Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 59

Macro Monday Is The Weirdest Heirloom Apple Yet

AHOY-HOY, FRANDOS. It is I, the King-of-Town! I come to deliver unto you a great bevy of news with the tolling of my bell, cla-clang, cla-clang. Or something.

First of all, fuck Mondays, right? Especially fuck the Monday after a holiday.

Okay, moving on.

Some buzzy news bits to hug and squeeze —

First, I got these:

The first official ARCs / AREs (Advanced Reader Copies/Editions) of Wanderers. Holy shit, it’s real! The product of a whole lotta work is coming to fruition — 800 pages of it, though still not in your hands until July, I’m afraid.

Also, an author I quite admire (seriously, her Book of M was so good, check it out in print or eBook), Peng Shepherd, had some very nice things to say about the book. She said, in a tweet, that “WANDERERS is a masterpiece, & you want it in your hands the second it comes out.” And Delilah S. Dawson, another writer I deeply admire and one I count as a most excellent friend, said the book makes her jealous, and for a writer, that’s high compliment indeed. Honestly, both Shepherd and Dawson make me jealous.

If you wanna preorder Wanderers in print, then the best place to do so is at your favorite local indie bookstore — which you can always find via Indiebound. Also worth reminding that many, even most, indie stores will ship right to you. If you wanna pre-order eBook, got you covered there, too. And you can add it at Goodreads.

Let’s see. What else?

You are listening to Ragnatalk, right? This past week Anthony and I had special guest Trin Garritano, who reminds us that Thor: Ragnarok is the most bisexual movie ever, and there’s a reason it’s called the Bi-Frost and not the Straight-Frost. Go listen! Or be haunted by three spirits!

In personal news, we put up our Christmas tree. Apparently this, by some metrics, is early? We always try to do it the weekend after Thanksgiving.

WHATEVER, WE’RE JUST FESTIVE AS FUCK OVER HERE.

*barfs tinsel*

Aaaaaanyway, here are some photos of heirloom apples in macro — don’t forget to check out my #heirloomapplereview thread, which has now reached its dread conclusion after, uhh, 170-some tweets? Wow, I might have a problem. In need of an apple intervention.

Have a great week, weirdos.

Macro Monday Hides In The Shadow Of Vader

So, the big news at present is not precisely positive, I guess — after punting me from making cool Star Wars comics, Marvel has (un?)officially canceled the first series I was working on for them: Shadow of Vader.

It’s a shame to see it go, of course. I’d written three scripts and the third of those three was, I think, one of the best things I’d written, at least in the comics space. And the series was going to have a few little touchstones linking back to the Aftermath series. ANd Juanan Ramirez’s art was *chef’s kiss* good. But alas, this is how it goes. I vaguely understand canceling it — I don’t know that any writer was necessarily comfortable with picking up the project, and I suspect people would be conflicted whether or not to buy it. (If you like my work, the conundrum is: buy it to support me, or boycott it to punish Marvel? if you hate me, then the reverse becomes true: buy it to support my ass-booting, or give it the middle finger because my name is attached to it? Sophie’s Choice, I suppose.)

The irony is that none of this would’ve been an issue if they’d chosen to simply not hire me for more books — which is a bit different than ejecting me outright. Instead of choosing to let me fade gently into the background, they had to wrap a note around a knife before slipping it between my ribs. It was pointed. Why they chose that way, no idea — I assume it was, as noted, political. But hey, I also don’t run Marvel, and their ways are not known to me. I like to think the Shadow of Vader scripts are now being locked in some SINISTER, MYSTERIOUS VAULT. Or maybe it’s a warehouse like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unmarked crates containing scripts both forbidden and forgotten…

(Dang, there’s maybe a story there.)

(Hm.)

ANYWAY.

You can read about it a little more about the situation at Polygon.

Predictably, The Worst People are extending their victory lap over this — as ultimately, this comes from them. The most hilarious talking point of theirs seems to be that, now that I’m fired, I’ll somehow no longer have a job as a writer? Like, I’m broke now? This of course ignores the actual reality that making comics, especially with Marvel, paid so little that it was far more of a hobby than an actual job — I make considerably more as a novelist than I ever did writing comic books. To make a career out of comics, you need to be on a whole lot of books at one time. For me it was always a side-gig. A fun one! One I’m not giving up. But comics was all icing, no cake. And not even top icing but like, the inessential middle layer of icing. Delicious! But really, for me, not the point.

Let’s see, what else?

Ah! Right. Last week, The Franzen did a list of TEN WRITING RULES that was, well, something, and so I did a whole thread about them. Because c’mon, don’t we miss the days where Twitter was for dunking on pretentious MFA writing rules and not, say, constantly pointing at the ongoing conflagration of fascism? My little thread made the news in some places, too, like the Guardian.

Anything else?

Ah!

Zer0es is still $2.99 till the end of the month.

And Invasive is $3.99 till then, as well.

(eBook only, and probably only US? Not sure about other countries.)

AND THAT’S IT.

Here, have some photos from when it snowed last week.

Shaun Barger: Five Things I Learned Writing Mage Against The Machine

[image error] The year is 2120. The humans are dead. The mages have retreated from the world after a madman blew up civilization with weaponized magical technology. Safe within domes that protect them from the nuclear wasteland on the other side, the mages have spent the last century putting their lives back together.

Nikolai is obsessed with artifacts from twentieth-century human life: mage-crafted replica Chuck Taylors on his feet, Schwarzenegger posters on his walls, Beatlemania still alive and well in his head. But he’s also tasked with a higher calling—to maintain the Veils that protect mage-kind from the hazards of the wastes beyond. As a cadet in the Mage King’s army, Nik has finally found what he always wanted—a purpose. But when confronted by one of his former instructors gone rogue, Nik tumbles into a dark secret. The humans weren’t nuked into oblivion—they’re still alive. Not only that, outside the domes a war rages between the last enclaves of free humans and vast machine intelligences.

