Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 268

25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters

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As storyteller, you are god. And to be frank, you're not a particularly nice god — at least, not if you want your story to resonate with readers. A good storyteller is a crass and callous deity who treats the characters under his watchful eye like a series of troubled butt-puppets. From this essential conflict — storyteller versus character — a story is born. (After all, that's what a plot truly is: a character who strives to get above all the shit the storyteller dumps on his fool head.)

Put differently, as a storyteller it's your job to be a dick.

It's your job to fuck endlessly with the characters twisting beneath your thumb.

And here's 25 ways for you to do just that.

1. Your Proxy: The Antagonist

Gods have avatars, mortal or semi-mortal beings that exist on earth to embody the deity's agenda. Avatars — be it Krishna, Jesus, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man — are the quite literal hand of god within the material plane. And so it is that the antagonist is the avatar of the storyteller, at least in terms of fucking with the other characters. A well-written and fully-realized antagonist is your proxy in the storyworld who steps in and is the hand holding the garden trowel that continues to get shoved up the protagonist's most indelicate orifice. The antagonist stands actively in the way of the protagonist's deeds and desires.

2. The Mightiest Burden

The audience and the character must know the stakes on the table — "If you don't win this poker game, your grandmother will lose her beloved pet orangutan, Orange Julius." But as the storyteller, you can constantly adjust those stakes, turning up the heat, the fumes, the volume until the character's carrying an Atlas-like burden on his shoulders. The world's fate suddenly rests in his hands. Character fails at his task and he loses his wife, his family, and all the nuclear missiles in the world will suddenly launch. In unrelated news: Orange Julius is the best name for an orangutan ever. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. Show your work.

3. Never Tell Me The Odds

Impossible odds are a powerful way to fuck with a character. "It's you versus that whole army of sentient spam-bots, dude. And they've got your girlfriend." It certifies that the task at hand is an epic one, and is the dividing line between hero and zero. Confirming heroism means beating those odds. Confirming mortality means falling to them. Note that a character doesn't always have to beat the odds. Failure is an option.

4. Torn Between Two Horses

Drop the character smack dab between two diametrically opposed choices. A character is torn between a love for her country and a love for her family. She's torn between her obsessive devotion to science and her religious upbringing. She's torn between saving the life of Orange Julius the genetically-modified super-orangutan or giving all the world's children infinite ice cream. Okay, maybe not that last one. Point is, tie your character to two (or more!) difficult choices, and let those horses run like motherfuckers.

5. Life On The QT, The Down-Low, The No-No-Nuh-Uh

Give the character an untenable secret life: a forbidden romance, a taboo, a transgression. Confirm that the revelation of this secret life will destroy her. "As soon as they find out you're really an android, Mary, I can no longer protect you." The character must constantly protect her secret life, must constantly work against revelation. And you as storyteller will constantly threaten that, won't you? Because you're evil.

6. Deny Success With Speedbumps, Roadblocks, Snarling Tigers

This one? So easy. Whenever your character reaches for That Thing He Wants (a girl, a cookie, world peace, a leprechaun's little hat), slap his face. Throw a tiger in his path. Chop off his hand. Thwart his every grope for the brass ring. That said, don't let your story become torture porn. A character needs smaller iterative successes to match the longer, larger failures. "I didn't get the leprechaun's hat, but I got one of his little shoes. We can use it to track him."

7. Go Down The "Do Not Want" Checklist

You frequently hear that a character is defined in part by what he wants, but you will find it useful to take the opposite tack, too. Take your character. Dangle that poor fucker by the ears. Give him a good look-over and pick, mmm, say, five things he does not want. Outcomes he fears. He doesn't want his wife to leave him. He doesn't want to die young. He doesn't want to have his penis stolen by wizards. Now, your job, as Evil Mastermind Storyteller is to constantly put the character in danger of these outcomes coming true.

8. A Victory That Tastes Of Wormwood

An old classic: "We finally got the leprechaun's hat! Ha ha, now we've the little basta — OH MY GOD THE HAT IS FILLED WITH BEES." Die Hard has exquisite false victories. John McClane succeeds in calling the authorities and ultimately ends up causing a bigger shitstorm as a result.

9. Storyteller As Robber Fly

Everybody has something they love. Identify those things. Then take one away. Or more than one! "Sorry, dear character, in the fire you lost your house, your husband, and your mystical manrikigusari given to you by your immortal sensei." You have a choice, here, of paths, a divergence of "lost now" and "lost forever." Lost now intimates the story can continue, and in fact, the reclamation of lost things is a story unto itself. Lost forever moves the conflict inward, where a character must learn to deal with that loss.

10. Tickle Them With A Ticking Clock

If you ever wish to squeeze my heart and cause my blood pressure to build so that my brain is smothered by swollen arteries, give me a ticking clock time limit in a video game. Freaks me out. Do that to your character. Throw him, his goals, his story, between the turning gears of a ticking clock. "You have one week to save Orange Julius from the leprechaun cult. After that? He becomes one of them."

11. Beat The Donkey Piss Out Of Them

Again we call upon John McClane, who ends up basically sticking a gun to his back in his own blood at the end of Die Hard. A simple way of dicking with your character is to hurt them. Again. And again.

12. Shot Through The Heart, And You're To Blame

That being said, a broken jaw, shattered foot, or stapled labia has nothing on the betrayal by a loved one. Maybe it comes down to a simple, "I'm leaving you in this, the moment you need me most," or maybe it's, "For your own good, I've alerted the police. They're on their way. I'm so sorry. Now hand me the orangutan." However it shakes out, the treachery of a loved one is a deeply twisting knife.

13. Shattering Lives With Your Story Hammer

Think about all the pieces of the puzzle that add up to a picture of "you." Now, do the same for your character. Imagine all those identifiers: lover, father, friend, sheriff, amateur chef, jazz fiend, leprechaun hunter. Now, break the puzzle apart. Throw away most of the pieces. Calamity and cataclysm rob the character of his fundamental identifiers. Force him to question who he even is anymore. What impels him forward? How does he rebuild? What is rebuilt?

14. Shatter Their Preconceived Notions

A deeper, more internal version of the last: take what the character thinks she knows — maybe about her family, her government, her childhood — and throw that paradigm out on its buttbone. The character's comprehension of events and elements has been all wrong. And not in a good way. The character must respond. Must act. Can't just go on living like everything's the same.

15. Motherfucking Love Triangle

The love triangle. Never a more hackneyed, overwrought device — but, just the same, a device that works like a charm if invoked with . Becky loves Rodrigo and has since they were young. But Orange Julius vies for her attention and Rodrigo is off fighting the Spam-Bots in the Twitter War of 2015. And Orange Julius is one sexy orangutan. Who does she choose? Swoon! You needn't stop at three participants. What about a love rhombus, aka the "lovetangle?" Point is, this is a more specific version of forcing the character into a difficult choice. Do it right and the audience will be right there with you, wearing their shirts, TEAM RODRIGO or TEAM SEXY ORANGUTAN. Gang wars in the streets.

16. The Scorpion Sting Of Deception

Lies form slippery ground, and by forcing the character to lie — or hear and believe another's lies — you put that character on treacherous ground. We know their lies run the risk of exposure, and we know that a lie is rarely alone — they're like cockroaches, you hear one, you know a whole wall full of them waits behind the paint. Further, if forced to believe another's lies, the character begins to make decisions based on bad info.

17. Just A Simple Misunderstanding

Speaking of bad info, the "misunderstanding" has been the backbone of the American sitcom for decades, and it's a trick you can use. "You said Blorp but I thought you said Glurp and now Zorg is coming to dinner! Oh noes! Hilarious awkward calamity ensues!" Note here the power of dramatic irony, which is when the audience knows the score but the character fails to possess such critical information. We know that the character is going to accidentally give her grandmother a set of small-to-large butt-plugs (for proper teaching of sphincter-stretching) when really she thinks it's a collection of Sandra Bullock DVDs. Ha ha ha! Oh, a funny thing happened on the way to the dildo shop! Comedy gold.

18. When Two Goals Meet In The Rye With Swords Drawn

Put a character at cross-purposes. Two goals cannot easily be achieved together. The character is supposed to have a date night with his wife and save the world from the leprechaun terrorists? Egads! But how?

19. Dear Character, You Have Made A Terrible Decision

The audience feels sympathy and shame for character mistakes because our mind-wires are crossed. We see a character fuck up and some little part of our brain makes us feel like it's us fucking up — we associate so closely with characters, we unknowingly get all up in their guts and self-identify. So, characters who make mistakes — or even better, willfully choose a bad path — can make your audience squirm in their seats.

20. Love At The End Of A Knife

Putting loved ones in danger is a powerful way to fuck with your characters. "Sorry, Bob — the Latvians have Betty, and if my intel is right, they've got a pit full of ravenous honey badgers to convince her to talk." And of course, saving that loved one is never easy. Danger lurks. Hard choices await. And even after rescue, can Betty ever again trust that her life with Bob won't be fraught with honey badger peril?

