Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 248

Hive-Mind Me Some Toddler Books

The tiny human is now one, and he’s also now enamored of books.

He has recently become addicted to Goodnight, Gorilla, which is cute as all get-out.

The other day on Twitter, when I mentioned his newfound adoration of this book and many others (and also his abject disdain for Goodnight, Moon), many folks chimed in with suggestions, including this delightful parody, Goodnight, Dune. So, I figure this is a good time to poll you folks with kids –

Recommend for me some good books! Preferably board books, since that’s what the tot likes.

He just turned one.

We need books.

DELIVER UNTO ME YOUR TINY HUMAN BIBLIO-SENSATIONS.

Recommend away!

25 Reasons You Should Quit Writing

Time for my annual, “Nope, you shouldn’t be writing, quit now, run away, go on, shoo” post. This time, in the form of the “25 things” lists that all you crazy cats and kittens seem to love so much.

1. It’s Really Hard

OMG YOU GUYS. Writing? It’s hard. It’s like, you have to sit there? And you have to make stuff up? For a living? And there’s all this… typing involved. You know what’s easier? Being an adult Baby Huey. Diaper-swaddled. Able to just pee where you sit. Your food liquified into a nutrient slurry and fed to you via a tube pushed through the grate of your giant human hamster cage. Okay, I kid, I kid. Writing actually is work. Intellectually and emotionally. You actually have to sit, day in and day out, and trudge through the mire of your own word count. Quit now. Save yourself from pulling a mental hammy.

2. You Probably Don’t Have Time

Writing takes time you do not possess. You’ve got that day job and those kids and, hey, let’s not forget your 37th replay of the entire Mass Effect series. Your time is all buttoned up in a starchy little shirt. Sure, Stephen King carved out his first novel one handwritten line at a time in between moments in his factory job, but if I recall, that didn’t pay off for him. (He should’ve just stayed working at that factory. Uh, hello, have you ever heard of medical benefits, Stevie? A pension? Lunch breaks? Duh.) Besides, eventually you’re just going to die anyway. Time won’t matter and it’s not like they’re gonna let you read your own books in hell. Better to quit now. Free up some time for drinking and masturbation. Er, I mean, “parenting.”

3. You May Have To Write A Whole Lot

Recently it came out that for writers to survive, they might have to buckle down and write more. Well, that’s just a cockamamie doo-doo bomb is what it is. That means writers might need to write — *checks some math, fiddles with an abacus, doodles a bunch of dongs in the margin* — more than 250 words a day?! Whoa. Whoa. Slow your roll, slave driver! I mean, it’s not like writing is fun. It’s an endless Sisyphean dick-punch is what it is. (See, Sisyphus carried an old CRT television up a dusty knoll, and when he got to the top, a faun punched him in the dick and knocked him back down the hill. That’s Greek history, son.) Write more? Eeeesh. Better to complain about it, instead. Or, better still: quit.

4. I Bet You’re Not That Good

I’ve seen your work. C’mon. C’mon. This is just between us, now. It’s not that good, is it? Lots of spelling errors. Commas breeding like ringworm in the petri dish that is a hobo’s crotch. All the structure of an upended bucket of donkey vomit. The last time an agent looked at your work, she sent it back wrapped around a hand grenade. So, you’ll do what so many other mediocre, untested, unwilling-to-work-to-improve writers have done: you self-publish, joining the throngs of the well-below-average with your ill-kerned Microsoft Paint cover and your 50,000 words of medical waste. Why do that to the world? Have mercy!

5. Hell, Maybe You’re Too Good

Alternately, you might be too talented. Your works are literary masterpieces, as if Raymond Carver, James Joyce and Don DeLillo contributed their authorial seed and poured it on the earth where it grew the tree that would one day be slaughtered to provide the paper for your magnum opus. And meanwhile, someone goes and writes porny Twilight fan-fiction and gets a billion-dollar book deal thanks to the tepid BDSM fantasies of housewives everywhere. You’re just too good for this. As you seem unwilling to write the S&M fan-fic version of The Hunger Games for a seven-figure-deal… well. This way to the great egress!

