Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 254

25 Things You Should Know About Word Choice

1. A Series Of Word Choices

Here's why this matters: because both writing and storytelling comprise, at the most basic level, a series of word choices. Words are the building blocks of what we do. They are the atoms of our elements. They are the eggs in our omelets. They are the shots of liquor in our cocktails. Get it right? Serendipity. Get it wrong? The air turns to arsenic, that cocktail makes you puke, this omelet tastes like balls.

2. Words Define Reality

Words are like LEGO bricks: the more we add, the more we define the reality of our playset. "The dog fucked the chicken" tells us something. "The Great Dane fucked the chicken" tells us more. "The Great Dane fucked the bucket of fried chicken on the roof of Old Man Dongweather's barn, barking with every thrust" goes the distance and defines reality in a host of ways (most of them rather unpleasant). You can over-define. Too many words spoil the soup. Find the balance between clarity, elegance, and evocation.

3. The "Hot And Cold" Game

You know that game — "Oh, you're cold, colder, colder — oh! Now you're getting hot! Hotter! Hotter still! Sizzling! Yay, you found the blueberry muffin I hid under the radiator two weeks ago!" –? Word choice is like a textual version of that game where you try to bring the reader closer to understanding the story you're trying to tell. Strong, solid word choice allows us to strive for clarity (hotter) and avoid confusion (colder).

4. Most With Fewest

Think of it like a different game, perhaps: you're trying to say as much as possible with as few words as you can muster. Big ideas put as briefly as you are able. Maximum clarity with minimum words.

5. The Myth Of The Perfect Word

Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. Get shut of this notion. The perfect is the enemy of the good. For every sentence and every story you have a plethora of right words. Find a good word. Seek a strong word. But the hunt for a perfect word will drive you into a wide-eyed froth. Though, according to scholars, "nipplecookie" is in fact the perfect word. That's why Chaucer used it so often. Truth.

6. No One Perfect Word, But A Chumbucket Of Shitty Ones

For every right word, you have an infinity of wrong ones.

7. Awkward, Like That Kid With The Headgear And The Polio Foot

You might use a word that either oversteps or fails to meet the idea you hope to present. A word in that instance would be considered awkward. "That dinner fornicated in his mouth" is certainly a statement, and while it's perhaps not a technically incorrect metaphor, it's just plain goofy (and uh, kinda gross). You mean that the flavors fornicated, or more likely that the flavors of the meal were sensual, or that they inspired lewd or libidinous thoughts. (To which I might suggest you stop French-kissing that forkful of short ribs, pervhouse.) To go with the food metaphor for a moment ("meat-a-phor?"), you ever take a bite of food and, after it's already in your mouth, discover something in there that's texturally off? Bit of gristle, stem, bone, eyeball, fingernail, whatever? The way you're forced to pause the meal and decipher the texture with your mouth is the same problem a reader will have with awkward word choice. It obfuscates meaning and forces the reader to try to figure out just what the fuck you're talking about.

8. Ambiguous, Like That Girl With That Thing Outside That Place

Remember how I said earlier that words are like LEGO, blah blah blah help define reality yadda yadda poop noise? Right. Ambiguous word choice means you're not defining reality very well in your prose. "Bob ate lunch. It was good. Then he did something." Lunch? Good? Something? Way to wow 'em with your word choice, T.S. Eliot. To repeat: aim for words that are strong, confident, and above all else, clarifying.

9. Incorrect, Like That Guy Who Makes Up Shit When He's Drunk

Incorrect word choice means you're using the wrong damn word. As that character says in that movie, "I do not think it means what you think it means." Affect, effect. Comprise, compose. Sensual, sensuous. Elicit, illicit. Eminent, immanent, imminent. Allude, elude. Must I continue? Related: if you write "loose" instead of "lose," I cannot be held accountable if I kick you so hard in your butthole you choke on a hemorrhoid.

10. Step Sure-Footedly

Point of fact: the English language was invented by a time-traveling spam-bot who was trapped in a cave with a crazy monk. Example: The word "umbrage" means "offense," so, to take umbrage means to take offense. Ah, but it also means the shade or protection afforded by trees. I used to take the second definition and assume it carried over to the people portion of that definition. Thus, to "take umbrage" meant in a way to "take shelter" with a person, as in, to both be under the same shadow of the same tree. I used the word incorrectly for years like some shithead. If you're uncertain about the use of any word, it's easy enough to either not use it or use Google to define it ("define: [word]" is the search you need). Do not trust that the English language makes sense or that your recollection of its madness is pristine. It will bite you every time.

11. The Barbaric Barf-Yawn That Is Your First Draft

This is not a hard or fast rule (hell, none of this is), but in my highly-esteemed opinion (translation: debatable bullshit mumbled by a guy who thinks "cock-waffle" should be a part of our collective daily vocabulary), you don't need — or want! — to refine your word choice in the first draft. That initial draft is, for me, a screaming weeping blubberfest where I just want to cry all the words out without any care in the world how they get onto the page. Second and subsequent drafts, however, are a good time to zero in on problems big and small. Don't spend your first draft scrutinizing word choice.

12. Verbs: Strong Like Bull

For every action you'll find a dozen or more verb-flavors of that action. You can drink your coffee or you can gulp, sip, guzzle, or inhale it. You can run down the street or you can jog, bolt, sprint, dash, saunter, or hotfoot it. You can have sex with someone or you can fuck 'em, hump 'em, make love to 'em, or ride 'em like Seabiscuit in a gimp mask. (Do they make gimp masks for horses? To the Googlemobile!) Use a strong verb that clarifies the action and makes sense in the context of the scene. A hostage escaping his kidnappers isn't going to scamper away — he's going to barrel, hurtle, bolt, or if you're a fan of not-fixing-what-ain't-broke, he'll run like a motherfucker. If the base-level verb gives you maximum potency and clarity, then use it.

13. "I Like Playing With My Cats!" John Ejaculated From His Mouth

Mmmyeah, one caveat to the "strong clarifying verb" thing — it doesn't apply to dialogue tags. No, no. Don't resist. Hold still. Stop trying to chew through the duct tape. I know you want to your characters to yelp, blurt, scream, gibber, shriek, murmur, mumble, babble, explain, exhort, plead, interrupt, erupt, exclaim, and ejaculate constantly, but don't do it. Do. Not. Do. It. Rely on "say/said" 80-90% of the time. You can, when seeking variety and clarification of action, use another dialogue tag.

14. The Verb "To Be"

Am. Is. Was. To Be. Will Be. Whatever. I'm not one of those who will tell you to cut out every instance of the verb "to be" in all its simple-headed forms because sometimes, simplicity is best. And yet, overuse of that verb may weaken your writing. Look for instances where the verb can be replaced by a stronger one or where it adds needless roughage to a sentence. "Barry is playing with himself in the corner" is better as "Barry plays with himself in the corner." If you say, "It is my opinion that Rush Limbaugh should be stuffed with dynamite and exploded like a beached whale," you'd be better off with, "I believe Rush Limbaugh…" instead. Oh, and if a sentence starts with "there is" or "it was," you should attack that sentence with lasers.

15. The Word "Specificity" Is Really Fun To Say

No, really. Try it, I'll wait. … Are you done yet? Specificity. Specificity. Spehhh-siiiihh-fiiiihh-sihhhh-teeee. Anyway. Moving on. Words help us define reality — nouns doubly so. Creature? Animal? Mammal? Cat? Panther? Housecat? Tomcat? Russian Blue? The North Canadian Spangled Bobtail? There I charted specificity to the point where it became useful and then crossed over into absurd bullshit. If I tell the reader that the cat is a "housecat," we all get it. But if I say that the cat is a "Lambkin dwarf cat," only a handful of cat geeks are ever going to grok my lingo. Aim for specific, but realize you can get too specific.

16. The Strong Spice Of Adverb And Adjective

Sometimes, a verb or noun just doesn't tell the whole tale. I can say "housecat," but I mean, "calico kitty with a sprightly attitude and a penchant for meowing loudly." Calico. Sprightly. Loudly. These all modify the verbs and nouns present in order to paint a picture. Adverbs and adjectives provide both a deeper sense of specificity while also providing flavor or color to the world. They're a strong spice. Use when you need, not when you want. Say what you mean and no more.

17. Adverbs Are Not Your Mortal Foe

Writers often bandy about that old crunchy nugget of of penmonkey wisdom — NO ADVERBS — as if it is bulletproof. As if a gang of adverbs shanked that writer's mother in the kidneys as she stooped over to water the hydrangeas. Adverbs are not birthed from the Devil's hell-womb. They're just words. Did you know that "never" is an adverb? As is "here?" And "tomorrow?" You can rely too heavily on adverbs (and amateurish writers do). You can also use adverbs that are unnecessary or that sound clunky when staple-gunned to the end of a sentence. And adverbs paired with dialogue tags will often chafe one's taint, but that doesn't mean you need to hunt down every last adverb with a spear-gun.