21. A Grim Game Of "I Never"

A character says, "I never want to become my mother," but then lo and behold… begins exhibiting the traits of her mother. A cop says, "I'll never let the job get to me," and, drum roll please, the job starts getting to him. Everybody has negative identifiers — roles they never want to fill, but roles that have a terrible gravity, a grim inevitability to them. That's a great way to torque a character's emotions.

22. Poke The Character's Weakness With A Pointy Stick

We've all got pits and pockmarks in our souls, and characters in fiction doubly so. Flaws and frailties ahoy, and it's your job as storyteller to exploit those weaknesses. A character might have addictions, anger management problems, a physical debilitation, a soft spot for leprechauns — whatever it is, it's your job to draw the poison to the surface and let it complicate the story. Because you're a dick. A super-dick, even.

23. And At Night, The Ice Weasels Come

The environment can be a great antagonist. Sub-zero temperatures! Dangerous mountain pass! Wasp tornado! The setting can come alive to bring great misery to good characters.

24. Roosting Chickens With Razor Beaks

I don't know why chickens "coming home to roost" is a metaphor for the past returning to haunt a character. I mean, chickens are about as non-threatening as they come. What about owls? Or falcons? Hell, forget birds. The saying should be, "Wait till those ninjas come home to roost." But I digress. Point is, a character may be running from his past. Just as he thinks he's escaped it, the past catches up with him — a crazy ex-girlfriend, an ex-partner looking for a last big score, a rogue Terminator. Though, I guess in the case of a Terminator, that's more the future catching up with you. Whatever. Shut up. Don't judge me.

25. Opportunistic Hate Crimes Against Beloved Characters

In the end what it comes down to is a willingness by you, the storyteller, to throw your characters under countless speeding buses. You may, like a parent with a child, want to be the character's friend — you like the character, you want them to succeed, and that's all well and good. But story is born of conflict and conflict is born of characters in trouble. That's not to say you need to cause them ceaseless miseries — again, we're not looking for torture porn. But you have to be willing to put the irons to their feet – a character's success is only keenly felt and roundly celebrated when first he had to go through hell to get there.

Your Turn

How do you like to use and abuse your poor characters? When does such torment go too far?

* * *

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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

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

The Terribleminds Disclaimer

Last week, you may have seen a little post of mine called, "Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars." The notion behind the post was, hey, you know what will save publishing? If writers start acting like petulant rock stars, replete with destroyed motel rooms, phatty cribs, and kitten-eating.

The post went viral. The blog mentions Neil Gaiman and was in turn retweeted by Neil Gaiman, which was awesome in all senses of the word. I watched my page count spike like the heart rate of a guy who just chewed up a bag of meth crystals like they were Cheerios. I was waiting for the fabled #neilwebfail, wherein he turns his gaze toward your website and followers pour out of the woodwork and the website tries to lurch forward but instead collapses from a deep vein thrombosis and needs to take an hour-long dirt-nap just to cool off. Thankfully, this old gal held steady and stayed on course despite the battering of many Internet waves, and came out stronger for it (and, of course, I appreciate the retweet by Mister Gaiman and all others who shared the love). The post seemed to get a lot of good attention and lots of folks thought it was fun.

Because it was a joke.

Of course it was a joke.

When I said:

Rock stars get the 'concept album.' We should be able to have the 'concept novel.' "This novel's not just a bunch of words, man. All the chapters form together into a single story. Yeah. It's pretty revolutionary."

…I was not actually suggesting the creation of a concept novel where the chapters form a single story. That's what a novel already is. It's not revolutionary. That's the joke. Maybe not a funny joke. That's between you and your own personal flavor of Jesus. But I would've thought that its status as tongue-in-cheekiness, as satire, as me-just-making-shit-up-to-attempt-to-be-funny was as clear as the pealing of a bell if the bell were ringing inside the bone cavern of your own skull.

But then I saw a whole lot of folks taking my post seriously. And arguing against it. As if I had attempted to make a serious point, as if I were really saying, "You know what we need, we don't need good books, we need more Snooki." *rad guitar lick*

On Metafilter, on Twitter, on Fark, I saw a surprising handful of comments that actually took my bullshit seriously. For a moment, I wondered: did humor die? Assassinated by a lone gunman? Was irony shot in the face on a hunting trip, left to bleed out in a ditch? Was I not obvious enough? Did I need to pepper my post with a dozen smiley faces? Should I have drawn a bunch of hastily-scrawled dicks across my post, the dicks jizzing little pee-pee bullets from the ink-smeared tips?

The thing is, this is not the first time this has happened. I write at least five blog posts a week, which even I consider to be marginally insane, and once in a while one of those posts really catches fire and draws attention. Inevitably, whenever this happens, I get a round of people — commenters, e-mailers, Redditors, what-have-you — that end up taking the post way too seriously.

So, it seems high-time for a disclaimer.

I am full of shit.

I'm usually just fucking around.

I just make stuff up.

I do it to be funny. I do it to yell at my 18-year-old self. I do it to yell at dilettante writers. I do it because I'm happy, sad, cranky, churlish, cantankerous, or drunk.

I often say things, then change my mind.

I contradict things I said a year ago, a month ago, ten minutes ago.

I curse like a motherfucker. My father cursed. My mother cursed. It is in me.

I often adopt the tone of a coked-up penmonkey drill sergeant.

Am I really like this? Ehhh, sometimes.

I'm certainly blowhardy and buffoonish, but here at the site I definitely crank the volume. Most people who meet me find that I'm ultimately more serious when traversing the physical plane of reality.

What I'm trying to say is –

Do not take me too seriously.

If you find value in the things I say, whether it's as a laugh or as a snidbit of writing advice you feel like you can adopt and take to the bank, then I am aglow with pleasure, the cilia and spore-pods that comprise my beard twitching and writhing in blog-addled bliss. If you find no value in what I say, then I'm not mad at that. Don't like that I curse? Don't like my dubious writing advice? Can't see past the self-deprecating tongue-in-cheek 'tude? Feel like I'm insulting you? Then be on your merry way. And I don't say that with anger. I don't say that like, "Then get the fuck off my lawn, you damn dissenters! Take your disagreeable turd-cutters elsewhere!" I mean to suggest that it's okay. Don't hang around here if what I say bothers you. Life's too short to let me bludgeon you over the head with my blog-hammer, my word-cudgel.

Do I sometimes try to be serious? Sure. Do I take writing seriously? You betcher sweet swirly nipples I do. I take writing and storytelling — art, craft, and business — quite seriously. And I do like serious discussion and I do enjoy real communication and conversation. But nine times out of ten, my posts shouldn't be enough to get you riled up. I don't want to get you riled up. It's not worth your time or mine.

So, that's it. That's my disclaimer. I'm just over here squawking into the void. I've said this in the past but my goal here is first to enlighten. When that fails, it is to entertain. And when that fails, it's to dazzle you with creative profanity so you at least feel like you got something out of the whole experience.

("Cock-waffle." "Vag-badger." "Fucksluice.")

(See? SEE?)

I want you to enjoy your time here and maybe learn something. I know I learn something every time I post about writing because it's me sorting out the sticks and pebbles of my own brain.

If you're not enjoying it, if you're not learning it, then don't sweat it. Relax. Take a deep breathe. Pulverize some Lorazepam in a mortar and pestle and stir it around your Tang then take a big ol' hefty drink.

Because, really, I'm probably not as serious as you think I am.

End of disclaimer.

Have a nice day.

*insert smiley face and marker-drawn dick-and-balls*

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Flea Market

Last week's challenge — "That's Right, I Said 'Unicorn'" — earned an incredible response, and you can check out those stories at the link.

So, I did a quick thing on Google+ yesterday where I had people list possible options for today's challenge — and Brooke Johnson came up with the idea of a flea market, and the strange things you might find there. I remember once I found a photograph of the Devil. For real. I mean, okay, it was a goofy looking guy from the 1960s in a spandex Devil suit — waxed mustache, poochy pot belly, delicate calves — but hey, it counts.

And it was autographed. Seriously. It was signed, "The Devil."

You don't have to write about the Devil. Just write about something you might find at a flea market. Something strange. Wonderful. Or dangerous. As magical or mundane as you see fit, long as it's got a story.

Any genre will do. This is suited toward speculative, but crime or horror or any of that will play well here.

You again have 1000 words.

Due here by Friday, August 5th at noon EST.

Once again, I'm going to give away free e-books.

Top five get a choice of one of my three DIY releases.

However, there's a catch — I won't be picking them.

You will.

Starting Friday the 5th at 12:01 EST, you will have 24 hours to choose your favorite of the bunch. All you have to do is comment with the name of the author and his/her story in the comments. The top five chosen favorites are the thumbs-up high-five ichiban winners. You can't pick your own. Because that's jerky.

Standard stuff applies. Post at your blog. Link back here. Point us to your blog in the comments on this page. Go forth and dig deep into the flea market, see what kinds of crazy shit your mind finds.

A couple quick follow-up notes, though: a suggestion to those who host stories at your blogs. It helps if those stories are a) readable and b) open to comments. Not critical, but you'll get more mileage out of a blog whose font isn't tiny, whose text isn't bright white on dark black, whose comment section is open to those who want to offer kudos or insight.

