Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 52

This Week: Wanderers (Holy Crap! Finally!)

[image error]A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. In the tradition of The Stand and Station Eleven comes a gripping saga that weaves an epic tapestry of humanity into an astonishing tale of survival.

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and are sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them–and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart–or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

* * *

This is it.

It’s out. (Well, it’s out tomorrow. Tonight if you come to the Bethlehem, PA pre-launch. And the 11th if you’re in BREXITLAND.) But this week, this big sprawly apocalyptic (not dystopian, not post-apocalyptic, but apocalyptic) book hits shelves. Er, hopefully it doesn’t hit them because it might break them? One hopes it gently lands upon shelves, like a graceful pelican.

I won’t go through all the blurbs or reviews or lists. You can go here and read all that.

(Though surely I can be forgiven for mentioning that it made USA Today, right?)

Let’s get some of your procurement options out of the way, though:

Print: Indiebound | Let’s Play Books (signed) | The Signed Page | B&N | BAM | Amazon

eBook: Amazon | Apple Books | B&N | Kobo | Google Play | BAM

Audio: Audible | Libro.FM

And you can add it on Goodreads.

Now, to answer some questions…

Is there a content warning?

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

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

Who will like this book?

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

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

Is this part of a series?

It is a standalone. (Though it’s big enough for 3-4 novels, I guess.) There could be a sequel if sales and attention warrants it — but it is a complete story.

What genre is it?

I don’t know. I mean, I guess technically it’s either “speculative fiction” or “science fiction,” but I also wrote what I feel is implicitly, if not explicitly, an epic horror novel. Thankfully, genres are just a thing people made up. So what narrative taxonomy works for you!

What if I can’t afford the book?

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

What can I do to support the book?

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

Can I come see you and get the book signed?

Heck yeah you can.

Here’s where I’ll be.

And that starts tonight, at the Bethlehem Public Library, 6:30PM. Books for sale. I’ll sign. Pre-launch party event featuring… I dunno what, actually, it’s a bit of a surprise for me. I’ve been kept in the dark. I assume food, drink, elves, various fires, a bag of possums, and a series of smaller and smaller robots.

Y’know. The usual.

What if I can’t be there but I want the book signed?

THEN TOO BAD

ha ha just kidding

A number of the print links above will take you to signed copies — probably the fastest route to that is to order from Let’s Play Books or Doylestown Bookshop, as I’ll be at both places over the next couple days and can sign/personalize accordingly, and they can ship directly.

Are there Easter Eggs?

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

What’s next?

Summer 2020, The Book of Accidents. It’s about… well, I don’t know how to talk about it yet. Creepy coal mines and alternate universes and a boy who can see other people’s pain and cycles of abuse and spirals and trauma and families maybe a serial killer. Still in edits.

Anyway, that’s it, I think. For now, at least.

Ooh —

I’ll add one last thing: this is a very spoilery book, with lots of twists and turns and switchbacks and oubliettes, so I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to preserve those, but just in case: please do.

Hope you check it out.

Hope you like it.

Hope you tell folks about it.

Black Swan says hi.

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One Week Till Wanderers, Plus A Promise Of Ink And Blood

[image error]Wanderers is one of those books that’s been with me for a very long time. Some books are *snaps fingers* lickety-quick — they appear fast, get on the page even faster, and next thing you know, that book is on shelves and you’re moving onto the next thing. But the sheer size of Wanderers parallels its presence in my life: it’s been a book I thought about for four years before I ever put a single word down about it, and once I started writing it, it still took a long time to write, to edit, and now, to launch. The long launch time is good, of course — the first excerpt from the book appeared last Halloween, at Entertainment Weekly, thus officially beginning the slow-and-steady march to publication. That’s in part because, if a publisher has some faith in the book and the author, giving it a lot of time to breathe and come to life gives it more chances to get on people’s radars, to become a thing in their mind, to pique interest and, in a perfect world, outright desire. (Or, a cult formed in the author’s honor. Which hasn’t happened for me yet, but one day. One day.)

So, that long, long wait is nearly here.

A book years in conception, making, marketing, and publication.

And it’s in one week.

So, in doing my due diligence here, a CHECKLIST OF VITAL REMINDERS, which will in turn be followed up by a PROMISE OF INK AND BLOOD —

1.) Hey, People Seem To Like This Book

This book, at present, has four starred reviews. (No book of mine thus far has ever had more than one.) Those starred reviews come from:

Kirkus: “Wendig is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time, resulting in a story that is ambitious, bold, and worthy of attention.”

Publisher’s Weekly: “This career-defining epic deserves its inevitable comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand, easily rising above the many recent novels of pandemic and societal collapse.”

Library Journal: “A powerful story about humanity, technology, and the survival of the world. Comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand are warranted, as Wendig shatters the boundaries of speculative and literary fiction…”

Bookpage: “It’s not easy to write the end of the world. With Wanderers, Chuck Wendig has mastered it.”

Other reviewers have said:

“Unexpected and enthralling . . . Approach Wanderers like it’s a primetime television series, along the lines of The Passage [or] Lost. Break it up into 70-page segments that you can devour like candy for an hour each evening. Let it unfold across your summer. . . . Make Wanderers a summer reading priority; you won’t regret it.”  — BookRiot

“Wanderers is OUTSTANDING. Wanderers excites me. You want well-developed characters and complex relationships? Read Wanderers. You want grounded sci-fi that ranks up there with bookstagram faves like #Recursion and #StationEleven? Read Wanderers. You want twists and turns and edge-of-your-seat action? Read Wanderers.” — Jordy’s Book Club

“An imaginative and absorbing work of speculative fiction.” — Booklist

“Wanderers is THE epic of the summer and you need to make sure you have it on your wishlist. This book is an electrifying marvel and deserves your attention, so make it a priority.” — Fan Fi Addict

“At the end of the day, few things are as American as hope, and Wanderers gives us plenty to hold on to, even as it chills us with all its what if? horrors.” — Michael Patrick Hicks at High Fever Books

And, in both honor and sorrow, reviewer Frank Errington before he passed wrote a wonderful review of the book at Cemetery Dance: “Wanderers is so damn cool, right from the get-go. Instantly fascinating. Wanderers is a big read. Actually, it’s a huge read, but it’s a comfortable one.  If you’re looking for a book to get lost in for a while, this is an epic journey.”

Plus, it’s made some kick-ass lists: Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Amazon, BookBub, Bookish, LibraryReads, ReadItForward, and more.

It’s also earned unholy good blurbs from the likes of: Erin Morgernstern, Rin Chupeco, Harlen Coben, James Rollins, Meg Gardiner, John Scalzi, Peng Shepherd, Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, Charles Soule, Delilah S. Dawson, Richard Kadrey, Adam Christopher, Peter Clines, Fran Wilde, Kat Howard, and Scott Sigler. (Blurb thread here.)

