Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 34

Jeff Noon: Five Things I Learned Writing Within Without

In the year 1960, private eye John Nyquist arrives in Delirium, a city of a million borders, to pursue his strangest case yet: tracking down Oberon, the stolen, sentient image of faded film star Vince Craven.

As Nyquist tracks Oberon through a series of ever-stranger and more surreal borders, he hears tantalizing stories of the Yeald, a First Wall hidden at Delirium’s heart. But to get the help he needs to find it, he’ll have to journey into the fractured minds of the city’s residents, and even into his own…

***

TERMINUS WAS THE ROMAN GOD OF BORDERS

Within Without takes place in Delirium, a city famous for containing more than a million borders. The exact number is disputed. The borders are constructed from many different materials: wood, stone, paper, wire, people, ideas, magical spells. Some of them, a few, are permanent, many others are temporary, perhaps lasting for a day, or even for ten minutes only. Some borders are official, planned and created by the city council, but most are made by the citizens themselves, for their own pleasure and purpose. For the residents of Delirium love to build borders, they love to queue at borders and pass through borders, and then knock them down, and build them again in a different place. The whole city becomes an ever-shifting maze, dissolving and reforming itself anew as each moment passes. Private investigator John Nyquist arrives in this city, a stranger to its values, and its true nature. He hopes to take on a case, and solve it; yet his every movement is held in check, blocked by one border after another. The early part of the novel details his struggle to negotiate this realm, where a suspect can suddenly shift their allegiance as a new wall is erected. His confusion grows. The case leads him towards the city’s oldest and most mysterious border, the one where the story drifts towards the edge of the page. I have learned however that the Roman god Terminus demanded a blood sacrifice, to be placed once a year under the marker stone where one realm edged another. It made me nervous for Nyquist’s outcome: would he pass over this final borderline, or become a victim of it?

WITHIN AND WITHOUT ARE PLACE NAMES

The working title of the novel was Weird Song Of Breaking Through At Last, a song I remembered from my youth, as performed by a rather obscure progressive rock band called Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. With one day to go before sending off the first draft to the publisher, I was researching ideas for another novel, which took me to an old map of London, showing the city’s wall still in place, and the various gates of the city marked. I saw that some of the towns had two versions of their name, designated Within and Without. For instance, Bishopsgate Without, and Bishopsgate Within. Farringdon Within, Farringdon Without. These London wards had been separated into two by the route of the wall. Immediately I knew that some of my fictional city’s regions could use such a nomenclature: the concept fitted well with the novel’s theme. And then, a moment later the true title of the book came to me. Nyquist is never in one fixed location, but either inside, and then outside, or betwixt and between, within and without.

THE BOWIE SONG IS ACTUALLY CALLED “‘HEROES’”

Not many people notice, or remember, the double quotation marks. There are levels of ambiguity implied. I read it like this: Someone is saying, “Oh, so you think you’re a pair of ‘heroes’, do you?” The first spark of Within Without started at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition celebrating David Bowie’s visual imagination, in 2013. I wandered around the exhibition, gazing at these large glass cases with the singer’s costumes inside, displayed on mannequins. I had a vision of the museum staff coming in early one morning and discovering that one of the costumes has vanished from a mannequin, without any sign of a break-in. A locked room mystery. I then pictured one of Bowie’s images separating from his body, escaping the flesh, to live its own life. Imagine: Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke on the run in Berlin, merging into the remains of the Wall, which was now depicted, in my daydream, as a green hologram, a reconstructed tourist attraction. A few years later, after Bowie had passed away, I returned to this image and merged it with the idea of the city filled with borders. There is a long tradition in folk music of the border ballad, and I like to think of “‘Heroes’” as an up-to-date version of that genre, with its vision of the two lovers kissing by the wall as gunshots ring out overhead. So then: Bowie, borderlines, escaping images. Sentient masks. Masks as alien creatures that bond with humans, magnifying the host’s charismatic value. It all started to come together. Flesh, image: and the no-man’s land where they don’t quite meet. And Nyquist lost among it all.

YOU CAN ALWAYS TRUST ARIADNE

A friend bought me a pack of cards called the Red Thread, perhaps named after Ariadne’s roll of thread or “clew” which she gave to Theseus to help him map his way through the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The pack contains thirty-two cards, each one with its own image and a title: The Spectre, The Gift, The Twins, and so on. The cards have a strand of red thread across each image, which can be joined to the thread on other cards, to make a map through the images. Just before starting the first words of Within Without, I shuffled this deck and turned over the top card. Whatever came up, I would use in some way, as inspiration. I did this for the whole book, using the cards as a regular input, taking the images literally, or metaphorically, as I saw fit. Sometimes the turned-up card made perfect sense in the narrative, and at other times, I had to think at strange angles. But every single card was used. One card led to an automaton making an appearance, others to Adam and Eve, to a Plumed Horse, to Medusa. The red thread itself actually turned up in one chapter, pinned to the wall of a corridor, leading Nyquist on. I write without any planning, without looking ahead, writing to discover the plot and the characters, as they are needed. The cards helped in this, offering their little shocks and nudges. One card in particular had a deep and important effect on the story, something I truly never expected to happen…

THE COLLECTIVE NOUN IS A LOVELINESS OF LADYBIRDS

Yes, the card showed a ladybird. Because of this, many of them turned up in the story, a whole loveliness of them. I had taken Nyquist from the busy city streets, into a smaller encircled town called Escher. Here, something very drastic happens: all the external borderlines are drawn into the human mind. Nyquist, to his surprise (and to mine!) discovers that he has a wall running down the centre of his skull. And behind that wall, whispering, cajoling, is a character. Another man. This character has been there for most of Nyquist’s life, but only now can the two of them converse, through a tiny hole in the wall. The prominence of the ladybirds led to the name I gave to this internal occupant: Gregor Samsa. Samsa is the protagonist of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, a novel detailing the transformation of a man into an insect. And so Nyquist finds himself moving towards a very dangerous borderline, where one species transforms into another, human into beetle. It might be said that science fiction itself, as a genre, operates in such a borderland, exploring those regions where one world crosses over into another world, old concepts into new.