6. Ugh, Learning, Ptoo, Ptoo

“All you have to do to be a writer is read and write,” they said. Which seems true of anything, of course — “All you have to do to be a sculptor is look at sculptures and sculpt some stuff,” or, “All you have to do to be a nuclear physicist is read signs at a nuclear power plant and do a shitload of nuclear physics.” But then you went and read books and blogs and Playboy magazine articles and the backs of countless cereal boxes and then you tried writing and oh snap it turns out you still have more to learn. And learning is yucky. Ew, gross. Dirty, dirty learning. Not fun. Takes effort. Bleah.

7. Finish Him, Fatality

“I’m writing a novel,” you say. And they ask you, “Oh, is this the same one you were writing last year? And the year before that? And the year before that?” And you say, “No, those were different ones. I decided that–” And at this point you make up some excuse about publishing trends or writer’s block or The Muse, but it all adds up to the same thing: you’re not very good at finishing what you start. Your life is littered with the dessicated corpses of countless incomplete manuscripts, characters whose lives are woefully cut short by your +7 Axe of Apathy. You’re so good at not finishing, embrace this skill and quit.

8. Rejection Will Make You A Sad Koala

You will be buried in the heaps and mounds of rejection. And it’s never nice, never fun. Sometimes you’ll get the cold and dispassionate form rejection slips with a list of checkboxes. Sometimes you’ll get the really mean, really personal ones that stab for your heart with a sharpened toothbrush shiv (I once got a rejection slip early in my career from author and then-editor Thomas Monteleone that pretty much… savaged me rectally). Rejection will ruin your day. And, if you do get published, bad reviews will haunt you the same way. Did you know that every time I get a one-star review for Blackbirds, my eczema flairs up? I get all scaly and itchy and then I’m forced to fight Spider-Man as my supervillain persona, “The Rash-o-man.” (My comic book is told from multiple perspectives!) Anyway. Point is, rejections and reviews hurt. Don’t thrust your chin out so it can get punched. Hide in your attic and eat Cheetos, instead.

9. You Don’t Want It Bad Enough

You have to want this writing thing really bad. Sure, the saying goes that “everybody has a novel in them,” but thank fuck most of those people are too lazy to surgically extract said novel. I’ll just leave this one to the wisdom of Ron Swanson: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”

10. Writing Really Cuts Into Your Internet Addiction

The Internet is like a… delightful hole you fall into, a Wonderland of porn and memes and tweets and porn and hate and cats and porn. I’m always wishing I had more time to just drunkenly fumble around the Internet, feeling its greasy curves and exploring its hidden flesh-knolls, but all this damn writing keeps getting in the way. “Oh, god, if I didn’t have this stupid book to write I’d be tweeting scathing witticisms and scouring the web for free ‘people-dressed-up-as-trees-and-flowers-and-pollinating-one-another’ porn.” (If people who dress up as animals and do it are called “furries,” what are people who dress up like plants? “Leafies?” “Greenos?”) Anyway. Quit now. Free up your time.

11. Writing Isn’t Just Writing, Which Is Super-Bullshit

The title “writer” is the piss-pooriest description of the job I’ve ever heard. Total. False. Advertising. Man, writers have to like… edit, blog, market, learn good business practices, engage in public speaking, train on typewriter repair, cultivate liver constitution, and learn how to select and seduce mates based on the strength of said mate’s health care plan. That’s a bummer. A major bummer. Hell, it’s an ultra-bummer.

12. Rife With Indignities And Disrespect

Admitting to someone you’re a writer is like admitting to them you like to you’re a closet My Little Pony fan, or you’re a self-made eunuch, or you like to have sex with raccoons. Tell someone you’re a writer and she’ll nod, embarrassed for you, and then take a gentle step back so she doesn’t catch whatever cat-shit parasite made you crazy enough to want to be a writer in the first place.

