Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 269

Of Google-Plus And Circle-Jerks, Part II

Google+ grows on me like a fungus. Like a scaly patch of ringworm, I can't stop itching it.

I don't really know why. I think in part I'm scratching to peel away layers, to dig beneath the rashy skin and find the potential buried beneath — because, at this point, I'm growing convinced that some real potential is there. But I'm also growing convinced that most of that potential is too hard to see and isn't yet manifested.

*itch itch itch, scratch scratch scratch*

Let's rip through the meat with our fingernails and see what else we find.

Caveat: Twitter Is My Main Gal

Twitter isn't for everyone. I get that. But it's definitely my one true social media gal pal. It took the formula put out by Myspace and Facebook and flipped it on its ear. Twitter is the beat poetry version of social media. It's some crass noisy combination of soapbox-shouting, flea-market-hawking, carnival-barking, stand-up-joke-telling, and haiku-having. It's got the motion and madness of a city street with all its sounds and smells. Twitter is ever the low but persistent hum. I merely need to tune into its Zen frequencies for a time. It requires no massive investment. It demands little of me. I splash about in its waters like a spider monkey who has never before played in the ocean. Splish-splash.

But — but!

Twitter is shit for conversation.

It's great for banter.

But conversation necessitates deeper investment, complexity, and nuance… and Twitter just doesn't do that well. You ever see two people have a long protracted discussion on Twitter? It's like watching two bricks tumble around in a washing machine. And Zeus forbid that the conversation suck in more than two people. Then it becomes the clumsiest gang-bang you've ever seen. ("Is someone wearing an oven-mitt on their dick? Is that a nose tickling my perineum? Who let the peacock in here? It smells like peanut oil.")

Imagine tuning two different radios to different shows and having those shows "converse."

Doesn't really work out so well.

And so, I give you, Google+.

The Googlecrucians Want You To Converse

G+ is setup for you to converse. It's like one big forum — whereas Twitter and Facebook limit the length of updates and comments, Goo-Goo-Plus has no such interest. It wants you to fill the space with your words, and it wants other people to fill the space, too. "GO AHEAD," the Lords of Google are saying. "SPEAK AT LENGTH WITHOUT RESERVATION. YOU HAVE THIS ENTIRE BLEAK DESERT OF POWDERY WHITENESS IN WHICH TO BLOVIATE. THE LEASH IS OFF. YOU DOGS MAY RUN FREE."

And that's awesome.

In theory.

It's not quite working for me. Not yet. It can! I can see it coming together and working — while the brownies here are definitely soft in the middle, this remains a beta release and is sure to grow and change.

Here's the first thing that's not working for me, though: a big conversation is like a fire circle or a parliamentary session. It's a rock around which you sit — a stable, single location that people come to where they can join into the conversation or just sit back and listen. This blog functions like that. It's a static location in the digital space-time continuum — you come to me, I don't come to you.

But G+ doesn't work like that. It, like so many other social media sites, is a stream, ever-flowing. Which means the conversations are always moving downstream, which means those conversations are hard to grab hold of, hard to track — it's like I'm constantly trying to grab hold of a slippery length of intestine and it just keeps squidging free from my grip. ("Squidging" is a word. Say different and I'll sic the hounds upon you.) Imagine if those aforementioned fire circles and parliamentary sessions were all on rafts, and we were all traveling together down a raging river. Yelling at one another.

The conversations at G+ are just plain hard to track — at least, in my estimation. (I'm kind of a dipshit, though, so keep that in mind.) Harder still when they become big, swollen discussions.

Rob Donoghue — the ever-wise — noted that, at present, G+ is built around people, but what if, instead, it were built around conversations? As in, that's what you tune into more than the people who host the discussion? Right? That's how forums work, but forums are often craptacular.

Can G+ give rise to The Ultimate Forum?

Maybe. But it's not there, yet.

Mostly, I find myself looking at big conversations there and thinking, "I'm glad people are having them." And then I click away and don't read the conversation because a nap sounds better.

Ways To Enhance The Conversation

Here, then, are some ways that Guh-Pluh can advance the way the site deals with conversation:

1.) The notifications are too much. The site's like a needy puppy with these things, constantly getting muddy pawprints all over my — well, not my pants, since I don't wear those, so let's just go with "hirsute calves." Half the time the notifications are about dead useless anyway. "Nobody has added anything to the conversation! Look! +1!" Since notifications have become noise, I've tuned them out — not ideal for following the flow.

2.) Threaded (or is it nested?) comments. Allow me to reply to a comment, not just the post. Further, let me break away into little sub-conversations if need be. I pull you three and we go into this other digital room disconnected from the main and we sit there and chat about whatever it is.

3.) I want a rope to pull myself back to the conversation. Blogs are great for this. If I know a conversation is going on at a blog post I like, I can just wander back there with a link. I need that here, too. In fact, Rob Donoghue earlier posted that thing about conversations only in Google-Plus, which means I can't link to it like a blog. I can't say, "You, dear reader, go look at that."

4.) Speakawhich, I pray to Internet Jesus and melt a motherboard on his altar that Google+ does not become a source of blogging. First of all, G+ is, at present, so spare it's somewhat ugly. It's a Spartan, utilitarian space with all the flavor of a Communist bread dole. I like that blogs are part of the personalities of their keepers. I don't mind if they're "connected," but so far, reading big chunks of text on Google-Plus is about as pleasurable as reading legal documents. (Sidenote: this is true of e-books, too. I long for the day that the Kindle, f'rex, allows books to have their own look again. It'll happen, I just don't know when.) A weird little part of me wonders if we go back to the Myspace-like customization within reason. Which leads me to a site that already does that well…

5.) Tumblr needs to get on over here and inject its Tumblrian DNA into the Googlecrucian experience. I actually like Tumblr a lot, but have tuned it out in favor of Google+ simply because of time commitment. That's a shame, because Tumblr was something different, where for now, G+ is mostly "more of the same." (I know, people are going to tell me that G+ is a revolution. Not yet, it ain't. It's Facebook 2.0.) Tumblr allows the sharing of content lickity-split, and further, Tumblr allows for connected and easily-customized blogs. Where Tumblr fails is — drum roll please — conversation. And so I demand that G+ and Tumblr have SOCIAL MEDIA BABIES. Go on, you two. Here's a room. One of you is ovulating — I can smell your Internet ovum. Have some lube. Go at it, jungle cats.

6.) Circles haven't really worked for me yet. Well, correction — they work to let me break apart my social media flow into littler "radio stations," so on that front? Total success. But in terms of enhancing conversation, not so much. Part of it is that in terms of broadcasting, I have no guarantee The Circle I Choose is even listening. Going back to that fire circle or parliamentary session image, I'm at the podium but I'm blindfolded. My audience might be nowhere to be found. Sometimes it's be nice if circles operated like "opt-in" groups — "Hey, this is my book club circle, and we're all in, and we can all see one another."

7.) I hate to say it, but I want Wave back. Wave was a great idea that failed to perform. It was like saying, "I'm creating a teleportation device" but what you got was a giant catapult that "teleported" you into a concrete wall. But what Wave promised was actually pretty awesome — "Hey, let's you and me and whoever else get into this little pocket of Internet space and just fucking communicate." It was some gallumphing mutation featuring strains of chat, e-mail, and social media — it just failed to come together. I want that back. I want it jacked into G+. I want to be able to pull people into that space and have those kinds of conversations that are disconnected from the larger stream. We shouldn't have to "follow" each other as circle-jerks to have a conversation.

8.) Bring all parts together. Right now, to me, G+ is a Frankenstein Monster of limbs welded together with lightning but the bolts, staples and solder-marks still show. I don't know what these pieces are doing together. In a conversation I need the ability to say, "Fuck it, we're doing a Hangout right now, just you people in this discussion." I need the ability for Sparks to generate from the chatter I'm making, not from topics I choose. I need the ability to hand-pick people and say, "Let's get into a space where we can draw on the digital walls like white-space and collaborate on some stuff." I need it to be more than Facebook.

It Will Be, If The Lords Of Google Will It (And The Creek Don't Rise)

My estimation of Baby Huey's Gooey Kablooey (Plus!) has risen considerably since I posted my last rant — but that estimation is based almost solely upon speculation. It's built on the promise of the site more than the current incarnation. Because right now? It's just more of the same. I know, I know — IT'S A REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL MED… stop that. Just stop. You can't make something a revolution just by saying it's a revolution. I can't just say, "There's a revolution in my pants!" and when you get there, it's just a plain old dangling wang down there. No worker's rights or health care for everybody — just a regular penis doing regular penis things. Like playing badminton. Or watching the BBC.

Right now Google+ is stumbling around like a newborn fawn because… well, it is a newborn fawn. Again: that bitch is in beta. I have confidence that, if the Googlecrucians continue their devotion to the site, in a year's time you won't use it like you use Facebook. It's just… right now, I'm using it like I use Facebook. Outside of the Hangout (with my Wangout), I don't see anything all that special at present. That means we've a pretty significant redundancy in the system.

I suspect the way we make Google+ better and help them bring these disconnected pieces together is by telling them what we think. The Lords of Google have been responsive so far.

Which is a good sign, and another glimpse of promise.

I thought about putting together a "Google-Plus For Writers" post, by the way, but once again, outside the Hangout, I don't know if there's any there there, yet. (Though, it may be worth asking what G+ could become for writers… what would writers want out of it?)

We shall see.

In the meantime, you will continue to find me on Twitter.

Anyway. Feel free to add your thoughts. How's Gee-Plus doing for you?