***

JEFF NOON is an award-winning British novelist, short story writer and playwright. He won the Arthur C Clarke Award for Vurt, the John W Campbell award for Best New Writer, a Tinniswood Award for innovation in radio drama and the Mobil prize for playwriting. He was trained in the visual arts, and was musically active on the punk scene before starting to write plays for the theatre. His work spans SF and fantasy genres, exploring the ever-changing borderzone between genre fiction and the avant-garde.

Jeff Noon: Website | Twitter

Within Without: Indiebound | Powells | Bookshop | Amazon | B&N

Megan Lindholm: The City Primeval

It is an absolute pleasure to host a guest post by one of my favorite authors — Megan Lindholm (who you may have read as Robin Hobb), who is here to talk about the story of the City Primeval — and the 35th anniversary of her novel, Wizard of the Pigeons.

***

Why, yes. Yes, I do know what primeval means. Ancient. Original. Prehistoric.

So how can a city be any of those things? A city is built by humans, many humans, and it takes years of habitation before it can be called a city. Even if it’s abandoned and falls into ruin, even if the jungle or sands overtake it, or later generations rob it of its memorials, and cart away its bricks and stonework to be used elsewhere, it still can’t be primeval, can it?

Well, I don’t usually corrupt a word, but in this case, I’m going to. In fantasy, there are numerous primeval cities, ones built so long ago that everyone has forgotten them. There are cities that predate the younger age of humanity, full of ancient wonder and magic. In Science Fiction, there are even more and stranger primeval cities; ancient ruins, abandoned by the aliens who built them, full of riddles, puzzles and dangers. A rediscovered city is one of the tropes of our genre, the ideal setting for a game of Dungeons and Dragons, or a tale of awakening old magic, or a Leiber or Howard yarn of Swords and Sorcery.

Have you ever been in an unfamiliar forest, with night coming on, uncertain of which direction will lead you back to your camp or a well-marked trail? You might wonder what else is out there with you, and you will listen, and strain your eyes to see through the darkness, fearing that you have blundered into the territory of an unknown predator, something that operates on rules that you cannot comprehend. Something that sees you only as prey.

Oh, wait. That’s not you in the forest. That’s me, in a city. And not an ancient, forgotten city, but a modern one. New York. Seattle. Paris. London. Edinburgh. Cities have always defied me; my sense of direction fails me when I cannot see the sun or moon. The buildings of concrete and steel and glass are faceless. Even in a retail district with lit display windows, in the small hours of the morning, the emptied streets seem threatening to me. Lighting is uneven, alleys gape, passing traffic glares and blares. And a big city, where the foot traffic remains lively all night? My caution remains.

A big city is the place where our most ancient predators are common. We are stalked by the creature that have always represented the greatest danger to any person: our fellow humans. And unlike a cougar or a skunk or a snake, the motive for attack can be completely incomprehensible. In the forest, one does not fear rape or robbery or harassment. But in a city?

Doubt me? Pooh-pooh this idea as that of a scared old woman? There is a natural law that I’ve never seen broken. Predators follow prey. It’s true on the tundra of Alaska, or the plains of Africa. And the more prey that is present, the greater the number of predators. Is that true of humans? Of course it is. Visit a big city bus station, or park outside a homeless warming shelter, or a soup kitchen. Go to a crowded retail mall when the holiday crowds are in full shopping frenzy. Sit down and watch. You won’t need binoculars to see them. The traffickers, the drug pushers, the petty thieves; they move through the crowd, looking for an opportunity. Or they seek a location from which they can watch the passing herd, and single out the one that looks most vulnerable to what they are offering. Or taking.  Beyond those predators are the creatures once human who will prey on the weak of helpless, for reasons that only they can grasp. Or for reasons that, in their damaged minds, they cannot verbalize at all. The vampires. The werewolves.

Is this overly dramatic for you? For me, it’s not. For me, the primeval predators and their ancient threats to humans are what make contemporary urban fantasy so appealing. That slice of the fantasy genre acknowledges what all of us know on a gut level. The magic didn’t go away with the arrival of the Age of Enlightenment. The creatures that preyed on us through medieval times are still with us. And they are still just as dark and dangerous as we can imagine. And probably more than we can imagine.

I wrote Wizard of the Pigeons over 35 years ago. Seattle was the first big city that I visited on a regular basis. To me, it felt far more dangerous than the forests I had known. The ‘Seattle Freeze’, the concept that Seattleites are generally stand offish and chilly toward newcomers was in evidence. The growing homeless population that now shelters in our parks and medians and street corners with their little dome tents and blue tarps was not evident then. But it was beginning. The signs were there: the sleeping bags that were tucked up under the scant concrete shelter of an overpass, the men sleeping on the park benches during the day when it was safer to be unconscious in a public place. I saw a scattering of beggars on street corners with their softening cardboard signs. It was a time when Vietnam veterans were still badly treated, and there were many of them among the street people of that era.

Within my extended family and among my friends were young men who had returned baffled and damaged by a war that made small sense to many of us. The high school boys we had dated and danced with and kissed goodnight had returned, but not as the fellows we had known. Seeing young men in worn fatigue jackets drunk in the park in mid-morning or huddled, back to a dumpster, in an alley as evening came on made me wonder. Whose boyfriend, whose son, whose brother, whose former husband were those men?  What family was missing a piece? But there were also moments of seeing a couple of them sharing a cigarette on a park bench. Or greeting one another with a hoarse laugh and a pound on the back. Moments that showed me that in some ways, they were moving in circles that I would never be able to access, forming alliances and moving forwards in ways I would never see.

There are many reasons for writing a fantasy. With Wizard, I felt there was an unacknowledged reservoir of power and resilience in the veterans I was seeing on the street. Battered and baffled, but somehow moving forward. I wanted to write about that. And, in many ways, my wish fulfillment was to try to write an ending for one of them that acknowledged that core of strength. So I wrote my story of the City Primeval, and those who wielded the power to both protect that city, and to save their own lives.