Have at it, bargain shoppers.

Adam Christopher: The Terribleminds Interview, Part One

Adam Christopher is a guy I can't help but like. He's a great writer, a good friend, and a guy who doesn't quit when it comes to writing. He's a machine, which is apropos then that he's got a couple of books coming out with Angry Robot Books (those fine cybernetic madmen who will also be publishing my first two original novels) next year. And we also share uber-agent Stacia Decker. Anyway — the fact I was able to get him to stop writing for ten minutes so I could strap him to a table and fire Query Particles into his brain is something of a small miracle. Check out his website here, and follow him on Twitter. Oh! And this is a HUGE-ASS MOFO of an interview. Thus, it's only the first part. Second part airs next week.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling, so before we do anything else, I'd like you to tell me – and, of course, the fine miscreants and deviants that read this site – a story. As short or long as you care to make it, as true or false as you see it.

Ask, and thou shalt receive:

GREEN EGGS AND HANDGUNS

by Adam Christopher

"Murdersville."

"Never been."

"Oh, you'd like it. Full of retired cops playing detective. Trenchcoats and hats and murders, the works."

West raised an eyebrow and raised his glass. The ice silently rocked against the side of the tumbler as he took a sip. He replaced it on the microscopic table between him and Frances and wondered why the table was so small anyway.

"Death and Taxes, Arizona."

West snorted. "Don't tell me, retired accountants?"

Frances laughed and studied his own tumbler. The vintage Scotch looked great, it was just a shame it had no flavour at all.

"Oh, better than that," he said. "Retired forensic accountants."

"You'll have to explain to me how that's better that regular accountants."

West shifted a little in his chair and glanced around the bar. It looked good. Authentic, with the right level of light (low) and the right kind of barman (surly). To the left of their table was a roaring fire which was silent and put out no heat. Okay, so some things would need fixing. Above, resting on two silver studs in the wall, hung a pistol next to a signed photograph of Walter Koenig. West wondered if the picture, at least, was real.

"That picture real?"

Frances shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"The gun then. I sure hope you're going to use that."

Before Frances could reply, a barmaid appeared out of nowhere, balancing a large, dark tray on one shoulder. She dipped down to unload her cargo and smiled sweetly at West. West smiled back, and wondered whether the food would be food or whether it wouldn't be, like the Scotch. He was hungry, and he told Frances this as the girl placed a silver-domed plate in front of each of them. Somehow the table seemed a little bigger than it had been.

"There's a lot to be tested, West," said Frances. He winked at the barmaid as she turned to leave but she didn't seem to notice he was there at all.

West reached for the cover on his plate but Frances tutted and waved his hand away.

"Allow me." He lifted the cover with a flourish and a grin. The fire continued to be a pleasant screensaver out of the corner of West's eye.

Under West's cover was a smaller tray. On the tray was a plate with two eggs, sunny side up. The sun, on this occasion, was key lime green. On the tray next to the plate was a pistol.

West glanced at the other tray, which looked the same with two eggs with green yolks, except Frances had a revolver. The metalwork was ornately engraved and the white ivory handle handsomely worn. West's was a more or less featureless automatic, all squares and rectangles and all business and no pleasure.

"The fuck is this?" asked West. There was a knife and fork on the tray too. West used them to lift his eggs and examine the undersides, in case an typewritten explanation from the kitchen was provided below. There was nothing there, and when the egg flopped back down the yolk was still a surprising colour.

Frances seemed less interested in the eggs and was busy eying up his piece.

"This is called 'Green Eggs and Handguns.'"

"I had a toilet seat this exact same colour when I was living in Florida."

Frances had tucked a napkin down his shirt front and looked about ready to start surgery. He lifted the knife and fork and then paused, and then pointed at West's plate with the knife.

"Based on a kid's story from, oh, long time ago. Hundreds of years. Written by Doctor Who or somesuch. Guy wore a striped hat."

"No shit." West slumped back in his chair and wondered why his gun was a government-issued relic while Frances had got the chef's special.

"Who was your trainer again?"

Frances sliced an egg. The key lime yolk ran to perfection.

"Decker. Four-dimensional story simulation and immersion. Her speciality."

"Huh." West was more impressed with that than his simulated meal. "You know who I had?"

Frances ate and shook his head and spoke with a mouthful of green egg.

"No. Tell me."

"Wendig."

Frances coughed. "Wendig? You heard what happened to him?"

"I might have," said West after a sip of Scotch with no flavour, texture or temperature. The sooner he was out of here and back in his cabin, the better. The drink was better, for a start.

"Wendig got brain baked. Took his class hostage, was convinced his beard was conspiring with the Feds. Real tinfoil hat stuff."

"Oh," said West. "Maybe I heard something else. I heard they let him retire gracefully, shipped him out to the Motherland. Took his brain out and turned him into a robot or something."

"Mmm." Frances had one eye on his gun. "Enough to piss anyone off."

West smiled. "Oh, he was angry all right."

West sat back and left his eggs and gun untouched, and watched Frances alternately shovel green yolk into his mouth and stroke the creamy handle of his shooter. The fire in the fireplace looped back to the beginning, and West wondered if maybe the barman had bugged out. He'd been polishing the same glass a mighty long time.

Nothing happened for a while longer. Frances took a thousand years to eat his eggs and West watched the fire and thought about taking a holiday somewhere sunny.

West leaned forward and the bar door crashed open. A man strode in, one hand pushing the door back, the other waving yet another fine handgun around like he was watering the grass. The man caught sight of West and Frances and walked over, quickly. He said something that neither West nor Frances could hear, then raised the gun and fired. West counted four shots, but later on Frances would insist there had only been two. It was something they'd need to work out later.

Satisfaction attained, the man holstered his weapon and sauntered out, buttocks tight like a bad John Wayne impersonation.

West looked down at his shirt. There were two holes, black and crinkled at the edges, showing where he'd been hit but there was no blood. After a second the holes faded away. Beta-testing.

Frances laughed. The sound was wet with key lime egg yolk and flavourless Scotch. West looked up from his shirt and looked at Frances. He frowned.

"What was that?"

Frances waved at the door through which the assassin had entered.

"Golden rule of writing."

"Never write your novel in Bleeding Cowboy?"

Frances waved again and his eyes went tight and thin with frustration. "Jackass," he said. "Golden rule: when in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."

West puffed his cheeks out. He wasn't sure that Frances was such a good scenario programmer as he thought he was this morning. That was before he'd asked West to join him in the simulation suite and run his story with him.

West stretched, and watched the fire awhile, perhaps happy that he hadn't tried the eggs. Frances ordered two more Scotches on the rocks. The drinks arrived and the pair drank, for effect if nothing else. The chairs were comfortable, and that was something.

"Truth and Consequences, New Mexico. Popular with retired cowboys."

West shook his head and watched the ice move in his tumbler.

"Ridiculous. Now I know you're making it up."

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

That's actually a pretty difficult question, because it's not something I really think about. I like to write what I like to write, right? So that just means taking an idea that excites me and that I feel I have to tell the world about, and write a book about it. It could be SF, it could be horror, it could be noir, it could be a mix of all those and more besides.

So if the idea – the story – is king, and if I'm not particularly bound by genre, then I'd have to say the same rules apply to my writing style. My writing style is whatever suits the idea or story being told. It all has to come naturally – you can't write a story that doesn't excite you, and you can't write in a style that isn't yours. But that doesn't mean it can't change – I've written steampunk in baroque, Victorian first-person. I've written science fiction in a clean, natural style. I've written science fiction in a pulp, noirish style. If it works, it works. It should never be artificial – people (and yourself, as the writer) will spot it a mile off. Don't try too hard. Don't think, write.

Style is of course different to voice, and voice is one of those intangible X-factors of writing that only really becomes apparent with time. I think I'm still in the process of finding my voice, although there is definitely something there now having written about half a dozen full-length novels – voice is something you discover. Certainly other people say I have a strong voice, even if I find it hard to pin down myself.

What's awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

You know how some people get excited when they go into a stationery store? All those blank notebooks and clean paper and new pens. It's all there for the taking and there are, at that single point in time when you walk in the door, no limits. My wife is like that. Please, whatever you do, don't ask her about stationery.

Writing is the same. There are no limits and no restrictions. When you have an idea, and that idea drives you to create something, there is nothing like it. You're creating worlds, characters, events and situations which are brand new and which, if you're doing it right, will start to take on a life of their own inside your head. This is the bit where non-writers start to think I'm barking, but it's true. When your heroine makes a decision in the middle of a story that wasn't in your outline, that wasn't in your chapter breakdown, and that opens a whole new door in the story that you – as the writer – had no idea was there… well, that's pure creation, and it is the reason I'm a writer.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

The flipside to this wonderful art of creation is the fact that writing is a job and publishing is a business, and this means there is stuff you have to do that isn't your favourite thing in the whole world ever. However, that's the same with every job in the world, and that doesn't necessarily mean it sucks. The worst part for me is editing, but as with any writer it's a kind of love-hate relationship. I want my story, book, whatever to be the best thing I am capable of producing. This takes a boatload of work, and often the editing is just as an intensive and time-consuming process as the writing. There are times, at 2am when you've read your novel so many times you have no clue whether it is good or bad or not – it's just so many words – that you can feel like throwing it all in and applying for a job with your local parks department so you can at least get some damn sunlight.

