Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 263

Get Your Pointy Teeth And Practice Your Zombie Shuffle: It's Double Dead Day!

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It's the 15th of November.

Which means that Coburn the vampire is here.

Poor, poor Coburn. Once the king of his castle — his castle being New York City — he awakens from slumber to discover that his city and his world have been gobbled up by a zombie apocalypse.

Most of the humans are dead.

Which means his food source is spoiled. Vampire can't live on dead blood, after all.

And so the vampire must move from predator to protector, a shepherd who must find a food source and stand vigil over the herd. It's not an easy transition, of course. The monster is still a monster, after all.

(This ain't Twilight, folks. Only way Coburn glitters is if he kills and eats a stripper.)

Along the way, what will he discover about the world? About the girl he protects? And about himself?

Gotta read it to find out.

A vampire in zombieland.

Featuring:

A teenage girl with a healing gift!

Zombie evolution!

Wal-Mart cannibals!

An army of Route 66 Juggalos!

A little white terrier named "Creampuff!"

And, of course, one cranky-ass cocky fuck of a vampire: Coburn.

Please to enjoy, folks.

Recipe: Sinner's Stew

You are now going to make beef stew. With short ribs.

Don't argue with me.

We don't have time for your mewling pleas and jibbering jabbers. The Devil and his consort will be here soon. For dinner. And they expect to be fed, by golly. What are you going to tell him? Are you going to look jolly ol' Lucifer in the eye and say, "Hey, sorry, Lucy old chap, I was too busy playing with the genitals god gave me and thus have declined to provide a meal for you and your lovely centaur trollop?"

Yes. That's right. The Devil has a thing for centaur ladies.

Don't judge.

So, let's get on with the stew, then.

This is what I'm calling a Sinner's Stew because it contains three of my vices:

a) Coffee

b) Beer

c) Whisky.

Here's how we begin:

Get a pot. Or a dutch oven if you like to go that way but I just used a heavy stainless steel pot. Because that's how I do. Into the pot you want to put your favorite fat product.

I used duck fat. Because duck fat is fucking phenomenal. You could also use bacon renderings. That, by the way, will be the name of my memoir: "Bacon Renderings: The Chizzy Wangdang Story." Because at the time of the memoir's publication, I will have renamed myself to "Chizzy Wangdang" in order to facilitate my rebirth as an icon of the literary scene: a true darling of artists and weirdos the world around.

Whatever.

Get six short ribs.

Bone-in. And not just because it's funny to say "bone-in" and then lasciviously wink at the person to whom you're speaking, but because bone-in meats tend to preserve and add flavor.

As a sidenote, short ribs are awesome because they're basically BRICKS OF MEAT. Seriously. One day I want to build a house out of short ribs and then, before it goes south, have me and a couple buddies with flamethrowers burn the house down, which is to say, cook all of that delicious meat. Then I'll invite the whole town over and we'll all have a big meathouse meal. And then any of the children that show up will end up captured and thrown into my oven because HA HA SUCKERS I'M ACTUALLY THE WITCH FROM THE HANSEL AND GRETEL STORIES.

I should really cut it out with the caps lock. But it's just so engaging!

Anyway.

Dust the short ribs with flour, salt, pepper, smoked sweet paprika, and garlic powder.

Brown the meat-bricks in the bubbling fatty goodness.

Once you're done with that, make sure that you get rid of all but say, a tablespoon of the fat in the pot.

Make sure the meat is firmly sequestered in the bottom of the pot ("meat sequestered in the bottom?") and now it's time to start adding some liquids.

Add to the pot:

One cup of black coffee.

One bottle of your favorite beer. I used a Troeg's amber ale.

Three cups of chicken — yes, chicken, shut up — broth.

Now. Stop for a moment. We need to talk about:

The bitterness problem.

Beer and coffee (no, we have not yet added our whisky) contribute bitterness. The beer more than the coffee. Both the alcohol content and hoppiness of the beer (by the way, beer needs a better word than "hoppy," because that sounds like it has something to do with happy rabbits or is perhaps the name of the Easter Bunny or some shit) can turn your stew bitter. That's a no-no.

I mean, unless you like that sort of thing?

Weirdo.

We must combat bitterness at multiple stages.

First thing to do, right now:

Boil it. Get a good rolling boil. Boil it for like, three straight minutes. Let the alkiehall cook the fuck off and dissipate into the atmosphere where the booze molecules drift to heaven and get the angels drunk.

Now, drop the temp back down and add some other bitterness-battlers:

Two TBs of Worcestershire sauce, which few seem to realize is actually just fish sauce.

One TB of sugar.

Two TBs each of cider vinegar and red wine vinegar.

And, finally, 1/4c of ketchup.

Toss in your spices while we're sitting here: a palm full of salt, a dash of pepper, a second dash of cayenne pepper, a dash of smoked sweet paprika, a dash of hot Hungarian paprika, a double-doggy-dash of garlic powder, a Bay leaf (which you will rescue from the broth and not eat), a bundle of fresh time bound up and also rescued from the broth (or you could just use the powdered stuff, shut up), a pinch of sage, a pinch of tarragon, and there you go.

Stir. Make sure it boils again. Simmer now for two hours.

What to do during those two hours?

The world is your story-book, friend. Jump a motorcycle over the corpses of slain giants? Hang-glide into a dragon's butthole? Slay the Dread Humbaba as he reclines and watches CSI: Mesopotamia?

Somewhere in there, though, you ought to chop some vegetables:

Three to five carrots, depending on size.

Three to five celery ribs, depending on size.

One pint of mushrooms.

One medium-sized sweet onion.

Obviously, you're a human with free will, despite all efforts of mine to shackle your mind and soul and force you to act only at my whim and command, so that means you may choose to incorporate other items into the stew. Potatoes would not be remiss, obviously. Maybe cauliflower. Or peas. Or pee. Or the blood of the last existing dodo bird, wrung from its still-warm body after you brained it with a skillet.

That's on you, Pikachu.

Here's where it gets a little crazy and we once again try to battle back the beast of bitterness –

Get yourself ten prunes.

Or, if you don't like that term, "dried plums."

(Though they are, of course, the same thing.)

Choppity-chop.

You may be thinking, "Doesn't this turn the broth into a diarrhea stew? I don't need a stew that helps me move my bowels, thanks." It does not. I don't know if the colonic irritant in prunes is cooked off, but I do know that ten prunes in a giant pot of stew does not a turbid diarrhea soup make. If you're really weird about it, try some other dry fruit: apricots, maybe?

