Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 44

Being Broken In Half (But Wanting To Be Whole)

Here is the difficulty for me, and maybe also for you: despite all of what’s going on, life continues to exist. It goes on. It doesn’t need my approval to do so, or yours, and will brook no interpolations or injunctions. Life progresses. It does so for us, and it does so for others, and as such, those others often need us. We have dependents. We have pets. We have spouses. We have friends and family and we have that guy we locked in our cellar and we have ourselves, and all of them need us in some way. They need us to be there, to be strong, and we need them to be strong, too.

But we’re not strong, not right now.

We’re all hobbling about on a pair of broken legs, emotionally speaking.

We’re operating, at best, at half-past half-ass. I mean, okay, sure, I know some people who are like, WOWZA I’M REALLY GETTING SHIT DONE, I’M SUPER PRODUCTIVE, I JUST WROTE A BOOK AND CLEANED MY HOUSE TIP TO TAINT AND BOY HOWDY I’M LIVING MY BEST QUARANTIMES, BABY, but those people are

a) sociopaths

b) lying

or c) unaware that they are repressing some grave emotional reckoning that is about to rise up on them like a tsunami made of angry ghosts and wreckst themselves before they checkst themselves.

Assuming you’re not one of those people, you are instead a person who feels a little like Frodo after he was stabbed by the Morgul blade — you’re not dead, not exactly, but you’re passing into some spectral realm, and all you really want right now is for some brave elf lady to ride up and take you to a mythical city where you can just get some goddamn rest. And then you can get up and go home. Except, even after that you can’t get up and go home because you have a burden to carry. You have that fucking goddamn ring. And other people are looking to you to carry it, even though you are clearly not at your best. Hell, other people are hoping you’re the brave elf lady who will carry them across a river to safety. And you’re hoping they’re the brave elf lady and — well, you get the point, I guess. The shit’s not over even when it’s over. Life goes on. So does the burden.

The question is, for me and also for you, how do you balance it? How do you be there for others, and be there for yourself, when you barely feel like you’re there at all?

I wanna be upfront: I don’t know the answer to this. It’s a fucking riddle to me, too.

I’m trying to suss it out, though. I know that as a writer — and I suspect a lot of other creatives are aware of this balancing act — I have to constantly find the sweet spot between self-care and bullshit excuses. In other words, there’s this interstitial realm where I am both being kind to myself and recognizing my limits while also, in recognizing those limits, I push myself to them, and sometimes beyond them when it is most appropriate. It’s like running: I run a gentle minimum of mileage but also know that whenever possible I am to push past that minimum, often by a considerable amount if I’m up for it. It’s this weird balancing act of knowing when to be good to yourself and knowing when you’re being too good, so good that you have actually made it bad. (To explain this in a different way, you should treat yourself to ice cream once in a while, but you can’t make it breakfast, lunch, dinner, or I’m pretty sure you’ll just die. A bloated corpse, leaking melted vanilla.)

(There are worse ways to go, though, I guess.)

And so I wonder if there’s a lesson in that, here. Some general awareness of knowing that I can’t half-ass it, but I also will definitely not be able to whole-ass it, much as I want to. Of knowing that for myself and others I have to be both kind in every direction, but also know when to push on myself to get done what needs doing. Let’s call it “three-quarter-assing it.” Like, no way I’m at a hundred percent, but people also need me to be better than 50%, so here I am, pushing when I can push, and hoping that gentleness and understanding will get us the rest of the way. It’s like my kid with distance learning. No fucking way is he going to be operating at top effectiveness because this is nowhere near normal for him — it’s like he’s learning inside a fishbowl. This shit doesn’t even feel real half the time. As if it’s all some manner of bizarre simulation.

So, I don’t have any advice. Except to be gentle on yourself and everyone, but also to be there in whatever capacity you can be. We don’t simply lay supine upon the ground waiting for rain to fill our mouths and float us down the drain to the land of the sewer clowns, but we also don’t get up and run. We hobble, we walk, we heal. We help others do the same and hope they do that for us, too.

I say this feels like a slow-motion 9/11, but 9/11 at least gave us the grace to have it happen and then go through the stages of grief and mourning. Here we are, trapped in them, not really progressing through them but violently lurching from one to another and back to the beginning. We’ve no idea how this ends, we just keep going. It ends someday, somehow, but what day, and what how?

Onward, onward, ever onward.

None of this is an answer, I realize. This probably doesn’t help. But it’s the challenge for me right now, and maybe it’s the challenge for you, too. I think we just have to recalibrate our expectations while… still having expectations. Because having expectations is, in its strange way, a form of optimism and hope, isn’t it? That anyone will need anything from us now or ever is recognition that the world still exists, that life goes on, and that while normal has gone all fucky, we are humans with needs who are interspersed with other humans who have needs. Things have changed. But we’re still here.

And I’m glad you’re here.

All of you.

Except you, in the back row. You know who you are. Gordon.

Here now, are my dogs, because if I can give you nothing, I at least have them to parade about.

Disjecta Membra: 3

Once again I return not with a single blog post (because I can barely concentrate enough to manage that feat), but a prismatic one — a single blog post broken up into fragmented, colored beams. Please to enjoy. Or don’t. Don’t enjoy things. No obligations.

A good portion of my day is now spent as a digital hunter-gatherer. I eyeball our supply and try to loosely plan meals and such and then I’m like, I DON’T THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH EGGS OH FUCK OH FUCK and then I realize Easter is coming and so I spend an hour doing some kind of Internet deep dive trying to source local eggs, and I make a bunch of phone calls and then, boom, I get two dozen eggs and the day is saved. Until the next crisis. Do I have enough toilet paper? I better go check again, oh shit, oh shit. Can I wipe my ass with tree bark or an errant squirrel? Should I have some kind of toilet-side shower pail, a tabo?