13. Hullo, Mister Fatbody

Writing is a sedentary activity. You sit on your butt all day. The only parts that move are your flitting eyes as they follow the cursor and your fingers as they piston-pound out text. The rest of your body slides inevitably toward atrophy, layers of blubber and gristle slowly wreathing your frame in its salty slugabed deliciousness. You’ll probably get fat and then people will make fun of you and then you’ll die.

14. Back And Eye Problems

In addition to becoming a lumpy word-goblin, you also sit there all day in one chair staring at a freakishly bright square of light and the ant-like words and images that dance across it. Your back will become a quilt of twisted muscle, your eyes like grapes covered in a greasy film. Save your body. Quit now.

15. The Disintegrating Value Of Your Words

The professional pay rate for short fiction is now “a half-of-a-Dorito per word.” The average advance for a novel is a punch to the neck and a nuclear-fuchsia Snuggie. Analysts predict that most self-published works of fiction are trending toward an average price of $0.13 per 120,000-word novel. Which leads to…

16. The Average Salary Is $9000 A Year

The federal poverty level is at $11,170, and the average author annual salary is $9,000 a year. Homeless people earn better salaries. Seriously. If a homeless guy can beg thirty bucks a day, he’ll do better than you. You clearly cannot make a living writing. Studies show that only four writers alive make a living writing, and those jerks have the whole thing sewn up. They’re like the 1%-ers of authors, those dicks. Better to quit now before you find yourself on a ruined mattress under the overpass, eating bedbugs for sustenance.

17. Your Chances Ain’t Good, Hoss

Everybody and their ugly cousin wants to be a writer. You know how many query letter submissions the average agent gets per day? Enough to crush the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. (In fact, that’s how the dinosaurs went extinct: they all wanted to be writers and starved to death. The meteors were just a cruel afterthought by an unmerciful god.) The chances of your work ever being seen — by an agent, then by a publisher, then by an audience — are about as good as the chances of you giving birth to a zebra riding a jet-ski. Which, admittedly, I have seen a few times. And it isn’t pretty. Oh, and don’t forget about…

18. The Septic Tide Of Self-Publishing

Now everybody and their ugly cousin can be writers! All it takes is a hasty lack of afterthought and a shameless willingness to click a PUBLISH button on the Internet. Abracadabra, your poorly-cobbled-together word-abortion is now available for anybody who cares to see it! Am I saying that good authors don’t self-publish? Hell no! Many great authors have self-published. Oh, but here’s the rub: discoverability on the Internet sucks. Trying to discover a new author on the Amazon or B&N marketplaces is about as effective as searching an above-ground pool full of dirty adult diapers for a half-eaten Snickers bar. Your work is just one more diaper on the pile. Or one more candy bar lost beneath the waste.

19. Gatekeepers? More Like Hatekeepers, Am I Right?

You know who’s preventing you from getting published? A buncha jerks. Editors and agents and publishers — all grumpy bouncers at the door of this SUPER-ELITE WRITER’S CLUB and any time you try to come on through they Taser you in the face and laugh as you flounder around in the gutter for an hour. The system is a Rube Goldberg machine that powers itself on your shame. Don’t let the bullies win. Better instead to take a nap and forget the whole thing.

20. Have You Been To A Bookstore Recently?

The bookpocalypse is upon us. All Barnes & Noble sells anymore is coffee and board games, except in the back where you can find a couple Franzen novels and 72 copies of a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am user manual. Indie bookstores appear haunted by the damned — it’s all trauma-bombed eyes and trembling gray shades, each of them willing to show you on the doll where Amazon touched them. I drove by a bookstore the other day and it was filled with feral cats. Caution. Cuidado. Verboten.

21. Publishing Is Now One Big-Ass City-Stomping Kaiju Battle

The Big Six publishers have formed into some kind of drunken papier mache Voltron in order to fight the tentacled galactic e-beast known as Amazon, and all us little writers are getting tromped by their stompy feet. Sure, try to show the world your novel: you’ll get lasered in the face. Better to hide in a bunker somewhere, wait out this monster battle. Your wordsmithy will just get you killed.