(The fruit breaks down and almost disappears into the broth.)

Your house by now will be smelling delightful. You may have attracted a small herd of wandering raccoons or some curious and starving neighbors. Beat them back with a rake. Or, do like I do: pepper lawn with Bouncing Betty landmines. That sets a precedent and eventually all trespassers (many without legs!) learn not to come fumbling about your private property.

After your two hours are up, all the choppity-chopped veggies (and prunes!) go into the gurgling broth. Oh! Remove the meat first. Put it on a cutting board. Bring the newly-enveggienated stew to a boil and as you do so, it's time to pop the bones out of that meat and start pulling apart the short ribby goodness. Chop it when necessary — some of the connective tissue may not yet be broken down. (If any of it seems truly stubborn, you can just remove the turgid tissue and toss that shiznit right in the trizzash — er, the trash. Just make sure to not lose any of the actual meaty deliciousness.)

Put meat back into the stew and, at the same time, rescue the thyme bundle and the Bay leaf.

Next step deserves all caps:

NOW IS THE TIME OF WHISKY.

Take a shot.

No, I mean — you take a shot.

(Actually, if you're like me, you've probably already been drinking this whole time. Good for you. Also, if you're like me, you've probably already soiled yourself. Not so good for you. Or for me. Just call the school nurse, they're supposed to have some extra pants on hand for incontinent drunks like you and me.)

Now take another shot –

And pour this one into the stew.

The choice of whisky is yours but I followed the suggestions of one Mister Stephen "Snack Whore" Blackmoore and went straight for the beautiful bottle of Laphroaig Scotch on my shelf.

The Laphroaig contributes that peaty smoky goodness. Which you'll also get from Lagavulin. Or, if you're really living on the edge, a shot of Mezcal. (I'd think Mezcal would be better in chili, though. Hm.)

Once more, boil for two minutes.

Now simmer for a half-hour.

Somewhere in here taste the stew. You want to make sure the bitterness factor has gone well and truly away — but, if it hasn't, you want to get ahead of that problem. A little more vinegar, sugar, maybe broth. Keep tasting and dicking around with it until that acrid tang has gone from the back of your tongue.

The Devil doesn't like a bitter stew.

He's sweet. Like candy.

So, there you go. That's it. Half-hour later you've got a bubbling pot of meaty stewed goodness. Ladle into bowls. Feed to the Devil and his centaur prostitute. Rejoice, sinner.

The Geography Of Blackbloom, Part One

Last week's challenge has borne fruit:

THE GODS OF BLACKBLOOM HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.

(All Blackbloom entries are here.)

I thought initially we might leap in and do some creation or other divine myths surrounding the gods we chose, but then I thought, well, it'd be nice to have a greater sense of what these gods create.

Thus, it's time to examine the physical world of Blackbloom.

What is this place?

What does it look like?

Where can you go? What vistas and nightmares can one explore?

We know a few things.

We know that seas of sand exist.

We know the place is fairly diverse.

We know it's subject to three seasons (rainy, dry, dark).

But we don't know much else.

So, you have 100 words.

With those 100 words, describe a place in the natural geography of the planet — think about how Earth has Everest or the Grand Canyon or the Hawaiian Islands or whatever. Go nuts. Go big. Go weird. Blackbloom is not a world for timidity. Note, however, we don't want to talk about cities. The cities of Blackbloom — which are sentient and can communicate — will get their own challenge. For now: think geography, not man-made (though certainly divinely-made and feel free to incorporate the gods if you feel it's valuable). Give us the names and the places and the madness of this new world writ large.

You've got two weeks. Till Friday, 11/25, noon EST.

Post your 100-word entries below.

Please: only one entry per person.

Further, again, you're likelier to have your entry chosen if it's written more like an entry from an encyclopedia (or, for more salient reference, from a roleplaying game book).

I'll pick — well, I dunno. However many helps us start to cobble together a map of the planet. Because that's what we want. Not a whole map, not yet — we'll still have those Here There Be Dragons portions — but enough so we start to see the world in all its splendor and terror.

The Gods Of Blackbloom Are Chosen

This week's challenge — The Geography of Blackbloom! — is live.

You people? You're killing me.

What with your awesome (and oft-conflicting) entries.

Killing me.

Took me hours to sift through the killer options for gods and goddesses.

But, I think I've nailed it.

Some early comments:

While the more fictional and non-encyclopedic entries were welcome and fun to read, they often contained not enough information to go on and so they really didn't end up getting included.

Also, a number of well-written entries conflicted with others I'd chosen, so this is less about me choosing which ones are coolest and instead about choosing which ones fit together. Part of the fun (and frustration) for me is looking for themes and picking them out and playing them up. I did find a few themes at work. I tried to grab hold of the ones I saw and run with 'em.

Just as the denizens of Blackbloom are separated by caste, so too, I believe, are the gods.

We also see mention at times of a court — a court that appears both defunct (in terms of power?) yet active (in terms of gathering?). Not sure what that means or how it plays out. (Part of the fun of this process is the raw potential — ideas yet to cement, undetermined, floating in the ether.)

The separation of the gods is as such:

We have the pair of Supreme Deities: Life and Death. They have no names, only identities.

They are parents to both gods and men — and their children (and, I suspect, their children's children) form the middle of three tiers, or castes. This doesn't have a name, yet — so, for now, I think it's suitable just to think of them as the gods of the Common Pantheon.

But I also noticed that many had conjured what appeared to be "lesser" beings (some were fun, but were so lesser as to be almost silly), and these gods all seemed to be lower caste and, in many cases, dirty.

These, then, are the Unclean Gods. Lesser, somehow. For reasons as yet untold.

I also liked that a lot of the names sounded like they belonged together. Feels like everything's a little more "together" then. A couple-few names in the Unclean Gods stand out as odd, though (Ashpuddle, Gloss, Sudswaller). That may be fine, or maybe that's a naming convention unique to the Unclean? I can't be sure.

Finally, I dug the sense that many of these gods are connected, that they have family and lovers and all the tangled drama and relations one comes to expect from a pantheon.

Given that the gods and goddesses "rained" upon Blackbloom, I don't think these divinities are the only ones of Blackbloom. I expect we've many more to see, but this is a good start, at least.

