Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 249

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.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Must Love Dinosaurs

Last week’s challenge: “Random Title Generation.”

Didja see? Didja see?

DINOCALYPSE NOW is ready to be downloaded into your eye-pads and Kindlemaschines and Nookies or whatever the hell you use in this crazy e-reader future. (And you can pre-order print!)

But, hey, I’d like to give a copy away. An e-copy, to be clear.

To get it, you gotta dance for your dinner. Or, rather, your dinosaurs.

This week’s flash fiction challenge?

Whatever you write must feature dinosaurs.

You have 1000-words.

You have one week. Due by noon EST on May 11th.

I’ll pick my favorite a week or so after the deadline and I’ll announce here at this post.

Again:

Must.

Feature.

Dinosaur(s).

RAAAAAAR.

Now go write.

Seeking Interviewees For The Thursday Interviewpalooza

I’ve got a few more interviews coming up — the guys behind So You Created A Wormhole, Ann LeMay, comedian Dylan Brody, plus all the questions you crazy kids sent in to me — but just the same, it’s time again that I start fishing for new torture interview subjects.

As you may know, I use this spot to interview storytellers. That can be anybody, really — authors, filmmakers, songwriters, comedians, comic book creators, editors, game and experience designers, etc.

This has two components — as a reader, feel free in the comments below to recommend some folks you want me to interview. I can’t promise it’ll work out, but hey, drop some names.

The second component is if you are a storyteller who’d like to be interviewed in this very space.

Now, let me put my Warning, Cranky Shithead hat on for one teeny-weenie moment:

First, this isn’t a marketing tool. Ideally, yes, the interview will spread word about your books and games and whatever else you’re doing, and I’m happy if that coincides nicely with some release of yours. Just the same, this has to be an entertaining interview for the readers of this blog. They’re the reason this thing exists. So, ask yourself: “Do I make good interview material?” Do you have interesting ideas? A compelling journey? Thoughts on the subject of writing and storytelling (as this blog is focused on those things)?

Second, I want accomplished storytellers — I’m open to interviewing self-published authors (as I am one myself), but here’s the thing: given self-publishing’s incredibly low (read: non-existent) bar to entry, I tend to get a lot of self-published authors who want in but don’t really seem to have much worth talking about. Again that question: “Do I make good interview material?” If you find me prejudiced against self-published writers, that’s because self-published writers have made me prejudiced against self-published writers.

So! All that being said –

Want in on an interview slot? Hit me up at:

terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Make sure “INTERVIEW” is in the subject of your email, yeah?

Now, I tend to get a flood of these emails, so I will try to work my way through and answer you. Forgive any delay on my part there, but as Miriam Black says, “It is what it is.”

Feel free to tell me in the email why you’d make a good interview subject. Also, if I don’t know you at all, I may ask to see something of yours — say, your book — so I know who you are and what you do. You can either email me said “thing” or I can provide you with a mailing address if need be.

And that’s all she wrote.

Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing

I yammered about this on Twitter the other day, and it felt like the subject needed some more oxygen, and thus I’m staplegunning it to the blog post. *kachunk kachunk*

Feel free to comment. And agree. Or object. Or send me doodles of your pets as characters from various science-fiction and fantasy novels. Whatever makes your grapefruit squirt.

Okay.

E-books.

I’ve seen some pushback — generally very smart pushback — about why publisher e-books cost so much. The answer, in short, is that producing e-books costs more than you think. You’re paying for editors and cover design and, of course, for the book itself, and the mechanics of putting those things into a container are not the bulk of a book’s cost. Hence, e-books are always going to be close to their physical counterparts in cost. After all, you’re buying a story, and the container is largely incidental. The experience is slightly different from format to format, but over all my Kindle version of THE STAND is no different from the hardback version, except I can use the hardback to bludgeon a hippo to death should I so choose.

It’s a good point.

And probably true.

And it really doesn’t matter.