Wizard of the Pigeons, 35th Anniversary Illustrated Edition: Bookshop

Yes, Virginia, There Is Still A Goddamn Global Pandemic

I am now fully vaccinated. The pandemic is still ongoing. The one does not change the other, in the same way that the statement, “I want the pandemic to be over” does not end the pandemic.

I bring this up because there is a fresh and sudden wave of bullshit-scented judgment water splashing down on us in the form of, “Wow, you liberals just can’t quit lockdown,” or, “Gosh, you sure all seem to be pandemic addicts.” The assertion comes, presumably, from the idea that here, at the pandemic’s end, some of us are choosing to maintain a portion of our mitigation measures like masking or reduced travel. Which further suggests we are in a co-dependent relationship with said pandemic, or worse, that we are literally addicted to it, the way one becomes addicted to heroin. (I’m not going to link to any of the articles or tweets. I don’t care to give bad, disingenuous actors traffic. If you wanna track down sources, you can find them, I’m sure.)

Here’s one problem, though:

We are not at the pandemic’s end.

It’s still fucking happening! This isn’t the series finale! Holy shit! What the fuck! Yes, it’s very, very good we are getting vaccinated. It’s great! I’m into it! It’s my new kink! Vaccination is the machete that is cutting a path to normalcy through the thicket of this pandemic. But be sure: it remains an active, ongoing pandemic. Globally, it is as bad as it has ever been. In India, it’s a brushfire, using human beings as kindling. Here in the United States, we’re starting to see a much-desired downturn in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Though in my state and in many others, the pandemic is still kicking: we’re still above last summer’s “second wave” levels by a good bit, and here in PA we aren’t even back below our March numbers. And we’ve had a rise in school cases — hell, a small wave just went through my kid’s school, and have seen similar effects through several local school systems.

We are at roughly 100 million fully vaccinated adults in this country.

That still leaves about 100 million adults to go.

It still leaves our entire population of children unvaccinated.

It still leaves out those who cannot get the vaccine, or who are immunocompromised in a way that the vaccine will not afford them essential protection.

It still leaves those who don’t want the vaccine due to being bad actors themselves, or being subject to mis/disinformation campaigns by the likes of Russia, or worse, our own little toady goblin white supremacist, Tucker “I Always Look Like I’m Peeing A Little” Carlson.

We’re still at a point that nearly a thousand people a day are still dying in this country.

The vaccines are 100% effective against death and severe disease, which is to say, statistically, but not literally — there have been hospitalizations and death in those who have been fully vaccinated, and I say this not to invoke panic, but just to ensure we’re all on the same page as reality. The numbers are low enough that, risk assessment-wise, you’re likelier to suffer pain and death from far rarer sources (lightning, cows, I dunno, probably rogue toasters), but the asterisk is still there that people who are fully vaccinated can still get it, can still get sick, can still get dead. And there remains no clear messaging or data on what this does for, or about, Long COVID — if five out of a hundred people can still get sick with COVID after being fully vaccinated, can they still suffer from the multifarious effects of long-term illness? We don’t know. Certainly it means that your chances overall are lower, which is great. But lower doesn’t mean zero, and that’s a calculation we have to make, especially when we remember that a hundred million people still aren’t fully vaccinated, and one hundred percent of our children aren’t fully vaccinated.

Never mind the fact that, psychologically, we’re still experiencing a massive unfolding of global illness and death. We’re mired in a changed world, a world that will remain changed after the pandemic. This is a mire of trauma, especially for those who listened to the science (gasp) and (double-gasp) took this shit seriously and (triple-gasp with a pants-shitting-pirouette) didn’t engage with the fantasy of a disease that the global scientific community just wholesale invented in a false-flag operation where they hired 3.2 million crisis actors to pretend to be dead but who are presumably now just chilling out on a beach on the Planet Venus while the rest of us pump our bodies full of tiny Bill Gateses in order to unknowingly transform ourselves into fleshy panopticons. We watched people get sick. Some lost parts of themselves and their minds. (Pant, pant.) Some had to watch loved ones die over iPad screens because they couldn’t be with them as COVID snatched their last breaths away.

Never mind the fact that the CDC and WHO haven’t always been entirely clear as to what is okay and what is not okay. I’m pretty sure the latest CDC flowchart suggests we can take our masks off outside provided we are vaccinated and standing in a 12′ by 12′ area and that the breeze is from the Northwest and that Mercury isn’t currently in retrograde and that we’ve never personally left a one-star Yelp review that contains the phrase, “I would’ve given it ZERO STARS if I could have!”

So yeah! We’re a little fucking anxious! We don’t like this. We’re not addicted to it. We want this shit to be over, too. So maybe take that judgey little face you’re making, wad it up into a fleshy spongy Madball, and gently screw it into your own asshole like a lightbulb. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s okay if you’re feeling trauma-bombed by all this. It’s okay that you’re a little hesitant to throw your mask in the garbage disposal and go running into a field of moist human bodies with your arms held high and your mouth hanging agape in order to catch the saucy mist of sweat and saliva and partying microbes. It’s fine. It’s normal. We’re not sitting in the dark, aroused by our own isolation. It’s just, we remember Jurassic Park. There were just dinosaurs eating people like, ten minutes ago. We’re not so eager to re-open the park just because you say it’s safe. We’re gonna take our time, whatever time we need, because that’s how a lot of people do things.

For the record, I’ve changed some behaviors since getting vaccinated. I don’t wear a mask outdoors if I can be sure that I won’t be in other people’s hideous mouth range. I hate wearing masks. Yet, I still bring a mask. I’ll still wear a mask inside, even vaccinated. I still won’t eat inside a restaurant, but I would now eat outside. My kid isn’t vaccinated. Our numbers in the area are still high, though they are dropping. I’ll keep an eye on all of that. If the numbers stay low, great. If vaccinations continue apace, great. If I can be comfortable that there isn’t some new Fresh Hot Variant that now evades the vaccines and will melt your face, super-fucking-duper. Then I’ll leave the shallow end of the pool and move to deeper water. I don’t see anything panicked about that, or lacking sense, or indicative of me being some lockdown-loving pandemic fetishist. I just think, wow, a lot of people died and are still dying and we’re not anywhere near where we need to be, so I’m going to play it slow and suspect that there still could be one or two dinosaurs out there on the island.