Feel free to comment below — but note that any comments here are theorizing. It's all heresy and apocrypha until we canonize things during challenges, so, don't expect anything in the comments below to be "truth."

Also, this week's challenge will be up shortly.

In the meantime…

I'm going to work up a loose graphic to highlight the "family tree" at some point (and this calls to mind the fact we're probably going to need a Wiki or something eventually), but for now, the gods in short:

SUPREME DEITIES:

Life and Death

THE COMMON PANTHEON:

The First Namer: Isyrm

The Three Children: Maritae is the god of the rainy season, I'm citing Tallyr as the god of the dark season, and the god of the dry season is as-yet-unnamed.

The Sisters: Koreth (Invention), Liam (Imagination), Perena (Luck)

Brother and Sister: Zephyr (Wind) & Chloe (Flowers)

The Family: Pasone (Love) & Torrda (Fertility) have a daughter: Diome (Apathy)

The Dancer: Yasri (Disorder and Madness)

The Duelist: Marriri (Passion and Violence)

The Abandoned: Kinnis (Otherworld/Underworld)

THE UNCLEAN GODS:

Sudswaller (Kitchen Sinks and Drains)

Ashpuddle (Collector of Broken-Yet-Precious Things)

Gloss (Language)

Tatamiri (The Book-Keeper)

Tylin (Underdogs)

Tomtar (The Question)

THE ENTRIES IN QUESTION:

In the beginning, there were two gods: husband and wife. The wife was Life and the husband Death. They lived in a castle in the clouds. Together, they populated the world, giving birth to both gods and people, depending on the sexual position they used when conceiving. Their children fell from the sky like rain. One day, the goddess of Jealousy asked Death to strike down her false lover, but Death ignored her plea. In a rage, she killed her father. His blood rained down into a pond at the top of a mountain, where the Blackblooms now grow. (Sarah E. Olson)

After Death was killed by his wrathful daughter, Jealousy, their once-mortal children on Blackbloom discovered a way to live for eternity with a Second Life, using the flowers that bloomed in Death's blood. With their new-found longevity, the humans ceased to believe in Gods; indeed, they began to perceive themselves as God-like entities. And so, without the strength of faith, the children of Life and Death became unrecognisable. In their anger, Life's children began to wreak havoc upon Blackbloom, while she herself withdrew, burdened by grief at the loss of her husband. (LoveTheBadGuy)

Maritae is the eldest of the Three Children, who hold dominion over the changing seasons. Long ago she was worshiped during the annual rains. Angered over being forgotten, she spends her season wandering the cities, animating the algae-like creature and taken great glee when it devours someone's pet. Her siblings find her yearly outburst amusing, which leads to greater annoyance and a spread of the algae problem each year. The rest of the time she can be found anywhere serving alcohol in search of interesting – and by interesting, we mean edible – company. (Kate Haggard)

The Sisters, named Koreth, Lian and Perena command the three principles of Invention; Imagination, Need and Luck. Each sister controls one of the principles and they have the power to influence it for better or for worse. The sisters have to work together but they often disagree. People worshipped The Sisters and in return they were granted fantastic discoveries and knowledge. When the people became arrogance and stopped worshipping, The Sisters felt abandoned and resentful. Now they covertly inspire the people to create more and more powerful weapons and magic so that they might one day destroy themselves. (Jim Franklin)

Isyrm is the First Namer, who speaks the tongue of the unflickering flame. His unfathomable words sing breath into the world, his touch brings the light of consciousness. He is most disturbed by the strangeness which makes the mortals unable to perceive him and the other gods. For the past two centuries, he has begun a plan to reach out to humanity, by slowly granting life to the world around them, hoping that other beings will perceive the gods and remind humanity of divinity lost. It is Isyrm who awakened the cities themselves from murmuring slumber. (J.M. Guillen)

Tallyr is the god-goddess of the Blackbloom flowers, which grant un-death. Tallyr was once called the Lightless Garden as he/she grew the Blackbloom flowers during the third season, when Blackbloom enters into an eclipse, when her power over shadows and their secrets ripens. It is said that his/her body is the soil and the seeds from which the Blackbloom flowers grow. Now, Tallyr walks as a frail figure with eye lids grown shut and the way he/she hears is through the vibrations in the ground. (Harry Markov)

Zephyr is the God of wind, and twin of Chloe, Goddess of flowers. It is said that both siblings have disliked one-another since they were created. The root of their animosity is unknown, but Zephyr's effects on the world do not help matters. Constantly, Zephyr massages the winds to disrupt pollen spreads, including the much-revered, Blackbloom flower. Due to his hatred of these very things, he lives on the sand oceans and captains the Dune Drifter, a frigate he uses to raid Blackbloom shipments across the trading routes. Sailors pray to him, and do not believe in the un-life. (Ryan G. Sanders)

Diome, god of apathy. Bastard son of Pasone, outlawed love god, and Torrda, low level goddess of fertility, he takes two forms: human and wind. Diome creates apathy and/or impotence at will. He is rooted in spite and ruin. He detests children. In human form he is handsome, charming, and conniving. As wind he can pass through a living being's soul, and replace human desire with torpor and lethargy. Ambitious to rule Blackbloom, Diome is a highly dangerous god. His pleasure comes not from causing death but in creating malleable subjects with long lives made empty and meaningless. (E.C. Sheedy)

Yasri the Dancer, Goddess of Disorder and Madness. Her dance is constant but ever-changing; perpetually in motion, it is thought that when she stands still it will bring the end of all existence. She spreads Chaos to combat the stifling stagnation of Order, for only through change can life be renewed. Some say she created the Games to upset the caste system. Passionate emotion and obsession are her hallmarks. Artists are most likely to perceive her true nature, but to know her is to lose touch with reality. All whores are her cultists but not all her cultists are whores. (Rachel T.)

Kinnis is the god of the otherworld, the land after death. For millennia his kingdom flowed with the finest art, music and food, produced by those who had passed. But, since the discovery of the Blackbloom's power, his kingdom has only the poor and unwanted in its halls. Furious, Kinnis cursed those who take the flower, so they cannot leave the surface, and sets out to make their second life a living hell. (Alexa)

Marriri, goddess of passion and violent acts. Fallen from worship with the rest of the gods, she now travels throughout Blackbloom, encouraging fights, inciting riots, and acting as a catalyst for romantic affairs. Depicted as an ivory maiden with bloody fingertips, Marriri is the reason why it's customary to wear white in a duel, or any overtly passionate activity. (A.J. English – note, I removed the last part of this so as to avoid conflict)

SUDSWALLER is a deity particularly overlooked by adults, though still recognized by lower caste smallings who are forced to wash after-dinner dishes for their spending coins.