Outside the dome, unprepared and on the run, Nik finds Jem. Jem is a Runner for the Human Resistance. A ballerina-turned-soldier by the circumstances of war, Jem is more than just a human—her cybernetic enhancement mods make her faster, smarter, and are the only things that give her a fighting chance against the artificial beings bent on humanity’s eradication.

Now Nik faces an impossible decision: side with the mages and let humanity die out? Or stand with Jem and the humans—and risk endangering everything he knows and loves?

* * *

THE DARK AND SPOOKY SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

In 2010, I proved to the world what a responsible adult I am by dropping out of grad school and moving to Los Angeles to try and make it as a writer.

I moved with a crew into a house with a courtyard, a mysterious black cat, and a master bedroom with a tinier, secret room you could get into via a hole in the western wall.

In the tiny room was a curtain. Beyond the curtain, a tiny door.

Behind that door? You guessed it – The Dark and Spooky Secrets of The Universe.

Staring directly into the brutal truth of reality’s most devastating revelations made me anxious, so I closed the door and decided to write MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, a novel about wizards and robots, instead.

You know why? Because I also learned that . . .

IT’S TOTALLY OK NOT TO OPEN PANDORA’S BOX

Say there’s a box, painted all your favorite colors.

Say there’s a song, coming out of the box. The closer you stand to the box, the louder the song becomes.

You like the song. You really like the song. You can’t remember where you heard it, but you’ve got the strangest feeling that it’s important. Like you loved someone once, and this song played on your first date, right before you kissed. And it was a really fucking great kiss. Like magic, you know?

Somehow, you’ve forgotten. But you know, with certainty, that if you open the box, it’ll come back to you. If you open the box, you’ll remember everything.

Just as your fingers touch the latch, you realize that neither the song nor the long-lost lover could be real. This must be a trap, made specifically for you.

So you walk away.

Nikolai Strauss, the titular mage hero of MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, begins his journey by making the choice to open his very own Pandora’s Box, in the form of a magical talking revolver. And it gets him into a hell of a lot of trouble.

It’s totally OK not to open Pandora’s Box. It’s okay not to click that link, watch that video, reply to that text, check on or reconnect with that severed toxic element in your life.

There is no magic box to make you happy. No single person or solution or change that will make this big horrible wonderful clusterfuck make sense all at once.

Anyone or anything that promises as such is likely full of shit.

Because…

UNFORTUNATELY, THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

Throughout the fuckery of my supposed adulthood, I have found that one of the primo keys to navigating the beautiful nightmare of The Millennial Experience is getting comfortable with very slowly picking away at life’s prickles, stubborn thorn by stubborn thorn. One day at a time.

Or, often enough, one moment at a time.

Next time you find yourself panicking — like, really panicking, with that claustrophobic certainty that your life is like one of those tower defense games where you’ve been trapped in a torturously drawn out fail state you can never quite claw your way out of — set a timer for 20 minutes.

By the end of that 20 minutes, so long as you haven’t actively made things worse, you will feel better. Because you CAN claw your way through this. Because it’s so much more interesting for you to do so.

Even if everything’s totally awful right now, so long as you’re smart and decent and sharpen your nose for bullshit, there’s GOTTA be good stuff down the line, sooner or later. So you might as well keep going, right?

Of course you should! Because…

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS GO FOR MORE INTERESTING

Life’s a little more fun if you think of yourself as an explorer. Everything interesting a dusty corner on a map, vague and unexplored.

If something’s interesting to you, you’ll have the patience to really do the work of properly penciling in additional detail. You’ll have the reliable drive and motivational warm fuzzies to obsess and persevere, where others might not.

I wrote MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE because I found the idea of a conflict between realistically human wizards and complex AI villains who are more like strange synthetic gods than murderous metal skeletons super fucking interesting.

I’m pretty sure a lot of you are going to like MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. I’m also completely certain that many of you will not. But I bet you’ll think it’s interesting.

One more thing:

THE UNITED STATES IS RULED BY A VICIOUS AND MEDIOCRE OLIGARCHY

and

CAPITALISM IS THE ECONOMIC MANIFESTATION OF PSYCHOPATHY

and

HOLY SHIT, EVERYONE IS SO STRESSED OUT RIGHT NOW

Since European colonists began plundering the native civilizations as somewhere between 20-100 million indigenous American people were killed by an apocalyptically devastating plague in the 1500s, our country has had a long and continuous tradition of shitty people doing shitty things to get filthy stinking rich.

For a lot of Americans right now, it feels like the walls are closing in. For the more vulnerable of our population, this experience has been more literal.

In the best of times, this country has not been a great place to be poor, disabled, or any sort of minority. It’s especially difficult to keep it together when smug, pig-faced bigots are squealing with vicious glee as a bible-thumping rapist is appointed to our highest court and children are being stolen from their refugee parents and placed in concentration camps where they’ll be deeply and profoundly traumatized.

In the world of MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, right-wing extremists like those currently rising to power across the globe in real life were suckered into a nuclear holocaust by psychopathic wizards.

It’s a lot of fun to write about the apocalypse. But it’s another thing to live it. Especially the miserable and banal sort of slow apocalypse promised by such real world Voldemorts as newly appointed President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, who promises to brutally plunder the Amazon, effectively stripping our planet of its lungs.

And let’s not forget the white supremacist infestation sliming its way to power in our own government. They’ve got a real hard-on for Armageddon.

After the extremely stressful Nov 6th election, if you’re in the mood for an escape from adulting, consider taking a break from all this exhausting reality with my debut novel, MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.

It’s about wizards. And robots.

* * *

Shaun Barger is a Los Angeles-based novelist who detests cold weather, idiot plotting, and fascism. He splits his days between writing, resisting the siren’s call of Hollywood’s eternally mild summer climes, and appeasing a tyrannical three-pound Chihuahua with peanut butter and apple slices. Mage Against the Machine is his first novel.

Shaun Barger: Twitter | Instagram

Mage Against the Machine: Print | eBook

25 Reasons To Keep Making Stuff

Yesterday I did a thread on Twitter — replete with animated GIFs! — that I thought was valuable enough to put here, too, at Ye Olde Blogge. So, here it is — note, the animated GIFs are missing, so you’ll have to behold the original thread for maximum effect.

