Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 64

Originality Is Overrated In Authorland

I meet a lot of writers, young writers particularly, who feel like they don’t have anything new to say, no new stories to tell, no new ideas.

Now, for me, ideas are mostly shiny, plastic dross. When you first find them they look like emeralds on the beach, a rare fossil, an Important Discovery —

But most of the time, they’re just cheap trash dressed up to look nice. They’re tequila-shined Mardi Gras beads that escaped the gutter, somehow. Maybe that’s unfair to ideas, because ideas are the seeds from which most stories germinate, but even there, consider that when you plant a seed and the resultant plant begins to grow, it looks the fucking same nearly every time.

It’s a little stem.

It’s two leaves.

A sprout, that’s all.

(Seriously, it’s this shit right here.)

And growing a plant out of a seed is both an act of generative power (I DID IT, I BASICALLY HELPED CREATE LIFE) to the crushing reality that what you did is so common it’s disgusting (I PERFORMED A BARE MINIMUM ACT THAT EVEN A CHILD COULD ACCOMPLISH).

And writing a book or any kind of story — or really, making any kind of thing at all — is a lot like that, too, especially right when you start. I HAVE BEGUN AN AMAZING JOURNEY, you think, seconds before you decide, JUST LIKE MILLIONS OF FAILED DIPSHITS BEFORE ME OH GOD I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING OH SHIT THIS GROUND IS SO WELL-TRAVELED IT’S A PAVED, BRIGHTLY LIT PATH, THERE ARE SIGNS AND DOG POOP STATIONS

FUCK FUCK FUCK

And it’s at this point that some writers, myself included, experience a kind of narrative, existential vaporlock. You freeze up. And the worry comes that you’ve nothing to add to the canon of ideas, that whatever story you’re going to tell isn’t particularly original. Surely someone has told a story like this.

You’re right. They probably have.

In the history of storytelling, it’s very, very hard to have an entirely original take on something. When you’re pitching a book to an agent, or when your agent is pitching a book to editors, you might be asked what the “comp” titles are — meaning, what books are like it already. And in Hollywoodland, pitching a story is often you trying to feign originality by smashing up two pre-existing properties — “It’s like Terminator meets Gilmore Girls! It’s Pinnocchio, but set on the Titanic — in space! It’s as if Spongebob Squarepants took the meth from Breaking Bad and found himself living destitute in a pineapple just outside Nightmare on Elm Street!” And it’s a very cliched thing, and I assure you, having pitched film and TV on the Leftmost Coast, it’s also a very real thing. If you don’t distill the property down to those two or three already extant stories, they certainly will, and it can feel weirdly disheartening to find out that your story is considered to be as original as two unoriginal things staple-gunned together.

And so at the start of the work and at the end of the work, the originality is in question.

For many, this is troubling.

Don’t let it be.

I consider there to be very few Actual Truths in writing, in storytelling, in making cool shit — but this, I think, comes as close to Actual Truth as I can muster.

Every story has one original thing about it.

And that original thing is

You.

That sounds like some goofy-ass self-help shit, I know, but trust me, you’re it. You’re the thing. You’re the Original Idea, the Important Discovery, the One Untold Tale, the Unexplored Path, the Savior of Narnia, the Sword of Damocles, the Revenge of the Sith wait I’m getting carried away, sorry, sorry. Ahem. Moving on. Point is, it’s you. Look at it this way —

You’re a bundle of unexpected genetics. Two people fucked, and they made you. And to make each of them, two other people fucked, and on and on and on — you’re at the bottom of an inverted pyramid, the nadir of an unholy host of genetic material that has scrambled itself up and guaranteed that you are a random, uncountable confluence of atoms. And that’s just the genetic side.

On the memetic side — the side of ideas and information — oh my sweet fucking hell, are you ever an infinite, irreplicable* maze. You are a labyrinthine tangle of wants, desires, fears, experiences, anxieties, certainties, questions. You’re the sum total of the places you’ve been, the people you’ve met, the things you’ve seen. And you complicate that when you go more places, meet more people, see new things. You never get simpler. You just get more complex. Your uncertainties grow. Your maze grows larger even as you travel it. You’re an amazingly weird, bizarre, wonderful bundle of wires.

(Now, I don’t want you get a big head about you — yes, all writers are precious snowflakes, but also, acting like a precious snowflake will make somebody melt your ass right quick. You’ll be a microscopic puddle before too long.)

I think a lot of writers — again, younger writers in particular, and I certainly didn’t realize this when I was younger and trying to write — is that this unique aspect of the work (i.e. You) is not something to be avoided, but rather, something to enthusiastically pour into the work. You should put yourself in there. Wholly and without reservation. Complicate the work with your uncertainties and worries. Address your questions and fears. Don’t just breathe ideas gently into it — summon your ideas as a gale-force wind and they’ll blow the sails of the story in the way that no plot twist or fight scene can.

That’s okay. That’s as it should be.

The story isn’t you.

You aren’t the story.

But you’re in there as much as you want to be. Invisibly, perhaps, but vitally just the same — suffusing it as you see fit. Don’t worry about originality in plot or genre or whatever. Worry about bringing yourself into the world, onto the page, into the story. Write what you like. Write what you want to read. Tell the story and use the voice in the way that only you can tell it.

You’re the One Original Aspect, and that cannot be beat.

*not a word but should be

* * *

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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

Macro Monday Brings The Tale Of The Mantis And The Serpent

See anything in that photo?

Sure, sure, you see a praying mantis.

But look again.

Up from the mantis. Up, up, up.

Yeah, now you see it.