22. When The Great EMP Comes, All Our E-Books Will Be Destroyed

Print books are being hunted in the streets like stray dogs. E-books will soon be all books, but then eventually China’s going to attack us with an elecromagnetic pulse or Russia will invent an ion cannon like from Star Wars and then all of our books will evaporate in the data-blast. All your hard work will be lost — ephemeral information cinders on the wind. Why even try?

23. And If Not, The Future Will Be All Writer-Bots Anyway

It’s not going to be long before spam-bots figure out how to produce new content. The next wave of self-published books will be written — sorry, “written” — by a hive-mind colony of self-aware spam-bots. They’ll have titles like “The Girl Who Kicked Over The Cialis Machine” or “Ugg Boots Informational Article Post” or “Ituqxufssjcmfnjoet The Real Estate Computer Repair Warrior.” Don’t get in the spam-bots’ way.

24. You Just Don’t Like It Very Much

I don’t think you like writing very much. Mostly you just complain. Boo-hoo pee-pee-pants sobby-face wah-wah existential turmoil. Writing is hard, publishing is mean, my characters won’t listen to me, blah blah blah. I don’t get the sense you really enjoy this thing, so why don’t you take a load off? It’s not like the pay-off from writing is huge. If it’s just an endless gauntlet of miseries, maybe go find something else to do. I’m sure the nearest bank is hiring. Or, as we’ve discussed, hobos do pretty well for themselves. And hoboing is an unbridled delight! Ask any hobo and he’ll say, “At least I’m not a writer.”

25. Because Some Asshole On The Internet Said So

If you’re willing to listen to me, and my words have given you pause, then you really should quit writing. And there’s no shame in that. Most folks who want to do this thing honestly never will — and maybe it’s best to maximize your opportunity and find your bliss somewhere else. But, if you’re reading all this and all you feel is the repeated urge to come find my house and flat-punch me in the trachea, good for you. If your response is to kick and hiss and spit and assert your writerly rights and then push past me so you can plant your pooper down in the chair to write your aforementioned pooper clean off, then to that I give you a high-five, a chest-bump, and a sloppy open-mouthed kiss (here, have my gum). Because to want to do this thing, you need that kind of fuck you, I’mma do it anyway attitude. And the last thing you need to be doing is listening to some Internet Asshole telling you to give up. Shut up. Go write. Be awesome.

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Revisiting The Fevered Egos Of Self-Publishing

First, go read this:

“The Man Who Thought He Was King.” About a self-published author who gets kind of… well, crazy? Uppity? I don’t know. I’m not even sure what he’s pissed about, honestly.

Read it? Done? Cool.

One of the biggest things holding self-publishing back is the attitude of some — not all, not most and not even many — but some self-published authors. What you will find in the self-publishing (or DIY or “indie pub”) community is a handful of maggot-chewed bad-apples bobbing noisily in the barrel. They’re loud. They’re entitled. They’re oddly defensive (methinks thou doth protest too much). They often have books that look and read like they were written by a fourth grader on a high-test ADHD drug cocktail.

And they’re more than willing to get up in your face about it.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be a cock-bag. A douche-nozzle. A righteous scum-topped cup of dickhead soup.

My message to the generic That Guy:

First, learn to write. Not just fiction but, say, forum posts. Tweets. Your own name. Whatever. UR JUST MADD COS I SELL TONSZ OF BOOKS AND YOURE SLAVE TO THE GATEKEPERS is not a compelling — or, frankly, cogent — message. Which leads me to:

Second, stop using your sales numbers as a bludgeon. BUT I SELL FOUR BILLION EVERY TEN MINUTES may or may not be true, but what it most certainly is is irrelevant. Is that how Neil Gaiman tries to end an argument? “WELL I’M A BESTSELLING AUTHOR SO EAT MY POOP.” I suspect he does not. (Though now I secretly kinda hope he does? I would give multiple pieces of my anatomy to have him on YouTube yelling that very thing — a boy can dream, can’t he?) Your sales numbers are not interesting. Nor do they represent a useful data point as the lever in whatever argument you happen to be in right now. Sales are not an indicator of quality. And it’s very difficult to establish if your sales numbers are even accurate. Take them off the table. Stop screaming them in people’s faces.

