Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 48

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.

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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