I didn’t see it when I first stopped to take a cameraphone pic of the mantis — that photo there is not the camera pic, by the by, but from my DSLR — and it was only as I got in close did I see the garter snake scoping out Princess Stinky, the Mantisfriend. I was like, shit, this is a literal metaphor playing out — a snake in the goddamn grass, would you look at that.

I figured, oh, well, nature red in fang and mandible, and I assumed that some Mother Nature was about to happen and the mantis was gonna get got. But then I wondered: hey, some mantids can eat birds, and maybe this little green lady can like, do some Mantis Martial Arts and crush the snake’s head with one of its spiky limbs? Shit, who knows. Nature is fucked up.

I revisited the scene again and again — the snake crept closer and closer. The mantis seemed vaguely aware of it. And then — the snake retreated? To the bottom of the grass, here:

So eventually they just faced away from each other like a pair of roommates who were irritated at one another. And then eventually the snake slithered away and the mantis remained. And remains still — I just passed her on the way here. (I assume it might be a her — she’s getting kinda bulbous, which is usually a sign of a lady mantis, not a dude mantis.) Rosemary Mosco on Twitter pointed out too that the snake’s eye is blue, which is a potential sign that it is

a) ready to molt

and

b) possibly half-blind for the moment until it molts

So, maybe the snake was never scoping out the mantis. Maybe it was asking for directions.

Nature. Like I said: fucked up. Even snakes get lost!

Let’s see, do I have any book news?

Yes!

Wait, is it anything I can share?

Shit, I can’t talk about this comic book, or this other secret thing, or… ennh, anything else?

Wanderers has a loose release date, now — July 2019? So, less than a year, now. Some Station Eleven slash The Stand epic-sized goodness coming your way, then, but for now, the long wait until release… it’s killing me because I want you to have it now?

But we will all just have to be patient.

I think that’s it for today.

GO FORTH AND SLAY MONDAY, FRANDOS

Rachel Caine: Dead Air, And Abstract Darkness

This a story about why I read true crime, and why I write thrillers. A true story.

It starts out a normal night working the desk at my dorm in college. Big place, over 1,000 coed residents in it on seven sprawling floors. Normally, there would be two people working the desk around the clock.

That night, after midnight, it’s just me.

At one a.m., a man who lives in the dorm and was, until recently, dating a friend of mine (also a dorm resident) drops by to talk for a while about a movie we’ve both seen. In the process, he asks me if his ex-girlfriend is in her room. I tell him she’s gone on a date.

Okay, he says, and puts an envelope on the counter. Then he walks away.

The envelope says TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. I hesitate. Is it to me? What the hell? I finally open it and read it as he heads down the hall toward his room.

In it, he states he plans to get a shotgun and sit beside her dorm room door, and once he sees her coming, kill himself “so she’ll never forget what she did to me.” He also implies that she might not survive either.

I call police immediately, and alert the dorm manager. The manager asks me if the man has a shotgun with him now. He doesn’t, as far as I could see. The manager asks me to follow the man at a distance and see if he’s really armed.

And, foolishly, I agree. I’m eighteen. I think I know what I was doing.

I do not.

The man sees me on the way back to his room and stops to talk to me as if nothing odd is going on. Then he opens his room door, picks up a shotgun sitting inside, and points it at me. He tells me to get into his room.

I obey.

I sit down, and he closes and locks the door. I tell him I’ve already called the police and they are probably already here and on the way to the room. He nods. For the next thirty minutes, he explains to me why he’s doing all this. He says he likes me. He doesn’t think that I should be in the middle of what he calls “his troubles.” I have no idea what else he says during that conversation; all I can remember is if he moves the shotgun toward me again, I’m probably going to die. I ask him to please put the gun away, because he’s scaring me. He shakes his head, but he keeps it aimed off to the side. It’s between us, but not threatening me directly.

Not yet.

Someone knocks on the door and asks if I am inside. It’s another dorm employee. I say yes, and ask my captor him if I can go. He says I can. Somehow, I walk calmly to the door, open it, and go outside.

The other dorm employee pulls me past the police line.

The man in the room surrenders without a fight. The two of us, the dorm employees, are sent in after to confiscate anything from the room that the man might use to harm himself or others … and why the police let us do that, I have no idea.

Half an hour later, my friend comes home from her date. She’s alive. She survived. And honestly: I’m not sure she would have if I hadn’t opened that note.

To Whom It May Concern didn’t have to concern me. But I’m glad it did.

That night was when the world changed for me. What I’d seen in that room baffled and terrified me. It was an introduction to a world where people weren’t what they seemed to be.

So … true crime isn’t just stories to me. It’s emotionally and psychologically valuable material about the world around me. When I read about crimes and criminals and victims, I’m trying to come to terms with those moments in my life where my view of humanity … shifted. And that shift? It might have saved me on more than one occasion.

I still remember the moment when my tire blew out on a Dallas freeway at midnight twenty years ago, and I had to park in a dimly lit stretch of shoulder to change it. (I was fully capable of changing it.) Three cars stopped. Two held men who were polite and took my word that I didn’t need them to rescue me.

The third man was different. When I waved and said, “I’m okay, almost done,” he didn’t stop coming toward me. There was something in his body language, something relentless. Every account of women murdered or raped in situations like this one ran through my mind. I stood up, faced him with the tire iron in my hand, and said, “You need to turn around now. I’m fine. Please leave.”

He kept coming.

I told him, “I’m not giving you the tire iron.”

He kept coming.

I backed up, took out my cell, and called 911. I held it out to show him the call.

