Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 45

My Statement To NPR On The Internet Archive’s Emergency Library

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you happen to be a normal human who doesn’t care about the weave and weft of the publishing industry, you may have missed that the Internet Archive has announced its “National Emergency Library,” removing lending limits on what goes out the door, so anybody can grab anything at any time. Problem is, a number of authors have discovered their books there, and orgs like the Author’s Guild, the SFWA, and the Association of American Publishers, have all submitted statements objecting to what is perceived to be an over-reach on part of the IA.

I called them a “pirate site” for it, which admittedly was a bit of a stretch (social media is not good for nuance, please accept my apology), but it remains clear just the same that what they’re doing appears to exceed their purview. Regardless, NPR had initially promoted this as a good thing a few days ago, and last night issued a follow-up article, in which I’m quoted, but I wanted to give my full quote here, as I think the full context is useful, if not essential.

That statement is:

Though it was perhaps overwrought and hyperbolic to call the Internet Archive a ‘pirate site,’ it seems true just the same that with this ‘Emergency Library,’ the IA has gone and opened wide, free access to books that they do not have the rights to distribute. Some have said they operate like a real library, and these books are available only to the disabled, but I was able to get on there, grab a book of mine, read it on the site and download it to Adobe Editions. It appeared to be a physically-scanned book, and the limitless available downloads are not how average libraries work. The good news is, the site seems to cooperate with takedown notices from authors and publishers — but it’s also worth noting that authors and publishers do not generally have to submit those types of requests to libraries, which again suggests that this is not ‘business as usual,’ nor is it a library in the expected sense of the word.

The problem with bypassing copyright and disrupting the chain of royalties that lead from books to authors is that it endangers our ability to continue to produce art — and though we are all in the midst of a crisis, most artists are on the razor’s edge in terms of being able to support themselves. Artists get no safety net. We don’t get unemployment and aren’t likely to be able to participate in any worker bailouts. Health insurance alone is a gutpunch cost, not to mention the healthcare costs that insurance wouldn’t even cover. I’m lucky enough (currently, at least), that I can weather a bit of that storm more easily, but most can’t, particularly young authors, debut authors, and marginalized authors who are already fighting for a seat at the table. I’m also not alone in calling this site out — others like Alexander Chee, NK Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Seanan McGuire, have noted their concerns over this.

I am all for access to information and entertainment, and remind folks that libraries here already allow you to take out e-books, even while their brick-and-mortar locations are closed. I used to work for a library system here in Pennsylvania, and libraries all around the country deserve their time to shine in this crisis, as we realize what vital institutions they are, both intellectually and as a service to the community.

You can read the SFWA’s letter re: infringement here. (From 2018.)

You can read the Authors’ Guild statement here.

You can read the statement from the Assoc of American Publishers here.

Here is a good thread on it from Margaret Owen, and another from Alexandra Erin.

And another from Alexandra Erin, too.

And Seanan McGuire.

And, of course, from Alexander Chee.

You can read a rebuttal from the Internet Archive here.

Brewster Kahle, creator of the IA, said to NPR: “We’re librarians. We’re not social media gladiators… the best I can tell, [the critics of the system] just think what they see on social media, and they retweet it.” Which is more than a little dismissive of author and publisher concerns, but so it goes.

To continue my commentary here a little — when I spoke about this on Twitter, it poured gasoline on an already roaring fire, and I endured what could best be described as a deluge of awfulness from corners of the internet both predictable and unpredictable. (The alt-right and the far left are definitely high-fiving on this one, forming a complete circle.) The alt-right side is, as noted, predictable — but I am surprised that the left has embraced a site run by a Bay area tech mill/billionaire over the rights of artists and writers, who I’d think would more commonly be embraced as the “workers” so commonly thought of in workers’ rights. But I was told that I was a millionaire myself (news to me), and others were told that they were “idea landlords,” suggesting I suppose that any dipshit can write a book. (The evidence of that, however, is not plain to see.)

But writers and artists are workers — we work very hard to produce material over the course of years. A book in your hand was not a fast process. It likely took two years to reach you. A publisher worked on it, too, at least if it went through the traditional system: from developmental edits to copy-edits to marketing to design, to sales and distribution and so forth. Most people inside publishing, too, are not well-off. They, too, are workers. And as noted, writers and artists live on that razor’s edge of being able to support themselves, and that’s true too for the people inside publishing, and true too for bookstore employees and librarians. We’re not rolling in piles of cash from, say, selling Alexa to Amazon, like Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive did.

I do admire the mission of the IA. Preserving information is admirable. I’m excited for any weird repository of information. But art and stories are not automagically “information.” They’re not data to be swept up by Internet vacuums and deposited into distribution tubes. Yes, over time certainly art does move into a public space in terms of ownership, and yes, there are copyright entities who want to tighten the belt on copyright so that doesn’t happen, which I also don’t agree with. But the battle for that isn’t in the studio apartments of writers and artists. Go yell at Disney. We’re not Disney. We’re trying not to die here in the void, especially at a time when now we’re looking at a world that is both hungry for more art while trapped at home and that may not be able to accommodate as many voices going forward. So we’re looking at the horizon, wondering what the fuck happens in 6, 9, 12 months. The recession of 2008 was not great for publishing, and this seems a deeper cut. So, we’re worried. And when we see a big institution like the IA pop our books up with no clear restrictions and no clear throughline as to how we get paid, that’s troubling. And again, “get paid” sounds crass, and yes, I’d like to live in the world where our chits and ducats don’t matter — but they do. We pay mortgages and rent, we pay exorbitant taxes and health care expenses, we also do this thing called “eating” “food” and turns out, that shit isn’t free, either. So “get paid” is a means to an end, not a means to get rich. Most writers are subsistence-types, not “roll around on a bed of money” types. We’d love to give our work away for free, because we’re in this less for money and more to share stories — but under our current system, sharing stories is a whole lot easier when we aren’t starving.

