Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 77

Dan Koboldt: Nine Years A Penmonkey, And Nine Lessons

I’m pretty sure Dan is a Kobold, and just isn’t telling us — I mean, it’s right there in his name. I keep asking, “Are you a kobold? and he keeps saying, “Stop asking me that, I’m a human being,” and then I wink at him because I know what he means. (Whisper: he’s a kobold.) Anyway! Here Dan is, offering up a bevy of lessons — nine, in fact — to match his nine years of penmonkeying around.  Please to enjoy, fellow kobolds and non-kobolds.

* * *

When Chuck generously agreed to host another guest post from me on his blog, he suggested something other than a FIVE THINGS post. Which is fine with me. I’ve told you ten things about my books already, and I’d be hard-pressed to come up with more. Instead, as I wrap up my series with Harper Voyager, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned since I started writing fiction.

In other words, these are the lessons from my nine years as a penmonkey. Nine years, nine lessons. Let’s do this.

1. Write the damn book.

Most people fancy the idea of writing a book. I have a few friends and relatives – people I’ve known for years – who are pretty fired up about it. They come up with great new ideas for stories on a regular basis. They buy special pens and notebooks (or a Macbook Air). They try new outline formulas and write-or-die apps. But they fail to do the single most important thing for someone who wants to become an author, which is to write the damn book.

If you want to be an author, you have to write (and finish) an entire book. Until you do that, you can’t query agents, pitch editors, or ask celebrities for blurbs. You have nothing to offer these people until you have a completed manuscript. And yet, so many people can’t seem to do that. Sometimes, it’s because they’re trying to get everything perfect. Perfect characters, perfect setting, perfect storyline. But perfect is the enemy of done, my friends. If you want to get anywhere, you need to be done.

Another reason many people don’t write the book is simply that writing is hard. There are lots of reasons not to do it. You work a lot. You have kids. You need to go to the gym. You can’t find your laptop’s power cord. These are all perfectly legitimate reasons not to write. If one of them works for you and you’re happy not writing, you shouldn’t. God bless. This game isn’t for everyone.

People generally fall into one of two categories when it comes to writing a book: those who talk about it, and those who do it. Over time, I can usually figure out which category someone’s in, and it rarely changes.

I can’t make you write a book. Only you can do that.

2. Double your eyeballs.

When I first dabbled in fiction in 2008, I considered myself a competent writer. I’d been writing nonfiction for several years for my day job, and I was a voracious reader. I thought I’d be good, or at least decent, when I switched to fiction.

Nope. I was pretty bad. Even worse, I didn’t know it yet. Luckily, I was in an “Introduction to Fiction Writing” class that included peer critique. My classmates gently helped me realize how terrible my writing was. Their feedback told me some of the things that I could improve.

Like most writers, I have blinders on when it comes to my own writing. We need more eyeballs on it to ferret out the weak points. Not our mom’s eyeballs, either, but the eyeballs of someone who reads in your genre. Or better yet, writes in your genre. (Always ask before using someone’s eyeballs). I refer you to my recent guest post on the NaNoWriMo blog, How and Why to Use Critique Partners.

3. The Zombie Gauntlet of Rejection

A nice side benefit of peer critique is that it helps prepare you for the pain associated with the publishing journey. As you progress in your career, criticism and rejection will be constant companions.

Think of it as trying to get past a gauntlet of rejection-zombies to the safety of your home. When you begin querying, each rejection is like an undead hand slapping you in the face. It stings, but you keep moving. When your manuscript goes on submission to editors, the rejections have more weight to them. Each one is like a punch to the guts. Sometimes, it’ll knock the wind right out of you. It helps to have an agent and writer friends who will pick you up from the dirt so you can keep going.

If you manage to get past the editor zombies, you’ve reached the door. But the acquisitions board has locked it from the other side. Many author dreams die on this threshold. Maybe you do better, and kick down that door to get published. That’s why they call it breaking in.

Even after you break in, your problems aren’t over. You simply trade them for a set of new ones. If you want to survive, you have to be mentally tough enough to take these knocks and keep going. And you need a support network of good friends to help you stay sane.