Last night, part of my huntering-gathering was about cocktail ingredients. I know. I know. That is probably not healthy? I promise I’m not drinking any more, I’m just not drinking any less — zing! Ahem. No, it’s just, we have a lot of base spirits. I’m well-stocked on gin and whiskey and such, but then, things to mix? Not so much. And yes, you can drink whiskey straight, and I do, but these days I am a fancy man who sometimes likes to add in various syrups and occult reagents to my drinky-dranks. Or tonic, at least. I think tonic makes gin medicine. Right? Whatever.

An interesting side effect is our buying has moved almost explicitly local. By which I mean, a lot of what we’re getting (particularly regarding food) is coming from local providers, makers, growers, farmers, etc. — like, meat from local farmers, veggies/fruits from an upcoming CSA, apples (and hard apple cider) from a local orchard, oatmeal and flour from a local mill (!), sourdough starter from a local pizza place, bread from a local bread place, all deliverable or curbside. I say this again as a very privileged person: a 20-minute drive will put me at one of at least seven proper grocery stores, and that’s not including all the growers and farmer markets, which are considerable. I live in the opposite of a food desert. I don’t say any of this as a moral lesson, only noting the interesting shift in where our stuff is coming from. As a plus, what we are getting seems to be of a measurably higher quality. Again: privilege speaking, and not for much more money. Sometimes less, actually, with veggies and fruits. But our grocery stores are becoming erratic in their supply. I’m to understand this isn’t because the supply isn’t there, but chains are either broken or rearranging, so there’s gonna be some instability. Turbulence ahead in every direction, so onward we go, seat-belts tightened right the fuck up.

I should do another post about Animal Crossing. It’s getting all French Guyana up in my island. Except with more rampant capitalism.

I have a secret book. I just got edits for it. I’m excited about it but it does mean I’m gonna have to muster up some will to do proper work.

Actually, I have three secret books. No, wait, four. Not trying to humble brag, I actually lost count. None of them are announced yet. Publishing involves a whole lot of waiting. Especially now, when everybody’s just, SHRUG, I DUNNO WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING NOW.

People are losing their jobs in everywhere, and in publishing, too. It helps if you can buy a book. And if you can’t, taking one out from a digital library loan is good, too.

One by one you start to know more and more people who are getting The Virus. And you start to know people who are dead from it, too. Not just names you know, or people online, but real people. A lot older. But not all of them.

I think the most vicious bites this Virus takes are the ones regarding loneliness. It’s not enough that we are forced into relative isolation, but worse, if you get “the Cove,” you end up quarantined. And then if you die from it, you die alone. And when you die alone from it, you also have no funeral. None can gather to see you off into the beyond. You’re alone from snout to tail of this thing. On a boat, drifting out to sea, into the mist, until you’re gone.

Hang this on the GOP’s neck like a cursed albatross. All of it. Trump. McConnell. Every salivating little goblin in their crew. This is on them.

Sorry, that got dark. But I mean, it’s gonna, sometimes. It’s a pandemic. One made worse by intervention that is both ignorant and malevolent.

I feel like I wanna podcast or something. But I don’t know what the fuck it’d even be about. Certainly me and Carboni could fire up the Ragnatalk van again. (Here I’ll note that before I moved, we had been working on a rewatch of Avengers: Endgame. But now I’m like, is that inappropriate? Or extra appropriate?) I thought about doing a writing talk podcast, but do I even have the juice for that, mentally? It feels a bit like “rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs” to try to focus on just talking about HEY HERE’S HOW YOU DO WRITE GOOD when the world is falling apart. Hmm. Not sure. More thought necessary. Or I’ll just sit and stare at the wall. There’s your podcast. It’s just me sighing and grumbling, ASMR-style.

Wanderers is still on sale. Still $3.99 if you’re so inclined. *stares*

So, it’s Biden. I wanted Warren. Was good with Bernie. Biden’s low on my list, but I’d vote for him over Trump any day. I mean, I’d vote for a pile of raccoons stuffed into a scarecrow over Trump, because I don’t hate myself and I don’t hate this country. So, I’m voting for the Supreme Court. For the environment. I’m voting because Biden is someone you can hold to the fire, and Trump isn’t. And one good thing about Biden I like is, I don’t think he wants this job. I don’t think he relishes it. That’s a plus to me. Regardless, I hope he picks a helluva running mate.

Fuck your lawns. Your lawns are a wasteland of nature. Here’s a good article, and it interviews rewilding advocate (and oh, also excellent novelist) Jeff Vandermeer. We did it last year at our last house and had a bumper crop of fireflies and a fox family take up residence. Gonna try it here and see how it goes. Will also try to plant a lot of natives when we have access to those plants, but not sure how I get them now. You might have a HOA that’s a dick about this sort of thing, but this might be a good time to try to push for changes — or just cough a lot anytime a HOA rep tries to get to your front porch. Maybe they’ll get eaten by whatever you have growing there, now.

I have a lot of new birds at the house. Birds I’ve not seen before. Let’s see, here’s a quick catalog for the four of you who care: Eastern towhee, Eastern bluebird, Carolina wren, golden-crowned kinglet, downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, yellow-bellied sapsucker, Northern flicker, tufted titmice, black-cap chickadees, nuthatches, chipping sparrow, white-throated sparrow, song sparrow, tree swallow, Cooper’s hawk, red-tailed hawk, black vultures, turkey vultures, robins, cardinals, pine warbler, red-winged blackbirds, scarlet tanager (not seen this season, but in fall), blue jay, cowbirds, catbirds (also not yet seen this year), uhhh, let’s see, brown thrasher, gray junco, house wren, and there’s probably more? Anyway. Here, have some birbsnaps, bye.