Finally, it’s already been optioned for TV by QC Entertainment! (Producers of: Get Out, Us, BlacKKKlansman)

2.) Hey Why Not Pre-Order The Book

So, pre-ordering a book is good for like, the entire book ecosystem, and here’s why: it sends a signal to the publisher that Author Is Good, it tells the bookstore to order an appropriate number of copies (and also sends the Author Is Good signal), it ensures you get a copy, and it contributes to first week sales, which are good. Plus, it makes me feel all ticklish inside.

You can pre-order from a wide, wild variety of locations:

You can get print from your local independent via Indiebound.org.

You can get a signed copy through any of the stores I’m appearing at, but also through these fine folks: Let’s Play Books, The Signed Page, B&N, Books-A-Million.

You can get the eBook from: Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, BAM.

And there’s audio, read by Xe Sands and Dominic Hoffman!

(If you’re UK, the book comes out July 9th, and you can get signed copies here.)

You can also add it on Goodreads, if that is your sort of thing.

Libraries will also carry this book, and libraries are rad. You can always check with your local library to see if they’ll have copies, and if you can reserve one early.

3.) And You Should Get That Pre-Order Swag

Swiggity-Swooty, you want that booty.

And in this case, the booty is a rad Shepherd highway sign pin.

Go to this page, enter pre-order info, and ta-da! IS YOURS.

4.) Put My Beardy McWeirdface On Your Schedule

I’m coming around to a whole lot of cool places in support of the book, so you should check out my Appearances page and see where I’m popping up like a bewildered gopher. You will find me on tour at — Bethlehem, PA; Doylestown, PA; Atlanta (Decatur), GA; Austin, TX; Houston, TX; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; San Diego, CA (Comic-Con and a MG signing); Denver, CO. Plus some other dates later in the summer.

5.) The Promise Of Ink And Blood

A long time ago my father, somewhat mysteriously, told me not to get a tattoo, because “that’s how they’d find me.” Presumably meaning, if I ever had to do something bad, the… authorities? would find me that way. (He also once stopped me on the stairs going up to the second floor of our house and he told me, “If you ever have to do something, you know, that you regret? Call me first. I’ll help you fix it.” I don’t know what this means, though I vaguely assume he was suggesting he will help me make and/or hide a body? That’s parental love, folks. I mean, it’s also a crime, but whatevs.) So I have long committed to not ever getting a tattoo because I assume it would upset his ghost (he passed away a decade ago), and I don’t have time for restless spirits.

But! I think enough time has passed where I’ll make this deal:

If this book hits the NYT Bestseller List, I’ll get some ink.

The ink I’ll get is a drawing done by my son — I feel like the best way past the SPECTRAL HEX of my father’s demand that I never get a tattoo is by deferring instead to my son, who has a piece of cool art that obliquely has some resonance with Wanderers. (I’ll show that drawing if all this comes to pass.) I might split the drawing in two and get it on the inside of each forearm? Not sure, yet.

Now, a couple caveats:

This book is unlikely to make list, I suspect. Genre doesn’t often ping the list easily, and it’s sort of a weird, fiddly, curated experience — the NYT list isn’t just “hey who sold the best?” So, the likelihood of this is, to me, not high. Though this book definitely has some spec-fic lit-fic crossover, I just don’t ever want to expect it’ll hit a list. It’d be nice! But who knows?

Further, the only real way that it hits list is by folks buying the book through independent booksellers. (Print list, at least. The combined e-book/print list is… I mean, I have no idea how that’s curated. I assume gremlins do it.)

So, I figure, that’s a good promise of ink and blood.

It hits list, I get ink.

INK FOR THE INK GODS

6.) And After That…

If you get the book — or if you’ve already read the book via an ARC — then I hope you’ll be kind enough to spread the word. Booklove is a viral thing — what I do here, trying to market the book? It makes a dent, but it isn’t what really moves copies. If you like this book or love it, if you could tell some friends, your family, a beloved pet, a cherished nemesis, whatever. Leave a review, too, at the place of your choice: social media, Goodreads, Amazon, a blog, or screamed into the blowhole of a magic dolphin. The book ecosystem is strengthened when we’re willing to talk about our books, and share the experience, and even show photos of us reading the books.

And that’s it.

It’s almost here.

One week left.

Thanks for checking it out, if you do.

*hyperventilates into a paper bag*

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Macro Mwednesday Is Totally A Thing, How Dare You Question Me

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/4...

Since I’m kinda on a bit of a schedule here (or in the UK, a SHED-YOU-ULL), I’ll make this brief with some quick news dips and dots, plus some photos, and then I’m outtie like belly button. Do the kids say that? The kids don’t say that? Well, shit.

News bits, beginning now:

• I did an interview on Tim Clare’s Death of a Thousand Cuts podcast, and it was a really great time and a fun interview and hopefully you’ll like it. *straps you down to a chair, stapleguns headphones to your ears* Oh how nice that you’ve chosen to listen.

• Speaking of the UK, Waterstones is offering signed copies of Wanderers.

• And yes you can order signed copies in the US, too, from various places — including my local stores, Doylestown Bookshop and Let’s Play Books.

• And holy craaaap the book is out in two weeks?! How did that happen? Here I remind you, poke poke poke, of the pre-order Shepherd pin you can nab…

• Plus, Wanderers is listed as a top ten book for July from LibraryReads…

• PLUS, best summer reading lists from Amazon, Bookish, Bookbub…

• FINALLY, another starred review from BookPage! “It’s not easy to write the end of the world. With Wanderers, Chuck Wendig has mastered it.” (That brings the total to four starred reviews! Maybe this book doesn’t suck?)

• I remind you that I’ll be in NYC tonight at the KGB Bar at 7pm doing a reading — plus DFWCon this weekend! Updated appearances listed right here.

All right, news-blobs dropped.

Onward to photography:

Michael Moreci: Writing Under the Influence

A long time ago, I read an interview from David Foster Wallace, and in it he talked about how writers are told to write what they know and what that means. He’d been taking a little bit of flak, apparently, for his reliance on modern/pop culture and its ephemera in his opus novel, Infinite Jest. Long story short, but Wallace said that his hyper-referential writing style was a product of his experiences. Like most of us, Wallace grew up on TV and video games and paperback novels. That’s the tapestry of our lives, just like the tapestry of Emerson’s life, or Thoreau’s life, was the naturalistic world. Atari and Saturday matinees, Wallace said, were his Walden Pond, and his writing couldn’t be anything other than a reflection of his experiences.

The thing is, we’re living in a weird time, creatively. Our world isn’t Emerson’s world; we’re smothered in information and art—through social media, through nonstop streaming options, wildly accessible entertainment, so on and so forth. In a sense, we’re influenced by influence. Let me give you an example:

I’ve written two novels—Black Star Renegades and its sequel, We Are Mayhem—and I like to sometimes joke that they’re just Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off. Now, like any joke, there’s some truth to this: The story is very, very much inspired by Star Wars. I’m a Star Wars fanatic. Thinking in Wallace’s terms, if you look at the tapestry of my life, it’s Star Wars, Stephen King, John Carpenter, and a whole bunch of comic books. And I was lucky to grow up in a house that supplied me with all these things, and from a very young age. My parents were not only supportive of my weird interests, but they were also liberal about my entertainment intake. I watched Halloween when I was five years old; I saw A New Hope when I was four. And my mom, bless her, used what little extra money she had to get me comic books and paperback novels from garage sales whenever she could. I was never short on supply when it came to absorbing pop culture, and that absorption was (and still is) a big part of my life.