18. The Thesaurus Is Not Satan's Own Demon Gospel

The thesaurus is not a bad book (or, these days, website). I love the thesaurus because I have a brain like a rust-eaten bucket — shit slips through all the time. I'm constantly snapping my fingers saying, "There's a word that's like this other word but not quite and OH SHITDAMNIT I CAN'T REMEMBER IT WHO AM I AND WHY AM I WEARING LADIES' UNDERWEAR?" So, I turn to the thesaurus not to look for a better, fancier word but instead to find the word my feeble mouse-eaten brain cannot properly recall. It is not the thesaurus that is the root of all evil but rather the love of the thesaurus that urges writers to commit the sin of pompous word choice. It is not a crutch; do not lean upon it.

19. Big Words For Tiny Penises

Smaller words are nearly always better than big ones. Big words put distance between you and the reader. Each added syllable is a speed-bump. Don't use word choice to sound smart. Don't talk circles around the reader. Your job is communication. Is your story a bridge between you and the reader — or is it a wall?

20. The Jingly Jangle Of Jargon

Jargon is when you rely on technical or area-specific terminology to get across your point. Jargon uses a limited vocabulary to speak to a small circle of people, and this is true whether you're talking about some aspect specific to knight's armor, a scientific theory, or the manufacture of space-age dildo technology. The test is easy. Ask yourself, will most people know what the fuck I'm talking about? If yes, carry on. If no, either use plain-spoken language or take the time to explain that shit you just slung into my eyes.

21. The Plumber Versus The Aristocrat

Certainly you have some leeway in terms of choosing the correct words for your expected audience. If you're writing a novel about baseball, nobody would fault you for using a metric crap-sack of baseball terminology. You'll certainly write different prose if you expect your audience to comprise plumbers instead of an aristocrats. Still, you'll find value in reading to be read widely, not just by a subset of potential readers.

22. Junk In The Trunk

I'll admit it: I love junk words. They are the greasy hamburger of prose, delicious to me and plump with empty calories. Effectively! In theory! Very! Happen to! Point is! You know? They offer minimal — if any! — functionality. Hunt them down with merciless abandon. Stomp them with cleated shoe until they squeal.

23. From The Department Of Redundancy Department

The repetition of one or several words can have a potent effect — but what happens a lot of time is, you repeat words accidentally. "The day was hot and heat vapors rose off the ground. The heat sapped Quinn's energy." Hot, heat, heat. A reader will trip on such repetition. And then he'll fall down some steps and break his coccyx. Man, "coccyx" sounds like some kind of dinosaur bird, doesn't it? THE MIGHTY COCCYX SWOOPS TO FEAST ON THE BABY TURTLEBUGS. I dunno. Shut up. Don't judge me.

24. The Sound Of Words Matter

Words play off other words. Together they form rhythm. Choose words that pair well together, like red wine and steak. Or Pabst Blue Ribbon and hipster shame. Or heroin and delicious urinal cakes. Shakespeare knew that rhythm mattered and so chose words that slotted into iambic pentameter. The way you hear the rhythm of the words is to read your work aloud. Do that and you'll find the flow — or, more importantly, find what's damming the flow so you can fix it with proper word choice and sentence construction.

25. You Will Be Judged On The Words You Choose

Consider word choice to be a test posited by the audience. Make errors (lose/loose), they will see you for the rube you are. Write by relying on big words, heavy jargon and purple prose and they will see you as sticking your literary nose in the air. The result is the same: they will close the book and then beat you to death with it. They are also likely to violate your pallid carcass with various kitchen implements.

Write to be read. Choose words that have flavor but do not overwhelm, that reach out instead of pushing back, that sound right to the ear and carry with them a kind of rhythm. Write with confidence, not with arrogance. Don't be afraid to play with words. But be sure to let the reader play with you.

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Fantasy Fiction At The Fringe

I'm reading Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon right now and I'm loving the unholy fuck out of it. Arabic myth with a protagonist who's a fat, old ghul hunter? Oh. Oh. Oh yeah.

(Needless to say, you should go and read it posthaste.)

It's kind of scratching an itch I'd forgotten I had, which is for fantasy fiction that goes well beyond that Tolkeinist purview to be brave and bold and do something unexpected with the very notion of fantasy.

So, talk to me. Make some recommendations. What would I like? What fantasy is out there — now or from the past — that operates outside the comfort zone and does something new instead of regurgitating all the same old tropes and archetypes and hero-plot piffle?

Further: what do you want to see in fantasy that's just never represented? What niches need filling?

Flash Fiction Challenge: Song Shuffle, Part II

Last week's challenge — "Tell a story in five sentences" — is all tied up and cinched with a bow. Those looking for a winner to that challenge, keep your eyes peeled on that blog post. I'll announce at some point today. It's a toughie, as usual, because, fuckadang, so many good options.

I loved this challenge so much, I'm bringing it back a second time.

As they say, second verse, same as the first.

Here we go:

Go to Your Favorite Music Player. Dig out your digital music collection.

Maybe this is iTunes or Spotify, or use Pandora if you'd rather go that way.

Hit SHUFFLE, then "Play."

Translation: pull up a random song.

The title to this song is the title to your story.

Use the song for inspiration, too, if you feel so inclined.

Word count is the full-bore double-barrel 1000 words, as usual.

You've got a week. Get your stories in by noon EST, March 9th. Just to be a little bit of a dick, I'm going to close the comments after that point — I don't set a deadline for gits and shiggles, after all.

Post at your blog. Link back. You know the drill.

Now queue up some tunes and get thee to some wordsmithy.

Seanan McGuire: The Terribleminds Interview

Seanan McGuire is Mira Grant. Mira Grant is Seanan McGuire. Both write kick-ass novels like FEED, or the INCRYPTID series. I can only assure you that you want to be reading her brand of urban fantasy meets horror meets, well, urban fantasy all over again. You will find her at either the site of Seanan McGuire or Mira Grant, and you can– and should! — totally follow her on Twitter (@SeananMcGuire).

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

I was that stereotypical little girl out of a Ray Bradbury story waiting to happen: my family didn't have much money, my bedroom looked like a magpie's nest crossed with a junk store, I had big blue eyes and curly blonde hair, and best of all, I lived right at the edge of a swampy marsh forest filled with crawdads, scrub grass, wild birds, and snakes of all varieties. I spent my summers running around in the sun until I was almost as brown as the dirt in our apartment building's yard, and promptly turned the color of chalk when the autumn came. My hair would bleach in the summer, and stay bleached well into the winter; I was a ghost-girl by the time Halloween rolled around, with no color left to my name but that unrelenting white.

I very well may have grown up in the golden age of trick-or-treating. Halloween was a big enough deal in the 1980s that everybody did it, and every house and apartment in sight gave out candy, but it wasn't yet the modern era of paranoia and refusal to let kids out after dark. Halloween was magic. Every October 31st my mother zipped me into a costume made by my grandmother, handed me my equally homemade (and equally awesome) trick-or-treat sack, blazoned with glow-in-the-dark pumpkins that would lose their glow before I was halfway through my rounds, and shoved me out the door. My mission? To collect as much candy as humanly possible in the short hours between dusk, when trick-or-treating became acceptable, and nine o'clock, when the porch lights started clicking off. (Running up against that unspoken curfew was an art and a science. You could double back to houses you'd visited earlier, and not only would they have forgotten you, there was a good chance you'd be able to score the remainder of the bowl from tired adults who just wanted to go to bed. Or you might get ignored, or yelled at, or placated with things that were distinctly not candy. I got silverware once. I think that guy was drunk.)

The year I was ten, I was dressed as one of the little dead girls from the Nightmare on Elm Street movie series. I had the right "look" for the part, and all I had to do was add some dark circles around my eyes and a white dress I didn't care about. I haunted the streets of Concord and Clayton, filling my sack with all the sugary goodness it would hold. I knew the shortcuts and the back ways and the best neighborhoods to target, the ones where you could get full-sized candy bars from people whose own children could afford store-bought costumes (still a rarity in those days, and something to be envied). What's more, I knew the fastest routes from neighborhood to neighborhood, which meant that I could skip the boring commercial blocks and get straight to the good stuff.

And that is why, from the perspective of the man driving too fast around the curve on Bel Air, I suddenly materialized–a dead-white girl in a tattered white dress, with white hair and eyes sunk deep into her skull–from beneath the old creek bridge. There were no other trick-or-treaters on that block, which may have added to the shock of my appearance; he had no other monsters to compare me to. He swerved hard, away from the bridge, and slammed into a tree.

I went back under the bridge and resumed trick-or-treating. I was, after all, not supposed to talk to strange men in cars.

According to the paper the next day, he lost control of his vehicle because he saw a ghost. My mother asked if I'd seen anything strange. I shook my head "no," and ate another pack of candy corn.

Why do you tell stories?