People aren’t addicted to the pandemic.

They’re surviving it.

They’re healing from it.

Maybe have a little fucking sympathy.

It took an immense personal and psychological toll.

We aren’t just grist for an economic mill. Maybe don’t hang the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner while we’re still losing 800, 900 people a day in this country alone. A 9/11 every week.

It’s okay if you’re uncertain how to proceed, or you want to gradually return to some semblance of normalcy (because be assured, what will result must be labeled a New Normal, because the Old Normal is a ghost, it’s gone). It’s okay to still wear a mask, whether to protect yourself or to make others feel safe. It’s okay to wear a mask next year, during flu season, because you want to neither catch nor give someone the flu. It’s okay to not simply handwave away COVID cases in children, because that’s pretty scary. It’s okay to be not okay. And fuck anybody who tells you different. Meaning, Brian Stetler. Fuck you, Brian Stetler, of CNN, a network one might argue is addicted to having shitheads like Rick Santorum okay fine I concede I’m a little off-point.

Be safe, be smart, it’s okay to go slow.

Love to you all.

On This Cake-Smeared Nativity, A Gift Exchange Of Sorts

It is my birthday. My second Quarantimes Nativity, as it were — technically, I’m turning a FORBIDDEN NUMBER, and given that said number is also the number of a rotten piece of shit president, and because I kinda feel like a year was taken from me anyway because of this dipshit pandemic, I’m gonna go ahead and claim this birthday as:

AGE 44, PART TWO.

*thunder rumbles*

And then next year I’ll just jump right to 46 and skip that other number.

As such, given that it is the day I was shuttlecocked into the world, I figure we can do a little bit of a gift exchange. Way it works is this:

You pre-order either The Book of Accidents (July 20th) or Dust & Grim (October 5th) from either an indie bookstore or Bookshop.org. You send me the receipt for that purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail.com, with the subject header: BIRTHDAY EXCHANGE. And then I enter you into a contest where I’m giving away two copies of You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton. Both of those copies will be signed by myself and the artist, Natalie Metzger. And one of those two copies will be annotated by yours truly throughout, in handwriting so bad you’ll think you’re summoning some manner of elder god just by reading it. Maybe I’ll even doodle in it to show you why Natalie is the artist for the book and I most decidedly am not! Who knows what heresies it will contain!

You have till Sunday, May 2nd, 11:59PM EST to enter.

It is available to US residents only.

On May 3rd, I’ll do a random draw of two names.

First name will win the signed copy of Magic Skeleton.

Second name will win the signed and annotated copy of Magic Skeleton.

Questions?

Ah, yes, you over there.

Why only indie bookstores and not, say, Amazon? Well, regardless of your feelings about Amazon, one thing I do know is that our indie bookstores are the lifeblood of the bookish community, so I’m hoping to gently urge purchases in that direction to support small business and to give some love to booksellers in a fraught time. Amazon and B&N are probably doing fine. Small businesses, not so much. So, this isn’t to willfully exclude them, but it is to serve smaller businesses in local communities. Ideally, your local community.

What’s that, you say? But you don’t have an indie bookstore near you? Ah, see, here’s the good-news-gospel for you: many indie bookstores ship. In fact, you want to order from my local, Doylestown Bookshop, they will mail it right to you. In fact, if you want, I can even sign and personalize copies bought through there, too. Many other bookstores, too, will ship. Powells, for instance!

Oh, no, you’re not in the United States? Well, normally I would open such a contest to all counties, and just shunt the shipping costs off on you if you’re international. My only issue now is, I’ve found the USPS becoming unreliable thanks to Louis DeJoy’s knee-capping of said postal service, and so some stuff has just… up and gotten lost. Not that it’s amazing in the states, either, but some shit just disappears overseas, and it gets a lot harder to track, then. Plus, costs are up to ship internationally. So, apologies, but for now this will remain a US-only contest.

Final question? What’s that? What if you pre-order both books, TBOA and D&G? Well, then yes, I suppose that can count as two entries, which can give you two chances to win, as they say. But no more than that. Let’s not get silly. I mean, sure, I’d love for you to pre-order 100 copies of each book, but that’s a lot of effort on my part to put those names in a comically large top-hat.

I think that’s it.

If you have more questions, drop ’em in the comments below.

Otherwise, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME PRE-ORDER MY BOOKS OR I DIE I mean ha ha ha what.

What’s Wendig Up To These Days, That Squirrely Bastard, You Can’t Trust Him

Hey! Who wants some updates. YOU GET AN UPDATE, YOU GET AN UPDATE, AND YOU GET a mysterious humming cube, don’t ask questions, just hold it close and tell it your secrets, AND YOU GET AN UPDATE OVER THERE.

Just a quick shotgun blast of stuff:

• Thanks all for checking out You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton (available here, signed copies at Doylestown Bookshop, just tell them you want it mauled with my monstrous signature). As always, if you liked the book, please go somewhere and leave a kind review. If you want to leave a negative review, that’s okay, too, just please camouflage it as a positive review to be sneaky.

• There is a Goodreads giveaway, literally ending today April 20th, for The Book of Accidents. They’re giving away 25 copies of the book — so make with the clicky-clicky and go get one.

• I’ll have some cool blurbs rolling in for TBOA and Dust & Grim soon…

• I’ll also soon be announcing July virtual events for TBOA. I’m also noodling on how to put together an in-person event somewhere. Not sure where, or how. Or even if it’s too soon! But it feels like if you did one outside, nicely spaced, masks-on, with a request for vaccinated folks to show up, that could work. Requires more thought, and, of course, a willing bookstore partner and a willing audience. Are people ready to go out into the world? I am. Maybe not to a whole-ass convention or anything, but I really yearn to do a bookstore event. Which is odd, because I hate people and am a monstrous hermit! GET OFF MY LAWN, I once would cry, except now I yell, WAIT NO GET ONTO MY LAWN, I WILL SIGN YOUR BOOK, ANY BOOK, THE PHONE BOOK, THE HOLY BIBLE, JUST GET OVER HERE AND LET ME TALK AT YOU.