Getting back to Black Star Renegades, there’s no way I could deny that it wasn’t influenced by Star Wars (Lucasfilm, in fact, has hired me since, and I’m currently writing many of the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic stories). I embrace that fact, fully—Black Star Renegades wouldn’t exist without Star Wars. But, there’s two things to say about this.

First, like I said before, we’re influenced by influence. Yes, you can jab at me for being so apparent with my influences, but Star Wars is also a sum of its influences. From classic sci-fi pulps to Kurosawa movies to silent films and a whole bunch of other stuff in-between, George Lucas’s space opera opus was the sum of many parts—all the things that influenced him. And all those things can then be traced back to various influences as well. This isn’t a groundbreaking revelation, of course; what’s important, though, is allowing your creative self to be okay carrying forth the DNA of other works. I’ve seen so many stories from talented writers wither on the vine because they were concerned with how much their work echoed things that have already been made. Solomon said there’s nothing new under the sun, and in my opinion that’s true (to a degree—if you dropped Solomon into our world, I’m sure he’d say “Holy shit! Look at all these new things under the sun!”). It’s so remarkably rare—like one in a million—to create something that’s nothing like anything else. We know it when we see it, and these rare instances are cherished, as they should be. And while striving for that is a noble pursuit, it’s also—and I’ve seen this with my own two eyes—the path to creative madness.

Of course, though, we can’t just go ripping off the things we love. That’s why I’m comfortable saying Black Star Renegades is a Star Wars knock-off—I know, in reality, it’s not. Here’s where the important trick comes in, a trick I’ve learned writing not only these two novels, but many, many licensed comic books.

So, as a comic book writer, I’m oftentimes asked to write stories for existing characters. I’ve written Superman, The Shadow, Cassie Hack, Adam West Batman, Nightwing, and more. And the thing I’ve learned in telling these stories successfully is this: You have to embrace the stories and their traditions for what they are. Nightwing is a sexy, fun version of Batman. That’s it. Therefore, when writing a Nightwing story, it wouldn’t really work to make him dark and tortured like Bruce Wayne—that’s not who he is. The job in writing for Nightwing is to write a story about a young, sexy dude who fights crime. But that’s only part of the puzzle. The other part, the most important part, is finding a way to embrace the core thing and make it your own. That’s the key. At the end of the day, the Nightwing story has to be a story that only I can tell—it’s my voice, it’s my point of view that the story is filtered through. Yes, I am embrace Nightwing completely—but I balance that with filtering everything he is through my own POV.

The thing is, the same goes for original creations. It’s the same balance of embracing your influences while maintaining your own voice. If you want to tell an epic fantasy but feel like it’s too much like Robert Jordan, remember that it’s you telling the story in your unique way. And the more you write, and the more your story takes shape, I’m confident that it’ll sounds less and less like Wheel of Time and more like your own thing. The same thing exists in Black Star Renegades. The Star Wars DNA is all over that book, but so is my DNA. There’s a lot of love for the galaxy far, far away in those pages, but there’s also a deconstruction of the messiah complex, and that dominant aspect of the book is all me. That’s my voice coming through, and it’s what makes that story what it is, and not just a Star Wars rip-off.

Now, this isn’t an endorsement of plagiarism—that would be bad. But we live in a world of influence that’s been influenced from other influence. There’s nothing wrong, in my opinion, owning it and making it your own.

Michael Moreci: Website

We Are Mayhem: Print | eBook

Tracy Townsend: In Pursuit Of The Sequel

Tracy Townsend is back at terribleminds, this time talking about one of the more curious difficulties an author will have — writing the second book in a series! 

* * *

Friends, I come fresh from the battlefield of my second novel, The Fall. Now that it’s out in the world where you, too, can see it, I can tell the tales of how it was wrought. I would be a very poor guide, indeed, if I did not want you to learn from my mistakes.

So you’ve decided to hunt down a sequel to your first book! Brave, industrious soul. Perhaps you thought this journey would be just like the last one? A long, winding road, full of switchbacks and mysterious, distracting dream-peddlers, maybe a treasure hoard at the end, guarded by some hulking reptilian being?

Oh, poor dear. You did think that.

Well.

Here. Come closer. In the words of an old friend of mine, “It’s not safe to go alone. Take this.”

Take some notes about your last book, because whatever map you think you’re going to use to get to the end of this one, its legend and key are based off that first, big brother book. You’ll forget how far apart the oceans are, or which roads run north, or even whether the hedges that grew up against the side of the cathedral were boxwoods or junipers. I know I did. (Thank god for copy editors. Thank god for fifty thousand words of story bible. Never throw away anything, my friends. The devil truly is in the details.)

Take a plugin and install it on your web browsers. Go ahead. Do it. Tell it you get some wickedly paltry allotment of minutes to dip out of your writing and into the digital sandbox beyond. Tell it all your worst habit sites and draw crosses over them in blood. (If you are like me, this will also significantly decrease the influx of impulse-purchased graphic tees in your home.)

Take some friends – the sort you can text or email at any hour of the night, howling unspeakable oaths, knowing they will stroke your fur flat until the full-moon madness of I-can’t-do-this passes. (My friends are too many to list. If I chant their names together, they rise up like a great writing Patronus and remind me that chocolate consumption alone does not write books, however much I want it to.)

Take a digital backup. And a hard drive backup. And an emailed copy of your work. Take a pile of parchment penned a nearsighted monk, but please, take every chance to duplicate your work. (This comes from someone who did – or thought she did – and still had to rewrite the last twenty thousand words of The Fall in a single weekend when her backup done backed out on her. Save. Every. Thing. Save it everywhere.)

Take family. Take the people who loved you before you ever wrote a single word of fiction, and who will love if you never do it again. Let them remind you that you’re more than your output. (My son, for example, has helpfully observed that my real superpower is “making breakfast.” All shall love me and have high blood sugar.)

Take a willingness to tear up the map. Your sense of what you needed to write to bridge two books into an ongoing story will change, as surely as a flooded river might wash out a road or submerge a bridge. There are other ways to get there. Some of them might even tell better stories. (Ask me about the time an incidental news article on contract law changed a key plot point, and how I would build toward it. “Debt management and property law” wasn’t on the map when I started, but. . . *shrug*)

Take the courage to break up the band. You haven’t really been traveling alone, even before you came to this list. You had your characters, good people or villains or rapscallions though they may be. You’ve learned to live with them. You might even love them. But new journeys call for  new maps and new roads. There may not be space for everyone to walk abreast anymore. Be ready to break up the party and send them off on their own quests.

This one will hurt.

Take a deep breath.

Maybe they’ll come together again. Maybe not. Maybe you’ll need another book to show them the way home together.