Because I am incapable of not telling stories. According to my mother, I started roughly five minutes after I started talking (she still recites one of my earliest claims, that the aliens had stolen her real baby and left me, on a regular basis). I think that, were I to take a vow of silence that extended to the written word, I would actually explode. On the other hand, I speak some ASL, so maybe I'd just get more fluent in a hurry…

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

If you want to be a writer, you need to read, and you need to write. Everything else is varying shades of bullshit, and what works for me is not absolutely going to work for you. I know people who find my combination of tight structure and absolute chaos to be incomprehensible, while I find their particular setups to be equally bizarre. But you have to read, or you won't know what works on a page, and you have to write, or you won't know what works on your page.

Reading and writing as critical components to a writing life, agreed. What one novel would you recommend to serve as a master class on writing and storytelling for aspiring professional authors?

Yay, questions with no right answer!  But seriously…this is a hugely personal question, and it's going to be different for every author in the world.  For me, that book was Watership Down.  You know.  With the rabbits.  It was the book where I realized you can have lots of characters and lots of situations and a major quest and not be talking down to your reader and that's okay.  I was eight when I read it, so it was sort of a step up from the rest of what I had access to.  And it changed my world.  So for me, that was the book.  But you probably have a different book, and that's cool.  I think this answer changes with cultural background, age of the reader, and what genre that person wants to work in.  And maybe gender, a little bit, especially in science fiction, since so much older science fiction is male-dominant.

I'd say that short stories, though…everyone, regardless of genre leanings, should read Tiptree's "The Only Really Neat Thing to Do," Matheson's "I Am Legend," King's "The Mist," and Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder."  That will build a foundation that lets everything else find the place it needs to stand.

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

I get email from people who feel that they have a close personal relationship with my imaginary friends. That's pretty awesome. I love that people who actually exist can suddenly engage with the people who exist only in my head. It's just incredible to know that these stories are getting out there, and that I can tell them to people, and that people will listen.

As for what sucks about it…a lot of people don't understand that it's work, it's hard, and it doesn't happen as fast as they read. So I start getting "when's the next one?" the day after a book comes out, and it just makes me so bone-tired that I want to crawl under my bed and stay there for a year. And these are some of the same people asking why I don't do a book tour, why I don't come to their town for a signing, why I don't spend more of my limited writing hours not writing. It makes me so tired. I need a nap.

You are Seanan McGuire. But you are also Mira Grant, author of the most-excellent Feed. I get a lot of authors asking about pseudonyms, so enlighten us: why write with a pseudonym? How did yours come about?

So my stock answer for this is basically "Disney created Touchstone when they wanted to show tits in the movies."  And that's basically true.  My Mira Grant stuff is a lot darker than my stuff under my own name. and actually dives into the huge pools of geeky, geeky science that occupy a large percentage of my brain.  Distinguishing the two seemed like a really good idea.  I continue to believe that it was a really good idea, since periodically, my fans discover Mira and go "OH HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS SHIT," and sometimes Mira's fans discover me and go "WHAT GIRLY FAIRIES TINKER BELL COOTIES WHAT THE FUCK."  And I like to avoid that.  (Mind you, there's a huge overlap between my fans, and a lot of people read both of me.  But the outliers can sometimes make my head hurt.)

I was originally going to be "Samantha Grant," but there's someone who owns the .com, and my publisher wanted me to have a pseudonym where we could get the .com.  So the shuffle of possible first and last names was run again, and I came up Mira.  It's a complicated horror movie pun which requires knowledge of two languages to get.  I am very proud of that fact.Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

My favorite word is probably "abattoir," which yes, unpleasant meaning, blood on the carpet, I know, but it's just so much fun to say. My favorite curse word is the uncreative "fuck," but I'm very creative with my swearing, and just as likely to call you a meatsack or a cockwaffle if I'm mad at you.

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

Without question, Woodchuck Special Reserve Pumpkin Cider. They only make it in the fall, they only make it for one night, it tastes like Halloween in a bottle, and I think I wound up buying or receiving a full hours'-worth of the production from 2011. I wanted more. I have one beautiful bottle in my fridge, waiting for me to finish my current project and reward myself with the Great Pumpkin's blessing.

My favorite non-alcoholic beverage is Diet Dr Pepper. I could fill a swimming pool with what I drink annually.

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

Book: After the Golden Age, Carrie Vaughn. Comic book: Unwritten, Mike Carey. Film: Slither, directed by James Gunn. Game: Kingdom Hearts 2, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.

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

I know how to gut and butcher a deer; I can shoot a longbow, although it's been years, so my aim may suck (on the other hand, a zombie war is a naturally target-rich environment); I know what plants and animals will kill you along the California coast; and I have a large collection of machetes and baseball bats.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

I like to think that, were I to commit crimes against humanity, there would be no one left to catch me, since the slatewiper pandemic would have taken them all out. Maybe the aliens have caught me? I don't know. Anyway, if this is my last meal, it would consist of whatever I damn well wanted, so…

Appetizers: A plate of sliced heirloom tomatoes, a bowl of potato leek soup made with my recipe, and a cup of fresh candy corn.

Main course: Two roast beef sandwiches and two brisket sandwiches, both from Maverick's in St. Paul.

Dessert: A pint of Riesling poached pear sorbet from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, and an assortment of cupcakes from Cups and Cakes.

Drinks: With the appetizers, Diet Dr Pepper. With the main course, Christian Brothers ruby port. And with dessert, Woodchuck Pumpkin Cider.

I have just discovered Jeni's Ice Cream and it is phenomenal. I must know — what other flavors do you like?

My favorite is absolutely the Riesling Poached Pear (hence it being in my last meal), but I have honestly never had any ice cream from them that wasn't amazing.  My favorites–beyond the pear–are probably Rockway and Apricot, Brambleberry Crisp, Dark Chocolate Peppermint, and their amazing seasonal Heirloom Pumpkin.  That shit is like religion in a waffle cone for a Halloween girl.

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

Hopefully, a nap.

More seriously, a new series, InCryptid; lots of new books and stories and thoughts and characters and now we're back to that whole "nap" idea. I'm hoping to move to Washington state within the next year, so I'm writing as fast as I can now to build myself a buffer for those days when I can't find my desk and the cats have hidden my spare laptop battery. It's an exciting life!

Discount Armageddon. First Incryptid book. Coming out next week. Get cocky. Get bad-ass. Tell us in no uncertain terms why everyone should go nab a copy ASAMFP. Kick us in the face with your sales pitch.

You know what I fucking hate in urban fantasy today?  I hate that all the women have to have these huge, improbable super powers, or we're expected to dismiss them as Mary Sue self-insert author daydreams.  We used to have bad-ass chicks with big guns and great hair, and now we have super models in leather pants who can magic up everything but self-esteem and a fulfilling love life.  It's the genre, it's the standard, it's the can-you-dig-it way things have gotta be.  And you know what?  Fuck.  That.

I want girls with guns whose only super power is spending a few thousand hours at the gym.  I want physics that work.  I want worlds that work, where the underlying science may not matter to the story, but still makes fuckingsense.  I want pixies that can fly because they have hollow skeletal structures coupled with a musculature developed for short-pulse lift, not because ZOMG PIXIES ARE COOL LET'S HAVE SOME PIXIES.  And I want as much ass kicked as humanly possible.

Discount Armageddon is my huge "fuck it, let's do this."  It is my I WANT AND I SHALL HAVE.  Because it is built on science and gonzo cryptozoology and biology that actually works if you cock your head and squint.  It has chicks with guns and no super powers but the ability to tango in high heels.  It has functional families and dysfunctional families and people who are people, not an excuse for leather pants.  And it's a honey trap.  It's light and fluffy and it has a pink cover, for fuck's sake, and if you come in, it's going to get dark, and grim, and bloody, because I am still me, and the second act of trick-or-treating is murder in the corn.  And it's going to be fucking awesome.

Also you should buy my book because I want to move to a creepy old house in the woods and it's going to cost a lot to surround the place with barbed wire, suspicious-looking scarecrows, and pit traps.  Plus I have cats the size of small dogs, and if I can't feed them, they're going to eat me.

Discount Armageddon.  It's so fucking awesome it can end the world and save you money at the same time.

(Discount Armageddon at Amazon.)

What of your word-babies (aka "novels") is most emblematic of you, and why?

Whatever I finished most recently, because I am not a stationary target.  I am constantly changing my approach to damn near everything except for chainsaws and corn mazes, and that means that if you're looking for "me," you need to look at the freshest tracks.  So right this second, it's actually the second InCryptid book.  And in a few months, it'll be the first of the new Mira Grant duology.

Life moves pretty damn fast.  Try not to blink.

Wuzza Wooza Wendig?

So, first things first, I have to show you that. "That" being that image up there. That's right, cats and kittens — another jaw-dropping eyeball-popping Joey Hi-Fi cover for yours truly. This time, for the next in the Miriam Black series, Mockingbird. (Cool interview with "Mister Hi-Fi" right over here.)

I'm the luckiest book boy in the world.

What else is going on?

Well. Lessee.

• The Bait Dog Kickstarter has 20 days left and we have crossed over the $4500 threshold. Which is crazy delicious. But, as yet, we have not yet crossed over into the "second book a-coming" bracket, which is set at a $6000 milestone. So, if you want to make me write another Atlanta Burns novel beyond Bait Dog, well, you know what to do.