Corry L. Lee: Five Things I Learned Writing Weave The Lightning

Empire. Revolution. Magic.

Gerrit is the son of Bourshkanya’s Supreme-General. Despite his powerful storm-affinity and the State’s best training, he can’t control his magic. To escape the brutal consequences, he flees.

Celka is a travelling circus performer, hiding both her link to the underground and her storm-affinity from the prying eyes of the secret police. But Gerrit’s arrival threatens to expose everything: her magic, her family, and the people they protect.

The storms have returned, and everything will change.

***

People can believe in terrible things.

I wanted Weave the Lightning’s government to be scary—secret police bursting into your house in the middle of the night kind of scary. But that has a lot of wiggle room. In an early draft, I explored a Soviet-style dictatorship where it didn’t matter how clear your party affiliation, you could still be targeted and everyone lived in fear. This created an obvious villain, but it also left basically no one “good” on the dictator’s side.

I discovered it’s more interesting when people have good reasons take different sides. (I mean, maybe they’re not Good reasons with a capital ‘G’, but at least understandable ones.)

This led me to a fascist state, where plenty of zealots believe the party line. They support the regime not out of fear of what happens if they don’t but because they believe. Maybe they think they’ll get something out of it, maybe they have a grudge against the people the regime is villainizing, maybe they just want to belong and they see the regime as a powerful force they can be part of. Regardless, there’s a strong belief that the regime is right, that it’s necessary. It may not be pretty, but what can you do when enemies are breathing down your neck?

The trick then was figuring out the kind of character who could have been steeped in that belief but have a chance to escape it. What would it take to kick the State’s conditioning? How would that belief erode, and what would it leave behind?

In Weave the Lightning, this character is Gerrit. He’s the youngest son of the Supreme-General, and he’s a mage trained in a top military academy. But he never managed to gain his father’s respect, and he can’t help challenging stupid orders. When the ability to create new magic returns to the world, some serious shit starts to go down, and it sets Gerrit on a path of questioning his deeply engrained beliefs. This leads to an interesting journey and a complex character—a richness I lacked when the regime was just the Big Bad.

People are complicated; so, too, magic.

Complex magic makes my brain sing. I love when the magic feels organic, an outgrowth of nature with deep roots. People work to understand it—they come up with theories, and those theories yield practical results. But as with science, we don’t know everything. There’s always more to discover.

Magic has one up on technology, in my opinion, in that it can be personal. With tech, you press a button and your computer turns on; it doesn’t matter if you’re in the right headspace. With magic, it’s not necessarily so easy—and from this, organic complexity can arise.

Building in this personal element, however, turns out to be… challenging. I describe the details of my magic system on my website, but one central element is the “neighboring reality” where magic is formed, a place of needs and ideas and emotion. It appears as a full-blown alternate world for those strong enough to see it but, because it arises from the mage’s internal landscape, it’s different for everyone.

This turned out to be a pain in the ass. It’s cool, don’t get me wrong. I love how it makes magic deeply personal. But inventing complex characters is hard enough on its own; digging into their psychology to manifest their emotional world… oof. Sometimes I hate past Corry.

Sometimes, you just have to explain.

Writers are often warned about the perils of exposition. “Show, don’t tell” is the knee-jerk adage. But sometimes, you really do need to tell.

Figuring out the right balance is hard—not least because the balance is different for everyone. I personally like figuring things out from subtle incluing. I’ve also been reading spec fic since I could sound out words on the page, so I have a vast cannon I can call on to understand new worlds, and I love when tropes are turned on their heads. Other readers may not work that way. One fabulous writer my year at the Odyssey Writing Workshop (which is specifically for spec fic writers) didn’t know that to kill a zombie you had to destroy their brain.  People have gaps.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that my early drafts of Weave the Lightning suffered from a complex magic system and an (utter) lack of reader hand-holding. I got better. I learned that exposition, when used sparingly, is a wonderful tool.

I still trust my reader to figure things out alongside my characters… I’ve just added enough waypoints to make it so they can.

And for readers who prefer an explanation up front, I put a magic primer on my website.

Break open your reveals.

I live for narrative moments when characters discover that things not what they believed—the surprising reveal that slots everything before it into place; the discovery that flings a character on a new path. I planned several for Weave the Lightning, and they were awesome. My readers were going to love them.

When an early critique said, “Gerrit doesn’t have time to react to [awesome reveal],” I was confused. That reveal set him on a new course! It changed everything about how he viewed his life before! What did she mean he didn’t have time to react? Clearly that comment was garbage.

It took me over a year to understand. When I did, it blew my mind and reshaped the book.

What my clever friend (Kate Alice Marshall, whose books I highly recommend) was trying to tell me was that I had a multi-stage reveal smashed into a single moment. Gerrit discovered something really big about his past, but that discovery came at the same time as he learned something else plot-shaking. I had done something similar with Celka later in the book. Because I had conceived of each “reveal” all at once, I saw each as a single point, when in reality they were complex. (As a physicist, I feel I should use the analogy of an atom that seems indivisible until you reach higher energies and discover it is actually made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. And those, in turn, are composed of…)

Getting back to reveals…

By unknotting the multiple threads that made up each reveal, my characters could uncover clues and piece them together throughout the story, building up to those earth-shattering moments. This gave them space to react to each component of the reveal (you’re welcome, Kate), and brought the reader along for the ride.

