Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 33

The Book Of Accidents: More Updates For The Update God

WELL, the book is out, innit? It escaped the electric chair it was strapped into, and now, with a flash of searing lightning, it is free. It’s out there. Calling your name from the tunnel, from the rocks, from the old house. You can’t really stop it. So you might as well go along with it, yeah? Yeah.

Figure it’s worth doing another round of updates, if you’re the type of person who cares:

First up, tonight I’m talking with the Mighty Paul Tremblay, one of my favoritest writers, an always-buy author who knows how to write books that rip your heart out of your chest and eat them in front of you. We’re speaking virtually, ON THE COMPUTERS, hosted by The Strand and Metaverse/ReedPop. It should be a great conversation, so please do join!

What else?

In no particular order —

Fangoria has a new excerpt posted! Fangoria! I’m in Fangoria! A moment that, were I to travel back in time to meet Previous Self, Previous Self would casually shit his Previous Pants.

Polygon reposted an earlier excerpt, too, so check that out.

I did a podcast with Talking Scared, really one of my favorite conversations I’ve had yet not only in general, but around this book — if you like horror and fiction and all the squirrely bits about how to do it right or wrong or in-between, then I think this is a conversation you’ll enjoy: Chuck Wendig and the Comforting Embrace of Horror.

Rob Bedford at SFFWorld did a stellar review:

“The result, a modern masterpiece of Dark/Horror Fiction. Highest possible recommendation, it will tough for another book to knock this off of my top spot for 2021.”

And one of my favoritest people, Sadie Hartmann, reviews the book over at Tor Nightfire, with a review title that already has me a-swoonin’ — The Book of Accidents Cements Chuck Wendig’s Status as a Master of Horror (!!).

“In the end, the destination was so worth the harrowing journey. Every worry, every heart-pounding moment, every hitch in my chest, and every swear word uttered…”

The Day also recommends it thusly:

“…Wendig — an outstanding craftsman with clever turns-of-phrase, a sharp descriptive eye, similes-as-miniature-works-of-art and a casually complex ease with character development — throws a variety of sci-fi and folkloric elements into the standard ‘Is there really Evil personified?’ recipe. I wouldn’t say it’s a bonus because his characters ARE so well drawn, but there’s a lot of observational wisdom in here that applies to our sad times.”

I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA this coming Tuesday.

And finally, if you’re still seeking a personalized copy, Doylestown Bookshop is ordering more books for that very purpose, so give them a call or put in a note during your online order.

Welcome To Ramble Rocks: The Book Of Accidents Is Out Now

Today is move-in day — the door to the house has opened wide, Ramble Rocks is open for business, the electric chair is empty, and something is calling you from deep inside the old tunnel. The Book of Accidents is now available in the US/CAN and the UK, and I’ll be talking a little more about it as the week goes on, though for my mileage, the less you know about the book going in? The better.

Let’s get some of those buy links out of the way now, shall we?

First, I’m still able to do personalized copies through Doylestown Bookshop.

If you just want signed copies, particularly where I’m doing virtual events, click here.

Signed copies in the UK: here.

Otherwise, please enjoy the book from:

Indiebound | Bookshop | The Strand | Powells

B&N | BAM | Amazon | Apple | Kobo | Google

Audible | Libro.fm

Some other links of note:

From The Guardian:

“It begins in a quite traditional way: a serial killer awaits death in the electric chair; years later, a married couple move with their emotionally fragile son to an isolated old house in the country … Yet this is neither a haunted house story nor another lurid look at an unfeasibly clever murderer, but something more interesting. Wendig combines cosmic horror and human heroism with his continuing theme of the traumatic effect of abusive relationships handed down from father to son; this is a rich, rewarding tale.”

This review (!!) in Grimdark Magazine by Beth Tabler:

“It is like a symphony starting with many discordant and uncomfortable notes that come together so fully the force of the cacophony nails you to your chair.”

A great review from the London Horror Society:

“There is a hint of Shirley Jackson in the new/old family home. A house isolated—despite the presence of neighbour, Jed—physically and psychologically. What goes on there is not bound by the normal rules of reality, but the book this put me in mind of the most was Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub—but maybe with a touch of Junji Ito’s masterpiece Spiral; the sense that the wrongness at the heart of the story pulls at everything around it…”

I got to chat with the wonderful Scott Neumyer at Shondaland, if you wanna check it out: “Chuck Wendig Finally Got To Write His Haunted House Book”

Here’s an interview with me at Grimdark Magazine.

And here’s an awesome video interview at Fango X from Fangoria. I had fun with this!

Also I got to chat a little with Gwenda Bond about the book on behalf of Subterranean Books — check that out here, over yonder hill and dale.

Of course, you can check out any of my virtual tour events here — and tonight kicks off with Aaron Mahnke and myself at the Avengers combo of PA bookstores: Doylestown Bookshop, Let’s Play Books, and Midtown Scholar.

Finally, Del Rey, in partnership with the horror streaming service Shudder, is running a sweepstakes where you can win six months of the streaming service and a hardcover copy of the book, if you’re so inclined to enter. I love Shudder and always find something spooky to watch there. Go forth, enter and win. And then go watch some horror movies.

I hope you check out the book, and if you feel like leaving a review or spreading the word, I’d appreciate it, otherwise I die flailing in the abyss, horror-clowns sucking at my toes as I sink deep into the unabiding dark. JUST SAYING.

Ada Hoffman: Five Things I Learned Writing The Fallen

The laws of physics acting on the planet of Jai have been forever upended; its surface completely altered, and its inhabitants permanently changed, causing chaos. Fearing heresy, the artificially intelligent Gods that once ruled the galaxy became the planet’s jailers.

Tiv Hunt, who once trusted these Gods completely, spends her days helping the last remaining survivors of Jai. Everyone is fighting for their freedom and they call out for drastic action from their saviour, Tiv’s girlfriend Yasira. But Yasira has become deeply ill, debilitated by her Outside exposure, and is barely able to breathe, let alone lead a revolution.