(Or dying from a pandemic disease which will leave us with high healthcare costs — or worse, will get us turned away from a hospital because we don’t have health insurance.)

The result ends up being, fewer voices going forward. And the bad news is, it’s not as likely that it’ll be my voice you’ll stop hearing. I’m by no means authorially indestructible, but I have contracts that will carry me for a while and, hopefully, I’ll remain. (Knock on wood, and much to the chagrin of some of you.) No, the ones you’re shaking off the ladder are, as I said above, debut authors, or young authors, or marginalized authors. It also ensures that publishers will take fewer chances on weirder, more interesting books because they cannot afford to.

Is there a nuanced conversation to have about copyright and access and fair use and all that? Of course. Is this it? No, it really isn’t. And that’s part of my problem — the IA simply made an assumption and made a move. A bulldozer effort. And bulldozers are not nuanced equipment. “For the greater good” has merit in some conversations, but it’s hard to see a greater good where writers and artists are pushed further to the margins instead of being brought closer to the center.

And here you may yet say, you don’t care, and fuck publishers, and fuck rich authors, and viva la revolucion, and I can’t change your mind on that. But if your worldview doesn’t include seeing writers and artists as workers (much less people), you’re probably a selfish fucking asshole anyway who is just looking for a convenient political excuse to be that particular asshole. Using your cause as a shield isn’t new, but it also isn’t clever or admirable.

(As a quick final follow-up sweep of outlying questions, I’ve seen it around that only two of my books were on the IA, but the first night I started tweeting about it, Wanderers was also there, in full, as was, if I recall, one of the Miriam Black books. The next day, only two remained, and they remain still: Under the Empyrean Sky and Double Dead. Some have pointed out that they haven’t been viewed or checked out much, which I assume is meant to be an indictment against me as well as a suggestion the site isn’t so bad, don’t worry about it, but I’d argue those people are missing the point by a country mile. Also, folks seem to think I want the Internet Archive to “shut down,” which is, again, missing the point. No, I do not want them shut down, relax. And finally, it has gone around that because I find this all a bit dubious, I hate libraries, which is a real fuckwit take — I’m not only a fan, I used to work for the public library. I entirely support people taking out my books from libraries. I actually support libraries being even more robust than they are now. I wish they had a stronger foundation and could lend out more books, because I see libraries as part of a vital social safety net, equal to roads in how they transmit information, equal to healthcare in that they contribute to the intellectual health of our nation.)

And that’s that.

Comments open, but ding-dongs will be sent to spam. And I do not have the wherewithal or time to sit here and reply to everyone who wants an argument, so please recognize you might be arguing with a wall. Which, just the same, you’re free to do.

And one last reminder, I do have access to some books to give away for free — you can grab my Mookie Pearl duology here, if you are so titillated.

Finally, as recompense, here is a picture of dogs, because dogs are a bonafide good.

The Mookie Pearl Duology, Now Free

I offered these two books last week up through Payhip/Paypal, but that shit did not seem to work. I got tons of errors across Paypal, and I don’t know where shit got borked. So, here we go again, except this time I’m offering them free, right here:

The Mookie Pearl Duology

It’s both books, each in three available formats (epub, pdf, mobi) for your use. They’re urban fantasy novels about a dude who works the literal intersection between the criminal underworld and the actual-literal-monstery-underworld. There are mystical drugs and stuff. They’re fun, I hope. Important to note that once upon a time, this was gonna be a trilogy — so, the second-book is a raw, rough ending if you just let it emotionally end where it does. It ends! It literally ends. It’s not an unfinished story. But there was always meant to be a third book that picks up the pieces of what the second book left behind.

Please to enjoy these reads, Pandemic Pals.

Disjecta Membra

I am not sure I have it in me today to write a singular blog post about any one thing, and so here I am, writing a blog post about many things. It’s just a tin pail of thought slurry dumped over your poor, unsuspecting heads.

Feel free to sound off in the comments, let us know how you’re holding up.

I saw my first Cooper’s hawk today. I was just standing in the yard taking photos of birbs, and whoosh, the raptor landed in a tree just behind our crabapple. The photo isn’t particularly good, but I mark it for posterity:

Birds in general have been a coping mechanism for me. Whenever I’m feeling anxious or stressed, I go out into the yard, find some birds, give a listen, then I reach out and I eat ’em. I just grab them from the trees like fruit and pop ’em in my mouth and haha no I don’t do that, please don’t call the BIRB POLICE on me. Mostly I listen and watch, maybe snap some pics if I can. The birds seem happy. Spring is here. They don’t give a fuck about our problems, and it helps me give less of a fuck, too.

I don’t know when this all ends. The president’s rhetoric suggests there will be some kind of Easter Miracle, that Jesus will come down and wave his God Wand and it’ll all be okay, then we can all hunt for the eggs that Christ laid across the land from his sacred cloaca. Or whatever that story is. And I think that rhetoric is working a little, too — already I’ve gotten some emails from local businesses that suggest, GONNA BE BACK IN BUSINESS SOON SO GET YOUR WALLETS READY. And I just don’t understand. How do they think this thing is gonna go? Do they think the virus will just fuck off? Meanwhile the rest of us are watching the numbers tick up, up, up, and we’re seeing the USA become the epicenter of the disease, and there are people who really think we will somehow just magically snap back into normalcy. At least some Republican dickheads are being honest and saying that we’re gonna have to sacrifice people on the altar of Mammon to get back to business — “Sure, people will die, but you don’t want to miss out on enriching my 401K!” says some bloviating fucksack. “We all have to do our part dying for the Almighty Dollar.”

I’m suddenly glad I don’t have a book out this summer, as was initially planned. Be happy for it to come out next summer, instead. That’s when this thing will be “over” — not over as in, gone, but over as in, we’ll have enough information and maybe some kind of treatment and we should be over the hump. It’s hard out there for authors with books out, so try to help out, if you’re able, by checking out their books. Amazon has been wildly inconsistent with book shipping, but that’s okay, because a whole lotta indies have pivoted to shipping — our local, Doylestown Books, will deliver, FYI.