It’s okay to trash a draft.

And trash it again. And again.

I have this dream that one day I’ll write a book and I won’t end up throwing the whole thing away and rewriting from a blank page. *wistful sigh*

Like many daydreams, in my heart of hearts, I’m not sure I believe it.

I hear other authors talk about writing their first draft, doing some minor revisions, and publishing it. I’m not that writer. Often I wish I was. It seems so much simpler, so much more efficient! If only I could plan things out well enough ahead of time, maybe I could become that writer!

Bah.

I number my revisions like software. Version 2.3 is, for example, the third major rewrite (I start at version 0), with its fourth minor rewrite. When I blow the whole thing up, it gets a new version number. Weave the Lightning reached version 9.

And that’s okay.

***

Corry L. Lee is a science fiction and fantasy writer, Ph.D. physicist, award-winning science educator, data geek, and mom. Weave the Lightning is her debut novel. Her science fiction short story “Shutdown” won the Writers of the Future award.

In Ph.D. research at Harvard, she shed light on the universe fractions of a second after the Big Bang. At Amazon, she connected science to technology, improving customer experience through online experimentation.

Everything Corry does, she does with intensity. Currently, she’s obsessed with cross-country skiing, French pop music, and single origin coffee.

Corry L. Lee: Website | Twitter

Weave the Lightning: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s

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Alma Katsu: Five Things I Learned Launching A Book During A Pandemic

Someone, or something, is haunting the ship. Between mysterious disappearances and sudden deaths, the guests of the Titanic have found themselves suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone from the moment they set sail. Several of them, including maid Annie Hebley, guest Mark Fletcher, and millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, are convinced there’s something sinister–almost otherwordly–afoot. But before they can locate the source of the danger, as the world knows, disaster strikes.

Years later, Annie, having survived that fateful night, has attempted to put her life back together. Working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic‘s sister ship, the Britannic, newly refitted as a hospital ship, she happens across an unconscious Mark, now a soldier fighting in World War I. At first, Annie is thrilled and relieved to learn that he too survived the sinking, but soon, Mark’s presence awakens deep-buried feelings and secrets, forcing her to reckon with the demons of her past–as they both discover that the terror may not yet be over.

* * *

IT COULD’VE BEEN WORSE. AT LEAST I WASN’T A DEBUT AUTHOR.

The Deep is my fifth novel, so not my first rodeo, as the kids say. Honestly, this was the first time that I wasn’t a wreck come pub date. I’d practiced my book tour talk until it was almost memorized. Picked out my tour clothes. Had worked with my publicist on advance work like writing blog posts and doing interviews via email. We had promises of more media in the pipeline. My last book, The Hunger, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party with a horror twist, had done well. My publisher and I both had high hopes for The Deep. We were eager to get started.

For your first book, launch is a time of uber high emotions, a metric ton of expectations, but no first-hand experience. You don’t know if everything that happens to you is the norm or something that should worry you. By book five, you know the traumas and joys of past launches. Kinda like, if you had four kids, for the fifth one you don’t even sweat the epidural.

For debut authors trying to launch a book in the time of COVID-19: Please please please be easy on yourselves and don’t be overwhelmed by the many conflicting emotions you’re probably feeling. It won’t be like this the next time. And there will be a next time. Put the gun/bottle/eighth box of chocolates down.

THERE IS NO SCENARIO IN WHICH IT DOESN’T ALL GO TO SHIT AT FIRST

A few days before I was to go on tour, there was a quick huddle with the publishing team and my agents. Optimism was high. Then, almost as an afterthought, I asked if anyone suggested that we cancel the tour. There was an uneasy pause, then I was told, no. I’d only asked because, at the time, things were just starting to be postponed, major events where crowds were expected. Mine were hardly in the same category, and I felt a little silly mentioning it.

The ironic thing is that for many years, I ran crisis support teams for the Department of Defense during humanitarian crises and natural disasters. I can tell you first hand that when a crisis hits, there is always confusion. Even when there is a plan in place. Even if you’ve been through it a dozen times, because no two disasters are exactly the same.

That confusion is super frustrating. You want to to be proactive, to fix this thing, not to be standing still when every fiber of your being tells you to do something. But, instead, everything is one big flail. Don’t fight the flail. It’ll exhaust you. Take a breath, let people get their equilibrium. (Though if you recognize that someone on your team has become paralyzed by fear or is overwhelmed, and then just give that person direction and they’ll come back to themselves eventually.)

BREAK OUT THE LEMONADE RECIPE

So, there I was heading to the airport to go home, with a book out for two whole days and no plans for how to promote it. Press had evaporated. No one, it seemed, was interested in anything other than the coronavirus. My publisher, along with everyone else, was scrambling to figure out how to sell books. Bookstores, a big part of how we reach readers, especially new ones, were scrambling to invent new business models.  Online sales, curbside pick-up, door-to-door deliveries. All author events were cancelled, but it seemed like in a matter of hours they started looking at the internet, asking what could be done in virtual space. Stores that had never done a video were wondering how to replicate their store programming on the internet.

When life gives you lemons, you really have no alternative but to make lemonade. Sulking over the unfairness of life is not going to work, not for your book, not for your publisher.

There has been no shortage of creative solutions from authors or bookstores. I looked at what other people were doing and picked the things that worked for me. Not every store is going to have space for you on their roster, you have to accept that. But you can do things for youself. It meant learning all about live streaming. It meant stepping up my social media game, learning the little tricks of each platform so that my content shined.