*clears throat*

IN THIS TIME OF RAMPANT ASSHOLERY

IN THIS ERA OF FLAGRANT DIPSHITTERY

IN THIS UNHOLY EPOCH OF UNBRIDLED, UNMITIGATED, RECALCITRANT FUCKERY

Why make anything? Why be creative? Not how – but rather, WHY?

25 reasons, starting now.

1. Because you need to escape the fuckery, and what you make is a door. A book, a piece of art, even an excellent meal – it’s a doorway out. It’s the tunnel dug out behind the Rita Hayworth poster in your prison cell.

2. Because we need to escape, too. We need what you make. GIVE US THAT SWEET SWEET PORTAL, GIVE US A LOG FLUME RIDE TO ESCAPE THIS OUTHOUSE FULL OF CENTIPEDES

3. Because creation is #resistance. Making things is additive. And in a subtractive time such as this, you must balance the void with its opposite. That is an act of defiance. And we need more defiance.

4. Because stories and art change the world. Individually, collectively, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Art is a glorious mutator. It evolves you. It evolves us. And eventually, the world.

5. Because you Making Cool Shit also makes the Worst People mad. Good. Fuck ‘em. Make stuff that makes those monsters mad.

6. Because what you make is a carrier for ideas. A Trojan horse stuffed with your NOTIONS. Packed tight with arguments and hopes and fears and solutions. Even when you don’t mean it to be? It is.

7. Because what you do is bigger than what’s going on. What you make is about tomorrow, so the cuckoo bananapantsness of today must not stop you.

8. Because what you make will outlast this ungovernable fuckshittery. What you make are mountains. We will cling to their peaks. And when the Tides of Stupid recede, the mountains of what you made will remain

9. Because it’s therapy. It’s therapy first for you, and if you share it, eventually for us, too.

10. Because it feels good, even when it feels hard, and feeling good is, uhh, well, GOOD. I don’t have to explain that any more than I have to explain puppies or cookies. Or cookies shaped like puppies, or cookies for puppies, or puppies baked into – wait scratch that last part.

11. Because you need that dopamine hit, baby. Mm, yeah, gimme that precious dopamine ping, that rush, that PAROXYSM OF CREATIVE DELIGHT. Nnngh. Unnngh. Yeah. *bites lip*

12. Because you need to up your game. No matter the era, no matter the epoch, no matter how fucking goofy things get – YOU STILL GOTTA UP THAT GAME. And making things ups your game.

13. BECAUSE I SAID SO

BECAUSE-A YOU FACE

BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY

I’m sorry that was very rude

14. Because you making something helps encourage others to make stuff, too. They see you doing it, and they want in on that BAD-ASS MAKER ACTION. CREATIVE SOLIDARITY, MOTHERFUCKER.

15. Because if you don’t, you disappoint this already-disappointed screech owl. Look at that owl. Feel its judgment. You need to turn this screech owl’s frown upside-down. That’s on you. DO NOT SHIRK YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

16. Because seriously, what else are you going to do, just sit here and stare at Twitter? It’s like staring into a blender full of chipmunks. Jesus, go make something, if only to find something better to do for the next hour.

17. Because making stuff is SEXY.

…

Okay I don’t know if that’s true but I’m gonna go with it.

*strokes beard seductively*

*finds a half-eaten Kit-Kat in the beard*

*eats half-eaten Kit-Kat seductively*

18. BECAUSE ART IS A WEAPON. A far more effective one than your standard weapon, too. LISTEN SPITE IS A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR, OKAY. Spite is your fuel source. Art is your flamethrower. WHOOSH, MOTHERFUCKER.

19. Because when you make things, you learn things, and education is good.

20. Because when you make stuff, you improve yourself. And we need you in fighting shape. YOU MUST BE A WHETTED BLADE READY TO SLICE THROUGH SHENANIGANS, CHICANERY, AND GARBAGE.

21. Because it’s what Li’l Sebastian would’ve wanted.

22. Because time is a depleting resource. You have what you have, which is this moment, right now. There is no guarantee you can make things later. So make things now. And if that’s hard, there’s always

23. Because you’re going to fail sometimes, and that’s a necessary thing. Failure is an inoculation. It bolsters your creative immune system. And in this ENDLESS CYCLE OF STUPID, you really, really need a strong intellectual and creative immune response.

24. Because art is beauty. Stories, poetry, craftwork, food, it’s all beautiful and this ugly world needs a dollop of beauty. There is beauty in both the act and the result of making stuff. So kick the shitstorm out of the sky with an aggressive rainbow counterattack.

25. Because

FUCK

TRUMP.

You think that bloated sack of stinkbugs and hate has ever made a thing in his life? He is a sucking chest wound. He doesn’t make anything and wouldn’t know art if it parted that merkin atop his head. SO DO THE OPPOSITE OF THAT SUPPURATING ASSHOLE.

So, keep on making stuff, folks.

You have your marching orders.

Now buy my books or I die gesticulating in the void.

* * *

[image error]

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound  /  Amazon  /  B&N

Molly Tanzer: Five Things I Learned Writing Creatures of Want and Ruin

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It’s dangerous work under Prohibition—independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike—but Ellie’s brother was accepted to college and Ellie’s desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things—like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to “the good old days,” so it’s hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins, but Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.

* * *

What We Read is Who We Are

Let me say first that this whole post is going be a little political, because my novel is a little political. Great, you’re probably thinking, as you’ll be reading this a week after the election, and are more than likely over reading, talking, or thinking about politics. But you see, I’m writing all this a little more than one week before the election—so how could this post, this novel, fail to be anything but political? After all, I came up with the idea for Creatures of Want and Ruin in the late summer before the 2016 election and started writing it in earnest a few weeks into November, after it was all over and America was trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. All I was thinking about at that time was politics—well, that and my good friends had a baby four days after that fateful night. But even that joyous event was politicized for me. As I held their amazing, sweet child in my arms for the first time, not 48 hours after she was born, I remember whispering to her “I will fix this for you, little girl.” I haven’t made good on that promise yet, but this novel is one the ways in which I am trying.