He stopped. He called me a filthy bitch. Said I was a paranoid whore who deserved to be raped and left to die. I stood there, not moving, until he was back in his car and driving away. Then I shakily told the 911 operator that I was okay, but I gave her the license number of his car. I never heard back about him; maybe he was just an angry guy who never hurt anyone. But I’m still convinced that reading true crime stories, and having a reasonable understanding of how to read signals, saved my life that night.

I’ve since read a lot more true crime and it’s helped me understand the vast, dark range of human behavior. I listen to true crime podcasts for the same reason … to try to put some kind of context around the horrible things people do. And, in some sense, prepare for the worst.

It’s probably also why I write thrillers. Thrillers can be as grim, as terrifying, or as inexplicably horrific as the real cases, but when I write that scenario, I can control the narrative at last. The potential victim can escape. The killer can be stopped. And the scales can be balanced. Thrillers are, to me, a way to shape the story in a healthier way than often happens in real life.

Writing the Dead Air project with showrunner Gwenda Bond and cowriter Carrie Ryan was a real revelation, because although I’d thought that my brush with darkness was unique, turns out we three all have some level of insight into the darkness around us, and we were able to bring that sense of tension and fear into the story. It’s built around a rich background of Kentucky horse racing (Gwenda’s local knowledge!) and the lengths people will go to in order to find justice (something Carrie’s well-versed in). Plus, we all have an intense interest in podcasts that break down crimes and motivations, so we were all in agreement from the beginning about how we wanted this story to feel.

Dead Air is an ambitious dual offering of serialized novel and dramatic audio performances, all for one low subscription price. It also has a stand-alone podcast by the main character that tells the story of a “solved” murder that may not be quite as solved as the rich and powerful would prefer. We’ve been thrilled to work with the amazing publisher Serial Box, who has a wide variety of serialized novel/audio projects like Tremontaine and Bookburners you might also enjoy.

So how many degrees of separation are you from real murder? I’m only one … four times over.

It’s best to keep it in fiction.

Rachel Caine is the NYT, USA Today, and #1 internationally bestselling author of more than 50 novels, including the new Stillhouse Lake series. Her first thriller, Stillhouse Lake, was a finalist for Original Paperback Thriller from the ITW Thriller Awards, and is currently a finalist for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Awards. She’s on social media and can be found at rachelcaine.com.

About Dead Air:

Welcome to Dead Air, where M is for midnight, Mackenzie…and murder. 

Mackenzie Walker wasn’t planning on using her college radio show to solve a decades old murder, but when she receives an anonymous tip that the wrong man may have taken the fall, she can’t resist digging deeper. It doesn’t take long for Mackenzie to discover gaps in the official story. Several potential witnesses conveniently disappeared soon after the murder. The victim, a glamorous heiress and founder of a Kentucky horse-racing dynasty, left behind plenty of enemies. And the cops don’t seem particularly interested in discussing any of it. But when the threats begin, Mackenzie knows she’s onto something. Someone out there would prefer to keep old secrets buried and they seem willing to bury Mackenzie with them. Thankfully, she’s getting help from a very unexpected source: the victim’s son, Ryan. The closer she gets to him, however, the more important it is for Mackenzie to uncover the truth before he gets buried alongside her.

Read or listen to weekly episodes of the serial novel Dead Air from bestselling authors Gwenda Bond, Rachel Caine, and Carrie Ryan, and then check out Mackenzie’s podcast for a uniquely immersive experience. Does the truth lie in the serial, the podcast…or somewhere in-between? Subscribe to the serial here. Check out the podcast on iTunes, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Cover Reveal: John Hornor Jacobs, The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky

Pleased today to reveal the cover to John Hornor Jacobs’ newest — a novella of cosmic horror, and you can read the description below and check out the cover above. But first I feel that JHJ’s other work is deserving of a mention. Obviously, the world is made of writers. We’re fucking everywhere, like mosquitoes, and it’s hard to sort through the cloud of us winged things to find a creature of some beauty — a pretty moth, a fancy-ass butterfly. Sometimes we miss out, and sometimes a winged thing of especial beauty avoids our discovery for a time and —

Well, this metaphor has gotten away from me, so I’ll just speak it plainly: Jacobs is probably one of the best writers you’ve never heard of. His work is imbued with that really powerful thing that goes into all excellent stories from excellent storytellers, and one day I am convinced the world will figure that out and catch up — I mean, we’re talking the level of a Stephen King, a Robin Hobb, someone whose work is just right a lot of the time.

(See also: Kameron Hurley. Another perhaps unappreciated favorite of mine.)

I don’t know precisely where to tell you to start with JHJ, but my favorites are the Incorruptibles, the start of a trilogy that is an infernal mash-up of Lord of the Rings and the Gunslinger. (Print, or eBook.) Actually, I see the Incorruptibles is $3.99 right now for the eBook, so. Or try The Twelve-Fingered Boy, a YA tale of a boy in a juvie prison who discovers that he possesses a very special kind of power — and here, think a YA Shawshank paired with the X-Men, and you’re close. (Print, or eBook.) Both are trilogies, so you get a lot of bang for your buck, too.

Now, though, time to focus up on the novella —

The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky

Having lost both her home and family to a brutal dictatorship, Isabel has fled to Spain, where she watches young, bronzed beauties and tries to forget the horrors that lie in her homeland. 

Shadowing her always, attired in rumpled linen suits and an eyepatch, is “The Eye,” a fellow ex-pat and poet with a notorious reputation. An unlikely friendship blossoms, a kinship of shared grief. Then The Eye receives a mysterious note and suddenly returns home, his fate uncertain.

