Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 63

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.

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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.

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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

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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 —

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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.

Alan Baxter: The H-Word

As someone who essentially secretly writes horror novels without them being called that (ahem), I’m definitely excited to see author Alan Baxter address exactly this phenomenon. 

* * *

I often used to have conversations that went something like this:

Some person: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

That person: Oh, cool! What do you write?

Me: Horror, mostly, usually mixed up with a lot of crime and thriller stuff.

But they already narrowed their eyes at the first word. Everything I said after “horror” was a blur to them, and I just know they’re visualizing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Freddy Kruger, slicing knives and gouting blood. They’re checking the room for exits, wishing they hadn’t asked the question. They’re probably thinking, “Why the fuck couldn’t this guy have been a plumber or an accountant or something? Why do I always get the weirdos?”

And you know what? Fair enough. People like what they like and a lot of people hate slasher movies. I really dig them. The good ones are really good and the terrible ones are a shitload of fun, so they all have a valuable place in our culture. But that’s not what I write. And it never ceases to bug me that so many people hear the word “horror” and think immediately of those movies without ever considering that the genre could be far more vast, varied and amazing than they ever knew.

I’m a horror writer, but I don’t write the novel equivalents of slasher flicks. For that reason, the conversation I described above often doesn’t go that way any more because I hide the word “horror” in euphemisms, like Grandma talking about sex when the grandkids are around. More often than not now, that conversation will go something like this:

Some person: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

That person: Oh, cool! What do you write?

Me: Supernatural thrillers mostly, often mixed up with a lot of crime and noir stuff.

Or

Me: Dark fiction, thrillers with weird supernatural and crime elements.

Or

Me: Sorta dark weird shit.

I just nudge the genre description a little to the left, saying essentially the same thing without the H-word. And it bothers me that I have to do that. It seems like such a strange dichotomy anyway. You go into any bookstore and you’ll see Stephen King shelved in the general fiction section among all the serious literary books, and he’s the biggest horror writer of all time. I sometimes say that I write “Stephen King type stuff”, just to see what the reaction will be, when my stuff isn’t actually all that much like King’s. But everyone knows who he is, right? He’s one of my favourite writers, certainly a big influence on me, but by far the biggest influence on my work is Clive Barker. My stuff is way more The Great And Secret Show or Weaveworld than it is It or Carrie, and therein lies a perfect example of the breadth of horror fiction. Then take those two authors and compare them to H P Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and Edgar Allan Poe. Then add in Caitlin R Kiernan and Kaaron Warren, mix in a dash of Laird Barron and John Langan, a pinch of Gemma Files and Nadia Bulkin, a dose of Victor LaValle and Paul Tremblay, garnish with Cassandra Khaw and Angela Slatter. I could go on and on, but it already sounds delicious. Just that list of names above is a massive cross-section of what horror can be. And incidentally, if there are any names up there you don’t know or haven’t read, unfuck that situation forthwith, as there’s a world of delights awaiting you there. And none of them are anything like slasher flicks. Of course, there are plenty of writers making fantastic novels that are a lot like slasher flicks, and those books are great too.

Those of us into horror know the intricacies and variety to be found in the genre. The sheer scope of supernatural elements, from the most subtle to the brutally face-consuming, is vast. And beyond that, often the most visceral, disturbing, thought-provoking stuff is completely secular. One of the most affecting and distressing horror stories I’ve ever read is the section in Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, where the old man is committed to a care home against his will. His loss of agency and the indignities visited upon him are utterly the stuff of horror, and there’s nothing supernatural or fantastical anywhere near it. Another truly gut-wrenching horror is Margo Lanagan’s short story, “Singing My Sister Down.” It’s set in a fantastical world, but there’s no magic, no supernatural element, yet it is among the most beautiful horror you’ll ever read. And yes, horror can be gorgeous even as it tears your nerves out at the roots.

Often, when discussing these kinds of stories, people will still use the H-word, but they’ll qualify it. They’ll say a book is powerful quiet horror, or literary horror. These descriptors can be useful, but they’re usually there to soften the blow as people don’t want to alienate readers by calling it what it really is – a horror novel. And I think we need to work on claiming that back.