4. Luck versus persistence.

Luck matters a lot more than it should in this game. You can write a fantastic book that lands a great agent. The agent knows the perfect editor for it. Maybe that editor loves it and makes you a great offer. Or, maybe that editor signed a similar book last month, so the answer is no. Your fate, hanging in the balance, and it all comes down to luck. Nothing you can do about it.

But there’s another factor at play. Persistence. This is something you DO control, and it’s also what separates published authors from failed ones. If an agent rejects your query, send it to five more. If your first book doesn’t get a book deal, write a second one (but not a sequel). If your first novel doesn’t garner the sales or reviews or awards that you’d like, try again.

You can’t control luck, but you can be stubbornly persistent. Most successful authors are.

5. Publishing is dead! Long live publishing!

Bloggers and podcasters love to discuss the state of the publishing industry. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either stronger than ever or plunging toward certain death. Generally it’s the latter, because bad/shocking news gets more attention. That’s why you hear more about teenagers dying in car crashes than elderly people going in their sleep. When I was a new author trying to break in, I gave these “publishing pundits” too much stock. I was genuinely concerned that by the time my debut was published, physical bookstores would no longer exist.

The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Yes, the publishing industry has undergone some major changes, especially in the past two decades. Major publishers have been consolidated into five big entities. More recently, the introduction of e-readers like the Kindle fueled the rapid growth of e-books. Brick-and-mortar booksellers like Barnes & Noble are struggling to adapt to a world in which more and more consumers shop online. So are most physical retailers, by the way. Google “holiday sales 2017” if you need convincing.

The publishing industry is not dying. It is evolving. People still buy books. They just do it online because you don’t need pants to shop online. People still visit libraries, but now they can use their library cards to borrow e-books and audiobooks. People still read, but they do it on their phones.

Change is the way of the world. Smart authors, agents, and publishers adapt and survive. Those who don’t adapt will eventually fade away. It’s that simple.

6. Obscurity is the enemy

This is not to say that the success of any author (or book) is guaranteed. There has never been more competition for readers or attention, especially because consolidation has happened on the retail side as well. Thanks to e-books, most titles will never go out of print, at least digitally. The challenge is ensuring that they continue to reach new readers.

There is a form of peculiar, unknowable black magic called Sales Rank. No one truly understands the meaning of this number, but its job is to make you feel the sting of obscurity. It will spike. It will fade. It will do little dances that make authors begin to question their sanity. Ignore this dark sorcery, and you’ll be much happier.

There are two powerful weapons that aid authors in the fight against obscurity. The first is your own personal hustle: your ability to hand-sell your book to a co-worker or con-goer or the guy next to you on an airplane. This is a subtle art that takes time and practice, but ultimately can keep your book selling. The fact that you’ve written and published a book is no small achievement. Many people will read it just because of that.

The other powerful weapon is your membership in the guild of penmonkeys. You didn’t know there was a guild? Well, welcome aboard. Please send your membership fees to Chuck. Acceptable forms of payment include beaver skins, undead souls, and bees.

The guild means that you, as an author, have great power to support the work of other penmonkeys. Hand-sell their books. Review their books. Give them a voice on your platform. Others will do the same for you when it’s your turn.

7. There’s a lot you can’t change

There are many things that affect an author’s career (for better or worse) that we simply can’t change. Some of the things authors don’t control include:

The economy
Market trends and forces
Reviews
Awards
Any company they don’t own, such as Twitter

It’s frustrating, because as humans we like the idea that our fate is on our own hands. In many cases, it’s not. The sooner you accept that – and worry about the things that you CAN control – the happier you’ll be.

8. Comparison is the thief of joy

One of the easiest ways to become unhappy is to compare yourself to others. There will always be authors who write faster than you, get bigger advances, sell more books, and win more awards than you. You might think that some of those authors aren’t as good as you, and maybe you’re right. It doesn’t matter. Pointing it out, complaining about it, or letting the unfairness of the world bother you will not accomplish anything.