However, social media is not a static target. Audiences are fickle. What delights one day is a bore the next. You must constantly think of ways to keep things fresh. My novel is a reimagining of the sinking of the Titanic and its sister ship, the Britannic, so history is understandably a big part of its appeal. So I’m trying to partner with other Titanic authors and historical societies. I’ve tried focusing on one or another famous historical person in the book, tweeting rare photos and bits of trivia, for instance. There are theme days on Instagram. It’s a constant challenge to draw eyeballs. And you can’t stop feeding the beast, which is stressful.

FRIENDS GOT YOUR BACK

While I was cheerfully (or pseudo-cheerfully) posting on Instagram campfire and making live streams, I did let slip one day on Twitter that this was all really, really hard and wasn’t what I’d hoped for my book baby, and I needed to go off to feel sorry for myself for a spell. I felt like I had to be honest.

The response was tremendous. In addition to some top notch commiserating and other wonderful statements of support, many people came through with offers to help. Let me interview you for my blog. Come on my podcast. Join me on my live stream. Participate in our live streamed group reading.

Feeling that I wasn’t alone made it easier for me to reach out to others to see if they wanted to partner up. For instance, I’m doing a joint live stream with an author whose non-fiction work on the Titanic I’ve admired a lot. We’re going to answer questions about fact and fiction about the Titanic, something that would never have happened if we were doing things the old way because he lives in England and I’m in the U.S.

ACCEPT THAT IT WON’T BE PERFECT. SOMETIMES IT WON’T EVEN BE GOOD

If you’re a hard charger (which I’m guessing you must be, or you wouldn’t try to make a living writing books), you’re wired to think you can power through this. You are going to grit your teeth and not only get through this, but you’re going to make it your bitch. You are going to butt-kick this disaster into doing your bidding.

But that’s not healthy.

Trust me. I have seen villages wiped out by earthquakes or a warring ethnic group. There are some things that can’t be forced into submission, wrongs that can’t be undone with willpower and a can-do attitude alone.

The odds of “winning” in the time of coronavirus are zero. Accept this. This is an extraordinary global event—don’t drive yourself crazy or to the point of weepy exhaustion. Don’t break your neck running into the same unbudging wall over and over.

The only thing you can do to avoid later regret, I think, is to do the best you can while listening to your inner self. To walk away when you need a break. To remind yourself that the old normal will return, that there will be another chance. Have faith that eventually this will pass, and we’ll pick up the pieces and start over.

* * *

Alma Katsu is the author of five novels. Her latest is The Deep, a reimagining of sinking of the Titanic and its sister ship, the Britannic. Her previous novel The Hunger, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party with a horror twist, made NPR’s list of the 100 Best Horror Stories, was named one of the best novels of 2018 by several media outlets and book stores, and was nominated for a Stoker and Locus Award for best horror novel. During her long career in intelligence for the U.S. government, she worked through many man-made and natural disasters including the avian and swine flu pandemics, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and genocides in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Bosnia. COVID-19 is the first one where she gets to stay home.

Alma Katsu: Website | Twitter

The Deep: Indiebound | Amazon

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Reddit Books AMA With Yours Truly

[image error]Psst. I’m over at Reddit Books today — pop over now, ask some questions. I’ll swing by shortly, and A all your Qs. We can talk about Wanderers, or pandemic self-care, or Animal Crossing, or whatever the sweet hot hell you so choose. Here’s the link. See you over there, word nerds.

Psst, The Wanderers e-book Is $3.99

I feel like the post title says it all, but you can grab Wanderers (not The Wanderers, FYI) on e-book currently for $3.99. You can nab it on Kindle, on Kobo, on Dasher, on Dancer, on Apple Books, on B&N, and probably other e-book places that exist that I’m forgetting about?

You can, of course, still procure it at your favorite indie store if you’d like a physical copy — and the paperback is on preorder, too. Many indie stores ship, including my locals, Doylestown Bookshop and Let’s Play Books. You can also use Indiebound.org and Bookshop.org to buy via local indies. You can even use Libro.FM to grab the audiobook and give back to indie bookstores.

Publishing is in a tough space right now. Every business needs human beings to operate them, and as social distancing strains the workforce, it narrows all channels for books to squeeze through. Which cascades through to publishing employees, authors, bookstore employees, librarians, and so forth. I don’t say to buy books as an act of charity, but ideally, also because you’re getting BOOKS out of it, and if you don’t love books, you’re a heartless banal monster.

Some other places where I am existing currently:

Me and Rob Hart talking about, oops, we wrote predictive novels.

Then, a Reddit fantasy panel where me, Malka Older, Mike Chen, Sarah Pinsker and Sabrina Vourvoulias talk about… oops, we wrote predictive novels.

Then, me and Gary Whitta talk about what it takes to maintain creativity and productivity during a time like this — and also how, fuck it, who said you even have to maintain that?

I swing by the Well, This Isn’t Normal podcast with Sara Benincasa…

Finally, I popped by VE Schwab’s Instagram yesterday to talk about… well, books, writing, writing careers, everything, as the opening guest to her wonderful No Write Way program. I think she’s gonna archive it too somehow, so I’ll drop a better link when I have it.

A reminder too that I’m on Instagram, @chuck_wendig.

I also hooked up my podcast mic, so I’m investigating ways to use that and reach out to THE WORLD BEYOND, who knows how? Maybe I’ll forget the mic and will engage with you PSYCHICALLY in your DREAMS.

More as I have it.

Stay safe, stay sane, be good to each other, be good to yourselves.

Read books, you glorious dorks.