Perspective helps. I try to remember that every generation has its own abnormal fuckery with which to deal. Spanish Flu, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, 9/11, whatever. And I’d rather be having this situation now than 100 years ago, or 50, or even 20. The internet has caused a lot of our problems but it’s also keeping us all connected when we physically can’t be connected. So, perspective helps, but it’s also important, I think, to realize that this shit could’ve been a whole lot better. We’re at a literal perfect storm of shenanigans — we’ve elected a uniquely malignant tumor, it’s an election year, we’re hyper-polarized, science has been under attack, Russia wants us mired in chaos, unfettered and unregulated capitalism is rampant, the social safety net has been chewed up by the squirrels of greed, our Democratic candidates are arguably targets for the very disease we need to fight. And so on, and so forth. So, yes, we’ve dealt with worse, but this also could be going a whole lot better. We need to protect our election and get rid of Trump in November, full fucking stop.

Our kid is back to school, but distance learning. It’s hard, but things like Facetime helps. He’s in touch with his teacher, and the school is in touch with us. It’s abnormal, but has enough of the normal with it that it softens the sharp edges of the current moment. We try to play it like we’re each in separate submarines, or space ships. You can communicate with others in their other vessels, but you dare not step out, lest you be sucked into the void of space, or swallowed by the sea.

A tweet from Jodie Whitaker as Doctor Who this morning made me cry. I don’t know that it would normally have done that? But these are strange times, and I wept like a smacked baby. (Here’s the tweet, btw. You too may sob uncontrollably for a moment!)

Strongbad did not make me cry this morning, but rather, laugh. That tweet, here. Also, I think I got a letter from Strongbad? We bought the Trogdor game, and then next day, got a handwritten letter addressed to me from… Strongbad. Written as Strongbad. With some extra Trogdor cards? Life is weird, but can still be amazing.

Games help, too. Like Animal Crossing, which I talked about here. But board games, too. We learned Azul the other night, and that was great. Bought a bunch of games, actually: Wingspan, Trogdor, Seven Wonders, King of Tokyo, Tsuro, ummm. That might be it? Learned X-Wing, but needed something that was for more than just two players. Also been playing Magic: the Gathering — the kid, who is only eight, has been playing now for two years, and last game he kicked the asses of me and my wife. (Note, we’ve not learned most of these games yet, but I find that YouTube — that hive of scum and villainy — has been helpful explaining how to play in ways that rulebooks generally don’t.)

My wife sometimes asks if we’ll be okay. And that’s such a hard question to answer. I mean, individually, will we be okay? I can’t know that, but I couldn’t know that before everything went down with The Cove, The Rona, the Trumptown Pox. No individual is okay forever. Is civilization going to be okay? Probably. It’ll hopefully change. This whole thing has exposed how vital it is to prioritize the social safety net — how a strong social defense of health and family defends our national and global interests by proxy. Disarray and disorder and greed at the governmental and corporate level leave us all exposed in huge ways, and it’s easy to think, “Oh that just fucks over individual people,” but once it fucks over a wide array of individuals, now it’s affecting groups, and society at large. So hopefully this thing shines a big hideous light on our ugly failings and the black light shows just where we’ve splattered the ceiling with our grotesque ejecta. Or something. Meaning, it shows us what to fix, and how to fix it. But does that mean “we’ll be okay?” In the long run we’ll be okay, but the short term? Oof. No idea. I like to imagine it’ll be turbulence on a plane. Worst turbulence. The kind that hurts people, tossing them out of their chair like popped popcorn. But the wings will stay on the plane and we’ll find clear skies. For now, though: expect a lot of fucking bumps. So, at the risk of sounding like some ranting Twitterati grifter, buckle up.

Facebook is bad. But, it’s been a nice place for steadier check-ins. My FB is a walled garden — it’s largely people I’ve met. I don’t use it much for sharing links, or anything. Just check-ins. It helps. People talking about what it’s like in their corner of the world, wherever that may be.

Food is good. JFC, you see how utterly broken my brain is? THIS IS BAD. THIS IS GOOD. THiS HeLPs. Anyway. Seriously, I always loved cooking and this has been a little more of a challenge now in terms of what’s available and what’s not, but it’s lead to an increased creativity in what I’m making. Kid made cookies the other day too, so that was nice. I subscribed to a local meat and fruit/veggie CSA, so I’ll have that going for me. We’re not in full DEPRESSION-ERA cooking, yet. But I did buy a fuckload of Spam. Which honestly just replaces the fuckload of Spam I already had.

I am mountain man. Do I try to trim my hair and beard or just let that shit go HOG FUCKIN WILD? Maybe I shave the head, grow the beard. Or shave the beard into a weird configuration. Some kind of SINISTER RUNE. Gonna have to figure out what to do with my skull fur.

Oh! Did I mention I’m writing this from the new writing shed? A post on that soon. It’s spare right now, very echo-ey. Just a desk, a computer, chair. Photo here. I’ll get couch, bookshelf, St. Andrew’s cross, aviary, occult reagents all set up and then update everyone.

Anyway here are some more photos. (More at Flickr.) Talk to y’all soon.

In Which I Play Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I’m pretty sure Tom Nook is some kind of mine baron. Maybe also a slumlord. Possibly, possibly, a serial killer, or just the creepy Mr. Roarke on this bestial variant of Fantasy Island, or also straight-up Satan hisgoddamnself. Can’t be sure. All I know is, I showed up on this place, and now I’m in debt to a “raccoon” up to my teats.

What I mean is, I’m playing Animal Crossing.

I have never played an Animal Crossing before. I literally didn’t even know what the fuck it was. I just know it looked vaguely pleasant, and in these trying times, I’m looking for metaphorical pillows wherever I can find them.