Anyway, Creatures of Want and Ruin is a book about a lot of things, including politics—but it is also about reading. My co-tagonists (I just learned that word!) are very different people but they are both avid readers. Ellie West fishes and bootlegs to support her struggling family; Delphine “Fin” Coulthead is a socialite who’s lost her way, but they both take time to curl up with a book—and because of that, they find some common ground; see their similarities instead of their differences. The enjoyment of the written word links them—and even ends up saving them, after a fashion. We’ve all had to take a harder look at what we’re reading over the last two years, where it comes from, and if it is written in the spirit of truth or with the desire to spread lies. But I take comfort in the fact that even in times like these one may still find pleasure and hope within the pages of a book, still be refreshed and changed by the simple act of reading, so I wanted to honor that.

Sometimes, You Have to Lose Your Way to Find Your Way

As I mentioned above, Creatures of Want and Ruin has dual protagonists, Ellie and Fin. Ellie the baywoman and bootlegger was pretty easy for me to write, in part because she’s a pulp reboot of my maternal grandmother and in part because while she is a complex character, Ellie a straightforward thinker who needs to grow in her understanding of the world, but starts and finishes the novel knowing who she is inside.

Not so much the socialite Fin Coulthead. I had to wrestle with Fin the entire time I was writing the book. I felt like every time I tried to write her I was staring at a puzzle with no edge pieces. I knew who she was, but not why. I’d gone too far down the path of writing a careless person in the vein of Daisy from The Great Gatsby… but Daisy was no heroine, and Fin is supposed to be. It was only after I had a solid enough draft to show to my agent did I figure it out… after she told me she hated Fin. And not the cool “Katniss sure is hard to like!” kind of hatred. Given how my agent has close to a 100% record of being right when it comes to problems with my drafts, I went back to Fin. I listened to what my agent disliked—basically, Fin’s absence of any interest in the world beyond herself—and worked backwards from that. In the end, I’m really happy with Fin, and I hope readers will be, too.

You Can’t Escape Yourself, And That’s Okay

These days, I mostly write fantasy… but I got my start in horror. Lovecraftian horror, to be precise. My first collection, A Pretty Mouth, is a series of interconnected Lovecraftian tales set in different time periods; the only story I’ve ever had anthologized as a Best Of is “The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad,” a riff on Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep,” but set in 1990 at a high school. That said, I don’t write so much cosmic horror these days, a decision that was both conscious and not. I wanted to explore different themes, different settings, different possibilities. And yet, one of the early reviews of Creatures of Will and Temper (the first, but largely unrelated book in this series), described the demons as “Lovecraftian,” which I found surprising as I hadn’t thought of them that way. I mean, the reviewer liked that, so good…

But it gave me pause just the same, and that’s when I realized I was writing a novel in which foul mushrooms sprout from the earth as masked, mysterious cultists terrorize the night, lighting fires and demanding a return to “the old ways”… even if the old ways they’re talking about are backwards, para-religious sentiments like keeping women at home and marginalized communities as marginalized as possible. Ah well! We all have our muses that we follow, consciously or otherwise.

America Is Hungrier Than We Knew For Hatred and Lies

In taking a “break” from writing this essay I clicked over to Facebook and saw that Florida’s agriculture secretary, Donny Purdue, described the Florida gubernatorial race as “so cotton-pickin’ important” at a GOP rally. As noted above, by the time you’re reading this we shall have seen the power of such rhetoric—whether it has rallied more to the Trumpist cause, or driven people away from it. Regardless, the last two years have been an alarming wake-up call for many as to the divided state of American ideas on race, class, gender, sexuality… even the need for a government at all.

When I began Creatures of Want and Ruin Trump was the GOP nominee; all the statisticians predicted a win for Hillary Clinton. And yet, Trump’s rhetoric, his presence, had begun to cause ripples in the ponds of my friends’ lives. We didn’t know then that those ripples would become a tsunami—we just knew that the summer of 2016 was a period in which many of us became vastly more uneasy around our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends, whether we were at family gatherings like barbecues and pool parties, or on Facebook.

I’m one of the lucky ones; I don’t have to watch my tongue or risk a goodwill apocalypse around my family, but many of my friends have not been so fortunate. Perhaps it seems odd to talk about all this in a “Five Things I Learned Writing…” essay, but this hunger I saw on the news, heard about in my friends’ stories, saw on social media—it informed a crucial family dynamic as I was outlining Creatures of Want and Ruin. I wanted to write a story with a protagonist struggling with tensions similar to what so many of my friends were dealing with, because seeing them standing up to those closest to them when the stakes were so high was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to write something to them, and for them, because of that.

America Is Starving For Love and Truth and Justice

While it’s true that I wrote Creatures of Want and Ruin while in a dark place, it is still a novel of strength and of hope. Yes, during this essay I’ve foregrounded a lot of the pain I’ve felt post-2016, for my friends and my country, but now I’ll talk about why I had the novel end in a decidedly non-Lovecraftian way, with the promise of the possibility of positive change.

Why? I’ll tell you: Because I attended the Women’s March last year and this year, where had the honor of walking beside thousands upon thousands of dissenters in Denver—and five million worldwide. Because my small rural city held a Charlottesville vigil, a Pride march that was better attended than the one held by a certain notoriously liberal city to our southwest, and our own Families Belong Together rally. Because I’ve seen friends standing tall by creating art, running for public office (and winning!), volunteering until they’re dog tired, reaching out in amazing ways to friends and strangers, and really just resisting in any and every way they can.  They take their kids to rallies, host dance parties against Trump, moderate debates between local candidates.  They aren’t backing down, so why would my characters, when faced with similar (if admittedly more supernatural) turmoil in their communities? I couldn’t dishonor the love and passion and determination I’ve seen over the last two years with a dour tale of defeat. Instead, I wanted to praise it with a pot-boiler about bootlegging liquor, kissing who you want, and fighting tyranny. It’s a novel about the power of freedom—the real kind, “freedom to,” not “freedom from,” as the all too prophetic Margaret Atwood would put it in The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a book meant to be as inspirational as it is cautionary, but it is up to you to decide if I succeeded.