• Shotgun Gravy (the novella that comes before Bait Dog) has been picking up a ton of very loving reviews lately. Producer Paul says, "I continue to be more and more impressed with author Chuck Wendig, and Shotgun Gravy is no exception." Josh Loomis says, "It's a tense read, crackling with nervous energy and dread anticipation of what will happen next." Jess says, "[Atlanta Burns is] human, vulnerable and yet ballsy in a way most people just wish they were." Oh, and finally, 58 smashing reviews hanging out at the novella's Amazon page.

• Another Kickstarter is doing well, and it's also one to which I contributed — Smallsmall Thing is a documentary about the rape of a little Liberian girl and what that means for her family, her community and her country. I did some script work on it, and it's a very powerful story. It's already over 33% — worth taking a peek (click here).

• Blackbirds rocks another very kind review — "This is a relatively small price to pay though when you've got Wendig throwing you into any number of violent and chilling encounters with what is becoming his typical abrasive attitude. The guy has only written two books and already I can't get enough. If you're after some urban fantasy that is by no means typical then 'Blackbirds' is probably already on your wish list. For everyone else, give it a go anyway and have your mind blown. Wendig takes you on a journey, down the forgotten highways of America, that you won't soon forget." From the review at Graeme's Fantasy Book Review!

• Oh! Another great Blackbirds review (at the World Writ Small) says: "Probably the best thing about this book is that it never leaves you time to feel sorry or second guess any of the characters. They are so clearly drawn that everything about them feels realistic, and hate them or not, you know they're just going to keep on keeping on. The worst thing about this book is that it ends."

• Dang, the hits just keep coming! From Dead End Follies: "There are many plot twists to Blackbirds that will make you stand up and yell 'OH MY FUCKING GOOOOOOD. NO WAY' but they are strategically placed in the story, so you never know when you'll be slapped across the face. Keeps a reader tense, believe me. All in all, it's a crazy story I could very well see on film in the new few years."

• A very kind review of Double Dead by writer pal Eddy Webb, where he refers to me as a "subtle storyteller." And then, surprisingly, does not admit to having just eaten a faceful of acid.

• Holy crap! Bad Blood cover! (Sequel to Double Dead, in case you didn't realize.)

• Holy crap! I just saw the Dinocalypse Now cover! But you can't see it! Yet! Soon! I'm sure! Exclamation point!

• Some of my #fakeoscars tweets were agglomerated at the Washington Post culture blog.

• Am in the process of unfucking my own YA cornpunk novel, Popcorn.

• Our son took his first step — like, he was holding onto the couch, he pivoted, took a full step on his own, and then tumbled into his mother's arms. It's not walking, not yet, but I think we're getting closer now. He's nine months old and he's been standing up like crazy (15 second record!). And he also built an F-14 out of our couch and flew it to the moon where he established a lunar colony for lost puppies. Okay, maybe not so much that last part.

• Finally, the good news is, terribleminds is getting to be very popular. The bad news is, that popularity costs. My web fees have gone up again in response to "increased compute cycles," which is I guess the same as saying, "The robots are having to work harder to manage the strain your blog is causing on the rest of the robot universe." Or something. May need a new host soon, or may really need to start considering new ways to fund this site.

25 Ways To Unfuck Your Story

Recently I've been going through a process of "unfucking" a novel — parts of it fired really well, but it just didn't feel right. Something about it just didn't hang together, so it was time to break out all the tools a writer has in his arsenal — every scalpel, hatchet, reciprocating saw, Drilldo, and orbital laser I had in my cabinet of madness. The agent was instrumental in shining a light in dark corners on this book.

Thus I thought, "Well, hell, I should chronicle the grand unfucking at terribleminds."

So, here we are.

This isn't meant to be a list where you do everything on it. It's a list where, when you discover your story may indeed be well and truly fucked, you come here looking for ways to reverse the heinous fuckery at hand.

First part of the list is geared toward helping you identify the fuckery.

Second part of the list is meant to help you provide the deep dicking your manuscript may require.

With that in mind, let's commence to unfucking!

1. Find The Cancer

First up: root out the heinous fuckery at hand. Somewhere, your story went off the rails. The flow has been dammed up by some log-jam, some sewer-clog, and it's your job to find out where the thing got gummed up. You cannot cure the cancer if you have no diagnosis indicating where it lives. Is it face cancer? Butt cancer? A deep and septic cancer of the soul? You need to know where to aim your editorial laser-knife.

2. Let It Sit And Pickle

Writers need time away from their work. Go at it too soon and you either hate it too much to let it live or love it too much to cut it with your steely knives. You need enough distance from the work to let you read it and believe that someone else wrote it — that distance allows you the cold, dispassionate dissecting the tale needs. Maybe that means you leave it for two weeks, two months, or two years. That's on you to figure out. But when you dig back in, you'll be amazed at the clarity a little time has afforded you. The trouble spots will start to stand out like a shadow on an X-Ray.

3. Read It Aloud

Another good way to get a feel for the story: read it aloud. Last week I interviewed author and alpha clone Dan O'Shea, and he said some characteristically smart shit about reading your work aloud: "Writing is just a system humans dreamed up because the sound of speech was transitory. … When you read something out loud, you catch things with  your ears that you don't with your eyes. All the awkward little constructions that your eyes rolled right over, the word you are repeating too often, the dialogue that's glaringly bad when read out loud – your ears will catch bullshit that your eyes never will."

4. Solicit The Help Of A Story Doctor

Sometimes objectivity only comes at the hands of someone who plainly Isn't You. Agent. Editor. Beta reader. Strange homeless guy who has a cardboard sign reading: WILL UNFUCK MANUSCRIPTS FOR BOTTLE OF RED WINE AND NEW PAIR OF UNDERWEAR. (Which is, for the record, a seriously good deal.) You can't always WebMD this shit. Sometimes you need a proper story doc to diagnose the patient.

5. Determine Severity Of Fucked-Upedness

Okay, good. You now know that your story is bewitched by fuckery-most-foul. The question now becomes: just how befuckered is the tale? To what depths do the rancidity and rottenness go? I'll suggest that the condition of the story will demand one of three courses of action (which we will call "The Three R's"): it may need Refining, Repairing, or Rebuilding. Refining is easy enough — the story's got grit in its panties and it just needs to shake out the sand. Give it a thorough washing, waxing and polishing and you're good. Repair means getting handsy with it — move some chapters around, excise a supporting character, tinker with the overall architecture of the thing ("MORE FLYING BUTTRESSES"). Rebuild is… well. No good way to say it, is there? Time to pack the walls with C4 and bring the whole thing down. Only then can the phoenix fly free from the pile of ash you left on the linoleum. More on that last one later.

6. Carve A Prison Shiv From Your Prose

A story can be held back by the language used to tell it. The story itself may be in tip-top fighting shape, but a story that's poorly-written won't ever make it to the ring. Refining language is key. Go through every sentence with pruning shears. Cut out junk language like so many fatty tumors. Dead-head your darlings. The goal of a sentence is clarity above all else. (Shameless self-promotion time: 250 Things You Should Know About Writing features: "25 Things You Should Know About Writing A Fucking Sentence.")

7. Rearrange The Revelations

No, I don't mean the final book of the Bible — you can rearrange that book however you want, it'll still read like an eschatalogical acid trip. ("Holy shit, is Jesus karate-fighting a dragon!?") No, I mean, a narrative progression is about the revelation of your story, and sometimes you need to re-jigger the timing of how you reveal certain things. Put differently: rearrange the sequence of narrative events (also known as: "the plot"). Your story may be frontloaded with too much drama — or not enough.

8. Re-Outline That Sumbitch

I just did this, and Sweet Sally Sugarbottom did it do my story wonders: first, take your story and outline it as it exists. Now you've got the story's bones laid bare before you (perhaps on index cards, if you're so inclined) and it becomes easy at this macro level to start doing what I just said you should do: rearrange the pieces. But — but! — not only does it help you rejigger, it helps you find problem spots. I literally killed off a handful of chapters and re-outlined new ones. Suddenly, I could see the forest for the trees — and it helped me hunt down the tumor-bedraggled grizzly bear that was eating all my wonderful story bunnies. No, I don't know what that means. I just wanted to write "tumor-bedraggled grizzly bear." And "story bunnies." And also, I ate fistfuls of peyote earlier. So, there's that.

9. Learn To Be Fashionably Late

You've got this whole beginning, right? This whole first act where you establish characters and create exposition and set the setting and — ZZZzzZzzz — wuzza? Whooza? Who are you? Why are my pants undone? Fuck the beginning. Take a chainsaw and lop off the whole first act (er, roughly — the chainsaw is not a precision tool, after all). Start the story as late into the plot as you can possibly manage without completely obliterating reader comprehension. This is true of individual scenes, too — Chris Holm, in his interview here at terribleminds, said: "If there's a scene you think just grinds the story to a halt, before you go chucking the whole damn thing, try deleting the first and last paragraphs of that scene. I'll bet you it reads better." See? Smart dude. High-five to him.