I am on Day Three of my mysterious island excursion, and my wife has assured me that it is, in her words, “Minecraft as designed by Bob Ross.” Which feel right on the money, except when it doesn’t — sometimes it feels like maybe your character is dead and this is Nintendo’s version of Purgatory, or Limbo. It’s clearly not Hell. It’s far too nice for Hell. But it’s also not Heaven. You can’t just have what you want. You’re semi-trapped on a fairly small island, and, as noted, upon arrival you immediately enter a series of bracketed debts that you owe to the owner of the Company Store, the aforementioned raccoon-not-raccoon, Tom Nook. Who also has you build the Company Store for him. Like I said: not quite Hell, but definitely not Heaven.

(Purgatory, as it turns out, still has mortgages for you to pay.)

So, here’s what I know so far.

I am a human, or a human-seeming being. I am on an island of humanoid animals — in my case, it’s Nook, his two little Nook clones, a hamster named Hamlet, and a… I dunno, an amphibian named Diva. There’s a gull who might be drunk, an owl who hates the fuck out of insects, and a dodo bird. But then I also run around and capture other animals, like fish and bugs, who apparently do not get to be anthropomorphic? Is this some kind of Planet of the Apes situation? Whatever.

We are colonizing this island for reasons. Empire and Colony and all that. My son, also playing the game, has learned that we must share an island, and that there is no way for us to not share an island. (Here, you realize that to have two separate islands, you would not only have to buy a second copy of the game, but rather, a second whole-ass Switch system. Thus proving that Nintendo considers Tom Nook an aspirational figure.) Given that my son and I are on the same island, it sometimes leads to unusual discoveries, like when I dug up what I thought was a fossil, but was instead just a pair of pants. “I BURIED THOSE,” my son said, proudly. When asked why, he said, “THAT’S WHERE PANTS GO,” and I admired that answer and saw no reason to challenge it.

There is a pleasing soft-horn acoustic guitar soundtrack which is endless and eternal. It is pleasant enough, but also never stops, thus lending credence to my thought that this is neither Heaven nor Hell, but an interstitial place that can afford only one NPR-style Muzak track.

We wander our island with little purpose except collection and economy. I have debts to pay, you see. Debts to pay the Baron Tom Nook first for flying me here, then for the mortgage on my house. I am also building them a museum and a store. I have a phone that they gave me, but also that I have to pay for. It’s not entirely impossible that this is a kind of indentured servitude? I didn’t ask for this, but here I am, on the hook for all of it. The good news-bad news is that everything is literally for sale. The entire island is simply a resource farm. I can pull up weeds, trees, rocks, bugs, butterflies, fish, clams, whatever I find, I take it, I fucking sell the shit out of it. I suspect I could sell Timmy Nook to Tommy Nook for the price of a K.K. Slider song. Nothing is forbidden.

All is grist for the grinding mill of our island economy.

Some things seem to reappear overnight. Which is again suggestive of a supernatural realm.

There is a plane. I can leave, but only for a little while. I must always return to Kolohe Ato, my island.

I am semi-married to my phone, in death as I am in life. Everything is driven to my phone. I am also not given the full slate of apps at the outset, but they are doled out to me. Tom Nook is either a love-bombing cult leader, or he’s Tim Cook of Apple. (Tim Cook? Tom Nook? Another piece of this puzzle slots into place as I meander about my walled garden.)

I do not know my purpose. As with life, this afterlife is purposeless but for the purpose you give yourself. I do not see a way to take a mate and breed, so I am left only to wander and participate in the economy and ponder my power in this place.

It occurs to me only now that I wish to kill Tom Nook. It’s not that I want to bring violence to this place — no, not at all, for it is very peaceful, and I hesitate to disrupt that peace. But I also recognize that Nook is the power broker here. I will never usurp him. Even though I am doing all the work: building stores and museums, telling people where to put their fucking tents, even naming the goddamn island. But Tom has everything. He has the microphone. He has the phone-phone. He has like, three stores — there’s a cash-in-your-miles store, an ATM mail-order store, and then one of his little rat nephews runs the other store. Tom Nook, like John Doe, has the upper hand.

I fear that my path leads me into inevitable conflict with the Baron Tom Nook. Could there be any other way? Is slaughter the only outcome? Or is there a bloodless coup I can run upon him and his venomous dynasty? Surely the game will afford me the change to take Timmy or Tommy Nook hostage. If not, soon I will have to find a DIY workbench recipe for a guillotine. (Though surely that recipe will require far too many iron nuggets, an already-precious resource. But one also suspects Tom Nook is sitting on an epic cache of those nuggets. Also N95 respirator masks, the little shit.) An island revolution may soon be necessary. But upon enacting this revolution, what will be the result? Will I manage to institute a new social order, an economy based on need where all are equal, where capitalism is a Purgatory we have left behind? Or will I be lured in by the trap of bells, and miles, and other strange currencies? It is tempting to hold power over my fellow island mates. Hamlet the Hamster should be working for me. He’s not smart enough to be making decisions for himself, which is why I told him where to put his tent. And he listened. He listened to me.

As he should, the little shit.

But Tom Nook won’t listen.

One day, I’ll make him listen.

For now, I do as I can, which is aimlessly fritter about. I can only do so much in a day, and the game rewards me for putting it down and not grinding, grinding, grinding — a small solace, proving again this isn’t Hell, but rather, a cosmic interstice. I try on new sunglasses. I shuck off my shoes and my pants. I dig up clams. I pole vault. I seek beetles. I pay my debts. I plot my revenge.

Emily Wenstrom: Pantsing Your Series Without Getting Lost in the Woods and Eaten by Bears

And now, here’s a guest post from Emily Wenstrom about how to pants without… er, doing it by the seat of your pants?

* * *

I just released the final book in my first complete series. Everything I did for this series, I did for the first time. My first novel. My first sequel. My first series conclusion. And at every step, I learned exactly how I never want to write a series again.

When I started this series, I was a bright-eyed pantser, all optimism and free-wheeling creative spirit.

Oh, I’ll figure it out!, I thought. I’ll figure it out when I get there.

It turns out that this is very much like wandering off into the woods without any supplies, and trusting that if you get lost, if weather happens, if your cross paths with wildlife, you’ll figure it out.

