Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 262

25 Questions To Ask As You Write

Sometimes, as you write it helps to keep your eye on the ball, lest the ball thwack you across the bridge of the nose and make you cry in front of all your friends. Here, then — in time for NaNoWriMo if you're going to be diving into that month-long novel-birthing experience — is a list of potential questions you can ask while writing your story in order to stay on target.

1. "What Is This About?"

This is, quite seriously, my most favoritest — and what I consider to be the most important — question for any author, writer, storyteller or general-class penmonkey to ask. Like I've said in the past, this isn't just a recitation of plot. This is you going elbow-deep into the story's most tenderest of orifices and seeing what lies at the heart of the animal. It's you saying, "This is about how when people are stripped of civilization they turn into monsters, man," or, "It's about how the son always becomes the father," or, "You dance with the unicorn, you get horn-fucked by the unicorn, you feel me?" It's about identifying the theme of your work, about exposing the emotional core and the truth one finds there. You ask this question to make sure your daily word count lines up with your overall desire.

2. "Why The Fuck Am I Writing This?"

What I call: "The Give-A-Fuck Factor." Why do you give a fuck? Do you? Why will anyone else care? Figure out what makes your story worth writing. Maybe it's a character. Maybe it's an idea. Maybe it's one scene somewhere in the third act you just can't wait to write. Find out why you're writing this. If you're just phoning it in, wandering aimlessly through the narrative without purpose, the audience is going to feel that. The audience can smell confusion the way that dogs can smell fear and hobos can smell a can of beans. They're like sharks, those hobos. HOBO SHARK II: BLOOD BEANS III. I dunno. Shut up.

3. "Is This My Story Written My Way?"

When I read a story by Joe Lansdale, I say, "That's a goddamn Joe Lansdale story." The voice is his. The story is his. The characters are his. You could drag me to an alternate universe where Joe Lansdale was never born and still I'd know that this book in my hands is a book by him. We have to own our fiction. We have to crack our chests open with rib-spreaders and plop our viscera right onto the page. It's gotta be us living there. Feel out the story. Feel if this is your story written your way (and if not, make it so). Write something that matters to you. If it feels like you're not there? Backtrack, find out where you lost the story (or the story lost you) and rediscover your voice and your path.

4. "Am I Ready?"

You ask this before you start your project and before every day of writing: am I ready? Writer and El Sexorcisto Jason Arnopp said yet-another-smartypants thing the other day on the Twittertubes: "I'm seemingly destined to regularly forget that sometimes you're not ready to write a script because you haven't finished thinking about it." Amen! So say we all. Sometimes you just haven't done the brain-work. Or gotten all your plotting and scheming out of the way. It is our nature as impetuous creators to want to jump in and do a cannonball, but all that manages to do is make a mess. Sometimes, truth is, you're just not ready.

5. "Does This Make Sense?"

Biggest problem with Hollywood big blockbuster movies these days is they don't make a lick of goddamn sense. Seriously, I feel like I'm in one big game of Balderdash — I'm constantly asking, "Do they expect me to believe this shit? Did they dose up a four-year-old on Nyquil and let him write this plot?" You'll find plotholes so big you could lose a Rancor Monster in there. Don't be that way. When you're writing, revisit the problem: does everything line up? Nobody's just… pulling a gun out of their asshole or suddenly crossing 2,000 miles of desert in a day? Anticipate that your readers are going to be intelligent and will be able to smell mayhem and foolishness from a mile away. Have everything make sense.

6. "What's My Plan?"

Have a plan and cast a wary eye toward it daily. It's okay if your plan is: "I'm going to write until I'm done." It's fine if your plan is, "I'm going to write the dialogue now, then a few big action pieces, then I'm going to go back and fill in all the gaps." Doesn't matter what the plan is: it only matters that you've contributed a little brain-think toward it. Don't be a pair of loose underwear caught on a tree branch.

7. "What Do These Characters Want?"

Characters have needs, wants, and fears. Simple as that. John wants a boat. Mary fears gonorrhea. Booboo the Space Whale needs to eat a supernova-ing star or he'll die. Every character is motivated, and that motivation is the engine that pushes them from one end of the scene and out the other. Asking this while writing helps you keep the motivations of these characters in line: these motivations drive the plot.

8. "What's The Conflict?"

Every character has a motivation, and then you come along, the Big Ol' Grumpy Dickhead Storyteller and throw all kinds of shit in their way to stop them from realizing their hopes and force them to confront their fears. This is conflict. Hiram wants to have a dance party at the country club but OH NOES he just got kicked out of the country club because his rival, Gunther, has been spreading lies about how Hiram likes to "lay with caribou." Now Hiram must defeat the machinations of his rival and prove his worth to the country club. What Hiram wants is prevented by conflict. So, every day, identify the conflict. Not just in the overall story but in each scene. How do the little conflicts build to larger ones?

9. "What's The Purpose Of This Scene?"

Every scene has its purpose. Find it. Expose it. In this scene, you need to show Rodrigo's helplessness. In that scene, you must foreshadow the showdown between Orange Julius (Secret Agent: Orangutan) and his foe, Hobo Shark. The scene after will see the protagonist lose everything and drive home the overwhelming difficulty. Blah blah blah, etc. As you're writing, find the purpose. Let it impel the day's writing.

10. "What Has To Happen?"

Every plot is like a machine. Some are simple — a lever, a pulley, a nut-cracker. Others are far more complex. No matter what the case, every machine would fall apart and fail to function without certain key components, and your plot is like that. These are the legs of the chair: you need them or the story will fall over and break its teeth on the linoleum. Keep your eye on these. Know when you're approaching one. Orchestrate them. Find the way to each. Make the No Man's Land between them compelling, too.

11. "How Does The Setting Affect My Story?"

Setting matters. (Someday soon I'll do a "list of 25″ about setting.) Setting contributes to conflict (snowy blizzard!), to interesting characters (Brooklyn hipster!), to mood (a low rumble of thunder indicating slow-approaching doom!). A great setting puts a great deal of story toys on the table. You'd be a fool not to grab a couple, put them into play.

12. "What Do I Want The Reader To Feel?"

The storyteller is a puppetmaster. You're here to pull strings and make people feel something — often intensely, often deeply. And so it behooves you to aim for a feeling rather than randomly hoping one occurs. In this scene you're writing, what do you want the audience to feel? Hopelessness? Triumph? Delight? Fear? Do you want them to laugh so hard they get a nosebleed? Or cry until they fall into a grief-struck slumber?

13. "Am I Enjoying This?"

Not every day is going to be a thrill-a-minute. Some days the word count is bliss; other days it's like brushing the teeth of a meth-cranked baboon. But you should keep an eye on your overall enjoyment levels. You should be finding some pleasure, some measure of satisfaction, with what you're writing. If not, try to suss out the reason. If you find it a misery, there's a chance the reader will feel that misery, too.

14. "Am I Taunted By An Endless Parade Of Distractions?"

As you write, it's best to ask: oh, shit, am I actually writing? Because, as it turns out, being on Twitter doesn't count. Nor does playing a video game. Or watching football. Or cranking one out to obscure Prohibition-era pornography. We writers are easily distracted, like raccoons, babies, and — I'm sorry, where was I? The sun just glinted on a quarter and I found myself mesmerized for — *checks watch* — about 45 minutes. Point is, if you're easily distracted, you need to cut that shit out. If it continues, you need to find out why. Why is it you don't want to write the thing you (theoretically) want to write?

15. "What Else Is In My Way?"

We all find our work hindered by various reasons. Family obligations, writer's block, technical problems, depression, vibrant hallucinations, addictions to huffing printer ink, etc. Time to identify these reasons — and by reasons, I mean, "excuses" — and begin systematically eradicating them. Find what blocks you, and either remove the block or find a way around.

16. "Where Are My Pants?"

Trick question! You should know where your pants are. They should be as far away from you as possible. Good penmonkeys work pantsless. I, for instance, pull a "Garfield" and mail my pants to Abu Dhabi.