There certainly seems to be a horror renaissance happening. Get Out winning Oscars, horror novels hitting mainstream bestseller lists, TV shows like Stranger Things and The Haunting of Hill House catching widespread audiences, stuff like that. There’s been the suggestion that the trash fire in a bowl of shit that is the world right now might be at least partly responsible. When things are awful, we look to horror to show us how much worse it could be, and perhaps more importantly, to show us the monsters can be beaten. We can slay the beast, cure the infection, lance the fetid boil of hateful pus (yes, I’m most definitely talking about Donald Trump, but it all applies in the broader spectrum too.) I say we need to use the momentum that’s building right now to reclaim horror as an acceptable and respected genre to write, not one that has people looking for the nearest exit when you proudly announce, “I write horror!” And for my part, I have a new horror novel out on November 6th called Devouring Dark.

Alan Baxter is a multi-award-winning British-Australian author who writes horror, dark fantasy, and supernatural thrillers, rides a motorcycle and loves his dogs. He also teaches Kung Fu. He lives among dairy paddocks on the beautiful south coast of NSW, Australia, with his wife, son, and two crazy dogs. His latest book is the horror novel, DEVOURING DARK, which explores death, guilt, and redemption, set against a backdrop of crime and corruption in modern-day London. Read extracts from Alan’s novels and novellas, and find free short stories at his website – www.warriorscribe.com – or find him on Twitter @AlanBaxter and Facebook, and feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.

Find DEVOURING DARK in paperback or ebook wherever you usually buy books, or order it at your local bookstore or library. Here are a few direct links:

Amazon     B&N     iBooks     Kobo

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Macro Monday Exhorts You To Participate In Your Democracy

HELLO, FRANDOS.

Hey, guess what? Tomorrow is most likely the most important election you have yet met. A great many things are at stake, and further, we have an excellent chance to provide some vital balance to countermand the current power bloc dominating policy and discourse in this country. Which means it is essential to vote blue, across the board, in every election. (Don’t believe me? Believe nearly-life-long Republican, Sully Sullenberger.) If you have not voted early or absentee, tomorrow is your day (as it is for me here in PA). It also means helping others get to the voting booths, and means asking your friends and family about them getting out to vote — sometimes that gentle nudge makes it likelier they’ll go, either as an act of social camaraderie, or, if necessary, an act of social pressure. We need to return to this country the idea that it is normal and expected to vote — part of a tradition of participating in our democracy rather than simply letting it float down the river, out of our control, like a little paper boat.

So, that’s my sales pitch.

Go vote.

It won’t automagically fix everything. But it might just turn this boat off its current course, which is presently headed right for an iceberg.

Here, listen to this weird little birb, who is yelling at you to go vote.

(It is, I believe, a Carolina Wren.)

Let’s see, onto some quick news blips.

As I noted, Zer0es is $2.99 right now on e-book. And Invasive has dropped in price, too, for e-book, to $4.99. (Note: Invasive is not a sequel to Zer0es, but is set in the same world. Mostly a new cast of characters, with a few crossing over. You do not need to read one to understand the other.)

If you require good NaNoWriMo story counsel, Damn Fine Story is your friend.

It’s nothing I had any part of, but the gorgeous special edition of D&D: Art and Arcana is like, 50% off now at Amazon.

New Ragnatalk.

I just finished page proofs for Wanderers, so that goes out soon to potential blurbers and review places — though the book doesn’t arrive until July! It’s nice though that the publisher is really pushing the book early to build some momentum.

And that’s it.

Here is a photo of an Eastern Phoebe, and then some Halloween pumpkins, and then a frozen-ass American flag, which is hopefully not a metaphor for anything.

A Nibbling Of Numptious News Nuggets

IT’S FRIDAY so apparently that means I have more cool news to share. Which is nice! It’s nice to have things to talk about sometimes. So gird your loins, buckle your belts, and don’t forget to wash your hands with soap and water. Oh and get your damn flu shot.

Here are the quicky news bits —

• Zer0es is totally Sword and Laser’s book club book this month, so feel free to go and get in on that action — it’s got hackers and trolls and self-aware surveillance programs and body horror and other fun stuff. And if you haven’t read it yet, Harper Voyager did a wonderful thing and dropped the e-book price to $2.99 if you wanna grab it.

• Wanderers gets a shout-out at The Mary Sue, “A Unique Look At A Potential Armageddon.” I’m glad the excerpt at EW seemed to resonate with people. I’m very excited for you to read this book. As some have asked, yes, this book is in past tense, not present, and no, it’s not my first to do so — Double Dead, in fact, is in past tense. (Point of trivia: I get no royalties if you buy Double Dead and Unclean Spirits, by the way, as some have also asked that question.)