Bio:

Tracy Townsend is the author of The Nine and The Fall (books 1 and 2 in the Thieves of Fate series), a monthly columnist for the feminist sf magazine Luna Station Quarterly, and an essayist for Uncanny Magazine. She holds a master’s degree in writing and rhetoric from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from DePauw University, a source of regular consternation when proofreading her credentials. She is the former chair of the English department at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, an elite public boarding school, where she teaches creative writing and science fiction and fantasy literature. She has been a martial arts instructor, a stage combat and accent coach, and a short-order cook for houses full of tired gamers. Now she lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois with two bumptious hounds, two remarkable children, and one very patient husband. You can find her at Twitter @TracyATownsend, and online at www.tracytownsend.net.

The Fall: Indiebound / Barnes & Noble / Powells / Amazon / Audible

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Megan O’Keefe: Five Things I Learned Writing Velocity Weapon

Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera by award-winning author Megan O’Keefe.

Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction.

However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda looses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe.

Now, separated by time and space, Sanda and Biran must fight to put things right.

* * *

I Like Big Books (And I Cannot Lie)

When I sat down to write Velocity Weapon, I really thought it would have a single point of view. I plotted it as such, pitched it to my agent that way, and even sold the thing to Orbit with just Sanda on the page. My brilliant and gracious editor (hi Brit!) saw through my nonsense, however.

She pointed out that, lurking beneath the surface of Sanda’s story, was a massive world and political tug-of-war that would be better explored if I leaned into the space opera element and brought in multiple points of view. She was, naturally, concerned that I’d balk at being asked to add so much. I loved it.

Expanding the novel let me nerd out not only on the worldbuilding and the characters involved, but also on plot structure. Maintaining the balance between Big Book and fast-paced was a fun endeavor, and I enjoyed layering elements of the original plot structure (the outline became almost fractal) to get the feel I was going for.

The original draft of Velocity Weapon clocked in at around 70k words. The final version runs closer to 170k, and that’s what it should have been from draft zero.

Sentience Is Weird And No One Understands It

Look, I can yammer on about the three projected stages of AI development, qualia, and the hard problem of consciousness until we’re both blue in the face. But, at the end of the day, the only answer to any of these questions regarding what it means to be a thinking, feeling being is a big fat shrug emoji.

The good news is that, because these things are so nebulous, it allows writers a lot of freedom to play with possibilities in fiction. Of course, even if we knew for sure what the answers were spec fic writers would continue to play with what-if scenarios. But hey, at least this way if one of our speculative theories turns out to be right (probably not, let’s be honest) we can pretend to be smug and say, “I told you so.”

I Subconsciously Act Out Facial Expressions and Body Language…

… and people, did you know that you can see me? I am, in fact, not inhabiting my own little writer-bubble where all that exists is the world in my head, the music in my ears, and the clicky clack of the keyboard.

I am, however, not going to stop. My local baristas may think I’m absolutely bonkers but they’re probably right, so I might as well own it.

People Want to See Healthy Relationships

The central protagonists of the story are a brother and sister. There’s no dark back story there, no history of one sibling picking on the other and desperately trying to make up for it now that things have gotten dire. They just love each other, and their parents, and are doing their best to keep their family members safe and happy while respecting their boundaries. Just as it’s important to model dysfunction in fiction so that we can better understand it, I believe it’s important to model healthy relationships, too.

Tense family stories are valid stories to tell, and many of us can probably relate to them easily, but this once I wanted a break from inheritable drama. The book has enough tension without family conflict, and so far readers have reacted positively to the Greeve family.

Subtlety and Complexity Make Strange Bedfellows

One of the most common notes I receive from editors is that I can “bring up” certain elements more – make Chekhov’s proverbial gun on the mantel less of a peashooter and more of a bazooka, so to speak. This is valuable feedback for me, especially as I’m one of those writers who likes to keep all my cards up my sleeve and only show you a little peek on occasion.

That’s a lot of metaphors. Anyway, this kind of writing (e.g., I used that word instead of this word which totally sets up everything I swear) is all fine and dandy when your plots aren’t a tangle of overgrown roots and hey, would you look at that, mine usually are. I blame growing up on Final Fantasy games for this (mine do come together in the end though, I promise).

This is where I’m supposed to say something like, “Writing Velocity Weapon helped me learn to strike a balance between the two styles.” That’s mostly true, but the hard fact is that writing Velocity Weapon helped me to be more aware of those proclivities. Writing is art and craft, and if we’re not actively learning, we’re not growing, and to hell with that. There’s always something each new story can teach us.

* * *

Megan E. O’Keefe was raised amongst journalists, and as soon as she was able joined them by crafting a newsletter which chronicled the daily adventures of the local cat population. She has worked in both arts management and graphic design, and has won Writers of the Future and the Gemmell Morningstar Award.

Megan O’Keefe: Website

Velocity Weapon: print | eBook

Ferrett Steinmetz: Five Things I Learned Writing The Sol Majestic

Kenna, an aspirational teen guru, wanders destitute across the stars as he tries to achieve his parents’ ambition to advise the celestial elite.

Everything changes when Kenna wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy’s most renowned restaurant, giving him access to the cosmos’s one-percent. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized “free meal” risks putting The Sol Majestic into financial ruin. Kenna and a motley gang of newfound friends—including a teleporting celebrity chef, a trust-fund adrenaline junkie, an inept apprentice, and a brilliant mistress of disguise—must concoct an extravagant scheme to save everything they cherish. In doing so, Kenna may sacrifice his ideals—or learn even greater lessons about wisdom, friendship, and love.

* * *

If You’re Thinking About Giving Into Despair: Don’t

I have a memory with an Etch-a-Sketch permanency; I forget everything in one shake of the head.  I can barely remember my wife’s birthday, let alone what day I started a novel.

But I remember the exact day I started writing The Sol Majestic: it was the worst day of my writing career.

See, I’d been trying to land an agent for almost twenty years.  But I’d honed my skills, and finally written a novel I could be proud to call my own – it was a weirdo little book about magical drug dealing and donuts, but it popped bright and I loved the characters.

The good news: I’d had an agent who’d been sniffing around my door, expressing interest in my fiction.  He’d asked me about that weird drug-dealing novel – have you finished that one yet, Ferrett? I’d love to see it when you’re done.  And he asked not once but twice, so I knew his interest was true.  Naturally, I sent it off to him the second I’d applied the final veneer of polish to my oddball fiction, and waited.

I waited for a month.

Then two months.

Then three months.

Well, that agent was very busy (as all good agents are), and he told me it might take a while to get back to me, so I figured waiting around for him solo was foolish – so I sent this magical donut drug-crime novel to other agents, all of whom summarily rejected it.

By nine months, it was apparent that my first agent was the only one still willing to look at it.

And on month ten, I got the reply from that agent that started with words you never want to hear from a professional:

“I’m sorry, but….”

Turns out this agent really liked the characters, but he felt the plot was broken.  And he’d been thinking about it on and off for almost six months now, truly wanting to give me some advice that would provide me with a rewrite so he could take me on as a client.  But after a long time, he’d decided that any of his plot-fixes would destroy the book, forcing me to tell a story I didn’t want to tell, and so, well…

Better luck next time.

And I broke.