Left with the keys to The Eye’s apartment, Isabel finds two of his secret manuscripts: a halting translation of an ancient, profane work, and an evocative testament of his capture during the revolution. Both texts bear disturbing images of blood and torture, and the more Isabel reads the more she feels the inexplicable compulsion to go home. 

It means a journey deep into a country torn by war, still ruled by a violent regime, but the idea of finding The Eye becomes ineluctable. Isabel feels the manuscripts pushing her to go. Her country is lost, and now her only friend is lost, too. What must she give to get them back? In the end, she has only herself left to sacrifice. 

The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky asks, How does someone simply give up their home? Especially when their home won’t let them?

* * *

You can check out JHJ’s website, or find him on Twitter.

Pre-order The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky now.

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Yes, You Can Pronounce GIF With A Soft-G Or Hard-G, Settle Down, Francis

“Hey, can you send me that JIF file–”

“HA HA WHAT DID YOU SAY? DID YOU SAY JIF.”

“Yes, JIF file, it’s a–”

“HA HA LOLWUT IS IT A JRAPHICS INTERLACED FILE? I WAS THINKING OF HAVING SOME VEGETABLES TONIGHT, MAYBE SOME JREEN BEANS WITH MAYBE SOME JARLIC AS SEASONING. WHO SHOOTS FIRST, IS IT HAN SOLO OR JREEDO? WASN’T IT FORREST JRUMP THAT SAID LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES? HA HA HA YOU DUMDUM IT’S GIF, HARD-G, BRO. LIKE ME. A HARD-G.”

“Oh. Okay. Hold on I need just to push this button.”

*trapdoor opens under Mister Hard-G, and he feeds the alligators in the pit, and his last words are, BUT ARE THEY CALLED ALLIJATORS HA HA OHH GOD THEY’RE EATING MY INTESTINES*

So.

Let’s talk about this.

I ranted a bit on Twitter this morning but feel like this needs to be carved into the digital space that I own, aka, this blog.

I ran a BBS when I was a kid — a bulletin-board-system, for those baby nerds not in the know. I did this unbeknownst to my parents, actually; I had a phone line that I essentially took over and plugged into my computer so instead of talking to people on the phone like a normal teenager, I was Proto-Internetting with Local Randos as a SysOp. (Sidenote: parents, keep up with technology or your kids are going to be able to do loop-de-loops around you. Just a tip.) I ran a few different instances, Telegard, WWIV, and the names of the BBS changed from Shadowlands to Bizarroworld to — shit, I forget the others. Whatever! I was vaguely plugged into computers and proto-hacker culture, I modded my own computer, I hosted warez and early bitmap porn and all that fun stuff. I then later became a Systems Technical Manager or some shit — meaning I was a one-man IT department for a (get this) fashion merchandising company. I also ran web stuff for a company that was basically just an advanced form of illegal radio payola, I worked for an internet provider, I did a lot of techie stuff despite not having a real techie background (I went to school for readin’ and writin’ dontcha know, what with all these fancy bookmathings I put out.)

And I, along with the people I worked with, pronounced GIF file as JIF.

It’s just how everyone I knew said it.

JIF. JIF File. Like the peanut butter. Like the saying, back in a jiff.

And then somewhere in the last 10-15 years, from the Shadows of Mordor, arose a peculiar kind of pedantry about it — yes, the acronym stands for GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT, and it was said, with great certain gusto (or jreat certain justo?) that because of that hard-G word at the fore, the acronym just also be pronounced with the same unswerving, unyielding G.

Like gravity, you could not fucking deny it. It was suddenly Nerd Law.

And that’s fine if you wanna pronounce it that way.

Just don’t lecture about it.

Here’s why:

You’re wrong.

Not about your pronunciation! Again, I don’t care how you pronounce it, long as people understand what you mean. You’re wrong about your logic — you are writing a logical check that the history of language cannot cash.

You are asserting that acronyms must be pronounced a certain way based on the pronunciation of the words that form that acronym.

So, what about YOLO?

You Only Live Once.

The O in Once is pronounced… Wuh. Wunce.

So, do you pronounce it YOLO?

Or YOL-WUH?

What about LASER? Yep, laser is an acronym.

It stands for:

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

I’ll bet though that you pronounce laser with a z-sound for the s, right? But that’s wrong, by the logic of hard-G GIF, isn’t it? Should be pronounced lay-sser, like you’re Cobra Commander. (Or, if you’re really cuckoo bananapants about that pronunciation, layster.)

SCUBA stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

But you probably say scooba not scuhbba, right?

What about…

JPEG?

That’s right, let’s talk about another graphical file format. The JPEG, like the GIF, is a pretty popular file format in the graphic/photographic space. And I’m gonna go ahead and make a brave, bold guess that you pronounce it JAY-PEG, right? And here you, imagined verbal sparring partner, will snarkily note that the G in JAY-PEG is that hard, turgid, erect ‘g’ because the G in JPEG stands for Group.

But what about the other letters?

JPEG = Joint Photographic Experts Group.

So, the P in JPEG is a soft Ph-sound, meaning, an F-sound.

So…

Surely, surely you will now pronounce it JAY-FEG, right? I mean, by your unswerving logic and infallible grammatical reality, you cannot possibly continue to pronounce it JAY-PEG, right? Except you will. Because that’s how people pronounce it.

Listen, I get it, in this day and age we like to have hard and fast answers about stuff, and we especially like to be haughty and know-it-ally when it comes to the English language, but the English language is a baby carriage stuffed with hot dogs, set on fire, and pushed down some steps toward a a bouncey-house full of schnauzers. It’s a fucking mess. Rough! Cough! Dough! Bough! Are any of those words pronounced the same? Why no, no they are not.