17. "Am I Writing To Spec?"

If you're rocking the NaNoWriMo, you know your count is 50,000 words. Or maybe you're writing a 90-page script, or a 5,000-word short story. Always keep your mind roughly orbiting your total potential word count: good writers know to write to spec and, in the day-to-day act of penmonkeying around, recognize when they're on-target or off-base.

18. "What's My Daily Word Count?"

Part of writing to spec is knowing what your daily word count should be. If you're writing NaNoWriMo, it should be somewhere between 1500-2000 words per day. Hit the target. Bing bing bing bing bang, popcorn.

19. "Who Is My Audience?"

This can be as broad or as limited as you care to make it. Your audience might be, "Everybody who loves a good thriller" down to "Teen boys between the ages of 15-18 who still wet the bed." Just as good authors write to spec, good authors also write to an audience. A speaker would tailor his speech to his audience, and so the writer must tailor his writing to an audience as well.

20. "Have I Saved Recently?"

I am an obsessive-compulsive saver. I will save at the end of every sentence if you give me a chance. I've probably saved this blog post 1745 times — 1746 now! — over the course of its writing. Seriously: save a whole lot. Learn to ask yourself that question in order to keep it and the habit top-of-mind. Oh, and just so we're clear: don't rely only on auto-save. We cannot trust robots with our future. Because robots hate us mewling meat-bags and secretly work to undermine our so-called "agenda of the flesh."

21. "Oh Shit, Do I Have This Backed Up In 72 Different Places?"

You must save often and back up your work across multiple sources. External HD? Cloud storage? E-mail yourself the draft? Print copy? ALL OF THE ABOVE, TYPED IN CAPS TO DRIVE HOME ITS SCREAMING IMPORTANCE. RAAAAR YELLING YELLING SNARRGH. Ahem. Point being, at the end of every day's worth of word-making, back up the file in as many ways and places as you care to manage. Future You, upon suffering a cataclysmic hard drive shitsplosion, will thank Present You for being so damn smart.

22. "What Will I Write Tomorrow?"

Toward the end of this day's word count, keep an eye on tomorrow's story-telling endeavors. Maybe make a few in-document notes. Keep a hazy picture of what happens when you next sit down to write. You'll be happy when tomorrow comes. Unless tomorrow doesn't come and the robots have finally decided to wipe us from the planet like one might wipe a booger off a drinking glass. Fuckin' robots, man. Fuckin' robots.

23. "Does This Look Like Shit?"

Does today's word count look like garbage? Spelling errors? Funky plotting? Hastily-scrawled poop? That's okay. You're allowed to do that. Just note it. Make a little checkmark in your brain, or even do a comment in the document — just know that today's word count will necessitate you coming back, doing some clean-up.

24. "Is This A Good Day To Write?"

Trick question! Every day is a good day to write. Go and do that which you claim to be. Writers: write.

25. "Am I Asking Myself Too Many Goddamn Questions?"

Of course you are. This post posits too many questions to seriously ask yourself: the point isn't to compulsively go through this list of questions day in and day out, but more to help take these questions and let them float in the back of your mind: if you grow too crazy about this, you're going to be focused more on the answers than you are on your actual word count, and that's not the point, not the point at all. These questions are — well, you know what they're like? You know how when you drive on one of those go-cart tracks they have the haybales up or the rubber bumpers to stop you from careening off-track and to your fiery doom? These are like that. These questions are what help keep your go-cart from flinging off into infinite space. Let them shepherd your word count rather than overwhelm it. Don't blow a gasket. Use them where they're useful; discard them with they're starting to fritz your circuitry.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Why I Wrote Shotgun Gravy

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I think I might do this for all my releases going forward: a post on why I wrote what I wrote. For good or bad, a look into the creative process — like a piranha frenzy or a garter snake breeding ball — that results in the grim and gory birth of fiction. Here, then, is a look into why I went ahead and wrote SHOTGUN GRAVY. If you feel like picking up the book (and I'd obviously appreciate it if you did), your procurement options are as follows:

Kindle (US): Buy Here

Kindle (UK): Buy Here

Nook: [Available Later Today, I Hope]

PDF (Direct): Buy Here

So. SHOTGUN GRAVY.

It's like the Pirandello play, in which I have a character — and, also, a title — in search of a story.

Way back when, when writing one of the many drafts of the script for HiM (Hope is Missing), our producer was talking about screenwriting and, in particular, brevity of description. Description in a script needs to be kept lean. Functional without being flashy, yet retaining that most elusive of things: voice.

And in this discussion he mentioned the script for Gone with the Wind, which reportedly relegates the scene of the city of Atlanta burning to a simple two-word description: "Atlanta burns."

At first I was struck by the simplicity of that as a descriptor — I don't know if that's how it is in the script, as I don't have a copy, but the lesson is still a powerful one…

You can get a lot of mileage out of short, sharp language.

But then I had a second thought:

Man, that's a great name for a character.

Atlanta Burns.

So, I tucked that away in my brain the way a chipmunk squirrels away an acorn in his bulging cheek.

(Can a chipmunk squirrel something? That seems wrong somehow, like I'm flagrantly punching Mother Nature in her leafy, verdant vagina. It also seems doubly unfair to the squirrel, as he can not "chipmunk" anything. Though perhaps the squirrel should just take it as an honor that his actions have earned him verb status? Well. Greater minds than mine will have to ferret out the truth. OH SHIT FERRET never mind.)

Cut to later on, where I was eating at a little breakfast joint in Bethlehem, PA, and I saw on the menu a delightful-sounding item: "Shotgun Gravy." Sausage gravy over biscuits and home fries.

And again I was like, "Yum," but then, "Hot damn, that'd make a fine title for a story someday."

Suddenly, Atlanta Burns — a character without a face, a voice, a life — popped up and I was like, "Ooh! Me me me!" Waving her hands in the air like a needy student. Jumping up and down. Oh-so-eager.

Atlanta Burns and Shotgun Gravy married together in my mind. Fused together.

Character and title.

But no story.

That was, mmm, I dunno. Almost two years ago, I figure.

Over the course of those two years, my brain did its thing, which is basically rolling around my environment like a giant whisky-sodden katamari ball, collecting whatever insane detritus and idea lint with which it comes in contact. Rolling, rolling, picking up crap. Lots of things started to get stuck to my brain-ball: the "It Gets Better" movement, Veronica Mars, Glee, gay-bashing, Neo-Nazis, kielbasa, cyber-bullying.

It was the "bullying" that kind of crystallized for me.

I was bullied as a kid. I think most kids were — you're either predator or prey in grade school, and your role there is by no means a fixed position. A bully who throws you around at school might get the snot beaten out of him at home — the "kick-the-dog syndrome" laid bare, a cruel infinite leminiscate loop of use and abuse. The bullied often become bullies themselves, and sometimes the bullies end up as the victims.

What I'm saying is: the worm turns.

Any bullying I suffered was never epic — I got jacked against a few lockers, got called names. Early on kids will bully you for anything: I remember someone making fun of the way I chewed in like, 5th grade. That became a thing for a time, and it was nonsensical (turns out, I chew just fine, though that maybe gave me a slight neurosis for a good year or two, thanks, assholes), but it was what it was. Eventually I grew up — literally, as an early-bloomer I got tall for awhile until I got shorter again what with everyone springing up around me — and for the most part the rough-and-tumble bullying fell to other victims.

Thing is, you don't have to look hard to find bullies. It's there in the workplace. In the political process. Hell, women, homosexuals, transgendered, developmentally disabled folks, overweight kids, they all end up as the target of some mean-ass shit. Sometimes just hard, cruel words. Sometimes it goes a lot deeper and gets a lot worse. We live in this sort of… predatory world, right? Where the strong try to abuse the weak. Psychologically, physically, sexually. And in a lot of cases, it's damn near okay. Kansas decriminalizing domestic abuse? The so-called "Protect Life Act?"