But all writers feel like this. Even the big ones. It's all part of it, and if you can't accept that then perhaps you really are in the wrong job.

I guess that can be distilled down to one thing that sucks: time. Time away from friends and family, time mashing a keyboard at weekends, on holidays, at Christmas.

But with every investment, there should be a reward. That's the way the world works, not just writing.

Okay. You say that every investment should yield a reward. That makes me want to ask: how do you reward yourself after finishing a big writing project? Do you do anything for yourself?

Every time I hit some kind of milestone – not just in terms of writing, but also the business side of publishing, like signing a contract or reaching some particular time point on a project – my wife and I go out for dinner. Hey, we like to eat… and we happen to live just a few minutes from a really awesome steakhouse! Both of us are pretty busy people so having a nice night out together is a pretty sweet reward. That seems to be a more meaningful reward than buying something… but I reserve the right to change my mind when the money gets better! And I've always fancied a 1978 Lincoln Continental Town Car…

Look for the next part of the interview next Thursday!

Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars

Oscar Wilde. Ernest Hemingway. Hunter S. Thompson.

Each, a rock star in his own right. Oscar Wilde was put on trial for sodomy and indecency. Hemingway killed bears, fought in wars, crashed planes, had an FBI file on him. Hunter S. Thompson consumed every drug known to man, was a certified gun nut, and started FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as a piece for fucking Sports Illustrated. Oh! And had his ashes shot out of a cannon made to look like a fist.

Who do we have like that these days? Neil Gaiman? He's close, but let's be honest — he's just too nice. Too normal. A positively lovely human being by all reports. You never hear, "Famous author Neil Gaiman caught with seven stewardesses in a Wichita bus depot." He doesn't throw Bibles through stained glass windows or get into drunken beefs with other speculative fiction writers. You won't see him roving about in public with exotic swords bought at a flea market looking to cut any dude who looks at him sideways.

Who else? J.K. Rowling? C'mon, she's like someone's business-savvy mom.

Stephenie Meyer? Ennnh. Can "Mormon" and "Rock Star" go together? It's like peanut butter and drywall.

We don't really have anyone. And see, while sometimes I lament that this writing career gets — in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield — no respect, maybe what we need is to go so far down respect's throat we come out the other side, surfing an effluent tide of flaming typewriters, LSD habits, and public badassery. We need literary rock star heroes to swoop in and save publishing.

And here's how we get 'em.

We Need Some Literary Beefs Up In This Hizzy

Epic rock star personalities make way for epic rock star beefs. David Lee Roth versus Van Halen. Jay-Z versus Nas. Foo Fighters versus the entire TV show "Glee."

The authorial world demands this. And we're not talking about some little Twitter snit, some online battle oozing across a handful of Livejournal comments. It's not enough for Stephen King to talk to Entertainment Weekly and be all like, "Well, Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling, pfft." I'm talking, Terry Pratchett needs to go and take a shit in Dan Brown's mailbox. James Patterson speaks publicly about Dean Koontz's "tiny dick." George R. R. Martin writes a 10-book epic fantasy cycle where the central antagonist is a gassy pegasus named after HUNGER GAMES author Suzanne Collins.

Rappers get rap battles. Authors need author battles. A bunch of books published lightning fast, each a fictional response to some other author's last confrontation. You know that would boost sales. "Oh, did you see the latest pair of roman d'accusation? Jim Butcher versus Jonathan Franzen? Holy gods, somebody's going to get hurt. Just wait till Chabon weighs in."

Erratic Author Appearances

You put rock stars in front of people, fucked up shit starts to happen. They show up late. They break guitars. They set stuff on fire. They huff paint and throw cymbals and bite the heads off winged creatures.

Authors — c'mon. You can do this at your author appearances. Just go nuts! Fucking freak out. Kick over a book display. Throw your boot at that old lady who shows up at all the author signings and asks inane questions. For God's sake — tell them to put down the book, it's time to autograph some tee-tas. After you're done inking a bunch of boobies — or dicks, who am I to judge? — take the rest of your books near to hand, douse them in lighter fluid, scream "Fuck your mother, [insert name of publishing company here]!" and then set fire to those bad-boys just before passing out on the floor in your own vomit.

Intensely Weird Drug Habits

No, no, no, I'm not saying you need to get hooked on the current spate of hardcore narcotics. Forget heroin, coke, meth, any of that. We're writers. We need to get creative.

I want to see Neil Gaiman espousing the creative benefits of injecting himself with adrenalin harvested from a live tiger. I want to see Motherfucking Franzen smoke Oprah's hair through a gas mask bong. Mitch Albom's next book will be THE 7000 MACHINE ELVES YOU MEET IN PARAMUS NEW JERSEY after he goes on a DMT bender and drives his El Camino through an abandoned Borders Books and Music.

Some authors will become addicted to licking the hallucinogenic ink off their own books. Others will pulverize Kindles and cook them down into an electronic slurry and plop beads of the "Kindlejuice" onto their eyeballs with little glass droppers.

Authors need their own class of designer drugs to get the attention we so mightily deserve.

Need To Start Making Some Rock Star Demands

Oh, the tales of rock star "riders," wherein they make demands to meet insane backstage needs. J. Lo wants red M&Ms, Iggy Pop wants broccoli, Lady Gaga demands a live goat for her paddock. You know the story.

It's time for authors to get in on this. "I will only sign at your bookstore if I am afforded the oral comforts of four temple whores. I also demand that my signing table be perpetually orbited by two dwarves dressed as characters from my book. No one may touch my hands. I will give them their books via a catapult to the face. Finally, if I am expected to speak and share anecdotes, then I must be given one 16 oz. glass of luke warm bacon grease with which to lubricate my throat. And I must have a kitty in my lap. Not my kitty. Your kitty. And I get to eat that kitty when I'm done."

"Sure thing, Miss Rowling."

Insane Hobbies On Display

Writers are so polite. Their hobbies tend to match. "Oh, I collect first editions of classic American novels!" "I crochet!" "I have a sugar glider named Lord Byron!"

We're done with that. It's time to crank up the volume knob, break it off, and stab the shard of plastic into someone's neck. Authors need bigger, badder, waaaaay more fucked-up hobbies.

Ostrich racing! The gunsmithy of automatic weapons! Espresso enemas! Book burning! The husbandry of predatory cats! Competitions to see who can write the longest novel! Collecting dead supermodels!

"Dude. Did you hear? Christopher Moore has this weird fight club he has set up on an oil rig off-shore. He makes other writers fight coked-up mandrills with latex walrus dongs. This shit's on Youtube."

Jack Up Our Books With Rockstar Juice

Books are just like, pff, pshhh, meh. Boh-ring. Need to jack it up.

What about books inked in the author's blood? Or books that, when read backwards, contain Satanic messages urging readers toward mass suicide? Or books that are empty of words until you pee on the pages?

Rock stars get the 'concept album.' We should be able to have the 'concept novel.' "This novel's not just a bunch of words, man. All the chapters form together into a single story. Yeah. It's pretty revolutionary."

Groupies + Entourage = Awesome

Authors need people around them. To insulate them from the harsh rigors of the world, to help fan the flames of the fickle Muse and to help keep sweaty jam-handed fans at a halberd's length.

We need:

a) groupies

and

b) a motherfucking entourage.

First, groupies? If I go to a bookstore, I want to head back into the break room for an after-party where a whole passel of fans await to serve my every whim. "Carry my iPad," I'll say to one. To another I'll say, "You will eat olives from between my toes — but do not chew, for you will then French kiss the person next to you and spit the olives into her mouth. Then someone has to poop in a cup. Because I demand it!"

Rock star bacchanalia, baby.

And an entourage, well, come on. Let us get shut of the fallacy now that all readers are awesome. Sure, except those guys who smell like ass-sweat and who want to make unruly demands of our writing schedules. I'm just saying, when George R. R. Martin walks into a room, he should be the center of a swirling vortex of George R. R. Martin lookalikes, all of whom wear t-shirts that say, "GEORGE IS NOT YOUR BITCH."

Pimp-Ass Writer Cribs

"Step up into my biblio-crib, son. Over here, I got a bunch of human babies crawling around a terrarium. In that room is where I keep all my beta readers — yeah, that's them, feeding each other figs and playin' Naked Twister and shit. Here's all my books, gold-dipped and encrusted with amethysts. Sure that makes them unreadable. So fucking what? The whole second floor's a library, and the library's where I keep my jacuzzi, my jet-boat, my chainsaw collection, and the head of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you stick a key in his ear and turn that shit, ol' F. Scott's mouth will start to move and he'll recite all the words to 'Babylon Revisited.'"

One Word: Hookers

Some writers need to get caught with either some high-dollar prostitutes — like, part of a super-elite escort chain that services Popes and astronauts — or some deeply grungy amputee meth-hookers. You can be sure that if Stephen King got caught in a Canadian bathhouse with like, a bunch of Quebecois Juggalo whores, man, his book sales would double overnight. You know it to be true.