Comparison will steal your joy away. Don’t let it. Grab onto your joy, squeeze it tightly, and hit anyone who tries to take it with an axe. If you accomplish anything as a writer in these difficult times, you should celebrate. You’ll be much happier if you do.

9. Don’t be a dick

I recently joined a private discussion forum for authors where there’s one rule: don’t be a dick. Basically, that means don’t criticize when it’s not your place. Don’t marginalize or insult people because of their gender, race, orientation, or appearance. Don’t be rude. Don’t take advantage of people. It’s a simple rule for life, but some people still have trouble with it.

No one likes it when you’re a dick. YOU might feel better, but that feeling will dissipate rather quickly. However, the people who have seen you be a dick, or worse, been the target of your dick-ness, will remember it for a long time. Probably forever.

If you don’t believe in karma or doing the right thing, let me appeal to your sense of ambition. It’s a small world and an even smaller industry. When you’re a dick, word gets around. Sometimes it gets around very publicly. Odds are, you will offend someone who (either now or someday) can influence your career. Maybe they’re a book reviewer. Maybe they read slush for a magazine. Maybe they sit on an acquisitions board for a publisher that’s considering your next book. If you’re a dick to people, it will come back to bite you. Guaranteed.

You might not even know that it’s come back to bite you. No editor will end a rejection e-mail with “I was ready to buy this, until I remembered that you’re a dick.” No convention will tell you that you have not been selected as a guest of honor due to your history of dick behavior. Instead, these things just won’t happen for you. They will happen for other authors who follow the golden rule. Don’t be a dick.

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Dan Koboldt is a genetics researcher and fantasy/science fiction author from the Midwest. He is the author of the Gateway to Alissia series (Harper Voyager) about a Las Vegas magician who infiltrates a medieval world. He is currently editing Putting the Science in Fiction, (Writers Digest), a reference for writers slated for release in Fall 2018.

By day, Dan is a genetics researcher at a major children’s hospital. He has co-authored more than 70 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. He lives with his wife, daughter, and twin boys in Ohio.

Dan Koboldt: Website | Twitter

The World Awakening: Books2Read

 

In Which I Appear On Launch, John August’s Bookish Podcast!

PSST.

So, John August — screenwriter extraordinaire and also novelist behind the middle grade book, Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire — has a shiny new podcast called Launch, which is about, well, launching a book, and it’s a snazzy snout-to-tail examination of the many processes behind writing and publishing a book. Well, John invited me onto the most recent podcast — have I mentioned that I am a fortunate soul? — to answer some of his listener questions about those many processes. So go right now and give a listen.

Thanks to John for having me!

Go listen, or I will stare at you very crossly.

*stares*

*waits*

*stares harder*

Macro Monday Soon Heads West, Young Man

We had a very nice snow this weekend, in that it dropped six inches on the ground, two on paved surfaces, was good for snowballs and snowmen, and hot chocolate and sledding, and then the day got warm and a lot of it went away.

I took a shot of a snowflake, seen above — it looked like a tiny little person hanging for dear life. I snapped the shot, and then my breath melted the icy tether holding it to the larger snowclump, and the little snowflake tumbled to the earth, where it was eaten by sharks.

Ice sharks.

Okay, I don’t know if there were ice sharks down there, I didn’t look.

WHATEVER.

Don’t @ me.

Anyway! What else is up.

I have a cold. So that’s nice. I mean, almost literally, it’s nice, because I guess it could’ve been the flu? I suspect I caught it from my six-year-old, who during dinner a few nights ago basically coughed on my food. He’s usually pretty good about controlling his aerosolized illness, but I dunno if the cough was a surprise or he was just like, “Fuck it, I’m sick, so you’re sick, *hackptoo*” but here we are, and now I’m sick.

So, to remind you, I’ll be at EMERALD CITY COMICCON starting next week. And that means it is time to reveal my schedule!

*pulls back curtain*

*blood and locusts*

Ha ha wrong curtain hold on

*pulls back different curtain*

*schedule is revealed!*

You can find a schedule for me here, but I don’t think it’s complete.

Here is a much better, more intimate look at my schedule.