Hell, look at the rhetoric often surrounding rape cases: rape victims are forced to run a rough gauntlet wherein they must effectively prove that they weren't somehow deserving of getting raped. That whole, "Well, what were you wearing?" question. Would it matter if she were naked? Does a low-cut blouse signify a rape beacon, drawing bad men like moths? "She was asking for it." Yeah, not unless she was actually asking for it, thanks. Nobody ever asks this of murder victims, you'll note. "Huh, what kind of shoes were the murder victim wearing? Can we just label this a 'suicide' and move on? Those are suicide shoes, jack."

All this stuff came swirling together in my head — and then came the discussions around whether Young Adult books were getting too dark. I wrote a post back then ("Adolescence Sucks, Which Is Why YA Rocks") which cuts to the heart of it: if YA is reflective of troubled teen culture, then we should embrace that. Because kids want to talk about this stuff. They want to acknowledge it and find power to shine the light of that acknowledgment and bite back the shadows of ignorance, because I promise you that ignorance is far more damaging. Seeing what hides behind the shadows steals the power from the darkness.

And suddenly, Atlanta Burns had her story.

Her story comes from it all: troubled teens and bullying and DADT and whatever. It's about taking back some of that power, about turning the table on the bullies — but at the same time, that's not an easy path, and not necessarily a sane path, either. You fight fire with fire, you might burn the whole house down, you know what I mean? Therein lurks a moral complexity and a darkness framed around a teen existence.

Does that make it YA? Does that make it noir? Probably not. I dunno. I'm not sure those terms are even well defined anymore. I know that Atlanta is, in her own way, a bit of a loser — and the book damn sure doesn't have a straight-up happy ending, and it definitely deals with teen issues. Which is why I think of it as noir-flavored YA, or YA-flavored noir. Or maybe it's just a story about a girl, her shotgun, and how she tries to protect a couple of friends from bullies.

It's a bit dark, but I think it's got some lightness in there, too. Humor and hope, not always completely realized. But in there just the same, struggling to come out. We'll see if they do.

Because this is only the first novella, as I've mentioned. I've got more on the way — er, provided this one sells okay. (I won't lie: the first couple days of sales were okay, but fairly low compared to my other e-books, even compared to Irregular Creatures.) I will ask that if you like the book, I could use you to spread the word. Maybe leave a review somewhere. Hopefully the story works for you. Her story just… tumbled forth, like apples from an overturned bag, and usually I like to think that it means there's something there, something people might really respond to, but that's up to you to say, not me.

Hopefully, BAIT DOG — which deals with animal abuse and dog-fighting — will find its way to the light. It's a hard book to write, but again, one that refuses to be contained.

Thanks for reading.

Shotgun Gravy: Now Available

"Sometimes she wakes up at night, smelling that gunpowder smell. Ears ringing. A whimpering there in the darkness. Doesn't always hit her at night, either. Might be in the middle of the day. She should be smelling pizza, or garbage, or cat shit wafting from the house next door, but instead what she smells is that acrid tang of gunsmoke. All up in her nose. Clinging there like a tick…"

So begins the tale of Atlanta Burns, a young girl with a grim past lingering at the fringes of her droll and dreary high school existence. She's content to remain there, too, or so she thinks: soon, however, she's drawn in a battle against two separate groups of bullies – a trio of local troublemakers and a group of Neo-Nazi gay bashers – to save a pair of new and unexpected friends.

But actions have consequences, and by fighting back, Atlanta discovers she's kicked over a log, thus revealing what hides squirming underneath.

It's just her, her friends, and a .410 squirrel gun against a handful of bullies and a conspiracy whose worst aspects remain yet hidden.

Can she triumph?

Will her victory be paid in unseen sacrifices?

Or is fighting back just asking for a face full of bad news?

(This is novella #1, a complete tale in and of itself. But Atlanta's story will continue in #2, BAIT DOG.)

Your procurement options are as follows:

Kindle (US): Buy Here

Kindle (UK): Buy Here

Nook: [Available Later Today, I Hope]

Or, buy the PDF ($2.99) by clicking the BUY NOW button:

What Awesome Humans Have To Say

"SHOTGUN GRAVY is like VERONICA MARS on Adderall. Atlanta Burns is a troubled teenage girl who's scared, angry, and not taking shit from anybody. Chuck Wendig knocks this one out of the park as he so often does." – Stephen Blackmoore, author of CITY OF THE LOST and DEAD THINGS

"Give Nancy Drew a shotgun and a kick-ass attitude and you get Atlanta Burns. Packed with action and fascinating characters, SHOTGUN GRAVY is a story that will captivate both teens and adults and have them clamoring for the next installment." – Joelle Charbonneau, author of SKATING OVER THE LINE

Author Notes

First things first, I suppose what I should say up front is that Atlanta Burns, "The Get-Shit-Done Girl," will be back in BAIT DOG, the second novella in the series.

From there is goes to novella #3, BULLY PULPIT.

And after that, novella #4, HARUM SCARUM.

(Those names may change depending on how the wind blows.)

Which means this is probably a good time to explain what's going on with these stories.

I'm approaching these novellas a bit like television storytelling in that it's both episodic and serialized at the same time. Look at a show like Burn Notice, you'll see what I mean – Burn Notice offers a new story every episode wherein the protagonist helps someone solve a problem. At the same time, each episode also advances a larger season-long plot and moves the characters forward a little bit (though never too much, as television thrives on characters that change little, if at all).

I thought it might be fun to try to emulate the shorter-form of television on the printed (er, "e-printed") page while still building toward a larger story in a serialized way.

So, this is the first novella in the series of four (probably), and when they're all said and done, they'll add up to the equivalent of a really big novel in size. Then, provided this whole series doesn't suck donkey taint and you fine, fine readers keep on reading and liking them, I'll move onto a second series (which, I assume, will also contain four more novellas).

That's the drill. I'll release each one… well, I don't know when. One every couple-few months, I figure. Unless of course these books just aren't selling, at which point I'll go cry in the bubble bath and then move onto something bigger and brighter. (If I can't sell 500 of this one, for instance, the next one isn't a lock.)

Now, to another question: is this book really YA, or Young Adult?

I don't know.

I didn't necessarily intend to write YA, but here I am, writing a book about a teen girl dealing with teen issues: rape and violence and bullying and sexual identity and all that stuff. Being a teen is just plain shitty. Everyone tells you that it's the best time of your life but it's not—

–it's one of the weirdest, and admittedly offers some major highs… and some staggering lows. (For my money, the years after high school were the best.)

As such, I guess this counts as YA (or YA-flavored crime, or crime-flavored YA). It's noir. Noir-esque. Quasi-noir. I don't even know what noir is anymore, honestly. It has a passel of bad words and ugly thoughts, of course, though let's not be naïve and pretend that teens don't use naughty swear words or do bad things. I think I did all my worst stuff when I was a teen. That's the nature of being young.

Anyway. Hope to see you all back for BAIT DOG (which is largely complete but needs a good polish), maybe in a couple-few months. Thanks for picking this one up, and if you feel so inclined to tell a friend about it or leave a review, you can be sure I'd appreciate that.

We writers can only survive through the support of caring readers, after all.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Five Words, Plus One Vampire"

Last week, you came up with a "Brand New Monster." Check out the horrifying results, won't you?

Man, if I don't just love the "five random word" challenge.

Once again I present you with five random words chosen out of a random word generator.

The words are:

COCKROACH

FOUNTAIN

TAX

BOTTLE

BOX

You must choose three of these and incorporate them into a flash fiction piece, 1000 words long.

Except, here's one more element:

You need to incorporate a vampire. Somehow. Last week was about new monsters, this week is about an old standby. Maybe it's a character. An antagonist. A reference. An allusion. Something. Anything.

Three out of five words.

And one vampire.

