings of calcified bone you’ll find a core of heart and sorrow at the center of it, gooey and sweet and sad all at the same time. Smith’s prose is direct and potent as a fist to the throat, but he knows too when to give the story the oxygen it needs. Go grabby. (Note: only available as an e-book, which is itself a crime. This should be a goddamn bestseller, this book.)

City of the Lost

Stephen Blackmoore. Buy at Amazon.

Like the work of Harry Connolly? Or Jim Butcher? Richard Kadrey? Dude. Dude. Get in on a little Stephen Blackmoore action. Uhh, hello, zombies? Los Angeles? Bad magic? Vampires? Witches? Nazis? I’m going to go out on a limb here and do myself a favor by comparing myself to Blackmoore — which is, to reiterate, a favor to me (and probably an insult to him, but shhh), but you’ve got a complicated protagonist, lots of bloody violence, some very potty-mouthed language. This is a book I was destined to love and, I think if you dig my work, you’ll dig this. It’s “urban fantasy,” except it’s equally noir or “noirror” (noir/horror), too.

Now?

YOUR TURN.

Recommend a book. Not your own. Someone else’s.

Go.