Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 42

Steven Spohn: Every Life Is Valid

Steve Spohn is a friend and an inspiration, and he’s always welcome at this blog. Give it up for him:

***

I have a sad, pathetic life as a terminally ill, profoundly disabled man who uses a power wheelchair and lives on a ventilator, according to the Internet. I mean, most of it is true; I am profoundly disabled, born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), and it is a terminal illness. I do use a wheelchair that’s more expensive than most BMWs–$56,000 according to my insurance–and I do use a ventilator.

But my life is anything but sad and pathetic.

***

In February, I was scheduled to go to Austin, Texas, for SXSW to accept an award for my advocacy work championing people with disabilities in the videogame space. They called it “Champion of Change.” Fancy title, right?

Sadly, that wasn’t meant to be. The world had started shutting down. A new virus had come along, which we didn’t know a lot about, but it was definitely worse than the common flu. All we knew was that things were terrible, people were dying, and someone on a ventilator has a much more difficult fight against this new invisible opponent.

The news came in fast and furious. All of a sudden, I found myself being tossed into a new category of “the 3%.” But it wasn’t like the fun “3%” like the ones who hold all the wealth in the world where I would get woken up every morning on an aircraft-carrier-sized yacht floating in international waters by a violin player gradually raising me from my slumber in my 24 ft.² waterbed covered in the feathers of the last remaining dodo bird so that I can be spoonfed cornflakes made of real 24 karat gold.

No. This 3% was much less fun. I was suddenly a part of the disposable 3% of immunocompromised individuals who were sick with underlying conditions and “probably going to die soon anyway.”

[image error]Like all Tales from the Internet, some people were exceedingly kind; some people were not. But the flavor of the unkind comments was…. Different. Most trolls will make fun of my weight, disability, or the fact that I like listening to Taylor Swift. These, however, focused on something different: the value of my life.

I’ve been an advocate for 15 years, and I’ve been disabled for the entirety of my life. Having to fight to prove I have value as a human being is not something new for me. Almost everyone who has gazed into my intoxicatingly blue (humble brag) eyes still acknowledges that I’m a real human being with feelings and aspirations, even if they don’t want me as a(n) employee, lover, friend, etc.

After all, I have a life, and that’s worth something.

For a solid month, I heard celebrities, politicians, military personnel, civilians, and people in between suddenly questioning if shutting down the country was worth saving the lives of people like me. The worst of them were tweeting me directly that saving my life and the lives of people like me was not worth any inconvenience to their everyday routines.

As you might imagine, having that thrown at you repeatedly has quite a taxing effect on your mental health. Yet, life for me really isn’t that much different than it was before the epic lockdown. My days out have gone from twice a week to zero. And my home care nurses are wearing masks 24/7. Other than that, it’s pretty much life as usual. You know, besides the whole “somebody coughing on me could kill me” thing.

But beating the odds is not something new for me. I’ve been called into a WWE cage match more than once, and I’ve come out victorious every time. How? Technology!

When I was very young, a severe flu put me in the hospital. Things got so bad that I ended up on the ventilator for the first time. It was horrifying. Imagine a nine-year-old trying to comprehend, deal with, and accept that I would never breathe on my own again.

Luckily for me, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh had an inter-hospital videogame system explicitly set up to encourage children to lean on each other for support. They created a virtual paradise full of palm trees, sunshine, and an oasis in the middle of rolling green hills and sand as far as you could see. Flowing into the sanctuary was a waterfall where I would meet a lovely pink star. She was my everything. We talked for hours every single day. We would commiserate, complain, and share stories of our favorite memories, including our pets!

Thanks to my inpatient best friends, Vicodin and Morphine, I don’t know exactly how many times we met, only that it was a lot. And in the end, I continued visiting long after that beautiful pink star stopped shining in that magical, virtual place.

***

I go into this and an entire 10-minute story about the time I wanted my mom to let me go on my new YouTube channel, which sounds like a plug (and it is, go subscribe, it’s free), but more precisely, it’s another part of the technology that is saving my life. I started this channel during the Flatten the Curve initiative as a way to help me follow my dreams while life tries to crush them. I had planned to start making the pivot to become an inspirational speaker this year. I’d rather be out on the circuit doing talks and inspiring audiences. However, fate will not allow that until there is a vaccine. But in the meantime, I can hone my skills, making videos from the speeches I want to give.

See, technology is as much the hero as the villain in my story. Twitter makes me feel bad sometimes, but it’s also the reason I’ve been able to meet and hang out with cool people like Chuck. I’ve gotten to have conversations with The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Gary Whitta, and so many cool people. Without Twitter and Twitch, despite all of their flaws, my social life would not exist, and I doubt my career would either.

YouTubes allows me to continue chasing my dreams despite a nightmare level virus that’s wreaking havoc on the world.

Being a Partner on Twitch allows me to build a community of positivity and laughter, full of amazing people that keep my social life alive and my creativity flowing.

Google’s texting via computer is what allowed me to start texting (the adult kind and the kind talking about chicken nuggets) because I can’t hold or use a regular cell phone.

Assistive technology transforms my Rocket Raccoon hat into a videogame controller capable of enabling me to play video games. And without access to those technologies, who knows where I would be? Certainly not on a red carpet at the biggest show in the video game industry.

[image error]KX9A5B The Game Awards 2017 at Microsoft Theater – Arrivals Featuring: Steven Spohn Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 07 Dec 2017 Credit: Tony Forte/WENN

On May 21, 2020, we celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) — a fantastic day that brings attention to technologies used by millions of disabled people around the world.

When I started this story, I told you my life is not sad or pathetic. Thanks to advocates fighting for accessibility in technology, I lead a terribly wonderful life full of dreams, aspirations, and hope.

Disabled people like me are just people like anyone else, worthy of love, laughter, and a bunch of cookies. We are not disposable. And indeed not a 3% statistic to be written off as a rounding error. We are each unique and individual.  Disabled people can be helpful, mean, kind, selfish, generous, prickly, fabulous, and/or any other adjective you can imagine. Each of us has our own goals. Some of us are chasing fame and fortune, and some of us are just trying to live life. No matter what we choose, it’s no different than the lives of our non-disabled friends.

When you see someone with a disability, don’t let yourself feel bad for them. Don’t let Internet trolls or Facebook heroes tell you that our lives suck. Our lives are more difficult in many ways. That’s true. If you think wearing a mask is a hassle, you’re not going to love using a ventilator; I can promise you that.

Carry forward the mantra: Everyone’s life is every bit as valid and as important as anyone else’s.

Me? Well, I do have a terminal illness, and I’m well aware of it. But I use technology to keep pushing forward and do what I can to make a difference in the world.

I will continue fighting against ableism and promote acceptance for disabled people in mainstream culture. But it’s not a battle that I fight alone. There are many cool advocates with disabilities living their lives publicly so that we might inspire others in the right way. Not by merely getting out of bed in the morning, but by doing really cool stuff.

To you, my lovely reader, I ask you to go out of your way to find disabled content creators that speak to you. If it’s me, cool, I hope you’ll click one of the numerous plugs that Chuck totally didn’t notice above (love you) and follow my journey (Hi Lin-Manuel Miranda).

But maybe I’m not for you. I can be loud on Twitter, sarcastic on Twitch, and hey, that’s perfectly okay if you’re not into that. My name isn’t Neo. I’m not The One. I’m One of Many, many people with disabilities representing our community.

Find disabled people putting out messages of positivity and inclusion that you feel resonate in YOUR soul. Invite them to be members of your tribe. Follow them. Amplify their words and give them a chance that many in society have not: the opportunity to be seen. Whether you have three followers on Insta, 400 on Facebook, or 2,000,000 on Twitter, you can help us “normalize” being disabled.

Thanks to technology, we’re out here. And we’re not going anywhere.

Eliot Peper: Five Things I Learned Writing Veil

When her mother dies in a heat wave that kills twenty million, Zia León abandons a promising diplomatic career to lead humanitarian aid missions to regions ravaged by drought, wildfires, and sea level rise.

What Zia doesn’t know is that clandestine forces are gathering around her in pursuit of a colossal secret: someone has hijacked the climate, and the future of human civilization is at stake.

To avoid a world war that appears more inevitable every day, Zia must build a coalition of the powerless and attempt the impossible. But success depends on facing the grief that has come to define her life, and rediscovering friendship, family, and what it means to be true to yourself while everything falls apart.