• Speaking of vaccinations — got my second dose of Moderna on Sunday. Team Dolly Parton 4EVA. Feeling good. Had worse effects from first dose. Still felt a little hungover? Also I have a face tentacle now? His name is Jerry.

• There will be signed copies of TBOA available, too, for order. I’m signing a big-ass batch of them for both the US and UK. More info there as I know it. Did I ever show y’all the Del Rey UK cover for The Book of Accidents? No? It’s at the bottom of this very post, then. My bad! My brain is a sieve!

• The Wanderers sequel, Wayward, is now… at 165k, and will be at 180k next week, when my deadline is. Ha ha, except there’s no way the book is done yet. I anticipate it being roughly the size of the first book. What’s old is new again because this is exactly what happened last time: by the time of my deadline, I was at 180,000 words, and then added another 100k onto that before sending it off. Thankfully, I have Tricia Narwani as an editor, who is a good enough editor to say, “I want the book when it’s done,” not, “I want the book tomorrow, just get it done.” Should be out next year, barring any unforeseen circumstances like a Second Pandemic. Ha ha oh shit!

And I think that’s all the updates that are fit to print.

More as I know it!

Out Now: You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton!

My life is weird.

So, the last four-ish years were somewhat ridiculous. Not in a good way, either. Ridiculous in a good way is, WOW HEDGEHOGS CAN TALK NOW, THAT’S CRAZY, AND ALL OF THEM HAVE DEEP, COMPLICATED THOUGHTS ABOUT SPACE TRAVEL, HOW RIDICULOUS. Ridiculous in a bad way is, DONALD TRUMP IS PRESIDENT AND THERE’S ALSO A PANDEMIC COMING.

Further, being on Twitter during this time was just magnifying the ridiculousness (which I originally types as “ridiculocrity” which is not a word but maybe should be), because we were all ants under the sun-touched magnifying glass of our own collective rage. It was just, we were angry. All the time. I was too, I’m not saying it to blame anyone. It was hard not just to want to bite your phone every day.

At the time, there were people who would do daily affirmations and motivations and such, Maggie Smith comes to mind, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and they were great and lovely and genuinely nice in that stop here and rest kind of way. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this! So, I wanted to do that, too. To be additive more than subtractive, to put something nice into the world, even if it was silly or cringe or what-not. Of course, given that it’s me, I couldn’t really leave it alone at “nice,” and so I would take nice motivations and mutilate them in my twisting grip until they were something, uhhh, different. Something weird. Something often at least a little bit monstrous and occasionally in all-caps.

I had no end goal for this. I know some people feel that tweets like these are performative, but I mean, yeah? Obviously? The fuck do you think I’m doing on social media? Once upon a time Twitter may have been a water cooler but it has for a good long while now become a stage, and we’re all on it. Thing is, the performance so to speak was always an earnest one. I did it because I liked it and I hoped other people liked it too. That was the only aim.

Fast forward to a year into doing it or so and, an editor at Rizzoli Books, Jessica Fuller, called to say, and I’m paraphrasing, THESE ARE FUN THEY SHOULD BE A BOOK. She probably said more words. And they definitely were not in all caps. But I mean, yes? Yes! Hell yes. I didn’t know what she had in mind, but she said she wanted art.

And I said, I think I know the artist. Like, I didn’t merely know a potential artist, I had… really one artist from the get-go who I felt was destined to draw this book.

Natalie Metzger.

Natalie said yes.

Jessica put together the tweets she wanted for the book.

We edited the text.

And now it’s here, in your hands. Or, maybe it’s not in your hands, but it damn well could be, if you’d dare to summon it with the matter of your willpower and currency (or library card).

It’s so weird that it exists. I’m really very lucky as a writer and I’m honored to get to do what I do and to have my… brain spasms somehow spawn things like this into the world.

The art is wonderful, and really, is the reason to show up.

I hope you check it out and enjoy it. It makes a good gift! As long as the person you’re giving it to has an, umm, slightly tweaked sense of humor and doesn’t mind profanity. Or possums. Or giant eye-butts. Because there’s a giant eye-butt in the book. That’s just how it is, I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. (Seriously, awooga, awooga, this book isn’t for kids, despite the fun cartoons.)

Anyway, your options for procuring a copy include but are not limited to:

Doylestown Books (ask them to see if I can sign it, and I might be able to swing by and do exactly that, and in fact I may be soon in possession of bookplates also featuring Natalie’s signature).

Let’s Play Books

Indiebound

Bookshop

B&N

Amazon

Rizzoli

Obviously, buying from an independent bookstore is good for the bookish ecosystem and also your soul. Many ship! Including my two locals, listed above.

Enjoy the book.

Become the cosmic possum, the cyborg pterodactyl, or the magic skeleton you wish to be.

Where’s Wendig? April Edition!

DID YOU KNOW, ahem ahem, cough cough, that next week is the release of YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, MAGIC SKELETON, a very silly book of monstrous motivations by me and artist Natalie Metzger? Well, it’s true. It comes out next Tuesday, and as a result, I’m gonna be bopping around this ol’ Internet, polluting your brainwaves with whatever hot shit wants to come out of my fool’s mouth.

Let’s go through it, shall we?

Already Up:

Gabriela Pereira is one of my most favorite people, and I am never not happy to be on her podcast — the conversation always feels informal and fun and it’s one of those where I’m never looking at my watch except at the end, when I am forced to believe that our time is already up. In this one, we get into Magic Skeleton but a whole buncha other stuff too, should you care go give it a listen — Episode 352 of DIYMFA.

April 13th:

Quarantine Book Club, with Natalie Metzger, hosted by Mike Monteiro. I’ve been on QBC before, and it’s a blast — so this time being joined by Natalie Metzger is gonna be an absolute delight. Grab a ticket now.

April 16th:

Lehigh Valley Book Fest, in an event called — *checks notes* “Wendig After Dark.” It sounds sexier than intended, but I do not plan to be doing this conversation in a sultry, seductive voice. Unless you want that, but it costs extra. Anyway! I’ll be in conversation with Rob Dougherty. It’s run by Let’s Play Books, and you can order Magic Skeleton directly from them! They will ship.