Here’s the thing: the “what should e-books cost?” question often takes into cost the actual cost of producing the e-book when, in reality, it needs to look at perceived value, instead.

Now, caution — I’m not an ecomonom… economonist… mathemeconom… whatever. I’m not great with money or numbers, so bear with me. (I’m also not great with elevators, escalators, tiny rodents, sporks, chopsticks, ferrets, or fingerless gloves. Just in case you’re making a list.)

An e-book is a digital good. Ephemeral and intangible. Sometimes we don’t even have access to the e-book itself in the form of a file — in the case of Amazon, we’re just “renting” the e-book the same way you rent Taco Bell food. You bought it. It’s inside your device. But if Amazon decides you don’t need it anymore, one snap of the wizard’s fingers and the e-books are poof, gone, siphoned from your reader like gas from a gas-tank. E-books have no supply — if I buy one, it doesn’t reduce how many remain, because theoretically infinite copies remain. No cost to reprint. No cost to remake. It just… sits out there, attempting to be the very embodiment of the Long Tail.

This is what the audience sees and believes.

It matters little what the e-book actually costs.

It only matters what the audience thinks they should cost.

Now, the audience won’t agree on an actual number (they’re cagey, those fuckers), but what they do seem to roughly agree on is, e-books should be cheaper than their print counterparts. What the e-book actually costs is irrelevant. What matters is the expected value loss by going with an ephemeral digital item — and, further, added into that is the expectation of, “I bought a device to read this, which cost me money already.”

Further cognitive dissonance is born of the fact that smaller producers (smaller publishers or individual authors) can produce a digital version of a book far more cheaply and easily than they can a hardcopy.

Publishers have themselves helped to confuse this issue by creating the expected release structure of books — from hardback to a trade paperback and then maybe to a mass market paperback. The e-book interrupts this chain because you can’t put out a book without an e-book counterpart, and so e-books don’t fit into that progression. The others are tiered and timed, but e-books don’t really fit into a tier or a timeframe.

To price e-books, there then exists a fight against some rational concerns and some very irrational behavior on the part of this active audience. But that’s normal — the freaknomics of the audience is always irrational. You can’t fight the flood; you can only try to swim in it. Certainly if enough big-ass epic motherfucker authors (think Stephen King-sized) made it a point to focus this meme or if Amazon enforced a higher price on e-books, the perception might shift. But neither’s likely to happen anytime soon.

One hopes and assumes that as publishers get better at making e-books, their costs will go down. Further, we must remember that e-books are in the “formative technology” phase right now. They’re VCRs and tape-decks. We won’t see CDs and DVDs for a little while down the line, and when we do, price will need to change (up or down, I can’t say). Also: infinite supply is a key component, here.

So. What to do, what to do? What’s the appropriate range of e-book prices you hope to see? Throw some thoughts into the ring, let ‘em fight it out all scrappy-like.

(Related reading: e-book data, viral catalysts, and spurring word-of-mouth.)

25 Realizations Writers Need To Have

1. The Story Is The Thing

“Publishing is on a collision course with the sun! Amazon has eaten all the books and shat them out as e-books! Development funds are drying up! Writers are shanking each other with Bic pens over a 1/4-cent-per-word!” Stop. Breathe. Refocus. Media companies will rise and fall. Technologies come and go. The story remains constant. More to the point, our need for stories remain constant. Storytellers and writers aren’t going anywhere. They may need to bend with the wind. They may need to find new ways to thrive. But they — we — will always have a place. The audience will be there. We just have to find them.

2. Old Stories, New Faces

As storytellers, we must adapt by adopting new ways of doing things — or, rather, new ways of telling stories. . The old roads may still work, but new paths through the jungle must be cut with our word-machetes. When you see a new piece of technology or social media, ask the question, “How can I use this to tell stories?” If you see a new publishing option (one that does not exploit the author), it’s wise to try it — if only to see if you can find new audience and a new vehicle by which to tell your tales.