• And finally, it’s Episode 5 of Chuck & Anthony: Ragnatalk, in one of our favorite eps, this one titled: IT’S KORG O’CLOCK. Okay, the episode isn’t all about Korg — it’s also about Jeff Goldblum and Betty Crocker and Kite Man and Greg Pak and so on and so forth. GO LISTEN TO IT. Otherwise, PISS OFF, GHOST.

Don’t forget this weekend is Daylight Savings Time, where at 2AM we open the Time Jar and release the hour we’ve been keeping hostage for the last several months.

And also, come Tuesday —

Don’t forget to vote.

Your country, your democracy, and maybe the world literally counts on it.

Here Is How You NaNoWriMo, You Ruinous Monster, You

First, you get your coffee.

You sip it. You listen to it for ideas. It has no ideas, because it’s just coffee, and coffee is idea fuel. So you drink the coffee. Or tea. Or gin, I dunno. Hell, drink some water. Just drink something. YOU NEED TO HYDRATE that is just NaNoWriMo Law right there. You let the idea ghosts enter you. And percolate. And whisper their ways.

Then —

You open a Word document, or a Scrivener page, or a plain notebook.

You regard the open expanse.

The empty white.

It is perfect as-is.

It is pure and untouched like a newborn baby. (I mean, okay, that metaphor only works if you’ve never seen a newborn baby, who look like a bag of prunes that just crawled its way out of a burlap sack full of ambrosia salad. Those things are like Toilet Ghoulies.)

You have a choice —

You can leave the page as is, open, unscathed, unmarked, a snowy expanse after a fresh winter storm.

Or you can ruin it.

You can start putting crass LANGUAGE MARKS across it: clumsy, dirty scrawl denoting the gabble-gibber of humantongue. You can write words into sentences into paragraphs. You can stomp your muddy boots all over the damn thing. You can shit it all up. What once was an innocent tract of unbroken order is now a landfill of chaos.

So, that’s your choice.

Keep it perfect and pure.

Or ruin it.

My money’s on: ruin that motherfucker.

That, I think, is the guiding principle of National Novel Writing Month: you are here not for purity, not for innocence, not for perfection. You are here to ruin a perfectly good empty page. And that isn’t just the purview of this month — but it’s writing any story, on any day.

You do this.

And then you do it again.

And then again.

And again and again and again until you have something finished. And even then that finished thing isn’t finished, because you’ve got to rip it apart once more and stitch it back together again. Repair through destruction. A near-constant act of ruination.

Now, a word on ruination:

It sounds bad.

Ruin.

A mouse turd ruins an apple pie. Cockroach eggs ruin a perfectly good ear canal. A Trump supporter ruins any party. (Sorry, it’s not Halloween anymore, sorry for the scaaaaary stooooories.)

But ruination has value, too.

Think of how ruination contributes to the act of making a beautiful balsamic vinegar, or soy sauce, or whiskey. Cooking any meal is an act of ruining the thing again and again — chopping it, skinning it, cooking it, reducing it down and breaking it apart with knife and fork and later, teeth. Communication is the act of ruining silence. Having children is the act of ruining your ability to binge watch Netflix. You gotta ruin an acorn to make an oak tree. Gotta ruin a caterpillar to make a butterfly, who in turn must one day be ruined to make more caterpillars.

The act of creation is always paired with the act of ruination.

And so, in this National Novel Writing Month, you’re gonna do exactly that. You will make a story by destroying the space of the page and your own peace. It’s easier not to do it. It’s simpler to simply let your time and your world be unperturbed by the pyroclastic act of making cool shit, but I suspect you are not the kind to go comfortably unperturbed.

Today, you’re going to ruin one page. You’re going to fill it with words. Some will be amazing words. Some will be brutally inefficient. You will string them together and when read aloud, they will make music just as often as they make the sound of a tuba kicked down a set of steps. And you’re not going to care, because that is what it takes: the willingness to do a thing poorly, the eagerness to ruin an uninterrupted space, the sheer bloody-minded delight of carving your ideas down into rock even though the only desire of the rock is to be left the hell alone.

You’ll do this day in and day out until you have a finished thing.

Maybe it fits neatly into the box marked “November.”

Maybe it takes you into December and January.

Maybe it takes you twelve months instead of one, or three weeks instead of four.

Doesn’t matter.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Ruination is the best friend to creation.

So get to ruining.

Your month begins now.

* * *

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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

Wanderers: Cover Reveal And Excerpt!