Third, please be advised that the number of books you write is also not an indicator of anything — certainly not quality. I could, if I chose, write a book a week. Each book would be a festering midden-heap, a clumsy orgy of misspelled words feeling up awkward sentences in the dark in order to give birth to a one-legged moaning monstrosity of a story, but I don’t. Yes, I do believe that authors in the 21st century will find increased productivity useful, but what that doesn’t mean is, “Vomit out as much poor-quality content as you can purge into the world.” Yelling, BUT I HAVE 137 BOOKS FOR SALE, leads people to suspect that you’re just another self-published whackaloon with poor impulse control.

Fourth, stop being mad at “gatekeepers.” Blah blah blah agents, publishers, editors. Every time you yell about traditional publishing it just looks like a dumptruck full of sour grapes. Which leads us all to what is likely the correct conclusion: you self-publish because you were rejected and your peen is in a twist about it, not because you have a great story you want people to read, not because you want the control that self-publishing affords you.

To the self-publishing DIY indie community at large:

Call these screeching moonbats what they are: screeching moonbats. I’ve long said that the self-publishing community needs fewer cheerleaders and more police — meaning, more folks willing to say, “That fruity nutball does not represent me, my work, my ethos, my nation, my planet, my species, or my very molecular structure.” Don’t let them be the loudest voices in your community.

Transmissions From Toddlertown: The First Year

I keep trying to find poetry in this. I’m looking for words. Big words. Small words. Any words. I keep wondering what I’ll say — maybe I’ll say something about the unit of time known as a year in which it feels like not much changes. Some new television shows, some crow’s feet digging into the skin around your eye, maybe a pay bump eroded by new bills. But then you have a baby and time takes on new meaning: it collapses in on itself and big things happen in small spaces while at the same time the whole thing blows out like elastic in old underpants, time an exploding star, a year passing in blink-and-you-missed it eruption.

Maybe I’ll say something about babies and new parents. Maybe something about change. Or chaos. Or life and love and madness. Maybe poop and pee, since those are certainly themes. Can I find poetry in a smooshy diaper? (It’s best not to ask, because you can be sure I’ll try.)

I don’t know what to say.

I try to get my head around this last year and I come up empty. Not of feelings or emotions. I’m giddy! And tired. And utterly in awe. And confused. And did I mention tired? No, the emotions are all firmly in place; they have their orders and they’re sticking around. What’s missing is a sense of perspective, of any kind of clean orderly thinking — I don’t have any great revelations or insights, I don’t have a thesis or theme on which to hang my hat. When I try to think, what would I say about this past year? I’m mostly left, mouth agape, lips working soundlessly, a slight breathy squeak emerging as my only answer.

What I do have is:

A one-year-old little boy.

A beautiful, smart, dangerous, insane, giggly, smiley, assertive little boy.

*blink blink*

Holy shit, it’s been a year.

Things move fast but feel like they’re slow.

Or maybe, things move slow but feel like they’re fast.

I still remember that night in the hospital. Baby boy screaming. Saturday Night Live muted on the television in what was to be the first of many sleepless nights. My wife pacing with the tiny human, me standing on guard, bleary-eyed and feeling useless. Eventually the nurse coming in and us asking her, “Is he sick? Angry? Did we already do something to upset him? Does he need a hug? A car? Is there a widget out of place that, were we to adjust it slightly, it would allow him to stop crying and go to bed? I think he’s broken? Did we break him or… is there a warranty department we can call?” The nurse taught us a new term — cluster feeder — and said it was all fine, no problem, no worries. And oh, good luck.

That night seems like yesterday. And it also feels like ten years ago.

It feels like yesterday that we brought him home. That he learned to smile. That he said his first “goo” and rolled over and climbed onto the couch and climbed to the top of the couch and climbed out of his crib and went from crawling to standing to walking two steps — then four — then eight — then one day decided that crawling was for suckers and walking was what all the cool babies did.

That was two months ago that he started to walk.