Hunted by the Gods and Akavi, the disgraced angel, Yasira and Tiv must delve further than ever before into the maddening mysteries of their fractured planet in order to save – or perhaps even destroy – their fading world.

1: Second Books Are Hard

They warned me! Everyone warned me! When you write your first novel you get to take your sweet time. When you write the sequel you’re under contract and you have to do it in a certain amount of time. It’s like having to learn your entire process over again.

It doesn’t help that, like, two years went by between landing an agent for The Outside and getting the green light from the publisher to write Book Two. When I finished writing The Outside, I was so in love with these characters and this setting, I was just chomping at the bit to write more. By the time I was actually allowed to write more? Time had passed. I was a different person. It took a lot of work to get that mojo back and I blew through a whole lot of deadlines in the process.

But I did it! I wrote the book, and now here we are. Because that’s the other thing about writers; we can do hard things.

2: Revisions Will Save Your Ass

The Outside had just two point-of-view characters – Yasira, who carried most of the novel, and Akavi, who got fun little “villain’s point of view” scenes now and then. The Fallen expands its scope – not just to more points of view but to more moving parts generally. Yasira and Tiv have been joined by a group of seven friends and oh my god why did I try to introduce seven new characters at once please do not do this to yourself. The climax of the book – I’m going to try to say this without spoilers – has them coordinating a bunch of dramatic things that happen dramatically in a bunch of places at the same time. This kind of expanded scope was essential to what I was doing with the book – it’s very much a book about collectivity, community, diversity of approaches towards a common goal. But also wow that was more moving parts than I could actually keep in my head at a time.

The solution? Revisions. Sure they’re annoying, and I’d rather get everything right the first time, but it turns out you can actually have seven vague underdeveloped secondary characters in a first draft, and then you can go back systematically and add more stuff about each character in all the scenes they’re in and people will be like “oh, your secondary characters are charming.”. You can have a final confrontation that’s sort of a rushed sketch of the major things that happen, and then you can go back, actually chart out what groups were involved in each of those major things and what their goals are, what major phases the whole operation goes through (including planning), what each group is doing in each phase, and add way more little scenes with way more detail, accordingly. Obvious writing advice is obvious, but, like, it’s fine! We get multiple passes at this stuff for a reason. You can be like a speed painter who adds more and more intricate detail with each pass over the canvas. Or at least I think that’s how speed painting works, I don’t know.

3: Isolation Sucks, Actually

I was writing about isolation before it was cool* (*spoiler: it’s not cool) simply for health reasons – I started work on The Fallen when I was in a complicated life situation and too burned out to do a lot besides go to my day job and then sit in bed with a blanket over me. Then of course the pandemic happened and now isolation is everyone’s problem.

I didn’t intend to make isolation a theme of the novel but, looking back at what I wrote, it’s everywhere. It’s in the backstory of Yasira and Tiv’s new friends, who were held prisoner by the Gods for years. It’s in the way Elu has to adjust to life without the information-rich networks he’s used to, when it’s not safe for him to interact with much of anyone but Akavi, and Akavi only interacts with him when it’s convenient. It’s in the way Yasira stays in her room out of trauma and exhaustion and the way Tiv causes problems, with the best of intentions, by trying to keep information from her for her own protection. Everyone in this book is at some level dealing with isolation, disconnection, or loss. Everyone who gets a happy ending gets it by finding new ways to connect and collaborate. A lot of this wasn’t even apparent to me until I finished writing, and then I did that thing authors do so often, where I looked back at it and went, “Oh, that’s what I was talking about,” and then blinked at myself with a suspicious expression.

I’m doing a lot better now, by the way. But still really looking forward to the day when I can go out and have a picnic with people again.

4: I Love Writing About Weird Buildings

It doesn’t play a big role in the novel, but there’s one chapter where Tiv goes and visits a museum that the Gods designed, and I fucking loved writing that chapter. It came out easily in a book where almost nothing came out easily. Give me a fictional space that was constructed to convey a sufficiently unusual experience and I will go wild designing its floorplan and writing what it’s like to move through it. I have no idea why I love this extremely specific thing.

5: Your Audiobook Narrator Is Going To Have To Actually Read This Shit Aloud

Writing a complicated telepathic conversation with a hive mind? Want to just splash phrases all over the page like an experimental poem to convey a multiplicity of collaborative but contrasting viewpoints within the same entity? Sure, go nuts, you’re already under contract for this book and you can do what you want.

But just know that the bewildered voice actor who’s trying to narrate the audiobook version will at some point call you on Zoom and be like “wait what is going on here? How do you want this read? Who is even talking in what part of this, exactly?” and you won’t have anything to say except “lol idk, good luck with that.”

Sorry, Nancy! I’m sure whatever you’ve come up with will be fine.

***

Ada Hoffmann is the author of the space opera novel The Outside, as well as dozens of speculative short stories and poems. Ada’s work has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Compton Crook Award, and the WSFA Small Press Award, among others. She is also the author of the Autistic Book Party review series, devoted to in-depth #ownvoices discussions of autism representation in speculative fiction. Ada is an adjunct professor of computer science, as well as a former semi-professional soprano, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and LARPer. She lives in eastern Ontario.

Ada Hoffmann: Website | Twitter

The Fallen: Powells | Indiebound | B&N | Amazon

Ryan Van Loan: 4 Things I Learned While Writing The Justice in Revenge (And One Lesson Relearned)

The island nation of Servenza is a land of flint and steel, sail and gearwork, of gods both Dead and sleeping. It is a society where the wealthy few rule the impoverished many.

Determined to change that, former street-rat Buc, along with Eld, the ex-soldier who has been her partner in crime-solving, have claimed seats on the board of the powerful Kanados Trading Company. Buc plans to destroy the nobility from within—which is much harder than she expected.

Stymied by boardroom politics and dodging mages at every turn, Buc and Eld find a potential patron in the Doga, ruler of Servenza. The deal: by the night of the Masquerade, unmask whoever has been attempting to assassinate the Doga, thereby earning her support in the halls of power. Blow the deadline and she’ll have them deported to opposite ends of the world.