April 24th:

Jeff Vandermeer, in conversation with, well, me. He’s got a book out, Hummingbird Salamander, which I found really brilliant — sharp, serious, David Fincherian stuff. A mystery, a puzzle, a warning. It’s really something else and it reads like a descent, like you’re falling into it. Anyway! Join us at the virtual Elliott Bay Book Company, won’t you?

Do I have any other news?

Maybe? Probably? I’ll be back Tuesday to remind you about Magic Skeleton.

Wanderers is out in France, and is… maybe doing well?

More as I know it!

POOF.

Five Reasons to Donate to the Read For Pixels Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women

*Taps the mic* Hello, everybody! Can y’all hear me? Yes? Okay — *deep breaths* — here we go:

The Pixel Project, a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women nonprofit, has been running our Read For Pixels program since September 2014 when Chuck himself, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, and nine other award-winning bestselling SFF and YA authors answered our call-to-action to help us reach out to their fandoms about violence against women (VAW) and raise funds to keep our anti-VAW work alive.

That inaugural Read For Pixels livestream author interview series (where Chuck, Joe, Sarah and co took to their webcams to speak out against sexism, misogyny, and VAW) and fundraiser was a smashing success and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Over 160 authors, 14 campaigns, and almost eight years later, we have a steadily growing resource of recorded livestream interviews and panels with authors. These are easily accessible on our YouTube channel to parents, teachers, kids, readers, writers, and fandoms worldwide who can either watch the videos to learn more about VAW while fanning over their favorite authors or use the videos to start conversations about VAW in their communities. Authors and publishers have also helped us raise approximately $10,000 per year by providing exclusive goodies as ‘thank you’ treats for readers, fans, and book collectors who donate to support our work.

You’re probably thinking: “Cool! I’ll go check it out. So why the guest post on Chuck’s blog?”

The answer: the [insert your cuss word of choice here] COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many small nonprofits, The Pixel Project has experienced a drop in donations due to the pandemic. This is a double whammy for women’s organizations like us as this is happening on top of decades of scarce funding for the overall women’s rights movement. So, with our current Read For Pixels fundraiser moving at the pace of a hobbit wading through the malodorous mud pits of Mordor (it’s been a month and we’re stuck at $3,220, which is only 67% of the way to our modest $5,000 goal), you can imagine our growing alarm. While we are 100% volunteer-staffed, we need to ensure that we can keep our campaigns, programs, and services running, especially now, when rates of VAW have been spiking so badly the UN calls it “the shadow pandemic”.

Chuck noticed our predicament and, being the mensch that he is, pinged us to offer to boost the signal for our fundraiser.

So here I am, on the first day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and our seven-day flash donation drive, presenting five reasons why you should consider donating to our fundraiser to help get us to our $5,000 finish line by the April 15th 2021 deadline:

Reason to Donate #1: Treat yourself while doing good!

From signed books to goodie bundles to flash fiction/poetry written especially for the donor, we have something for every donation level.

And while you’re enjoying your goodies, also enjoy the fact that your donation will be going towards keeping programs like our daily helpline retweet session on Twitter which tweets out domestic violence and rape/sexual assault helplines for women in over 30 countries worldwide from 8.00PM to midnight Eastern Time, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Reason to Donate #2: Get expert eyes on your writing while doing good!

We have a stellar line-up of acclaimed authors who have donated critique bundles for WIPs (works-in-progress), including Adriana Herrera (Romance), Alaya Dawn Johnson (Fantasy), Anna Stephens (Grimdark Fantasy), Bec McMaster (Paranormal Romance), Brigid Kemmerer (YA Fantasy), Jeannie Lin (Historical Fantasy), and Toni L.P. Kelner aka Leigh Perry (Mystery/Crime).  Some have a post-critique video chat workshop bundled in; others allow for three to five questions from the donor about the critique; still others offer to look at a query letter draft in addition to your WIP.

All these authors are willing to take time out of their packed schedules to help you when you help keep programs such as our annual 16 For 16 campaign alive. Through 16 For 16, we have built an ever-growing archive of almost 180 resource articles to date about everything from how to stop street harassment to lists of organizations tackling everything from child marriage to MMIW (Missing and murdered Indigenous women).

It’s totally win-win!

Reason to Donate #3: Chat with your favorite author while, did I mention, doing good!

It’s good to talk… and even better to talk with your favorite author in the name of supporting a good cause. For this fundraiser, Alyssa Sheinmel (Contemporary YA), Jodi Meadows (YA Fantasy), Julie E. Czerneda (Science Fiction and Fantasy), Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Fantasy and Poetry), Meg Gardiner (Crime/Thriller) and Tasha Suri (Fantasy) are all happy to spend some quality 1-to-1 time on a video chat with donors to natter about everything from books and writing, to gardening, stubborn rabbits, and geeky hobbies.

While you’re chatting, we’ll be working on our Fathers For Pixels program which provides dads worldwide with a variety of platforms (blog interviews, panel sessions etc) for sharing their ideas with other dads about raising kids and engaging with their peers and communities about sexism, misogyny, and VAW.

Reason to Donate #4: Treat someone else while… wait for it… doing good!

Do you have a friend or family member who has a birthday coming up? Do you see a Read For Pixels goodie offered by their favorite author available on our fundraising page? Donate to snag that unique treat and delight them.

Bonus: You’ll have an interesting story to tell them about where the gift came from. It might even be a great springboard for chatting with them about VAW.

Meanwhile, your donation will support our Inspirational Interviews series which has been running for a decade and counting. This blog series shines a spotlight on anti-VAW advocates, activists, and organizations worldwide with a focus on how they are changing the world for women and girls as well as their ideas about what people can do to help stop VAW in their communities and countries.

Reason to #5: Just do good.

Donate to our fundraiser because you believe in supporting efforts to prevent, stop, and end VAW. Whether you can give us $5 or $500 to help us reach our $5,000 goal, every cent counts.