Post the fiction at your blog or on the web somewhere so we can see it, and then link back here. You've got one week, as usual: till Friday, October 21st, at noon EST.

J.C. Hutchins: The Terribleminds Interview

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This week the temporal streams have crossed. Bodies have perhaps been swapped, as if in a comedy starring Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron, or starring Lindsay Lohan and an incontinent horse. At the fore of this week, Mister J.C. "Hutch Snugglepants McGee" Hutchins interviewed me at his podcast (come and bathe in the soothing dulcet sounds of my weird voice), and in the same fell swoop turned in his answers for an interview here at Jolly Ol' Terribleminds. If you don't know Hutch, well, shame on you — podcaster, novelist, and above all else, consummate storyteller. I read a script of his and it knocked me on my ass. Here, then, is his interview. You can find his website here at jchutchins.net and you should, of course, follow his ass on the Twittertubes (@jchutchins). Remember: Momma gets a what-what.

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.

Back in the 1990s, I used to freelance for Wizard, a now-defunct print magazine that covered the comic book industry. I had the great fortune to interview some of my favorite comic writers — undisputed greats such as Will Eisner, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis.

My favorite, and most memorable, interview was with writer Alan Moore. We talked about his new endeavor at the time, America's Best Comics … and about his incredible legacy as a creator: Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Watchmen. I probably gushed a bit about my favorite Superman comic story, which he wrote: "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

And then I asked him about his life as a practicing magician.

Now when I say "magician," I don't mean card tricks, smoke bombs and top hat rabbits. That's being an illusionist. What I was discussing with Moore was the real deal, the ancient shit — magic magic, the kind you conjure with sorcery and summonings. Moore was an earnest believer, and because I'm a wildly open-minded dude when it comes to this sort of thing because of some peculiar life experiences of my own, I didn't bat an eye at his belief.

My favorite part of the interview was when he recalled a conversation he once had with the an ancient and powerful entity — I think it was the god Mercury. Moore was fully aware of how mad it all sounded, but again, could only share his belief and the authenticity of his personal experience.

It was at this point when I asked him: "How do you know you were talking to the god Mercury?"

"Well, when it looks like a god, and it barks like a god, it's probably a god," he replied.

It was an awesome conversation. I still have the tape somewhere. I remember him having a great voice. Deep and raspy, like he gargled gravel.

So yes. Magic. Spells, communing with gods, awesome. What magic would you possess if you could?

All of the ultra-cool abilities of a Jedi master, but without the midi-chlorians.

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

There's plenty to love about being a writer. I reckon my favorite part of it is that a goodly chunk of my heart gets to stay young for, like, forever. I get to play make believe every day. It's nuts: People pay me to pretend for a living. That's a cool, blessed job to have.

It can get lonesome — it's just you and your puny words, desperately trying to do justice to the vision in your head. And it can get scary — as a freelance creator, I sometimes don't know where the next paycheck's coming from. It's intimidating too, as the kind of work I do can be experimental … which means I'm learning on-the-fly, under the gun. And it can be heartbreaking. There's a lot of rejection in this business.

The dreamer side of me — the part that concocts stories and writes them — is an ever-optimist. It's gotta be. I can't create when my heart is stony. I need my heart. I need to fall in love with whatever I'm writing about.

The entrepreneur side of me — the one that worries about hunting, and bills and day rates — it learned long ago the value of managed expectations. I ship, I rewrite if needed, I birddog the check. This side of me insists I'll never be more than what I presently am: a grease-grimed mechanic who's here to fucking work.

This actually delights my inner optimist, because being a grease-grimed wordherder is all I've ever wanted to be.

Let's talk about transmedia — you're both fan and practitioner. Care to define what it is in your own words?

Sure. "Transmedia" is an emerging, and usually technology-fueled, way to tell stories. Transmedia narratives are designed to unfold in multiple storytelling media, often simultaneously.

Think of a physical newspaper. You read a front page story and experience its nonfiction narrative in many ways: Through the high concept headline, the body text, the photos and cutlines, a colorful infographic or two. Even the "Continued on Page A3" jump prompt states there's more to consume if you expend the effort to find it … as does the boldfaced call to action to visit the newspaper's website for "breaking news updates" on this story, including audio recordings and more in-depth reporting.

Each medium here tells its part of the story in ways that best plays to its strengths. Complex expositions are best-left to text … but text can never capture a moment as exquisitely as a photograph. But photographs can't deliver the arresting immediacy of video or audio. And none of these media can rival experiencing the story first-hand, in the field.

That kind of packaged newspaper story is an ultra-simplistic example of what I consider transmedia: A cohesive narrative deliberately designed to be experienced through multiple media and multiple channels.

Now imagine building fictional narratives with this paradigm in mind: multiple media delivered through multiple channels — including live events that support the fictional conceit (in which your audience become participants) — all serving a common story. When you bake this compelling opportunity into the DNA of the stories you're telling, things get very interesting and cool very quickly.

I've got a whole chunk of my brain presently dedicated to developing ways to apply this ecumenical approach to expanding not just the storytelling methods within a narrative … but the kinds of transmedia narratives one can create within a larger storyworld.

I believe that a fictional universe need not cater to a single genre or demographic. I'm working on developing transmedia intellectual properties that can accommodate all genres and demographics — from hard SF for teenagers to rom-coms for Baby Boomers. It's very ambitious, but absolutely possible.

What's the power of transmedia? And what are its perils?

To be clear: There will always be stories best-told through a single medium. Folks need not worry about their novels or movies going away. But I believe transmedia narratives will crack open storytelling in new ways that we'll be exploring and experiencing for decades.

We're already at a point where storytellers can economically craft narratives in which their characters can receive and send emails and phone messages from real people (aka consumers), post video blog "confessionals" or handheld location shots, and leave behind "evidence" in real life locations that can be documented and shared online by audience members. What I just mentioned is kindergarten, low-cost stuff … but is widely considered revolutionary by average consumers who are accustomed to passively consuming broadcast-style entertainment.

The true and disruptive potential of transmedia storytelling is that nearly everything around us — your phone, a billboard, a mailed letter, a t-shirt, a tweet — can be used to contribute to a cohesive narrative. Your narrative. That'll blow your mind if you let it. And you should let it, because storytellers need to be thinking about this stuff.

The perils are as numerous as its promises. When you start adding additional media or channels to tell your story, you start adding time, effort and risk to the project. You also add expense, which can sharply decrease your number of achievable cross-media / cross-channel storytelling opportunities. I reckon this is why the most famous transmedia stories — such as the brilliant Alternate Reality Game Why So Serious? – are funded by mainstream entertainment entities as promotional vehicles for films, video games and TV shows. These stories have many moving parts. You gotta cough up cash for those parts, and for mechanics like me to make them go.

I also fear that transmedia storytelling will be forever linked to these event-like promotions, and won't be find wider creator and audience acceptance. We're getting there. There've been several downright genius indie transmedia experiences … and mainstream entertainment and video game studios are savvily exploring transmedia's potential. But I reckon that until we're on the cover of Newsweek, we'll still be underground Morlocks in the eyes of mainstream consumers.

Don't get me wrong, I kinda like being a Morlock. But I also want these stories to break out in wildly successful ways.

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

Cheerful. Cocksucker.

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

I'm not much of a boozer, but I consume astounding quantities of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. Oh Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, I'd do anything for you.

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

I won't be recommending anything you or your brilliant peeps haven't already consumed, but sometimes it's nice to revisit a story to study the thing, and marvel at its execution. When I think about great taletelling, my mind zips immediately to:

Books: Scalzi's Old Man's War … King's The Stand, Pet Sematary and Bag of Bones … Deaver's The Coffin Dancer … Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky … Melzer's The First Daughter. All masterpieces, on their own terms.

Comics: Thompson's Blankets … much of Morrison's run on JLA … Waid's run on The Flash … Johns' early-to-mid Flash stuff … Gaiman's Sandman … Ennis' Preacher … Woods' DMZ … and nearly everything Ellis writes.