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Psst, The Wanderers eBook Is $3.99

I feel like the post title says it all, but you can grab Wanderers (not The Wanderers, FYI) on e-book currently for $3.99. You can nab it on Kindle, on Kobo, on Dasher, on Dancer, on Apple Books, on B&N, and probably other e-book places that exist that I’m forgetting about?

You can, of course, still procure it at your favorite indie store if you’d like a physical copy — and the paperback is on preorder, too. Many indie stores ship, including my locals, Doylestown Bookshop and Let’s Play Books. You can also use Indiebound.org and Bookshop.org to buy via local indies. You can even use Libro.FM to grab the audiobook and give back to indie bookstores.

Publishing is in a tough space right now. Every business needs human beings to operate them, and as social distancing strains the workforce, it narrows all channels for books to squeeze through. Which cascades through to publishing employees, authors, bookstore employees, librarians, and so forth. I don’t say to buy books as an act of charity, but ideally, also because you’re getting BOOKS out of it, and if you don’t love books, you’re a heartless banal monster.

Some other places where I am existing currently:

Me and Rob Hart talking about, oops, we wrote predictive novels.

Then, a Reddit fantasy panel where me, Malka Older, Mike Chen, Sarah Pinsker and Sabrina Vourvoulias talk about… oops, we wrote predictive novels.

Then, me and Gary Whitta talk about what it takes to maintain creativity and productivity during a time like this — and also how, fuck it, who said you even have to maintain that?

Finally, I popped by VE Schwab’s Instagram yesterday to talk about… well, books, writing, writing careers, everything, as the opening guest to her wonderful No Write Way program. I think she’s gonna archive it too somehow, so I’ll drop a better link when I have it.

A reminder too that I’m on Instagram, @chuck_wendig.

I also hooked up my podcast mic, so I’m investigating ways to use that and reach out to THE WORLD BEYOND, who knows how? Maybe I’ll forget the mic and will engage with you PSYCHICALLY in your DREAMS.

More as I have it.

Stay safe, stay sane, be good to each other, be good to yourselves.

Read books, you glorious dorks.

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Authors: I Remind You About Doing A “Five Things I Learned” Post

In this time of pandemic fuckery, the book publication situation is a goofed up. Release events are canceled, for one. No tours or anything. And that sucks. You’re an author! You’ve written a book! That’s exciting. It is deserving of as much pomp and circumstance as you can muster, and one must not let a rampaging disease strangle your delight — or your release — with a wet towel.

So, currently I’ve not much to offer, but I do reminder that I have slots available here at the blog for a FIVE THINGS I LEARNED WRITING [Insert Your Book Name Here] post on the week of your release. The way these work are:

You email me at terribleminds at gmail the following:

– Your book’s jacket copy/description.

– An author bio.

– A link to a high-res graphic of your cover, or an emailed JPEG of that cover, under 2MB in size.

– Then, a post where you detail five things you learned while writing your newest book. These do not have to be writing-related things, though they certainly can be. They can be about cool research (“I learned whales hate Swedes”) or even things you learned about yourself (“I can’t start my writing day until I have eaten an entire pork loin in one bite”). Each of these five things is given a leader (aka, the thing you learned) and then following are one to several paragraphs about that thing. No limit on post length, though my guideline is usually: if it’s under 1k, it might be too light, if it’s over 2k, it might be too beefy. Be earnest or funny or interesting. Don’t go into “sell sell sell” mode.

– Links to your author pages (bare minimum: a website and Twitter address).

– Links to your book’s purchase pages, bare minimum one from Indiebound, another from Amazon.

Now, for the post itself?

A good example is right here.

When you send it, I’d like it in .doc or .rtf.

Do not copy it into the body of the email.

I’d like minimal formatting: no italics, no bold, no headers, nothing. If the five things items are not clear that they’re the five things, just number them. (I might pull the numbers out for posting because I think it looks better). Also, no carriage returns between lines — I don’t need a blank line (return/enter) between paragraphs. Means I just have to hand-delete them, and in a bigger post, that’s a pain in the butthole.

Try to get me all of this the week before your release. By Thursday of the week prior to your book coming out. And that’s it. It won’t solve your lack of in-person promotion, to be sure, but I have a mailing list here of 11k and more who come to the blog without subscribing, so you at least catch some eyeballs, maybe? I’m far likelier to lean into traditionally-published authors because, real talk, I cannot always confirm the quality of indie books in advance of the post, and further, it’s those traditional authors whose releases are most disrupted right now.

Certainly, if authors don’t wanna ping me, publishers or agents can, too — just know that I also have aggressive spam filters on, so hopefully I’ll catch whatever gets caught in ’em.

Note, too, if you’re a person who has already done a FIVE THINGS post for an earlier book, you’re certainly welcome to submit a guest post of your own choosing? Your call!

Onward we go, folks!

None Of This Is Normal

In April of 2016, a weasel (technically a stone marten) went and fucked the hadron collider (technically chewed a wire), and ever since, we’ve been routinely time tunneling our way through iteratively worse timelines. From Trump’s election to right now, a pandemic in which we are all forced to remain inside our little territorial bubbles lest we catch the Cove, the Rona, the dreaded virus, and pass it along to others.

It wasn’t normal in 2016 when Trump was elected.

And we are a thousand — a hundred thousand — miles from normal now.

And yet, we’re expected to carry on, like we can respond to this with increased normalcy as a counterbalance. Writers will write more. We can cook more. We can clean and organize more. We have a lot of free time now and so we will use it, like industrious ants, like worker bees. But that’s bullshit. It’s not easy to just “carry on.” It’s like sitting at your desk at work and seeing a co-worker suddenly hike down his pants and shit in his little trash can. You can’t simply shrug that off and be like, “That Gary always finds his own path!” and then keep filling in the fucking spreadsheet on the screen in front you. A man just shat in a trashcan in the next goddamn cubicle. You have to acknowledge that. You have to stop and deal with that.