* * *

MOLLY TANZER is the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award–nominated author of Vermilion (an NPR and io9 Best Book of 2015), A Pretty Mouth, the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant, and other works. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Creatures of Want and Ruin: Print | eBook

Macro Monday Eats So Many Berries, It’ll Burst

I get way too excited when I find a new bird.

Which is not to say I’m literally discovering new species of birds, by the way — though if I did, do not think I wouldn’t call it the GRUFFLED WENDIGO or maybe the EAST PENNSYLTUCKY BEARDBIRD. Whatever. No, I mean, when I find a bird that is explicitly new to me. In this case: a cedar waxwing.

I found a shitload of them nomming on the many, many berries in the understory of our forest.

I snapped some pics — those can be found at the bottom of the post. And no, they’re not macro photos, but by now we’ve surely learned I care little for your HUMAN RULES.

Not much news this week —

The Daily Beast did a thing about the lack of safety around comic freelancers, and, for Obvious Reasons, I get namechecked. So go and check that out, if you choose.

Also, The Columbian recommends Damn Fine Story as a good NaNoWriMo book.

And I think that’s it.

HERE HAVE SOME BIRBS

Kate Heartfield: Five Things I Learned Writing Alice Payne Arrives

A disillusioned major, a highwaywoman, and a war raging across time.

It’s 1788 and Alice Payne is the notorious highway robber, the Holy Ghost. Aided by her trusty automaton, Laverna, the Holy Ghost is feared by all who own a heavy purse.

It’s 1889 and Major Prudence Zuniga is once again attempting to change history—to save history—but seventy attempts later she’s still no closer to her goal.

It’s 2016 and . . . well, the less said about 2016 the better!

But in 2020 the Farmers and the Guides are locked in battle; time is their battleground, and the world is their prize. Only something new can change the course of the war. Or someone new.

Little did they know, but they’ve all been waiting until Alice Payne arrives.

* * *

Time Travel Is Hard

I don’t mean actually traveling through time, although yeah, that too. Time travel is hard to write because stories are, almost by definition, events in linear time, and once you start messing with that, it can be a challenge to preserve things like pacing, conflict, urgency or, uh, coherence, which are things I’m told some readers expect. Oh no the bad guy’s coming! He’ll be here any second! Hurry! Or…. use your time traveling device, stop by Ibiza, have an umbrella drink, whatever.

So the writer has to put limits on what time travel can do (it’s much like working with a magic system, this way), without destroying everything that makes time travel cool and interesting in the first place.

My friend Kelly Robson has written about why she made her time travel consequence-free in her novella Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach; she wanted to write about how time travelers would act if they believed that nothing they did would alter the future, to explore what it would be like to have a “Google Street view of the remote past.”

In Alice Payne Arrives, I set out to do the opposite, to explore the consequences of individual decisions on the future. In my novella, time travel is mostly restricted to two militaristic factions who are working endlessly to change the timeline, and so the history of the world and the characters’ own backstories can change, even within the span of the novella. (Did I mention plotting this was hard?)

So I had to build in other restrictions, other reasons why time travel can’t just fix everything. This is important not only for storytelling reasons, but also for ethical ones: If you write a book in which time travel can change history, and that history still includes any of the genocides and oppression of our own history, you’d damn well better have thought through the reasons you’ve made that authorial choice.

Chapter Titles Are the Neitherlands

Before I wrote this book, I thought about chapter titles mainly as guidelines and signals for the reader.  I loved them, but I thought of them as ornaments.

Because much of Alice Payne Arrives takes place in the 18th century, and one of my point-of-view characters was born in that century, I knew I wanted my chapter titles to include some echoes of the glorious chapter summaries from that period in English literature. Henry Fielding has some amazing ones in A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, which was written in 1749:  “Chapter Twelve: Containing what the reader may, perhaps, expect to find in it.”

Although I wanted some of that flavor, Alice Payne Arrives is not an 18th century pastiche, and one of its point-of-view characters was born in the year 2132. So the chapter titles became an interstitial space between the worlds of my point of view characters. They started to remind me of the Wood Between the Worlds in the Narnia books, or the Neitherlands in Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy: places where the story isn’t happening, but the world of the story is still assumed to exist. This draws back the curtain on the ontological workings of the book as a construct. For example, my favorite chapter title in Alice Payne Arrives is: “Shit Gets Weird; Or, A Consequential Encounter.” That chapter title doesn’t belong to the 18th century point of view, or the 22nd century one. It belongs to both, or … neither?

Chapter Titles Are the Soundtrack

This whole thing with the chapter titles got me excited because I’ve long been fascinated by the way historical movies can use deliberately anachronistic music to shorten the emotional distance for the audience. What does it mean to tell the truth about the past if a Just the Facts portrayal of the past can actually convey a false emotional experience? For example, if I have a character say “zounds”, that feels different to my readers than it would have felt to the people in the room with the character because their social and cultural context is different.

One way to try to tell both kinds of truth is to present the facts and present some anachronistic cultural context, to help guide the modern time traveler.

Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is a brilliant example of this, as is the movie A Knight’s Tale. For an exploration of what makes A Knight’s Tale so great in this way, read Michael Livingston.) Maybe, I thought, chapter titles in fiction could serve the same sort of mediating function that a soundtrack does in movies?

And of course, the musical Hamilton does exactly this with music too, so I was amused to find that the behind-the-scenes book Hamilton: The Revolution (affectionately known as the Hamiltome) does something similar with its chapter titles as I did in Alice Payne Arrives. (E.g.: “Stakes is High; Or, What Happened at Lincoln Center and What Came After, Including Lunch with Jeffrey Seller.”)

Worldbuild for Book 2 in Book 1

Roughly while I was working on the copy-edits and proofreading for book 1, I was drafting book 2. I’d never written a sequel to anything before.

World-building in a book is sort of like set dressing in a stage production: You show the reader the stuff they need to see, and you hint at other bits to create an impression that the world continues, off-stage. Sure, you have some ideas about what’s happening in those imagined spaces, but for the most part, behind and between the lovely painted sets, there’s nothing a bit of plywood and some rat poop. I’m used to doing just a little bit more world-building than I’ll actually require for a given book.