3. Thrive, Don’t Survive

New models and new means open new ways for you to make a living by telling stories. That’s the goal, right? It’s certainly my goal. Yours might be, “Barely have enough to pay rent and buy myself a 9-pack of Ramen,” but I say, aim higher. Point is, if the old way isn’t giving you the living you need, you need to mix that shit up. Diversify. Feint right, then duck left — break free of the Conga line and do your own spasmodic seizure-dance on the Disco floor. You need to learn your own moves. Shake what your Momma gave you.

4. Embrace All Tools

In any career, it pays to learn all the tricks and tools of the trade. A carpenter doesn’t just know how to build chairs. A dominatrix doesn’t just know how to spank an upturned bottom or shove mascara brushes into pee-holes. A carpenter learns how to use the Laser-Nail 9009. A dominatrix learns how to build her own cat-of-nine-tails from the entrails of her gimp. (Okay, this is probably why I’m neither carpenter nor dominator.) Writers should learn tools old and new. Don’t just learn how to write a novel. Write short. Write long. Write scripts. Write games. Write blogs. Write creative non-fiction. Write psycho-vids for the HoloNet. Learn it all. Do it all. Stay relevant and diversify. The shark swims forward or he drowns. The monkey kills the monkey or the monkey doesn’t get the cupcake. Or something. Shut up.

5. The Myth Of The Perfect Path

Amazon is the savior! Amazon is a monster! The Big Six destroy authors! The Big Six will save publishing! Kickstarter! No, wait! Indiegogo! Love agents! Fuck agents! Hollywood rules! The studio system sucks balls! Brain! On fire! Fritzing out! Too many exclamation points! Too many opposing viewpoints! Can’t feel legs! Ahem. No perfect path exists. No one company or model is ideally suited to anybody and everybody. Amazon helps many. Amazon hurts others. Traditional publishing has fucked over some authors, and has unfucked just as many. No perfect path exists. We all choose which angels and devils to place upon our shoulders. Accept your nuanced and imperfect options.

6. Tribes Are Fucking Stupid

To build off that last point, tribes are fucking stupid. We create tribes to stroke our own egos, to confirm our choices to the world at large when we only need to confirm them to ourselves. Detonate your tribes. Destroy your cults. Tell your leaders you’re leaving for the secular life and if they fight you, bludgeon them with a femur and move along. Embrace a single inclusive tribe: the tribe of storyteller.

7. The Power In Clumsily Flailing About Like A Drunken Orangutan

Say “yes” more than you say “no.” Sometimes trying new things and learning new skills isn’t about a focused strategy or a well-meaning plus/minus pro/con list. You need to be savvy in business but you’re also a creative human being, goddamnit, and sometimes creativity is about wildly pirouetting and crashing into lamps and trying new things just because you got a bug up your ass to do it.

8. Your Work Has Value, So Claim Value For What You Do

Deny anybody who wants you to work for free. If you work for free, that’s something you do, not something someone asks of you — doubly true where they’re making money and you’re not. They might as well ask you to bend over and stick tennis balls up your poopchute for the pleasure of an audience without you getting even the benefit of a reach-around. Or health care. Or free tennis lessons! Stories have value. Storytellers have value. Anybody who says different should be thrown into a wood chipper and used for mulch.

9. Free Is Part Of A Strategy, Not The Whole Damn Strategy

That says it all but it bears unpacking: you can’t just give everything away and hope to thrive — or, frankly, even survive. You can give some stuff away. But don’t give it all away. Free is a zero sum, zero value game.

10. The Crass Reality Of “Monetization”

It’s an ugly word. “Monetization.” I gag a little when I say it. Whenever I hear it, a little trickle of blood oozes from my earholes. Just the same, storytellers need to eat, pay bills, support their deviant sexual habits, and that takes money, and that means you either work as a bag-boy and give your stories away for free or you find a way for your stories to help you make money. Sometimes that’s selling direct. Sometimes it’s a more circuitous path to the bill-paying and deviancy-having. Creativity without business sense will leave you starving. When you tell stories, ask the question (much as you may hate it): “How does this help me survive, and then thrive?”