25 Ways To Defeat The Dreaded Writer's Block

Switching gears from the "25 Things" series (which is now neatly compiled in an e-book cheaper than a bottle of water of a hobo handy) and segueing into a more practical "25 Ways" list.

I do not believe in writer's block. I believe it shares the same intellectual space as the bogeyman in your closet, as the serial killer under the bed. The more you fear it, the more it gains power. To be clear, I do believe that writers can be blocked, that writers can have bad days where the intellectual plumbing feels gummed up by an old diaper filled with soggy fruitcake — I just don't believe this is unique to the writer. Everybody gets blocked. Everybody gets frustrated. Everybody can have a bad day where the brain-squeezin's just won't get squozen.

Even still, while the problem may not be unique, the solutions often are.

And so that's what we're tackling today.

Ready? Let's crotch-kick writer's block so hard, it tastes the poodle crap we stepped in on the way over.

1. Write Through It

You are confronted by a tangle of jungle vines and Amazonian thicket. The only way forward is forward. You have a machete. What do you do? You chop, motherfucker. Take the blade. Start hacking. Won't be fun. Won't be fast. But it's the only way to gain ground. Your first way through writer's block is just to write. Clench your jaw. Tighten your sphincter. And write. The key is to write badly if you must. Write without regard for quality or care. Flail about with your word-machete until the tangle is clear.

2. Write Through It, Part II: All Work And No Play

This is the same as the first but bears special mention: sometimes it's not even about writing words in your story, sometimes it's about just writing. Writer's block is often about jarring loose stubborn bullshit — it feels like you're trying to pull teeth out of a meth-cranked raccoon, but that's an act of finesse. Put down the pliers, get out the hammer. Start swinging. Write crazy. Write big. Write insane. All work and no play makes writer-monkey a twitchy serial murderer. Write one word over and over. One sentence. One paragraph. Don't worry about what you're writing. Turn on the spigot. Let the madness flow.

3. The Blood Must Flow

Science lesson. Blood carries nutrients to your brain. One of those nutrients is imagozen, the vitamin that governs our imagination. I may just be making that up. But there's some truth there: we do need good blood-flow to the brain to think clearly. Been sitting on your ass a while? All the blood and sweet, sweet imagozen is pooling in your ass-parts. Get up. Move around. Take a walk. Exercise. Do some push-ups. Hell, have sex. You gotta love a guy who will tell you to solve writer's block by "banging it out." Right? No, seriously, you have to love me. Take off your pants. Mine are already on the floor. LOVE ME.

4. Stick Energy Drink Up Ass, Tighten Buttocks Until High-Octane Enema Occurs

I am not actually recommending an energy drink enema, just so we're clear. I will not be held liable for the embarrassing X-rays that make it onto the Internet. What I am saying is, caffeine? It's your buddy. Caffeine can give your brain a much-needed jolt, as if from those electrified paddles. CLEAR. Bzzt. Start with tea. Tea has a mellower edge than coffee. That doesn't work, try coffee. Mmm. Coffee. Speaking of — *slurrrp*

5. Booze Booze Booze Booze Booze *vomits*

Caffeine creates tension. But maybe what you need is recoil. Could be that you're just too ratcheted up to write. No problem. Switch your chemical dance partner. From caffeine to liquor. I'm not saying you should make a habit of writing drunk — in fact, I'm suggesting you write merely tipsy. Whatever amount of alcohol lubricates your social gears may also lubricate your writing gears. Just this once. Just to ooze past this block. To get your mind chatting up the birds at the word-bar.

6. Chatty Cathy, Don't Clip Those Strings

Talk to yourself. Seriously. Use your mouth. Vocalize words. Have a conversation with yourself. Talk about the story. Talk about what's clogging the pipes. Yammer away like a crazy person. (For bonus points: do so at a public bus terminal.) If you're so inclined, record the conversation. Label the file, "MY MANIFESTO." E-mail to all the newspapers.

7. Reach Out And Touch Somebody

Perhaps a masturbatory chat with yourself isn't quite enough. Fine. Find another human being (or, if you're reading this after the year 2018, find a sentient appliance bot, like the Dishflenser 500, or the Toast-Aborter v2.0) and have this chat with them. Talk out your problem. Get their input. Human interaction can go a long way toward jarring loose whatever grubby suppository is stuck up inside your narrative butthole.

8. Converse With Your Imaginary Friend

This one will make you certifiable, so don't perform it in front of any sensitive family members. But take one of your characters, and talk to them. Out loud or on the page. Do a little role-playing. (And any writer who hasn't engaged in a little role-playing — either the kind with dice or the kind with a librarian's outfit and an orangutan mask — is missing out on learning how to let your fiction find its path.)

9. Fuck With The Feng Shui

Get up off your ass. Pack up your writing. Go elsewhere. Across the room. To the kitchen table. To a Starbucks. To a Jersey rest-stop. Hell, wander outside, do some writing there. Sometimes just the change of scenery is enough to free the word-demons from their restrictive cages.

10. Tinker With The Guts

You ever get lost while traveling? "We're supposed to be at the Aquarium. And yet here we are, atop an ancient hill, trapped inside a giant wicker effigy, surrounded by torch-wielding cultists. I think we took a wrong turn somewhere, honey. Sorry, kids." Sometimes you have to backtrack. Find out where things went awry. So too with your fiction. Read back. Find where you fucked up. Your reluctance to continue writing may be born of the unconscious discomfort that something in your tale is wrong, like a picture hanging askew on the wall. Go back. Straighten the picture.

11. You Need A Motherfizzucking Map

It can be hard to see the forest for the trees when writing a big project. You feel like you're wandering in the swamp, walking in weeds as high as your ears. Do you have a map? Probably not. Listen, some writers are pantsers. They love to operate off the narrative grid. You may not be one of them. Go back. Write an outline. Beat out the story the way you'd beat a confession out of a perp. Know where you've been and discover where you're going and then go back and write. Sometimes writer's block is just you missing the big picture.

12. Throw The Map In A Bag And Burn It

Alternately, maybe you need to pants it a little. Maybe you're too married to an outline that just isn't tickling your pink parts anymore. Fine. Fuck it. Throw caution to the wind. It's time to do something dramatic. Christa Faust has a killer tattoo that cuts to the heart of it: "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." That's a specific example, but you can blow up the story however you choose. Fire! Death! Betrayal! Cataclysm! Deception! Adultery! Whatever it is, take the map you've written, wrap it around a hand grenade, and shove it up the story's ass. CHOOM. Harvest the sweet story blubber.

13. Put Lipstick On That Monkey

Sometimes, a cosmetic change goes a long way. Me? I'm a font whore. I like to find the right font that fits well with my story. Yes, this is ludicrous. Yes, this is a waste of time. Yes, I do it anyway. And once I take 30 minutes to find the right font, the story's style locks for me. Try it. Or maybe you mess with margins. Or line spacing. Or you choose to write long-hand. Or carve your story into the back of a hooker corpse. Your call.

14. A-Scripting-We-Will-Go

Depart from your narrative, and turn your fiction into a script. Just for now. Just for the part that's blocking you. Of course, if you're already writing a script, then do the reverse — switch it up and move into the more languid and longer form afforded by prose. Again, this "switching of gears" can uncage the story-bears. By the way, "uncage the story-bear" is the metaphor I choose when I proclaim I am about to make love. I walk into the room, I scratch my beard, unmoor my pants, and I announce that in a booming voice. I just wanted to let you in on that part of my life. Thank me later.

15. Dear Missus Frittershire

Familiar with the epistolary? Any story that takes the form of a series of documents is considered epistolary. The novel might manifest as a collection of letters, e-mails, newspaper clippings, diary entries, tweets, the ravings of an impudent spam-bot, etc;. Try this out. I don't mean for the whole story. But for today, try writing through your writer's block by embracing this form. "Today, my character will write a blog entry." "I will use the art of the takeout Chinese menu to tell this story." Shit, you never know.

16. Wander Down An Alley

Er, not literally. I will not be held responsible if you are captured and eaten by Oscar the Grouch. (You gotta watch that guy. Terrible hungers.) Let's say you're writing a novel. Let's say you're banging your head on that novel the way a bumblebee bats his head against the window-glass. I want you to take the protagonist, or some aspect of the storyworld, and deviate. Write some flash fiction, maybe a short story, some ancillary, tacked-on, doesn't-connect-directly-to-the-novel story. Indirect, yes. Direct, no. Take today and write only that. It may open doors for the larger project at hand.

17. Kill The Shiny

As modern souls we are besieged by distractions. Text messages and tweets and spam-bots and porn and TV-on-demand and cyber-LSD and digital cupcakes and only the gods know what else. Escape the gravity of your own distractions. Turn it off. Power it down. Use a program like Mac Freedom or Write Or Die. Close the door on all the piffling, waffling, middling bullshit and make sure it's just you and the word count.

18. Hear A Buzzer, Start To Drool

Tell yourself, "If I write 1000 words, I get [fill-in-the-blank]." Doesn't matter what it is. Ice cream? Another cup of coffee? An hour of television? A jet-boat made of pony bones? Like I said: whatever. But establishing a reward gives you motivation to do the one thing that really defeats writer's block: writing through the anguish and coming out the other side. Covered in blood. And smiling.

19. The Penmonkey Diet

Carbs are great if you're going to be, y'know, using that energy for something like, say, moving your laggardly slugabed body around. But writers live a sedentary existence, at least while working, and so it behooves you not to hoover a bowl of Corn Pops into your gut. Do that and the carbs will only drag you down, make you mentally foggy. Stick with protein while writing. By the way, bacon is protein. Just saying.