Armed with Eld’s razor-sharp sword and Buc’s even sharper intellect, the dynamic duo hit the streets just as the shadow religious conflict between the Gods begins to break into open warfare. Those closest to Buc and Eld begin turning up with their throats slit amid rumors that a hidden mastermind is behind everything that’s going wrong in Servenza.

Facing wrathful gods, hostile nobles, and a secret enemy bent on revenge, Buc and Eld will need every trick in their arsenal to survive. Luckily, extra blades aren’t the only things Buc has hidden up her sleeves.

Sequels are the easiest books to write.

I was completely unprepared for how much FUN it was going to be returning to the world of Sambuciña ‘Buc’ Alhurra and her partner-in-crime-solving and master swordsman, Eld. I’ve written a fair number of novels (12), but aside from this one and the concluding novel to The Fall of the Gods series, those were all first novels. As a lifelong reader I should have been prepared, right? One of the best things about a favorite series is watching the characters and the world grow before our eyes. There’s a reason why Frodo and Samwise linger with us longer than Bilbo does. And there’s a reason why I really enjoyed writing this novel. If you’re not familiar with Buc, she’s an autodidact streetrat who isn’t afraid to use a blade when others’ brains prove too slow to follow her own. Eld is there for when her mind and tongue get her into situations where one blade won’t be enough. The pair are a loaded blunderbuss and I’m the one who gets to pull the trigger. It was a literal blast. Beyond that, I got to dig into worldbuilding and magic more this time around (it is a fantasy novel after all) and watching Servenza, this island gear-wrought city-state rise from the blank page like Atlantis returned was really cool. Cooler still was showing us magic through the warring rival mages’ eyes (and talons and fangs), whether it was Sin Eaters with their mind magic allowing them to communicate with their Goddess directly or the Dead Gods using blood magic to transform into were-creatures or better yet, Buc and Eld caught in between both sides. And the foreshadowing, ye Gods, the foreshadowing. It was almost too much fun.

Sequels are the hardest books to write.

Say what? I know, I know I just said how much fun I had writing this one and I absolutely did, but if a book was going to ruin my confidence in my ability as a writer it was this one. Why? Well, last time Chuck had me on, I talked about discovering I had a brand: that there are specific aspects of storytelling I tend to really lean into (fast pacing, tight transitions, fireworks, all tied together by emotional character arcs). In writing The Justice in Revenge I discovered I had an audience. I didn’t know who they were just yet, they were faceless ephemeral, but they were waiting: someone (hopefully a lot of someones) was going to read this book and this was the first time I’d ever known that for a fact. When you’re in the query trenches as a young writer, past the first book or three, you start to forget that the goal is for a lot of people to read your book because it just doesn’t seem likely to happen. The odds are astronomical and in their enormity, there’s some freedom. I didn’t realize how much freedom until I sat down to write the opening chapter and realized, holy shit, YOU are going to read this. Or your sister might. Or her friend. Or their friend’s Mom (sorry for the swears, Mom). That kind of pressure puts a lot of weight on the mental cogs turning in my mind that eventually translates to my fingers moving across a keyboard and, through the magic of the written language, creating a story. A novel. I usually write a pretty solid first draft. I may add some scenes, tweak a few moments, and play with the linework, but it’s rare I have to make major changes. This one required a significant rewrite. One sans nerves. I really love how it all came out, but boy howdy, was I unprepared for the journey it would take me on.

I can juggle better than I knew I could.

I’ve never been much of a juggler…I can just manage three balls for a few tosses without dropping them, but that’s about the extent of it. In my daily life, I do juggle a day job and writing and having an actual (sort of) life. I’ve been doing that for years now and I’ve got that down pat, but when it comes to the business of writing, I’ve alway been very methodical: do one thing at a time, then move on. I was never one who could query while drafting a new novel for example. I could brainstorm, outline, but I couldn’t do prose until I was ready to start the next novel. Well, turns out being a published author changes things. I no longer have the luxury of doing one thing at a time…a lesson I learned on the fly while finishing final edits with The Justice in Revenge. Basically, in the spring/summer of 2020 (recall that summer? Of the pandemic and reckoning with systemic racism and the decade that was 2020) I was editing Book Two, promoting Book One for my debut release, writing the conclusion with Book Three, and my dayjob was in healthcare…it was A LOT. I survived it, though, and I learned that I can do multiple things in multiple areas at once. It’s not always fun, but it’s called being a professional and I realized if I want to make my dreams a reality, I need to level up. I’ll say this though, I never knew how full my brain could feel until I had 4 versions of Book One, 2 versions of Book Two, and a coalescing version of Book Three in my head. This is why authors talk to themselves, folks. Well…one reason anyway.

I have (almost) no control over the success of my career.

“The rocket’s already been launched, so there’s not much more we can do but watch.” I think my agent, DongWon Song, meant those words to be comforting to me when I asked them two weeks before The Sin in the Steel hit shelves, what more I should be doing to ensure the book that had won me an agent and a 3-book deal with Tor Books would find readers. What I really was asking was, “How do I ensure this book is a financial success? That the book, and ergo me, are not failures? Flops?” The answer, I learned, over the course of the past year, is that you don’t.

You can’t.

I’ve never been a fan of can’t. You can’t write a novel, only special people do that. You can’t write another novel, the first was a fluke. You can’t write something good enough to land an agent. You can’t get a book deal. You can’t have a career as a writer. A lot of can’ts I’ve heard or told myself in the lonely, midnight hour of the blank page and I’ve overcome all of them. Save that last. So I did what I’ve always done when faced with can’t. I threw everything I had at it…and here is where reality asserts itself, friends. Turns out, one person can’t actually do a whole lot themselves. That’s why publishing exists (duh, Ryan). The problem with that, is, publishing is a numbers game. No one knows what will stick, so they chuck a bit of everything at the wall and wait and see. I’ve no complaints with the toss Tor gave The Sin in the Steel, far from it, but once the book hit shelves they were onto the next book and I was still there, screaming out into the void that you all should read my little adventure fantasy with heart. There were pirate queens for Dog’s sake! It’s a lonely time when you realize that whereas a publisher can make waves, you can barely stir ripples. It’s not that those ripple don’t matter, every one that finds a reader absolutely matters, but ripples don’t make one a bestseller overnight. It was something I should have remembered, because writing is like that every step of the way. A sentence doesn’t make a paragraph and a paragraph doesn’t make a chapter and a chapter doesn’t make a book. There’s a lot of rowing to be done before that bathtub crosses the Atlantic (to repeat one of my favorite Stephen King quotes on writing) and you get to type ‘The End’. I’m not sure if I’ll ever fully make my peace with the fact that I’ve set my sights on a career that is so externally subjective, but I do know that I can keep writing and that brings me to the lesson I relearned this past year.