* * *

Follow Your Curiosity

A few years ago, I listened to a podcast interview with award-winning journalist Charles C. Mann in which he described scientists researching how to intentionally manipulate the global climate to offset the worst impacts of climate change.

While geoengineering proposals range from seeding the oceans with bacteria to sucking carbon dioxide directly from the air, only one approach is practical with today’s technology. You fly planes into the stratosphere and spray inert dust that makes the Earth ever so slightly shinier, reflecting a tiny bit more incoming sunlight back into space, thus reducing the amount of energy entering the Earth system and cooling the planet. The kicker is that it would only cost two billion dollars a year to offset the current rate of global warming. That means that any country and even a few wealthy individuals could decide to create such a program all on their own.

This scenario raises so many questions that will define the coming century: what does it mean to exist within an environment in which we ourselves are the primary agent of change? What will the future look like when technologies like nuclear weapons, CRISPR, the internet, and geoengineering can give a single human being the power to literally change the world? How can we harness our own natures in order to leverage such technologies to actually make the world better?

Holy shit, I thought. Someone needs to write a novel about this.

And Veil was born.

Don’t Try to Be Original

The more I learned about the science of geoengineering, the more I pressured myself to construct a story as intricate as the climatology models I was reading about. Part of it was wanting to honor the source material, but there was also a less honorable aspect: wanting to impress readers with an original science fictional take on an important issue.

We’ve all experienced the joy of appreciating a truly original work of art—something that opens new worlds for us. But is the originality we experience the result of the creator striving to be original? My best work emerges when my ego gets out of the way, when a story flows onto the page as if I am no more than a conduit. Veil refused to get going until I stopped trying to be clever and just wrote what seemed obvious.

Don’t try to be original. Just do what comes naturally. Others will call what comes naturally from you “original” because *you* are its source, your nature informed it. But you know the secret: you did what was obvious, and that’s what made it inspired.

Don’t Let Routine Get In Your Way

As we shelter in place to flatten the curve of a global pandemic, it feels like a lifetime ago, but last year at this time my wife and I were embarking on a pilgrimage. The Camino de Santiago is an ancient pilgrimage route, a network of paths across Europe that lead to the purported resting place of St. James in Santiago de Compostela. My wife and I aren’t religious (only about half of the pilgrims we met were Catholic), but we love walking, and over the course of five weeks, we hiked five hundred miles along the mountainous northern coast of Spain.

I was supposed to have finished writing Veil before we started.

I hadn’t.

So after spending all day lugging a heavy pack through pouring rain, howling wind, or baking sun, I would sit on my bunk in the converted gymnasium of a remote village albergue—volunteer-run shared sleeping quarters for pilgrims—and write a chapter, or a scene, or a sentence, before passing out.

So often, I trick myself into thinking that I can’t write unless the conditions are right: a large block of time, hitting a minimum word count, a quiet place to work, having eaten the optimal breakfast, an ample supply of inspiration, etc. But routine can hinder as well as help. I finished the rough draft of Veil on the Camino because I didn’t let routine get in my way. I wrote whenever, wherever, and however I could, and you can too.

Choose the Rollercoaster

Writing Veil was an emotional rollercoaster. Here’s the 1980’s montage version: bursting with ideas and enthusiasm—>thinking “wow, this one is different in a good way” as I whiz through the first few chapters—>insidious doubts gather in my mental shadows until—>somewhere around the halfway point I have an existential crisis that this book won’t, can’t work—>after extensive struggle, the crisis resolves into a new understanding of the story itself—>momentum builds until I’m experiencing the excitement of reading the climax even as I write it—>etc.

It turns out that this doesn’t get easier. It’s a rollercoaster I board ever time I write a new novel. The only difference experience makes is that now I know that I’m buying a ticket when I sit down to draft a new story. The rollercoaster is an integral part of my process. I choose the rollercoaster.

Realizing that the rollercoaster is a choice is crucial. It means I’m signing up to do the work. It means that when things get tough, I recognize that the struggle is the work. It means that when fear rears its ugly head, I face it—clear-eyed and even-keeled.

Find the Heart of the Story

I only ever figure out the heart of the story as I’m writing it. Rather than executing a clever plan, working through a manuscript sentence by sentence feels like hacking through dense undergrowth, following an overgrown path that might or might not lead out the other side.

As I explored this particular jungle, patterns began to emerge. Zia took on unexpected depth and started making decisions that surprised me. Her circle of friends came into focus. Strange loops connected choices, objects, locations ever more tightly—opportunities to increase the story’s density of meaning, a pocket universe reflecting itself.

But it wasn’t until a long train ride through Italy—interrupted by a wildfire on the tracks during which conductors handed out plastic water bottles to sweating passengers—that my wife posed the ultimate question: why are you writing this story in the first place?

Only by answering did I realize the answer. I was writing this story to take readers on a journey that would challenge them to reflect on life in the Anthropocene. I was writing it because the characters’ personal losses echo how we have all lost capital-n-Nature—the ability to draw a clear line between humanity and our environment. By coming up with ever more ingenious tools that extend our reach from the subatomic to the cosmic, we have lost a neat metaphor for explaining the world to ourselves. The cast had to find the courage to face their grief, to reconcile, to figure out a way forward. That is precisely the situation we find ourselves in with respect to the Earth system: we can no longer afford to pretend that our actions don’t have consequences or that it’s possible to turn back the clock. However difficult it may be, we must take responsibility for the extraordinary powers we’ve developed, and use them to build a better future together.

* * *

Eliot Peper is the author of Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, the Uncommon Series, and the Analog Series. His novels have been praised by the New York Times Book Review, Popular Science, San Francisco Magazine, Businessweek, io9, Boing Boing, and Ars Technica. He has helped build technology businesses, survived dengue fever, translated Virgil’s Aeneid from the original Latin, worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm, and explored the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, the Verge,  Tor.com, TechCrunch, VICE, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he has been a speaker at Google, Comic Con, SXSW, Future in Review, and the Conference on World Affairs.

Eliot Peper: Website | Twitter

Veil: Amazon

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Jason L. Blair: Five Things I Learned Writing Full Deck Roleplaying

A bit of a preamble, if Chuck will allow it, for those who may be wondering, “Full Deck Roleplaying? Is this a book? A game? Weird title for a novel.”

Full Deck Roleplaying is a book. And a game. It’s a tabletop roleplaying game or RPG, kinda sorta like Dungeons & Dragons which is everywhere these days. I’ve been making RPGs for almost twenty years. They’ve done well for me. They, in no small part, are responsible for my career in making video games.

Now, RPGs run the gamut as far as how they’re played and what they do. D&D is a dungeon crawl. You get together with friends and another person, the Dungeon Master, sets out challenges the players have to overcome to be heroes and get loot. Some RPGs are story engines. They are all about giving people the tools to tell engaging narratives. Some RPGs have lots of rules and some have very few. And there’s tons of options in the middle and all over the place. Tabletop roleplaying is a vast and varied landscape.

Full Deck Roleplaying is built around telling stories which might be why Chuck invited me to write something for his blog. Stories are my passion. Games are one of the ways I tell them.

In Full Deck Roleplaying, players create characters, create worlds, and create drama through the use of standard playing cards. But the cards are not just there to do your bidding. They influence the game by narrowing your choices and adding new details, forcing you to adapt to the hand that life—or at least the game—has dealt you.

You can try out Full Deck Roleplaying for absolutely free or you can kick in a few bucks if you want, no pressure. The beautifully-illustrated 66-page PDF contains the core Full Deck Roleplaying game system—setting creation, character creation, and the rules of play including handy reference sheets so you don’t have to dig for information during a session.

Full Deck Roleplaying puts the story in your hands.

What follows are five things I learned while writing this game, my first major game release in over eight years.

* * *

Write Where the Comfort Is

The past four years of my life have been defined by terrible things. I lost my brother and my father almost a year apart. (My brother died after a long battle with sepsis. I found out my dad had cancer on Christmas of that same year, he died only months later.) The top of my left femur literally started decaying and I had to have my hip replaced. I pulled up roots and yanked my family across the country away from friends and an established community for a bad career move. My recently-widowed mother relocated to be closer to us just as the studio I was at and I decided to part ways and just as I was told I was being divorced after almost 26 years. Soon after, my two kids—the light of my entire life, folks—moved back to Illinois and far far away from me.

It’s been a bad ride, friends.