I curled up in my basement, crying, because that had been my last chance at publication.  If I wanted to have a publisher print my book, I’d have to first write the book, which would take me a year, and then spend another ten months shopping it around, and then maybe it would sell – maybe – and I’d get it published, what? Four years from now?

It seemed like a long goddamned slog for no good reason.

And I looked at whether I wanted to be a writer.

And I knew that if I didn’t start a novel right then, that day, in that hour, I would set down the pen and never write again.

So I wrote the start of a simple novel.  I didn’t have a setting in mind, so I copped a universe from my Nebula-nominated novella “Sauerkraut Station.”  I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, but I’d been reading a lot of Anthony Bourdain lately, so fuck it – kitchen drama in space.  And my protagonist….

Well, he was in despair.  Just like me.  Searching for a way out.

Now, you may note that this novel got published.  And as it turned out, due to some dumb luck, that magical drug-dealing novel got published as well – that was my debut novel “Flex.”

But if I’d given into despair, well, none of that would have happened.

Look: the road to publishing is pretty much designed to drive people mad.  It’s a whole lot of subjective opinions, and judgy strangers deciding whether your worth has any external value, and long waits while someone else determines if your words are good enough today.  And some days you’re NOT good enough, and you have to go back to examine your writings with blunt truth and honesty, finding ways to level up your skills so you can perform this imperfect ink-smeared telepathy we humans call “writing.”

But if you’re having a hard day, let me tell you:

DO NOT GIVE UP.

I got there.

Maybe you can, too.

When You Got No Time For Research, Seek Out Your Trashy Loves

Sci-fi author Mary Robinette Kowal is infamously meticulous in her research; at one point, she went through every word in her 19th-century Regency England fantasy to ensure that every word in the book was period-accurate.  Was no one in the 1820s describing eyes as “baby blue”? Well, out that phrase went.

Me?  I get tired reading half a Wikipedia page.

So when I was writing a book, I chose something I had an innate love of – which is to say, every food network show ever.  I have an unholy love of Gordon Ramsay in all his incarnations from Hell’s Kitchen monster to adoring MasterChef Junior pseudo-dad.  I’ve watched every Iron Chef and worship at the altar of hometown hottie Michael Symon.  I’ve read tons of chef’s biographies.

So did I do a lot of research for my book The Sol Majestic?  Not entirely.  I didn’t research for the book, exactly, but every time I’d sat riveted in front of the Jiro Dreams of Sushi documentary, every book I’d read on legendary restaurant El Bulli, every time I’d thumbed through Kitchen Confidential, well…

Let’s just say I was an expert through fandom.

And this book I was writing because, shit, I was about to throw in the towel?  It needed to be pure comfort reading.  Yeah, I could put a character in dire straits, but I was in no headspace to write a horror novel.

I needed to build a fictional home I could escape to – someplace wonderful I could retreat to when the world got to be too much.

So I wrote a story about the most beautiful restaurant in all the stars – a place where they served miraculous foods only made possible through science-fictional technology, using everything I’d ever loved about fine dining to create a kitchen with chefs I adored.  That knowledge I’d picked up on how Michelin-starred restaurants planned their meals using only the freshest cuisine?  I figured out the supply lines from locally-sourced produce all the way to a kitchen that was light-years away from habitable ecosystems with a mixture of “How It’s Made” and old Planet Money episodes.  I recreated the working environment of a functioning, jovial kitchen by sifting my memories of endless Netflix food documentaries.

And that’s the weird thing: they tell you that you should do research for your book.  But in a sense, if you write about the stuff you already love, you’ll not only have done the research, but you’ll also have a more unique research.  Because sure, you can write a science fiction book that’s got the same old physics equations as anyone else – or you can create a book that’s got time-travelling soup battles (which, y’know, The Sol Majestic does), which is something that only other Food Network junkies will truly appreciate.

There Are Three Rules For Creating Science-Fictional Food

I spent a lot of time crafting the foods made in The Sol Majestic because, well, the Sol Majestic is theoretically one of the greatest restaurants in the known universe.  If the food falls short, so does the book.  And so a little experimentation showed it had to hit three axes consistently:

Delicious Food.  Because if I don’t make your mouth water by describing the crunch of the skin on the lacquered duck breast as you bite into it, that sensation of the oily mouthful of perfectly-seared duck melting into the spicy molasses-and-citrus infused skin, then I’ve failed at making this a restaurant you’d want to eat at.
Experimental Food. …but if I only describe everyday foods, then you’ll risk thinking The Sol Majestic is not a very cutting-edge restaurant – the equivalent of a starbound Olive Garden.  So I had to devise wild takes on traditional meals to make The Sol Majestic seem like they were worth the trip there: things like using artificial gravity to compress foods so tight they’d cook themselves, scented rose petals that dissolve on your tongue to leave wisps of flavor permeating your mouth, and of course wild mosses harvested from rare asteroids.
Unknown Food. Yet if all The Sol Majestic serves is chicken and fish variants, that doesn’t feel very science-fictiony, does it? So I had to bring in a bunch of both imaginary and rare foods – at one point, my protagonist Kenna rattles off a list of foods that others have told him about (blubber, siopao, Silulian black-udder, p’tcha, vacuum flanks), and it was interesting to see who could identify the real-life foods and who just went with it.

The three of them combine to make The Sol Majestic seem like a real restaurant you’d want to hang at.  But honestly?  The back room doesn’t eat that stuff all the time.  They eat grilled cheeses, like an actual goddamned working kitchen – it’s just they use great bread and cheese.

(Cue that $1 grilled cheese food cart everyone’s talking about.  I’d eat there.  So would everyone at the Sol Majestic.)

When Your Back’s Against The Wall, Steal A Plot… But Make It Yours

So we had a restaurant, but a restaurant does not a novel make.  And I was, if you’ll recall, writing largely to give myself hope, so I wasn’t sure I was up to an elaborate plot.

But if Ready Player One had taught me anything, it’s that the plot to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is pretty much bulletproof.  So yes, I had a starving young prince walk in and win a free meal from a genius – a genius chef who becomes intensely invested in helping Kenna’s abandoned philosophies regain the lustre they once had.

Yet at the same time, I also wanted to explore what that ragged genius meant.  Because society is hard-wired to sympathize with the jerky white dude who creates amazing art – and while I’m obviously in favor of great art, I wanted to explore some of the cost those great projects take upon the Oompa Loompas.  So I made a mad genius, yes, but I also thought about the culture that had to evolve around that fragile creativity, and the money it took to fund it, and the accountants that made all that possible… All to ask the question, “Is it worth it?”

That all formed a book that, while it shares plot elements with the Chocolate Factory, eventually grew into a musing on class struggles, and power, and religion.  Because food, and how food is harvested, ultimately defines and creates culture.  Which is pretty good considering I was writing like a motorcycle speeding down a narrow night road – one curve at a time, dimly lit.

Restrictions Breed Creativity

Aaaaaand finally, when I sat down to write this novel, I gave myself some rules.  Clearly what I’d been doing before hadn’t been working, so I gave myself a self-imposed challenge: I could not say how anyone felt, aside from my protagonist Kenna.  I could only relate what Kenna thought of someone’s reactions by describing their body language.