Movies: Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Robocop, Aliens, Star Wars. Everything I learned about writing airtight plots, high-stakes conflicts and memorable characters came from studying these flicks.

Games: I loved the nontraditional, but very moving, storytelling in Ico and Portal, and how game company Valve brilliantly incorporated a more traditional narrative into Portal 2.

I've enjoyed the Mass Effect series' branching narrative and superbly realized storyworld. L.A. Noire's nuanced gameplay, and how that affects the unfolding story, is awfully cool.

Whenever I want inspiration for a great piss-and-vinegar, kill-em-all-deader-than-dead revenge story, I play some God of War III. I get to be a god slayer. How badass is that?

I've watched you recently get into video games (Uncharted, God of War, Portal 2). What's the trick to good storytelling in games?

Earlier this year, I bought a PlayStation 3 to replace an unreliable shitheap Samsung Blu-Ray player. On a lark, I fired up the complimentary game that came with the console — Killzone 3 — and within minutes, was literally getting weepy. I was absolutely humbled by the spectacle, and the quality of writing, music, sound effects and visuals.

I sucked at the game — it had been 10 years since I'd gamed — but I immediately saw video games as the legitimate storytelling frontier it in fact is. I made a decision right there, within 10 minutes of firing up that PS3, to do whatever I needed to do so's I could write video games someday.

That means gaming my ass off, which is what I've been doing ever since.

Games are a unique breed of storytelling. But they're still stories, so many of the "must-haves" in other media must be represented in games: interesting characters and conflicts, larger machinations that are revealed over the course of the narrative, a theme and emotional anchor driving the story, foreshadowing and payoff … that stuff.

The popular theory seems to be that video game players are there to play, not watch a movie. Savvy developers are catering to this. Games like Gears of War 3 have nailed a successful formula — brief cutscenes, with exposition delivered through gameplay dialogue. (As opposed to all exposition being delivered via cutscenes.) I read somewhere that the longest cutscene in Gears of War 3 was 40-odd seconds. The rest of the narrative was smartly delivered as the player explored the world.

Personally, I love cutscenes. I don't mind relinquishing control of the experience so long as my recent hard-fought victory (against a level boss, for instance) is rewarded with an appropriately cool plot twist or an emotionally resonant character arc.

To me, that's what games are: fun problem-solving experiences. The best game narratives understand that effort / reward dynamic, and effectively amp up your investment of effort as the game progresses … and rewards that effort with an equally amped-up story and stakes. I like my video game narratives to be jaw-dropping epics — but it's the emotional growth of the character (and needing to know what happens next) that keeps me coming back.

That's just like any other well-told story.

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

My horrified screams of mercy — and then my howls of suffering as the undead shred open my stomach and feast on my intestines (and I'll still be conscious through the whole thing, watching them feast, silently marveling, "How did all of that fit inside my body, oh my god, sausage, it looks like long ropes of sausage") — will undoubtedly inspire others to learn how to properly load a firearm.

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

Angelina Jolie.

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

I'm collaborating with marketing agency Campfire on a few groundbreaking marketing campaigns. One is for a TV miniseries based on a bestselling horror novel; the other is for a multi-console video game. These are a lot of fun because I get to help expand the storyworlds of those universes and use my writing and research skills in many different ways. One of those campaigns will go live later this year.

I'm also the lead writer on a new tabletop miniatures game currently in development. That's a ton of fun because I get to do some serious worldbuilding. I've also got an ownership stake in that game, so I'm personally invested in its success — which always helps bring focus and one's best work to a project. That'll be out next year.

I'm also on the prowl for video game writing opportunities. I'll continue to pursue that in earnest in 2012.

As for my personal work, I'll release two novels, a short story anthology and probably a novella into several ebook marketplaces by year's end. There's also a mile-long list of stories and screenplays to write. It's never a dull moment around here. Inside my noggin, I mean.

Got any writing or storytelling advice for folks?

Humans are capable of making all kinds of cool stuff, but we can't make more time. Tick-tock, we can't get it back. Past tense, man. Gone baby, gone — forever.

How much of that gone-baby-gone time have you spent talking about writing, and not actually writing? How many hours, days, weeks, months, years — sweet Jesus, decades — have you spent telling others about all the stories you'll someday write? That novel. That comic book. That screenplay. Memoir. Whatever.

You'll never get that time back. Ever. That's time you could have spent living your dreams by writing your stories. Your lip-flapping is actively sabotaging your chances of achieving your dreams. Shame on you. You've talked enough.

That's my advice. You're either a writer or you aren't. Writers write. So write.

Let Us Speak Of Horror Novels

I love me some horror.

But I gotta be honest: I haven't read much great horror recently. In part because it's harder to find — like I mentioned yesterday, you don't see it with its own section anymore.

I want to read some kick-ass horror again.

So, recommend a horror book. Or, if you prefer, the oeuvre of an entire horror author. (I for one will, any day of the week, recommend the horror stylings of Robert McCammon. Uh, SWAN SONG, anyone?)

Here's the key, though. I don't want to hear only the recommendation. I want to know why. I want to know why it's scary and, beyond that, why it works for you as a great story. Let's crack this nut a little wider. What makes for effective horror fiction? Talk about it. Open up your Hellmouth and belch out some diabolical troofs.

And if you don't read horror: why not?

Get to it, little monsters.

25 Things You Should Know About Writing Horror

I grew up on horror fiction. Used to eat it up with a spoon. These days, not so much, but only I suspect because the horror releases just aren't coming as fast and furious as they once did.

But really, the novels I have coming out so far are all, in their own way, horror novels. DOUBLE DEAD takes place in a zombie-fucked America with its protagonist being a genuinely monstrous vampire. BLACKBIRDS and MOCKINGBIRD feature a girl who can touch you and see how and when you're going to die and then presents her with very few ways to do anything about it. Both are occasionally grisly and each puts to task a certain existential fear that horror does particularly well, asking who the hell are we, exactly?

And so it feels like a good time — with Halloween approaching, with DOUBLE DEAD in November and me writing MOCKINGBIRD at present — to visit the subject of writing horror.

None of this is meant to be hard and firm in terms of providing answers and advice. These are the things I think about writing horror. Good or bad. Right or wrong.

Peruse it. Add your own thoughts to the horror heap. And as always, enjoy.

1. At The Heart Of Every Tale, A Squirming Knot Of Worms

Every story is, in its tiny way, a horror story. Horror is about fear and tragedy, and whether or not one is capable of overcoming those things. It's not all about severed heads or blood-glutton vampires. It's an existential thing, a tragic thing, and somewhere in every story this dark heart beats. You feel horror when John McClane sees he's got to cross over a floor of broken glass in his bare feet. We feel the fear of Harry and Sally, a fear that they're going to ruin what they have by getting too close or by not getting too close, a fear that's multiplied by knowing you're growing older and have nobody to love you. In the Snooki book, we experience revulsion as we see Snooki bed countless bodybuilders and gym-sluts, her alien syphilis fast degrading their bodies until soon she can use their marrowless bones as straws with which to slurp up her latest Windex-colored drink. *insert Hannibal Lecter noise here*

2. Sing The Ululating Goat Song

Horror is best when it's about tragedy in its truest and most theatrical form: tragedy is born through character flaws, through bad choices, through grave missteps. When the girl in the horror movie goes to investigate the creepy noise rather than turn and flee like a motherfucker, that's a micro-moment of tragedy. We know that's a bad goddamn decision and yet she does it. It is her downfall — possibly literally, as the slasher tosses her down an elevator shaft where she's then impaled on a bunch of fixed spear-points or something. Sidenote: the original translation of tragedy is "goat song." So, whenever you're writing horror, just say, "I'M WRITING ANOTHER GOAT SONG, MOTHER." And the person will be like, "I'm not your mother. It's me, Steve." And you just bleat and scream.