20. Hop Around Like A Coked-Up Jackrabbit

Nobody said you had to write your work in order. I like to write in sequence for the most part just because it keeps me on point — but if I'm at a section I'm just not "feeling" that day, I'll skip around, write something else. "I want to write a fight scene between two stompy robots," I'll say. Hell, you're the god of the story. You may experience it in whatever order you so choose.

21. Get Visual

I like to take photos. Or fuck around with Photoshop. You think I haven't been vain enough to do up fake book covers for my as-yet-unpublished books? Oh, I have. Point is, sometimes writer's block is just about flexing those creative muscles on the right side of your brain. Hell, you fingerpaint poop on your Plexiglass enclosure like I do and that counts. Seriously. Look, I drew a monkey! The flies are his eyes.

22. Down The Rabbit Hole Of Research

Research can be a trigger to get you moving again. No matter what you're writing about, you will always find more to know, and in this case research qualifies as a "good" distraction as long as you keep a relative focus. You play it right, research can be the key that unlocks whatever mental door got slammed shut.

23. Recognize Why You Don't Want To Write This Part

Sometimes you get stuck on a part and are too stubborn to do anything about it, so you just stand there and stare it down, growling and stomping your feet. Here's a secret: maybe that part you're stuck on is a part you just don't want to write. And if you don't want to write it, what are the chances that someone might not want to read it? You know what you do? Skip it. Kill it. Move past it. Find another way through.

24. Fuck Off For A Day, Willya?

You get one day. One. Free pass. No writing today. Just flit away, little butterfly. Flit, flit, flit. Clear your head. Have some fun. Tomorrow the work returns. The block, undone. Or it damn well better be.

25. Deny The Existence Of Writer's Block

If you're being skewered by a unicorn, the secret is: tell the unicorn he doesn't exist. If you do that, he'll disappear in a puff of Lucky Charms cereal. That's true. That's fact. Same thing goes for writer's block. If it's assailing you, an incubus clinging to your back, you just tell that mythological being that you don't believe in him. You do that, you steal his power. Suck his breath away. Make him turn to so much vapor. You have to harden your heart and your head against it and believe that the one way through is that old saw that everybody repeats but they always forget: writers write. That's the one tried and true way through writer's block. Because a writer who writes isn't blocked, is he?

* * *

Like this brand of booze-soaked, caffeine-addled, salty-tongued writing advice? Then I might recommend you take a look at 250 Things You Should Know About Writing and Confessions Of A Freelance Penmonkey, both available now. Please to enjoy.

250 Things You Should Know About Writing: Now Available

Psst.

Psssst.

*gesticulates wildly in or near your field of vision*

I HAVE SHAT ANOTHER E-BOOK INTO THE WORLD.

*receives notes from handler*

Oh. I'm supposed to be more upbeat? More market-savvy? Oh. Oh. That makes sense. Let's try this.

I SQUATTED IN YOUR DIGITAL TRENCH AND BIRTHED ANOTHER ELECTRONIC WORD BABY.

Better? Excellent.

I give unto thee, 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

Let's right now just get your options for procurement outta the way…

Kindle (US): Buy Here

Kindle (UK): Buy Here

Nook: Buy Here

Or, buy the PDF ($0.99) by clicking the BUY NOW button:

(Note that buying the PDF is through Paypal. Paypal will tell me you've procured the e-book and then you'll get an email from me — usually within 15 minutes — with the book attached. The only caveat is, if I cannot access a computer — like, say, when I'm asleep? — then the file will have to wait until I can drag my draggy ass out of bed and send it to you.)

Now that we've gotten that out of the way…

What In The King Hell Is This?

Remember those "25 Things" lists I've been doing? This is those, compiled. With four new lists.

You may be saying, "Gee whillikers, Wendig, that's not enough to convince me. Can't you do better?" I can, and will. And also: don't say gee whillikers. This is a NSFW site, and I demand you use proper profanity like the booze-brined penmonkey you're supposed to be. Instead of "gee whillikers," let's try, "By the fuck-hammer of Odin's bastard cock, Wendig, that's not enough to convince me."

1. A Sticky Faceload of Value Adds

Contained within you'll find, "25 Things You Should Know About…"

… Being A Writer!

… Writing A Novel!

… Storytelling!

… Character!

… Dialogue!

… Plot!

… Editing/Revising/Rewriting!

And you'll also find four brand new lists, comprising roughly 10,000 words:

"25 Things You Should Know About…"

… Writing A Fucking Sentence!

… Writing A Screenplay!

… Description!

… Getting Published!

Features such new "things" as:

Beware The Sentence With A Big Ass, I Want To Buy The Semi-Colon A Private Sex Island, The Publishing Dog You Choose To Be, Atmospheric Description Burns Like Alien Syphilis, Too Many Characters Foul The Orgy, and Pricking The Reader's Oculus With This Grim And Gleaming Lancet.

Now, those pesky mathologists among you will do some quick accounting on the abacus that is your "fingers and toes," and you will discover that this equals 11 lists, not 10. And 11 x 25 is not 250.

It's actually 275.

Which means that, yes, the title is a total lie. But let's be honest — "250 Things" sounds much better. Right? Right. Plus, that way I can say, "25 bonus tips to penetrate your quivering eyeholes!"

Everybody likes bonus shit. You know who doesn't? Al Qaeda.

2. Cheaper Than A Dollar

You can't buy much for a dollar in this lifetime. It costs more to buy a jar of goddamn jelly. And if you're like me, that jar of jelly isn't going to last long. You're a jellyhead. I can smell the pectin on you. Look at you twitching for your next fix. Sticky fingers? Mm-hmm. I know the signs. "C'mon, man. I'll take store-brand! Store-brand! I'm Jonesing for my jam, bro."

That jelly is temporary. But my dung-cart full of writing wisdom is forever. Or, at least, it is until the Great EMP of 2016 wipes out the electronic memory of All Computers Everywhere. Oops.

This book is one cent cheaper than a dollar. That's cheaper than a Lady Gaga single.

(Also note that eventually, I'll raise the price to $2.99. So get in while the gettin's good.)

3. If You Don't Buy It, I'll Eat This Baby

No, seriously. Look. See that cute cherubic baby? The one who looks terrified? Yeah. You don't buy it, I'm going to have to eat him. Gobble him right up. Won't be difficult — he's very small, and so cute and sweet he probably tastes like a Jolly Rancher candy. Or maybe a churro. Mmm. Churro. Anyway. The point is, I've got a baby. A baby who needs to eat, not a baby who needs to be eaten. You can help make that call. For just the price of a cup of cheap gas station coffee, you can prevent me from cannibalizing my own progeny.

If You Are Compelled By Black Magic To Do More, More, More

As always, the two biggest ways of supporting the book are as follows:

a) Tell people via the various social media iterations (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and whatever other social media site comes popping its head out of an Internet bolthole).

b) Leave a review, whether at Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, or your own blog.

I would also be obliged to remind you that I have another book about writing advice, COAFPM, or CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY. I would also remind you that currently my Whirring Doom-Bots have a "Penmonkey Incitement Program," where the more copies I sell of that book, the greater rewards I give out. For every 50 sales, I send out a postcard. For every 100, I give away a t-shirt. For every 200, I offer a copy-edit of someone's work. For every 500, I will give away a Kindle. If I sell a billion, I will eat my weight in gold medallions.

What Comes After This?

COAFPM is selling well, and if this also sells well, you'll probably see more books on writing from Yours Truly. I may also cobble together a small book of humorous essays if I find that interest exists. Finally, I've got a series of novellas I plan to self-publish — the first draft of the first is done, now working on edits and an outline for the second novella.

In November, I've got DOUBLE DEAD coming out with Abaddon. Then in May I've got BLACKBIRDS with Angry Robot. The follow-up to that, MOCKINGBIRDS, will hit… er, sometime thereafter.

My Gratitude Gambols About Like A Randy Goat

Regardless, just wanted to say thanks to any who buy the book and continue supporting me not eating my baby. I mean, supporting my ever-growing bourbon habit. I mean, supporting a lone penmonkey just wriggling through the publishing trenches. You know what I mean.

Flash Fiction Challenge: An Uncharted Apocalypse

Last week's challenge — "The Lady And The Swordsman" — demands your eyeballs.

The Apocalypse.

The end of the world. The end of days. The end times.

Armageddeon Ragnarok 2012, blah blah blah.

We know how the Apocalypse comes, how it all ends. Meteors, tsunamis, earthquakes, plague. It's been done a thousand times before. Nobody's really bringing anything new to the apocalyptic table.

Oh, except you.

Here's your task: I want to see flash fiction set in a very unconventional, never-before-seen apocalypse. A Create Your Own End Times kinda story. Get as creative as you want. I want the world to end — or be in the middle of ending — in a way we've never seen before.

In this story, we want the characters to say, "Whoa, we didn't see that coming."

Humor, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, tragedy, literary, whatever. Go nuts.

Once again: 1000 words and one week to fill them. Get your tales done by Friday, July 22nd at noon EST. Post them at your blog, then share the link here in the comments.

Tell us how the world ends, will you?

Oh — and this week, we've got prizes again. This time, I'm going to pick my five favorite and toss them a PDF copy of my as-yet-unreleased e-book, 250 Things You Should Know About Writing, which is a collection of ten (well, technically eleven, shut up) of my 25 Things lists from this site.

Now: unveil the end of days as only you can write it.