I soon discovered that a sequel would require me to fill in those gaps in my setting: sometimes quite literally. In book 1 I had some scenes in the study and some scenes in the foyer without nailing down which rooms were in between, but in book 2 I had a scene in which the characters move from the study to the foyer, so I had to make sure that the rooms I filled in for book 2 didn’t contradict any offhand remarks I’d tossed off about the layout of the house in book 1.

So now I understand why series writers love their wikis and their notebooks.

Go Weird or Go Home

I wrote Alice Payne Arrives when I was on submission with what would become my first published novel. Being on sub is a great time to just write whatever the hell you want, if you can carve out the time to do that, because your brain weasels are busy telling you you’ll never succeed in the industry. You can respond to said brain weasels by saying, “Yes, I know, that’s why I’m writing whatever the hell I want.” Win-win.

So I spent a month furiously writing 28,000 words of fast-paced, bonkers mash-up of historical romance and thematic political SF with complex plotlines, complicated relationships and world-ending stakes. Novellas are great for that kind of experimentation; they let you explore a bigger idea than will fit in a short story, but they won’t eat months or years of your life.

And lo and behold, my agent and I sold it to one of my dream publishing houses. It can be scary to write the weird joy of your heart without holding anything back. But sometimes, that’s exactly what resonates with other people.

* * *

Kate Heartfield is a former newspaper editor who lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her time-travel novella, Alice Payne Arrives, releases on Nov. 6 from Tor.com Publishing. Her historical fantasy novel, Armed in Her Fashion, was published in spring 2018 by ChiZine Publications. Also in the spring of 2018, Choice of Games released her interactive novel, The Road to Canterbury. Her short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies.

Kate Heartfield: Website | Twitter

Alice Payne Arrives: Print | eBook

Tips On Horking Up Your Novel’s Zero Draft

Note: I had this on THE TWEETERS, and thought it would be good to transcribe here, too: a series of thoughts and tips on purging that first — or zero — draft from your brainbucket. Please to enjoy.

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SOOOoooo let’s switch gears a little bit and talk more about one of my favorite things: CREATIVE REGURGITATION IN THE FORM OF HORKING UP THE MESSY, SHRIEKING FIRST DRAFT OF YOUR NOVEL — whether for #NaNoWriMo or just for shits and giggles, let’s talk some tips.

Obviously writing a book is fucking hard. It’s you wandering through a dark house that isn’t your own. You’re going to bang your knee on a lot of furniture. Gonna trip. Gonna meet some ghosts there in the dark. It’s okay.

It’s like, part of writing is that act of finding your way through that dark, unfamiliar house. It’s you mapping the terrain, gaining comfort, learning how first to creep through that place and soon, sprint. This tends to come as you write more and redraft.

But sometimes, wandering through the dark rooms and twisting chambers, you just wanna find a fainting couch and NOPE right the fuck out of the book.

So it’s valuable to consider some storytelling tips to help you push on through.

And obviously as always the caveat, the bleating alarm, AWOOGA AWOOGA, is that nothing I say here is True, writing advice does not equal Facts, this shit ain’t Math, it’s just me giving you some sassy notions you are free to use, abuse, or discard to your liking.

Or, put differently, WRITING ADVICE IS BULLSHIT, BUT SOMETIMES BULLSHIT FERTILIZES.

Let us continue.

(oh and these storytelling tips aren’t necessarily just for novels — stories share similar bones across a variety of formats and media)

Okay, first up: CHARACTERS ARE THEIR PROBLEMS. That’s why they’re there on the page. They have problems and they’re trying to solve them, and the story is about that attempt to solve those problems.

We talk a lot about motivation and wants and stuff when it comes to characters, but for me, there’s value in getting right to the heart of it — a problem. A problem indicates conflict, and conflict is food that feeds the reader. Identify that problem ASAP, and set them to solve.

Smaller problems are more interesting than bigger ones. By which I mean, Han Solo’s debt problems in Star Wars is far more interesting than OMG REBELLION VERSUS EMPIRE. His problem is empathic and understandable. Find common emotional bonds with the audience.

A character tries to solve their problem, it’s your job, as THE MONSTER THAT YOU ARE, to stand in their way. This is the maze — you create bends and distractions and hard choices and character flaws and physical obstacles that prevent them from easily solving their problems.

As a character walks this metaphorical maze — literally DOING SHIT and SAYING SHIT in pursuit of the end to their problem — they are basically excreting plot like narrative earthworms. CHARACTERS ARE PLOT-SHITTERS.

(that’s the name of my next book, by the way: CHARACTERS ARE PLOT-SHITTERS: YOUR GUIDE TO WRITING CHARACTERS WHO POOP PLOT ORGANICALLY, coming soon)

Another of your jobs as storyteller is to remember that storytelling is the act of shattering the status quo — at the beginning of the story, SOMETHING HAS CHANGED. There has been a shift, a pivot, and that ties into or complicates the characters’ problem(s).

Further, narrative is an act that must resist stabilization.

What I mean is, even as a story — the characters, the plot, the narrative — begins to stabilize, it must again destabilize to continue. This creates interest. This creates rhythm. A sense of uncertainty.

This is why in the units of narrative measurement, those units often end with a kind of upset — a scene, a sequence, an act all end with SOMETHING CHANGING. The larger the narrative unit, the larger that change will likely need to be.

This is for the characters, and by proxy, the audience — you want them to start to feel settled, and then you fuck up the narrative tectonics once more, moving the earth beneath their feet. Sometimes subtly, sometimes to break the world.

You have ways shake the ground — the saying goes that instead of using AND THEN, you’re better off going with BUT or THEREFORE — but really, it’s worth looking at all the conditional conjunctions as words of consequential narrative value.

Meaning, instead of this happens AND THEN this happens AND THEN this happens, it’s…

this happens

BECAUSE OF

this

BUT THEN

this

UNLESS

this

but EVEN IF this, etc, etc,

…it’s like a Mad Libs story equation, letting you play with chain of consequence and event.