I have all the control in the world: butt in chair; hands on keyboard

Hamilton, the musical has a wonderful line in the number Hurricane: “I’ll write my way out.” In the musical, Hamilton, full of ego, thinks to write his way out of being caught paying off the man whose wife he was sleeping with, and instead ruins his marriage and political aspirations. There’s many lessons to learn there, but to be fair to Hamilton, he had written himself out of poverty, into college, into the right hand of Washington, into his future, socially superior wife’s heart, and into the Constitution and that’s the lesson I relearned this past year. I don’t have control over something so nebulous as a career, but I do have control of what I do in those fleeting moments between book releases. Butt in chair; hands on keyboard, is oft repeated advice to new writers–that the only way to complete a book is to show up and put in the work. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the only way to keep having books land on library shelves and in bookstores is along the same lines.

I said a moment ago that I probably wouldn’t ever make peace about my lack of control, but when I’m writing, I am at peace. It doesn’t mean writing comes easily, the story flowing effortlessly from the keys to the screen, but I am happy and full of purpose and hopefully those feelings, however fleeting, however ephemeral, do shine through on the page. We can’t all be Alexander Hamilton (and I’m not sure we should try, the dude did a lot but had some pretty serious flaws as well), but we can try to write our way out. That’s what I’ve been doing while writing Justice and the conclusion to the trilogy, The Memory in the Blood. Writing my way out…I hope you’ll come and join me.

***

Ryan Van Loan is a Fantasy author who served six years as a Sergeant in the United States Army Infantry (PA National Guard) where he served on the front lines of Afghanistan. His work has appeared in numerous places including Tor.com and Fireside Magazine. His debut novel, The Sin in the Steel (Tor Books), Book One in the Fall of the Gods series came out in Summer 2020, the sequel, The Justice in Revenge follows on July 13, 2021, and the conclusion to the series, The Memory in the Blood drops Summer 2022.

Ryan Van Loan: Website

The Justice in Revenge: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Powell’s | Bookshop

The Book Of Accidents: Reviews, Signed Copies in the UK, And More

As we enter the final lap here, with The Book of Accidents releasing next week (ahhhhh), I figured it was a good time to do one more pre-release roundup.

I posted tour information and where to get signed copies already, buuuut — if you wanted to buy signed copies in the UK, then I have that info available, as well:

Waterstones

Forbidden Planet

Goldsboro Books

Let’s see, what else?

A starred review from Booklist:

“Wendig has fashioned a horror story that feels at once old-fashioned and cutting-edge, masterfully taking a familiar scenario and shaking it up to devastating effect. More proof, if proof were still needed, that Wendig is a force to be reckoned with across genres.”

And a starred review from Library Journal:

“Wendig’s latest is a bold, impressive novel with fierce intelligence and a generous, thrumming heart; this is the author writing at the height of his powers. It’s intimate and panoramic. It’s humane and magical. It’s a world-hopping, time-jumping ride that packs a deep emotional punch.

…blends horror, fantasy, and small-town family drama in an ambitious epic that spans both a multitude of worlds and the interior expanse of the human heart. This one’s essential.”

The audiobook is narrated by Xe Sands and George Newbern — available here.

And tonight I’m a part of the virtual Random House Open House, doing a panel about hot new summer reads — you can find details here on how to attend!

I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering the book or asking your library to carry it. It’s weird to launch a book during a pandemic and I’m still… not entirely sure how I’m doing on that front. And it’s an intensely personal book, to boot, a heart-on-sleeve kind of novel, so hopefully it connects and people find their heart is there in the book, too. (Don’t worry, I didn’t steal your heart. Just… borrowed it, for a little bit.) If you’re so inclined to spread the word, that is a great favor you can do. Thanks, and hope you enjoy the book. One more week. Commence to freaking out.

How To Buy Signed Copies Of The Book Of Accidents?

PSST. HEY, KID. WANNA BUY A SIGNED COPY OF A BOOK?

If you are one of those nice people inquiring about how you buy a signed copy of The Book of Accidents, I have the “deets” (do the kids say “deets” anymore, they probably don’t, oh god I’m ancient, a crumbling mummy, a rain-soaked wasp nest, nooooo) —

Here, then, are your ways to procure a signed copy:

If you want a signed, personalized copy, meaning, I sign it to THROMDAX THE EVER-DELIQUESCING or whatever your actual name is (Gary, perhaps!), and then I hastily, sloppy pen my actual autography underneath it?

Then you have three options:

Doylestown Bookshop

Let’s Play Books

Midtown Scholar

All three are tied to the joint event I’m doing with Aaron Mahnke to launch the book. Requests for personalization, at least with Doylestown, run up to July 15th.

The other bookstores hosting me for virtual events will also have signed (not personalized) copies available, should you be so inclined.

Finally, there’s: Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million!

Ta-da!

Also, as a sidenote, if you were so inclined to pick up my first novel, Blackbirds, you can do so digitally this month for the meager coinage of $1.99. Please enjoy.