Now, there have been bright spots. Even though the job didn’t work out, I met some good people there. I got to hang out with friends in the area and get to know them better. After that job and I shook hands for the final time, I was offered an opportunity at a great studio working with some fantastic people—and it’s only three hours from my kids. Plus I’m near a Trader Joe’s and that’s always nice.

But. Still. I have never carried this much pain in my life. It weighs on me every day. I feel its shadow over me in the morning and its breath on my neck at night. I never thought my life would so utterly implode. I’m still trying to find stuff amidst the debris.

I let the feelings of the past four years—all of which culminated in the greatest middle finger from the universe I’ve ever seen—keep me run into the ground for months. But one good thing came from it. Well, one good thing in regards to writing. I stopped caring about market trends and zeitgeist. I stopped caring about marketability. I started to just write. For me. I started to write where the comfort was.

In February, I wrote a Middle Grade novel that I’m currently shopping to agents. In March, I wrote a new roleplaying game that I just released in May. Those two projects may not seem to have much in common but the link there is that I wrote what I wanted. I wrote to comfort myself. In the novel, I wrote the story that came to me after my father’s passing. With the game, I wrote a system that I’d like to play. I didn’t know if anyone else would connect with it or not but it’s what I wanted. Those projects, well, I won’t say they “made me happy” but they gave me a joy I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I found a lot of comfort in both them. They were cathartic in different ways. In the novel, I got to see my father again. In the game, I got to see myself again. My younger self who took more risks and swung harder for the fences. I found a fire again. And it wasn’t the crackling embers of Hell at my feet. It was flames in my belly giving me the strength to pick up and move.

Editing is Alright

You could fill a book with chestnuts and platitudes comparing writing versus editing—and people have. Some writers love the editing process. To me, it was a necessary evil. I did it. Like I said, it’s necessary. But I didn’t enjoy it. It was rushing up river, it was playing in traffic.

But now, for whatever reason, I have found enjoyment in editing. Maybe it’s just narcissism but I like reading what I’ve written. I like rethinking how a chapter is constructed, how something is worded. I like making sure all the right seeds are planted throughout the text so, when the tree sprouts at the end, you want to sit in its shade.

I honestly don’t know what happened there. I don’t know what switch got flipped. Maybe it’s because, for the first time in ages, I feel connected to the material so revisiting it and making it stronger isn’t a chore. It’s helping a friend get better.

Routine is Nothing; Routine is Everything

I wrote the entirety of both that novel and that game in Google docs on my phone. 30,000 words on the novel. 8,000 on the game. I’m currently writing these words in a Google doc on my phone. It’s how I’ve been writing for the past eight months. I’ve written this way on my couch, in my car during lunch or in the parking lot of a grocery store, on a lumpy half-broken bed way too late at night, on the floor, on my back, on my stomach, on my side.

Which to say, anything I thought I needed to write—a comfy chair, the perfect software, the right atmosphere, the proper routine—were all excuses. What I needed was to write.

That said, the intimacy of being inches from my phone, the familiar motion of tapping letters on a screen with my thumbs became my routine. When I think of writing anymore, that’s what I think of. It’s comforting. And, most importantly, it gets the writing done.

This method didn’t come about as a personal challenge or a deliberate means to break some unhealthy writing barrier—

Actually. Well.

That’s a lie.

It came about because I was deep deep in the thrall of depression and would spend my entire evening staring at my phone, watching YouTube, checking Facebook, texting friends, and, of course, reading TerribleMinds.com, RELIGIOUSLY. I couldn’t watch TV much less sit in front of a computer and write.

But I knew I needed to do something, to distract myself if nothing else. So I gave myself a project—a book for adults about a cult deprogrammer on his last assignment. Which is weird because I see myself more as a kid lit author but I also knew I had some stuff to work through that was better suited for an adult audience. Anyway. I figured since I was staring at my phone all evening anyway, I may as well put that to use. One night, I opened up the Google docs app and started tapping away. The next night, again. The third night, the same. Then every night for a month. Multiple sprints every evening. Anywhere from 500-2000 words a night. Day after day. I didn’t want to break the streak.

I started to feel that rush. I was building momentum, chapter after chapter, and I would be up until 2a some nights writing away. The dopamine hits started coming. I was writing. After years of not doing much of nothing for myself, I was getting words down and building a story.

The routine came from that. And, y’know, writing on a phone isn’t hard. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking his left eyelid. Tapping a screen is cake.

Sure, it has its frustrations. App notifications, text messages, the dreaded phone call, making sure you have enough battery, autocorrect’s helpful edits but all that can be managed. And I don’t find myself switching apps to check Twitter or Facebook but I do switch apps to quickly open Wikipedia or to Google something. I love it. Anymore, I can’t imagine writing any other way.

You Are Building Towards Something

I’ve been making games for almost twenty years. My first published effort, Little Fears, was a great setting with an okay system. In the years since, I’ve released other game books—some entirely of my own creation, some based on established systems and lines. With every release, every project, I strove to make the best book I could. There’s something different about Full Deck Roleplaying. I don’t mean that as ad-speak. There was something different in how I wrote it. Not just that I was writing for comfort, like I said above, but I felt like all the little lessons I’d learned in my years as a game designer were coming together. Full Deck Roleplaying is the culmination of everything I know about making tabletop games. And there was incredible freedom that came with that. I knew what I wanted this to be. I scrutinized every rule to make sure it was doing what it needed to do. I stripped out anything that didn’t belong. It was the first time, if not ever then in a long while, where I felt strong. A musician nailing a solo. A surgeon intuiting a procedure. It gave me a level of confidence and clarity that I had been missing for years. I didn’t feel meek. I didn’t second-guess and compromise. I had a vision and I worked hard to make something that fit that vision.

Full Deck Roleplaying is what I’ve been building towards as a game designer. And the plans I have for it are what I want to do. I see a road where nothing was before. It’s an amazing feeling.

All this is to say that, whatever it is you’re doing, you’re growing. In skill, in endurance, in wisdom. Even the work you look at it and spit on has given you something. If that something doesn’t manifest soon, it will eventually. Just keep going.

I Have the Best Friends

Okay, maybe I didn’t learn this while writing Full Deck Roleplaying. Maybe I knew it way before. But it’s certainly been made evident in the days following the game’s release.

I was blown away when Chuck asked if I wanted to do a Five Things about this little self-published game book of mine. I’ve known Chuck for about a decade now and we both come from the tabletop mines but he is all National Bestseller and Awesome Writing Advice Guy and he wrote a book that maybe caused the pandemic? I dunno. I skimmed the headline. But he’s Chuck Wendig, y’know? He’s someone that I feel awkward mentioning in the list of people I know because it sounds like a name drop. I’ve read his work. Turns out? It’s really really good. You might say he’s a Kick-Ass Writer. [ed — goddamnit, blair — c.w.]

Me, I make my living as a game designer. I make video games during the day and tabletop games at night. Sure, I have aspirations to be a novelist—and I’ve self-published a novel—but I’ve yet to make that transition to Writer With Books at Barnes & Noble or Author With a Respectable Amazon Ranking.

Still though, I was totally gonna take him up on the offer. I’d be an idiot not to. Which, I mean, I’m an idiot—but not that kind of idiot. Chuck was doing me a real solid—and he wasn’t the only one.

My friends have been spreading the word about this new game of mine, retweeting and sharing posts, talking it up to people. In 20 years of working in games—and 40+ years of working at life—I’ve made some amazing friends who have my back.

Full Deck Roleplaying may seem like just another game book. Easily made and easily ignored. Plenty of RPGs come out every day. But this game means a lot to me. It’s an attempt to crawl back from total life failure in some way that I own and control completely. I cannot overstate how wonderful my friends have been. Maybe they sensed something special in this game. Maybe they’ve kept up with what’s been going on in my life and just want to help. It doesn’t matter why. It just matters they are. I know it and I see it.

Thank you to Chuck, for the platform to reach more people and just to talk about things I usually only talk about in filtered groups on Facebook. Thank you to all my friends who have helped make navigating the River Styx that much easier. Thank you to my mom and aunt for the immeasurable support. Thank you to my kids for knowing how hard this has all been. I can’t even imagine how it’s all been for you.

Finally, thank you—YOU—for reading. I hope your friends are as wonderful as mine are. You deserve it.