Stephen Blackmoore: The Terribleminds Interview

Like I tried to make clear last week — I know some awesome motherfuckers. Case in point? Stephen Blackmoore. Mister Blackmoore is a writer after my own heart. Wit like a lash. He'll talk booze. He'll talk games. Best of all, the guy's an incredible writer. I'm lucky to call him a friend. I'm also lucky to have read both his upcoming DAW releases, CITY OF THE LOST, and DEAD THINGS. The former is going to knock your socks off. The latter is somehow, mysteriously, inexplicably even better — that book is going to knock your head off. And then, with your burbling throathole, you're going to say, "Can I have some more?" Anyway. Blackmoore — whose blog, LA NOIR, is worth checking out as it details the grim and grimy side of Los Angeles — decided to submit for intellectual processing at the Terribleminds Enlightenment Center.

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.

I had this roommate one time. Squat, little homunculus of a guy from Boston. It was me, him and a mutual friend. So I move in and he's the Mystery Roommate. He's away for the first three months I live there. I never meet him. But the Mutual Friend tells me he's cool, so, whatever.

So, he finally shows up. Nice enough guy. Kind of evasive. He's been "away" the last few months. That's all he'll say. "Away."

So I ask the Mutual Friend, "Hey, why's he so weird about talking about where he's been?" I mean, I don't care one way or the other, but if somebody doesn't want to tell me something really innocuous and simple, chances are it ain't so innocuous and simple.

"Oh," she says. "He's been in jail."

This being news of the sort I'd normally like to have BEFORE I move in with somebody, I ask, "For what?"

Turns out his girlfriend broke up with him about a year before and he shows up on her front lawn coked to the gills, crying and screaming her name.

And naked.

So picture this overweight, pasty white, Jewish guy running in a panic through Mar Vista with his junk flapping in the breeze and a couple LAPD officers on his ass flipping coins as to which one of them will have the unfortunate honor of having to take him down.

Now everybody has a bad turn every once in a while, right? It happens. You're lonely, your heart's broken, you've just done a couple monster rails of Peruvian flake.

You're gonna go a little crazy.

As it turns out, though, this isn't the first time, or even the second. Seems he's got an issue with, shall we say, self expression.

Now I don't really give a damn if he's been in jail or has some issues. Everybody's got issues. I got no problem with crazy as long as it doesn't chuck furniture at my head or try to shank me in the middle of the night.

All things considered, though, he wasn't that bad a roommate.

And the best part about it was that he was really paranoid.

No, really. Paranoid people are great, See, they overthink everything. Spend days figuring out what every little thing means. They're constantly overanalyzing, trying to figure out all the angles.

That makes them very easy to fuck with.

Mystery Roommate and I had largely separate schedules. Weeks might go by before we saw each other. I'd leave before he got home and he'd leave before I got home.

He had this cheap, cardboard chess set with plastic pieces that he stuck in the living room with the idea that he was going to play with, fuck I dunno, the voices in his head or something.

So one morning as I'm walking out the door, I stop and I move a pawn.

When I get home that night I see that he's moved a pawn.

So I move one of my pieces. Along the lines of, "I think a Knight on that square would really pull the room together."

I hate chess. I know how to play it, sure, but it's like watching golf. My idea of a great chess move is to scream "Checkmate", kick my opponent in the nuts and light the board on fire. I'm not actually paying any attention to the game.

I won three times.

So one night when our schedules actually synced up he starts talking about chess. Gambits, openings, defenses and I don't know what the fuck he's going on about.

Turns out he's been spending hours at a time analyzing my game. Trying to figure out what I'm doing. What my next move might be. And when he thinks he's got me figured out, BAM! I change the game on him. One second I'm doing some weird Bobbie Fischer shit and the next I'm playing like a goddamn monkey.

He's convinced I'm some sort of chess genius.

He asks me what my strategy is.

So I tell him.

Next day I find the torn up chess board in the trash. I don't know what he did with the pieces, but the garbage disposal never worked very well after that.

The moral of the story? I'm kind of a bastard.

How would you describe your writing or storytelling style?

An unfortunate side effect of Tourettes.

I tend to underwrite. I think a perfectly good novel length is 60-70K words. Not that I don't like longer novels, I love longer novels. I'm just not predisposed to write them. Comes from writing short stories, I think. And being lazy.

I'm also interested in voice over plot. On the one hand I've been accused of style over substance, which I'll concede for some things I've done, but that's not what I'm shooting for. Sometimes style is substance. A story is a complete thing, not just individual pieces. Voice is an important part of it. It just happens to be the part I'm most interested in.

Bear in mind, I didn't say I was good at it.

Yeah! Fuck chess! Ahem. Got a favorite boardgame besides chess?

Ah. Games. Yeah.

This is where I let my geek flag fly, right? I used to play a lot. A long, long… long time ago.

Jesus, I'm old.

Anyway, I mostly played RPGs. D&D, Call of Cthulhu. A lot of old school Traveller. When they put the game out in those little booklets instead of one monster rulebook. My first D&D boxed set didn't come with dice. It came with these little paper chits that you had to cut out and draw from a cup.

You kids and your "dice." Back in my day we had to calculate range modifiers with astrolabes! And digging through entrails! Why I remember when we had to sacrifice a goat just to figure out our armor class!

But board games? Never really grabbed me much.

Although…

There was this one. It's a little embarrassing because of the name, but I'll say it, anyway. Black Morn Manor. I got a lot of shit when that one came out.

One player's the evil monster holed up in a spoooooky mansion in the woods and the other players are trying to figure out what sort of monster it is. See, there's an object, wooden stake, voodoo doll, whatever, that can kill the monster. Monster's trying to destroy it, other players are trying to use it. It's hidden somewhere on the board.

The challenge is that there's no board.

Instead, everybody gets tiles for pieces of the manor grounds or rooms in the house that they lay down to build the board as they go. Only the monster player's got tiles too. While you're building a straight shot through the house to get to him and kill him he's turning it into a maze and trying to kill you, too. And if you die you switch to his side.

What's awesome about being a writer or storyteller?

There's the "making shit up" bit, which is fun, but better is seeing someone else's view of it. I think of a story as a collaboration between the writer and the reader with the reader doing most of the heavy lifting. So I try not to be heavy handed with description if I can help it.

I like seeing and hearing other people's interpretations. I love the idea that someone might come away with something different than I thought of and put their own particular spin on it.

Case in point, my novel CITY OF THE LOST has a cover by the comic book artist Sean Phillips, which is cool. But what's cooler is that he's also doing some internal illustrations for some scenes and characters in it.

And seeing how he pictured these characters is incredible. He's got details on them that I forgot I put in there and even then they're not exactly how I pictured them. Seeing them through his eyes was both gratifying and a little humbling. Sure I wrote those characters, but in a lot of ways he made them his.

I wanted to do comics before but after seeing what he's done with them now I REALLY want to do comics.

Conversely, what sucks about it?

Assholes and haters.

I don't mind them so much when they come after me, but yeah it can sting. Most of the time, though, it can be downright entertaining.

Fun fact: Somebody once put together a blog titled something like "Stephen Blackmoore Is A Big Fat Idiot" because of some unfavorable things I said about her murderer cousin who gunned down two people in an income tax office and fucked off to Wisconsin. Sadly there was only one post IN ALL CAPS BADSPELLINGANDNO PUNCSHASHION beyond the obligatory !!! A few months later she took it down.

I think of that as my, "I have arrived," moment.

I'm looking forward to my first 1 Star review. I'm taking bets on whether it's going to be because I a) kill a dog, b) kill a hooker, c) got a gun or Los Angeles fact wrong or d) beat a guy to death with a midget.

You're entitled to your opinion. I ain't gonna argue that.

But I hate watching people, particularly creative types, get beat over the head for shit they have no control over or because they pushed someone's buttons who doesn't know how to handle having their buttons pushed.

I get pissed off and rant as much as the next guy, if not more, so I get I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, but I still don't like it. It takes bigger balls than most people have just to put yourself out there in the first place. Squashing someone like a bug because you got your panties in a twist is just you being an asshole.

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:

Don't take yourself too seriously. It ain't worth it.

I'm a bit of a process monkey. You do anything special in terms of writing? Notebook, whiteboard, outlines carved into the flesh of a gimp you keep shackled to the desk? Always curious to see how other writers, ahem, "make the sausage."

I stare at the wall a lot. Though I'm not sure that has anything to do with my writing.

I've tried index cards, mind-maps, Post-Its, a white board, note pads. None of them have ever really worked for me. They all just get in the way. Took a look at Scrivener once and my eyes glazed over.

Though outlining a book works really well for me, I can't start with an outline. I have to start with a few scenes to help me establish the voice, the characters and give me an idea of what I'm trying to do. For me the outline's just about plot and there's a lot more to a story than the plot.

LA Noir is by and large a blog about the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. It's an awesome place to stop by and read some grisly little tidbits about the City of Angels, and is pretty unusual in terms of an author blog. Where'd the idea for that come from, and why?

I never actually intended L.A. Noir to be an author blog. It just sort of worked out that way.

A few years back I was writing for a community blog called LAVoice. Los Angeles politics, police, education, that sort of thing. It was a cool site, and won a couple awards, but it petered out.

While I was digging up things to write about for them I kept running into crime stories that I found myself wanting to talk about instead.

So I figured what the hell. As far as I'm concerned the best way to show contempt for something is to mock it and if I can't go around being Batman beating the crap out of pedophiles and drug dealers the least I can do is point and laugh. And there's a lot to point and laugh at.

Because otherwise it just really pisses me off.

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

Favorite word: "Defenestration" I love the fact that the act of flinging something out the window has happened often enough to require its own word.

Favorite curse word: "Jesus H Monkeyfucking Christ"

I have no idea what the H is for. Hubert, maybe? No clue.