10. The Glue Of The Throughline

Obi-Wan Kenobi, before all that stinky Midichlorian hoo-hah, said something really cool about the Force: "It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the Galaxy together." (Assuming he wasn't talking about some bondage fuck-party at some Huttese orgy palace on Tatooine, I guess.) In terms of writing, Obi-Wan could've been talking about a story's throughline. The throughline is everything. The throughline is the element (or several elements braided together) that is found on every page of your story. It's theme and motivation and idea and conflict bundled up together. And guess what? Your story may not have one. Or, more likely, it may have an inconsistent throughline. Take time to identify a throughline. Then take the time to hammer that nail through the whole of your manuscript.

11. Unearth The Emotional Core

The emotional core is the molten hot heart of your story — but it remains properly concealed, because if unleashed it will burn the rest of your story in a scorching wave of fiery twee pap. (If you say "fiery twee pap" over and over again, an elf will appear and Taser you in the face. True story, try it out. Then film it and put it on YouTube.) That said, while you may not expose the emotional core, it should still power the story like a big ol' battery. Have you identified the emotional core of the story — and, the emotional core of each character? Do you know the emotional component that drives them? Is that emotion present and keenly felt (if not entirely seen)? You may need to install an emotional core inside your tale. Which makes your story sound like a spaceship. Which is kind of fucking awesome.

12. Tighten The Gooshy Mushy Middle

The middle of your story can feel like everyone is lost in the desert. Like the narrative structure has dissolved into a gallumphing pile of gray, raisin-specked ooze. The middle needs tension. The middle needs structure. Consider a mid-point act break — smack dab in the middle of the story, change things. Pivot the tale. Let the narrative experience a state change (steam to water, water to ice). Make sure that escalation and conflict are continuing through the middle — don't let the second act play out as a straight line connecting the first and third.

13. Ensure Every Scene Has A Porpoise

If a scene fails to have a dolphin or porpoise, then your story is a bonafide turd-blossom. *checks notes* Wait, that's not it. Oh. Oh. Purpose! Heh. Hah. Oh. Let's try this again. Each scene must have a purpose. Test each scene. Weigh it in your hand. Does it have narrative purpose? Meaning, does it just sit there, or does it get up and go to motherfucking work? Does it push the plot forward? Does it reveal something new about the characters? Does it tell us something we didn't know before? If you can't find its purpose, kill it. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to replace it, either (though a transition may be required).

14. Speaking Of Transitions. . .

Sometimes, transitions are all you need. A plot can feel inconsistent and inconsequential if you haven't drawn the proper bridges connecting each event to the next. The opposite can be true, too. You may have too many needless transitions. Don't spend 10 pages getting the characters to where they're going. I mean, unless they're riding jet-skis. BECAUSE FUCK YEAH JET SKIS. *vroom vroom splash eeee!*

15. Blow Shit Up, Boom

Fuck the status quo. Your story got boring, son. Hey, it happens. It settled like a sleepy snake taking a nap in a wheel rut. How to fix? Blow something up. This can be literal (as in Stephen King's THE STAND, when a writing block in that story led him to blow up half the characters with a bomb), or metaphorical (meaning, you drop a "bomb" that reverberates throughout the entire rest of the story).

16. Not Enough Dialogue

Dialogue is story lube. We hit a patch of dialogue and we glide right over it — it's textually light, easy on the eyes, and it damn sure keeps things moving. Yet it has great potential to carry forward plot, character, and theme. Look at the actual construction of language upon the page. Do you see lots of description? Great heaving tsunamis of text? Will the audience feel as if they've been walled away with the cask of Amontillado? Cut that down, break it up, and add liberal helpings of dialogue.

17. Faster, Pussycat, Write, Write, Write

Pacing is key — you want a story that moves, not a story that lays there like a fat old housecat on the windowsill. That's not to say every story needs to whoosh forward like it has a bitey ferret shoved up the pooper, but certainly you want to take a long look at a story that has all the momentum of a moth caught in cold honey. How to increase pacing? First, language. Use shorter paragraphs and sentences. Get to the action quicker. Keep things moving — boom boom boom boom. Second, cut out plot fat. Anything that the audience does not absolutely need to know should not be told. Third, chop out heavy description and exposition. And remember that note about dialogue: story lube.

18. Breathe Oxygen Into The Tale

The other side of pacing is that things can go too quick — sometimes you need to cool your heels, hoss. A story needs oxygen. You need to cool down the tension so that the readers get to catch their breath before you push them off the cliff once more. Do things feel like they're moving at a pace too frenetic? Stretch it out, like taffy. Interject some strong emotional beats to space out the action.

19. Tantric Storytelling

One of the reasons we read is to pursue mysteries. We are transfixed by variables; we are held fast by unanswered questions. So, unanswer some already-answered questions. Withhold revelation. Find those things you've already told the reader and pull back. Keep it obfuscated — answer as late in the story as you possibly can. A lot of storytelling is you being a dick and not telling the reader things. You're promising them, "Oh, no, I'll answer that question real soon," and then soon as they dive for the carrot you pull it back another five inches. "Soon," you say again. Then, just as you're about to lose them: POW. Mystery answered.

20. Your Characters In Full 3-D And Smell-o-Vision

Your characters might be falling flat. Reason? They are flat. They're too simple. Too predictable. They have all the depth and breadth of a hot pink Post-It note. Give your characters some complexity. Motivations and fears don't always need to be so cut-and-dry. Desires can compete. Characters should zig when the audience wants them to zag. They should be able to still surprise us. Pull each character out and give her a good long look. Is she too simple? Too one-note and on-the-nose? Then either fill her with the breath of complexity or throw that boring-ass douche-cookie in the refuse bin. Mmm. Douche-cookies. So vinegary!

21. You're Being Too Nice

A storyteller must possess a savage cruelty, a compunction to do great harm to both character and the audience who loves that character. Look over your story. Are you pulling punches? Does the story operate at maximum malice? Stop glad-handing it. It's not your job to be kind. Show your teeth. Sharpen your claws. Let the audience gaze upon the terror of your FUCK YOU IMMA EAT YOUR CHILDREN face.

22. Hot Sub-Plot Injection

We like a layered story, a tale with lasagna layers of meat and cheese and sauce and unexpected spices ("Is this sage? Do I taste… marmoset saliva? Oh! These ivory buttons give it such crunch!"). Sub-plots help give a story added complexity. A sub-dermal love story? An off-the-books heist-gone-wrong? The reconciliation of two best friends long ago separated by one's preference of cake over pie (the blasphemy!)? Whatever. The sub-plot should bolster the main plot and should offer more of that throughline we talked about earlier.

23. You've Lost The Thread

Theme is the argument you're making with the story. All men are doomed to fail. Or, nature wins over nurture. Or, pie is delicious and anybody who says cake is better than pie is clearly a Manchurian Candidate put here to assassinate our leaders. Right? Right. Sometimes, though, you'll find parts of your story — scenes, characters, whole chapters — that seem to entirely ignore your theme and go traipsing off on their own. Such portions will stick out like broken noses. Find those outliers. Either tweak to confirm theme or eradicate and put something better in their place.

24. The Disappointing Ejaculation

Your story's ending is everything. A great story with a real poodle-fucker of an ending feels like a let-down and can take a whizz all over the rest of the story. It's a grumpy panda playing a sad trombone. The ending might not make sense. It might be too predictable. Maybe you just tapped out early and descended into a flurry of senseless profanity. "And then the three elves went to the old wizard and FUCKDUNKING JIZZFARMING SONOFACOCKJUGGLING NIPPLE-THIEF." Sometimes a fucked-up story just needs you go back in and hammer out a new ending. So, go do that. I'll wait here. Shameless self-promo #2: 500 Ways To Be A Better Writer has within its digital folds: "25 Things You Should Know About Endings."

25. Go All Dalek On They Asses: Exterminate!

When I first wrote BLACKBIRDS, that book was all over the place. It was like some hyperactive child upended his toy-box all over the floor — the tale had no cohesion, the narrative components were everywhere, it was more a "pile of shit" than a "lean mean tightrope walk." Came a point when I realized I had a good idea — in fact, many good ideas — in there, but the lit-puke I'd yarfed up on the page was never going to cut it. And so I fixed it the same way we're going to fix civilization after the Mayan apocalypse: I destroyed everything and rebuilt it from the ground up. Meaning, I rewrote it. I scrapped everything I'd done and started over. (After re-0utlining, if you must know.) Then, in a few short weeks, I had a much more sensible, streamlined draft — a draft that would go on to get me an agent, a book deal, a film deal, a moving van full of gold doubloons, and a harem of book groupies with astoundingly loose morals. (Okay, that might not all be true.) Point is, sometimes you have to blow it all up and start over. No harm in that. In fact, it might be the best — if not the most pleasant — thing for your story.