(And when you donate to us, please also consider donating either cash or supplies to your local women’s shelter or rape crisis center. Like us, they need all the help they can get.)

It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.

*

Interested in checking out The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Visit us at http://www.thepixelprojectnet .

Interested in checking out our Read For Pixels fundraiser and making a donation to help keep our work alive? Go here .

*

Regina Yau is the founder and president of The Pixel Project, a virtual volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organization on a mission to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. A Rhodes Scholar with a double Masters in Women’s Studies and Chinese Studies, she has a lifelong commitment to fighting for women’s rights. In addition to running The Pixel Project, Regina also teaches English to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, writes stories about cheeky little fox spirits and terrorist chickens, and bakes far too many carb-and-sugar-loaded goodies.

C.L. Clark: Five Things I Learned Writing The Unbroken

In an epic fantasy unlike any other, two women clash in a world full of rebellion, espionage, and military might on the far outreaches of a crumbling desert empire.

Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.

Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet’s edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.

Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren’t for sale.

***

I learned a language.

The idea for The Unbroken came when I was studying French in university, specifically when I was studying Francophone African literature. The authors wrote about their experience with colonialism, including the experiences of writing in French instead of Arabic. At the time, I wanted to learn Arabic for academic/career reasons, like getting a degree in Franco-colonial studies, but Arabic is hard to pick up on your own with nothing but a few Google guides for drawing letters. A few years after my failed attempt at learning on my own, and abandoning the idea of a PhD, I found myself in my last year of an MFA in fiction with a few extra course credits to spend and a novel I wanted to research properly. I tried again.

Arabic is a beautiful language, a language of poets and artists and some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. It’s both intuitive and simple and as complex as mathematics. There are multiple dialects and my rotating cast of teachers made sure that I had exposure to all of them–resulting in an odd accent that earns me a lot of teasing anytime I’m not speaking formal Arabic.

I learned that a language is so much more than a language.

The better I got at Arabic, the more people I could speak to. The more people I spoke to, the more stories they told me. More than a combination of syllables and rhythms, language is stories, and stories are histories. A language is food and customs and traditions and religions. The right language, even the right accent, is power and privilege. It unlocked moments of parallel understanding and sparked lifelong friendships. And just like learning more and more French exposed me to the underbelly of a chic European nation’s glittering reputation, learning more Arabic gave nuance to a stereotypical at worst, and homogeneous and incomplete at best, picture of the Arabophone world I was exposed to by American and European media.

I learned that learning a language is not enough.

I got to speak with Moroccans and Algerians (at least partially; there was a lot of fumbling on my part) on their own terms, in their preferred languages, about what it’s like living in a post-colonial country. Despite having pretty decent schooling, though, I was at a steep disadvantage in my understanding of the history of the Arabophone world. That meant doing more research. It meant interrogating my own assumptions–what’s the difference between Israel and Palestine? an ignorant American kid might ask–well, here’s a Palestinian journalist. What about the French? Well here’s The Wretched of the Earth. The more research you’ve done, the better you understand complex situations, and the better you understand complex situations, the better you can support the people working to better those situations.

If you do it right, learning a language is empathy. It’s a radical act in learning to listen and understand someone else, which is difficult at the best of times, and it’s an act that native English speakers are so rarely called upon to do.

If you do it right, writing is empathy.

It’s a radical act in learning to listen and understand someone else, which is difficult at the best of times, and it’s an act that those with more privilege are so rarely called upon to do.

I learned that the Sahara really is cold at night.

Really cold.

***

Cherae graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, FIYAH, PodCastle and Uncanny.

C.L. Clark: Website | Twitter | Instagram

The Unbroken: Indiebound | Bookshop | Powells | B&N | Amazon

The Curiously Complicated Emotions of Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine

Spoiler warning, I suppose: I got my first dose of The Vaccine.

It was Moderna at a Wegman’s with a candlestick wait no that’s Clue. (Forget the candlestick part. The rest remains accurate.) Securing the appointment was not easy, and was based almost exclusively on luck — I had not realized that Wegman’s seems to update their appointments at Tuesdays around 11AM, and that’s when I clicked. The first four appointments I clicked did not take me through, but the final one suddenly… scheduled. (I’ll be honest, it’s not unlike how I got a PS5. Pure clickity-clickety luck.) A week later, that appointment happened. It was a simple, fast execution. I went in. Told them I qualify (not a lie, in case anyone fears me a line-jumper, though I have complicated thoughts about line-jumpers, most of which adds up to, “Well, anyone who gets the vaccine needs the vaccine and they’re one fewer link in the infection chain”). I went over, leaned across a pharmacy desk, and a very nice nurse stuck me with a needle so painless that if I had not been watching her do it, I would’ve assumed it was an act of pure medical mimery. Then they scheduled my second dose and after a waiting period of fifteen minutes, off I went, back into the world, my body now in possession of the Death Star Plans, aware of the flaws in its design.

The external process was easy.

The internal process was a little more complicated.

By internal process, I mean — what I was thinking, what I was feeling.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t been inside a store since March of 2020. I’ve remained a relative hermit. Our kiddo’s virtual. I don’t even go to grocery stores, having the combo-pack privilege of money and location so I can order food curbside, or delivery, or from a CSA. This isn’t entirely anathema to my life anyway, as I am a writer who writes in a shed in his backyard, so I’m pretty used to being happy in relative isolation — just the same, I love to travel. I love to people watch. Hell, I love grocery stores. I love shopping for groceries. It calms me. Maybe that’s weird, but it’s me.

So, it’s… interesting, at least, that my next trip to a grocery store was a year later, getting a vaccine for the disease that stopped me from going to grocery stores in the first fucking place. I masked up. I pushed past the small panic attack (ohmygodpeople ohmygodvirus ohmygodsixfeetSIXFEET) and did the deed. And upon receiving the shot it was like —

It was like it all hit me at one time, a cresting wave, a hole beneath me, a light from above. All of it. A pyramid of feelings spun upside-down, its sharp peak pressing down upon that space between my shoulder blades. I was happy, obviously. It’s hard not to be happy, I guess. Just the theoretical promise of even a rough semblance of normalcy felt buoyant, the feeling of being in a cage but seeing someone walking toward it with the door key in hand. Hurry up, you think, get over here, I got shit to do, I’m ready to stretch my legs, I’m ready to run, I want to go shop for produce, is there an orgy, can I get an invite, I dunno that I wanna go, I’m just saying, I’d like the option is all, because now life is all about options again, woooo. 