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

Whatever you're buying.

But if I'm buying I like single malt whisky. Oban, Dalwhinnie, Lagavulin, Macallan, Balvenie. If you can get it there's this great Tasmanian whisky called Lark that'll strip the rust off battleships. Until you put a drop of water in it and then goddamn is it smooth. Good stuff.

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

Jesus. Just one? Okay, uh… KISS ME JUDAS, by Will Christopher Baer.

That's one of those novels I keep going back to. It's insane, hallucinatory and has one of the best inconsistent and unreliable narrators ever.

Guy goes up to a hotel room with a prostitute and wakes up in the bathtub with a stitched up side and a note saying CALL 911. A pretty standard urban myth goes rapidly off the rails from there as he goes hunting for his possibly missing kidney. Or maybe it isn't missing and this random prostitute who may or may not actually be a prostitute (or maybe she's a surgeon, or a nurse, or a professional organ harvester, or a drug mule) is just fucking with him. Maybe she stuffed baggies full of heroin into the hole. Maybe she's trying to kill him. Maybe she's trying to get him to kill someone else. Maybe that someone else is her.

Oh, and he's a cop. Or he used to be a cop before he had a mental breakdown. Now he's very clearly insane, off his meds and fighting a rampant infection from the (expertly as it turns out) stitched up wound. He goes on for pages about how he's going to kill her when he finds her and then when he does he decides no, actually he loves her. Or at least really enjoyed the sex. What he can remember of it.

But he still wants to kill her. And get his kidney back, which may or may not be in the cooler she has in her car.

He's afraid to look.

Things kind of go downhill from there.

Where are my pants?

In the evidence locker. At least until the trial or the zookeeper at the monkey house drops the charges. But I don't see that happening. I mean, really, in the eye? With his kids watching? That's just cold, man.

Good aim, though.

Got anything to pimp? Now's the time!

I gots me a book!

A dark urban fantasy titled CITY OF THE LOST coming out January 3rd, 2012 through DAW Books. It's been described as "creatively violent." I mean, how can you go wrong with that?

Here's the ad copy:

Joe Sunday's dead. He just hasn't stopped moving yet.

Sunday's a thug, an enforcer, a leg-breaker for hire. When his boss sends him to kill a mysterious new business partner, his target strikes back in ways Sunday could never have imagined. Murdered, brought back to a twisted half-life, Sunday finds himself stuck in the middle of a race to find an ancient stone with the power to grant immortality. With it, he might live forever. Without it, he's just another rotting extra in a George Romero flick.

Everyone's got a stake, from a psycho Nazi wizard and a razor-toothed midget, to a nympho-demon bartender, a too-powerful witch who just wants to help her homeless vampires, and the one woman who might have all the answers — if only Sunday can figure out what her angle is.

Before the week is out he's going to find out just what lengths people will go to for immortality. And just how long somebody can hold a grudge.

I just turned in the second in the series, DEAD THINGS, which picks up with a different character in the same world. I have no idea when that will be coming out.

Anything you can tell us about DEAD THINGS?

DEAD THINGS is a follow-up to CITY OF THE LOST. I'm writing the series from the perspective of the world rather than a particular character, so DT has a different protagonist. I like the idea of showing different views of this world and seeing what sorts of stories I can tell in it.

DT is about a necromancer named Eric Carter. He can see the dead, talk to them, manipulate them. He's on speaking terms with Voodoo loas, demons and the undead. He's a rarity among mages, which are rare enough as it is. He's not thrilled with it but he was born that way.

Fifteen years ago Carter's parents were murdered by another mage and he went a little bugfuck. Took the guy out by feeding his soul to a bunch of hungry ghosts. Pissed off a lot of people when he did it. They gave him a choice to either get out of L.A. or they'd kill his younger sister. He hasn't been back since.

But now his sister's been murdered and when he returns to L.A. he finds out that her death was just bait to get him back home.

But who wants him that badly and why? There's no shortage of possibilities. There's the guy who drove him out of town, his best friend who he left to pick up the pieces, the mage he killed who might actually have come back from the dead.

And when he runs into Santa Muerte, the patron saint of murderers and criminals who used to be an Aztec death goddess, things get a lot more complicated.

What's next after COTL and DT? Whatchoo working on now?

A lot of that staring at the wall thing I was talking about earlier.

I've got about half a dozen other ideas I'm playing with for the series, incuding ones that pick up with the characters from COTL and DT, though I'll probably hold off on those. I'm hoping I can keep this going for a while. Really depends on whether enough people like it or not, I suppose.

I'm working on a story bible for the series. Maintaining consistency can be a real pain in the ass. I keep running into the same problem I have with index cards and Post-Its. Referring back to a bunch of dry notes just doesn't work for me, so instead I'm writing short stories set in the world. So far it's helped cement some things for me and I might use a few of them as jumping off points for future books.

I've also got a collection of short stories I'm toying with releasing on the Kindle, but I don't know if I'm ready to do that just yet.

Other than that it's just jotting down ideas here and there. I want to try my hand at a lot of different things. Science fiction, a western, a straight crime novel. Would really love to write for comics and games.

And while I'm at it I want a jetpack and a pony.

Transmissions From Baby-Town: "Turning Corners"

Let me be your birth control, those without kids: the first six weeks of raising a Tiny Human provide a lesson in small miseries. You have not slept. The pieces of your life — the schedule that holds your sanity together — has been hammered apart like so much peanut brittle and, for added measure, is then thrown into Cookie Monster's crushing maw to finish the job. You feel like a tooth cracked apart, the raw nerve exposed. Everything feels like the blood test from THE THING: a hot wire stuck in a petri dish of blood, then pop, then monsters, then something has to die screeching in fire.

That thing that's dying in a fire is your old life.

The old ways are gone.

The old roads are shut.

It is the dawn of a new day.

These are the poo-dimmed tides.

* * *

Raising a baby might as well qualify you for credits in a class called FECAL MANAGEMENT 101. That's what you're doing a lot of the time: just managing poop, both literally and figuratively. Very early the poo is nasty. You could shingle a roof or fill potholes with the black tarry meconium. Then it gets a little better. Poop from pure breast-milk is nutty, popcorny, not entirely unpleasant. (I won't lie. It made me hungry.) But soon as a drop of formula touches that kid's lips it's like his gut flora turn into teenagers — the innocence of his bowels is lost, and now his intestinal bacteria are all a bunch of hooligans hanging out under lampposts, smoking noxious cigarettes.

Give the kid formula to supplement and his shit starts smelling like shit.

And the wee one blows ass like a champion. You could push a sailboat with the wind that comes out of his bediapered hindquarters. And kill flowers with the smell.

* * *

Everything was going fine down below, but then suddenly: the specter of constipation.

B-Dub hadn't gone for… I think it was four days? I know how I feel if I don't, ahem, take out the biological garbage once a day, so there we are, starting to worry. We think, ye gods, he's probably swelling up with poop. One day he'll be like Violet Beauregarde in the Wonka Factory, blowing up like a blimp — except instead of purple, he'll be the color of caramel sauce. Then he'll rupture. Pbbt.

So we call the doctor and the nurse says, "Give him an infant suppository," except she doesn't tell us that you don't buy infant suppositories, you buy larger suppositories then cut them up into quarter sticks. And nobody else tells us this either, so we run around like assholes for the evening until finally we come upon the truth and my Mother-in-Law thankfully shows up with what we need.

Giving a suppository to a wiggly infant is like trying to punch a moon bounce — your intended attack always returns. It calls to mind giving a pill to our terrier: the medicine ever comes back into your hand.

Finally it worked. The child purged. And what came out was almost disappointing: no epic flush, no apocalyptic explosion, no crap tsunami. It was just… a normal baby bowel movement. And it wasn't even constipation, technically. Not like he was pooping little ball bearings or anything.

* * *

Four more days, same problem.

No poop.

Moderate discomfort.

Awesome.

You look online — i.e. gaze into the doom-eye of the mad oracle — and you find that, as it turns out, Every Baby Is A Different Baby. Some kids poop five times a day. Some kids poop once every five days. Some are efficient little processors and don't need to go all that often — after all, it's not like they're eating cheesesteaks and bran cereal every couple hours. They're on a liquid diet. Most of that can be peed out.

Even still, everybody wants to make you feel like a shitheel because your baby isn't pooping. Like it's our fault. "Oh, am I not supposed to store my wine cork collection in his butthole? Oops! Mea culpa."

The other problem is, apparently you can, Pavlov-style, train your child to poop only with suppositories accidentally. Instead of a dinner bell ringing meaning food, it's the rectal plunging of a glycerin tab to signal unconsciously that, hey, it's totally time to take a crap now, thanks.

It's times like this you suddenly realize, oh my god, this is our lives. We can barely make the time to go to the bathroom ourselves but here we are, obsessing over the effluence of our child.

* * *

For the record, it was just the formula. We cut back and moved him from Enfamil Gentlease to Similac and, ta-da, no more constipation. Stupid razzafrazza formula. Oh, and thank you, doctor, for not recommending this course of action and making sure we figured it out all by our lonesome.

Did I mention we need a new doctor?

* * *

I was eating cottage cheese the other day, holding B-Dub, when he spit up. And I looked at what came out of his mouth, and I looked down at the cottage cheese I was eating, and I was struck by the notion that the cottage cheese companies (aka "Big Dairy") were probably just repackaging Baby Puke and selling it to us as a snack. I mean, I kept eating it. Whaddya gonna do?