IT’S HERE IT’S HERE OMG IT’S HERE

*blows apocalyptic tuba*

*a blood rain gently falls*

Hey, if you were maybe thinking there’d be a Wanderers cover reveal before too long — well, you ain’t wrong. Because here it is, over at Entertainment Weekly. You’ll also find an excerpt from the book, and for extra fun, I’ve got some pre-order links should you be so inclined to get in on this epic journey. (Seriously, the book is like 800 pages in hardcover. It’s a bison-bludgeoner.)

Pre-order for print or e-book!

Note: the print pre-order is Indiebound, but certainly you can check with your own local indie store to nab a copy that way, and I’m sure as time gets closer I hope to visit some stores to sign books and shake babies or whatever it is us author-types do.

Here’s the cover copy —

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 milita 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.

And again, you can find the cover and a full excerpt at EW.

Wanderers releases July 9th, 2019, from Del Rey Books.

I Can Fly Twice As High — AKA, My HalCon 2018 Recap

I AM BACK FROM THE FOGSOAKED WILDS OF COASTAL ATLANTIC CANADA, FROM THE LOVECRAFTIAN REALM OF DONAIRS AND POUTINE AND LOBSTERS.

Halifax was great.

Hal-Con, in particular, was sublime.

It’s one of those “just right” cons — not so big it’s a soul-crushing meat-grinder, but not so small where you’re not really sure the juice was worth the squeeze. It had tons of local vendors, ace cosplay, and a really nice spread of great people — both fellow guests and fans. (Bonus: got to hang with my Sister from Another Mister, Delilah S. Dawson — whose newest, Treason of Hawks, is out in both print and e-book, and it completes her excellent Shadow series.) They also treat their guests like fucking royalty. I had a personal assistant! His name was Spencer and he looked like a young Matthew McConaughey? (Sidenote: why the fuck don’t I have an assistant?) It’s nice. It was all nice.

Nice as cookies.

I mean, except for the flight back, to which I say:

EAT SPECTACULAR SHIT, AIR CANADA.

This is the third time I’ve traveled with them.

And the third time they’ve canceled a flight right out from under me.

Like, you get to the airport.

You wait until approximately the boarding time.

And then the flight is just — boop! It’s fucking gone. It never existed, maybe. It was a collective hallucination borne by the ticket-holders, who knows. Either way: this happened again yesterday and they were like, “You can go home tomorrow instead.” And I was like, “There are no additional flights?” They said there was one, but it had no seats. And they were going to give me a hotel room but they didn’t have any hotel rooms and I was gonna have to wait. And technically I had to be back here today because I have child-entangled things to do, and then also Halloween tomorrow, so my kid was crushed I wasn’t coming home. While waiting, I toodled around the Internet for about 17 seconds and found out hey yeah there are too seats available on the next flight?

The Air Canada person told me (in what I am to understand was a lie) that she couldn’t rebook me on that one For Reasons, and I could book it and they’d just fix the difference later? Ugh. So I did that.

That flight was to leave at 9PM.

And ended up not leaving until after 10PM.

Which meant I didn’t get home until after 1AM, which is not fun.

But I got to gently wake up B-Dub and give the kid a hug, which was honestly the best reward at the end of such an irritating kidney stone of a journey.

Oh also, another thing that makes it all worth it?[image error]

Yeah, that’s right.

That’s Levar Burton.

One of the actual architects of both my childhood and, one could argue, my very career. Inspiring me then, and inspiring me now because this dude is as kind as any. He walks into a room and introduces himself to everybody, warm and smiling. He is pure cool and total comfort. (Bonus: to my great shock, he knew who I was, which pretty much completes Life Bingo, I think. I won life. I have conquered the summit. If I perish here, know I am satisfied at having made it.)

So: if given a chance to go to Hal-Con?

Do it.

(Just don’t fly Air Canada.)

Let’s see, what else is up?

Big announcement tomorrow, I think.

The Mega Ultra Super Big-Ass Book Bundle is still on sale for another day, 50% off with coupon NANO2018 — you can click here to grab a shitload of writing books and a couple novels.

One more deep-dive on the bots-and-puppets phenomenon surrounding, well, me. This time over at Vox-dot-com, so give a click and have a read. I don’t agree with every assertion made, and I think there might be some context missing, but it will be a fascinating read for you just the same.

You Might Be The Killer screened at Toronto After Dark, and it think won some cool audience awards? It’s also still showing on SyFy now and again, including via on-demand.

I’m working through Wanderers page proofs at a furious pace.

And I think that’s it for now.

See you soon, my sweet babbies.