If I say JIF file and you say GIF file, we both understand what the other means, and that, ultimately, is the point. So, be not superior — soft-g or hard-g adherents — and accept that both ways are perfectly fucking fine, thankayouveddymuch.

Now please buy my books! Have you considered Damn Fine Story, which is pronounced Dammun Feen Storf, or Blackbirds, which is pronounced Fook-birbs, or maybe Invasive, which is pronounced Sir William Hottentot Schmeebly Fidget Junior? Have a great* day!

*jreat

Macro Monday Is A Crab Offering You A Quest — Will You Heed The Call?

The crab offers you a quest. Do you take it?

ANYWAY HEY HI HELLO what is up, my frandos.

So, some nice news —

Damn Fine Story is now out on bail!

*checks notes*

wait, no

Damn Fine Story is now out on audio!

There, that’s better.

It’s read by Patrick Lawlor, who does a very good job of… well, essentially pretending to be me? So, if you’re one of the people who have been waiting for this book on audio, we gotchoo covered.

Also, DFS continues to sell really well? So thank you? In BookScan, it has now outsold Zer0es — which is no small feat. Given the e-book of Zer0es, that still remains one of my biggest books in terms of total sales, alongside the first Miriam Black book, Blackbirds, but to see DFS do so well in its first year of release has been heartening. And I just pitched its sequel to Writer’s Digest, so, we shall see. It would be a more genre-focused version of DFS, some Advanced Level Story-Fu dealing with sci-fi and fantasy and horror and maybe a little mystery-thrillery-crimey goodness, too. Here’s hoping WD takes the bait, so I can have an excuse to do more obscene, absurd footnotes.

And speaking of that, I got to hang out at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC this past weekend, and got to meet Jeff and Ann Vandermeer and hear Walter Mosely speak (which is sublime, lemme tell you) and it’s always great connecting with writers of every level and age and publishing experience. Thanks for coming out and listening to me jabber.

And now, for some more wistful photographic remembrance of the PNW —

Michael Mammay: Five Things I Learned Writing Planetside

A seasoned military officer uncovers a deadly conspiracy on a distant, war-torn planet…

War heroes aren’t usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it’s something big—and he’s not being told the whole story. A high councilor’s son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated—but there’s no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.

The colonel quickly finds Cappa Base to be a labyrinth of dead ends and sabotage: the hospital commander stonewalls him, the Special Ops leader won’t come off the planet, witnesses go missing, radar data disappears, and that’s before he encounters the alien enemy. Butler has no choice but to drop down onto a hostile planet—because someone is using the war zone as a cover. The answers are there—Butler just has to make it back alive…

* * *

READ OUTSIDE YOUR GENRE

You often hear that to be a writer, you’ve got to be a reader. I support that. I go out of my way to read new releases in my genre so that I can learn from them, help promote the good stuff, and so I can be fluent when talking to readers and other writers. People notice, by the way. Readers notice that you’re lifting up other books, and authors notice that you’ve read widely. Hey, if nothing else, knowing that you’ll promote them will get publishers and authors to send you free books.

But the book that probably had the most influence on PLANETSIDE was GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn, which is definitely not science fiction. I was taking a bit of a writing break after deciding not to further revise a novel I’d been working on, just taking my time and sulking. You know, as one does. I was also reading a lot, and I picked up GONE GIRL on the recommendation of a friend. I hadn’t even read a chapter when it hit me. That voice! Flynn’s first person narrator just hit me in the face in the best possible way.

I’d had a kernel of an idea for PLANETSIDE, but up to that point I’d always written in third person. A chapter of GONE GIRL, and I knew immediately that I had to tell my story in first person. I sat down, wrote one short chapter, and sent it off to a few people I trust. That chapter doesn’t exist anymore, because the story went a different direction, but the reactions of those readers does. I remember one clearly: “Wow! This reads like it was written by a totally different writer! Uh…no offense.” I didn’t take any offense.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS IN ORDER TO START

A novel has to have a beginning, middle, and end. But it doesn’t have to have all of them when you start writing. If the idea is burning in your brain, sometimes the rest will come to you once you start putting it on paper. I started writing PLANETSIDE with just a character, an inciting event, a setting, and the idea for one of the big twists. The rest came along the way. I started writing in November of 2014, and I didn’t even know the major conspiracy in the book until I woke up with the idea on New Year’s Day. It’s a good thing I came up with it, obviously, since it’s the driving element in the book, but I’d never have gotten there just staring at a blank page. There is no way I’d have dreamed up that twist if I hadn’t put Carl Butler into the environment and had him interact with it. I got to a point where it became clear that people were hiding a key thing he didn’t know, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I did.

Is that dangerous? I mean, maybe. Maybe you start writing and the big idea never comes. But danger is relative. Sure, you may not finish the story. But it’s not like someone is going to toss a box of angry badgers into your car with you if you have to start over. Note: If someone *is* going to toss a box of angry badgers into your car over your writing, you need to get different friends. At worst, you’ll lose some time, but even that isn’t wasted. Any time you’re writing, you’re learning and growing, and that’s not nothing.

WRITE THE SHIT OUT OF IT

So maybe this one is obvious, but I just wanted to say ‘write the shit out of it’ somewhere publicly, and what better place than here? It’s kind of a mantra. In this case, I have a specific application. PLANETSIDE was done, and I was about a month out from querying agents. It was a good book, and I think it would probably have still netted me representation, though I can’t say for sure. Then I had an idea to change the third act and make it better. I noodled it out, then I pitched it to one of my very smart writer friends. I was excited. She was less excited. She told me she couldn’t see it. This isn’t any knock on her. She’s a brilliant writer and superb with plot and pace, and what I proposed didn’t make sense to her. I didn’t let it deter me. I told her I was going to write the shit out of it.