Two More Words: Public Urination

Defecation's an order too far, but urination? Man, there's just something bad-ass and iconoclastic about pissing in public, something that flips a big ol' rigid middle finger to the man. For an easy way into the bad-ass rock star lifestyle, writers need to start urinating in public. The Starbucks counter inside Barnes & Noble? Pee on it. Stack of New York Times' newspapers containing a bad review of your novel? Pee on it. Comic-Con fans waiting in line to see Nathan Fillion just stand there looking handsome? Pee on them, then pee on Nathan Fillion, then as nerds attack with foam swords, just whirl around in the circle, peeing in a golden circumference. That's a surefire way to get in the newspapers as a rock star writer-type.

YOU ARE A GOLDEN PENMONKEY GOD.

*psssssssssss*

Now Whut?

Your turn. What rock star habits will you adopt, writer-types? Tell us, or I'll pee on you.

25 Ways To Become A Better Writer

Time again for another list of 25 — this time, a long hard look at the many ways to press hot irons to the feet of your writing and make it beg to get better. Flip through them, and then should you find you've got your own to add, well, hot dang, you know what the comments section is for. Time to measure up, penmonkeys.

1. Practice Makes Perfect, Little Princess

The easiest and most forthright way to become a better writer is, duh, to write. Write, write, write. Write regularly. Get on a schedule, whether it's 100, 1000, or 10000 words a day. Writing is a muscle, like your bicep, your heart, or your private parts. Don't use 'em, you lose 'em. And then they fall to the ground and rot like oxidizing apples and are in turn eaten by hungry gophers. Om nom nom.

2. Time To Eye-Fuck Some Books

The world is home to — *does some quick math on fingers, toes, testicles, nipples, and teeth* — 45 smajillion books. Each of them often containing somewhere north of 50,000 words. And new books hit the atmosphere every day. You do not need to read all of these books. But you should act as if that is indeed your task, carving your way through the world's cumulative body of the written word one tome at a time. If you want to write, you're coming in at the ground level of these 45 smajillion books written by 33 fnuhzillion different writers. You are a but a mote in the reader's eye. You want to compete? Read. Learn what other writers are doing. Absorb it with that schnapps-laden sponge you call a brain.

3. Read Widely, Weirdly, Wisely

Here then is the prison that writers build for themselves: it becomes harder and harder to read purely for pleasure. Reading for pleasure often means sticking to a few genres, with a few authors — "Oh, I like fantasy, so I only read fantasy fiction," or, "I love the Detective Cashew Pepper series by K. J. Staplebottom, and I've read up to #47 in the series." That privilege has been revoked. You now must read widely, weirdly, wisely. Read everything. Move outside your desired library. Read obscure British literature. Read poetry. Read non-fiction. Read science-fiction even though you hate science-fiction. If you want to do what everybody else is doing, fine, read only in your pre-existing sphere of influences. But this is about improving your work, not treading water like a poodle who fell off a boat.

4. Don't Be A Book Racist

Those who write books are occasionally "book racists." They pump their fists and espouse Book Power while denigrating other forms of the written word. "TV will rot your brain," they might say. As if the Snooki book will somehow do laps around an episode of THE WIRE. Books are not the only form of the written word. You may not even want to write books. Branch out. Watch television. Watch film. Read scripts. Visit great blogs. Play games. Don't be a book racist. The storytelling cults can learn much from one another.

5. Whittle Your Mind Into A Straight Razor, 'Cause It's Time To Cut A Motherfucker

Another instance where improving your writing skill may come at the slow erosion of your pleasure. Read and watch stories with a deeply critical eye. Not to be a dick, but to instead ask: "What would I do differently? Why would I do it that way? Could I do this better? How would I write it to improve upon it?"

6. Unclog Those Ears, Wax Boy

Listen. Seriously, get your pinky into that ear, unplug it of all the wax and hair and sadness that's built up in there and just… listen. We read with our ears as much as with your eyes and so it's critical you know what sounds good as well as what reads well. Sit down at a bar, listen to a conversation. Turn on an audio book or a radio show. Listen to a stand-up comedian deliver jokes and stories. Write it down if you must — see how it lays on the page. It should lay there like Burt Reynolds with a snake draped delicately across his man-parts. In other news, I bet his man-parts have their very own mustache.

7. Go Forth And Do Shit, My Son

Write what you know means what it says but doesn't say what it means. You know more than you know. Fuck fact. Embrace authenticity. Writers do not gain a sense of authenticity by sitting at the computer all day jizzing out word-babies. Have something to write about. To do that, you must go out. Into the world. Take a trip. Get in a bar fight. Hunt a white whale. Metaphorically. Please don't kill whales. They are our benevolent alien masters and one day they're going to get really pissed and call in an airstrike.

8. Learn What Words Mean And Where Punctuation Goes

Storytelling may be an art, but writing is a craft, and that means learning where commas go, how to spell words (like "clitoral" or "sesquicentennial"), and in general how to put together a fucking sentence. Read yourself some Strunk and White. Flip through a dictionary now and again. Scope out some Grammar Girl. Hear a word you don't know? Go look it up. Improve your technical skills. It is the bedrock of your penmonkeying and without it, you're just a punk-ass who won't eat his vegetables.

9. Be Torn Asunder By Editorial Talons

It helps to submit to editors. Real editors. Tough love editors. Because sometimes your writing needs to get on its knees and have wax poured down its back while it receives a right-good nipple-caning from a whip-like willow branch. Your writing improves in the fiery gaze of a hellish editor. The flames will wick away the flopsweat and the amateurish urine stain. The barnacles will char and fall off. Submit to an editor.

10. Be Ripped Apart By Other Writers

Writers are not editors. (File under D for "duh.") They have different priorities and different perspectives. (And they're probably also raging drunkaholics. Editors are nice and drink wine. Writers will drink all the cough syrup at CVS if they can get their ink-stained fingers on it.) Whereas an editor will often highlight a problem, a writer will come up with a solution. That doesn't mean it's a solution you want, but it's worth it to have that perspective just the same. Submit your work to other writers. Demand — with a gun in the small of their back if you must — that they not be kind. Mercy will not strengthen you.

11. Self-Flagellate

Pull up your pants, that's not what I mean. I mean, you must smack your word count with the horse-whip of scrutiny! You must become your own cruelest editor, your jaw clenched tight with the meat of your own manuscript trapped between your teeth. This doesn't need to be a consistent mode of operation, but once in a while it pays to take a page of your writing and go at it with a blowtorch, a car battery, and a starving honey badger. Cut your words. Make them bleed. Behold the healing power of bloodletting.

12. Throw Down Your Own Crazy-Ass Gauntlet, Then Run Through It Naked

Set challenges for yourself, then tackle them. Write a piece of flash fiction. Write poetry. Attempt to tell a story in a single tweet. Play with the second person perspective. Write a novel in sixty chapters, each only 1000 words. Treat it like a game where the rules are ever-changing.

13. Highway To The Danger Zone

Related, but different: write into your own discomfort. Escape your plexiglass enclosure and run toward peril, not away from it. Confront your many demons with your work and dissect them on the page. Write in genres with which you're not at all comfortable. Know your limits, then take those limits, wrap them around a hand-grenade, and shove them up the ass of a velociraptor. Because, really, fuck limits. You wanna be a better writer, you'll write outside your own proscribed margins.

14. Read Your Shit Aloud

I will pin your arms beneath my knees and scream into your face until I pass out from a rage aneurysm (an angeurysm?): read your work aloud. It will make you a better writer. I promise.

15. Embrace The Darwinism Of Writing Advice

Here's what you do with writing advice (says the guy delivering a nigh-constant stream of dubious penmonkey wisdom): hunt it down, leash it, read it, absorb it, then let it go free once more. Let it compete with your other preconceived notions about writing. Sometimes the new writing advice will win and become a dominant meme inside your wordsmith's brain. Other times your pre-existing beliefs will hold true — and will grow more tumescent, like a potent word-boner — through just such a test. You must take in writing advice and test it against your own notions. Tell all writing advice: "NOW YOU MUST FIGHT THE BEAR."

16. Learn New Breakdancing Moves, Fool

You can't be coming to the street with your stale-ass bullshit. The Worm? Really? The Robot? Classics, admittedly, but you're going to get smoked by bigger and better b-boys, yo. So too it goes with writing. You must be willing to try new ideas. Not a plotter? Try plotting. Don't like flashbacks? So write some motherfucking flashbacks. Make them your own. Try new tips, tricks, techniques. You should be able to say, "I wrote my last novel on the back of a dead hooker. With a Sharpie! Don't worry, I outlined it first on the chest of my UPS man. He's still upstairs in the tub! Hey, uh, know anyone who needs a couple kidneys?"