And I had to do it creatively.

Which was a huge change for me.  I came from a pulp fiction background where people were always snorting in disgust or smirking in amusement – which aren’t “body language” so much as “literary shorthands for classic emotions.”  Every long-term writer has a few go-to shorthands for expressing common reactions – when I write on autopilot, characters will ball their fists in rage forty or fifty times in a row unless I edit that happy crappy out.

But I determined that I wouldn’t just say that Kenna liked someone – I had to break down *why* he liked that person, what specific aspects of their expressed character that appealed to Kenna.  Gone were the old shortcuts of “She looked friendly” – I had to decide what this character was doing with her body that made her look friendly to Kenna, which in turn led me to investigate what sorts of things Kenna would be searching for.

All of which rooted the book MUCH more deeply in character.  Because sure, everyone narrows their eyes in anger.  But when you take that away, you’re left trying to determine how a specific character shows anger – whether it’s the flighty artist Paulius batting Kenna’s objections aside like he’s swatting mosquitos, or the imperious nostril-flares of Scrimshaw the cold business manager, or the way Montgomery clasps her precious barrel of alien yeast to her chest in preparation to bash you over the head with it.

And then, in turn, that reaction is a dance – because I’d frequently figure out a way that a character would express anger, then discover that Kenna, my protagonist, wasn’t observant enough to recognize these gestures as anger.  But that was okay!  Because the point wasn’t “Kenna the super-psychiatrist deftly avoids an argument,” but rather “Kenna discovers who these characters are in an organic way.”

And sometimes, I discovered these characters in an organic way.  Because I wasn’t just churning out quippy dialogue – I was stage-blocking these people, wandering around my basement like a marionette, acting.  And sometimes when I stumbled about in my writing-room stageacting, I discovered hidden depths – a character who seemed merciless had a tremor in their hands that revealed a hidden regret to me, which in turn fuelled a turn in the plot.

All that worked because I took a risk.  And why not?  I wasn’t getting a novel published any time soon.

…I thought.

But if you’ve read all the way here, you’re probably aware that The Sol Majestic got published – my little gift to you.  Because a lot of folks have described The Sol Majestic as “hopepunk”: a book that is brutally aware of the injustices in the universe, and still believes in the triumph of love, hope, and beauty.

Because I was neck-deep in despair.  I wrote my way out.

I hope my book can lend you a hand.

Or at least a delicious grilled cheese.

* * *

FERRETT STEINMETZ is a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2012, for his novelette Sauerkraut Station. He is the author of the ‘Mancer trilogy, The Uploaded, and he has written for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Ferrett lives in Cleveland with his wife.

Ferrett Steinmetz: Website

The Sol Majestic: Print | eBook

All The News That’s Fit To Fall On A Friday

[image error]Been a little while since I popped (originally mistyped as “pooped,” oops) in here with some news, so here is some quicky news bits for you. PLEASE TO BEHOLD THE MANY THINGS HAPPENING.

• Did you know I’m doing a pre-launch Wanderers event on July 1st at the Bethlehem Library in the Lehigh Valley? WELPS, I SURE AM. And you can click here to register to said event. Let’s Play Books will be the bookseller. And you can actually pre-order signed copies from them, too.

• Why yes, I did get a third starred review for Wanderers! This time, from Library Journal: “A powerful story about humanity, technology, and the survival of the world. Comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand are warranted, as Wendig shatters the boundaries of speculative and literary fiction in a saga that will touch every reader.” I am positively thrumming with excitement. I hope y’all dig this book. It’s been a long time in the lead-up to release…

• Did you know you can add the book on Goodreads? YOU SURE CAN.

• Find me talking about writing licensed work over at The Guardian!

• Did you want a HYDRATE AND READ BOOKS t-shirt? You can get one at Worldbuilders, for charity. And you can get a FOXES CONTROL THE WRITING SHACK sticker, too.

• Wanna check out Damn Fine Story on e-book? Hey look, it’s $2.99 right now on Amazon.

And finally, I got my author copies of Wanderers! Dang, that’s a big book.

* * *

(Here I remind you that you can of course pre-order Wanderers at an independent bookmonger using Indiebound. You can pre-order the e-book, too —

Amazon! B&N! Apple Books! Kobo! Google Play!

And there’s always audio, via Audible.)

On Running, And Writing, And How A Little Becomes A Lot

In high school, I could barely run The Mile.

(I capitalize it because it was always exactly that — not a mile, but rather, The Mile, part of some wifty health assessment thing that chose to test how fast kids could run The Mile, usually while a gym teacher buzzed alongside you in a fucking golfcart.)

I had what was once called ‘growing pains,’ or ‘knobby knees,’ or more properly diagnosed, Osgood-Schlatter, which sounds maybe like some fancy chocolate or a Nazi that Indiana Jones punched. Basically, it pushes out part of your knee just below the cap, so you get this elbow-like protrusion there. It hurts. You can use it as a gym class excuse. So you bet your ass I used it as a gym class excuse. (I of course sat off to the side and read books. I know, it’s a little on-the-fucking-nose.) As a result, I generally did not have to complete The Dreaded Mile.

I added that word, Dreaded, because it was awful. All that slogging and running. Most kids looked like they were dying. Running laps around the soccer field. Wet and sweaty. Some kind of teenage death march. A YA novel waiting to happen: a teen version of Stephen King’s The Long Walk.

Eventually, the Osgood-Schlatter faded. The knobby-ish knees remained, but without pain (mostly). And I just chalked it up as: hey, running is stupid. Nobody should run. I biked here and there, that seemed nice, and I was able to tell myself: ha ha, people who run are dumb, at least a bicycle gets you somewhere. And I of course internalized all the supposed evidence that running was bad for you anyway, and that runners were chumps. Suck it, chumps. Destroy those knees, dipshits. Oh, oh, what’s that? Hamstring pull? Shin splints? Suckers.

I’LL NEVER BE ONE OF YOU, I trumpeted to the skies from my bicycle, which is to say, from my couch, while playing video games probably. NEVER SHALL I BE A RUNNER.

And then I had a kid.

* * *

Life, you’ll note, presents you with certain crisis points. I don’t necessarily mean crisis points like OH SHIT A DRAGON or OH FUCK THERE’S A GUNSHIP HELICOPTER CHASING ME or I CAN’T DECIDE IF I WANT TACOS TONIGHT OR PIZZA OH FUCKING SHIT THIS IS A REAL FUCKING CRISIS, DAVE. I just mean, life sometimes hip-checks you up to a cliff’s edge, where it forces you to either summon the wherewithal to jump or walk back from the precipice. Neither being a wrong decision, mind you — but one requires you to screw your courage to the sticking place, and the other has you err on the side of caution, and at times, cowardice.

Jump or walk.

Fuck or run.

Shit or get off the bucket.

Writing was like this for me, at various points.