I managed to get out of there without being eaten by a bear, but wow, let me tell you, there were some close calls, and it took a lot longer than it needed to. Never again. I’ll always be a pantser, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take a compass with me, or maybe a few Cliff bars.

Here’s how I’m changing my writing process for my next series:

Map the World

Your characters can’t go anywhere without knowing where everything is. How long will it take? What kind of terrain and other risks will they face? How does each location relate to other important places in the series?

This is a lot to delve into before your books even have defined arcs, and it’s not necessarily the first thing you have to do. But it’s definitely something I’ll take the time to sort out before publishing my series next time.

Let’s say your characters running off this way and that on their quests. What if all that cross-traffic is an opportunity to tease or foreshadow for a place that will become important in a later book? What if it’s right in their path now, but it isn’t mentioned at all because you just haven’t ideated it yet?

If you don’t know where your characters go through the full series, you can’t plan for this. And if you’re not careful, you can limit your options later, too.

Look ahead for the characters’ arcs

For one book, it’s not hard to define your core characters. That’s just our authorly bread and butter. But as I got deeper into my series, this got more complicated.

You can’t count on your character being the same in book three as he was in book one. He’s seen some things between point A and point B. And he’s been changed by those things.

By the time I got to my series conclusion, I had to wrestle with who my hero was anymore. I tried to write him as the same classic hero character we expect from the first novel, it didn’t go well. I had to stop and think about all that had happened to him since then, and in particular, what he had lost. Only then could I make sense of the final book.

Don’t let your characters catch you off guard by these changes. Think about them ahead of time and let them inform your planning.

Track the details

Think quick—are your character’s eyes blue or brown? What about the supporting cast? If you can recall this type of detail at whim, well, you’ve got a better memory than I do. Between draft revisions I spent a lot of time word-searching through my own books to keep my characters and places consistent.

Other authors—wiser authors—seem to do this thing where they just track details as they go. Some create a glossary, others pull it into an Excel spreadsheet. I’m told Scrivener’s tool for this can be very helpful. I wouldn’t know, and that’s the problem.

For my next series, I’ll experiment with some of these methods and find a way that works for me. Because managing the internal consistency of my stories shouldn’t take over my life.

Think ahead

Now look. Everyone says not to write the full series before querying, and they’re right. I can’t imagine spending years perfecting three, five, more books just to find out at the query that no one will publish it.

So at first, put your energy into book one. Make it the best book one you can.

But once you know you’re getting published, this is a crucial moment when I hit a fork in the road. One was full of sunshine and flowers—the path of the true panster, unfraught with worries of the future. The other was dark and thorny, where plot tangles waited to be wrestled with.

I chose the first path, and I can tell you now, this is where the bears are waiting to eat you. The thorns and darkness came up later anyway, and by then I was too far in to do much about it.

Even if you’re not a plotter, once the series is for sure moving forward, hit the pause button. If you can at least pound out beats for the arc of each book in the series, you’re going to save yourself a lot of frustration and find more opportunities to build it up beforehand.

Once you know these core elements and how they will evolve over your series, go back and revisit book one.

The Best Bear Fight is the Bear Fight You Don’t Have to Have

The thing with art is that sometimes you have to do things wrong before you can do them right.

I learned a lot about bear fighting and plot wrangling with this series—and I’m proud of the books I was able to create through these struggles. I just don’t think it needs to be so damn hard next time.

Because the best bear fight is the bear fight you don’t have to have.

Sparks: Amazon

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It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay

These are extraordinary times. And I don’t say that as a compliment, necessarily — it is not said with Spielbergian awe, but rather, with a kind of bamfoozled dread. As if you came upon a strange hole in the ground full of old-timey baby-dolls. You know, the creepy, haunted ones? You’d say, “That’s extraordinary,” and you wouldn’t mean it in the good way.

You might also say, “That’s fucked up.”

What I’m trying to say is:

These are fucked up times.

Shit’s fucked up. It just is. As I noted yesterday, it’s as if we’re witnessing the ghost of normalcy rather than normalcy itself — it died so fast, it hasn’t yet left this plane of existence, and so it lingers, refusing to be banished until an exorcism finally sends it packing. These are abnormal, bizarre, confounding, dipshitted, batshitted, extraordinarily fucked-up times.

You don’t have to be okay with that.

You probably shouldn’t be okay with that.

More to the point, you also don’t need to do it all. You don’t need to get it all done. You don’t need to clean your house from top to bottom. You don’t need to homeschool your kids into super-geniuses. You don’t need to write King Fucking Lear or discover a new scientific principle. You don’t need to be happy. We’re all in mourning from the death of normalcy. We’re all knocked off balance, like someone just kicked your bike as you were riding it. You ended up in the ditch. We’re all in the ditch with you. It’s okay to just sit here in the ditch for a while and say, “Fuck.” It’s okay to wait before you stretch, before you stand up with a groan and see what’s broken. It’s okay to sit on your couch and gorge on bad TV. It’s okay to read a shitty book. It’s okay to not finish the shitty book. It’s okay to let your kids be kids and just tell them they’re on spring break right now. You don’t need to be an A+ parent, and they don’t need to be A+ kids, and you don’t need to be an A+ spouse. Christ, you don’t even need to be an A+ human. Aim for B, maybe B-, C+, just hold it the fuck together.

Forgive it in yourself and forgive it in those around you, too.

That’s not to say this is the time to let all the rope slip through your fingers. Your kids need food. You need food too, and water. Everybody needs things and this is a crisis — though a weird-feeling slo-mo crisis, as if we’re watching two whales collide underwater, with us between them — but you don’t need to be a hero. You don’t even need to be normal.

You just need to be you, and go with it.

You’re allowed to feel all of what you feel.