* * *

Jason L Blair makes video games by day and tabletop games by night. A recent transplant to the Chicago area, he is currently enjoying the confines of his tiny apartment and longing for IKEA to reopen. In what time is left over, he likes to write Middle Grade novels and chapter books that he hopes, one day, kids of all ages will get to read. You can keep tabs on him over at JasonLBlair.com and see what kinda games he’s cooking up at FunSizedGames.com.

Jason L. Blair: Website | FunSizedGames | Twitter

Full Deck Roleplaying: DriveThruRPG

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Wanderers: Now Out In Paperback

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Welp, it’s out. Wanderers has landed in paperback, finally (all 800 pages of it) — the tale of mysterious sleepwalkers moving their way through a pandemic-throttled America. If you’re looking for a good time, look no further, because America’s hottest bookclub is Wanderers — it’s got everything: artificial intelligence, bat fungus, washed-up rock stars, white supremacist militias, shady corporations, an election year, social media, a beloved theme park. Hashtag Stefon voice.

It’s obviously, um, weird having a book out like this right now because… you know, it’s surprisingly on-point. Now, to be fair, sci-fi and horror authors aren’t out there to really predict anything — if we’re talking about the future in our books, we’re really using that as a way to talk about our present. I just, um, didn’t anticipate this to be so presently present. At the same time, a lot of what’s in here aren’t things we couldn’t have seen coming. Hell, we did see this coming. Pandemic-level diseases are not new. They pop up every 10 years or so. It’s just, usually, they don’t get a foothold, and often they don’t get that foothold because we are somewhat ready for them. This one, we were not and here I could devolve into talking about the failure of a “””president””” who encourages people to make bleach smoothies and stick lightbulbs up their asses, buuuuut we already know all this.

There were a few bits of the book I wasn’t ready to have mirrored in reality (predictive AIs like BlueDot, or the comet called Swan), and there were quite a few bits I totally missed. If I were writing the book now I’m sure I would’ve written a chapter on toilet paper hoarding.

Hey, look at this — the back of the book has this little bit right here:

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That’s pretty rad. It hit a lot of best-of-year-lists. Was nominated for the Stoker. Hit a lot of national bestseller lists. It’s gotten quotes from some people who… well, the list blows my mind (and culminates in five [!] pages of blurbs and comments at the fore of the paperback edition). I’ve honestly been very fortunate that people have responded as well as they have to this little (er, big) book. Am I humble bragging? No, I’m actual bragging, because I think authors should be proud of their books, and this one, I’m genuinely proud of.

Let’s get some of your procurement options out of the way, and again, given the era in which we live, it is worth considering buying from a local indie store, if you find yourself able to — independent bookstores are trying to stay alive (as are we all) in this peculiar epoch of pandemic bullshit, so helping them helps the industry which helps the authors and which creates a strong bookish ecosystem, and bookish ecosystems help books thrive so readers have them:

Paperback: Indiebound | Bookshop.org | Doylestown Books | Let’s Play Books

Or you can check out the book’s page at the publisher for more buy links.

Here’s the review aggregator from Lit Hub (ooh, look at those raves).

Also, I’ve updated my FAQ from when the book launched in July…

Is there a content warning?

There is. I’ve concealed it behind a ROT13 filter so that those who desire the warning can simply unscramble it by c/p’ing the encrypted text into the window at rot13.com.

Pbagrag jneavat: fhvpvqny vqrngvba, fhvpvqr, gbegher, enpvfz naq ovtbgel, qvfphffvbaf bs zragny urnygu naq zragny vyyarff, tha ivbyrapr, naq n tencuvpny qrfpevcgvba bs Z/Z encr (sbhaq ba cc 434-435 bs gur uneqonpx, ng gur raq bs puncgre 50).

Who will like this book?

YOU WILL, OF COURSE. You, specifically you. *stares unswervingly*

More seriously, this book is for fans of things like The Stand, Station Eleven, Lost, Swan Song, The Passage, The Book of M, The Strain, The Hot Zone. 

Wait why would I buy this pandemic book during a pandemic?

Well, that’s kind of on you, I guess — I don’t really know. Some readers will seek pure escapism during this time and others will go the opposite way. (I read McCammon’s Swan Song during the height of nuclear panic in the 80s and… well, it helped. YMMV.) I do think this helps contextualize a lot of what’s going on, and further, because what goes on in the book is so much more cuckoo bananapants, maybe our current reality will feel a little better. Plus, the book is, despite its grim matter, full of what I wanted to be heart and hope and humor. As Kirkus put it, “A story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together… equal to Stephen King’s The Stand.” SyFy said it “makes the Apocalypse beautiful.” Kinda depends on your gut, but I like to think it’s still a worthy book to read right now.

Is this part of a series?

It not part of a series and is currently a standalone. (Though it’s big enough for 3-4 novels, I guess.) I’ve always said that there could be a sequel if the sales warranted it and if I had a story in mind and… *coughs into hand* I CAN SAY NO MORE.

What genre is it?

I don’t know. I mean, I guess technically it’s either “speculative fiction” or “science fiction,” but I also wrote what I feel is implicitly, if not explicitly, an epic horror novel. Certainly it seems to be working well for readers who like, say, Stephen King books. Hey, whatever. Thankfully, genres are just a thing people made up. So find whatever narrative taxonomy works for you!

What if I can’t afford the book?

Then I slyly but pointedly direct my gaze at Your Local Library. Libraries are where the free books — and essential community services! — live. If they do not carry the book, you can always contact them and ask them to, or perhaps request it through ILL (inter-library loan).

[Note, libraries are not all open right now, but many still lend e-books and audio!]

What can I do to support the book?

The story goes that what is most likely to convince someone to read a book is not me telling you to, or advertisements, or a blog tour, or a tweet, or, or, or — but rather, word-of-mouth. Meaning, the best thing you can do is talk about it. Online, in meatspace, wherever, however. Reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Tweets, blog posts, incoherent wails of joy. Tell friends and family and random strangers and cherished villains. If you read it, and you like it, and you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, that’s the best way to help — just try to get other people to read the ding-dang thing. That’s the hardest part, and I really can’t do it. This part falls to you. If, of course, you like it (and me) enough to do so.

Can I come see you and get the book signed?

So, once upon a time, the paperback was going to come out in July and I was going to go on a book tour. As a bit of inside publisher baseball, we looked at the sales numbers of the book and where the book overperformed were in places that, drum roll please, I went on book tour. Proving that book tours work — at least, for the right kind of author, and with the right kind of event. Were I a brand spanking new author with little “platform” (ugh) or “brand” (uggggh), maybe that wouldn’t work so well. But, I do okay in that department, and so I am fortunate enough that people come to my events to hear me talk. As such, Del Rey was intending to send me out again for this one — in this case, to states and cities I had missed the first go-round. Except, oops, that’s not happening now.

I will be doing some online gigs, of course, as we do now. I’ve got a great podcast interview about it coming up with Ana Marie Cox. Today I’ll be recording with Del Reydio, talking to my amazing editor, Tricia Narwani. I’ll also be doing an Instagram Live thing this Friday with Paul Krueger (2pm EST, at the Del Rey IG account), and may also have some other bits and bobs in the works.

As to whether or not you can get a signed book from me…

Welp, you can check with Doylestown Books, and it’s possible if you buy a copy from them, I can sign it? I think we can maybe facilitate a safe, socially-distant, mask-on way of doing that.

Are there Easter Eggs in the book?

There are, indeed. Lots of references to other books, other authors, my own books, and so forth. A hundred points to the Hogwarts House that finds them all.

What’s next for you?

Initially, Book of Accidents was coming out late Summer/early Fall, but we decided to move it based on the coming election, since media attention would be hyperfocused on that shitshow, and it seemed best to get out of the way of that screaming cultural locomotive lest we become blood paste on the tracks. So that is now coming out in Summer 2021. It’s done — though I should have a copy-edit pass to go, and a cover yet to reveal.

There’s also You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton, coming out in 2021 — my inane “motivational” tweets with art by the awesome Natalie Metzger.

And there’s Dust & Grim, my MG, coming out in 2021.

Gonna be a busy year.

That’s not even accounting for SECRET BOOKS 1, 2, AND 3.

So, please tell folks. Spread the word.

And don’t forget —

Black Swan says “hi.”

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Disjecta Membra: 8

First and foremost, let’s talk free ice cream. I said I was giving away some free Jeni’s ice cream contingent on a donation to the RERF (Restaurant Employee Relief Fund), and we had 26 people donate, each for $25 or more, meaning a $650+ contribution to the RERF. Thank you all! Winner of the free ice cream was Kim Nelson! YAY KIM.