3. Horror's Been In Our Heart For A Long Time

From Beowulf to Nathaniel Hawthorne, from Greek myth to Horace Walpole, horror's been around for a long, long time. Everything's all crushed bodies and extracted tongues and doom and devils and demi-gods. This is our literary legacy: the flower-bed of our fiction is seeded with these kernels of horror and watered with gallons of blood and a sprinkling of tears. Horror is part of our narrative make-up.

4. Look To Ghost Stories And Urban Legends

You want to see the simplest heart of horror, you could do worse than by dissecting ghost stories and urban legends: two types of tale we tell even as young deviants and miscreants. They contain many of the elements that make horror what it is: subversion, admonition, fear of the unknown.

5. We're All Afraid Of The Dark

We fear the unknown because we fear the dark. We fear the dark because we're biologically programmed to do so: at some point we gain the awareness that outside the light of our fire lurks — well, who fucking knows? Sabretooth tigers. Serial killers. The Octomom. Horror often operates best when it plays off this core notion that the unknown is a far freakier quantity than the known. The more we know the less frightening it becomes. Lovecraft is like a really advanced version of this. Our sanity is the firelight, and beyond it lurks not sabretooth tigers but a whole giant squirming seething pantheon of madness whose very existence is too much for mortal man's mind to parse.

6. Plain Stakes, Stabbed Hard Through Breastbone

On the other hand, creating horror is easier and more effective when the stakes are so plain they're on the table for all to see. We must know what can be gained — and, more importantly, what can be lost — for horror to work. Fear is built off of understanding consequences. We can be afraid of the unknown of the dark, but horror works best when we know that the dark is worth fearing.

7. Dread And Revulsion In An Endless Tango

Beneath plot and beneath story is a greasy, grimy subtextual layer of pacing — the tension and recoil of dread and revulsion. Dread is a kind of septic fear, a grim certainty that bad things are coming. Revulsion occurs when we see how these bad things unfold. We know that the monster is coming, and at some point we must see the wretchedness of the beast laid bare. Dread, revulsion, dread, revulsion.

8. Stab The Gut, Spear The Heart, Sever The Head

Horror works on three levels: mind, heart, gut. Our mind reels at trying to dissect horror, and good horror asks troubling questions. Our heart feels a surge of emotion: terror and fear and suspense, all felt deep in the ventricles, like a wedge of rancid fat clogging our aorta. Our gut feels all the leftover, baser emotions: the bowel-churn, the stomach-turn, the saline rush of icy sepsis as if our intestinal contents have turned to some kind of wretched fecal slushie. Which, for the record, is the name of my new Satanic Ska band.

9. The Squick Factor

Something my father used to do: he'd walk up, hands cupped and closed so as to hide something, and then he'd tell me to open my hands, the goal being that he would dump whatever he was hiding into my palm. Could be anything. Cicada skin. A frog or frog's egg. The still-beating heart of a unicorn. The point was always the same: for me to find delight in being grossed out. Horror still plays on this. And why shouldn't it? It's both primal and fun. Sidenote: we should do a new gross-out reality show called The Squick Factor. Hollywood, call me. You know my number from the last time we made love under the overpass.

10. That Said, You Do Not Actually Require Buckets Of Overflowing Viscera

The Squick Factor is not actually a prerequisite for good horror. Some of the best and most insidious horror is devoid of any grossness at all: a great ghost story, for instance, is often without any blood-and-guts.

11. Characters You Love Making Choices You Hate

Suspense and tension are key components to the horror-making process. I've long thought that the best way to create these things is to have characters you love making choices you hate. When you see a beloved character about to step toward the closet where the unseen serial killer is hiding, your sphincter tightens so hard it could break someone's finger. We recoil at mistakes made by loved ones, and this is doubly true when these mistakes put their lives, souls and sanities in danger.

12. Horror And Humor Are Gym Buddies

Horror and humor, hanging out at the gym, snapping each other's asses with wet towels. Horror and humor both work to stimulate that same place in our gutty-works, a place that defies explanation. Sometimes you don't know why you think this thing is funny or that thing is scary. They just are. It's why it's hard to explain a horror story or a joke: you can't explain it, you can only tell it. And both are told similarly: both have a set up, ask a question, and respond with a punch line or a twist. It's just, they go in separate directions — one aims for amusement, the other for anxiety. But the reason you can find these two working sometimes in tandem is because they're ultimately kissing cousins.

13. Sex And Death Also Play Well Together

Two more kissing cousins: sex and death. Shakespeare didn't call the orgasm the "little death" for nothing. (I, on the other hand, refer to it as "The Donkey's Pinata.") Both are taboo subjects, both kept to the dark — and, as we know, horror lives in the dark, too. We all fear death and so sex — procreative and seductive — feels like an antidote to that, but then you also have the baggage where OMG SEX KILLS, whether it's via a venereal disease or as part of the unwritten rules contained within a slasher film. In this way, in horror, sex and death are the Ouroboros, the snake biting its own tail. Or maybe the double-dildo biting its own tail?

14. Car Crashes And Two Girls With One Cup

If you want to understand horror you have to understand the impulse that drives us to click on a video that everybody tells us we don't want to see, or the urge to slow down at car crashes and gawk at blood on the highway. That urge is part of what informs our need to write and read horror fiction. It's a baser impulse, but an important one. We deny it, but you ask me, it's universal.

15. The Real Horror Story Is What's Happening To The Horror Genre

Horror's once again a difficult genre. It had a heyday in the 80s and 90s, evidenced by the fact it had its very own shelf at most bookstores. That's no longer the case at Barnes & Noble, and Borders broke its leg in the woods and was eaten by hungry possums. I've heard that some self-published authors have pulled away from marketing their books as horror because they sell better when labeled as other genres.

16. Ripe For Resurgence?

That said, I wonder if it's not time for horror to rise again, a gore-caked phoenix screaming like a mad motherfucker. The times we live in often dictate the type of entertainment we seek — and we're starting to slide once more into a very dark and scary corner of American life. Horror may serve as a reflection of that, equal parts escapist and exploratory — maybe it's time again to let monsters be monsters, giving a fictional face to the fiends we see all around us. Then again, maybe shit's just too fucked up. Who can say? It's worth a shot, though. I submit that it's a good time to try writing horror.

17. Horror Writers Tend To Be Very Nice

I don't know what it is, but goddamn if horror writers aren't some of the nicest writers on the planet. I think it's because their fiction is like constantly lancing a boil: the poison is purged, and all that's left is smiles.

18. Horror Needs Hope

Good is known by its proximity to evil. You don't know what a great burger tastes like until you've eaten a shitty one. You can't know great sex from awful sex until you'd experienced both (pro-tip: the great sex is the one where you don't cry after and eat a whole container of cake frosting). And so it is that for horror to be horrific, it must also have hope. Unceasing and unflinching horror ceases to actually be horrific until we have its opposite present: that doesn't mean that hope needs to win out. Horror always asks that question of which will win the day: the eyes of hope or the jaws of hell?

19. Lessons Learned

Horror stories can serve as modern day fables. It works to convey messages and lessons, rules about truth and consequence. If you're looking to say something, really say something, you've worse ways of doing so than by going down the horror fiction route. Great example of this is the underrated DRAG ME TO HELL, by Sam Raimi: a grim parable about our present economic recession.

20. The Stick Of A Short Sharp Needle

Sometimes, horror needs to be really fucked up. It just can't do what it needs to do unless it's going to cut out one of your kidneys, bend you over a nightstand, and shove the kidney back up inside your nether-burrow. Horror all but demands you don't pull your punches, but that kind of unceasing assault on one's own senses and sanity cannot be easily sustained for a novel-length or film-length project. Hence: short fiction and short films do well to deliver the sharp shock that horror may require.

21. We Need New Monsters

The old monsters — vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves — have their place. They mean something. But they may also be monsters for another time. Never be afraid to find new monsters. Horror in this way is a pit without a bottom: you will always discover new creatures writhing in the depths, reflecting the time in which they are born. Just go to a Juggalo convocation or a Tea Party gathering. You'll see.