17. I Just Blogged A Little In My Mouth

You often hear, "writers should blog to build their platform," to which I say, pants, poppycock, and pfeffernusse! (I know. Such a foul tongue!) I say: writers should blog because it keeps them writing, because it exposes their writing to the air of community, because it tests your skill in the open plains. Blogging is further a great place to play with language, to put words out there that aren't headed to market, that aren't forced to dance for their dinner. It allows you to use words like "poppycock" and "pfeffernusse." True story.

18. Interface With Other Inkslingers

Sometimes you have to sit down over a pitcher of moonshine (or a hookah burning with the ash of an 1st edition Finnegan's Wake) and confab the shit out of that palaver with other writers. Meaning: talk it out. Talk about careers. Techniques. Books you love. Writers you hate. Writer conventions and conferences are good places for this. Just remember: the writers are always at the bar. Like moths to a porchlight.

19. Wade Into The Mire Of Your Own Fetid Compositions

Time travel a little. Go back into your past and dredge up some writing from a year ago. From ten years ago. Read it. Learn from it. Also gauge how well you've grown. This can be instructive because sometimes you don't know in what ways you've changed — further, you might identify darlings that repeatedly come up in your writing, darlings that deserve naught but the edge of your editorial chainsaw.

20. Do Not Defile The Penmonkey Temple

Your writing is the product of a machine, and that machine is your brain and body. The higher that machine functions, the better the writing that blubbers and spews from it. I'm not saying you need to treat your body like it's a white tower of physical perfection — but we're talking basic shit, here. Move around. Eat a good breakfast. Heroin is not a great snacktime treat. Fine, maybe you don't need to treat your body like it's a temple. Just don't treat it like it's the urinal in a Wendy's bathroom.

21. Flex Your Other Artistic Muscles

Take photos. Paint a picture. Play the piano. Macrame a dildo cozy. Muscles work in muscle groups — your writing muscle is part of an overall creative cluster. You gotta work 'em all.

22. Find Your Voice By Not Finding Your Voice

Sometimes improving your writing is about letting go of your writing. Some writers become so obsessed with their voice that they forget they already have it — your voice is who you are, your voice is your natural default way of communicating with the written word. To find your voice and improve your wordsmithy, sometimes it pays to just relinquish ego, relinquish control, and stop fucking worrying so much.

23. Embrace Your Inner Moonbat

All writers are a little bit batshit. We've all got some combo-pack of Charlie Manson, Renfield and Bender from Futurama running around in our skulls. Embrace it. We've all got a head full of ghosts and gods and it behooves us to listen to them, to let them out and play on the page, to use the madness granted to us rather than deny it and walk the safe and sane line.

24. Veer Drunkenly Toward Truth

Be real on the page. Be you. Know your experiences, know your heart and head and whatever squirting fluids pulse between your bile ducts and put it all on the page. Be honest. Be bold. Don't fuck around. Only by bringing yourself to the work will you find that your writing truly improves. Let it all hang out. By saying what needs to be said, you will see your writing get better, unburdened as it is by pretense and artifice.

25. I Am Jack's Desire To Be A More Awesomer Writer

An alcoholic (or any kind of -aholic) only gets better when he wants to, and so it is with writing. To be a better writer you must truly want to be. Open yourself. Test your work. Be willing to change.

Otherwise, what's the point?

* * *

Want more of the 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

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING — $0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Search Term Bingo And The Revenge Of The Hamster Skin Codpiece

Time again for SEARCH TERM BINGO, little babies. If you don't know how this works, here it is: people discover this website via some of the strangest search terms one could imagine. I pluck these search terms out of obscurity and dissect them for gits and shiggles.

Let us begin.

oatmeal fetus

If I ever find a fetus in my oatmeal, I'm going to kick that old creepy grandmother on all the boxes of Quaker Oats and knock that big black hat right off her head.

Also, "oatmeal fetus" sounds like something I would see in a David Lynch movie. ERASERHEAD II: THE OATMEAL FETUS IN THE RADIATOR. David Lynch, you so silly.

hamster skin codpiece

That sounds kind of nice.

Okay, wait, wait, hear me out.

You ever held a hamster? Soft, fuzzy little guys. I've never held one against my junk or anything (well, there was that one time in Petsmart, but I was fnorked to the gills on PCP), but I'm betting dollars to dingos that it would be wonderful. At long as the little guy doesn't get nibbly. So, the next logical step would be to harvest a dozen hamsters for their skin and use the "hamster leather" to make a codpiece. Right?

It's not like Jesus doesn't make more hamsters every day. That shit's right there in the Bible. "And lo, Jesus turned the temple whores into hamsters." Besides, you ask me, the world has too many damn hamsters. Those little fuzzy-nuts have had it too good for too long.

pretty girls named janae clapping their vaginas

I don't know why, but this calls to mind some really weird-ass variant of Double-Dutch, except instead of using jump-ropes, they're jumping over really long vaginas.

You also don't get to say that very often. "Really long vaginas." Because that's generally not how we measure the vagina, is it? We measure it by its grip, really. "That vagina is very tight." Or, "That vagina is like a breathy grotto from whence an unholy cloud of bats may pour out." But long? You don't get that very often. Still, if you're clapping vaginas, you'd think that the labia would have to have to be like open-palmed hands.

Also, that's probably the weirdest search term I've ever gotten. Top Ten, at least.

Slap slap slap.

You go, Janae One, Janae Two.

You clap those va-choo-chas.

drunk moms peeing

Porn is getting chopped up into dicier niches every day. "Drunk Moms Peeing" isn't even that weird anymore. Glance around the 'Net you'll find single-serving porn sites like:

Men Who Ride Giraffes Naked And Who Are In Turn Ridden By Monkeys In Diapers

Napping Lesbians

Dildos Shaped Like Forgotten Politicians Used To Grout Bathroom Tile

Chicks Dressed Like Spider-Man Banging Dudes Dressed Like Spider-Man

Buttocks Covered In Poison Ivy

Dead Porn Stars

Waffle Dick

when i cut my beard it is hard for me to pee

Uhhh. Wh… what kind of beard are we talking about? Because mine's on my face. And I don't pee out of my mouth. I mean, unless you could these blog posts, which are pretty much that.

my baby northern mockingbird isn't pooping

That is the single strangest euphemism for "erectile dysfunction" ever.

piss lightning shit success

This is the name of my new self-help book. "Piss, Lightning, Shit — Success!"

It will have a followup: "Jizz, Fire, Burrito — Profit!"

is batman a pitcher or catcher

Questions like this are why the Internet was invented by Jesus and William Gibson and Al Gore in a closed session atop Mt. Rushmore. I'll submit the question first to you, my inestimable audience.

Batman: pitcher or catcher?

The easy answer is "pitcher." Lot of pent-up shit, that guy. But then sometimes you hear about those powerful CEOs who go to dominatrices to have cigarettes put out on their inner thights because they like to cede control for awhile, so you kinda wonder if Batman takes rather than gives. I await your answers.

why is my wife a dickface

Probably because you're a fuckweed. If you would stop being such a massive pube-hair, your wife would have to be less of a dickface to compensate for your utter shitheadedness.

does baby r us sell super soakers?

Because that's how we feed babies nowadays. Bottles just get easier and easier! Time to administer formula directly to their mouths and out through their buttholes with the new Formula One Super-Soaker. Just hose down your baby with a gallon of formula. Make 'im big and strong. Like Paul Bunyon. Or that guy who was so hella fat they had to tear the roof off his trailer to get him out.

fancy words to use at random times

"Here you go, sir, your dry cleaning. That'll be ten dollars and –"

"BOMBASTILOQUENT!"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"VERISIMILITUDE!"

"Uhhh."

"RESPLENDENT PERSPICACITY!"

"Just take your goddamn trousers. I got the skid-stains out, weirdo."

"ENCHANTE!"

i've eaten so much plastic

Man, me too. Anytime I see plastic, I'm all like, "I want that inside my body." And I eat the shit out of it. My intestinal tract is liked with plastic nibblings. Food just slides through and comes out the other side, still pretty much intact. Goddamn I've eaten so much plastic. Credit cards. Pen caps. Ziploc bags. I ate a whole roll of Saran Wrap the other day. Just gobbled it up. It was horrible. Why do I keep doing this?

IT DOESN'T EVEN TASTE GOOD

Oooh an old Ace of Base CD!

om nom nom

crunch crunch crunch

I CANNOT STOP

what do testicles look like on the inside

Every testicle is like a snowflake, friend. They all look different on the inside.

Mine, for instance, are quite roomy. Together they look like a mod 1960s bachelor pad with a bar that looks like a gleaming rocket. The bartender is a naked lady wearing shiny hip reflectors and an all-glass astronaut helmet. She makes a great Moscow Mule. You hear that? That's right. "The Girl From Ipanema." I so love all these pastels. Who wants some petit fours? Oh ho ho, JFK, you're so funny even though you're dead!

totorial on how to shoot wendig

The word is "tutorial," lackwit.

…wait, maybe that's why you're looking for instruction on shooting me.

Hmm. Okay, I'll cop to that. I'm a bit of a pedagogue. I got that word right, yeah? I want to make sure it's the word that means "strict teacher" and not "guy who touches kids."