The shape of narrative matters. You never want a straight line. Even the standard “male ejaculatory arc” is boring news — you want a story that kinks like a maze, that rumbles and loops like a roller coaster.

When in doubt: try to surprise yourself. Make a decision on the page that isn’t the decision you intended. You can’t fuck it up — it’s your story, you’re the god of this place. If you felt like going right, ask what happens if you go left, or up, or you blow it all up.

“Dave was going to ask Esmerelda to marry him in this scene, but instead, WHAT IF HE BECOMES A VENGEFUL WEREWOLF AND HE NOISILY EATS A BABY IN FRONT OF HER then what happens?” is a very good question.

(wait that’s a terrible example, eschew baby-eating)

Also when in doubt: pump the story full of YOU. Your ideas, your fears, your worries, your peccadillos, your armadillos, your bag of dildos wait hold on what

What I mean is, in that first draft especially, a story is often a conversation between the author and the author. It’s you… working stuff out. Maybe subconsciously, maybe not. But don’t be afraid to HAVE FEELINGS and OPINIONS and mud-wrestle with those notions on the page.

It’s why putting politics in stories is essential — not as an act of preaching, but as an act of examining these ideas, questioning them, grappling with them. Politics not as an emblem of political parties, but as a signal of grand ideas that affect PEOPLE.

That’s the nature of theme: hidden arguments going on behind the walls of the story, like ghosts bickering near the conduits of wire and between copper pipes. Every story is an argument. That’s not a bad thing.

And letting that be true — embracing that instead of fearing it — gives you energy to write more, because the work on the page is salient, is intriguing to you, is surprising, uncertain, argumentative. We all argue with ourselves. Do some of it in the story.

And at the end of the day?

Be interesting.

We talk a lot about SHOW DON’T TELL but a religious rigor in this leaves a story being pure purple prose — all reaction shots and heightened senses.

We do call it “storytelling” for a reason.

When you must TELL something, the goal simply is to make it interesting. Fun to read, which means fun to tell, too. Exposition can itself be a kind of story nested in a story.

(It’s the difference between a boring-ass history book and a fascinating one. History is dull when it’s facts and figures. It’s fascinating when it is, itself, told as a story.)

AAAAANYWAY, hope that all helps, okay, goodbye, good luck.

Tell good stories!

And art harder, motherfuckers.

p.s. you can have all of this unpacked more in a book I wrote called

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DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound  /  Amazon  /  B&N

Dan Koboldt: Horrifying But True Tales from Science

Earlier this year I wrote the foreword to a book called Putting the Science in Fiction, edited by Dan Koboldt — the book’s goal is to talk to scientists and help sci-fi authors write more authentically toward their subject matter. Here’s Dan to talk a little about some *cue creepy theremin music* HORRIFYING BUT TRUE TALES FROM SCIENCE. 

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A few years ago, I started a blog series aimed at helping SFF writers create more realistic stories. Basically, I’d encountered so many misconceptions about human genetics that I wanted to set the record straight. People are always saying write what you know, and genetics happens to be my area of expertise. So I wrote a few articles to debunk some of the most common misconceptions. To my surprise and delight, some of my blog’s readers found them useful. They wanted more.

The problem was that science fiction encompasses a wide range of sciences and technical areas. I didn’t want to pretend to be an expert at everything (I save that for the grant applications). So I went out and recruited some other experts to contribute to my blog. Dozens of them — aeronautical engineers, neurologists, nurses, astrophysicists, and more – have written posts for my Science in Sci-fi, Fact in Fantasy blog series. Now, we’ve collected 59 of those articles into Putting the Science in Fiction, a book with Writer’s Digest.

One of the best things about hosting this series (and editing the book) is that I get to read all of the articles first. I’ve learned as much as anyone. Then again, there were a few factoids here that I almost wish I could forget. Disgusting things. Frightening things. Horrifying things.

Chuck’s blog seems like the perfect place to share some of them.

You Don’t Want These Parasites

If you want a really freaky classic sci-fi read, I recommend The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein (1951), in which aliens turn up on Earth as mind-controlling parasites. Gripping stuff. As it turns out, a number of real-world parasites are able to change their host’s behavior. The most famous of these is probably Ophiocordyceps, the zombie-ant fungus. After it infects a carpenter ant, the fungus releases chemicals that disrupt the ant’s neural control, causing it to wander around until it finds the perfect leaf. Then it dies, and the fungus grows out of its head.

Toxoplasma gondii is another fascinating parasite. This one infects rats and, strangely, erases their natural fear of cats. Obviously, it makes the rats much more likely to be killed and eaten by felines. Then the parasite multiplies and gets released in the cat poop. Yikes.

If you’re a fan of the Aliens movie franchise, you’ll like this one: parasitoid wasps like the giant ichneumon wasp, reproduce by laying their eggs in other insects. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the unwilling host from the inside out.

Sources: Zombie Microbiology 101 (chapter 13) by Mike Hays and Insects in Fiction: What Bugs Me (chapter 27) by Robinne Weiss.

This Planet Can (and Will) Kill You

The Earth is a fairly dangerous place. Humans, as a species, have discovered countless different ways to die here. Sometimes the planet itself is responsible. Tornados, hurricanes, flash flooding, mudslides… it’s almost like we’re not welcome on this rock. Earthquakes are a particularly fearsome kind of disaster. Some of the deadliest side effects occur after the quake is over. Tsunamis – caused by earthquakes that occur under the ocean – are a good example. Another one is soil liquefaction, when water-laden soil essentially turns to liquid, swallowing people, cars, and even buildings.

The ocean is also a pretty dead place, though not in the way that many people imagine. About 1,750 people in the United States die each year by drowning in natural bodies of water. Hypothermia is another danger because water wicks away body heat so efficiently.  Many shipwreck victims survive the initial wreck, only to freeze to death while waiting for rescue. It’s a simple, if unexciting fact that many more people die from these causes than from shark attacks.