11. The Internet Changed Everything

I’m not telling you something you don’t already know (and by the time you read this there will probably be something new, like, “THE MEMEGRID CHANGED EVERYTHING” or “THE NANO-BEES COLONIZED OUR STORY-PODS,” but fuck it, whaddya gonna do?), but I feel the need to remind storytellers that the Internet has made the tools of story creation and dissemination cheaper, easier, crazier, and farther-flung. Farther-flunger? Shut up. This is good in that it gives you and the audience greater connection, and troubling because it amps up competition and changes value. It is what it is. Take advantage.

12. Mother May I?

It’s time to stop asking for permission. Storytellers have been cast in a submissive role for a long time — “Please, Mistress, may I have another?” *WHACK* — and the worm is turning. Nobody’s doing you a favor by helping your story come to life. It’s not a treat placed on a dog’s nose while he waits patiently to chomp it down. This isn’t about killing gatekeepers so much as it is about redefining the gates. This isn’t about going DIY so much as it is about finding people — agents, editors, publishers, artists, other storytellers — who see you as a partner, not a peon. Symbiosis, not parasitism.

13. Bookstores Can Be Vital Places

This is not to say that new trumps old. That’s not the point. The point is, both exist, and both are likely to continue to exist. The real world — aka “meatspace,” aka “IRL,” aka “that place where I go to the grocery store and fondle overripe fruit” — is where people actually exist. And bookstores (and libraries, and movie theaters, and anywhere the audience gathers) still remain vital places. Reality trumps the digital space. Find ways to connect with the living, breathing audience. Leave room for those physical connections, which is not to say you should all be having some kind of author-audience orgy. I mean… y’know, unless you’re into that. *takes off pants, gently strokes mushy cantaloupe while moaning*

14. Speaking Of The Orgy

You can’t do this alone. Don’t think you can. Don’t think you can exist without some combination of partners, editors, artists, producers, agents, liaisons, lion-tamers, bee-wranglers, tweeters, whiskey procurement agents, sandwich-preparation-techs, and fluffers.

15. Other Writers Matter

Other writers are as crazy as you are, and trust me, I’ve seen what you do. (For the love of all that’s sacred, cover up those crotchless Naugahyde trousers. And put down the river otter.) Just the same, community in the writer’s world is key. Writers help writers. Storytellers help storytellers. They’re not competition. They’re partners. Cohorts. Drinking buddies. Folks who know how to properly dissolve a dead body.

16. The Audience Is More Active Than Ever

When fire touches water, the molecules go all batty and twitchy and that’s how water boils. The audience is the water, and they’re set to boil. The audience is an active element. They tweet, blog, post to Facebook, email the author, and create a generous (and alarmingly fast) feedback loop. And they’ll do you one better: prime movers in that space will create fan-fiction or involve themselves in the story in a big way. Open your door to the audience. Join the feedback loop. Get shut of notions of creative integrity and leave room for audience engagement, collaboration, and emergence.

17. Oh, And By The Way, You Need That Audience

Some creators treat their audience like an enemy. Do that and you’re dead. They’ll gut you like a fucking fish and stick a grenade where your heart used to be. The audience is the most important team member in any storyteller’s crew. Without the audience, you’re just a naked weirdo screaming at himself in the mirror.

18. Your Work Won’t Be For Everyone

The audience isn’t total. The audience is more and more fractured these days, like a hunk of hard toffee broken into pieces. But that’s okay. Smaller audiences are often more invested ones, creating a more vibrant ecosystem for creators. The age of the rockstar is fading, and that’s true across most of the artistic spectrum. But the death of the icon doesn’t mean the whole thing is going to collapse. When the big fish dies, the little fish can fill the space. You may not get to be Stephen King, but you can be a storyteller who makes a living — a good living — doing what he loves to do, and there is perhaps no more perfect thing than that.