*bats eyelashes*

*plays sex jazz*

Thursday, March 1

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

SIGNING

Location: PRH Booth #1610 (Level 4)

6:00 PM – 7:00? PM

OFF-SITE — signing and panel at Brick & Mortar Books in Redmond, WA, with Fonda Lee and Alex Marshall

Location: Brick & Mortar Books, 7430 164th Ave NE suite B105, Redmond, WA

Friday, March 2

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM

PANEL: Pop Culture Throwdown

Me! Marko Kloos! Kevin Hearne! Cherie Priest! Mia Garcia! Django Wexler! Amy Bartol!

Location: WSCC 603

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM

SIGNING

Location: Writers Block – Autographing Table?

5:15 PM – 6:15 PM

PANEL: The Universe of Star Wars

Me! Delilah S. Dawson! Amanda Cherry! EK Johnston! Kevin J. Anderson! And more.

Location: WSCC 611

7:00 PM – 11:00 PM

WorldBuilders Party

Location: WSCC Room 3AB

(You should totally come to this! Pay in to charity, play games with a bunch of authors and creators. I’ll be running a game of Balderdash, baby. Old-school liary liar-faced game! Also because I’m way way behind on playing any modern board games! Shut up!)

Saturday, March 3

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

PANEL: Star Wars Books

Me! Delilah Dawson! John Jackson Miller!

Location: WSCC 611

5:15 PM – 6:00 PM

POST-PANEL SIGNING

Location: Writers Block – Autographing Table?

Sunday March 4

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

SIGNING

Location: PRH Booth #1610 (Level 4)

1:15 PM – 2:15 PM

PANEL: Writing the Future

Me! Jason Hough! Annalee Newitz! AdriAnne Strickland! Sylvain Neuvel! Michael Miller!

Location: WSCC 603

2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

POST-PANEL SIGNING

Location: Writers Block – Autographing Table?

So, there you go. That’s my schedule.

After that’s over, I will be running a writing workshop for the Austin Romance Writers of America (ARWA!) on Saturday, the 24th.

Then it’s Raven Con and PHX Comic Fest and, you know, some other fun stuff.

See you on the flipswitch, booty-scooters. Is that the hip lingo? Are the kids saying that to one another? No? Shit.

Flash Fiction Challenge: A World Without Guns

Tough challenge after this week’s news — but I’ve seen some folks talk about what fiction can do or say about the (yet another) school shooting, and I think genre fiction has a chance to do something or say something interesting regarding it. Science-fiction, for instance, pretends to be about our future but it’s nearly always about our present.

So, your job is to compose a piece of flash fiction where guns are gone — for whatever reason, made illegal, never been invented, use your imagination. This is primed for sci-fi, but feel free to find a way to make it work as fantasy or horror or XYZ genre, too.

Length: You have ~1500 words.

Due by: Friday, Feb 23rd, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

My Cup Runneth Over: Quick Thoughts On Managing Anxiety

As I have noted in the past, I got me some anxiety.

Honestly, it’s hard not to, right now. The news is traditionally not a place you go for Good Feelings, but these days you turn on the TV for fifteen seconds or you give one quick scroll through Twitter and it’s a fucking assault, isn’t it? EVERYTHING WAS BAD AND HAS NOW COMPLETED ITS POKEMON-LIKE EVOLUTION TO A FULL-BLOWN NIGHTMARE, the news will have you know. What did Trump do today? you think to yourself, and then the news answers, THE PRESIDENT HAS GUARANTEED A NEW FOOD PROGRAM FOR THE POOR IN WHICH THEY ARE FED THE OTHER POOR WHO DIED IN THE HUNGER GAMES, WHICH IS LITERALLY JUST GAMES WHERE HUNGRY PEOPLE FIGHT OVER FAST FOOD, OH ALSO, KANSAS IS BEING EVACUATED AND IS NOW A MASSIVE BATTLEGROUND STADIUM FOR THE HUNGER GAMES, MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR, BUT THEY WON’T BE, UNLESS YOU’RE RICH

P.S. IN 25 YEARS NEW YORK CITY IS GOING TO BE UNDERWATER

P.P.S. DOGS ARE GOING EXTINCT AND CHOCOLATE IS NOW POISON

P.P.S.S. ELON MUSK HAS TAKEN HIS ANDROID SEX HAREM AND FUCKED OFF TO MARS, AND BY THE WAY, THE MISSILES ARE FALLING AND THAT BOSTON DYNAMICS DOOR-OPENING ROBO-DOG IS GOING TO HUNT YOU THROUGH THE WASTELAND, BLACK MIRROR-STYLE

So, it’s a very good way to feel bad.