Anyway, sure, you want to shoot me. Here's how. First you have to find me. I'm probably at the liquor store. I might be hiding in the freezer case, guzzling chilled pinot grigio. Wait till I fall asleep — it's inevitable, I nap like, every 20 minutes or so — and then take aim at my head and fire.

You should use a really quality weapon.

The best brand, I find, is NERF.

Yep. Use Nerf. Uhhh. Totally deadly, those Nerf darts. Fatal when touched.

chuck wendig in the shower

Now we're talking. That's a sexy search term. Me in the shower. Washing my beard with a fist full of Suave body wash. Getting in all those manly nooks and crannies. Using a porous whetstone to scrape all the barnacles free from my body and shed my reptilian undercoat. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. You like my spinal bone spurs. You like my twin crotch-snakes, one of darkness, one of light, each wrestling for control of the world's fate. Nnnngh. So hot. So wet.

wendig day sex husband

Boy, everything's just "coming up Wendig," innit?

This one might be a puzzler to you Americans, which is why I have chosen to include it. Like "the Hoff," I am very popular in Europe. Over there, they have this thing called "Wendig Day," and on that day I play the roll of "Sex Husband" (it sounds sexier in German), which is kind of like an erotic and adulterous Santa Claus-type figure? It makes more sense if you're high. Anyway, so they have this parade, and I come sauntering out in my assless lederhosen and my alpine hat with the peacock feather, and then I give a good deep dicking to all the housewives who have lined up along the Rue de Sexy-Sexy (aka Der Bangenstrasse).

It's a fun day! You should book a flight.

how to read expiration dates on zachary

Did you turn him over? The date is on his foot. No, no, I know, it's a little confusing.

The year comes first! Four-digit, not two. That's where people mess up, I think. The bad news is, Zachary's expiration date is long been up. Which explains why he smells like spoiled yogurt. Further, it explains why the howling soul-demons are hounding his every step, trying to drag him into Hell where that past-due motherfucker belongs. Were I you, I'd stay the hell away from Zachary.

For reals.

what ails you volleyball?

"Syphilis," said the volleyball. "I bumped rubber with a dirty kickball beneath the underpass. Now I got the syph. But bad. Don't tell my wife. And my little baby shuttlecocks."

letter to baby in wombat

I'm going to go ahead and safely assume you meant "womb," not "wombat," but just in case, here would be the letter I would write to that wombat-ensconced baby:

Dear Baby,

Get the hell out of that wombat.

You don't know where that wombat has been.

If you don't get out of that wombat right now I am going to leave you in that wombat and drive home and then you'll never see me again and you and the wombat can have crazy adventures.

You stupid, stupid baby.

Love,

Chuck "Sex Husband" Wendig

will chocolate melt in anus?

It will. Which is good, generally, because that means it won't stay up there and you won't have yet another serious of embarrassing X-Rays. "Sorry, doc. It's an Almond Joy."

Still, maybe you want a chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your ass.

Check out Reese's Feces. The candy favorite of anally-fixated extra-terrestrials across the galaxy!

tits force mission

Man, I used to love this cartoon when I was a kid. I'd get up real early on a Saturday morning and I'd hear that theme song starting. Remember that theme song?

TITS FORCE MISSION

GONNA GET THE CALL

TITS IN DANGER! AT THE LOCAL MALL!

TITS FORCE MISSION

GONNA SAVE THE WORLD

SLAMMING EVIL! AS THEIR TITS UNFURL!

TITS FORCE MIIIISSSIIIIIIOOOON…!

*rad keytar lick*

Such an awesome show. Remember how the team leader, Johnny Tits-on-the-Bottom, would send out laser beams from his nipple-covered keytar? Fuck yeah. And how he had that little space monkey who followed him around? What was that monkey's name again? I always call him "sweater monkey," but that's not it…

Oh, right! The Oh-Bang-O-Tang! Or "Bango The Space Monkey."

I hear they're making it into a movie. With Leo DiCaprio playing Johnny Tits-on-the-Bottom.

And Kathy Bates as Bango.

the writing machine of god

It's called the world. The world is God's typewriter. And we are his characters.

Actually, I'm just kidding. Just trying to be profound.

God writes on a Tandy 1000 SX.

Penmonkey Incitement: T-Shirt, Unlocked

And, bam.

The CERTIFIED PENMONKEY t-shirt is unlocked now that we've reached the "100″ mark for the PENMONKEY REEDUC… er, INCITEMENT PROGRAM.

(We're now at a total of 430 sold.)

What that means is, this t-shirt –

– will be sent to one lucky COAFPM procurer.

That PENMONKEY will be –

*is delivered an envelope by a whirring Doom-Bot*

Holly West!

Woo! *confetti, applause, buzzsaws*

And, because we hit the 100 mark, that also means: postcard.

That postcard goes to –

*drum roll using the skulls of my foes as drums, Ewok-style*

Lynda Kachurek!

If the both of you could e-mail me to confirm your mailing addresses, that would be super-sweet.

Remember: at certain "incitement procurement targets," awesome things (like cybernetic Dobermans) are released. If you need a reminder, the releases go according to this handy-dandy chart:

For every 50 sales, a postcard.

For every 100 sales, a t-shirt.

For every 200 sales, a copy-edit of your work (5000 words or 50 script pages).

For every 500 sales, a brand new Kindle.

Also, please note that if you haven't already done so, you need to send me proof of your purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com, so the Doom-Bots know to count you in subsequent incitement draws.

Though, if you bought COAFPM as PDF, you do not need to send it to me. I've got it covered.

Other Updatery-Doo

If you're so inclined to know how all the e-books are doing, stick around.

COAFPM (now with 12 great reviews at Amazon, and always seeking more) is doing very well. That $4.99 price point is a strong one. It allows me to see some bill-paying money come in without necessitating epic sales numbers — further, it allows me to do cool contests like the incitement program.

You can read a nice review of COAFPM here.

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING actually has the opposite going for it — I've already sold 350 copies in four days (compare that to the 430 sold for COAFPM over two months), but of course at $0.99 you only get 30% opposed to the 70% with slightly higher prices. But that's okay. This book is meant to whet people's appetites and force them to grow addicted to my "Chimp-on-PCP" style of writing and further increase in them a desire to don red robes and drink my hypnotic Flavor-Aid. (Remember, everybody: Reverend Jim Jones did not use Kool-Aid. Is it sick that I envision a wife trying to force feed her husband a cup of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and he's like "No — no!" and then the Kool-Aid Man comes cannonballing through the tent-flap and he's all like "OH YEAAAAHH"…?)

Seems like self-published authors are best served by a diversity of product and price point.

I might just be making that up, though. Don't quote me on it. You do what you like.

IRREGULAR CREATURES, my short story collection, is continuing its "slow and steady wins the race" approach. Getting near 750 sales, so I'm pretty happy about that. I'm even happier about the incredible reviews over at Amazon (38 of 'em so far, all surprisingly kind).

You can find a nice review of IC over at JD Rhodes' blog.

And I think that's all, folks.

If you got questions, comments, complaints, prayer requests, or wedding proposals, now's the time.

Flash Fiction Challenge: That's Right, I Said "Unicorn"

Last week's challenge — "An Uncharted Apocalypse" — had some amazing stories, so you should go check 'em out. I'm going to take the weekend pick my favorite five and then toss those five folks a copy of my newest e-book, 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

I like unicorns.

I mean, not in the sense that I have hundreds of unicorn collectibles on my shelves — *hurries to drop a blanket over my shelves* — it's just, dang, unicorns crack me up. A pretty white horse with a big horn sticking out of his head and, boom, that's it. Instant mythological favorite the world around. It's an absurd animal.

Real reason I talk about unicorns so much — *quick runs to tear down wall of unicorn posters — is that the "unicorn" represents that kind of bullshit special snowflake precious writer mystique, right? The same people who believe a glittery Muse is going to fill their heads with hot notions are the same people who probably believe a unicorn is how babies are made.

Unicorns are just really weird and really goofy.

*darts to closet, slams door before you can see the unicorn cosplay outfits*

Anyway.

Thus, it seems high time to have a unicorn-themed flash fiction challenge.

I want you to incorporate the unicorn into your 1000-word story.

I don't care how, but you get bonus points for thinking creatively or doing something different with the creature that we haven't seen or don't otherwise expect. Bring some attitude to it.

Any genre will do.

You've got one week. Friday, July 29th, by noon EST.

Get on it.

Oh! And this week, I'll pick one favorite.

That favorite will get all three of my e-books.

Peace in the Middle East, yo.

Laura Anne Gilman: The Terribleminds Interview

Twitter is serendipitous to me, because without it, I'd not have met or communicated with, well, pretty much anybody. I'd be alone in a clawfoot bathtub with a cat. And I don't own a cat. Point being, without Twitter I'd not have come into range of Laura Anne Gilman, once an editor, now a "write the hell out of some books" novelist. Writers, you best go ahead and read what she has to say. Let the interview commence. (Oh, and if you wanna follow her on the Twitters, you'll find her @LAGILMAN.)

This is a blog about writing and storytelling, so before we do anything else, I'd like you to tell me – and, of course, the fine miscreants and deviants that read this site – a story. As short or long as you care to make it, as true or false as you see it.