Hell, I don’t know what to feel. I keep thinking, YEAH OKAY I’VE BEEN PREPARING FOR THIS MY WHOLE LIFE, TIME TO WRITE A BOOK, A WHOLE BOOK, HERE WE GO, HERE WE FUCKING GO, and then I just sit there and I’m like, hey that’s not happening yet? And I go to eat and it’s mostly just grazing. My kid’s like, “Can I play the Switch?” and I’m like, “Yeah, hell yeah, it’s Spring Break, go hog wild, dude.” I tell him to read a book after, and he does (Percy Jackson, the first book, if you must know), but I’m not running him through the wringer. No math flash cards or quizzes. Life is slower right now, and stranger, and I feel this mad pinball bounce of emotions: I go from panic to dread to a weird kind of giddy elation that has no comprehensible logic to it, and then I land on tired, and then I land on sad, and then I land on gratitude because if all else fails this has at least made me appreciate things more, and then I feel shitty for appreciating things more because this isn’t the time to appreciate anything, is it? Then I feel shitty for feeling shitty like, what is wrong with appreciation? What is wrong with finding joy? Guilt ensues. And a refutation of guilt. And a weird feeling of relief for the earth because I’ve seen photos of dolphins in Italy and I think back to the line I wrote in Wanderers (“Humankind was a disease. The earth was the body. Climate change was the fever. And in that fever, in that rising of global temperature, the earth was able to release new defenses.”) and then I just feel bad for writing that. AITA? Probably.

And so the drunken carousel of wildly-spinning emotions goes on, staffed by octopods, ridden by monkeys, narrated by a short-circuiting robot.

I’m not okay.

I’m not broken.

But I’m definitely, absolutely, unfuckwithably not okay.

And I’m going to let that be okay.

I hope you will, too.

These are weird days, friends. It’d be weird if you weren’t weird about that.

Carry on.

Here is a photo of a flower. Happy spring.

Anne Charnock: Five Things I Learned While Writing Bridge 108

Late in the twenty-first century, drought and wildfires prompt an exodus from southern Europe. When twelve-year-old Caleb is separated from his mother during their trek north, he soon falls prey to traffickers. Enslaved in an enclave outside Manchester, the resourceful and determined Caleb never loses hope of bettering himself.

After Caleb is befriended by a fellow victim of trafficking, another road opens. Hiding in the woodlands by day, guided by the stars at night, he begins a new journey—to escape to a better life, to meet someone he can trust, and to find his family. For Caleb, only one thing is certain: making his way in the world will be far more difficult than his mother imagined.

Told through multiple voices and set against the backdrop of a haunting and frighteningly believable future, Bridge 108 charts the passage of a young boy into adulthood amid oppressive circumstances that are increasingly relevant to our present day.

* * *

THE PERILS OF A MOSAIC NOVEL

Bridge 108 has six viewpoint characters, and the central story is about a young climate migrant who is trafficked into slavery in a post-Brexit England. As I tapped away at this novel, I wondered if the reader would confuse the different voices. I honestly didn’t think so—the characters themselves are distinct. However, when I’d finished the first full draft (I edit as I go along, so my first full draft is almost the done deal), I suspected I could do more to fine tune the six voices. Sure, at the end of the first draft they each had their own distinct vocabulary to match their background and personality, their own favoured profanities! But I felt I could do more.

In particular, I decided to further separate the voices of a twenty-something female trafficker, Skylark, from a thirty-something female illegal business operator, Ma Lexie. They had similar tough backgrounds though Ma Lexie had hoped to stay in education longer. My solution: when re-drafting Skylark’s chapter I adopted a prose style of long, meandering sentences to suggest her life of ‘ducking and weaving’ and her slightly more youthful, flitting mindset. Ma Lexie had experienced more hard knocks, and I shifted her voice to be a tad more clinical, to reflect her more strategic, more hard-headed approach to life.

TREASURE YOUR WRITING FAMILY

Bridge 108 is my fourth novel, and I now have more writing support than I had ten years ago. I knew no other fiction writers when I started writing my first novel, A Calculated Life. But I did have fantastic support close at hand. I relied heavily on my immediate family as first-readers. My husband is an ex-journalist, so he has a good eye. And our two sons gave me fantastic tips and advice based on their knowledge of the tech world, economics, maths and so on. With Bridge 108, once again they have all helped enormously. In addition, I could turn to my new writer friends to ask for help. It’s so important to have a writing family!

My advice to anyone asking for help from family, friends, writing colleagues, is to keep them posted on when your manuscript is likely to be ready for reading. Keep them updated if the schedule changes. Be flexible! If one of your readers has a time slot when they’ll be able to look over the manuscript, send them whatever you have, explaining it still needs some work/proofing etc. I wrote Bridge 108 to a tight deadline, and I am so incredibly grateful that my family and two close writer friends were prepared to read the completed manuscript as soon as it landed in their inboxes. Of course, I am ready to reciprocate! That’s how it works.

I CAN FEEL EMPATHY FOR A DESPICABLE CHARACTER

I admit I had mixed feelings about writing the character of Jaspar, the head of an enclave recycling clan. He enslaves migrants in his waste collection operation and at his recycling warehouse. See, I did not know if I could write a truly bad guy. Some of the characters in my earlier novels have appalling character traits, but none reach Jaspar’s levels of violent disregard for other people. Well, I needn’t have worried. I loved writing Jaspar’s viewpoint chapter and if anything it unnerved me how energised I felt in creating this despicable person. I shocked myself, and I feel his chapter is one of the strongest in Bridge 108. Having said that, there were aspects to Jaspar’s personality that struck me as endearing, even commendable. I feel that nuance is so important in creating believable characters.

I CAN ONLY WRITE FOR MYSELF

In the midst of drafting any novel, I can hear the critical voices of future readers, but I have learned to ignore them, especially so while writing Bridge 108. From the outset, I saw Bridge 108 as being more than ‘Caleb’s story’. I knew I’d become bored writing from his point of view for the entire novel – that’s just me, other writers might love to do exactly that. With the multiple voices, I could reveal more about how the enclaves operate, how the recycling clans operate in a shadow economy, how the state institutions exploit the climate migrants for economic gain, how each of my characters is both perpetrator and victim.