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Only a buck: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING —

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The biggun: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY–

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Funny Books?

This weekend on Twitter, I said something about blah blah blah, religion isn't funny enough, and if I had a critique of the Bible is that it needs more jokes. And then I went on to recommend a particularly funny book about religion — Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.

Moore is, of course, a funny motherfucker. I've seen him speak a few times at book signings. He took the people at one signing out for drinks. Another signing I went to as a component of my bachelor party (not kidding). He's great. Very engaging. He will at times talk about animal penises. It's just how he rolls.

And all his books are off-the-charts funny, at least to me. I still remember reading Practical Demonkeeping in high school and thinking that he was the horror equivalent of Douglas Adams.

I read him, Bradley Denton, Tim Sandlin, and I think — "This stuff is rolling in raw hilarity."

Thing is, you don't read many funny novels.

I hear the prevailing wisdom is, "It's hard to sell a funny novel."

Though, I suspect what that really means is, "It's hard to write a funny novel."

So, two questions:

First, what funny novels have you read? Why were they funny? Were they more than just funny? Did they have good characters, good story, all the things you should have in a proper tale?

Second, what's funny? How do you write funny?

That second one's an open-ended and perhaps unanswerable question.

But worth asking, just the same.

Take a crack it it.

See you in the comments.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The 10k Contest

Last week's "Make Me A Sandwich" challenge went pretty apeshit — closing in on 50 submissions at the time of this writing. Go check it out, won't you?

*blink blink*

Somehow, I have fooled 10,000 of you into following me on Twitter.

This is insane, and suggests that most of you are spam-flavored sex-bots, sex-flavored spam-bots, or brain-diseased serial killers with a penchant for loudmouthed idiocy in the form of questionable writing advice. Either way, it happened, and there you all are, spambot-or-no. So, I thought I'd thank you by giving away a little something-something, bow-chicka-bow-dow.

But I'm still going to make you work for it.

I want you to tell me a story in five sentences.

No longer than 100 words total. The shorter, the better, in fact.

The permutations of the story beyond length are up to you: I don't much care about genre or subject matter or any other fiddly bits. All I care about is the brevity and, by proxy, the potency of the tale at hand.

Deposit your storytelling awesomeness direct in the comments below. Do not put it at your blog.

You get one entry. So, write strong and choose wisely.

You have until Monday (2/27/2012) at noon EST to get your entries in. Then, by the following Monday, I will pick my favorite out of the whole big-ass bunch of stories.

The writer of my favorite story gets a prize package. Which is not a euphemism for my penis.

Prize package includes:

(1) hard copy of Double Dead, signed.

(1) hard copy of Human Tales anthology (story in it by me), signed.

(1) digital e-book copy of: all of my writing books (including the newest, 500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer), Shotgun Gravy, Irregular Creatures, and, when it comes out (late April), Blackbirds.

(1) handwritten postcard by moi.

Now, if you're international, you can still enter — but, you'll either have to pony up for shipping or just accept the digital e-books (i.e. no Double Dead, Human Tales, or postcard).

So, that's it.

Five sentences.

Buncha giveaway stuff.

Monday's the end.

Come on and tell us all a story.

Chris Holm: The Terribleminds Interview

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Today, we're publishing three — count 'em, three! — interviews here at Jolly Olde Terribleminds. On first pass, I don't like to crowd up with interviews, and I thought, mmm, maybe I'll spread these out. But here's the thing: these interviews talk to three writers who each share a kind of intellectual space. All three are cracking short story writers, all three come out of crime writing, all three have killer novels (two of them published, one on submission), and to boot, all three know each other. So, my thought is, let's let these interviews feed into one another. Right? Right.

Now, time to talk to fellow Angry Robot author, Chris F. Holm, a talented motherfucker who's proven that he's a gifted short story writer — and who now gets to show off his novel, a soul-collector-gone-awry tale called DEAD HARVEST. (Check out that killer cover.) That drops next week (2/28), so keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, check out what he has to say below. Track him down at his site — chrisfholm.com — or stalk him on the Twitters (@chrisfholm).

When you're done here, check out the other two interviews:

Dan O'Shea

Hilary Davidson

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

Okay, I've got one. It's a story about the power of story, and it's true and false in equal measure. If that don't fit the question, I don't know what will.

My Papa Burns was a consummate storyteller with a wicked sense of humor, and there was nothing he loved more than winding up his grandkids, much to my grandmother's consternation. Their house was on Earl Avenue in Mattydale, New York, and one of Papa's favorite topics for grandkid-winding was Earl. Earl — according to Papa, and all my aunts and uncles who gleefully corroborated his story — was a gaunt loner of a man who once lived in an apartment above my grandparents' garage. Earl was apparently quite the amateur photographer, but a horrible accident with his developing chemicals left his face irreparably scarred. Papa always intimated Earl was guilty of perpetrating great and terrible crimes against the children of the neighborhood, though of course he never told us what, precisely, those crimes were. Or, for that matter, how being a gaunt, disfigured loner who does unspeakable things to children leads to having a street named after you. But plot holes matter not to children. Not when presented with so juicy a story as Earl's.

For you see, as the story goes, no one knows what became of Earl. Some say he died. Some say he was run out of town by the parents of his young victims. But not Papa. Papa was convinced that Earl was still up there, living like an animal in the ruins of his old apartment.

Did it occur to us to ask why Papa, a cop with a loaded sidearm and a litter of grandchildren forever underfoot, would let some creepy feral child killer/molester/photographer/whatever live in the attic of his garage? No, it did not. But it did occur to us to try to find out for ourselves whether Earl was still up there.

There were no stairs up to the garage's second floor. There was no ladder. Just an empty square of darkness, framed by rotten four-by-fours and cut into the ceiling. The plan was simple: Me and my cousin Joey were going to lace our fingers together and hoist up our cousin Steph — the oldest of us at maybe ten, and therefore the tallest — so she could stick her head through the trap door and take a peek. Steph's younger sister Sarah was in charge of steadying her so Steph didn't tip over. And we'd find out once and for all whether Earl was still up there.

We found out, all right. We found out good.

When Steph's head cleared the trap-door's frame, she let out a shriek the likes of which I'd never heard. The three of us at ground level panicked, and we dropped her. She didn't give us so much as a moment to worry if she was okay before sprinting, ghost-white, out of the garage. Instinct kicked in, and we three followed. When we finally regrouped, Steph breathlessly related what she'd seen: the scarred, pitted, anger-twisted face of a madman, just inches from her own. As if he'd known we were coming. As if he'd been waiting for us.

Once our initial fright had passed, me and Joey mocked her something fierce. In the protective light of day, far removed from the gloom of the garage, we were sure she was full of shit. Sarah, the youngest of us, seemed less sure.

But you know what? We never ventured into that garage again. And looking back, even knowing Papa's stories were so much bunk, I'm half-convinced she saw Earl all the same.

Why do you tell stories?

My answer's simple: I tell stories because I can't not. But that ain't just some glib cliché, because believe me, I've tried. I'm from a practical, middle-class family one generation removed from the working class, so I was raised to believe you found a vocation you were good at and then did it: end of story. In grade school, it turned out I was good at science. Which led to advanced classes, which led to acceptance into college, which led to me majoring in biology. Next thing I knew, I was working toward a PhD in infectious disease research, and trying to ignore these insane ideas that kept waking me up at night, begging to be written down. And oh, yeah: I was miserable. So, with encouragement from my amazing wife (seriously, I'd still be on the wrong damn path without her), I dropped out. Started writing. And I can't imagine ever doing anything else.

Infectious diseases — tell me that's going to start popping up more and more in your work.

My fascination with infectious diseases has snuck into my fiction a time or two already. I wrote a horror short that appeared in BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND ONE, which explored the real and terrifying concept of a pathogen actually altering the behavior of its host in order to propagate itself. And a major plot point in DEAD HARVEST centers around the early inroads toward a cure for tuberculosis.

That said, I'm sure you'll see it take on a starring book-length role sometime in the not-too-distant future. There's a book in my head just dying to be written that tackles the idea of a global-killer pandemic in what I hope is an unexpected way. But the thing's so damned ambitious, I'm not sure I'm writer enough to tackle it yet.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

I have a tough time giving writing advice, 'cause really, who the hell am I? But one nuts-and-bolts pointer that served me well early on in my career (and continues to do so to this day) is this: enter a scene as late as possible, and leave early. Plenty of folks have already heard that one, I'm sure, but for those who haven't, I'll say this: read over your WIP. If there's a scene you think just grinds the story to a halt, before you go chucking the whole damn thing, try deleting the first and last paragraphs of that scene. I'll bet you it reads better.

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

There's a ton that's great about being a writer. Engaging your every flight of fancy. Going down the rabbit-hole of your own half-crazed theories like some schizophrenic detective uncovering a truth no one else has ever seen. Justifying every bit of slackitude you've ever indulged in as "research." Being told even once someone lost sleep because they had to finish what you wrote. Packing away some small kernel of your soul like a Horcrux, so that no matter how awful life gets it can't taint you completely, because you just know you can make something beautiful out of it.