Also, let’s get the self-promo out of the way early. Reminder: the Wanderers paperback is out tomorrow! I might pop up some places here and there to promote it. Like, in your bathroom mirror.

Where the fuck is Flick? Where the Flick is Fuck? What? Huh? Shut up. Yes, I’m still playing Animal Crossing and I have an island full of cool rare bugs and I haven’t seen that motherfucker Flick in like, three weeks. Is this important? No. Am I mad about it regardless? Yes.

I might have fresh strawberries this afternoon. I know, you’ve got a soul boner for this hard-hitting content I’m laying down. But hey, fresh strawberries are a true joy of spring, and seems like we might be getting some today. And I didn’t know if we’d see much by way of fresh berries this year. Though we did plant some blueberry bushes, even though blueberries are, by and large, a disappointing bullshit fruit that consists largely of fruit that tastes more like the ghost of blueberries than actual blueberries. And yes, someone will say, BUT THAT’S JUST THE SUPERMARKET VERSION, except I’ve also had some farm market local blueberries too and they were also just little Baron Harkonnens full of berry-scented water. I’ve had maybe two pints of blueberries that tasted like blueberries, were delicious, and required naught but popping them in your maw. The rest were merely purple sadness balloons.

So, wait, why plant blueberries, then? For the birds, duh.

Speaking of birds! Seen some new ones recently including — whoa, what, a cuckoo? A literal goddamn cuckoo? Yep. Cuckoo. Photo at the bottom of the page, plus some other finds.

We are told that everything will now change. The pandemic, the lockdown, it’s changed us, changed society, changed what we do going forward. And I’m sure it has, to some degree, but I suspect those degrees are small — weird chaotic cascades. We’re expecting a BIG SOCIETAL SHIFT, but… then you see people lining up for bars, and wanting to hop on the next cruise ship, and refusing to wear masks because MAH FREEDOMS or some horseshit. Maybe nothing will change. Maybe this is, as others have noted, more like the gun debate, where we simply accept a tithing of blood and flesh to some disturbed, distorted idea of personal liberty. Personal liberty and American exceptionalism, each throttling the health of the community, and by proxy, the health of the individuals in that community. Because, though cliched, it really does take a village. And when we value the individual over the village that raised them — well, that’s how shit gets fucked up.

I keep hearing about a vaccine in the fall, but how? I’d think that’s too fast, isn’t it? Not that I don’t want one. I do. But a rushed vaccine that either doesn’t work well or that has deleterious side-effects will only widen the reality gap between science and anti-vax propaganda. It’d arguably give them ammo to push for that anti-science agenda. I mean, again, I want the vaccine soon — but given that a 12 month turnaround time would already have been abnormally fast, what’s it mean if that timeline is halved again to six months? What gets lost?

Here’s a thing that happens. Whenever any new Star Wars property comes out, I get tagged in a lot of articles about Aftermath, often due to speculation or because I decided some portion of the post-OT canon. Which is fine! It’s nice, even. But then I get a series of people who assure me that they have the inside scoop that XYZ thing from the New Star Wars property is actually a thing from Aftermath. This is also fine! I don’t think it’s problematic or anything, I just mean to say, it’s never been true. Some little Aftermathy bits have crept in — the valachord reference in Solo, or the general sort of vibe of Palpatine’s end game in ROTS. Needless to say, I’m again hearing things about how XYZ in Mandalorian Season 2 is from my books and — all I’ll say is, I will caution you to not believe it. Generally things in SW don’t jump from print to screen; they go the opposite, from screen to print. Screen leads the way. It’s a giant connected canonical universe, yes, except all revolves around a single star, and that star is the film and TV properties. This is not a rendered judgment against it. It’s just… how it tends to work.

Rise of Skywalker hasn’t stuck with me. I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, but haven’t yet been able to sit through it all the way now that I have the home version. I tried. But it’s just kinda soggy to me at present. It feels really pacey, like someone impatient is behind it, snapping fingers and asking it to hurry the fuck up and just get it over with. It doesn’t take any time to breathe. I should try skipping to the second half, see if that helps. I recall the second half feeling more paced out, more drawn, more consequential. Hrm. But my kid hasn’t really cared much about it either, which surprised me. For him it’s mostly about The Mandalorian. (As a sidenote, this is about me and not about you, and whether you hate the movie or love it, it says nothing about you, nor your tastes, nor mine. We really need to get over the idea that our pop culture preferences — or even our general preferences at all — are in any way an assault on anyone else’s own feelings.)

We’re doing No-Mow May. Which is, like, the most wonderfully lazy way to support the environment. We just don’t mow. The front yard is getting leggy as hell, but seeing a lot of wildflowers pop up, and a lot of native pollinators. Already got bumbles bumbling, but also mining bees. And we have what I think is a huge sycamore maple which has these dangling scrotal blossoms on it, and they are COVERED in bees. And now we’re all imagining scrotums slathered in bees and I’m sorry, but also, I’m not that sorry.

Also planted some native plants. What did we get, let’s see — helianthus, phlox, blueberry, asters, bee balm, mountain mint, hazlenut, hyssop. Will get more as we can. Also have some actual veggies growing now: radishes, kale, snap peas, carrots. Put in some temporary beds too and will plant some more post-frost seeds.

Sorry, back to Star Wars. Damn, though, the Clone Wars final season was… aaaaghghrbrbble, so good. I honestly have a sort of sour gut feeling whenever I think of Star Wars these days (too much time in those trenches, I guess), but this was a hump I didn’t have a hard time getting over. Honestly, feel how you feel about the prequels — but TCW series and even Rebels truly contextualize the prequels in a meaningful way. One thing that’s interesting to me is that the character of Anakin in the films and the character of Anakin in TCW are… pretty different. TCW is a more confident, subtle version of Anakin, one whose fall feels more natural — and one who, I think, you like more. It’s interesting to see that divergence, and ponder if it’s just a stylistic authorial choice or a willful kind of course correction.

That’s it, I think. Photos, and see you tomorrow.

Where I’m At, Plus Some Free Ice Cream

Before I get to the part where I give you some free ice cream, you first must endure a carousel of self-promotion. You will sit there, and it will whirl about you, dizzying and hallucinogenic, until the end, whereupon you are successfully inculcated and now inhabit THE WENDIG CULT, which is mostly just a cult where we wear beards and look at birds. Also there’s a modicum of human sacrifice but we’ll talk about that later ha ha ha ahem.

So, let’s see.

First up, Wanderers is out in paperback on this upcoming Tuesday, May 19th. If you care to check it out, an independent bookstore is the most wonderful place to buy it (indiebound, bookshop.org, doylestown bookshop, let’s play books). If you’ve already read it, please tell others, and if you could leave a review, that’d be great. If it’s not a nice review, then please yell your review at a blue jay, who are the canonical carriers of bad reviews. The blue jay will surely pass the review along to those who require it. I mean, hey, the Washington Post said you should read it.

Second, I was on… a talk show (wait for it)… inside Animal Crossing (no it gets weirder)… run by Gary Whitta, the guy behind Book of Eli and Rogue One (hold on)… a show that recently also hosted T-Pain, Danny Trejo, and Elijah Wood? Yeah. It’s a thing. It’s called Animal Talking. It’s fucking weird. It’s awesome. Gary is good people and it’s a neat thing, so here’s the YouTube of my episode. Check out the show live, too, because what fun.

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Also, guess who wrote a spot on Polygon about Calvin & Hobbes in our era of the Quarantimes, and how Lockdown makes it all the more relevant? It’s me! It’s true! Holy shit!

Anyway. I think that’s it?

ONTO THE FREE ICE CREAM

HA HA THERE IS NO FREE ICE CREAM YOU FELL FOR A CLASSIC RUSE

*sigh*

Fine, I am assured by my lawyers that if I said there’d be ice cream, then there’d be some goddamn ice cream, so uggggh whatever. Stupid law. So! The other day I was the recipient of some free ice cream myself, when Jeni’s sent me some of their new SUNSHINE ice cream, which is a luscious gray ice cream (honestly, it’s so fancy it should be grey with an e) that tastes in stark contrast to its color like you just blended up a smoothie of lime sherbet, Froot Loops, and Skittles, and then injected it with some of that vampire-killing Sunshine from Blade II. Point is, it’s fucking tasty, containing a hefty measure of one of my favorite flavors — passion fruit! — and I’m glad I got some, but I also feel like, do I deserve free ice cream? Probably not. Do you deserve free ice cream? Of course.