But throughout the many months of drafting and editing I could hear a future reader saying, “The story jumps around too much” or “I only want to know Caleb’s story”.

The fact is this: I can’t always give readers what they want! I have to trust my own writing instinct, stick to my own vision, and hope my novel that will be judged on its own terms.

CREATIVITY IS KEY, BUT SO TOO IS A WEIRD SPREADSHEETING

There’s a time for creativity—all that staring into thin air, imagining the next great twist in the plot, going with the writing flow etc—but there’s also a time for writing a journal, filling in spreadsheets and making checklists too. I love the beginning of a writing project when I buy an A4 hardback ­notebook (spending time choosing the colour!), which I use for sketching out ideas, working out timelines, outlining characters, etc. At the outset, I also set up two spreadsheets. In one spreadsheet I log my daily writing activity, specifying whether I’m outlining, drafting, editing, proofing, and adding my word count. I don’t stress about my word count (maybe a little), but I love to look back on a project to assess it in terms of cold metrics! Weird, I know. I also start a spreadsheet for the novel’s chapter-by-chapter story, with columns for chapter setting, chapter characters, story development, key events in the plot, additional notes, reminders for later edits. All gloriously colour coded. If I’m too tired to draft the next section of the novel, I joyously fill in my spreadsheets. Yes, definitely weird!

* * *

Following her education at the University of East Anglia, where she studied environmental sciences, Anne Charnock’s writing career began in journalism and her reports appeared in New Scientist, The Guardian, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and Geographical, among others. As a foreign correspondent, she traveled widely in the Middle East, Africa and India, and spent a year overlanding through Egypt, Sudan and Kenya with her journalist husband, Garry.

She went on to attend The Manchester School of Art, where she gained a Masters in Fine Art. Between art projects and exhibitions, she began writing her first novel, A Calculated Life, which she self-published. She signed a publishing deal with  
47North for a new edition and, four months later, A Calculated Life was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award 2013 and for The 2013 Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award (Debut Novel).

Her second novel, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (47North), is set in the past, present and future. The research for this novel took her to Shanghai and Suzhou in China, and to Florence and Bologna in Italy. The Guardian included this novel in “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2015.” Her third novel, Dreams Before the Start of Time (47North), won the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award and was shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association 2017 Award for Best Novel.

She returned to the world of A Calculated Life in writing the novella The Enclave (NewCon Press). This won the British Science Fiction Association 2017 Award for Best Short Fiction. 
In 2017, she was delighted to become “interviewer in residence” for the Arthur C. Clarke Award as part of the award’s collaboration with the Ada Lovelace Day.

Anne Charnock: Website | Twitter

Bridge 108: Amazon

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Ann VanderMeer: Five Things I Learned Editing Avatars, Inc.

Mars 2080. 

While on a mission to Mars in the year 2080, a young astronaut encounters a decommissioned robotic Avatar unit, partially buried in the Martian dust. She pops open the cranial casing to find its central processing chip, still intact. She holds the chip up to her visual display unit to reveal its contents. Within moments, she is flooded with what-seem-to-be “memories” from the life of the avatar. This is Avatar Inc’s 24th successful mission, as part of an overall campaign to physically retrieve, preserve and archive the memory cards from their most valuable robotic avatar units. They searched the world, and deep into the solar system, to acquire the chips that contain avatar memories spanning the 21st century. These are those memories. 

Stories can heal and also bring us closer together, even when we’re miles apart

Even as we are faced with what seem to be insurmountable odds, the human spirit still rises to the occasion. Keep in mind that the avatars are controlled by humans. And they make mistakes but also decisions that help save lives even to their own detriment. I see this in Ken Liu’s “Uma,” when the person behind the maintenance avatar decides to go against protocol and save a family. I see it again in “Oannes, From the Flood” by Adrian Tchaikovsky, when people on an archaeological dig are faced with that same dilemma. What this tells me is that even in our most dire circumstances, our inclination is to do what we can to help others, no matter where they are or where they come from. Beyond the excitement of the gadgets, technology and devices, it is the human element that brings us all together.

This anthology is launching in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and each hour the news seems to be getting worse and worse. Some may think this is the wrong time to be reading stories. But I disagree. I see many people online posting and engaging with the stories. What better way to take a break and still connect with others? These connections make me hopeful for what can be.

Writers may veer from the original prompt but that’s ok

Establishing a prompt that is provided to each contributing writer is an important way to design a cohesive theme and an enjoyable experience for the readers, but you also don’t want to creatively hamper the writers or have the prompt be so limiting that you start to see repetition across the stories. For Avatars Inc, we noticed that writers slightly deviated from the original prompt, which forced us to take a hard look at the overall narrative of the campaign. We ended up adjusting the prompt in response to the authors’ interpretations, and we are thrilled with the result.

I know that sometimes giving more freedom to a writer can be a dangerous thing (insert smiley face here) but in this case, it was a marvelous idea that generated extraordinary fiction.

Science Fiction stories never cease to amaze me

I’ve spent the last few years heavily immersed in fantasy stories after editing THE BIG BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION and THE TIME TRAVELER’S ALMANAC.  Fantasy was a nice break for me. As I worked on Avatars Inc, I was reminded of why I love science fiction so very much. I feel challenged and comforted at the same time. How can that be? The stories in this anthology forced me to take a different look at the world as it is today, but also to feel hopeful that humanity will rise to the occasion to deal with complicated issues. Are all the futures generated in science fiction stories hopeful? Of course not. Right now, we’re inundated with dystopian fiction worldwide. But as long as we can reach for the stars, and writers keep sharing their vision of what could be, I can take comfort in that.

The relationship between Art and Science is getting stronger

I’ve always known there was a relationship between art and science. I’ve seen it while working on various projects in how writers approach their work, riffing off of current events and yet extrapolating into the future. And I am also seeing so many science experts reaching across the divide to include writers in storytelling, to help get messages across to the larger public. Just as many universities are having multidisciplinary conferences that bring scientists and artists together, organizations like XPRIZE also recognize this important relationship.