MORE SOON BYE

Ten Years In The Word Mines: One Lesson

Looking back over my emails, I am reminded that it was this week in the Ancient Year 2011, when my super-agent Stacia Decker sold my first original novel, Blackbirds, to Angry Robot Books. That book, about a young woman with a very foul mouth and a terrible attitude who can also see how you’re going to die when she touches you, took five years to write and two years to publish (a year to sell, a year to build up to its release). I wrote the sequel to it, Mockingbird, in thirty days. From there, I’ve had a fairly successful — and, to be sure, privileged-as-fuck — career. In that time, I’ve published 23 novels, plus two books of writing advice, a book of magic skeletons lovingly drawn by Natalie Metzger, not to mention a few novellas, a handful of comics, and some other miscellaneous debris. I’ve two more books coming out this year, and another three novels contracted after that, and another book of writing advice. I’ve met wonderful people, readers and authors and idols, not to mention amazing booksellers, librarians, and publishing humans. I got to work in (and then mayyyyybe get blacklisted from?) Star Wars. I get to do this as my full-time job from inside the weird wonderful box that is my murder shed writer shed. It’s been a lot more good than it has bad.

And, and, and and and, yesterday I just completed the first draft of a new book — Wayward, the sequel to Wanderers, which currently is clocking in at almost exactly the same word count: ~280,000 words. I started writing it in September, a book about the after-effects of an apocalyptic global pandemic, written during a *checks notes* global pandemic. It’s a weird book. I don’t know if it’s a good book. I enjoyed it. It’s epic. My glorious editor, Tricia Narwani, will know how to reduce it to its constituent atoms in order to rebuild it into something better.

So, here we are.

I am a lucky boy.

Initially, my plan was, let’s revisit the career and figure out what the hell I’ve learned. Did I learn anything? Can I tell people what that thing was? After all, I’m a writer, and this is a blog. Listicles are a thing, even if they sound a little like testicles? I could do a classic return to the 25 Things series which populated this space for many, many years. But —

Ennh.

Ennh?

Ennh.

I’ve said so much about writing. Do I have twenty-five new things to tell you? Probably not. I know less about writing now than I did ten years ago. Some of that is born off of the hollow, callow confidence of youth — some of that comes from the rigors of a hopscotching career bouncing from this genre to that format to this style and back again. I have learned that I don’t know how to write a book, and that’s a very good thing. I learned that when I finish writing a book, I’m a different writer from when I began. And when I start the next book, I’m a different writer again. Every book demands you be the writer to write that book and that book alone. Your process can change book to book, chapter to chapter, day to day. You learn a lesson with one book that doesn’t apply to the next. As I am wont to say, this shit ain’t math. You can’t plug your collected reagents into the crafting table and get a diamond pick-axe. It’s a different adventure every time, because that is the nature of adventure. If it was the same every time? Well, it wouldn’t be a fucking adventure, would it?

So, instead of twenty-five things I learned, I instead thought–

Is there one thing?

Is there one lesson I would attempt to impart to others, even knowing full well that writing advice is bullshit, that it is a product of survivorship bias and would end up a piece of advice guaranteed to be useful only to the writer who gives it?

It took me a little while to realize what I would impart.

And what I would impart is this:

You need to know thyself as a writer.

You need to know who you are.

That’s easily said, but heroically done.

Before I get too into the weeds, though, let’s talk about what that even means.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of, well, okay, you need confidence to be a writer. Or you need, what, skill? Talent? Is talent even a thing? (Probably not.) Ah! A process, that’s it, you need a single-bullet one-size-fits-all process. We accept this, and so we begin to mythologize our processes, our standards, our ways and means of doing this thing we do. (It’s often in this place, at this time, that we start to offer advice to others. As we internalize our process, we tell others how to do the same with theirs.) This feels like Knowing Thyself. “This is what I do,” you say. “This is how I accomplish it.” It becomes codified. It becomes folklore. It’s the legend we tell of ourselves.

And it’s… maybe mostly bullshit.

It is not, in fact, Knowing Thyself.

What I mean is this: knowing your process is not the same thing as knowing yourself. Process is just recipe. It’s an Ikea instruction manual. But what you’re doing is telling stories, making art. Yes, there is procedure and process, but at the end of the day, your process will inevitably fail you. The recipe will stop working. You have the instruction manual to build a Billy Bookcase but now you’re making a Fjärngblorg Swedish Fornication Chair, and lemme tell ya, that is a whole different animal.

When your process fails you, it can destroy you. Short term, long term, it can cut your throat. It’ll make you feel like an impostor. It’ll make you feel like you’re lost in the woods. Except —

If you know yourself as a writer, that failure becomes understood. It’s expected.

It becomes a natural part of this journey: the failure and transformation of process.

Death and rebirth. Haughty, weighty shit, I know, and I’m sorry it sounds so fucking airy, but that’s what it feels like — every story, you’re reborn, and somewhere writing that story, you die again.

Forgive the following ambles into Metaphor Town, but it’s how I think, how I convey wriggly ideas, and it’s how I (attempt to, probably poorly) instruct.

Think of it this way: when you move into a new domicile (house, apartment, bear cave, elf tree, whatever), it is new to you. You might wake up in the middle of the night early on and forget how to find the bathroom. You might not even remember where you are. You will have light switches that are a literal mystery to you. They don’t seem to turn anything on. You will smell smells and hear sounds that are odd, maybe even off-putting. But as the weeks and months progress, you begin to know your house, don’t you? You know its creaks and groans, and can differentiate the normal “house settling sound” from “that is a hoofed demon sneaking into my kitchen to steal my lemon cookies, that motherfucker.” You know when a smell is just the heater kicking on and when the cookie demon is smoking a cigar. You can make your way through the house in the dark.

Or, think of it another way: when you learn how to cook, it’s all about the recipe and the ingredients. You arrange the items, you put them into the pot in the order that is described, and you eat the thing you made. Maybe it’s bad, good, great, whatever. But after years of cooking, you change that a little — or, at least, I did. You start to learn how to rescue a dish that’s going south. You start to learn what will kick up a dish, and not simply in a way that is simplistically designed as “better,” but that is instead “more keyed to your preferences.” You learn that you prefer this chili powder to that chili powder. You also go beyond just ingredients, right? “This needs acid,” you think, and you think about what acids are available to you (citrus, vinegar, fermentation, Xenomorph innards) and what they bring to the dish and why that taste is essential to you.