Three days ago the second squirrel arrived. We'd been lured into passivity by the first one, I suppose: it had seemed friendly enough, willing to stay on its side of the screen, not tormenting the cats more than normal. The tree-rats in our neighborhood are bright eyed and thick-coated, finding enough food to eat, supplemented by the little old ladies' bread crumbs and an occasional abandoned sandwich. You don't think of them as a threat.

That was before the second squirrel. Before we found the window screen cut away, and the peanut butter jar missing. As well as the smaller of the cats.

[some of this story is true. some of it is not. yet.]

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

…. um….. the bastard child of a haiku sensibility and a genre-rific childhood, as raised by literary-minded housecats? Beyond that, I leave it to future scholars to argue about it.

In truth, I've had so many influences growing up, it's hard for me to point to any two and say "there, that's it." Hemingway and Roger Zelazny, Dorothy Sayers and Robin McKinley, Robert Frost, Dashiell Hammett, Madeleine L'Engle and Raymond Carver were all on my shelves as a teenager. That was also when I started getting interested in haiku, in the idea of conveying something complex in a deceptively simple visual image or turn. So.. terse but lyrical is my goal, I suppose. Although that conflicts mightily with my love of the semi-colon….

What's awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

Writing. Head down, full-on, discovery-of-story. The kind of writing that makes you do a chair dance every so often, just because you're having so much fun.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

Everything else? No, really, the only thing that sucks about being a writer is the fact that so many people seem to think "anyone" can do it, that all it takes is an idea and some time. I'm not sure there's any other profession that gets that kind of dismissal. Maybe teaching. Which is a sad commentary on how literacy is treated, I guess…

Deliver unto us a single-serving dollop of writing or storytelling advice that you yourself follow as a critical tip without which you might starve and die atop a glacier somewhere:

I have this in the sidebar of my Livejournal, because it's so damn true:

"You sit down. You tell a story. You do it any damn way it comes out that works consistently for you. You hope people like it. You hope people pay you for it. You do it again. And again. That's all I got. Zen and the Art of Writer Maintenance. You can cheer me on and I can cheer you on, but in the end? In the end it's down to how you get your getting done, done. So get it done."

I say that everybody has their own story of "breaking in" and getting published — it's like we all dig our own tunnels and detonate them behind us. Any interesting tales from your rise to ascendancy as a creative penmonkey?

I find that a lot of people think that, because I was an editor, my route to publication was easy/simple/fast. Not so much. I sold my first short story to the first market I sent it to – Amazing Stories, back in the 1990′s – but that was it for over a year. And my first original novel, STAYING DEAD, went to all the major genre publishers at the time – seven, I think – and got some nice responses, but nobody was putting money on the table. One publisher asked me to rewrite chapters to see if it would work as a YA, but that didn't go anywhere. Then I was having lunch with an editor at a brand-new imprint, who had put out a call for historical fantasy – and I had submitted another project there – and I mentioned this book to her. "Send it," she said. A total flyer, and she had to do some fast talking, I suspect, to get it approved. That was *counts* ten books ago, and we have another two under contract, all in the same universe. Right place, right time, right project. And the right editor. That's pretty much been the story of my career so far.

You've got experience as an editor — so, what's one mistake you see too many writers making in their manuscripts?

Oh, we're creative, we make all SORTS of mistakes….. Not trusting ourselves and not pushing hard enough, that's a big'un. No matter what you're writing, second-guessing the market and trying to keep it 'familiar' is always going to hurt you far more than being "too original" or "too …" anything, really. We're goddamned WRITERS, we CREATE. Even if you're writing to formula, twist it! Give the story something new, something specifically yours. Or why bother doing it at all?

Whoops. Starting waving my hands a bit there. Never a good sign. Did I knock over your glass?

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

Just one? Without any context? Aww… Verklempt. Mainly because it's fun to say, and so evocative. Favorite curse word is motherfucker. It's rounded, with real weight, and conveys so many different meanings depending on the tone of voice used. really, a multipurpose tool.

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

Wine. A crisp, flinty white, or a red with a lot of complexity and depth… I like my wines to acknowledge their tannins, invite them in and make them feel welcome. I can talk endlessly about wine, so this is your warning to shut me up now or that's all we're going to talk about for the rest of the interview…

Yeah, I'm known for drinking Scotch* whisky, too, but that's my 'working' drink, when I want to keep focused. Wine is social, expansive.

*and Irish whiskey and American bourbon and…

Fuck it, let's talk about wine. Recommend me a nice red, but a red that goes well with summer.

For warm weather reds, I like Zinfandel for picnics – it's a warm, fruit-forward taste that goes well with bbq (I'm talking real Zin here, not that pink stuff they sell.) But that's a bolder taste, and most folk prefer the lighter reds, that take well to being served lightly chilled (yes, you can chill some red wines). You want something young, with a lowerish alcohol rating (under 12%), ideally aged in steel, not wood. Rioja (Spain), and Beaujolais (France) are the first I'd think of, and then Pinot Noir (France/NZ/US). You could also try a Pinotage (SA).

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

Leverage (the tv show). Great stories, told not only with words but visuals – the body languages of the actors, the camera shots chosen by the directors, even the choice of stories, and the white spaces in-between, where what they DIDN'T do is strongly implied… it all creates this amazing package that kept me – who usually has a very short attention span when it come to tv – fascinated. And there's an evolving arc – not in terms of "this is the story," but "these are the people in the story."

Where are my pants?

That's between you and your dog. er, god.

Got anything to pimp? Now's the time!

Two things. okay, four things, but only two am I really going to be pimptastic about.

The first is DRAGON VIRUS. I'm still not sure if it's a collection of short stories connected by a narrative thread, or a very odd novella spanning 100+ years. It's SFnal horror with a literary edge, and one of those projects that are only possible because of small presses (in this instance, Fairwood Press). Not for everyone (if you're looking for puppies and kittens and rainbows it ain't here), but the people who have liked it have really really liked it.

The second is Practical Meerkat. This is a weekly column I'm doing for Book View Cafe, the full title being "Practical Meerkat's 52 Bits of Useful Info for Young (and Old) Writers." Each week, for a year, I approach a different aspect of writing – both craft and business-side, gleaned form my experience as an editor (15 years) and a writer (going on 17 years now, published). At the end of the year all the essays will be collected & polished into an e-book, so you don't have to worry about keeping up if life (and writing) gets busy.

The other two things, of course, are The Vineart War, my Nebula-nominated epic fantasy trilogy (the third and final book, THE SHATTERED VINE, will be out in October 2011), and the Cosa Nostradamus urban fantasy series (most recently PACK OF LIES), which combines caper novels and police procedurals with modern magic in New York City. Guaranteed vampire-free UF! You can find samples to read on my website and via my publishers (Harlequin and S&S.) (Also, here's an Amazon link to all her work — cdw.)

DRAGON VIRUS lives on at a small press. (I'm a fan of small presses — I think they can move and turn fast in response to industry shifts.) Publishing right now is in a crazy place. Care to predict where books and authors and publishing will be in five, ten years? In case you choose not to answer that, I'll remind you that I've strapped a bomb to the underside of your chair.

I've been saying for several years now (usually into the ears of people saying la la la can't hear you) that small press, big press, and digital are going to become equal partners, much the same way that hardcover and mass market did, decades ago (Most people in publishing today have always worked with mass market, but I've heard stories about how the hardcover folk panicked at this upstart…much the same way trad publishers reacted at first to digital). One format isn't going to 'wipe out' the other, not the way some partisans are predicting. The companies that survive are either going to pick one and specialize, or learn to spread their costs over both print and digital.

Self-publishing is popular right now, and both the process and the market are chaotic as hell, but in about 3-5 years it's going to shake out and take its place within the overall publishing structure described above, rather than dismantling it.

The one thing I believe will continue is the role of the editor. Self-publishing is the buzzword now, but the larger that pool grows, the more there will be a need for a story to stand out to succeed. You have to be offer something more than average, more than merely "good," when there's competition. The much-maligned gatekeepers were one way that happened – now I could easily see the editor coming back into use as that gatekeeper, rather than a publisher's brand.

I certainly think that would be a good thing, for both writers and readers.

What's wrong with fantasy and/or urban fantasy today? Anything you'd like to cast a wary gaze at? If a new writer is looking to work in those genres, where could they go wrong?

Too many people coming in, thinking that UF is A, and only A. The wonderful thing about contemporary fantasy is that it's incredibly inclusive – you can range from the unromantic tough-edged adventures all the way to the overtly romantic, from dark to light, male and female main characters, big cities or small towns, etc. But too often people identify "urban fantasy" as kickass babe in leather, with vampire/were companion," and that's only one slice out of the pie. Mind you, that's the slice that seems to get all the press… but there's room for so much more, and if we narrow in, we risk becoming a parody of everything that was originally good and fresh and interesting.

Fantasy has an incredible opportunity to be whatever it wants. You're not stuck to a specific type of story, or a frame of reference. The fantastical elements should be restricted only by the plausibility of your worldbuilding.