19. It Puts The Word In The Mouth Or It Gets The Hose Again

Word of mouth is still the best driver for stories — it is the infection vector we all use and desire. But it’s changed. The Internet has widened the mouth so it can accommodate more words — our “circle of trust” has grown significantly bigger with the advent of social media. It’s no longer just the 10 people we hang out with at work or the bar. It’s the 100 people on Twitter, the 1000 on Facebook, the blogs and reviews we read.

20. Piracy Is Not Theft

A controversial point, but I want to put it out there: piracy, good or bad, is not theft. It is perhaps a kind of parasitism? Combat it where you can, find value in it where you can’t. Which leads me to…

21. You Can’t Control The Tides

Some forces lay outside an author’s control. You may be able to change some small things here and there, and you can certainly find new paths — but just the same, elements of this life will always be outside your control. Whether we’re talking e-book pricing or piracy or audience interest or Amazon or publishers or whether or not there are viral YouTube videos of me randily humping fruit at your local grocery store, some things are outside your control. When that’s the case, you can either go with the waves or walk away from the beach, but standing there and yelling at the tides will do you little good.

22. Be Generative

Do. Don’t just talk about it. Or think about it. Or play pretend. Put yourself out there. Tell stories. Lots of them. Learn the skill. Harness your talent. To be creative is to create. It’s all on you, motherfucker.

23. Storytelling And Writing Are Two Different Skills

I’ve said it before but I like it so much I plan on keep shoehorning it into your brain-hole: writing and storytelling are two different skills that feed off one another — a Yin and Yang, a pair of snakes biting each other’s tail. You must know the art of the story and the craft of communicating that story. One without the other is like a two-legged pony, dragging himself around all sad-ass, the most griefstruck pony in the world. Also, “Griefstruck Pony” was my nickname in the Crips. Or was it the Bloods? Whatever.

24. Maybe Time To Call Yourself A Storyteller?

I’m wondering if “storyteller” is more versatile than “writer?” Of course, it’s also probably worth even less respect on the open respect market. Try telling someone you’re a “storyteller” and they probably think you dress up like a goof and tell stories to wandering children for mere tuppence. Just the same, it’s a good way to differentiate between “I write technical VCR repair manuals” and “I write stories for an engaged audience.” And it also doesn’t pin you to any one format, platform, or medium. Shit, I don’t know. By the time I get to item #24 on these lists I’m usually drunk and dizzy. My nude body covered in fruit guts. So. Y’know. Enjoy that visual. *high-five*

25. A Good Story Is Your Best Defense

Your best defense against changing conditions and an uncertain environment is a good story. Book, comic, movie, game, cartoon, cave-based pictographs, whatever. By being capable and crafty, by being generative and progressive, by knowing how to do that thing you do, you insulate yourself from the chaos of the industry. The audience will always be there. The story matters to them, and they matter to you.

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Shooting Blackbirds: A Round-Up Of News And Reviews

Blackbirds is out now for just shy of a week, and this seems like a good time to do a round-up of stuff related to and orbiting around the book’s release? I’m totally geeked that the book is getting a lot of love (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of not love — it’s a tough book, no doubt, and is perhaps a bit polarizing, but I suppose I’d rather a book be polarizing than be shot straight down the gray mushy middle).

I’ll politely ask (beg, wheedle, plead, cajole) that if you have read the book and are interested in leaving a review somewhere (Amazon? B&N? Goodreads?) I’d be mighty appreciative.

On with the round-up, then. Load your rifles. Let’s shoot some blackbirds.

(If I missed anything, feel free to remind me in comments, I’ll add!)

Places I Pop Up Like An Unwanted Gopher

“I’m dying. Don’t get excited. You are, too.” I had me a big idea about writing Blackbirds, a notion about death and fate and powerlessness and hypochondria and all those crazy things, and as such, I’m over at John Scalzi’s space this past week talking about it. Check out: “The Big Idea: Chuck Wendig.”