Short and crusty in appearance, and somewhat foul smelling if ignored for long, this demi-god holds dominion over kitchen sinks and drains, and is appeased by anointments of soapy water and lemon oil. Prayers should be spoken in Sewer-tongue. The Sandsailor's Lament refers to the god in the 103rd haiku: The galley grumbles, When Suds wont clean the trenchers, In Dark Season's moon. (Kirsten)

Tatamiri, the Book-Keeper. She is the vagrant lady from the Veleto caste (the beggars) who sits on your doorsteps every evening, spreading all around her papers, records, datapads and what have you, items that she had gathered from trashcans, gutters and dumpsters. And she stays there for hours, crunching numbers and figures, speaking them under her breath. Tatamiri is keeping tabs on every soul the Blackbloom has robbed from Death. The ancients say that whenever her figures amount to nine billion, the Bloomed wither and their desiccated remains are scattered to the winds. And Tatamiri starts all over again. (MC Zanini)

Tylin is the god of the underdog. Ever since his attempted coup and resulting exile from the now defunct Court, he has taken a keen interest in the lives of mortals, whether they be flesh and blood or stone and steel. He seeks, above all, to raise the low above the high. As part of his punishment, each fresh memory erases an old one, leaving the limits of his abilities unknown even to him. Those who seek his aid must remember while that Tylin's might can be a great boon, you may very well make yourself his next target. (Ryan Jassil)

Blackbloom gods are like minor nobility: a home estate and a place at court. Ashpuddle's estate is at the bottom of the sandy ocean; that is, if something is lost anywhere in the sandy ocean, eventually currents in the sand will (thousands of years later) dump it in her domain. Everything there is worn smooth. A weakling goddes, her place at court is as guardian of the oft-Bloomed; she is said to be very small, dirty, shy, and an inveterate collector of things that are broken but still precious. (DeAnna)

Gloss is the god of language. He is seen on the streets, begging in bloody rags and murmuring to himself in tongues. All who meet the skinny wretch assume him mad, but in secret he speaks directly to the cities, and moves between them, exchanging plans. (Matt Roberts)

Tomtar – Most commonly seen as a pack of unruly children (species matters not) roaming the streets, looking into alleys and doorways, going up to strangers and posing odd questions about the state of reality with the unblinking innocence of a child but never waiting for an answer. Tomtar is the hermaphroditic god of the question. Associated with scholars, nomads and hobos when it was known as a god, it's name has lost its significance only to be replaced as a slur directed towards the homeless and insane and even the foreign – tomtar. (Sven Nomaddson)

Toxic Tempers And Fevered Egos In Publishing

Dear Humans of the Internet,

As of late, we've seen a lot of hoo-ha and fol-de-rol about "legacy" publishing and self-publishing. We've seen words like "house slave" and, I dunno, something about frogs and monkeys sexually assaulting one another? I don't want to look too closely at that one. Eeeesh. Some of the voices think that all this is a-okay and that tone doesn't matter (a curious exhortation when made by a writer, a person for whom words and tone should matter). Some of the voices recognize that those terms added little to the debate (with others placing most of the fault on those who were offended rather than those causing the offense — "I'm sorry you're offended" is different than "I'm sorry I caused you offense").

You know what? Hell with 'em.

Stop listening. Stop paying attention. Stop shining lights in dark corners. Let the cults tend to their leaders. Let the Jonestowns grow more insular and paranoid and leave them to their invective.

The loudest of those voices are swiftly becoming irrelevant — they keep saying the same things ad nauseum. They have one trick up a well-worn sleeve. The hypocrisy and hyperbole are slopped like gruel on an orphan's tray. They've resorted to, in the best of circumstances, trollish behavior. And in the worst, the behavior and language of bullies. Any points they may have — points that, in some cases, make a lot of sense and others that are woefully narrow — are lost in the eye-rolling rhetoric.

They want attention.

So, let's stop giving it to them.

They're going to do what they're going to do. Which is their right to do so. They've got their ideas. They've got their opinions. Good for them. Just the same, the discussion has hit a wall. And the whole conversation has become a bit of a circus. Or, worse, a circle jerk. Remember: last one on the cracker has to eat it.

Nobody wants that job.

Let's also be clear that toxicity and egomania is not unique to self-publishing: I've seen many in traditional publishing make brash and unreasonable statements about the DIY thing, too. Don't let anyone tell you that self-publishing is not a viable part of the ecosystem. It is. It is a legitimate and equal choice where once it was not. Let the zealots on both "sides" have their barbed wire fences and jungle compounds and false dichotomies. Leave them to their eager-to-please sycophants: a manic chorus like the buzz of cicadas.

They've got their way.

You find your way.

I'll talk more about this next week in a post called "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law," but for now, just know that every writer digs his own tunnel and detonates it behind him.

(Actually, I see that Will Entrekin has a good post on this today, actually — "There's No Such Thing As The Publishing Debate." A good quote from that: "If only we could acknowledge that there's really no debate about publishing, we could start really helping readers find new writers, and vice-versa, and really, isn't that what books are really all about, anyway?" Check it out.)

Love,

Little Chucky Wendig

Age 8-and-a-half

Oh, and P.S. –

To the dude on Twitter yesterday who accused me of blocking him because, apparently, I hate self-publishing? I clearly, plainly, certainly do not hate self-publishing. I do not advocate against self-publishing. I have six self-published books. They have earned me not insignificant income this year. (Though, also to be clear, I've made more money publishing traditionally and with work-for-hire during the same time frame. Goes both ways.) I, in fact, at the time of your accusation had not blocked you at all and I remain unclear as to how you came to that conclusion. I've since blocked you, of course. I'm happy to have a conversation, but I'm not happy to participate in a fruitless discussion where you see fit to fertilize the conversational lawn with bullshit. I don't brook bullshit — especially when it's about me or people I respect.

*drops a smoke pellet and disappears like the Motherfucking Batman*

Well, Holy Crap, It's Time To Give Away A Kindle

Hot dang.

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY has sold almost 900 copies since it dropped, and since starting the Penmonkey Incitement Program we're actually up to 509 sold.

Which means it's time to give away:

a) Another postcard

b) Another t-shirt

c) Holy shit, a Kindle.