22. Never Tell The Audience They Should Be Scared

Show, Don't Tell is a critical rule in all of storytelling, so critical that you should probably have it tattooed on your forehead backward so that every time you look in the mirror, there it is. But in horror it's doubly important not to convey the fear that the audience is ideally supposed to feel. You can't tell someone to be scared. You just have to shove the reader outside the firelight and hope that what you've hidden there in the shadows does the trick. You can lead a horse to horror, but you can't make him piss his horsey diapers when something leaps out out of the depths to bite his face and plant eggs in the nose-holes.

23. Break Your Flashlight

You write horror, you're trying to shine a light in dark corners. Key word there is "trying" — the flashlight needs to be broken. A light too bright will burn the fear away — the beam must waver, the batteries half-dead, the bulb on the verge of popping like a glass blister. It's like, what the light finds is so unpleasant, you can't look at it for too long. Look too long it'll burn out your sanity sensors. In this way, horror isn't always concerned with the why or the how — but it is most certainly concerned with the what.

24. Horror Still Needs All The Things That Makes Stories Great

You can't just jam some scary shit into a book and be like, "Boom, done, game over." Slow down, slick. Come back to the story. You still need all the things that make a story great. Horror — really, any genre — ain't shit unless you can commit to the page a story filled with great characters, compelling ideas, strong writing, and a sensible plot. Don't just dump a bucket of blood on our heads and expect us to slurp it up.

25. Horror Is Personal

Horror needs to work on you, the author. You need to be troubled, a little unsettled, by your own material. Write about what scares you. Doesn't matter what it is or how absurd — hell, some people think that being terrified of clowns is ridiculous, until you realize how many people find clowns spooky as fuck. Dig deep into your own dark places. Tear off the manhole cover and stare down into the unanswered abyss. Speak to your own experiences, your own fears and frights. Shake up your anxieties and let them tumble onto the page. Because horror works best when horror is honest. The audience will feel that. The truth you bring to the genre will resonate, an eerie and unsettling echo that turns the mind upon itself.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

This Recipe Will Autumn Your Fucking Face Off

It's time for another NSFW recipe.

This time: sausage, apples and pasta in brown butter sauce.

It's delicious.

I mean, it'll fucking kill you. You'll eat this and a great big cholesterol-laden ball will lodge in your heart and you'll seize up but fuck it, you'll gurgle and coo happily while perishing.

Ready?

OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR MIND.

Here, then, is what you're going to do.

Soften a sweet onion. You do not soften an onion with kind words. You do not use Rohypnol. You dice that sumbitch and put it in a hot pan with oil and salt, then lower the heat, cook it down for five to eight minutes. Maybe splash a little water in there if you need further softening. Wilt the onions like a sad erection.

Then: get some ground country sausage. Crumble that shit up in a pan. Use your hands. Don't be afraid of germs. Raw meat is good for you. (Disclaimer: raw meat probably isn't good for you.)

Let it get to sizzling. Inhale the fat vapors. Experience a vision quest where you fight a pig-headed god for physical supremacy, and then you cut him open and bacon rains down upon you, crispy and wonderful.

Put a little salt and pepper on there. Sprinkle plenty.

As it browns, set a big ol' pot of water to boiling for pasta.

Also: chop up two portabello caps.

Grate one carrot. Really fine-like. So much so that the carrot now looks like little piles of bright orange dirt.

Dice up two apples. Two good tart apples that holds up to cooking. Choose an apple with some balls. I like Jonathan apples. Though, Jonathan is not a name that sounds like it has balls, so instead I call these apples "Wolf-Fang Chainsaw" apples. That gets across the sentiment I'm looking for.

Once the sausage is browned, get your veggies into the mix. Stir, stir, stir. Do I need to tell you that? I maybe do. I see you over there. Wearing your pants on your head. Sucking on a dirty shoelace. Weirdo.

Final piece of this: toss in two tablespoons of cider vinegar. Acid is your friend.

Now, pasta into the water.

What kind of pasta? JESUS YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF CAN YOU. Okay. Okay. I'm calm. I don't care what kind of pasta you use as long as it's the kind with some texture, some nooks and crannies and spiral-twirls so it can hold the sauce. You use straight spaghetti or something and I'm going to come over there and burn your eyes shut with a fistful of searing hot sweet onions. Don't make me.

Cook the [INSERT PASTA CHOICE HERE] for as long as it demands, but cook it to al dente, right? You don't want to go all the way with the pasta. You want to go up under the shirt and stop there.

Reason being, you're going to want to cook the rest of it in the sauce.

"What sauce?" you ask.

To which I reply — well, I don't reply. Instead I take a palm full of cracked black pepper and blow it into your face in order to punish you for your crass impatience. It burns. I know it does.

Go get a tissue. Blow your nose. I'll wait.

Okay. Sauce.

Six to eight tablespoons of unsalted butter in a hot skillet.

Sprinkle salt over it.

Let it foam up and melt.

Lower heat to med-low, then let that cook while the pasta cooks. Maybe six minutes later, it should be looking brown and smelling nutty, and here you're thinking, "Chuck's going to make a poop joke now, right?" but I'm not. I'm really not. This sauce is too good for that. Too. Good. For. That.

Now, take 2 TBsp of creme fraiche — or sour cream, or heavy cream, whatever you have that's creamy (put your pants back on) — and stir it into the brown butter. Mix it up. Toss in some sage and other herbs. I don't care what herbs. Herbs de Provence are nice. But get a little rosemary and thyme at least.

Pasta goes into the sauce.

Let it cook in the sauce for another two or three minutes.

Plate the pasta.

Top with the sausage mixture.

Top that with a few crumbled walnuts.

Top that with a little song-and-dance.

Shove into your mouth.

Die happy.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Brand New Monster"

If you missed it, last week's brand new worldbuilding challenge — "Blackbloom" — is still going strong at 100+ entries. Come, define a new world. I'll pick the best of the bunch on the last Friday of this month (and all worldbuilding challenges will fall to the last Friday of every month).

It's October.

Time of pumpkins, devils, and the flesh of the innocent stitched into a double-breasted tuxedo.

It's a month of horror.

And so I feel like the first flash challenge (and maybe all of 'em, who knows) should focus on horror. Right? Right. Or, at least, monsters. Here, then, is your task: I want to see a brand new monster. Something you've never seen before. Not a vampire. Fuck the zombies. No werewolves or ghouls or ghosts or demons or witches or Snookis. I want you to the best of your ability write a story featuring a Brand New Monster of your own creation.

Doesn't actually have to be a horror story. Monsters can feature in all manner of story, after all.

Maybe the story is from the perspective of the victims. Maybe it's from the POV of the monster.

I trust you to handle it with aplomb and awesomeness.

You have 1000 words or less.

You should complete your fiction by next Friday, October 14th, at noon EST.

I'll pick a random participant to receive –

Well, I don't really know what you'll receive.

It'll be a surprise to you. And to me, apparently.

Go forth, Doctor Penmonkeystein.

Conjure a new creature for us all to gaze upon.

In wonderment.

And in horror.

Joelle Charbonneau: The Terribleminds Interview

Joelle Charbonneau is one of the nicest and hardest working authors I know. She kicks ten kinds of ass. We share an agent — the uber-super-ultra-agent, Stacia Decker — but the sad thing is, without that connection I might not have read Joelle's delightful debut, SKATING AROUND THE LAW. Which would be an epic mistake on my part because it was a blast — and, for a bit of meaningless trivia, the first e-book I ever read (tied with Hilary Davidson's also-excellent THE DAMAGE DONE, both of which I read at the same time). Anyway — you can find Joelle's website here, and follow her on Twitter @jcharbonneau.

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.