* * *

Our standards for cleanliness have dropped. We're basically something out of a National Geographic special these days, like, we're people from one of those tribes only recently discovered. The constant nursing. The origami boulders of spit-up paper towels everywhere. The fact that when I put on a shirt, I examine it not to see if there are any stains but rather, how bad the stains happen to be before I throw it on.

And I inevitably wear it. Because, who's got time for laundry?

We've gone back to some primal state.

* * *

I wear earplugs now when we bathe him. His cries don't really bother me, but there's this special horrific alignment when we get him in the echo chamber of the bathroom — his shrieks of horror turn into this pandemonious cacophony, a sound not unlike all of the souls of the damned being thrust into a cauldron of bubbling pitch. For some reason, this sound doesn't bother my wife as much.

But me? It raises my blood pressure, makes my ears ring, tenses my shoulders into hard bundles.

Only then. Only during bathing.

You'd think he'd like it.

"Oh, hey, I'm being dipped in a gently warm bath and being softly sponged by a beautiful woman whose boobs I see frequently. I think I'll take a special moment to scream as if I'm being covered by a thousand papercuts and washed in a tub full of Sea Breeze and rattlesnake venom. Everybody good with that? Super."

* * *

The other day, two fawns played on our lawn while the mother stood off to the side, chewing on some leaves. I wanted to ask her, "Do your babies explosively poop up their backs?"

Nobody talks about that milestone, do they?

First smile.

First word.

First breach of the fecal containment unit.

I almost wish I could attain the "up the back blow-out." Just to see if I could.

* * *

He won't sleep in his bassinet anymore. Only sleeps on his mother. Which means she has to rig up this whole thing so he stays laying across the Boppy at night. Which means she basically is developing some kind of Mommy-fed scoliosis, some joint-cracking arthritis at a young age, some mad calcification of her bones. All to support the Little Pink Dictator that rules our life.

Once, I was ruled by an entirely different Little Pink Dictator.

But he's staying quiet these days. As well he should be. I won't tolerate any nonsense from him because it's his fault we're in this mess. Don't think I'm not savvy to your games, you little cock-waffle.

* * *

You start to have serious conversations. Conversations that can only happen when you haven't slept and the baby is inconsolable and the air smells of baby powder and burned nerves.

You start to say, "Maybe we just run away. Hawaii, right? Still in the country. No need for a passport. We live on the beach. Leave the baby here with a note. Our parents will handle it. Or the neighbors. Or whatever homeless person moves into our domicile when we vacate. Is there a rescue shelter for babies? Maybe we can just take him there. I mean, pssh, pfft, we'll leave some money. For… toys and… baby things. It'll be fine. Let's just go. It's the dark of night. We can just go. We can just leave. Hurry before he notices!"

But he always notices. Because he's good like that.

* * *

Thing is, it all sounds horrible.

And anybody gazing in from the outside as you are now, anybody who doesn't have kids, probably thinks, man, that sounds awful. And at times, it is. Even still, you get your moments.

Better yet, around the six week mark we turned a corner. He stopped being Herr Doktor Pissypants all day. He's alert, now. He smiles when we smile. He babbles at us. He says A-Goo and Ook and he yips like a coyote and howls like a wolf and he laughs when you mess with him. Moreover, not only is he changing, but we're changing, too. We're figuring stuff out. We know about gripe water. I know about the Magical Daddy Football Hold. I know that if you take him outside he becomes rapt by all that he sees.

We know to just listen.

The other night we had him laying (not sleeping) next to the bed and he was just… yammering away at whatever ghosts and bugs live in our house. Laughing and yelling and oohing and aahing. And it's sweet.

We think he's advanced, of course. Every parent thinks their kid is advanced. They're like, "OMG LOOK AT THE WAY HE SPIT UP ARE THOSE THE FIBONACCI NUMBERS." But the way he tracks objects and smiles and says consonants and kicks his legs and tries to push off and stand up and memorizes the stories of Mark Twain (okay, I might be lying about that last part) makes us sure he's going to be a smart kid. Which is probably more trouble than we're prepared for, but oh well, so it goes.

We think he's cute, too. Every parent thinks they're kid is cute.

But look at that face.

Look at it.

I SAID LOOK AT IT GODDAMNIT — see this gun? Yeah.

Like I said. Cute. Objectively. Shut up.

Point being –

There it goes, that corner we just turned.

We smile and he smiles. I ask him to tell me a story and he burbles and coos. And it all starts to make a weird kind of sense. It all comes together and says, this is why you're here, this is why you do things, this is why I write and why my wife gets scoliosis and why we work and love and live, and it's all for him, all for the ever-adorable and totally-advanced Wriggly Napoleon who governs our lives.

Every day, it seems, is a new corner to turn.

Which is terrifying and beautiful in one weird bundle.

* * *

(Required continued reading: "Sailing Over A Year," and "Dinosaur Vs. Parents," both by Lauren Beukes, both about her experiences as a parent during the first two years. In short: awesome.)

Penmonkey Incitement: Postcard, Unlocked

And, a week after we started, the stars aligned, the ancient gods awoke, the Druids once more rose and fell as a people, the seas did churn blood, and COAFPM scored 50 sales.

Which means, the first incentive is unlocked.

Time to send out a postcard.

Except, whoa-hoa-hoa, I'm feeling generous. I'm going to send out two postcards. Because, dang, I just ordered these shiny new PENMONKEY cards, and I want to show them off to people.

Way this works is, I take the emails of everybody who bought the book on PDF and who e-mailed me to show me a receipt from their Kindle or Nook purchase. I line 'em up in a spreadsheet. I use RANDOM.ORG to generate a random number. And that number corresponds to a numbered line on the spreadsheet. Easy-peasy, buttocks-squeezy.

I generated two numbers because, again, I want to send out some motherfucking postcards.

Numbers generated: 25, 102.

Those numbers correspond to:

Gareth Hanrahan (aka "Mytholder!")

and

Theresa Fisher!

I'll be contacting you crazy kids over email. Thereafter, the Doom-Bots will usher you toward your "final reward" in the whirring "pleasure saws" and "laser baths" here at the Penmonkey Spa Camp.

Now, yesterday saw a big jump in Those Who Possess The Penmonkey, so we're already up 62 sales — which means we only have 38 more to go before I start doling out t-shirts. And let me tell you, I got my own CERTIFIED PENMONKEY t-shirt in the mail yesterday? And it's actually a pretty snazzy shirt. (Ordered from ZAZZLE.)

Do recall how the incitement works:

For every 50 sales, I send out a postcard.

For every 100 sales, I send out a t-shirt.

For every 200 sales, I offer an editorial look at 5,000 words of your writing.

For every 500 sales, I will procure for someone a Kindle.

All for a period of 1000 sales, or one year.

That's (in theory) 20 postcards, 10 t-shirts, five edits, and two Kindles.

Right? Right. Now, worth noting: this first pick came from a batch of only 126 people, because that's the number of people who have let me know they procured the book. Those are pretty sweet odds in terms of nabbing the next reward, a t-shirt, but again, remember that it only works if you email me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com and throw for me proof that you procured a copy of COAFPM for your Kindle or Nook (again, if you bought on PDF, I already have you counted).

Now, I'm revising my International policy a leetle teeny bit.

For the postcard, I will send internationally.

For the t-shirt, I will send internationally only if the procurer pays the international shipping. Sorry for that, but I just can't afford the second mortgage to send a shirt to Marquesas or something.

For the edit, I'll look at anybody's work no matter where they live, but I will edit to US standards.

For the Kindle, sorry, international folks are SOL. Er, blame Amazon?

In other news, I'm slowly readying my next e-book release, a book based on my 25 Things series found here at the ol' bloggery-hut.

And I finished the first draft of Shotgun Gravy, my teen-noirish Veronica Mars YA-esque thing starring the "Get-Shit-Done Girl," Atlanta Burns. So, keep your grapes peeled for that, too.

In the meantime, if I sell more copies of PENMONKEY, somebody gets another postcard and a t-shirt.

To procure PENMONKEY:

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

The Trials And Tribulations Of The Modern Day Writer

I'm not here to predict the future for you penmonkeys.

Were I to predict such a future, I would suggest that in the next 10 years, we will all be hunted down by self-aware Verbo-Bots and Publispiders, crass automatons who seek to harvest our brains for the words they contain. The Publispiders pin us to the wall while the Verbo-Bots stomp up and trepan our skulls with a whirring drill. We smell our hair and bone burning. When the hole is complete, the robot penetrates our brain-space with some surgical tubing, then milks our minds of our delicate fictions. Then, just to be an asshole, the Publispider plants its robot babies in our colons.

You can see why I'm not allowed to predict the future.

What I can do, however, is ruminate frothily on the rigors of the present, which is exactly what I'll do now. See, things are different for the writer these days. It's a brave new world full of great reward and buzzsaw peril — step correctly and you'll have laurels heaped upon your head, but step poorly and you'll find your balls cut off with a garden trowel.

Let us then examine the state of affairs for the Penmonkeys Of Today.

Write More, Word Slave

*crack of lash*

Gone are the days when the writer could focus on her novel career and put out one book every year — at least, gone are those days for writers who want to accept "writer" as the day job.

Advances are down. Per-words on freelance and short story markets have dipped. Some markets are outright gone. Takes a while to get published, too. Point being, it's getting tougher to "earn out" as a full-time writer — or, rather, tougher for those only focusing on a single path through the jungley word-tangle.

Sure, you've got self-publishing (and we'll talk about that 800-lb mecha-gorilla in the room in just one sec), but to really succeed at self-publishing it seems right now that your best bet is to paint with a shotgun: you're not served by posting one book and walking away but posting a book or project (or product, if you can stand that word) every couple months.