I will be giving away a Kindle Touch ($99), to be specific.

Here's how this works.

I draw randomly from the list of names of those who have procured COAFPM – the trick is, if I don't know that you purchased it, then I don't know to pick your name. I'm not psychic.

If you bought it via PDF: I have your information already, no need for you to worry or do anything.

If you bought it via Amazon or B&N, I do not possess this information automatically. Which means you need to send me proof-of-purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com. (Many have already sent in your names, and those that have do not need to re-send that information.)

I will pick the names tomorrow (Friday) at noon (EST).

Which means you have until then to still procure COAFPM and get me the information if you want to be in on the Kindle draw. At present your chances are pretty good: 1/250 or so.

And I will also be picking for the postcard and t-shirt.

Come back here to this post — this is where I'll be making the pick.

To procure the book ($4.99):

Kindle (US), Kindle (UK), Nook, or PDF.

Thanks!

When In Doubt, Just Say, "Fuck 'Em"

Maybe you're doing NaNoWriMo.

Maybe you're just writing a novel. Or a script. Or an epic YouTube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts by a wrecking ball covered in Christmas lights.

Inevitably you hit that point in any project where you feel like you're in the weeds. Vines tangled around your feet. The forest's hissed warnings telling you, You're just not good enough. The mud pulls at your feet. Red eyes stare from the darkness — the pinpointy stares of winged monkeys waiting in the shadows, waiting to swoop in and steal your shoes and, I dunno, probably poop in them or something. (Because winged monkeys are uniformly dicks. Total assholes. And terrible tippers, to boot. I mean, five percent on a bar-and-dinner tab? You go to hell, winged monkeys.)

Point is, the wheels are coming off the cart.

And you start to think, "I could just give up. No. I should just give up."

Fuck that frequency, homeslice.

I'll brook none of that babble around these parts. Because around these parts? We finish the shit that we started or we get our precious widdle toesy-woeises broken with a ball-peen hammer. ("This little piggy went to market, this little piggy got thrown into a car crusher where all his tender bones were pulverized into pork dust WHAM WHAM WHAM.")

Over there, you'll see a wide open field of lonely writers milling about. Millions of them. Slack-jawed and bumping into each other, sometimes saying, "Oh, let me tell you about my novel," before voiding their bowels and pawing at one another while making sad moosey noises. Then, over here, you'll see a much smaller group of writers. Easily a fraction of the wider herd.

You know the difference between the two groups? The big herd never finished a thing. Endless novels begun, and just as many never completed. The smaller group — the ones breathing rarefied air — are those writers who have finished something. Most don't. That's the big separation. Most never finish what they start. And you cannot ever be a successful writer if you don't complete the stories you begin.

It's the first and most critical step.

And you're going to finish what you're doing.

You're going to do it, because you're going to say –

(say it with me)

"Fuck 'em."

Fuck The Haters

A writer encountering dissenting voices is like a fish encountering water molecules — it's going to happen. And it's going to hit you from all sides and it's going to take myriad forms. "Nobody reads," someone might say. "Being a writer isn't a career." They'll have a list of reasons to check off. Unsteady income, general lack of health care, a supposedly failing publishing industry, whatever. Or maybe they'll take specific aim at this one task: you can't finish, why waste your time, that story's not that good, what a terrible idea, blah blah blah. It could come from family, friends, strangers, even other writers.

Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em right in the eye with a yellowlicious stream of sweet, steamy urine. They don't get it. They don't have to get it. It's not their life. Not their dream. You wanna write this thing, you can't be bogged down by the naysayers and shit-birds. Maybe they're jealous that you're making a go of something special. Or maybe they think they really have your best interests at heart. Tell them it's not like you're trying to climb K2 in your fucking underwear. You'll do what you like, thanks-very-much. Squeeze your teat at them and tell them, "Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of me ROCKING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS BOOK. Now have a body-temperature blast of Haterade, hater-face!"

(Haterade is really just pee. So we're clear on that point.)

Fuck What Everybody Else Is Doing

In NaNoWriMo in particular, it's all about the community and commiseration of all the nutty wordmonkeys wordmonkeying together. That's cool. It's a good thing — if it helps you.

But it can also be a real bummer. On the one hand you see people less than two weeks in and they're like, "I WROTE 400,000 WORDS — THAT'S EIGHT NOVELS, BITCHES!" and suddenly you can't help but feel woefully, dreadfully behind. On the other hand you get the tireless self-pity party, "Oh, I'm still behind, oh, I don't know if I can pull it out of the fire, ohhh, I didn't write today, muhhh guh fnuh." Those folks have their own kind of… contagious inertia, their own infectious ennui. You start to think, "Well, if all these people can't do it, maybe neither can I. And maybe it's okay if I'm not going to finish because, hey, a lot of writers don't!" You become attracted to the commiseration. Misery, after all, loves company. (It also loves old lunchmeat. So if you leave out some month-old ham, you'll find fruiting misery-spores! Science.)

Or worse, you start comparing your first draft to published books. That's an epic no-no, the kind of no-no where you should be shaken like a baby until you lose consciousness. The midpoint of your first draft need not possess the quality of a book plucked off the shelf. Your first and most significant goal is to complete that which you are writing. Quality is great if it lives in the first draft. If it doesn't — that's why Book Jesus invented the "rewrite" process. So, just go ahead and sacrifice a white bull — or at least a nearby homeless guy — to Book Jesus and thank him for his gift to all penmonkeys everywhere.

Fuck what the rest of the writers are doing. Fuck 'em right in the ear with your middle finger, a finger sticky with honey and dipped in wasps. Concentrate on your own world. Blinders on, and write.

Fuck The Industry

"But the trend right now is Young Adult golem romance! But all the bookstores exploded! But the average price for e-books right now is thirty-seven old buttons! GNEAAAARRRGH."

Thinking about the industry is just going to harsh your buzz, man. So, fuck it. Fuck 'em under the armpit with a cranky Bohemian pit viper. You can worry about the industry — and trends and book prices and what agents want and what the average advance is and which publisher tried to screw which writer and which self-published author just became an overnight success and then took a four billion dollar contract from Amazon's new "golem romance" publishing company — later. Now is not later, and now is the time to write your book and ride that pony until it dies and then keep riding it till you get where you're going.

Fuck NaNoWriMo

If NaNoWriMo is working for you — then ignore this.