So, I wish I could give it to ALL OF YOU, but I can’t, because who am I, Scrooge McDuck? Swimming in Ice Cream Riches? (Certain sections of the internet will suggest to you that I am a MILLIONAIRE, full of money like some kind of money pinata, but, uhhh, haha have you met a writer before? Anyway.) At the very least, I feel a contest to give some free ‘scream is fair. I’ll send five pints of Jeni’s — one pint will be Sunshine, the other two will be dealer’s choice (but I intend for them to be fruit-tropical-adjacent). All you gotta do to win is the following:

a) be in the United States, upper 48

b) donate $25 or more to the RERF, the Guy Fieri-led Restaurant Employee Relief Fund

c) email me your receipt (screenshot or FWD or whatever) of that donation to the RERF to me at curious_spider@yahoo.com by Sunday night at 11:59PM.

I’ll randomly pick someone by Monday, will announce the winner here, I’ll get your address.

Then: ice cream for you. A tiny dollop of sunshine and sweetness.

And that’s it.

Here’s a photo of that ice cream, by the way:

Dan Moren: Five Things I Learned Writing The Aleph Extraction

Aboard a notorious criminal syndicate’s luxurious starliner, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his crew race to steal a mysterious artifact that could shift the balance of war…

Still reeling from a former teammate’s betrayal, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his band of misfit spies have no time to catch their breath before being sent on another impossible mission: to pull off the daring heist of a quasi-mythical alien artifact, right out from under the nose of the galaxy’s most ruthless crime lord.

But their cold war rivals, the Illyrican Empire, want the artifact for themselves. And Kovalic’s newest recruit, Specialist Addy Sayers, is a volatile ex-con with a mean hair-trigger who might put the whole mission at risk. Can Kovalic hold it all together, or will the team tear themselves apart before they can finish the job?

Must go faster

My first two books were written on spec—which is to say, I wrote them, and then my agent pitched them to publishers. But The Aleph Extraction was the first time I wrote a book on contract, meaning the publisher paid me to deliver it on time. Which meant that if I didn’t deliver it, it wasn’t one of those “nobody will get upset at me but myself” situations. No, many many people would be upset. Least of all me.

No pressure.

Look, I’m no stranger to deadlines. I’ve been a working journalist for almost fifteen years, and in that time I would regularly punch out an 800-word piece in about an hour. But getting into the creative zone and spinning an entire world out of whole cloth? It takes a little more energy. My first book took nine years to go from being written to getting published.

When Aleph came around, I realized I had about nine months. Nine months to write it, get feedback from beta readers, incorporate that feedback, send the draft to my agent, incorporate his feedback, and then eventually send it on to my editor. Doable? Well, if a human child can develop in nine months, seems like I ought to be able to dash off a book with spaceships and pew pew pews.

Believe me, I am as flabbergasted as anybody to discover that not only can I write a book in nine months, but it’s actually pretty good. Luckily, deadlines are one of the few things in the world that can motivate me to plan ahead, so I ended up creating a schedule for when my first draft had to be done, when I needed to revise it, and when I needed to send it to various parties. Did I hit all those milestones? I mean, do I look like Idris Elba, the handsomest man alive? The answer to both of those questions is “no—but close.”

It’s worse

A lot of writers advocate torturing your characters. That is because writers are, at heart, sadists. Well, maybe just Stephen King. But we are definitely control freaks, which is why we delight in creating realms in which we have absolute, godlike authority.

Anyway, I once read some writerly advice that coincidences in stories are no-nos if they help your characters along—oh ho, here just happens to be the exact MacGuffinator that will destroy Kirkon the Unfathomable’s invulnerable Battle-o-Gon. The day is saved!

But, on the flip side, they pointed out, you can always have coincidences that make things worse for your characters. Trapped in a space station that’s slowly falling out of orbit into a planet of such crushing pressure that Dirkly Massivepecs will soon be nothing more than a cube of compressed flesh? Thank god there’s an escape hatch right here that will let him jettison to saf—OH NO, IT’S FULL OF SPACE BEES.

No one ever expects the space bees.

A point with a view

Both of my previous novels featured two narrators, but was that enough for The Aleph Extraction? Nope. I’ve added a third character, because I believe in increasing the difficult every time I start on a new ordeal. Like that guy in The Crucible. “More weight!” Never stay still. That’s when the space bees get you.

Addy Sayers, my new narrator, is very different from my previous POV characters, Simon Kovalic and Eli Brody: she’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of a small asteroid, and she’s not here to make friends. Growing up on the street, eking out a living as a petty criminal, Addy’s had a hard life and she doesn’t expect anything from anybody.

Putting Addy into the mix with Kovalic and Eli not only means an opportunity to take a different perspective on what’s going on in the Galactic Cold War, but also means I got to explore some parts of the universe that we haven’t seen before. And let me tell you, they’re not pretty: thieves, gangsters, arms dealers. A big war is a perfect time for them to thrive.

Timing is everything

Of course I worried about timelines in my previous books: time, as the only saying goes, only exists so everything doesn’t happen at once. But neither of those earlier books included an elaborately plotted super space heist. Does Tom Cruise leave anything to chance when he jumps out of a plane to land on a nightclub in Paris? I mean, I don’t know, he’s kind of crazy, maybe? But does Ethan Hunt? Heck no.

Telling a heist from multiple viewpoints means that I had to make sure that everything lines up correctly, otherwise one character might de-ionize the neural explainotron before their partner remembers to invert the retro field’s dynamic quotient, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Ha ha, we would not, let me tell you!

For me, that meant going through and isolating every place in that chunk of the story where one of the characters makes any reference to time, and then making sure that all of those times agreed. Not only so that things happened in the right order, but—much more importantly—so that eagle-eyed readers won’t write in to point out that it doesn’t align. Because it sure would be embarrassing to have a basic math error make it to print in one of your books, not that I’d ever know. Ha ha ha.

Unexpect the expected

I wrote the book. I turned it on time. I lined up some publicity. I even planned for the space bees.

But the crystal ball neglected to tell me that there was a pandemic waiting in the wings. LOUSY PIECE OF GLASS. Point is: no matter how well you think you’ve planned your latest endeavor, life invariably finds a way to mess with you. Release dates get moved, copies don’t get shipped on time, audiobook production gets held up. That, as my father would say, is the way the cookie crumbles, which also explains why I eat all my cookies in one bite now.

What to do? Well, the only thing to do. Roll with those punches. Paper copies get shipped before the official release date? Encourage those folks to write reviews or share pictures on social media! Book launch gets canceled? Consider a virtual reading instead. Can’t handle the crippling doubt of whether or not this book will succeed and you’ll get the opportunity to write another one? Spend hours building a utopic island paradise in Animal Crossing. I mean. What?

The things that are in your control, you do your best to be flexible and to adapt to the new normal. The things that are out of your control? Well, in the words of the ice queen herself, let them go.

Just remember: in space, no one can hear the bees.

* * *

DAN MOREN is a novelist, freelance writer, and prolific podcaster. A former senior editor at Macworld, his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Macworld, Popular Science, Yahoo Tech, and many others.

Dan Moren: Website | Twitter

Aleph Extraction: Indiebound | Bookshop | Elsewhere

Disjecta Membra: 7

Instead of one delicious cookie, here you get a stepped-on cookie, fractured into many crumbly bits! What a special gift! Anyway. Here, again, are my SLAPDASH DISORGANIZED THOUGHTS during what I think is Week 349 of the Quarantimes. You’re doing great, sweetie.

I’ve started to finally work again with some effect. I’m not like, hard-charging at 100% or anything, but I have a measure of focus I didn’t have weeks ago. And when I say “measure,” it’s exactly that — it doesn’t last as long as it used to (before ALL THIS BULLSHIT began), but it also lasts a whole lot longer than it did, say, the week prior. Helps too that I have the story I’m working on more or less figured out. But “figuring it out” took me longer, too, than it normally would. Again, I just try to remember, we’re all walking on broken legs. Doesn’t mean we can’t get from Point A to Point B, but we’re gonna do a lot of hobbling about and crutch-walking, and that means it’s gonna be slower. Still gotta move. But gotta take it easier, too because you shouldn’t try to run on a broken leg.