Reader, I wrote the shit out of it. I rewrote two chapters and wrote three new ones. It just flowed. Once I finished, I sent them to the reader. She read them and told me I was going to get a book deal. She couldn’t see it when I pitched it, but once I had it on the page, she knew. It wasn’t a huge risk on my part. I had a finished book, so if it didn’t work, I could always pull up the old version. The point is, I had an idea that I believed in enough to write it even in the face of someone saying ‘eh, maybe not.’ You will face this a lot. You’re going to tell people about an idea, and sometimes they’re going to tell you that it doesn’t fit the market, or that certain genres don’t sell. A lot of the time, they’re going to be right. But sometimes they aren’t. Writing the shit out something fixes a lot of other problems.

LET YOUR CHARACTERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Something I pride myself on is realistic dialogue. I hope that when I write, my characters sound the way that people really sound. One trick I’ve found helps that, and really helped in PLANETSIDE, is letting characters have their say. I fully understand that I might sound like I’m a sausage short of a Grand Slam breakfast here, but hear me out. You can’t force it. If you go into a scene with the dialogue already done, it can come out stilted—forced—because it doesn’t fit. If you go into the scene knowing the character and let them react according to their personality as the scene develops, it reads as natural.

One place this had a big impact on PLANETSIDE is in chapter 7. My main character, Carl Butler, is a grizzled old war veteran, and in this scene he was visiting the commander of the hospital, Doctor (Colonel) Mary Elliot. The way I initially conceived the scene, Butler was going to go in, pull some macho bullshit and get a key piece of information he needed to continue his investigation. A funny thing happened when I put those two characters in a room, though. Elliot wasn’t having his nonsense. She’s a woman who rose to a high rank in a challenging field, and when Butler pushed, she pushed back. The scene ended with Butler not getting his information, and being thrown out. More importantly, though, Elliot, who I thought was a bit player, announced herself as a bigger factor in the story. The story got better because of it.

FIND EARLY READERS THAT YOU TRUST

I use a lot of readers. Some of them are beta readers, some of them are critique partners. Some of them read for me every time I write, some are one time readers. I make a point of trying to have readers with a lot of different backgrounds and viewpoints. I try to get a mix of men and women, experienced and less experienced writers, along with other areas of diversity. I love them all. I’m good at taking criticism of my work. Every time someone says something, it makes me think. I always take it as ‘how can I use this to make my book better?’ The answer might be that I can’t, and I might discard the note. A lot of times, I can.

One specific note about PLANETSIDE that had a major impact was when an early reader, a woman, mentioned that most of my characters were men. I looked at it, and she was right. About eighty percent of the speaking parts were male, and there was no great reason for that. In the next rewrite, I changed the gender of three characters. In two cases, it had very little impact on the story, but the other one changed things a lot. When you read the book (because you’re going to read the book, right? Right? Please?) you’ll meet an important character named Lex Alenda. Originally she was a dude. The thing is, as a male, she wasn’t a good character. The male version served as a foil for Butler, somebody to make plot things work, but he had no heart. The current Alenda is one of the most important secondary characters, and her relationship to the protagonist adds a ton of depth not only to the story, but to his character as well. If I hadn’t made that change, I never would have figured that out, and the story would have been weaker for it.

* * *

Michael Mammay is a retired army officer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy. He has a masters degree in military history, and he is a veteran of Desert Storm, Somalia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He lives with his family in Georgia, where he teaches English to high school boys, which is at least as challenging as combat.

Michael Mammay: Twitter | Website

Planetside: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Goodreads

Your First Draft Does Not Require Your Faith In It

A nice Twittery person asked me about low confidence during a writing day, and if I had any words of encouragement, and I answered there, but I feel like it deserves a special call-out here, too:

Your first draft does not require your faith in it.

A lack of confidence is a bummer, but a lack of confidence in yourself or the work is so accursedly common that I’m not sure I’ve ever met a writer who didn’t grapple with it from time to time. And if I did, I think that person is probably a sociopath. Or Pierce Brown. Handsome devil, that Pierce Brown. Maybe the actual devil? I present to you the evidence:

More research may be required.

Regardless, my point stands:

The work doesn’t need your confidence.

The work just needs the work.

What I mean is, if you can manage, push through. Recognize that we all have those days where we don’t believe in the thing we’re writing, but all it takes is to persevere and continue the effort. Your faith in it is invisible and illusory — words on a page are not ensorcelled by how much you believe in it. It’s not a fragile little sprite, it doesn’t require your clapping to come to life. Now, the caveat here is sometimes you still have to take a break and walk away — and that’s okay, too. Don’t walk away too long, but a short, non-permanent vacation from the work is super-cool, and sometimes essential. But then come back to it. Come back to the narrative and renew your effort.

Listen, some days where I’ve had the highest level of faith in what I was writing? The work wasn’t worth the keystrokes required. Sometimes the best days of writing actually result in the crappiest yield of quality words. Sometimes the worst, hardest, hardiest, most miserablest days make the best. Sometimes a bad day means bad words, and a good day means good words. You never know. All you can do, sometimes, is divorce the reality of words made from the unreality of author feels.

We are often the worst judges of our own work. Especially as we’re eyeballs deep in it. It’s like trying to figure out if you’re going to die while lost in the woods. You are or you aren’t; worrying about it isn’t gonna fix your problem. What will fix your problem is picking a direction and moving in it.