But maybe it isn't working for you. And that feels like an indictment against you.

It's not. Not yet.

NaNoWriMo offers you one path toward completing a novel.

That novel is a short novel by many standards, and the time frame is also a fairly short one. Further, it asks that you write this novel during one month of the entire year and during a pretty shitty month, to boot (Daylight Savings! Thanksgiving! Black Friday! Christmas Shipping! And don't forget about the Sadie Hawkins Day Under The Overpass Hobo Prom!).

Sometimes you go to the doctor and you say, "Doctor, I got a sixth toe growing out of my left foot and this sinister leftmost toe has a little face on it and it's trying to convince all the other toes to revolt against me," and the doctor prescribes you some antibiotics. You take 'em and they don't work. So maybe he prescribes you an oily unguent and that works for a little while but then the toe grows back, bigger and meaner and now it's got fangs and a little Viking hat. So finally the doctor prescribes you a meat cleaver and a bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey and that's the prescription that works.

Every writer, and indeed, every book, demands its own prescription. No, I don't believe that every writer is a glimmering glittery snowflake — at the end of the day, it's all about boots on the ground and words on the page, and work is work and we all gotta commit. But how we do that work — pantser or plotter, 1k per day or 3k per day, Scotch or Bourbon, coffee or tea, self-pub or trad-pub — is ours. You can try to cram the square peg in the circle hole but all you get for that is frustration.

So, if NaNoWriMo is the square peg but your book is a circle hole…

Fuck it. Fuck NaNoWriMo. Fuck it right in the word count. Fuck it right in the win conditions. Fuck it in its silly name with a sexual device known only as "The Gauntlet of Hephaestus."

Fuck Yourself

All that crass and disruptive noise is coming loudest from inside the broadcast station of your own silly head. Those swirling self-doubts. That thorny tangle of fear. The whispers of winnowing confidence, the demons of diminished patience, the ugly ducklings of unease and uncertainty. You're the one who gives into all this stuff. You're the one with his hand on the stick, his fingers on the keys, his pen in the inkwell. If you don't finish this thing it's nobody's fault but your own. Take the blame. And then claim the power — because it's never too late to drive this motherfucker across the finish line.

So, fuck you for not finishing. Fuck yourself in all those moist grottoes where fear clings to the ceiling and the fear guano piles upon the floor. You're going to do this. Don't stare at me like that. Don't give me that look. You're going to finish that which you began. You're going to become one of those writers who does what he wants, not one of those pretenders who falls under the wheels of his own bus. You can do this. It's one word at a time. Many words make a sentence, many sentences make a paragraph, and many paragraphs make a chapter. And many chapters add up to a completed manuscript.

There's your angry, surly pep-talk from your unfriendly neighborhood penmonkey drill sergeant: head down, nose in the word salad, fingers on the story machine.

You can do this.

You will do this.

This is who you are and what you want.

Don't stop.

Don't blink.

Keep writing until the writing is done.

The end.

25 Things You Should Know About Suspense And Tension

It doesn't matter what kind of story you're writing — doesn't matter if it's a novel, a script, a game, whatever, you're better off learning how to implement suspense and tension into your work. It's been on my brain lately, and so it seems a good time for another straight-up "List of 25." Read. Digest. Comment. And above all else, go forth and write like a motherfucker.

1. True Of Every Story

We assume suspense and tension are reserved for those stories that showcase such emotions. "This is a suspense-thriller about the mad ursinologist who runs around town leaving being enraged bears and the beautiful scientist lady who seeks to undo his sinister plans." Bzzt. Wrongo. Every story must offer suspense and tension. Will Harry get together with Sally? Will the Millennium Falcon escape the gauntlet of TIE fighters? Will Ross and Rachel finally consummate their love and give birth to the Satanic hell-child that the prophets foretold? Suspense and tension drive our narrative need to consume stories.

2. Predicated On Giving A Shit

A small disclaimer: suspense and tension only work if the story offers something for the audience to care about. If the audience neither likes nor cares to discover the truth about La Bufadora, the Assassin Baby of Madrid, then any suspense or tension you build around this infantile killer will flop against the forest floor like a deer with its insides vacuumed out its cornchute. VOOMP. Just a gutted pelt. Never ignore the Give-A-Fuck factor. And stop fucking with deer and their deer buttholes. Weirdo.

3. Ratchet And Release

Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.

4. Harder, Harder, Haaaaarderrr, Ngggghh

In winding tension tighter, escalation is everything. How could it not be? Tension is about hands closing around one's neck: the grip must grow tighter for the fear to be there. If the grip relaxes, then the tension is lost. A roller coaster doesn't blow the big loopty-loop on the first hill. Rather, you see it in the distant. You know it's coming. Each hill, bigger and meaner and faster than the last. The final hill is the culmination, the climax, a roller coaster loop where you crash through plate glass windows and have jars filled with bees pitched at your head. Mounting danger. Rising fear. The hits keep coming. The Jenga tower teeters…

5. The Bear Under The Table

It's the Hitchcockian "bomb under the table" example — you create shock by having a bomb randomly go off, but you create suspense and tension by revealing the bomb and letting the audience see what's coming. The first day of a new school year creates tension not because it's random (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER IT'S 4TH GRADE) but because you know all summer long that shit is coming. Also, for the record, I think we should revise the "bomb under the table" example to a "bear under the table" example. Bombs are so overdone. But two characters sitting there with a Kodiak bear slumbering secretly at their feet? Oh, snap! Sweet tension, I seek your ursine embrace!

6. Danger A Known Quantity: The Power of Dramatic Irony

This, by the way, is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is best friend and old frat buddy to Herr Doktor Suspenseuntension. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Suspense is created whether or not the characters are aware of the problem, but if the audience is the only one in on the secret, that may go a long way toward heightening tension.

7. The Question Mark-Shaped Hole In All Of Our Dark Hearts

That's not to say every quantity must be known: the most refined tension grows out of a balance between known and unknown elements. Yes, the boy knows that the first day of 4th grade is coming, but inherent to that are a number of unanswered questions: did his bully and elementary nemesis Brutus "Smeggy" Smegbottom get held back? What will his new teacher be like? Who will he sit next to? Will Peggy Spoonblossom finally accept his Valentine's Day card? (Smegbottom? Spoonblossom? The fuck is wrong with me?) The first day of school is a known quantity, but what will happen on that day is not.