Paul Vasquez, the Double Rainboy guy, died from COVID. And that’s a helluva thing to write. He had what I consider an outsized impact on how we view beauty and nature and honestly I think he gave people permission to feel that way about what they see out in the world and to express that feeling in a big way. To see the disease take him away from this beautiful world is a decidedly not-beautiful thing. But he left beauty — and recognition of beauty — for us.

My baking situation has become a real problem. I’ve baked so much fucking bread I’m pretty sure I’m just a big sack of carbs. I baked so much bread I had too much and it went stale and then I took that bread and turned it into bread pudding, which I’ve also never made before, and it was delicious, and now my heart is just a crusty loaf of bread. I am bread. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside, sour throughout. I still haven’t cracked the “sandwich bread” thing, though — each time it’s come out like a brick. It’s still good, just not… sandwich bread. I’ve also been sourcing flour from small mills around the country, like a fucking weirdo. What is the deal with bread? Is it an emblem of being able to do a kind of Frontier Survival Act? Is it the fear of not being able to get bread? Or is it merely the comfort of smelling fresh baking bread? Have we all been colonized by sourdough starters? Maybe we have.

My sourdough starter is named Steve, by the way. He’s still bubbling and making hooch. The key, and thanks to Seamus Blackley for letting me in on this, the “your starter should double in size” is basically some Instagram bullshit. Mine never doubled in size. Never even grew that much. But it’s vigorous and makes great bread. Good job, Steve. Good goddamn job.

Our dog has cancer. Or had. She grew what would best be called a “sinister barnacle” upon her neck, under her collar — vet at first thought, well, maybe it’s an infected ingrown hair or something, but it got kinda thumb-sized and angry, but then stablized. So they had us watch and wait. It was good for a couple months but then grew, as sinister barnacles tend to. So, we scheduled the surgery and it was last Monday. It went well, though now her neck looks like some real Frankenstein shit. And hard to protect that area because it’s where a collar would go — so we have a towel swaddled around her like it’s a scarf, and she traipses around the yard as if it’s the French Riviera. Got a report back, and it was cancer — soft cell sarcoma or something? Slow-growing, and they got it out with clean margins. So, in theory, as long as she heals well, she should be good, and he said she should live out her normal lifespan. So, bad news turned to good news? Or something?

The vet was all no-contact. An impressive operation. Here in PA, it seems people are taking this more seriously than in other places… buuuuut also not as seriously as they should. I had a building inspector just roll up on me in my shed while I was working. No mask. Tried to just walk the fuck in through the door. We had a propane guy try to pet our dogs while they were in the yard — which is fraught even in non-pandemic times because, uhh, they’re dogs, and dogs can bite off your fingerbits, buddy. Had to get a battery replaced on our old Forester (we’d been running it, but it still died on us) and AAA was like, “It’s non-contact, don’t worry,” but then the guy showed up and it was of course not that at all — he refused to do it all himself, needed someone in the car while he replaced the battery. He was masked and everything was socially distant, so it was fine, but eennnhh. So stressful.

Hell is other people, now. Officially. Sartre knew what was up.

Local politicians of the G-O-P variety are showing their colors. They want our country to reopen all the way and they want the “numbers” for the disease to stop including nursing home and other care facilities, as if those are hermetically-sealed chambers where the disease gets in but never gets out. And it further suggests that the elderly who die from this… aren’t really people, anyway, which is fucking gross. The altar of Mammon is wide and hungry for blood, and they’re happy to throw us on it in order for it to disgorge a few golden coins into their pockets.

You see photos and you increasingly realize there are Two Americas. And we are drifting further and farther apart. It’s not exactly that it’s new — there was the Anti-Mask Brigade or whatever in 1918, and we had full-on Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden in the 30s. But social media and the internet have afforded people the luxury of choosing their own consensus reality (if you ever played Mage: The Ascension, boy will that fuck with your head). They get to pick a world where on some spectrum the virus isn’t that bad, or it doesn’t exist, or it was pumped into our blood due to evil flu shots and now we’re being thought-controlled via 5G by twin gay Satanic puppetmasters, Bill Gates and Tom Hanks, who want to make a new vaccine that will presumably be filled with… I dunno, robots or something. We’ve corroded access to education and eroded people’s critical thinking skills so now they’re happy to swill whatever Flavor-Aid will get them to the Promised Lands. The cult-like thinking is spreading like aerosolized syphilis. We’ve got these concentric circles starting to drift together — Q weenies, and anti-vaxxers on both the left and the right, and Trumpies, and militia-nuts and… is there any way to get the Flat Earthers in there? Probably.

Murder hornets are just a thing they’re using to get clicks and try to scare you, by the way, evidenced by the fact that no entomologist is gonna call them “murder hornets.” That’s not science. And they’re not even widespread. This is like the killer bee phenomenon from when I was a kid. THE KILLER BEES ARE COMING FROM AFRICA AND well, you remember the rest. Also a lot of wasps and such are useful to the world in a variety of ways, often eating or parasitizing worse critters. Unless they’re up in your grill, don’t try to wipe them out, please, because they’re almost certainly not the Asian Hornets you’re afraid of. If they are, call a professional to assess. But also, HOT BEE BALLS.

Hey, look. I got a box of books! Wanderers paperback, out 5/19. Please to buy from your local favorite indie bookstore? If you don’t have one, Doylestown Books will deliver.

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Mother’s Day was tougher this year than I expected. And a hard balance because, my son is celebrating his mother (and I am too), and I can’t be all morose, but this is the first Mother’s Day without mine aaaaand. Well. It’s hard.

Oof, this shit is getting depressing. I don’t mean for it to be. Uhh. I’m seeing a lot of new birds recently! Blue-headed vireo. Magnolia warbler. Orchard oriole. (Those sound like launch codes.) Also there are brown thrashers nesting in the hedge by my shed and they are fucking brutal against blue jays. I just saw a BIRB WAR between a thrasher, a jay, and a catbird. Noisily mosh-pitting in the sky. Here’s the thrasher, and then I’m out, byeeeee:

Laura Lam: The Gut Punch of Accidentally Predicting the Future

Laura Lam is a damn fine writer whose work has only grown better over time — and her newest, Goldilocks, is evidence of that. It’s sharply relevant and has that feeling of a screw turning and digging in as you read it, and I cannot recommend it enough — and here she talks about some of the same stuff I’ve grappled with, re: Wanderers, meaning, oops, I predicted the future. Sci-fi writers aren’t out here trying to predict the future, really; we’re usually trying to talk about the present and the past. But sometimes, we hit the mark just the same. Here’s Laura!

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I thought Terrible Minds would be the place to talk about the strange, horrible feeling of accidentally predicting the future, since Chuck did it too with Wanderers.

It happens to pretty much any science fiction writer who writes in the near future. Worldbuilding is basically extrapolating cause and effect in different ways. You see a news article somewhere like Futurism and you give a little chuckle—it’s something happening that you predicted in a book, and it’s a strange sense of déjà vu. I used to even share some of the articles with the hashtag #FalseHeartsIRL when I released some cyberpunks a few years ago. I can’t do that with Goldilocks, really, because the stuff I predicted isn’t some interesting bit of tech or a cool way to combat climate change through architecture or urban planning.

Because this time it’s people wearing masks outside. It’s abortion bans. It’s months of isolation. It’s a pandemic.

In real life, it’ll rarely play out exactly as you plan in a book. Some things twist or distort or are more unrealistic than you’d be allowed to put into fiction (e.g. murder wasps or anything that the orange man in the white house utters). In Goldilocks, I have people wearing masks due to climate change being a health risk, which was inspired by how disconcerted I felt seeing a photo of my mother wearing a mask due to the wildfires in California while I live in Scotland.

The rising tide of misogyny and other forms of bigotry has been on my mind the last few years, so I created a dystopian future, my take on a Handmaid’s Tale scenario—how would that shake down if climate change meant thirty years of habitability at most? I took a slow, insidious approach, though I deliberately didn’t go into a detailed step-by-step breakdown from how exactly we go from here to there. This was because it would date itself immediately (it already has, I suppose, as there’s no mention of coronavirus in the book), and I also thought it’d be more interesting for readers to fill in those blanks and each find a subtly different route.

I figured you’d still try to use reproductive health as a way to control power over the narrative, and the Heartbeat Bills that cropped up while I was drafting last year and the way states are using COVID-19 as a way to ban abortions is fairly telling. I also thought about how people offer something that seems good for those who just gave birth but has a sting in the tail—a birth bonus to make the first few years of raising a child easier, but it’s also a way to sneakily encourage people with uteruses to stay home and look after the kid for a few years. If you want any additional kids? You have to pay a very hefty child-tax to get that state-mandated IUD removed, so only the rich are able to have more than one.