Just like writing.

Your first draft can be shit. That’s okay.

You always, always have a second draft if you need it.

And a third, a seventh, a seventh-seventh.

Your faith is not the keystone.

Your work, your thinking, your typey-typey writey-writey fingers?

That is what forms the backbone of the work.

Now go write, willya?

* * *

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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

What I’m Holding Onto In This Epoch Of Autocratic Fuckery

I want to articulate a finer, more poetic sentence than the one I’m about to write, but I find that difficult, so instead I’m going to go with the sentence inside my heart:

Shit is pretty fucking fucked up right now.

I mean, it just is. Look around. This country, and by proxy the world, is a hot, hot mess. It’s like a preschool where all the toddlers are drunk and have been given power tools, oh, and also, they’re not toddlers but actually tiny grifters pretending to be toddlers, and they don’t just have power tools, but also, THE POWER TO REWRITE AMERICAN POLICY AND LAW AND THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM FOR SEVERAL GENERATIONS AND

*has to stop*

*has to breathe into a paper bag*

*has to endure a 72-hour anxiety-and-rage spiral*

*has to punch a Nazi*

*has to binge ice cream and Xanax*

OKAY HI I HAVE RETURNED.

What I’m saying is, things are — whoo, wow, they’re just stupid right now. This continues to definitely, definitely be the Stupidest Timeline — as I have suggested before, a squirrel got into the Hadron Collider or something and tried hiding his nuts (ahem) in the components, he shorted something out, and now here we are. Wilbur Ross stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. Asbestos is legal again for building products. Our president went onto Twitter to explain somehow that Democrats are… diverting rivers? And that’s why shit’s on fire? Not to mention, yanno, all the Russian election hacking and the kids in the cages and now they’re going after legal immigrants and not just illegal immigrants and then there’s QAnon and

*paper bag again*

*rage, anxiety, and punching*

*ice cream and pills*

It’s hard to keep it all together.

It’s hard not to succumb to utter hopelessness —

Or rage —

Or sheer crushing anxiety —

It’s hard.

So, I try to have a rigorous menu of thoughts and ideas I revisit from time to time during this ENDLESS TURD CAROUSEL, this TRAM RIDE UP THE DEVIL’S ASS, this FOUL-SMELLING CLOWN ORGY. And I thought I would offer up those thoughts here, for you, today.

1. I can always make stuff.

This is a small point, and I admit, a point of some privilege, but for me, it’s useful to remember I can always make stuff. I can make dinner. I can tell a story. I can take a photo. I can make my son laugh. I can write a blog post like this one. I have options to look away from the — *gestures toward the Hieronymous Bosch painting happening* — and enact my creative will upon the world. Even in little ways. It’s small, but it matters. To me, anyway.

2. I can hug a tree.

Seriously, I’ll hug a goddamn tree if you give me a half a chance. The world has trees, and I will hug them. I will hug the squirrels right out of them. Point being, I can go out in nature. I can take a hike. I can watch some fireflies. I can eat some fireflies. *checks notes* I will not eat fireflies. Nature is good. I know it’s partly on fire. I know we’re not always nice to nature. And around here right now the air is so humid it has practically become a non-Newtonian fluid, but it eventually cools down and I can take the dogs for a walk and I can find nifty spiders and I can just… escape the noise and go into the wild for five minutes or five hours and I can see stuff like this.

3. I can plant a tree, too.

Not everyone can plant a tree, but you can buy a plant. If you want to do a good thing in the world — one small, good thing — then buy a plant. Keep it in a pot or put it in the ground. Plants are good. They turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. And if they’re cursed by a proper witch they can be turned into a giant tanglemonster that will totally turn your adversaries into fucking mulch. At least, I hope so. I’m honestly counting on it. Tanglemonster, 2020.

4. Books exist.

So many books. So many books. I have enough books I could die underneath them. If I can’t escape into the forest of actual trees, I can escape into a forest of stories made from trees. And books live in other places, too, like libraries and bookstores, and libraries and bookstores are where BOOK WIZARDS live, and those BOOK WIZARDS can cast their BIBLIOMANCY SPELLS to help you find more and more books in which to bury yourself. Books are amazing, yay books, more books, always books, endless labyrinths of books. Here’s a book you could read that’s very good [print | ebook]. Here’s another [print | ebook]. Because fuck yeah, books. And fuck yeah, coffee. Fuck yeah drinking coffee while reading books.

5. Things have been a lot worse.

I don’t know that they’ve been any stupider, but they’ve definitely been worse. On the whole, the world is okay right now. It doesn’t feel like it, and it sure isn’t good, but I do think it’s valuable to look back over the course of history — honestly, even recent history, the 80s, the 60s, WWII, WWI — and see that, oh, okay, every generation has a huge challenge to address, and somehow the Human Virus keeps on keeping on. This isn’t meant to minimize what’s happening, or minimize how bad it could still get — but it is worth having a longer view of what’s come before, both in context and comparison. It’s hard to have a long view of history; easy to be myopic in the present. Again, this isn’t an excuse not to act — it’s a reason to act before it gets worse. Dig me?

6. We have small power that can be exercised en masse.

One vote isn’t much, but a lot of votes can change history. That is one example of the small amount of power we wield that, collectively, can move metaphorical (occasionally literal) mountains. A vote. A small donation. A kind word to a friend. Some encouragement, some call-in, some expression of your will unto the world. One tree you plant. One owl you save. That owl may go on to be a magic owl, who fucking knows. You don’t know. Magic owls probably exist, shut up.