8. Always Tell Han Solo The Odds

Han Solo says, "Never tell me the odds." But we need to know the odds. It's another component of the transparency sometimes needed to create tension: we must know when the stakes are high and the odds of success are totally astronomically fucked.

9. Save The Date!

Let's say you're a total dickhead parent to the aforementioned soon-to-be fourth grader. If you wanted to foment tension in that child, all summer long you'd occasionally remind him: "Hey, summer's fading fast, kiddo. School's on its way!" Every once in a while you'd lay on him a little something extra: "Hey, I heard Brutus Smegbottom got a new pair of brass knuckles." Or, "I think I saw Peggy Spoonblossom down at the mall eating a froyo with her new boyfriend." You'd needle him. Remind him of his tension. That's what the storyteller does because the storyteller is a total fucking asshole. The storyteller must occasionally — not constantly, but just enough to keep it hovering, to keep it orbiting — remind the audience that, hey, don't you fuckers forget that something wicked this way comes.

10. Character You Love Does Something You Hate

An easy way to create tension: when a character the audience loves does something the audience hates. It's the whole, "Oh, I'm going to go investigate the creepy noise rather than flee from it and load my shotgun and call all the cops." John McClane jumps off the building's edge! Harry ruins his relationship with Sally! They mysteriously elect Jar-Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate! It's a moment when the audience winces. One's butthole tightens up so hard it could pulverize a walnut. You say, "Oooh. That was a bad call. This is not going to end well." That septic feeling in one's gut — the anticipation of worse things to come — is the splendor of effective suspense.

11. Character You Hate Does Something You Hate

Of course, it's also effective to have a character the audience hates do something bad, too — that, then, is the power of a killer antagonist, nemesis, and villain. That sense of OH GRR GOD SO MAD RIGHT NOW is a powerful one. Tug on that puppet string whenever you need to for maximum storyteller cruelty!

12. Physical Tension Is The Shallowest Of Tension

A threat against one's life and limb is totally workable — a character in physical danger is a good way to create fast tension. But sometimes you want to go deeper. You want to stab your sharpened toothbrush shiv into the heart and the brain. Emotional tension is the most palpable and troubling to the reader (and that's a good thing): fear of damaged love and intimate betrayals and irreversible emotional wounds creates a more vibrant and spectacular tension in the audience. It's cruel, yes. But as noted, it is not the storyteller's job to be kind. The storyteller should not be a safe haven. She is not to be trusted.

13. The Pain Sandwich

For maximum evil, ensure that the tension is multi-layered. The protagonist's wife being in danger represents both physical (she might die) and emotional (he might lose her) tension. Apply with the mayonnaise of escalation and the bread-and-butter pickles of dramatic irony for one dastardly sandwich.

14. Personal Suspense Above Global Suspense

Sure. The world's gonna end. That's tough. Mos def. I feel it in here. *thumps heart with fist* Except, really, I don't give that much of a fiddly fuck. I never do. The global threat is never ever (and once more for good measure: ever) as interesting as the personal threat. Yes, all the world is going to die but if that happens so too shall the protagonist's daughter die. Boom. Personal. Connection. Meaning. Suspense and tension are best when personal in addition to (and ultimately above) the global or cosmic.

15. The Tongues Of Tension, The Speech Of Suspense

How you write matters in terms of creating suspense and tension. If you're trying for a tension that is fast, frenetic, a tension born of collapsed moments and microscopic beats, then you wouldn't use big ponderous paragraphs to tell that tale. Just the same, you wouldn't hope to convey that slow creeping sour-gut dread with short sharp truncated sentences. As with all things, language matters. The architecture of your language means something — are you building a Gothic cathedral, a one-room studio apartment, or the Winchester Mansion?

16. Drug Dealers And Cliffhangers

The storyteller is a drug dealer dealing out pain and pleasure in equal measure — a hard slap to the face and then a free taste of balm and salve to soothe the sting. Once they're hooked, you keep them hooked with cliffhangers. Not all the time, no, but whenever they might start to pull away, you surge within the audience that sense of suspense by leaving them dangling from the edge of the cliff. "My favorite character is in danger! Who just walked into the room? Is that a Kodiak bear under the table?" Mm-hmm. It is. Come on back and keep reading and keep watching. Daddy Bird will feed you, little baby.

17. Flaws And Foibles And Frailties And Other Awesome F-Words

Character flaws. Use 'em. Excellent tension creators. Knowing that a character has a drug habit or a propensity to break hearts lets us know that at any point they might fall off the wagon and lash out with the whip of their most intimate frailties, sending ruination far and wide. But we must know that the flaw is on the table, or at least have it hinted at — this does not work in a vacuum. You know what else doesn't work in a vacuum? A vacuum. True story!

18. Agitation And Discomfort

Comfort is the enemy of tension. You want characters and readers alike to remain in a state of agitation and discomfort. Even during times where the tension is relaxing rather than ratcheting up you still want to create a sense of dread and foreboding, using language, circumstance and situation to deepen discomfort.

19. Failure Most Certainly Is An Option

The audience needs to know that things can go wrong. If they become trained by you as a storyteller that you'll save everything and everyone at the last minute, the storyteller will no longer suspect you of being an untrustworthy malefactor. You are not the reader's buddy. Failure must be on the table. You must be willing to let things go all pear-shaped once in a while. Tension without fear is a defanged and declawed tiger dressed as a banana. Harmless and deserving mockery over fear.

20. Speak Of Ke$ha And Ke$ha Shall Appear

Sorry. Tic-Toc joke. I shouldn't, but I can't help it. (And shut up, I actually like that song.) (I SAID SHUT UP.) Never be afraid to use a ticking clock to instill tension and suspense. Character's only got one week to save the little girl? One day to get the random? One hour to defuse the bomb? Works in any type of story — "The girl of my dreams is about to board a plane in 30 minutes! Can I make it to the airport on time to profess my life and tell her that I got her cat pregnant? Uhh? What? Nothing! I didn't say anything about a cat being pregnant! Let's go back to talking about Ke$ha."

21. Deny Your Audience The Satisfaction As Long As You Can

Storytelling is Tantric. You withhold the audience's orgasm as long as you can. The audience wants to know that everything's going to work out, that it's going to be all right. They want answers. Comfort. Solace. Don't give it to them. Not until late (if ever). The longer you can hold out on 'em, the deeper the tension digs into the meat and marrow.