And it feels like yesterday. And it feels like two years ago. And it feels like a dinosaur’s epoch.

Time stretches like taffy. Collapses like a house of cards.

It was the hardest year of my life.

And the weirdest.

And the most wonderful.

All in equal measure, not warring for dominance moment by moment but somehow sharing the space of each moment — emotions normally left to act as enemies suddenly getting all chummy with one another. Arm in arm. Hand in hand. Traipsing along, la-la-la.

It’s the lack of sleep, in part. You start slashing those restful hours — a pair of scissors cutting ribbons from a piece of paper until you’re left with half of what you started with — and your normally sunny outlook turns into a piano string pulled tighter and tighter until all it does is scream and threaten to snap. It’d be one thing if you lost sleep but then got to, y’know, relax. Watch some television. Read a book. But you lose sleep and you’re expected to endure the irrational screams of a very small person, and you have to feed him and try to somehow wrestle him into a nap. Babies need love and attention and at the very early ages don’t seem all that interested in giving it back. They take, take, take, and you give, give, give, and you hit these points where it’s like, “We can just put him out in a box by the curb, right? We’ll write on the side FREE LAWNMOWER PARTS and someone will snatch it up.” Or you think, “At midnight, I’m going to quietly pack up some toiletries and underwear and I’m just going to start walking until I hit the coast.”

As parents you fight and yell and his yells jack up your yells and you wonder:

What the hell were we thinking?

And just what the hell were we thinking? We waited to have a baby until things made sense, until it was the “right time” to do so. We lined up all our ducks in perfect quacking rows, arranging our life in impeccable order. Which is a lot like setting the perfect dinner table for a guest who is a coked-up chimpanzee with a loaded handgun. It’s like building a wonderful house in the path of a tornado.

“What were we thinking? Did we make a terrible mistake? What keeps us keeping on?” — and then the tiny human reminds you why. He smiles or laughs or does something so cute you wish that he and a baby seal and a trio of puppies had a television show where they travel around the country just being totally adorable, and then your mind unfolds an infinity of good thoughts for his future — his first taste of ice cream, his first day of kindergarten, his first Prom — and once more time goes all wibbly-wobbly and the weird and wonderful parts sandbag the difficult ones and you are again reminded why you do this thing you do.

They change month to month. Week to week. Moment to moment.

That first year is a year of transitions.

Talking to not talking. Laying to rolling to crawling to walking to oh shit he’s running (and sweet mercy can this kid run — often into the hardest object into the room). Liquids to liquidy-solids to solids to sharp teeth to holy-crap-I-think-he-just-gnawed-the-cabinet. He hates books and thinks they’re food or objects for throwing until the day comes when he starts bringing you books, one after the other, for him to read. He crawls in your lap and stares at you expectantly and may the gods help you if you don’t start reading double-quick because by gosh and by golly, baby wants a story.

So many transitions.

One day he can’t see you, then one day he can. Babies move from this internal locus of solipsism (I am the only thing in this universe) to realizing that more exists beyond the borders of their eyes and fingertips (I am just one part of this place and OOOOH PUPPY).

Every day a new experience.

Today he got a balloon. Yesterday he had some pizza. Soon he’ll have cake and, c’mon, cake. He walks. He runs. He jumps. He dances. He knows where his ear is, where my nose is. He says “Mom, Dad, dog, door, yes, turtle, book.” Not all at once of course, for that is the cheat code that destroys the universe.

It’s an endless series of firsts, one tumbling after the next.

But the biggest transition is from take-take-take to give-give-give.

He gives. He tries to make us laugh. He gives kisses. He gives hugs.

When he sees you, he squeals and runs toward you to grab your legs and squeeze them tight.

He takes love. But now he gives it, too.

It melts even my crunchy dry ice heart, it does.

You play this game with yourself, and this game is not the “fun” kind of game so much as it is the kind of game where you see if you can beat yourself about the head and neck with a club made of delusion.