The situation outside our door is considerably more upsetting than Gary’s little “cubicle toilet,” and so you should not be expected to simply go about your day as if, gosh, I’ll be so productive now. I can do so many things! THIS IS ALL PERFECTLY FINE, you say through clenched and cracking teeth, eyes twitching and wet with tears, one snot bubble balloon inflating and deflating at your nostril’s entrance like you’re a cartoon character.

I’ll give you an example —

We went for a walk the other day. It was up a little backroad, and it’s a particularly nice walk. Bridges over creeks, a lot of forest, a lot of big rocks and such.

Except, that day it was not a particularly nice walk.

Why?

We were not the only humans who thought it would be. It’d be hyperbole to say it was packed, but there were a lot of walkers. And the road is narrow. And some people are good at social distancing, and others, nyyyeaaaah, not so much. We’d be walking up and see people agglomerating in the middle of the road like cholesterol clogging an artery, and we’d slow our walk in the hopes that, like human Lipitor we’d break up this oleaginous chunk of people and could continue properly social distancing, but still they gather, still they chatter. So as I got closer I kinda cleared my throat and made it sound a little like a cough, and that was enough to spook them like startled squirrels, and onward we could go. But then someone on a bike (decked out like they’re sponsored for the Tour de Fucking France) would zip by right past us, and you feel like, as they’re zooming by what if they cough, what if they just fire off a wicked aerosolized viral rocket and oh god now we’re sick. One guy on a bike slowed down to talk to us and he’s like HEY BE CAREFUL THERE’S A DEAD RAT UP AHEAD, and it’s like, who gives a shit? Get out of here, you mobile outbreak monkey. What’s the dead rat gonna do? Is it a zombie? Does it have coronavirus? (Spoiler warning: it also wasn’t a dead rat. It was a squirrel. What a dingle.)

So, what should’ve been a very nice walk was actually quite stressful.

Point being, this grasp for normalcy only heightened how deeply fucking weird everything is. And the response to that can’t be to intensify normalcy. You cannot meet abnormality with increased normalcy. It just doesn’t work. There’s no countermanding it that way. We’re told we can be more productive, that we’re all work-from-home now, but lemme tell you: this isn’t your average way to work-from-home. This isn’t how to accelerate productivity. It’s like being told to work-from-home during a locust plague and a forest fire. “Just sit there and do the work, head down, don’t look outside, definitely don’t match eyes with Baalzebub, who is currently stalking the neighborhood next door with a SCYTHE made of BITING FLIES. It’s fine! Ha ha ha! Haven’t you always wanted to learn how to crochet? Now’s the time! Just ignore the screaming!”

It’s hard to concentrate when everything is so strange, so broken, so dangerous. It’s like being told to paint a masterpiece while on a turbulent flight. It’s just not the time.

And so, I want you to know, you shouldn’t expect yourself to be somehow a better, more productive person in this time. You can be! If you are, more power to you. That doesn’t make you a monster. But if you’re finding yourself unable to concentrate, that’s to be expected. That is normal. Normal is feeling abnormal in response to abnormality. You must be kind to yourself and to others when it comes to what we think people can and should be able to accomplish during this time. Ten million people are out of work, suddenly. People are sick and dying. The thing we crave at a base level, human interaction, is suddenly fraught and fragile. Hell, everything is fraught and fragile. We’re only realizing now that it was fragile all this time.

None of this is normal. You don’t have to feel shamed into forcing normalcy as a response.

So, what then, is the answer?

There really isn’t one. There’s no playbook for this sort of thing. No therapy regimen, no best practices. Best I can tell you, and this should be taken with a grain of salt so big you’d have to chip away at it with a pick ax, is that you try your best. And when you fall well short of that, you instantly and intimately recognize why. And you forgive yourself, and you forgive the rest of the world for also falling short (“rest of the world” does not include politicians or billionaires, by the way), and you try again. And it’s okay if you can’t focus on writing, or reading a book, or planting a garden, or patching drywall, or whatever. Find a different thing. Keep busy when you must, but also don’t be afraid to sit with how you’re feeling and accept it. Accept it unconditionally. Accept your anger and sadness, accept your delirium, allow yourself the time to drift and to fail. Also accept any joy you feel, and do so without guilt. Joy is hard-won, and if you manage that victory, there’s no shame in that. Take the victory lap. We will have to hunt joy like an elusive beast across the wasteland.

If you capture it, celebrate.

I think most of all, just don’t let anyone tell you how to feel. Now, maybe more than ever, don’t compare yourself to others. Everybody’s not only trapped in their houses, but also trapped in their own maelstrom of emotions, too. Let that be true. You can talk it out. You can share how you’re feeling. But don’t compare in a way that punishes you, or that paints your own feelings as a transgression.

This is all very new to us.

Normal is gone. There will be a new normal. We’ll get there. We’ll get through this. But things will change and that’s going to be okay. Maybe better than okay. Maybe we’ll come out better in the end. But we don’t have to be better now, we don’t have to be better overnight. This isn’t work-from-home. This isn’t your time to shine. This isn’t time to be productive. If you are, embrace it. If you’re not, forgive it. Do what you can do. Be safe.

And stop shitting in your trashcan, GARY.

Disjecta Membra: 2

Once again, I return unable or unwilling to write a blog post about one thing, so you get a blog post about several things. Please to enjoy, and feel free to say ‘hi’ in the comments below, let us all know how you’re doing, what you’re up to, if your brain has turned to trash bag juice and started to leak out your ears.