Or, let me try this metaphor, see how it lands: I experience the joy (/sarcasm) of generalized anxiety. Panic disorder, all that happy shit. It’s not severe, but it’s ever-present. The trick is, I know it. I view it like heartburn: I know there are triggers, I know what many of them are (and a few I don’t), I know usually how to avoid it, I know how to medicate against it, and I know that when those first two things fail (avoidance, medication), I know how to deal with the actual attack if it happens. (Ironically, anxiety can cause heartburn, and heartburn can trigger anxiety, in a delightfully fun feedback loop that is, I suppose, neither here nor there.) There are strategies to deal with it that range from meditation to logical thinking to simply letting it run its course with the recognition that this thing will not last forever and I’ve been here before, it was fine every time, and sometimes you have to let the river take you where the river takes you. It’s not a perfect system, but it provides comfort.

In the above examples, there are three pieces I want to grab hold of with my crab pincers, pluck them out, and plop them onto the sand in front of you, my sweet sweet crabby prizes.

a) You can make your way through it in the dark.

b) Why that taste is essential to you.

c) It provides comfort.

These are the three reasons to Know Thyself as a writer.

You will encounter a great many difficulties as a writer. As noted, your process will fail. You will be challenged by critics, reviewers, editors, agents, some of whom are very good, some of whom are not good, some of whom who have the story’s best interests at heart, and some who have only their own interests at the fore. You will sometimes get lost in a story. You will sometimes lose confidence in it, or yourself. You will at times feel like an impostor. You will compare yourselves to others. You’ll have a book nobody wants to publish. You’ll publish a book nobody reads. And so on, and so forth.

But in all things, you can go to ground and make it through —

You can find your way through in the dark.

You can know what you like and what you don’t like.

You can find comfort in who you are and what you’ve done —

And, you also gain comfort in the chaos.

When your process fails, when a book isn’t working, when you’re stuck, you need a rope to hold onto through the dark to make your way through the forest. When an editor or critic tells you this thing doesn’t work, you come to know what darlings you can kill and what hills you need to die on, because you know what pieces of that story are yours, or moreover, are You. And when the shit hits the fan, you know the river will take you where the river will take you, and you find comfort in the uncertainty — because this whole thing we do is wildly uncertain.

You start to understand the weird noises, the base components, the triggers.

You can predict the hills and valleys. Both creatively and in the business.

And you can know how those things are temporary. How failure is a step forward that feels like a step backward. How you will lose confidence in the work at certain milestones and how the self-doubt is normal, not exceptional. You’ll know when you can weather through and when you can’t, or shouldn’t. You’ll know what the first and last days of writing a book feels like, and how much time you need to take off between trying to edit it. You’ll figure it out.

And for me, it’s what allows me to keep going. It’s what lets me hold onto the ladder and not fall into the fucking abyss. Now, the big question is —

How?

How the hell do you Know Thyself as a writer?

It’s reductive to say, you just do, but that’s at the core, the answer. You just do. And that word, “do,” is key — do, being an active word, not a passive one. You write. You write and you rewrite and you fail and you give up and then you try again and you buy the house and you start cooking and you get heartburn and, and, and. You do it even though it’s silly and feels weird like it’s somebody else’s underpants and you put the bucket on your head and try to headbutt the wall until it falls down or you do. You write. You fail. You write again. And you do so with a special eye toward that ultimate goal: Knowing Thyself. Not just process. Not just recipe and equation, but really figuring out who you are, what you like to read, what you like to write, what experiences you bring to the page and what experiences you want to have in the future so you can bring them to the page. You try to be present within yourself. You try to be mindful of the whole journey, not just its parts.

It sounds hard. And it’s the hardest thing. But also the easiest thing. Because you are who you are. Your voice isn’t a thing you hunt down, it’s the thing you have had all along. It’s like how you don’t always know you’re home until you leave it for a while. It’s hard, and it’s easy, and above all else, it’s really, really weird. But that’s it. That’s my lesson. To me, and maybe to you, if it’s useful.

Know Thyself.

Hopefully I’ll see you in another ten years, where my one lesson will be, just exist, or something equally bizarre and reductive! Also if you’re so inclined to pre-order The Book of Accidents or Dust & Grim, they’re coming out soon, and I need to feed myself and my family, and if I can’t feed them with words, I will have to begin to hunt humans for their meat, and nobody wants that. Bye!

The Book of Accidents: Virtual Tour Announcement!

So, The Book of Accidents is out on July 20th — holy crap, one month away?! — and I will be appearing at various bookstores in support of it! The trick is, like most authors during the Quarantimes, I’ll be appearing at these bookstores from the comfort of my own li’l writing shed, rising as a virtual ghost, a veritable digital specter, crawling into your internet to talk about books and horror and birds and apples. It’ll be great! And you don’t even have to leave your house. And why would you want to leave your house? THE WORLD IS A HUNGRY MOUTH. Safer instead to come meet me on the plains of 1s and 0s, yes? Yes.

The especially cool news is, I’ll be appearing at these bookstores with a handful of very wonderful authors, truly some of my favorite writers and people, so I expect that the ensuing conversations will be a gosh-dang monkey-fridgin’ delight.

Here is that schedule (also viewable in the above graphic) —

July 20th, 7pm EST, in conversation with Aaron Mahnke, as part of a joint bookstore event between three PA bookstores: The Doylestown Bookshop, Let’s Play Books, and the Midtown Scholar. (If you want signed, personalized books, then buy from one of these stores, if you please.) Register for that event here.

July 21st, 7pm EST, chatting with Paul Tremblay for The Strand / Metaverse NYCC, NYC. Register for that event here.

July 22nd, 6pm EST, conversing with Stephen Graham Jones for The Fountain Bookstore, in Richmond, VA. Register for that event here.

July 23rd, 7:30pm EST, hanging out with Delilah S. Dawson for the University Bookstore, in Seattle, WA. Details here.

July 28th, 8PM EST, visiting with Kiersten White for Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, WI. Register for the event here.

And finally, July 29th, it’s me and Cassandra Khaw, chatting at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR. Register here.