I wanted to be a writer for a very long time. Junior high cemented it, and I never really let go of that dream, a dog with a favorite toy clamped in his teeth. But out of college you start taking on jobs that seem to get you further and further from the dream, right? And you get busy. And you don’t have as much time to write. And it’s like realizing, oops, you dropped the toy and now you’re sitting there, watching that beloved toy drift farther downstream. And if you don’t jump in and get wet, you may never get that toy back. I hit a point where it became, do I want to do this or not? How will I manage it? I had to start setting up some kind of plan. I didn’t need a fucking spreadsheet or checklist or anything, I just had to take it seriously enough to sequester for myself some time and space to write. Even nested in other jobs. I had to say, I’ll write in the morning before work, or I’ll write at lunch. Or I’ll secretly write at work, meaning I was kinda double-dipping I know I know you’re not supposed to do that shut up I did it anyway. I’d steal time and write a hundred words here and there. Not necessarily to write things To Sell, but simply to write — to practice, to get better, to figure it the fuck out. A little bit here, a little bit there. It added up. It led to a freelance career in gaming.

And the crisis point came again when I had taken on so much freelance work that I either had to stop taking on new freelance work or quit my day job. And another crisis point came when I had to decide to quit freelancing in order to write a proper goddamn novel. (I couldn’t do both, it turned out. I tried, many times, but I couldn’t split my focus and exercise what turned out to be two very different sets of creative muscles.) Each time I found a way to close my eyes, hold my nose, and jump.

I figured out how to figure it out.

A little bit at a time.

* * *

So.

As it happens with kids, they do their own kind of Pokemon evolution, where one day they’re potatoes who move like potatoes move, which is to say, not at all. And then they’re caterpillars. And then they’re the walking dead. And then they’re Usain Bolt, sprinting at top speed toward the sharp corner of that coffee table you didn’t babyproof, you asshole. NOBODY NEEDS GLASS-TOP COFFEE TABLES WHEN YOU HAVE CHILDREN. PUT THAT AWAY. IT’S ALSO VERY DATED, TO BE HONEST. YOU HAVE KIDS NOW, YOU NEED A COFFEE TABLE MADE OF SOFT EARTH AND BAGS OF BIG-SIZE MARSHMALLOWS.

Our child, the Childe B-Dub, started walking at eight months, and started running at eight-months-and-one-day, and it became immediately clear that he was evolving much faster than I’d have liked. (As I have noted in the past, every day with a kid is like that scene in Jurassic Park where the velociraptors learn to open doors.) It also became clear that before too long, he was going to easily get away from me. I envisioned the day when he decided he was going to bolt at top-speed toward a busy road, or a wood-chipper, or some kind of elk-fighting arena… and I wouldn’t be able to catch him. It wasn’t just his speed. It was his sustained effort. The kid must’ve eaten a bunch of 9-volt batteries because he was the Energizer Bunny. He could go and go and go and go. I could sprint for about *checks watch* six seconds, at which point I would have to concede his fate to the elk arena.

So: crisis point.

I either had to get in shape —

*shudder*

— or I had to expect my two-year-old was going to run into the woods and be gone forever.

I chose to try to catch him.

Which meant I had to learn how to run.

* * *

A few things, right out of the gate, you need to know:

Running is theoretically autonomous — we know how to do it from an early age, as evidenced by my child. But you should learn to run correctly, and sometimes learning to run correctly means first learning to run incorrectly — which is to say, figuring out why your shins hurt, or you have plantar fasciitis, or why running at this time is worse than running at that time, or why “these old hobo wingtips” do not make good running shoes.

The other thing is, you can go running, but you won’t necessarily be able to do it well, or for long, or in a way that doesn’t look like a sack of wrenches rolling cartoonishly down a hill.

This is especially true if you start this journey not in your teenage years, but rather, your late 30s.

So, I did something that seemed lazy at the time: I said, I’m going to start running, and I’m not going to set any expectations of distance, speed, or form. I’m going to run however far I can run without feeling like I’m dying, and that will be my finish line — and my ongoing benchmark. I will run that far as often as I can. And that’s it. I don’t need to be an expert. I don’t need to be a marathon runner who lubes his nipples so they don’t bleed through his shirt.

I just need to not die while chasing my Speed Force toddler.

See, we have a tendency sometimes to really, really want to push. We are trained that way across our various disciplines: push harder, push faster, push farther and further, PUSH LIKE YOU’RE POOPING, someone yells (okay, nobody really says that). We are invited and expected to go beyond our limits because that is how you extend those limits. And that’s true, to a point: but it also sets for us false expectations right from the word “go.” We believe however far we go isn’t far enough. We expect that there is, in fact, never ‘enough.’ We begin already by losing, by creating unreachable limits. And this is why, often in creative fields, so many people fail out of the gate — we have a vision in our heads of THE MASTERPIECE WE MUST IMMEDIATELY COMPLETE and so we endure a miserable regimen of work where it feels like some artistic version of Xeno’s Paradox: we can never truly cross the distance and be satisfied. Our goal, forever out of reach.

I didn’t want to do that with running.

I knew myself then, and know myself now.

I knew if I pushed too hard, too fast, I’d fucking hate it so bad I’d be done in a week.

So, I said, be gentle with myself. Be kind. Expect that I am going to be super shitty at this.

I said, I will do a little. Not a lot. Just a little.

And that first day, I ran… I think maybe a quarter-mile. It felt like dying. I’d heard tales of the runner’s high, but this was not that: this was a runner’s low, a sprinter’s nadir, a jogger’s lament in the deepest sweat-slick oubliette. And what I did there wasn’t even running, not really. It was a kind of gallumphing, a dead-armed horse-clop where my burning feet and numb-fucked legs somehow juggled my jiggling body forward until I had to stop.

It would’ve been really easy to feel bad about this. Not just about how bad it literally felt, but about how unsuccessful I was. A quarter-mile isn’t… actually that much. It’s like, 1,320 feet. Roughly a run down and back up our driveway. But I chose to accept that this was a good outcome. I’d never really run in a concerted way. This was a success. Honestly anything more than 50 feet was a success.

So, I set it: a quarter-mile benchmark.

And what happened next, happened pretty fast.

By the following week, I still set my quarter-mile benchmark, but I was no longer running a quarter-mile. I was running a half-mile, semi-reliably. And then, three-quarters of a mile. And maybe after a month, I dinged a level-up: I completed a motherfucking mile.

And still I didn’t change my benchmark. I told myself, I’m going to be happy if I get out there and fumble my way for a quarter-mile. If I do that, I can stop. Truth is, sometimes I still did that. Sometimes I still hit that quarter-mile and I was like, yeah, no, nope, it’s humid, my glasses are sweatily oozing down the bridge of my nose, my legs hurt, my taint is lava hot and I don’t recall my taint getting that hot before, and fuck this shit, fuck all this shit right now.

But that was not the norm.

The norm was, I hit my benchmark and said, I feel pretty okay, I’m gonna push a little more. I never said, “I’m going for the full monty, the big damn mile.” I just said, “I can do more.”

And I did more, until I couldn’t.