This makes the writer both honeybee and Great White Shark. First, you gotta be the worker bee and dance for your dinner — you want the honey, you'd better shake that buzzer of yours, buddy. Second, in what is becoming a probably overused metaphor, sharks must swim forward or drown, and so too must the writer be ever moving onto the next thing lest he sink into a fetid morass of bankruptcy.

Actually, let's just hybridize that and say that it makes the writer the Great White Honeyshark.

Agreed? Agreed.

(Mmm. Honeyshark. Sounds like a delicious breakfast cereal. The fin stays crunchy in milk!)

Writers must produce. And produce. And produce. ABW: "Always Be Writing." (PICK. THAT COFFEE. UP. Coffee is for writers only.) One book a year? Psssh. No. Focus only on novels? Not likely. Writers are no longer as free to work in a single sphere of writerly existence. Get used to writing short, long, script, game, non-fiction, etc. Be many-headed. Like the hydra. (The Great White Honey-Hydra?)

Now, this is a double-headed dildo axe. It fucks cuts both ways.

On the one hand, I kinda like it. I like that the writer is a worker. It means the craftsmen, the producers, the truly capable, will survive. Do work. Live to fight another day.

On the other hand, if we assume a slippery slope (and I always do, one lubricated with Astroglide and the tears of my enemies), then we can see where the profession of "writer" is becoming more and more watered down so much so that, in a few years, it's going to earn less respect and fewer shekels than before. And trust me, the last thing we need is less respect. Last week, a homeless guy peed on me.

The Writing Life: Now With Actual Choice!

I don't need to expound too much on this point, but know that the last year has seen an alarmingly fast shift in terms of self-publishing. That shift has been almost uniformly positive — the rise of e-readers and the market dominance of Amazon (who, like its namesake, is now the tallest meanest warrior-queen in the room) has really changed the game. The fact that capable, talented, and serious writers are going in that direction is a telling sign. It's no longer the realm of Pure Uncut Slush (though I assure you, that's still in there) and is now a viable choice for writers.

Writers didn't actually have much of a choice before, after all. Self-publishing before usually meant getting fleeced by some vanity pub. Now you've got real — and awesome — options.

A Septic Tide Of Zealots

Some would have you believe that this choice is a false one. And this is true on all sides of the fence. Over there, you have the Defenders of the Realm, those who carry the flag for the "legacy" publishers, who say that the only legitimate way forth is to stomp that rag-tag army of barbarians into the mud from whence they came — it's get your book with the Big Six or suck a pipe, pal.

On the other side of the fence are the self-publishing zealots, a froth-mouthed cult of author anarchists who believe that the One True Way is to publish yourself — after all, it's easy! You'll get rich! You have control! Damn the man! Burn the gates and their keepers! Anybody else is a chump.

Be not swayed by such false dichotomies. My advice to you is taken straight from my own approach: do both. Traditional publishing and self-publishing (sometimes called "indie" publishing, but damn does that term get people into a froth) each have their own ups and downs. Do both. One for you, one for you. Legacy publishing opens you to getting your book in stores, it gives you a path toward greater visibility and other publishing rights and awards and reviews. Self-publishing puts you in the hands of readers faster, and also lets you earn money (sometimes good money) more quickly.

Don't let anybody tell you your brand new kick-ass choice is not a choice at all.

You smell the sweat-stink of a zealot, call him what he is and shut him down.

The Men Of Many Hats

You're no longer going to survive as "just" a writer. Won't happen. The responsibility falls to you to edit, to find markets, to pimp and promo your work, to know what sells and what doesn't, to network, to do all the sexy dances. This is doubly true of the self-publisher who now takes on all the responsibilities of a micro-pub: design a cover, put the book together, hire anybody who needs to help the book come staggering to life like some rough-shod Frankenstein made only of stitched together nouns and verbs, and so forth.

As a sidenote, I like that term. "Micro-pub." Better than indie, which carries its own debate. Better than self-published, which is a term that sounds about as dismissive and masturbatory as a term can get. ("I just 'self-published' my seed into this Kleenex!") Ahh, but micro-pub! One man publishing. Like micro-brew.

Yeah. I like it.

I will hereby refer to myself as a "micro-pub."

At least until I forget I came up with that term, which is in about — *checks watch* — ten minutes.

The Diminishing Value Of Books

Price versus value is almost like plot versus story, in my mind. The former is the hard definition — price is the cost set by seller, plot is the sequence of events set by the writer. The latter is a softer, hazier thing with ill-defined margins — value is the estimation of the product, story is the overall narrative. Price contributes to value just as plot contributes to story: the lesser a part of the greater.

As writers, we'd better get used to the fact that the value of books — novels in particular — is dropping. Part of this is driven by price: some micro-publishers and even some legacy publishers have significantly reduced the cost of books and e-books. Many haven't — but that's why value is not equal to price. The other part is an assumption — however correct or incorrect — that digital content is cheaper to produce than printed content. (For my opinion: hell yes it's cheaper to produce.) It's why you see so many folks (like me) irritated when an e-book costs the same or more than it's print counterpart. I see that, I get sand up in my swim-trunks. My balls get gritty with rage. Overtime, a pearl of pure anger forms beneath my manly plums.

It's why I applaud the efforts of my publisher, Angry Robot, who has their e-books offered for around five bucks a pop. That gets me to buy those books. But when I see an e-book that goes higher than eight, it better damn well be an author whose children I would bear and push out of my urethra. See, but even here, a degradation of value: last year, I didn't feel the same way.

For the most part, I'm all for the reduction in value — and, subsequently, the reduction in price. I think books should be cheaper. I want books to be accessible. If books are precious (and as a result, expensive), then publishers win, readers lose, and by proxy, writers lose, too. Further, I want books to compete with other media. (I'm waiting for the day a Netflix-esque online "library card" hits the 'Net — that day will awesome in the truest sense of the word.)

Of course, once again it's not hard to see the slippery slope slick with guts and lube: go too low with our prices consistently and that value dips. I've said in the past (to some scorn) that the ninety-nine cent price point (for novels in particular) helps winnow down the value of books, and I still feel that's true — that said, it's worth mentioning first that any price point below standard publisher price has this effect and further, and second, this reduction in value is healthy (up to a point).

Ultimately, what it means for the modern writer of 2011 is: best get used to being better business people as well as better writers.

The Death And Rebirth Of The Short Story

I see the short story market as if it were Schroedinger's Cat: both dead and alive at the same time.

On the one hand, the short story market — as in, I send in a story, you publish it — is maybe not doing so well, at least in terms of writers getting paid. I've seen in the last ten years what markets will pay for short stories either flatline or go down — meanwhile, the cost of living (especially for a writer without a steady day-job) has gone (duh) up. Not the ideal financial direction.

You send a story out there, you open yourself to readership and in some cases awards, but a lot of times it's not financially sustainable to do all your short fiction like that.

Where the short story is gaining life, however, is in the self-publishing arena. Collections and individual shorts for sale seem to be gaining traction, and that's pretty great. This is where that dollar price point maybe has more traction.  A buck for a short story is a price I'll pay and a value I like.

(Again, the advice of "do both" rings true here — take some stories to market, take others to Amazon.)

Lawrence Block has a number of short stories out there for a dollar, and they're all worth it. So too with the short fiction of Tobias Buckell. Know others? Tell us about 'em.

My God, It's Full Of Distractions

Sad fact: one of the perils of modern life is that we are deeply distracted. We are bombarded by options. And that's true of readers as it is of writers. That means as writers are are in danger from distractions on two fronts: on the first front, our audience has an unholy host of entertainment avenues, and so we're competing less with other writers and more with Every Goddamn Cat Video On The Internet. It also means that our own time can easily be flushed down the ol' terlet if we spend our time, ohhh, say, watching Goddamn Cat Videos instead of writing.

I've also seen comments that suggest that self-publishing has not generated a Tsunami of Crap and that quality work floats. Which is a poo-poo stinky-faced lie. Self-publishing has generated a lot of crap just as it has generated a lot of awesome work, and I assure you that, having downloaded a number of self-published titles, I've seen a lot of shit work do well and a lot of brilliant work do poorly. You're naive if you think that quality is a magical unicorn who will carry your wonderful work aloft in a saddle made of adorable, squirming human babies. Shit floats, folks. The trick is, this is true outside self-publishing, too. Again, you're competing with Snooki's book. You're competing with Goddamn Cat Videos. You're competing with this blog that you're reading right now, which is a sure sign that poop is woefully buoyant.

Amiright?

Your Turn

As always, everything I say here is just the opinion of one penmonkey ook-ooking into the grave abyss that is the Internet. I'm only half-convinced of my own opinions on any given day, so I'm always happy to hear dissenting ones. Further, feel free to jump in with your own opinions on The State Of The Union as it relates to writers. What new opportunities and new dangers await in 2011?

Of Google-Plus And Circle Jerks

I remember Myspace.

We speak of it now like it died in a war, but it's actually still out there if you care to gaze upon it. It was and remains the social media equivalent of a GeoCities website: everything is blink tags and glitter fonts, tropical vomit and chrome skulls. Like Metallica rode in on a pack of My Little Ponies and got thrown into a wood chipper, and the chipper sprayed the guts up onto our screens.

Then? Facebook came around. Facebook was all clean lines and blue cubicles. Though it came from the realm of the collegiate, it appeared as the buttoned-up office worker of the social media work, tsk-tsk-tsking on all the blown-out margins and half-naked goblins of Myspace.