Obviously, I ask that if you partake in an event, you try to buy a book from the hosting bookstore! (They should all have signed copies available, with a number of signed bookplates at each.) They are kind enough to run these and provide the infrastructure and the support, and of course bookstores are a mighty wonderful part of the BOOK ECOSYSTEM. If you like books and authors and stories, then supporting an independent bookstore is an essential component. I also hope you’ll consider buying the books of the conversing authors, all of whom are amazing goddamn authors and whose books demand your eyeballs. You will be rewarded with excellence.

And most of them will ship books right to you.

As to whether or not I’ll be doing any in-person events, it’s not likely for this specific release window, given that things are still up in the air — lots of airline cancellations, plus the rise of the delta variant, plus the differences in COVID numbers and protocol state to state, makes that tricky. But, I’m not averse to doing an in-person event at some point soon, either, because I am a vaccinated human* who is happy to meet other vaccinated humans! If I have such an event where we may orbit one another’s flesh sacks in three-dimensional space, I will surely put it here on this blog. So I remind folks that subscribing is always a good idea, if you’ve not done that.

I’m also doing a virtual chat at the Jacksonville Public Library this week — 6/23. You can find details for that event here.

Hope you’ll check out the book! If you don’t, I die!

MORE AS I KNOW IT.

*sack of wizard-cursed apples

S.G. Browne: Five Things I Learned Writing Lost Creatures

A family of luck poachers receives a phone call that sets them off in the hopes of reversing their bad fortune. At a singles mixer for chemical elements, a luminous-yet-jaded Neon looks for love, or at least a one-night exothermic reaction. When blue skies turn gray and the daikaiju siren blares, the ten-year-old daughter of the local weatherman discovers her destiny. And washed-up evildoers live out their meaningless lives at a retirement home for villains—you never know when someone might turn the swimming pool into a shark pit, or bring a death ray to Taco Tuesday.

From the imagination of S.G. Browne comes a collection of fourteen short stories of downtrodden luck poachers, lovelorn chemical elements, obsolete villains, disillusioned children, trademarked teenagers, outcast reindeer, victimized zombies, and time-traveling alcoholics—many of them lost and searching for answers. Some of them find what they’re looking for, while one or two discover that childhood dreams can come true.

***

There’s A Leprechaun Sanctuary In Carlingford, Ireland

Carlingford is a small coastal village in northeast Ireland, about an hour south of Belfast. Among other things, Carlingford is known for its oyster farms, medieval buildings, and leprechaun sanctuary. That’s right. A leprechaun sanctuary.

You can learn all sorts of interesting (and often useless) information when you write a short story about the pandemic, incorporate the internet meme “The earth is healing, nature is returning” into your story, and end up reading a bunch of articles about mythological creatures and going down the proverbial research rabbit hole.

The genesis for the leprechaun sanctuary started back in 1989 when P.J. O’Hare, a local pub owner, claimed he found evidence of a leprechaun after hearing a scream near the wishing well on Slieve Foye, the mountain that overlooks Carlingford. When the pub owner investigated, he found small bones, a tiny green jacket and pants, and a handful of gold coins surrounded by what appeared to be scorched earth. I have no idea if there were any other witnesses. But the clothes are apparently on display at PJs Pub in Carlingford.

The discovery sparked The Carlingford National Leprechaun Hunt on Slieve Foye, with thousands descending on the mountain to search for leprechauns. While many of the locals embraced the surge in visitors and the increased revenue it brought to Carlingford, they wanted to make sure to protect the little people and their habitat, as it was believed that 236 leprechauns lived in the caverns of the mountain. I have no idea why or how they arrived at 236 rather than a nice round estimate like 250. I’m just the messenger.

Finally, in 2009, twenty years after the discovery of the leprechaun’s remains, the European Union granted official heritage status to the leprechauns who lived in the caverns of Slieve Foye, declaring the mountain and all of its inhabitants, animals, and flora a designated area of protection under the EU’s Habitats Directive.

So who wants to go to Carlingford?

Chlorine & Fluorine Are Promiscuous Elements

I received a C in my freshman college chemistry class. I aced high school chemistry and was a straight-A student going all the way back to 1st grade. So getting a C during my first semester at college came as somewhat of a shock. It probably had something to do with the fact that in high school, I wasn’t staying up late three nights a week playing drinking games in my dorm room. It didn’t help that my chemistry class was at eight in the morning on Friday and Thursday night was a big party night.

I didn’t retain a lot of information from my college chemistry class. Go figure. But even had I not been hungover in class on a regular basis, I’m pretty sure my college chemistry professor never mentioned how chlorine and fluorine are two of the more promiscuous elements of the periodic table.

Fluorine has formed compound bonds with nearly all of the other elements. Like all halogens, Fluorine only has nine electrons. In periodic table parlance, she’s one electron shy of a full shell. Not to mention she’s highly toxic. So caveat emptor. Chlorine, meanwhile, has, at one time or another, hooked up with nearly all of the other elements, which is surprising considering he’s toxic, gassy, and irritating. But who am I to judge?

When it comes to chemical promiscuity, Hydrogen isn’t much better. It doesn’t matter if you’re noble or poor, stable or monoatomic. If you’re ionizing, Hydrogen is synthesizing. So if you’re looking for a serious relationship, he’s not exactly husband material. Carbon, meanwhile, has two stable naturally occurring isotopes and is capable of forming multiple stable covalent bonds, which makes him more of an ideal candidate for a long-term relationship. Although when it comes to monogamy, he’s not exactly a paragon of virtue, having formed more compounds than any other element.

If you’re not interested in making a commitment or forming any kind of lasting bond, there are plenty of chemical elements who are just looking for a one-night exothermic reaction. But it’s probably best to avoid Technetium and Promethium, since neither one of them has any stable isotopes. The last thing you want is a stalker.

I think it’s safe to say that most of the elements on the periodic table tend to be polyamorous or at least prefer to be in open relationships. I also think it’s safe to say that when it came to writing a short story about a weekly singles mixer for chemical elements, I learned a lot more about chemistry than I did in high school or college.