22. Look To Your Life For Suspense

Seriously, that example of the first day or school? Or a new job? Or that feeling you get when you speed past a cop car? Or when your mother goes sniffing around your closet and almost finds the leather-clad gimp you keep in there? That's suspense. Harness those feelings from your own life. Find out what makes them tick. Replicate in your fiction. And seriously: gimps are so 199os. Get a hobo butler like the rest of us.

23. The Fear-Maker's Promise

Suspense and tension are about fear. Plain and simple. Not just fear in the characters, but fear — actual honest-to-Jeebus fear — in the audience. Find a way to invoke fear and dread and you've won.

24. Suspense Keeps Them Reading

This'll be a future list — 25 Things That Keep Them Reading — but for now, be content to know that effective implementation of suspense and tension will keep them coming back and turning pages.

25. Suspense Keeps You Writing

Thing is, it's also what keeps you going. Creating powerful suspense takes you along on a journey, too — the writer is not immune to his own magic, or shouldn't be, at least. If you feel like you're not engaged or that your own sense of suspense and dread just isn't in play, then you might need to look at what the problem is. Just as readers need a reason to keep reading, writers need a reason to keep on writing. And you, as writer, are the Proto-Reader, the first line of defense. If the tension is as limp as a dead man's no-no stick, you'll feel it. And that means it's high-time to find a dose of high-test narrative Viagra to tighten everything up.

Transmissions From Baby-Town: "The Face Of My Father"

It happens once a day, maybe.

My son will be looking at me — he's five-and-a-half-months now, you see — and then comes this moment. It's not one thing: it's the alchemy of muscle movements, facial tics, of whatever unseen elements constitute our faces. All of it adds up to a single sum, an equation answered by my father's face. Staring back at me.

It's pretty weird, seeing your father's face. In infant form. It's like seeing a ghost. A ghost that has taken over my baby — but then you realize, that's not it, that's not right at all. The ghost hasn't taken over my baby.

This is my baby.

Holy shit.

I mean, it makes sense, of course. Genetically, the baby is in part the product of me and I am the product of my father and By The Mighty Scepter Of Science I conclude that, yes, indeed, it totally tracks that certain physical traits will make themselves known over the course of our lives. It goes deeper than that, however. Our faces are more than just the features. It's more than just a delicate twining of DNA spawning certain recurrent elements. This equation has imaginary numbers.

Here's what I mean:

When my father passed away, I was present. And when he died, I knew he was gone — no longer present — before any of the signs and signals were made clear. It wasn't merely the slackening of features — you could tell that something had gone. Poof. Vanished into the ether. I don't mean to suggest you have to believe in a soul, but just the same, life is different from death (a-duh), and so when life vacates the body, the body changes. The body and the face become reflective of that inert state.

Life has left the building.

The body, given up the ghost.

But now sometimes I see the ghost — my father's life — on my son's face. The way he moves his nose. Or the way he smiles. My father used to get this puckish grin on his face — curiously, the same look I sometimes saw on my grandmother's face, even after she had her stroke — and now there it lives, sometimes floating to the surface on this cute round little baby head. Again, I don't know that you can even pinpoint it.

It's just… there.

I have it in me, too. Maybe not the face. I don't look at myself often enough to see it. But I hear it. In my voice, in my words. Something in the tone or tenor. Word choice, maybe. (My father, after all, is where my love of profanity was born. He celebrated profanity, and now I do, too, for better or for worse.)

I'm named after my father.

My first name is his.

My first name and his first name is also my son's middle name.

Charles.

It's too early to see how else or how often that glimmer of my father will appear in my son — maybe it'll come and go and then leave for a time, or maybe it'll always be there. My son is strong. Independent and stubborn. Like my father and, perhaps to a lesser degree, like me. He's already good with his hands — my father worked with his hands. Maybe I'm just making all this up. Perhaps I'm hungry to see connections that aren't there. That's what some will say. That's what some will think. Maybe they're right.

Maybe they're just assholes.

Who knows?

What I know is, I'm sad my father never knew my son. While the last thing I want to think about is my son one day passing on, but perhaps some day long and far away from here and now the two of them will travel together in the great Happy Hunting Ground up in the sky. Some of the things my father taught me, I'll teach my son. Some of the things he taught me, I won't. But other things I can't stop and don't want to stop. The ghost lives on. The ghost persists. The soul — or whatever that passes for it, whatever uncertain and spectral vehicle is the thing that carries that ember of life, that living mask, that visage as unique as a fingerprint — is here in my son's eyes and smile and in the shape of his nose.

And I'm happy for that. It's the only way he'll know his grandfather.

That, and the stories we'll tell.

Putting the name and the life to the face.

Filling in the ghost.

Happy birthday, Dad. You would've been 68, today, I think.

Go bag a great big heavenly elk and use his antlers to fight the Devil and give him what-for.

Blackbirds: Now Up For Pre-Order

"Blackbirds is a horror story, a traveling story, a story of loss and what it takes to make things right.  It's a story about fate and how sometimes, if we wrestle with it hard enough, maybe we can change it.  Blackbirds is the kind of book that doesn't let go even after you've put it down and nobody else could have made it shine like Chuck Wendig." — Stephen Blackmoore, author, City of the Lost and Dead Things

Psst.

Hey, you.

That's right, BLACKBIRDS is now up for pre-order.

You can pre-order at Amazon.

You can pre-order at B&N.

An e-book is in the cards, of course, but you can't pre-order that. Not yet, anyway.

It's a buck cheaper at B&N, but my assumption is that discount will also be the case at Amazon. (Amazon has that pre-order price guarantee, wherein you'll get any price drops that occur between now and delivery.)

Why pre-order? For one, it lets the publisher know of demand for the book. That's valuable information. For two, it lets the publisher know of demand for the author — and that's good to know, too.

Got other cool things in the works for BLACKBIRDS, including two special treats at the back of the book. But I shan't talk about those — not yet, anyway.

If you're looking for fiction from yours truly right now, I might recommend:

SHOTGUN GRAVY, about a troubled teen girl taking on some high school bullies with naught but spunk, grit, and a .410 scattergun. (Oh, and Adderall!)

Or:

DOUBLE DEAD, about a pissed-off vampire who awakens only to discover that most of his food supply has been turned to the shambling undead. He must transition from predator to shepherd to protect his food supply. This ain't Twilight, folks: the only way Coburn glitters is if he kills and eats a stripper.

And that's all she wrote. Thanks, folks!