What sucks? The self-doubt. The days the words are slow in coming. (I don't believe in writer's block, but every job has its shit days.) The fact that, to a one, we're addicted to the validation of utter strangers, and sometimes utter strangers can be douches.

You write from a place where genre has reduced meaning — in other words, you kind of smoosh together genres. What's the value of genre to both writer and reader? Are there risks in painting outside the lines overmuch?

The value of genre, to reader and writer, is simple. People like organizing things. Labeling them. Arranging them according to predetermined criteria. It's our way of making sense of a world that resists sense-making. And generally, it's pretty handy. I've been a fan of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror all my life, so I'm more likely to find a book that's to my liking on shelves labeled "Science Fiction," "Fantasy," "Mystery," or "Horror" than I am in, say, "Biography" or "Inspirational." It's just a numbers game.

The problem is, arranging things according to predetermined criteria has a tendency of getting away from us. Of propagating prejudice. And that's a damn shame. Because there are no doubt titles in "Biography" or "Inspirational" I'd really dig, but that I'll likely never be exposed to. And I know for damn sure the labels I've listed thus far poorly represent my favorite sorts of books, which tend to be "Stories That Are More Than One Kind Of Thing." I'd shop the hell out of that section, and chances are, most of what I write would be stocked there, too.

That's the answer to the first half of your question. The answer to the second half is, hell yes there are risks to painting outside genre lines. Every genre's got its adherents and its detractors, and every genre's got its giant-air-quotes-implied rules. Which means if you're writing in two genres at once, you're twice as likely to turn off a given member of your audience, or twice as likely to fuck up in their eyes. The kneejerk reaction of most crossgenre writers is to say, To hell with them, then. If they don't get what I'm doing, who needs 'em? And that kneejerk reaction ain't wrong. But I'll tell you this: when sending out queries or shopping a novel, your audience is nothing but agents and editors, some of whom are gonna be turned off by work that's tough to classify. That can sting. But fear not; there are plenty of crossgenre fans out there, and all it takes is winding up in front of the right one of 'em to set you on your path.

Gotta talk about 8 Pounds, an alarmingly good collection of horror and crime stories you self-published: how are those stories ones that only Chris Holm could've written?

That's an excellent question, particularly since one thing I strive to do whenever I sit down to write something new is to tell a story only I could tell. But if I'm being completely honest, I'm not sure every story in 8 POUNDS clears that bar. "A Simple Kindness" is my take on the classic pulp tale of a patsy being played by a femme fatale. "The Well" is a twisted little bit of flash that's the horror equivalent of a joke, all setup and punchline. I like both stories very much, and stand behind them to this day, but the fact is, I'm not sure someone else couldn't have cooked them up.

The other stories in that collection, though, come from perhaps a more personal place. "The World Behind" reflects my impressions of Virginia, formed in the two years my wife and I lived there after college. "The Big Score" is my love-letter to Maine, inspired by the ten years I spent at a job with offices that overlooked a working fish pier. "Seven Days of Rain" filters my apparent obsession with lifelong regret (of which I was unaware until I noticed how often it popped up in my work) through my twin loves of Poe and McDowell. "A Better Life" I wrote in response to the mice in the walls of my new home. "Eight Pounds" was borne of a funny bit of dialogue that lodged itself in my head and wouldn't let go. And "The Toll Collectors" was my first attempt to tell a story that straddled the line of crime and the fantastic.

Whether that means only I could have written them, I couldn't say. But I do think each represent a snapshot of who I was while I was writing them, and each of them represent a point on my evolution as a writer.

What did 8 Pounds teach you about self-publishing (if anything)?

8 POUNDS taught me that self publishing is damn easy to do, and damn hard to do right. The temptation as a writer to just click a button and upload your unfettered genius for all the world to see is mighty indeed, but holy hell is there a lot of work involved in making it look and read as clean as a traditionally published book. I was lucky enough to have been through a round of professional edits for each of the stories I included, since they'd all initially been published elsewhere, and proofreading alone, I must've gone through five rounds of edits. Add to that the formatting quirks of the assorted sundry ebook formats, and any detail-oriented person could drive themselves insane trying to get everything exactly right.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, or that I wouldn't recommend that path to others; given the proper circumstances, I'd do both. What I am saying is, anyone who thinks of it as a shortcut is kidding themselves. Successful self-published ebooks have a lot in common with successful traditionally published books: most notably, a buttload of hard work. The only difference is, with self-published books, all that work falls to the author.

Get cocky. Drop your penmonkey testes on the table and demand that all behold them: what makes DEAD HARVEST a mighty motherfucking ass-kicker of a book that everybody should buy in quantities of 12 or more?

Look, I can wave my hands all I want about how I think DEAD HARVEST is, at its core, a deeply romantic novel about a guy condemned to hell for saving the life of the woman he loved, and the thankless task he's forced to do by way of punishment, but let's face it: that's just the spoonful of emotional resonance that makes the asskickery go down. What it all boils down to is an undead, body-swapping protagonist sacking up and going toe to toe (to toe to toe to toe) with a cadre of pissed-off angels, more demons than you could shake a rosary at, the entire NYPD, and a psychotic rival soul collector who thinks he's a god, all to protect a young girl who may or may not be a mass murderer. And oh, yeah, if he fails, he'll be responsible for jump-starting the Apocalypse. If that ain't a heaping helping of badass, I don't know what is.

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

Picking a favorite word is tough. I'm kinda partial to defenestrate. Or mellifluous. Or schadenfreude. Or moiety. Or petrichor. Or interrobang. Or phenomenology. Or kummerspeck, which isn't English (yet), but German, and means "weight gain due to emotional overeating" or, more literally translated, "grief bacon."

Picking a favorite curse word is easier. It's "fuck" in a walk. Sure, there're sexier curse words out there, or ones with greater shock value, but "fuck" is just so fucking versatile, it's like the Leatherman of curses. You should carry it with you always, 'cause sooner or later, you're gonna need it.

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

If I had to pick a single drink on which to live out the rest of my liver-abusing days, I suppose I'd choose a big, ass-kicking Paso Robles Zin. But it'd be tough walking away from whiskey. What I love about both wine and whiskey (be it Scotch, Bourbon, rye, or anything in between, the smaller the batch the better) is they tell a story. You can taste the ground from whence they came, the air they breathed, the baking sun or rolling fog under which they grew. As with storytellers, the worst of them never get past that — they're no better than the sum of their parts. But the best of them transform all those influences into something transcendent. That, to me, is magic. (Oh, and another thing they have in common with storytellers: the best of them wouldn't be the best of them without the help of a judicious editor, usually the guy with his name on the bottle.)

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

Just one? I guess I'd have to go with LAST CALL, by Tim Powers. It's a thrilling, sprawling, insanely ambitious novel that blends elements of pulp, fantasy, and history into one of the strangest and most wondrous books you'll ever have the privilege of reading. I'm not going to do the book the disservice of attempting to summarize it here, but it involves Bugsy Siegel, the Fisher King, the intersection of luck and fate, and a game of poker played with a Tarot deck, where what's at stake are the players' souls.

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

Well, I grew up in the country, so I can shoot. In my Day Job alter-ego, I'm a scientist, so I could probably MacGyver up a quality booby trap or chemical weapon in a pinch. And there's always the off-chance the zombies' weakness will prove to be obscure television references and super-cool dance moves, in which case… yeah, okay, I'm still only one of two.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

Wow. That's a tough one for a foodie, 'cause I like the whole damn spectrum, from chili dogs to truffles and foie gras (and hell, I'd consider both at once). But if we're talking last meals, I've gotta go a heaping platter of barbecue. I'm talking pulled pork with North Carolina-style vinegar-based sauce. Ribs, both pork and beef. Hot smoked sausage with low-country mustard sauce. And don't forget the cornbread, slaw, and collard greens. If I'm going out, I'm going out full.

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

One of the things I love about this gig is, I have no idea what the future holds. Might be I get to write another five books in the Collector series, and that'd be just fine by me. Might be I move on to something else. Right now, I'm working on a straight-ahead thriller, mostly just to see if I can color within a single genre's lines just once. Truth is, there ain't years enough in this life of mine to tell all the stories I want to tell. That thought should bum me out, but really, it just makes me smile. It's somehow reassuring to know they're out there, even if I never get to 'em.

Hilary Davidson: The Terribleminds Interview

Today, we're publishing three — count 'em, three! — interviews here at Jolly Olde Terribleminds. On first pass, I don't like to crowd up with interviews, and I thought, mmm, maybe I'll spread these out. But here's the thing: these interviews talk to three writers who each share a kind of intellectual space. All three are cracking short story writers, all three come out of crime writing, all three have killer novels (two of them published, one on submission), and to boot, all three know each other. So, my thought is, let's let these interviews feed into one another. Right? Right.