7. People are messy, and the Perfect is the enemy of the good.

This sounds like a bad thing, like an admonishment, but it’s really a good thing. I think we do this thing were we draw so many uncrossable lines that we end up boxing ourselves in — I think by embracing nuance and accepting imperfections and messiness in people, we deepen our bench of allies and co-fighters in this cuckoo timeline. No, not everyone is going to be 100% aligned with us, but that’s okay. They don’t have to be. We can suss out those details later — for now, we have fascism to fight, frandos. So let’s work together to get it done.

8. And there exist a lotta good people out there.

John Rogers once noted that there’s a Crazification Factor in people — roughly 27% of people will vote for the stupidest, nuttiest fucking thing. I hold onto this like a drowning dude holding onto his floating volleyball pal — it is buoyant and hopeful in this turbulent time. Sure, that means 27% of people will at any time vote for the most delusional, reprehensible shit (“Sure, you should be able to fuck whales,” or “I do believe that individuals are responsible enough to own personal nuclear weapons, yes, liberty is wonderful, fuck regulations, second amendment, wooo”), and those people are rigorously immune to any kind of intellectual vaccination. They will not be inoculated against their ignorance. Sounds bad. But flip it — it means at any given time there are 73% of people who are not this. The glass isn’t half-full — it’s 73% full, which is pretty fucking full. I know when I interact with people on the whole, they’re… pretty great. Online, offline, wherever. It’s easy to get lost in the noise of squawking shitbirds, but that’s mostly just because they’re noisy.

9. Yellowjackets get mad as summer ends

I’m reminded of this now: as summer winds down, wasps get shitty. Extra-shitty. They know what’s coming. It’s Game of Thrones time — winter is on its way, and so they grow desperate and aggressive, and they freak the fuck out trying to get as much sugar and meat as possible. But they cannot dissuade this existential threat. Winter is still coming no matter how pissed-off they get. You can draw from this whatever metaphor you like given our current — *gestures broadly* — situation, but I like to remember it from time to time, as it explains some shit, if you let it.

10. When in doubt, dogs

Worse comes to worse, maybe the dogs will survive us and evolve and take over and make this a better place than we did. Until then, we have them in this world, and they are good boys and girls, all of them. And sure, yay cats, too, but cats will gladly eat us given half a chance, and cats are mostly using us for various sinister reasons (which is okay, we deserve it). But dogs are pure, and they exist, and the world is made infinitely better for their inclusion in this and any timeline.

* * *

[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

Macro Monday Continues Its Fond Reminiscing Of The Pacific Northwest

I know, that header image is of a rose with a fly on it, and that has very little to do with the Pacific Northwest but SHADDAP I like it. I don’t know why I like it. Something something contrast, something something irony, or maybe I just really like that Seal song, A KISS FROM A FLY ON A ROSE or whatever.

More PNW photos at the base of this post, if you care to bask in them.

Let’s see, what’s up with me?

I did another editorial pass on WANDERERS — it’s a book that, blessedly, is getting a lot of love from inside the publisher, and my last developmental and copy-edit came from Del Rey. Now it’s gone on to PRH readers, and so they wanted to do another pass on it to tighten it — not the plot, meaning, not a developmental edit, but a line edit that really cinches all the laces and tugs all the knots, in part because OKAY HEY I REALLY LOVE A GOOD METAPHOR, OKAY, and if I like one metaphor, you can damn sure believe I like TWO metaphors, and blessedly, my editor went in with a flashing, gleaming straight razor to cut those extraneous threads.

Thank fuck for editors, is what I’m saying. They have saved my bacon time and time again. Never let me get so big-headed that I believe editors are someone superfluous. Not every editor is amazing, to be clear, but when they’re good, they’re great.

Expecting a cover release soon for that book, bee tee dubs.

Oh and don’t worry, the book is still like, 270-some-thousand-words ha ha ha ohh no what have I done oh god oh shit. Ahem.

What else?

Working on a new novella — Interlude: The Tanager — for an upcoming collection with Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson. Our last one, Three Slices, has done very well (in no small part because Kevin is amazing and has a wealth of wonderful fans). That collection features an interstitial Miriam Black story set between The Cormorant and Thunderbird, and now this new collection Death & Honey, will have an interstitial Wren-focused story set between The Raptor & The Wren and Vultures. Vultures, the sixth and final book, comes out in January — and D&H will drop in Feb-Mar. Delilah, also one of my favorite writers, will also contribute to D&H, and may I just take a special moment to say if you need more fun in your life and you have not yet read Kill The Farm Boy, get on it (print | ebook).

I also finished outlines for a five-issue [REDACTED] comic book series.

Hopefully I can talk more about that soon.

Maybe at NYCC, which I’m going to!

Also, I’ll be in NYC this coming weekend —

At the Writer’s Digest Conference!

My schedule:

Saturday, 1:45pm, panel on SFF writing with Jeff Somers, Ann VanderMeer, E. J. Wenstrom, Diana Pho, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Jess Zafarris (Moderator).
Saturday, 4:15pm, craft workshop session with me on writing a Damn Fine Story — how to focus on character over plot and tell a compelling tale

And I’ll be floating around otherwise, so feel free to find me and there’s a cocktail reception and book signing that Saturday at 6:30pm, so come, drink some drinkies, I’ll devalue your books with my monkeyscrawl, we’ll have a few laughs, it’ll be great.

I think that’s it for now.

Here, have some more fond visual reminiscing of the PNW.

Nope, no macros in here, but… yay pretty?

(You can find the full album here, with a ton more photos. I add to it daily as I process pics.)