The game is this:

You say, “It’ll get easier when _________.” And you fill in the blank with some foolish dipshit milestone, some magical pivot point where things are supposed to turn suddenly and get easier. You say, ahh, soon as he starts eating solid food? Easier. Soon as he can walk? Easier. Soon as he can entertain himself? Easier.

Ah, self-deception. Sure, he eats solid food, but then he learns to splurt it into your hair. Sure, he starts to walk, but then he learns to run into hard objects. (The other day, he literally stopped in the middle of the hallway, paused, turned his body toward the wall, and ran straight into it. Then cried for five minutes.) Sure, he can entertain himself now, and one of the things that entertains him is opening drawers and accidentally slamming his fingers in them. Or trying to touch the dog’s tail which often means miscalculating and reaching for the dog’s butthole. Or trying to eat pieces of mulch he finds on the floor.

As one thing gets easier, another thing gets harder. It’s like leveling up in a video game — you hit your level, ding! — and you get new powers and new toys but at the same time you have to fight a harder class of creatures and it’s not easier or harder so much as it is different. Which, at the least, keeps things interesting.

Oh, I’m not kidding when I say he’s active.

Some babies are lump babies.

Some are not content with such lumpishness.

We sometimes wish we had a lump, but it was not to be.

When only his head had popped out of the womb he was already looking around, bright eyed and curious. Probably wondering what he could grab and break. A trend that continued. You think babyproofing works? Good luck with that. This kid rips those babyproof plug covers right out of the wall. We can’t get them out with our adult gorilla fingers, but this little ninja flings them away like they’re nothing at all.

Here’s the secret, though.

After that first year, things do get easier. That’s the milestone that matters. That’s when the game is played and the game is won — if only for a short time, at least. Because by the time the tot is a year, things start to make more sense. Everybody’s getting more sleep. Routines are fairly well dug in. He’s more fun. More talkative. He appreciates things — like, actually seems to appreciate them.

Maybe it’s not that they get easier. Maybe it’s just that they make more sense. Maybe it’s that you come out of the storm and even though your life has been tossed ass-over-shoulders by the human hurricane and tottering tornado known as a “baby. ” The dark clouds have passed and you can comfortably start to rearrange the pieces without worrying about getting smooshed by a flying bovine.

I know it’s temporary. I know as we level up with each year he’ll gain new tricks just as we gain new tricks and sometimes the battles will get easier and sometimes they’ll get harder. I am assured, in fact, that when he one day becomes a teenager we will find ourselves living with some grumpy emo hell-beast who will revert once more to the take-take-take of his infant predecessor. But that’s okay. We have time.

Hardest, weirdest, and most wonderful year.

Time blows up, blows out, implodes, goes sideways.

From order to chaos and back to order. At least, a little bit of order.

From taker to giver, from loved to giving love.

It’s been an awesome year in the truest sense of the word. Just as he’s different than from when he emerged into this world, I’m different from when he emerged. I’m more confident and driven and happier and, well, a lot more tired (and I probably get twice the sleep that my wife gets). Everything has changed and it has changed for the better. As Jonathan Coulton sings, “You ruined everything — in the nicest way.”

Happy birthday, Baby B-Dub.

I love you, your mother loves you.

You’re the best thing that ever happened to us. I am happier every day because of you.

Now please stop trying to touch the dog’s butthole.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Paint Color Title Scheme

Last week’s challenge: “Over The Top Pulp Fiction Insanity“

I love shopping for paint because the paint colors are so bizarrely and uniquely named.

And I thought, hey, a challenge based on some of those colors would be kinda rad.

So, here’s the deal.

I’m going to list ten paint colors. Choose one. This chosen paint color forms the title to your story.

Bonus challenge: try to make color a big part of the story. In imagery, plot, character, whatever.

Here, then, are the colors:

Grasshopper Wing

Bone China

Timeless Lilac

Pageant Song

Burnt Tile

Fuchsia Kiss

Flamingo Dream

Glorious Gold

Mermaid Song

Flint Smoke

You, as usual, have one thousand words and one week to complete.

Due by Friday, the 25th, at noon.

Post at your blog. Link here. Now go color.

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.