Fuck April Fool’s Day. Is it Fool’s? Fools’? Fools? Whatever, fuck it, it’s awful. It was awful before this year, and now, with us soaking in a pandemic, it’s extra awful. It is a refuge for mediocre pranks performed by people who think they’re funny and brands who are trying to mandate humor as a corporate strategy. It works sometimes, in the hands of a master — someone who doesn’t mock you, or trick you, but makes you laugh in a way that is unexpected, but those people are few and far between, and this year is definitely not a year to try out your HAR HAR I GOT THE RONA joke, Dave. That said, funny is still good, so sure, try to be funny. Share jokes, great. Share a favorite comedian or comedy routine. Just don’t try to “pull one over” on your fellow human beings. We’re fucking fragile over here, Dave. Don’t make us break quarantine to come hit you with a chair.

So, my emotions have stabilized somewhat. Last week, I was on a cocaine roller coaster of feelings, just dipping and diving between the feels, from anger to sadness to panic to weird giddy boilovers. That has stabilized in a way that is both comforting and creepy? I’ve entered into what feels like a sensory deprivation tank. It’s not precisely emotionless, but it is a soft, unfettered place. It is dark and vaguely peaceful while also being mentally moist and… I don’t want to say uncomfortable, but unnerving? Unnerving. That’s the word. But at least Jack Black’s on Tik-Tok.

I’ve tried to up my cooking game. We’re not at the point where I’m trying to do an episode of Chopped or anything (“In your basket are: four ramen flavor packets, a case of Slim Jims, a bag of yellow Skittles, and the last two-ply toilet paper roll in the house. Get cooking!”), but I definitely am feeling more creative. I was watching the Netflix show Chef, which is very good, and I loved that Roy Choi was all about how he doesn’t really make recipes — he just figures out what he has on hand and kinda feels his way through making a meal, knowing what tastes good together, what a dish needs, and so forth. Anyway. Whatever. I did a pork shoulder last night for tacos that was pretty fucking great — 3 lb. shoulder in a pot, homemade chicken stock halfway up the roast, lotta garlic and chili powder and cumin and some Mexican oregano and then a splash of pineapple juice, plus some Seed Ranch umami sauce. Salt, pepper, obvs. Three hours on 275, last hour on 325 with the lid off, just melt in your mouth. Popped it into tacos with some quick-pickled onions. Side dish: black beans with frozen spinach, again some more pineapple juice, garlic, chipotle-in-adobo, salt, pepper, more chili powder and cumin, cooked that for like an hour on low. Really came together. Lime juice splash on everything before eating.

Hot sauces, by the way, can’t be about burning your mouth (and later, your ass) shut. I don’t understand the need to try the hottest fuckin’ hell-sauce. I mean, I get it from a dare standpoint, but my dinners aren’t meant to be dares. I need flavor with that heat. Our current spate of regular-use hot sauces are: Cholula green pepper sauce, Seed Ranch smoked jalapeno, Aardvark Habanero, and of course, motherfucking Gochujang. You want a religious experience, make some mac-and-cheese and then before serving, just splatter it with Gochujang. Hnnngh. What are your go-to hot sauces?

We have VR. Oculus Quest. Hesitant to ever buy into anything Facebook owns, but we got one for Christmas and it ended up being a very good LOCKDOWN item. It’s not a real escape, but it kinda feels like one? GHOST GIANT is a beautiful game, and that’s one of the things about VR — I haven’t found many good “games” yet, in the sense that they are truly game-interesting, but I’ve found a lot of beautiful, artistic experiences. Which ain’t nothing in this day and age. SUPERHOT VR is fucking great, though. I wish it was twice as long as it was.

I want to watch the new Birds of Prey movie. But it’s an R-rated movie and I live in a house with a child who is home all day and I have no time in front of a television that is not family-friendly oh god I just want to watch a movie where they say bad words and shoot people and maybe there are boobs, I dunno. The 8-year-old can watch R-rated movies now, right? Sigh.

We’ve been watching Indiana Jones movies, though. Went through Last Crusade first, which I thought was the most… I dunno, kid-appropriate. Then Raiders. (Kid looked away during the infamous NAZI FACE-MELTING scene.) Skipped Temple of Doom so far because… I mean, first, it’s got a lot of ick-factor, from hearts out to monkey brains and shit. But also, it’s problematic as fuck, and that’s a movie that needs to come with some conversations. So we went to Crystal Skull, and are about 2/3rds through it. It’s both simultaneously better than and worse than I remember. Every good scene is immediately counter-balanced by some campy pulp that plays against the rest of the tone — and that’s the thing, tonally this thing is a pinball. All over the map. And CGI has made it feel small and cheap-looking in places. When it leans into real locations, it plays beautifully under Kaminski’s eye, but otherwise everything feels somehow lessened, like the grandeur and adventure is now video-gamey. But a dude does get disassembled by ants, so that’s not nothing.

Here is where I’m at, by the way. I did Skype a Scientist yesterday, except I’m not a scientist but that’s okay. Video here. Today I live chat with Gary Whitta, and tonight I record a Q&A with author Rob Hart. Friday is a Reddit Fantasy panel about the end of the world, and next week is a Reddit AMA with me. Saturday I’m Instagramming with Victoria Schwab. Links as I have ’em! Also, a reminder that most indie bookstores are open and delivering, so if you’re ever so inclined to check out my books, that’s a good way to help keep indie stores in business.

And that’s all from me.

Here’s a flower.