And for a while, Facebook held it all together. But before long, chaos crept in at the edges. Eroded those clean blue margins. Pissed on the cubicle walls. Next thing you knew, it was all HELP ME KILL THIS FILIPINO BOOKIE IN MAFIA WARS and DALE NEEDS HELP INSEMINATING DONKEYS IN FARMVILLE and people were tagging you with photos you weren't even in ("Is that a cat throwing up on a parakeet?") and people could add you to groups you didn't sign up for ("Why am I suddenly getting email from "The Sparkly Bieberwhores?"). It never fell into the Las Vegas ayahuasca dream-vomit of Myspace, but the madness remained, endemic to a once-clean system.

And now, Google+ (or Google-Plus or G+ or GP or GooPloo or Guh-Pluh or whatever it is we'll eventually call it) is here, once more stepping into the arena as the master of order, as the scion of sanity, clean and white and elegant as an Apple store.

I am here to say: Lo, I am underwhelmed.

And more than a little confused.

Both fairly default states for me, to tell the truth, so this isn't all that new. Even still, my experiences with The Googlecrucians has been surprisingly gutless and without mirth. I figure, hell, let's talk about it.

Though, quick caveats: first, this is not a review. I've seriously hardly used this thing. Don't trust me to tell you what to think about it — go splash around in the Googley Waters thine ownself.

Second, if you like it? Then I am happy for you. I may like it too one day. Soon, even. In fact, if you would be so kind as to drop into the comments and say why you like it and how you use it, I would reward you mightily. And by "reward you," I mean, I'll give you a wink and a thumbs-up and a high-five and that shall be your glorious prize. Get excited.

It's Like Facebook, Only Less So!

When "new" social media hits, to me it should feel like something new. Not merely an improvement but rather, a whole muhfuckin' redesign. Facebook wasn't like Myspace. It had that sense that I was dipping my toes in the lifestreams of others rather than actively hopping over to your "page" where you, I dunno, talked about how much you love the goddamn Thundercats or auto-play music that sets fire to my ears. Then Twitter came out of left-field and it dialed down complexity and dialed up that frequency to the point where it became this constant signal of conversation ever burbling in the background, and all you had to do was tune the knob to make it louder, or clearer, or more meaningful.

Twitter encouraged brevity. It embraced simplicity.

Now, Google-Double-Plus-Good has hit and it's less a redesign and more a re-skin. In the MMO-gaming space you'd say, "it's not a World-of-Warcraft killer so much as it is a clone." The feeling I get from people is that "It's like Facebook, but without all that… Facebook all up in your face!" Which is fine. Certainly Facebook has earned the ire of many for its constant application messages and its privacy settings. And Gee+ has thrown in one of the great things from Twitter: the loss of enforced reciprocality. I follow you. You don't need to follow me. Huzzah. It's a nice touch.

Even still, this horse is still a horse. When Twitter came around, the Internet didn't show me a horse. It showed me a chimera shooting lasers from its eyes and pooping Faberge eggs. It was like, "Whoa, I have never seen this before." When I logged onto Googolplex, I just saw another horse. Painted white, admittedly, and maybe given a nice currying, but still a horse.

This isn't a home run. It's a bunt. That can't be enough, can it? To get millions to switch?

As Intuitive As Putting Together Ikea Furniture

Goddamn Allen wrenches.

To Hell with your Sknarng coffee table or your Fnorbsbjar S&M spinfuck chair, Ikea.

Anyway. What was I saying? Right.

The first thing that happens when I get into Googley-Poo is that it tells me that people have added me to circles even though I'd never before been on the service (leading me to believe that the site is a psychic social media version of SkyNet), and yet when I look at my list of who had me in circles, some of those people weren't there. Further, I'm then asked to delineate people into circles of my own. Friends or acquaintances, which seems arbitrary, cruel, and actually not all that meaningful. (It's not until later that I realize I can do whatever the fuck I want with circles, but initially, that's not all that clear.) Why not just force me to pick enemies? My initial plan was to separate people into Byzantine Masonic Circles ("You have taken the trials and can join the 35th Echelon Of The Grandmaster Of Fez-Wearing Hula-Hoopery") but I eventually discover that nobody can actually see the awesome circle names you've used to classify them.

Then I'm supposed to figure out exactly how circles work in terms of both broadcasting signal and receiving it from others. I grok the reception: I can say, "I only want to see posts from people in my Those Marked For Eradication By Doom-Bots circle." But the broadcasting portion is a little weirder. A circle indicates a group — like, if I create a circle and we're all in it, we should all be, I dunno, talking to one another. A circle of jerks, if you will. (And I do wonder how long it'll be before "Circle Jerk" enters the G+ parlance.) But that's not quite the case. This dude's blog post takes a look at How Circles Work, but what I read in his blog is not necessarily how I understood it upon entering the circle. Even still, I'm not sure who I'm even talking to. Or yelling at. Or who can talk to me.

Or where my pants went.

Speaking Of Pantslessness

No, I do not want to hangout with you on a webcam. Or, more specifically, you don't want to hang out with me on webcam. Listen, in the great Venn diagram of my computing life, the circle of "Am Using The Internet" and the circle of "Am Shirtless And Covered In Baby Puke And Dorito Pollen" have a near perfect overlap. I'm also afraid that if I somehow turn on my webcam, the first thing I'm going to see is someone masturbating at me. Which is why I am prepared instead to masturbate at somebody. Fight fire with fire. Fight Onanism with Onanism. I have a very clear "first strike" policy on webcam jerkoffery. Once again, the need for "Circle Jerk" to enter the Goo-Plus parlance is dire. Dire.

What The Who Now Is A Spark?

Then there's something called a spark? Which is really just an chosen topic that accumulates random links about my chosen topic? This feels a little "stapled on." Like, does this relate at all to my friends? Er? Circles? Er, what's the term? Circlemates? Google-Pals? Plus-Buddies? (Again: Circle Jerks. I'm just saying. Let us all adopt this new lingo.) Who filters Sparks? Isn't the power of social media the ability to have word-of-mouth fuel your filtering abilities? Has Google hired a guy just to figure out what Sparks I should like? What's happening? What are all these flashing lights? Why am I being anally probed?

The Department Of Redundancy Department

I already have Twitter and Facebook. The former, I'm very happy with. The latter, I could mostly give a shit about but I've got tons of family and classmates there. So, I do an update to Twitter and/or Facebook, I now have, what, a third social media axis to choose from? And I'm going to do what? Say the same thing there that I said everywhere else? That's fine, I guess, but the thought of having to track posts and replies across three axes (not to mention the blog or Goodreads or Tumblr or other blogs or reality) just makes me want to take a goddamn nap.

Even worse, Googly-Eyes over there wants me to get all handsy with organizing my social existence. You know what sounds excruciating? Organizing my social existence. Putting everybody in little boxes. Arranging people like pewter figurines in their little drawers and cubby-holes. Are you a friend? Or a worker? What if you're a worker-friend? What if you're part of my Beekeeping Club but you might also inadvertently find interest in my posts about Coffee Beans Run Through The Intestinal Tract Of Sugar Gliders? I already have enough busy-work in my life — balancing checkbooks, washing dishes, obsessively going over my "locks of hair stolen from all the red-headed hookers I've murdered." Do I really want to micro-manage my online cohorts? Is micro-managing stuff ever fun (except for obsessives)?

As a writer, is this just another place for writer wankery? Don't I do that enough? (Answer: duh, yes.)

I'm reaching a state of social media ennui. Tedium with such pablum.

The whole thing feels a little bit redundant.

A Mote Of Promise In SkyNet's Eye

That's not to say you won't enjoy Fraggle Rock Google Plus. You very well might. As a Facebook replacement, it's aces, I suppose. (Though I'm a bit puzzled by those who are apeshit gonzo about OMG GEE PLUS IS A BILLION TIMES BETTER THAN FACEBOOK, which to me is like saying, OMG FRUITY PEBBLES IS A BILLION TIMES BETTER THAN FROOT LOOPS.) Further, when the digital winds blow right I occasionally catch the briny scent of sheer potential in the service, a potential that maybe harkens back to what Google wanted with services like Buzz and Wave.

For now, I can't see myself hanging out too much at the Gee-Willikers Gee-Whiz Gee-Plus Zero-G G-Unit G-Love G Money — I occasionally pull back the tent flap and see if anything good is going on, but so far, it's mostly just a bunch of carnies sitting around smoking cigarettes and looking a little bored. That said, if you can find me on there, feel free. Entrap me in one of your jerking circles.

Otherwise I shall remain firmly ensconced in the Twitters, where I am allowed to stand on a soapbox, yell all kinds of crap into the air, and you can decide if it's worth hearing.

As always: YMMV, IMHO, etc.

In other news: get off my lawn, you damn kids. With your Google+. And your hair. And your clothes.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "The Lady And The Swordsman"

It's another photo-based flash fiction challenge.

Look at that photo above.

Write 1000 words based off whatever that picture calls to mind inside the crazy teacup that is your skull.

Any genre will do.

As always: you've one week to complete this. Friday, 7/15, by noon EST.

Post at your blog.

Drop a link below.

Link back here if you're so inclined.

And that's that.

Get to writing.

Oh — wait.

One more thing.

Everybody still enjoying these challenges? Want to make sure that you're all into them. Further, if you've any requests or suggestions, you know my ears are peeled back, the earholes ready to receive your wisdom.

(Further, I'll add that above, "Swordsman" may be inaccurate — that masked individual looks to be wearing a woman's blouse, so excuse any sexism implicit in the title. I just thought it had a nice flow. You don't even need to cling to either of those ideas — just use the picture as your springboard toward awesome fiction.)

Go write, gods-damnit.