Why do you tell stories?  Because I always wanted to be a superhero and couldn't fly.  Okay – maybe that is taking it a little too far, but I have always wanted to do and be more than can be crammed into one lifetime.  Telling stories is a great way to walk in a really cool pair of shoes for a while.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Cut the boring stuff.

Of course, to do that you have to be willing to admit that some of what you have written is boring.  Everyone has their longwinded, boring, pacing stopping moments.  A writer has to take a step back and be willing to say that something they've written is crap.  That's the only way you can make a story shine.

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

The whole superhero thing is the great part about being a writer.  There are endless possibilities and as a writer I am able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and create sex-driven grandfathers and camels who wear hats without ever leaving the confines of my living room.  Of course, that being said there are things that totally suck.  The whole mentality of 'if you build it they will come' is total crap.  Just because you write something doesn't mean anyone will ever read it.  It doesn't matter how great your writing is, just because it is sitting on the shelf in a bookstore doesn't guarantee that a person will plunk down cold hard cash for the opportunity to visit your imagination.  Promotion is part of the writing business.  It takes away from the time you would rather spend writing and the worst part is that a writer never really knows what PR actually leads to sales.  You just have to keep throwing things against a wall and hoping something will stick.  And even then….  Yeah – it sucks.

You did it, you triggered the alarm by mentioning the word "superhero." That means it's time for that tried-and-true question: if you were a superhero, what would your powers be?

My first instinct is to say that I would fly, but that is a totally lame super power unless it comes package with super strength or something equally useful.  I mean, flying is great for a personal hobby, but what good are you to someone who falls off of a building or to a plane that loses an engine.  If you try to catch the person or help the plane you end up dead.  Dead is bad.  So, I'm scratching flying off the list.  Since the wave of the future is computers, I plan on being Data-girl – someone whose mind can meld with and manipulate computers without a single touch of a key.  I'm taking over the Matrix baby!

Follow-up: if you had the chance to write the stories of one superhero, which superhero would that be?

Firestar – I grew up an X-Men fan.  Firestar was always willing to torch some guy's ass for justice, but no one ever bothered to really deep dive into her character.  Maybe they just thought it was enough that she was a redhead and hot, but I think she got the short end of the stick.

Skating Around The Law and Skating Over The Line are your two mysteries featuring Rebecca Robbins, rink-owner and amateur detective. Can you talk about constructing those books. In particular: how do you engineer a great mystery for an audience?

I think a great mystery needs to have fast pacing, a fun puzzle and most of all it needs to play fair with the reader.  If the main detective (amateur or otherwise) knows something about the case then the reader needs to know it, too.  Which in my mind means that the reader has to have the puzzle pieces in front of them to solve the crime – especially if you are writing in first person.  Pointing the finger at a bad guy the reader has barely met or never had any real information on is cheating.  As a reader, there is nothing I hate more than investing my time in a book where the ending feels forced or comes out of left field.  Surprise is good, but the reader needs to be able to go back through the book and find the sprinkling of clues that in hindsight points them in the right direction.  If those clues aren't there, the mystery often falls flat.

The Rebecca Robbins mysteries are both mystery and character driven.  I want readers to be equally invested in both.  Each book has a stand alone mystery that should engage and entertain the reader, which means you don't have to start at the beginning of the series.  A reader can jump right into any book without feeling like they are playing catch up.  However, it is my hope that I've constructed the storylines to allow the characters to grow from book to book and that the readers will come back for those characters as much as they come back for the mysteries.

A lot of your characters are quirky and endearing. You write them well and so it forces me to ask, what's the secret in writing great characters?

Wow.  Thanks.  Now I feel the need to say something profound and earthshaking about characters.  One moment while I get a paper bag to stop my hyperventilation.

Ok – the bag worked so here goes.  I think the best characters are at the core people we can identify with.  If you start out with the intention to write a wacky, eccentric character, you come out with a caricature instead.  Characters aren't one dimensional.  They need to be well-rounded.  You have to start at the bottom, find the pieces of the character that everyone can identify with and build from there.  In my case, I didn't start out writing Skating Around The Law saying "I want Rebecca to have a lothario grandfather with a penchant for impersonating Elvis."  My intent was to create a touchstone for Rebecca in her old home town that she fought so hard to get out of.  I wanted her to have a caring presence in her life who supported her and at the same time wanted her to think twice before selling her deceased mother's roller rink.  At the core, he is the grandfather we all can identify with.  He loves his granddaughter, but he also is selfish enough to try and keep her close by.  It just turns out that he juggles multiple girlfriends and loves mimicking The King.

We need to talk about the camel. Elwood the camel is such a great character. Yet because he's a camel, he's built in very simple, straightforward strokes. Where'd you get the idea for Elwood?

Good question and I even have an answer to it!  When I'm not writing or chasing around after my toddler I'm a voice teacher.  A few days after I started noodling the idea for Skating Around The Law, I had a lesson with a student who owns horses.  While we were chatting, she let me know she wouldn't be able to make her next lesson because her horse had to go to the U of I.  Being the sarcastic sort I said, "Wow, smart horse."  She laughed and explained that she was taking her horse to the large animal veterinary clinic at the university.  She then went onto say that the last time she went to the clinic there was a guy there with a camel.  Stranger still, the guy wasn't the camel's owner.  Turns out the camel didn't like the farmer he lived with and caused problems whenever the farmer brought him to the clinic.  In fact, the last time the farmer brought him, the camel broke out of his carrier and went running down I57 in an eventually aborted jail break.  The image of the camel racing down the road flanked by cornstalks and soybean plants stayed with me long after the lesson and I couldn't quite figure out why anyone in the middle of Illinois would own a camel.  A few days later I wrote the opening to Skating Around The Law and at the end of chapter three there was a camel wearing a fedora – my explanation as to why a camel would be living in rural Illinois.

Both those books are "cozies." You ever want to write something totally opposite to that? Grim and gory and noir-soaked and blood-caked?

I would like to point out that my agent has labeled my books "Itchies"  – not quite cozy…kind of like a wool sweater that keeps you warm but makes you twitch a bit while wearing it.  I'm not sure if that is flattering, but it sounds about right since my sense of humor is a little edgier than the typical cozy.

And YES!  I have written and will hopefully continue to write stuff that is grimmer, gorier and more disturbing that what appears in Indian Falls.  I have no idea if those books will ever sell, but I think it is important for me to explore the darker ideas to keep my writing sharp and my imagination fresh.  Anyone will tell you that writing comedy is tough.  When you push too hard to get a laugh everything falls apart.  It's important to take a step away every now and then and remind yourself that you don't need to be funny.  You just need to write the characters and let them tell the story.  Writing something different always helps me take that step back.  Conversely, writing the lighter stuff makes me look forward to spending time in the shadows.

As for the stuff I've written that explores those shadows, well, I hope they will make an appearance on bookshelves.  In this business, it is tough to say what will sell and what won't.  As writers we just have to keep telling stories and hope that at some point someone will get a chance to read them.

Favorite word?

Outstanding.

And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Craptastic –Does that count?

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

Sauvignon Blanc.

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

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  It always reminds me of peeling an onion.  Layer by layer you learn that everyone on the train has a secret.  How cool is that?

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

Just line the zombies up like an alley full of bowling pins and I'll mow them down.  Me and my pretty blue bowling ball can do some damage.  (I can also sauté up a mean Zombie soufflé, but that's for after the war is won.)

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

I knew those crimes would catch up to me.  Okay, if I'm going out I'm going out with a bang.  I'm thinking Crawfish etouffee over dirty rice and as much freshly baked cornbread as I can eat.

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

I'm about ready to start the second book in the Paige Marshall mystery series.  The heroine is a classical singer turned amateur sleuth.  One of my other professions is stage performing, so I'm looking forward to once again merging those two facets of my life.  As far as the future?  The hell if I know.  I'll just keep sitting my butt in the chair and getting words on the page.  Hopefully, people will continue to read them.  If not, you might find me racing around town in tights and a cape.  You just never know.