Even so, the ocean has plenty of inspiration for sci-fi and horror writers. There’s a parasitic barnacle that grows entirely inside the body of a crab, and compels the crab to tend its eggs. There’s also an isopod (an ocean version of a pill bug) that feeds on fish tongues and in some cases, replaces the tongue with its own body. Yech.

Sources: Earthquakes: Fact versus Fiction by Amy Mills (chapter 41) and How the Ocean Will Kill You (chapter 43) by Danna Staaf.

It’s Just As Easy to Die in Space

Many of my book’s contributors work in aeronautical fields. I love flying and have taken lessons on small aircraft, so I’m fascinated by this stuff. And also a little terrified. Pilot and aviation writer Sylvia Spruck Wrigley informed me that if you fly into a cloud (losing sight of the ground) and you aren’t an instrument-rated pilot, your life expectancy drops from decades to 178 seconds.

Flying in space is even more difficult, because you have no point of reference. There are no directions in space, so you have to navigate relative to a celestial body, such as a planet. The body itself may be moving. Sounds tough. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that without friction, moving objects in space is at the whim of Newtonian physics. There are no brakes and no flaps. You just move, and continue moving, until enough force is applied to stop your momentum.

Of course, it could be worse. You could get ejected from your spacecraft and die in space. Contrary to popular belief, it wouldn’t make your blood boil or your eyes pop. Instead, the oxygen in your tissues causes your entire body to bloat, kind of like a corpse. You won’t freeze to death (heat transfer works differently in a vacuum) but I’m guessing you’ll be pretty uncomfortable.

Unless you’re a Jedi, there’s not much you can do to save yourself. Holding your breath will cause your lungs to rupture. It’s best to exhale slowly. Most likely, you’ll lose consciousness and then expire from hypoxia or embolism. On the bright side, as this happens, you can rest assured that you’ve died in the best way possible: with great scientific accuracy.

Sources: Misconceptions about Space by Jamie Krakover (chapter 50), Realistic Space Flight (chapter 51) by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

* * *

Dan Koboldt is the author of the Gateways to Alissia trilogy (Harper Voyager) and the editor of Putting the Science in Fiction (Writers Digest, 2018). As a genetics researcher, he has co-authored more than 70 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. Dan is also an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Every October, he disappears into the woods to pursue whitetail deer with bow and arrow. He lives with his wife and children in Ohio, where the deer take their revenge by eating the flowers in his backyard.

Dan Koboldt: Website

Putting the Science in Fiction: Print | eBook

Amy Jo Cousins: Help Provide Child Advocates

And now, a note from author Amy Jo Cousins —

* * *

At one table sits a government lawyer. At the other table sits a child.

The child could be twelve years old. Or seventeen. Or three. She’s been given a “Know Your Rights” presentation by an attorney at the shelter where she is being detained. It may or may not have been in a language she speaks. She made her way to the United States by herself, or she was taken from a parent at the border. And now she is representing herself in immigration court in front of a judge who will determine her future.

This is our immigration system.

In every state and territory in the United States, when decisions are made regarding a child’s custody and care in the child welfare system, there are statutes that require we consider the child’s best interests, that we care about their safety and well-being.

In the immigration system? Judges are not required to consider the best interests of the child before deporting her to the country she fled. When that twelve-year-old girl represents herself in immigration court against a government attorney—whether she’s asking to be sent back to her home country or to stay in the U.S.—the judge is not required to consider where she will be safe, whether or not she will thrive, or even survive.

The immigration system is incredibly complicated and adversarial and humiliating. It turns you into a number on a case file. It doesn’t know that you’re a girl whose favorite possession is the big white bow you wear in your hair, that you’re a boy with scars under his shirt, that you make bracelets for all the kids in the shelter, that people came into your house and “disappeared” your father, that you’re going to be a soccer star when you grow up, that your house was burned down because your neighbors hate your religion, that you miss your mom and want to go home.

At the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, we provide independent Child Advocates for kids in detention. Our Child Advocates take the most complicated cases. They represent the most vulnerable children. Our job is to hear their stories, to learn about their families and home countries and individual needs, to KNOW them and to ensure everyone involved in the process is prioritizing the child’s best interests at all times. And we follow up after their release from detention to make sure they continue to have access to educational, social, medical, and legal services. A Child Advocate is a lifeline for a child in detention.

When we talk about working with the children in detention, it’s never easy or simple, because they’re not case numbers. They’re children, kids with fears and hopes and needs, and every last one of them deserves to be recognized. A Child Advocate makes sure everyone in the system knows who their child is as a real person. That’s the job. Child Advocates force decisionmakers to see children as children in a system that wants to process them like a number.

Here’s a thing I learned during my first week at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights: it costs $3,700 to recruit and train a single Child Advocate volunteer. The Young Center takes its responsibilities seriously when it comes to background checks and training for an adult they will introduce to a child and who will advocate for that particular child for months or years.

Right now, our amazing matching challenge sponsors have offered to match up to $50,000 in donations to the Young Center. That means we could raise $100,000 this week. You know what I see when I look at $100,000? 27 new Child Advocate volunteers, each one of whom will end up working with more than one child in time. That’s DOZENS of children getting the ally they need to make sure the system sees them.

A five-year-old girl who wakes up every night in the shelter with nightmares. A six-year-old boy who has stopped speaking. A fourteen-year-old boy who was labor trafficked from China. A sixteen-year-old girl who arrived with her toddler in tow and another baby on the way.

All of these children need Child Advocates. That ally who learns their story, who sits with them in court and helps them not be scared, who makes sure everyone in the system knows what makes that kid unique. Because we should treat children like children, like they matter.

Donate to the #YCChallenge through Wednesday (11/7) and help another kiddo in detention get a Child Advocate. Your donation will be doubled by the matching challenge, plus, you’ll be entered in the lottery to win some amazing prizes, like tickets to a live filming of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, autographed copies of the Inkheart Trilogy, Star Wars memorabilia, or a personal tour of Intelligentsia’s Chicago Roasting Works.

You can do two amazing things today: vote and support the Young Center. Thank you for bringing your compassion to the fight in both arenas. Thank you.