The Use of Avatars can be much greater and more creative than I ever thought possible

I was surprised by all the different ways avatars were being used in the stories. I knew there would be space stories, of course. But I never thought of crime scene cleanup, as an example, and it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Nino Cipri came up with that idea in their story “At the End of a Most Perfect Day.” I also was intrigued with Johanna Sinisalo’s story “A Bird Does Not Sing Because It Has an Answer.” We think in terms of using avatars to go where it would be dangerous for humans. However, in this story the avatar is adopted because humans are dangerous to the natural world! And in “La Mer Donne” by Sarah Pinsker, the avatar is operated for weather reporting in the middle of a storm. Living in Florida, I am very used to seeing reporters trying to stay put on solid ground while a storm whips around them. I expect that, just as I was surprised to read about novel avatar use-cases in the stories, that I will also be surprised to see what teams are developing as part of the real-life ANA Avatar XPRIZE.

* * *

Over a 30-year career, Ann VanderMeer has won numerous awards for her editing work, including the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award. Whether as editor-in-chief for Weird Tales for five years or in her current role as an acquiring editor for Tor.com, Ann has built her reputation on acquiring fiction from diverse and interesting new talents. As co-founder of Cheeky Frawg Books, she has helped develop a wide-ranging line of mostly translated fiction. Featuring a who’s who of world literature, Ann’s anthologies include the critically acclaimed Best American Fantasy series, The Weird, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, The Big Book of Science Fiction, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, and the forthcoming Big Book of Modern Fantasy (Vintage).

Avatars, Inc.: Digital anthology (free)!

The Ghost Of Normalcy Lingering Past Its Time

Everything seems mostly normal.

And it’s that word, that one word — “mostly” — that’s getting me.

A day begins, a day ends. Cars go past. Some cyclists, too. I make breakfast, I write some things, I make dinner, the family tosses a baseball around the yard. And then while we’re out there playing baseball, a plane goes overhead, and I make a quick joke to my wife and son — “Now, those people really know how to win at social distancing.” Because, y’know, forget six feet. They’re up in the sky and we’re on the ground. Only people doing it better are the people on the ISS, right?

But that joke, it’s not a normal joke. It’s normal to make jokes, to be clear; in times of standard operating procedure and in times of tumult, we make jokes. Light-hearted jokes and gallows humor alike. It wasn’t the joking — it was the joke.

That wasn’t a joke I could’ve made two weeks ago.

Shit, maybe even a week ago.

I wouldn’t have understood it. It wasn’t a thing. And now, it’s a thing.

A week ago, we went out to breakfast with a couple friends, and even though things were starting to get a little weird (my son’s school closed for a day due to “The Rona,” or are we calling it “The Cove?”) we still felt, you know, fairly normal. The blips and glitches in everything felt expected and unexceptional in the sense we knew we lived in strange times, what with the unbridled fuckery of the Trump Era, and we’d grown accustomed to those little bumpy hitches and pulled stitches. But now, looking back, that breakfast feels somehow indulgent. Like we didn’t appreciate it enough. And we don’t know when, or even how, a breakfast like that will happen again.

That’s what gets me, most. It’s that we’re living presently beneath a veneer, a shiny shellacking, of normal. Are things broken? No, not yet. Will they break? Probably somewhat, though to what extent, who can say? But right now we’re still in this interstitial space where things feel mostly normal, until something hits us that really, really doesn’t feel normal at all. A photo of emptied shelves, a cart full of toilet paper (stop hoarding toilet paper, by the way, you’re not going to poop more in the apocalypse, settle down), a picture of the stock market, a mumbly-mouthed presser with Trump, a new picture of the stock market as it plunges during his mumbly-mouthed nonsense, and then a Facetime call between kids because they can’t see each other, and then an e-mail from a local business about how they’re weathering the quarantine, then the quiet fear that the ground is shifting underneath your feet in a way that is as-yet-unperceived, a silent and unmoving earthquake, as much spiritual and emotional as anything else —

And then you look back outside. Cars and cyclists. Birds birbing. A plane overhead.

It feels normal, but that seems like an illusion. Like you can run your hand right through it — passing your fingers through a ghost. I suspect the illusion will continue. Until it doesn’t. How long will it be before something I did today feels rare, like a gift I didn’t appreciate enough at the time?

I think we’ll be fine, of course.

Not now. Maybe not soon. But eventually, eventually, we’ll be fine.

And eventually, we’ll find a new normal, whatever that will be.

Bit Of News, Couple Of Sales, Yadda Yadda

[image error]HEY Y’ALL, it’s me, your Pandemic Pal, your Apocalypse Acquaintance, your Coronavirus Cohort, your Quarantine… uhh, Qu… Quester? Fuck, I don’t know.

Anyway! Just some quick bits while we all hide in our submarines and spaceships:

First up, if you need a little escapism, here’s a 50% off coupon for both of my Mookie Pearl books — use coupon code MOOKIEPEARL to get 50% off both  — EDIT: I’m taking this down for now because Paypal is losing its fucking mind. I’m getting email after email of payment, and then payment canceled, and then again and again. I’ll look into it. Sigh.

If you’re into a more cathartic kind of “escapism,” then WANDERERS is now dropped a bit in e-book to $11.99 over at Amazon.

And you can find me at SyFy talking about the book and our, uhhh, current level of fuckery? Both how the book compares to reality and also about hope and community and stuff.

In other news:

MY WRITING SHED IS DONE. Needs to earn its final permit, and then I’ll snap pics and point out the trapdoors (information only available to subscribers).

That’s it for now, I guess.

And here I ask, anything I can do for you? How are you all doing? Would you like it if I did a kind of AMA here? I’m starting to wrangle some “online appearances” upcoming — some digital panels and podcasty things. But what else can I do for you? I want to be of service in this dark time.

Meanwhile:

Here is a dog.