I felt happy. Obviously. Definitely. Yes.

But I felt… other things.

And it’s the other things I want to talk about.

I was happy about that return to normalcy, but angry, too, for how many people never left normalcy in the first place. So many people who chose to ignore the fire that was burning down their neighbor’s house. People who kept on living life at their maximum, sacrificing nothing while others sacrificed everything. And that anger mounted, too, because those people were sold a lie, a bill-of-sale for a bridge in Brooklyn, handed this disinformation debt from a toxic political environment stirred by a propagandist, a brute, a fool. I was angry at the politicians who even now act like masking is an act of terror against the nation of their faces, their beautiful faces, their God-chosen God-shined God-blessed faces, how dare you cover up their holy mouths with a crass slip of fabric. So what if it protects others? Protecting others isn’t the mandate of this country, damnit. Oh, no no no, individual liberty trumps communal responsibility every time. Who cares if the boat is sinking, you can’t make me use a bucket to bail it out. That impacts the freedom of my hands not to wield a clumsy bucket. Jesus Christ, I might get splinters! How unfair is that?

How dare I be asked to change literally anything in the midst of a pandemic?

And that makes me worried, too, because what happens in the next crisis? We have strong leadership now, but turns out, there are a whooooole lot of people in this country — and, I’m quite sure, the world beyond it — who are happy to ignore reality because it will inconvenience them in some way. We live in this age of Choose Your Own Adventure truth, where if you don’t like the option you picked, you just go back and flip to another page. “I turn to page 37, where climate change isn’t real,” and you get lost in the storyline you prefer rather than the one the rest of us are living in. It feels like swimming upstream, because it’s easier to sell a lie than to deliver the truth.

But then I get hopeful, too. Because if you’d told me a year ago we would have a vaccine, a real goddamn vaccine with real goddamn efficacy, I’d have patted your head and said, well, that’s nice. But we have three to choose from, and may have more on the way. And and and, two of those vaccines are based on new technology pioneered by small companies that were ignored by investors because it wasn’t viewed as reliable, or properly capitalistic enough, or whatever their reasons. And it may lead us to new vaccines for other troublesome diseases. Which is amazing! Technology is amazing! Especially, especially when the important, life-giving, world-essential stuff isn’t subject purely to the whims of unregulated capitalism! Except it sometimes still is! And there enters sadness.

Sadness for those who haven’t gotten the shot yet. Who can’t get it. Who are marginalized and underserved in this country and in other countries, too poor to get the shot, too Black, too brown, too this, too that, you don’t live in the right area, you aren’t white, you aren’t in a more liberal state, you aren’t in America at all, and so on, and so forth. And it’s not just the people who can’t get the shot now. It’s the people who can never get it, because they didn’t survive. The right loves to regale you with how low the chances of death are, when the disease has killed well over a half-a-million people in this country already. We’re coming up on one Wyoming’s worth of people gone from the space-time continuum because we didn’t know how to protect them. One year. So many lost. We broke the world for 3,000 dead in 9/11. But some people shrug off a number that is 180 9/11s. One. Hundred. Eighty. Sometimes we were losing three thousand people in a single day of this disease. A horror show of pain and misery, lost lives, broken families, lost jobs, lost health from long COVID, and when I say lost, it’s not just lost, it was taken, stolen by people who politicized the disease, who governmentally codified a callous, uncaring response.

But, we’ve turned the corner, at least. You can say that much. A lot of doses have reached a lot of arms. We have better leadership now, better than I imagined we’d get. There’s a light at the end. We’re not in that light yet, and of course some people are running rampant (don’t even look up videos of spring break right now, or you’ll shit bees), but we’re… getting there. Rickety, clumsy, drunken. But we’re getting there. And so anger and sadness give way once more to happiness and hope, because for all the torment and woe, any chance out of *gestures broadly) ALL THIS is a good thing.

It’s a wild, whirling blender of emotions, is what I’m saying.

It’s a lot to process, but after you get that shot, you gotta sit there for fifteen minutes, doing very little but waiting to make sure you don’t have an allergic reaction or puke up frogs or whatever, and while sitting there, it was hard not to just sit with it all. Because truly, I try not to spend a lot of time thinking about it in the day-to-day, because it’s too damn much. But in that moment, it felt right to dwell. Even to dwell upon what went, and what felt, wrong.

I guess I note all this just because I expected to feel happy and relieved, which I did. But I didn’t really expect that door to open and let all those other unruly feelings in, too. I guess it’s my way of saying, if I’m feeling it, maybe you’re feeling it, too. These days I think there’s more and more value in reminding people that it’s okay to feel things, even when those feelings are complicated.

To epilogue this motherfucker, I’ll note that the after-effects of the first shot have been mild. On the way home, my shot arm got weirdly hot right in the crook of my arm, as if I were bending the joint around a hot curling iron. It lasted for maybe five minutes, and then was done. During dinner last night, my tinnitus kicked up real hard — I pretty much always have it in my left ear, never in my right. The left dialed up loud and the right started, too. That was maybe ten minutes. Other than that, this morning I feel like I shouldered open a door with all the arm pain, but it’s not too terrible.

I’m told the second-dose is likelier to be a doozy, and to prepare for a day or two of downtime. That’s okay. Sometimes when you update the ol’ meat computer, it takes a while to properly install the upgrades. The antivirus software will have some bug fixes. That’s okay. I’m giving off good 5G software now as the Tiny Robot Tom Hankses inside me are learning their way around. My teeth are microchips, which is cool. I can access my own thoughts via an app, which was unexpected, but hey, the future is wild, y’all. The future. Is. Wild.

Anyway, eat shit, coronavirus.

Hope y’all get some shots in your arms real soon.

Be well, stay safe, mask up in the meantime. Care about others. Yay science.