I Enjoyed Exploring My Feminine Side

Prior to writing the majority of the fourteen stories that comprise LOST CREATURES, I wrote nine novels, one novella, and four-dozen or so short stories. I don’t mention this to boast or humble brag, because there are countless writers who have written and published far more stories and novels than I’ve ever imagined. I mention my writing history to emphasize that although my novels and many of my short stories have featured prominent female characters, none of those characters played the role of the main protagonist. So the majority of my writing was male-centered and told from the male POV, which, over the past two decades, has been almost exclusively in the 1st person.

Then I was introduced to the short story collections of Karen Russell and Kelly Link.

Not that I hadn’t read books or stories written by female authors before, but none of them had inspired or compelled me to shift my perspective when it came to my characters and how I wanted to tell my stories or who I wanted to tell them. Not to mention the type of stories I wanted to tell. It brought more balance to my writing and I found myself exploring ideas and stories and characters that I never would have considered writing about before because they wouldn’t have worked as well, or at all, when told from a male POV.

So while half of the stories in LOST CREATURES have a male protagonist, the other half are told from the POV of a female—including a ten-year old Japanese girl concerned about daikaiju ruining her weekend plans, a college-aged zombie taking remedial English classes, and a mother reminiscing about the pet centaurs she raised as a child. Most of the stories are told in the 1st person POV, which allowed me to spend a lot of time in the female perspective, seeing the story and the world through a different set of eyes than I had so often told most of my stories. And these stories turned out to be some of my favorite stories I’ve ever written.

By the way, if you’ve never read anything by Karen Russell or Kelly Link, I highly recommend it.

Writing Short Stories Helps Me To Find My Happy Place

The thing they don’t tell you about being a writer is that there are times when it can become a grind, sucking all of the joy out of the creative process. Not that writing is always fun. The business side can be a time suck when all you want to do is sit down and write. But sometimes it’s a challenge to be creative, to write words that you’re happy with, to craft sentences and paragraphs and scenes that make you think, “This is what I was meant to do. This is my jam.”

That’s the sweet spot that writers look to hit. And when we’re lucky, we hit it. But other times it can be tedious, like when you can’t figure out how to fill a plot hole in your novel or when one of your characters starts doing things that don’t make any sense and you shout at your computer, “What the fuck, Timmy?”

When the story isn’t working no matter how hard you try to make it work, especially when you’re on a deadline and you have to find a way to make it work, that’s when the joy of writing becomes a panic-filled grind. Because if the story isn’t working for you, chances are it’s not going to work for anyone who reads it. And that’s worse than anything Timmy was doing to piss you off.

And then there are the times when you’re not writing to fulfill yourself but in order to fulfill a contractual obligation. It happens more often than you’d think. Sometimes the business of writing becomes more about the business than it does about the writing. And that sucks.

When writing becomes a grind for me, when my novel isn’t working or I find myself writing something for the wrong reasons, I write short stories. They’re my way of exploring ideas that matter to me without having to worry about a deadline or a contract or if my agent or editor will like them. I write them for me. I write them for fun. And I write them without the constraints of expectations about whether or not I can sell them. It would be nice if I could. But that’s not why I’m writing them. I’m writing them for the pure joy of writing. To remind myself that writing can be fun. To remind myself why I started down this path in the first place.

To write stories.

Compiling A Short Story Collection Is Like Being A Literary DJ

Over the years, I’ve made my fair share of mixtapes and am old enough to have made some on actual cassette tapes. I still occasionally make mixtapes on CDs (although you could argue that it’s technically a mix-CD). But I’ve always enjoyed the process of compiling songs and putting them together to create a specific experience for the listener. I even had a brief side gig as a substitute DJ in 1990 while living in Los Angeles, spinning records Friday nights at Alzado’s Restaurant & Bar in West Hollywood. Alzado’s liked their rock and roll on the classic side, which was right up my musical alley. But you still wanted to spin a good mix of tunes that would keep the energy going and the customers happy.

To me, short story collections are like literary playlists and the writer is the DJ, spinning tales to create a rhythm and flow to keep the energy going and the reader engaged. I can’t speak for other writers, but when I compiled LOST CREATURES, I put the stories down in a specific order, moving them around until I found the right flow, with the idea that reading the collection from start to finish would give the reader an experience they wouldn’t get by jumping around from one story to another. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not the experience I intended for the reader to have.

So LOST CREATURES is my literary mixtape. My Friday night DJ gig. But instead of spinning songs, I’m spinning stories, trying to create the right mood and rhythm in the hopes that the reader sticks around until last call.

***

S.G. Browne is the author of the novels Breathers, Fated, Lucky Bastard, Big Egos, and Less Than Hero, as well as the short story collection Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel and the heartwarming holiday novella I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus. He’s also the author of The Maiden Poodle, a self-published fairy tale about anthropomorphic cats and dogs suitable for children and adults of all ages. He’s an ice cream connoisseur, Guinness aficionado, cat shelter volunteer, and a sucker for It’s a Wonderful Life. He lives in San Francisco.

SG Browne: Website | Twitter | Instagram

Lost Creatures: Amazon | Kobo | Apple | B&N

Wanderers In The KDD, Yeah You Know Me

I’m so sorry, that post title is terrible. But I am a monster, and so I persist. ANYWAY this is just a quick drop in to let you know that, should you be so inclined, Wanderers is a Kindle Daily Deal today, which winnows the price down to a cozy $3.99. So you can head over there and check it out. Let’s see, what else is going on?

I’ll have The Book of Accidents-related news soon. Blurbs, signed copies, virtual tour.

I’d still like to do an in-person event somewhere, but there remains hesitation, which is understandable!

Pre-ordering books is good for the bookish soul — it helps the bookstores, and it helps li’l ol’ me. It makes sure to signal demand, to make sure there are books on hand and that bookstores order more if necessary. And it just supports the overall book-based ecosystem. Which is nice! You can pre-order The Book of Accidents (July 20th), as well as Dust & Grim (October 5th). The most wonderful place of all to order those books is your local bookstore — or an independent bookstore elsewhere across the country, many of whom indeed will catapult books right to your door.

OKAY BYE. MORE SOON.