I say make genre your bitch over at Criminal Complex, in an essay called “Genre Is A Moving Target.”

I exhort all you crazy writers to embrace your crazy over at Writer Unboxed: “Own The Crazy.”

I help you identify your shit-or-get-off-the-pot novel at Stephen Blackmoore’s space.

I join Uber-Human and Ultra-Creative JC Hutchins for the 100th episode of the Functional Nerds!

In this interview at Litstack, I say things like, “I procure hallucinogens from the Tuk Tuk people of Borneo, and then I kill my own doppelganger in hand-to-hand spirit combat.”

In this interview at My Bookish Ways (where they are also giving away a copy of Blackbirds, so don’t miss out), I say things like, “I like to drink a draught of bat’s blood before I write, and I can only write wearing a dead possum pubic wig.”

In this interview at LitReactor (with the one and only Keith “Rawdog” Rawson), I say things like, “You have bred true, penmonkey. Go rest now. Go die of the bird-flu, your work here is done.”

And finally, here at my own site, the 25 things I learned while writing the book.

Reviews That Don’t Suck

From Tor.com: “This is one of those novels that sucks you in and doesn’t let you off the hook until you’ve turned the final page… It’s a short, sharp tale that’s consistently captivating and a pure, dark delight from start to finish.”

From Shelf Awareness: “Wendig inserts surprising moments of humanity among all the profanity.”

From LitStack: “Wendig is not for the weak. Wendig is for the brave, the adventurous, those strong in mind and stomach.”

From Clear Eyes, Full Shelves: “And thus begins a visceral, blood-pumping (sometimes a lot of blood pumping out of someone’s body) ride filled with (minor spoiler alert) the obligatory Big Bad, his burned-out henchman, his amusingly sadistic henchwoman, an ironically named blackmailing conman and a mysterious metal suitcase.”

From Adventures Fantastic: “It’s a high octane ride through the dark recesses of humanity, a smashing blend of noir and the supernatural that combines the best of classic crime novels with downright genuine creepiness.”

From Violin In A Void: “It’s a quick and dirty brush with the seedier side of urban fantasy. A good kind of nasty, especially if you get a little tired of squeaky clean heroes and heroines who do no wrong.”

From The Book Stoner: “I enjoyed this very much and I spent half the time laughing my brains out. It’s just darkly hilarious? Hilariously dark? Anyway, read this if you’re into dark humor and gore and crime novels with a twist of fantasy.”

From Stefan’s Bookshelf: “Blackbirds is urban fantasy at it’s gory and violent best, 5 bloody stars.”

From Waiting For Fairies: “Blackbirds is a hauntingly macabre book… The prose is visceral and brutally beautiful.”

From Dice, Food, Lodging: “Blackbirds is a finely crafted story that didn’t disappoint me for even a page. The story is visceral and gripping and kept me reading straight through. I hate to call up the connotations of a “page turner,” as I have some distinctly non-stellar examples in my own head, but I honestly hated to put this one down.”

From Andrew Jack: “If you want the short version of this review, then here it is: I loved Blackbirds. I loved it as much as any other Urban Fantasy I’ve ever read, which, considering my almost inappropriate love of The Dresden Files is saying a lot.”

From Cupcake’s Cupboard: “Blackbirds, a rough, unflinching suspense tale from Chuck Wendig, introduces us to Miriam and the torture of knowing how people die, yet being powerless to stop it.”

From The Guilded Earlobe, a review of the audiobook: “In Blackbirds, Chuck Wendig has created a character who should be wearing a T-Shirt that says, ‘Spoiler Warning.’”

EDIT:

I’m told that SFX is giving the book a 4/5, saying, “Think Six Feet Under as written by Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk.” So, that’s pretty sweet! (They didn’t much like Double Dead.)

From MyShelf Confessions: “This is a must read for fans of paranormal books on the much darker and grittier side of things.  I was hooked a few short pages in and could barely put Blackbirds down until I was finished.”