* * *

And that, as it turns out, ends up being a pretty good method for how I do things. Writing, running, and honestly, most everything: I set a low benchmark, an easy-and-not-too-low-limbo-pole under which I can shimmy, and then I end up doing more. Then I do more, until I can’t.

Here’s how that’s true in writing:

When I started, I’d tell myself I’d write a page. Just one little page. Often handwritten.

We had a notebook we passed around school, a big sort of mash-up fan-fic universe, and it was largely that, as a rule: you gotta try to write a page. You could, of course, write more, and inevitably, we did. And when it came time to freelance, and the metric was less about pages and more about word count, I set a low word count, too: 500 words, just crank out 500 fucking words and don’t die.

Of course, I’d end up writing more.

And as time went on, and I became more professional (“professional”), I was able to comfortably adjust the benchmark, letting it drift upward. The 500-word basement became 1000 words, and eventually, 2000. The same thing happened in running — my quarter-mile drifted up, a bit at a time, until now it’s comfortably a mile. I can run a mile every fucking time. I never don’t run a mile. And I say to myself, once I’ve run the mile? I am free to go. I am accountable to no one. I couldn’t run a mile ten years ago. Good job. High-five. Gold medal. Fuck off.

But I often run two.

Once in a while, I run three.

[image error]

(I’ve never run more than three.)

(But I did do a three-mile run twice this past week. A first for me!)

In writing, I say I’m gonna write 2k, but sometimes, it’s 3k, and on rare days, I really bring it home with 5k or more. (I think 15k is my tops. It hurt my brainparts.)

Worth noting too that in each case, upgrading my benchmark sometimes came because I upped my game. In running, I was getting shin-splints and plantar pain, so I went to a running store and they told me about my gait and what shoes might work — I bought new running shoes, Hoka One Ones, and the pain disappeared. With the pain gone, I was able to run a little faster, a little longer. (Bonus: no pain.) In writing, I was able to cut out distractions with a program like Freedom, and I learned how to use Microsoft Word better, and simply how to hack my schedule and my diet in a way that gave me a little more energy and clarity. So: sometimes working more means working smarter.

But at the base level, it’s just about doing.

And if you want to do a lot, it sometimes means aiming only for a little.

The key was doing something that remains antithetical, I think, to our way of working: we are told to push and push and growl and grind. We’re told to break ourselves to get results. But that, for me, was simply not the way. Not to say I haven’t tried that. Or to say I haven’t sometimes pushed and pushed in a way that was painful — both in writing, and in running. But when I did so, it wasn’t because I demanded I do it. I was pushing past an already low bar of success. I already baked the Get-Shit-Done Cake, and everything after was sweet, delicious, Accomplishment Icing. And the extra fun is, when you set a lower benchmark and surpass it, it feels like a huge fucking win. And feeling like you won is a good way to motivate yourself to do it again, and again, and to do more next time.

It is a kindness to yourself. Don’t expect to run a mile out of the gate. Don’t demand you write the next bestseller. See the increments. Break it up. Find safe, sane, kind limits for yourself — and then you will find it increasingly easy to exceed them. To embrace a little and relish the success instead of always trying to conquer the whole damn lot — and falling short every damn time.

Deep breath. See the finish line. It’s right in front of you. Doing something small is better than doing nothing at all — because you’ve set your difficulty levels too damn high. Because your expectations are too steep, too severe. Because you could not find kindness for yourself and a small, satisfying measurement to keep you going, always going, always able to do more, go bigger, do better.

A game of inches is how you run a game of miles.

Now go.

* * *

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WANDERERS: A Novel, out July 2nd, 2019.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. An astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls “a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”

A sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America. The real danger may not be the epidemic, but the fear of it. With society collapsing—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers and the shepherds who guide them depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Preorder: Print | eBook

The Spectrum Of News, From Good To Sad

I suppose we should just get the sad news out of the way now: I do believe the foxes are mostly gone. Rather, they’ve abandoned the den behind the shed — they may yet be nearby, in another den! I’ve seen a kit here and there, traipsing through the woods at twilight (for crepuscular beings, they be), and one leapt away from my shed the other day in a flash. My wife saw one of the parentfoxes in the woods, skulking about as foxy foxes are wont to do. But beyond that, there is no more presence of them here — no playful kits, no dug up bits, no dog toys stolen and played with. It may have been from our neighbors’ fireworks last weekend, or it may simply have been their time to widen their range and find another den. Alas.

I may do a calendar or a photobook soon, with some of that money going to animal/nature charities, because it’d be nice to find some way to direct these lovely photos I was able to take of the kits. Hopefully the foxes aren’t mad I’m stealing their intellectual property. If they are mad, they can take it up with me by hollowing out my meat and wearing my skin like a coat.

HA HA IT’S OKAY THAT HASN’T ALREADY HAPPENED

*barfs up rabbit bones*

Ahem.

But! Onto better news.

First up, Wired has chosen Wanderers as one of its fourteen must-read summer books.

And Michael Patrick Hicks did a really nice review of the book, saying: “Wanderers is necessary update to the canon of epic apocalyptic American spec-fic, examining the collapse of society and the mass extinction of humankind through the lens of USA 2019.” (Note, the review is lightly spoilerish.)

Also, I’ve got an additional date added to my Wanderers tour —

7/1, from 6:30-8PM, I’ll be at the Bethlehem Library for a pre-launch event! Books will be for sale through Let’s Play Books. (You can also pre-order and I’ll sign and they’ll ship.)

And again, here’s the other stores that will be sullied by my presence:

I’m also at BookCon next weekend — my schedule is:

Saturday 4:30 PM – 5:00 PM

Signing

PRH Booth #1221

Sunday 12:00 PM – 12:40 PM

BookCon Panel: How Our Present Impacts Today’s Science Fiction

Panel with Bob Proehl, Rob Hart, and Sarah Pinsker moderated by NPR’s Petra Mayer

Choice Stage

Sunday 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Geek Geek Revolution: BookCon Edition

Panel with Bob Proehl, and others

1E07

Sunday 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM

Signing

Autographing Area | Table #12

Aaaaaand don’t forget about me and Keith DeCandido reading at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction event on June 19th. And just after that, I’ll be at DFWCon giving a keynote, and eventually at SDCC, as well. Huzzah and hooray and bezoar.

You can also find me on a couple PODCASTS, which are for your EARS:

I was on Cordkillers! Whoa!

I also talked to Dan Blank on The Creative Shift!

And finally, Chuck & Anthony are back! Is back? Whatever. THE TWO OF US HAVE RETURNED, as the prophecy foretold. In the new cast, we talk the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, and we just recorded one talking about the finale, too. We’ll also be back to talk about more John Wick in the future, and maybe some OTHER COOL STUFF.

I think that’s it. There may be more, but whew, I’m spent. It’s Friday. It’s pants-off dance-off time.

I’d give you some final fox photos as a send-off, but Flickr is being a BITE IN THE ASS, so:

Look for them next week!

* * *

(Here I remind you that you can of course pre-order Wanderers at an independent bookmonger using Indiebound. You can pre-order the e-book, too —

Amazon! B&N! Apple Books! Kobo! Google Play!

And there’s always audio, via Audible.)