Five women steal a spaceship to journey to Cavendish, a planet 10 light years away and humanity’s hope for survival and for a better future. A planet they hopefully won’t spoil like the old one. It’ll take the Atalanta 5 a few months to journey to Mars to use the test warp ring to jump to Epsilon Eridani (the real star for my fake planet), and then a few more months’ travel on the other side. It’s a long time to be with the same people. I did not expect those elements of how the women cope with isolation to be a how-to for 2020. I read a lot of astronaut memoirs, and that has probably helped me cope with lockdown a bit better than I might have (my top rec is Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth).

Though it’s a mild spoiler, in light of current events I have been warning people that there is a pandemic in the book. It’s not a huge focus of the plot and it never gets graphic, but I forwarded an article about coronavirus to my editor on January 22nd with basically a slightly more professional version of ‘shit.’ The illness within the book is not quite as clear of an echo as White Mask, it’s still strange. The last thing I expected when I wrote a book with a pandemic was to have its launch interrupted by an actual pandemic.

You don’t feel clever, or proud, when you predict these sorts of things. You feel guilty when you see the nightmares about the future come true instead of the dreams. You wanted it to remain something cautionary. I’m nervous about how to talk about the book—I don’t want to be seen as profiteering off of something so terrible, yet I know some people have also found reading about fictitious versions of current events calming. Because books have a narrative shape, an ending that’s often hopeful. This is comforting when we don’t know when or how this liminal in between phase will end or what our new normal will be.

I worked hard on the book, and it’s had the most pre-pub buzz I’ve had so far (this is my 6th book). I wanted—I want—it to do well. It’s a particularly painful wistfulness to wonder how it would have done if the supply chain was normal. Instead I see the hardback out of stock at certain retailers and I wonder when it’ll be re-stocked and if potential readers will go to alternate retailers like Bookshop or just shrug and move onto one of the other many books out there in the world instead. When my phone pings a reminder for a planned in person event that isn’t happening now, I daydream about that parallel present where none of this happened. My mom is still halfway around the world instead of visiting me like she was meant to be just now, again wearing a mask outside the house, but for a different reason. She and my parents-in-law are in their 60s and 70s, and my mother-in-law is being treated for cancer. I worry about them every day, about everyone who is at risk.

It’s a gut punch. I didn’t want this future. None of us did.

I hope we move towards a better future.

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Laura Lam: Website | Twitter

Goldilocks: Doylestown Books | Indiebound | Amazon | Powells | B&N

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Disjecta Membra: 6

Once again, here we go with less a full-course blog meal, and more a series of vaguely unsatisfying bloglet nibblins, like some grotesque shareable you’d order at Applebee’s that would give you vicious 3AM diarrhea. Also, my favorite Lord of the Rings character was Bloglet Nibblins, half-hobbit, half-orc, all sex machine.

I figured out some business with my middle grade book. In case you didn’t see, ahem ahem, Little Brown bought my MG novel, Dust & Grim, and I’m in the midst of edits on that book, and I rewrote the first act and wasn’t feeling it — but I figured out how to move forward on it in a way that’s satisfying. It’s weird because my BRAINTHINK comes slower at this moment in time — it’s like, the thought I need to find is in the back of the cabinet, but instead of just reaching in and plucking it off the shelf, I have to first push through a wall of pudding. The wall of pudding is gloppy and forbidding in that I cannot see what’s beyond it, so I gotta do a lotta fumbling around.

This mind pudding effect is not kept to just fiction. I get it all the time now. I sat down after lunch today, plonking myself in front of the computer, and I had a list of things I needed to do, and then the moment I sat, that list was gone. Simply inaccessible. I just sat there, slack-jawed, like, I have shit to do, I’m sure of it, buuuuuuuut. (I talk more about this phenomenon with Jared Rizzi on his new podcast, if you care to listen.) So instead I went outside and stood underneath a snow of crabapple blossoms. Oddly, it helped, and I figured out several things I needed to do.

One of the things is about rewilding our property. Found a good native plants place not far away that will deliver, and I’m picking some nice natives to start to go in around the front and back yards, either to replace junk that’s there now or to simply slot in alongside stuff to start competing. The goal is to get more birds and butterflies and buggables and such. Maybe summon a hobo or two, enticed by fragrant flowers, and then we can butcher the ol’ hobos and — I’ve said too much. I don’t want to share my hobo recipes, because then you’ll all start hoarding hobos, and I won’t be able to get any.

Hey so I found a new bird. Er, I didn’t discover a brand new bird, but rather, one that is new to me — one who roamed idly into view as I was standing there. So here I present, the yellow-rumped warbler. SONGBIRD OF THE GILDED BUTT. I’m really quite fond of that photo.

I have a bread problem. I real damn bread problem. So you remember how I did the obvious thing and cultivated a sourdough starter? Yeah, I’ve baked with it every day since. I’ve made two loaves with just starter, then another “noir” loaf with chocolate and walnuts, and with the discard I made rolls, and I made waffles. The rolls were sublime, truly some of the greatest I have ever eatenthe waffles I usually make. The waffles were… fine, not great, totally edible but inferior to , which are murderiferously good. Then I bought two 10-lb bags of flour (soft wheat and hard bolted wheat) from a local mill and seriously, I have a problem. That problem is bread. And probably diabetes, soon? Can you grow meat from a sourdough starter? Or Impossible Burgers? (Oh, these are the rolls, btw.)

I guess a meat shortage might be a thing? We get most of our meat from local providers, which is nice in that a) I’m supporting people near me and b) they’re not big factory farms subject to the problems those have. Not to say “small farmers” are automagically better people or better places, but on a whole I find they are, if only because you can go there, and see the operation, and talk to the farmers. We did try when this all started to buy a freezer and hahahaha that was fucking stupid. In mid-March, the earliest we could get one delivered was April 28th, and you’ll note that April 28th has come and gone. Our new delivery date is June 15th, so, yeah. Somewhere there’s like, one guy with a thousand freezers he’s using to keep all his toilet paper cold. The fucker.

Also, Pepcid? So someone said that famotidine cures The Cove, The Rona, The Vid, and now people are hoarding that even though the off-chance of it working means you’d need to have it delivered to you via IV, which is not what you buy from Target, you dicks. I could use my heartburn meds just for heartburn. Anxiety heightens heartburn. And heartburn heightens anxiety! Fun.

My anxiety is quieter, though, these days. That feels weird, but I think it’s smug. Self-righteous. “See, I told you this shit would happen,” it says, rocking back on its heels like a too-proud child. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back later. For now, just pickle in the world I told you would arrive.”

Some injuries are funny. I’m sorry, it’s just true. For instance, this thread where I asked last night, hey, what’s your weirdest or most embarrassing injury? It’s got 3,000 responses and hooooooly shit.

Wanderers in paperback. Boom, you just got suckered into reading a sales pitch. You fools. Ahem. No, seriously, Wanderers? It’s coming out in paperback this month. Aaaaand I don’t know if that’s gonna work or not, because print is weird right now? But if you’re so inclined to grab a copy, your local indie store would surely welcome that business. So would Doylestown Books, where you can pre-order it. Comes out May 19th. Tell your friends! And your vague acquaintances!

We’re okay here. Again, lucky and privileged and mostly fine. A lot of floating. Distance learning is hard — everything feels like homework for the kid, because now, everything is homework, and his bedroom is his classroom, and that just sucks. It’s nobody’s fault. Everybody’s doing their best. But it’s definitely an act of jogging on a fractured leg, and everyone pretending that, nope, you’re just supposed to run like that, it’s fine, the herky-jerky gait is normal, keep running, it won’t hurt, ow, ow, ow. We got toilet paper. We went from none to a lot in short order? We have food, though what’s available week to week is erratic and odd. I’m trying to cook healthy meals, but veggies have been the real hard one to get — we’re trying Misfits Market for the next month until the CSA we subscribed to kicks into gear. These are all very privileged problems, I know. Just the same, things are weird, and the industry in which I work is going through some paroxysms, and as the country’s economy wavers, so too do theoretically luxury items like books and… well, just grabbing onto the cliff’s edge as tight as I can, is all. As I imagine most of us are doing. I think that’s it. I’m out. Here are dogs.