Now it's time to check out one wicked weaver of tales — Hilary Davidson, whose novel THE DAMAGE DONE was one of my hands-down favorites of 2010. She's an incredible writer and knows how to really ratchet up the mystery and suspense like few others do. The next in the series — appropriately, THE NEXT ONE TO FALL — is out now, so go find it. Check out her website (hilarydavidson.com) and go follow her on Twitter (@hilarydavidson).

When you're done here, check out the other two interviews:

Chris Holm

Dan O'Shea

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

The guard who led me into the detention area was in a jovial mood. "So, did you enjoy your trip to Spain?" he asked.

I nodded, but my mouth was too dry to let out anything but a hesitant, "Sure."

"That's good." He unlocked a door and walked me into a room that, in all the times I'd flown through New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, I'd never seen before. It had a low ceiling and felt dirty, but the overhead lights were too dim for me to be certain of what was shadow and what was grime. There were rows of gray plastic chairs in the center and three uniformed officers seated behind desks on one side. The bodies in the chairs looked as if they were acting out the five stages of grief. Some had their heads swiveling around, clearly in denial about where they were. An angry man in front of me had his fists balled up and banging against his thighs. "This is a mistake," a woman said to a guard, clearly bargaining. The most common posture, though, was one denoting depression: people slouched in chairs, some bent over with their heads in their hands. The only example of acceptance was a sleeping baby whose mother was still in denial.

"Sit here," the guard said to me, indicating a space between two men.

"But I…" I don't belong here, I wanted to scream. Detention was a place for drug mules and criminals and suspected terrorists. Whatever I'd done, I didn't belong here.

"Sit down. Right there." His jovial tone was gone. "Don't get up until you're called."

I took the seat.

"Don't worry," whispered the man to my left. I glanced at him. He was South Asian and in the low light, his eyeballs looked yellowed like old paper. His hands were folded together in a gesture that seemed almost prayerful.

"There is nothing to worry about, you see. I am not worried," the man went on, his voice soft. "They do not wish to let me into their country because they think I have leprosy. But, you see, I have been cured."

Why do you tell stories?

All my life, I've had a game of "What If?" going on in my head. I'm curious about people and about where they've been. When I can't find out the truth, my brain will fill in the blanks with stories. Then I've got these characters spiraling around my head, and they start to take on a life of their own. When I was a kid, I think this was called daydreaming, but now it's my job.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice.

Overdescribing things — people, places, physical action, emotions — just slows your story down. You need to describe those things well enough so that readers can picture what you're talking about in their own minds, but you don't need to spell out every detail for them. In fact, it's often better to leave certain details unsaid and let the reader fill them in for themselves. Telling me that a man is five-foot-ten and has black hair and olive skin and green eyes is just a collection of details; you could go on and on, describing what he's wearing and I'm not going to know anything about him, really. Choose the details you share carefully. Telling me that a character's eyes are flicking over the room, avoiding the person who's talking to him, tells me something about that character.

The Damage Done, which is a great novel, has this creepily elegant Hitchcockian vibe to it — how does The Next One To Fall compare in terms of tone, character, and subject matter?

Thanks for the kind words about The Damage Done! Even though their settings are very different, the books have a lot in common. Both are, at heart, about searches for missing women. In The Damage Done, Lily Moore is hunting for her sister, Claudia, so she's personally invested in the outcome. In The Next One to Fall, the woman who dies at the beginning of the book is a stranger to Lily, but there are things about her that remind Lily of Claudia. When Lily finds out that the dead woman is actually just the latest in a string of dead and missing women who were involved with a wealthy man named Len Wolven, part of her desire to get justice for them is tied to the fact that she feels her sister never got the justice she deserved.

The cast of characters is different in The Next One to Fall — the book is set in Peru, and it brings back Lily and her best friend, Jesse, but not the others (well, there might be a little but of Bruxton… but just a little). But the characters are every bit as multifaceted and murky as the ones in The Damage Done.

You'll definitely feel the Hitchcockian vibe in the new book, possibly even more strongly than in the first one. I wanted to acknowledge, on the page, one of my biggest influences, so there's a scene in The Next One to Fall that I hope pays homage to Mr. Hitchcock. I can't tell you what it is without being all spoilery, but you will know it when you see it.

What's the trick to writing a good follow-up — whether a sequel or "next book in a series?"

Each book needs to stand on its own, even if it is a sequel. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Well, I already explained X is the first book, so I don't need to do it again." Wrong. Not only do you need to explain X, you need to do it in such a way that you're not boring the hell out of people who read the previous book. Also, your main characters have the same emotional pressure points they had in the first book, but you need to explore them in different ways. In The Next One to Fall, it was an obvious thing to make Lily sympathetic to the victims, to link them to her sister. But Lily also comes across the sister of one of the victims, who is hunting for her missing sister in Peru. Instead of becoming allies, Lily can't stand this woman; part of the reason is that this woman acts in a reckless way that is not at all dissimilar from Lily acts in The Damage Done. Lily sees part of herself in the woman, and she doesn't like it one bit. It's not a role-reversal, but it explores Lily's character in a different way.

If there's a trick, it's not spoiling the plot of the earlier book. People who pick up The Next One to Fall are going to know one very important thing about how The Damage Done ends, but there's no information about who is guilty of what. If anything, there's a tease. At one point in the new book, Lily says, "Two of the guilty were dead. One was in a mental institution. Others who should have been behind bars were walking around free." But she doesn't tell you anything else. I didn't want to spoil the story for anyone who discovers the second book first and then goes back to read the first.

How are your two Lily Moore novels stories only Hilary Davidson could've written?

Even though Lily is very much her own person, we have a lot in common. Things, places, and issues that fascinate me also fascinate her, though she sometimes ends up owning them and forcing me to do more work (her knowledge of old movies has forced me to watch a lot of them). My family jokes that Lily is my friend from another universe. We can't interact directly, but I know her so well. In that universe, Lily may well start writing fiction about a character she will call "Hilary Davidson." I wouldn't put it past her.

You broke into writing with a series of impactful noir short stories. What's the art of writing a killer short story?

You've got to be completely ruthless with a short story. The room you get in a novel to build and explore and wander doesn't exist in a short story. Plenty of people will give a novel a chance even if it doesn't grab them at first. But a short story? Forget it. It's the difference between karate and krav maga. With karate, you have an extended match with the elegance of ballet and some exhilarating moments. In krav maga, your fight will last eight seconds and someone will probably lose an eye.

Just what the fuck is "noir," anyway?

"What is noir?" is a question over which writers get into fistfights at conferences. Well, that's not quite true — it's more like they'll yell at each other online about it a lot.

My take: noir is black. It's the heart of darkness. It's a world without redemption.

Noir is where dreams go to die terrible deaths.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, "When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." Noir is what you are left with when you can no longer turn your gaze away from that abyss.

What's great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

I love writing, even when it's hard. I love editing my own work, and watching a story take shape. Meeting other writers is a huge plus, as is meeting readers. I love going to conferences like Bouchercon and Thrillerfest and Bloody Words. Writing nonfiction has let me travel the world, which is something I'm incredibly grateful for.

The downside: It's a tough business to break into, and even after you break in, you have to watch some very talented people hit their heads against walls endlessly, trying to break in, too. People in publishing can be very negative. You're forced to read endless articles about "The End of Books."

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

I have trouble picking a favorite anything, but the word hellion immediately came to mind. Since I'm obviously in a hellish frame of mind, I'm going with hell for favorite curse word. I love that you can talk about hell and it's not a curse word, but the minute you say, "Holy hell!" it becomes one.

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

I love sparkling wine: champagne, cava and prosecco are all divine.

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

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding is a book that made a huge impression on me. I read it for the first time when I was 12. It's about a group of schoolboys who are evacuated from England during a war, and they end up stranded on an uninhabited island with no adults. The oldest children in the story are 12. The story is so powerful because you're reading about this microcosm of humanity that goes off the rails, and starts to destroy itself. The fact that Golding is writing about children rather than adults only makes it a better story — it highlights the darker impulses of humanity.

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

I have combat skills. My parents started me in karate lessons when I was eight, and I fell in love with martial arts. I've also studied krav maga, the martial art of the Israeli army, which is brutal.

You've committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

Ah, hell. I'd want dinner from Bistango, my favorite restaurant in New York. I have celiac disease, and they make perfect gluten-free meals: warm bread with garlic-infused oil, roasted Portobello mushroom in balsamic reduction, chicken fusilli with sun-dried tomatoes, red velvet cake with the world's creamiest frosting. Plenty of champagne. Note to Bistango: please make sure there's a file in the cake.

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

My second novel, THE NEXT ONE TO FALL, came out on Valentine's Day; it's a thriller set in Peru. It's also a sequel to THE DAMAGE DONE, though you don't need to read the first book to follow it. I just sent the third book in the series to my publisher, Forge; it will come out in the spring of 2013. My next big project is a standalone novel, also for Forge, which will be published in 2014. I also write short fiction. I just sold a novella about a twisted love triangle in Paris to Ellery Queen, and I've got a story coming out in the second Beat to a Pulp anthology.