In fact, it’s a very good way to trigger one’s anxiety. (For me, anxiety tends to manifest first as a physical sensation — like a feeling of ants somewhere in the space between my heart and my stomach — and then as a kind of pattern of obsessive thinking and hypervigilance. Hypervigilance in this case being a whole lot like tonguing a broken tooth to see if it’s still broken, which only causes it more pain, but yet there you go, keep on poking at it.)

(Poke poke poke. Ow. Poke poke poke. OW.)

And of course, anxiety exists even on good days. It’s not just a thing that happens when the world is bad — it can happen like clear sky turbulence, everything’s going along fine, and then suddenly OH MY GOD I’M DYING OF CANCER or WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EVERYONE FINALLY FIGURES OUT I’M A FRAUD and there you are, alone and shaking like a pee-filled chihuahua on a cold winter’s evening. There’s also anxiety related to my writing career — and I expect that anxiety and depression are common in creative folk, though I also suspect it’s a chicken-and-egg question. We live so completely in our heads, are we more prone to anxiety and depression, or is there some relationship between the two?

Who the hell knows?

Anxiety is a demon. It’s a chattering, vicious monkey. It’s a bag of gut-worms.

But, I deal with it.

And I thought I’d talk a little bit more about how I deal with it, and how I deal with it has a lot to do with how I view it.

Now, the caveat here is, as always, I am not a Certified Mindologist. You should not take anything I say with any kind of medical backing. I am not an expert on this subject; I am merely an expert on the subject of Me (and even there, my expertise is occasionally dubious).

Part of what inspired me to talk about this is this tweet from a friend, Mallory O’Meara —

Anxiety pals, remember – it’s not a switch that turns ON or OFF. It’s a dial that you can learn how to turn down.

— Mallory O’Meara (@malloryomeara) February 7, 2018

I like that metaphor. Metaphors help me think of the world in different ways, and help me come at problems from unexpected directions because, ultimately, metaphors are about making unexpected connections between things.

Here is the metaphor I tend to use regarding anxiety, and to look at that metaphor, it’s first necessary to look at another medical issue:

I’ve got allergies, and one of the ways that allergies have been described to me by doctors is that we all have an imaginary cup, and exposure to allergens fills up that cup, and if the cup is overfull and spills over, you must endure a proper allergic reaction. Now for me, that reaction isn’t life-threatening as it would be for some, but rather, it’s just irritating. I can be around a cat for just so long, and then my cup runneth over — and next thing I know, my eyes itch, my throat feels tight, I sneeze, and the longer I remain, the worse it gets. Eyes go puffy, nose goes full spigot, throat feels like it’s being bitten by tiny bugs, etc.

Being allergic to something is nobody’s fault, really. It’s just a thing that happens.

Anxiety is the same way.

And anxiety is, to me, like being allergic to, y’know —

*gesticulates toward the entire world*

All of that.

And —

*taps middle of forehead*

All of this too.

Meaning, you have an emotionally inflammatory response to — well, all kinds of things. It can be everything. It might only be some things. We all have triggers, and some of those triggers are expected, some of them are unexpected.

And, just like with allergies, we have a cup.

I like to suspect that this is true for everyone — everyone has this kind of emotional, psychological cup available to them, and the normal events of a normal day fill that cup up little by little. Traffic in the morning, add some to the cup. Doctor’s appointment, add more to the cup. Some good news at work, maybe pour a little back out of the cup. Some people are fortunate, I believe, to have buckets instead of cups: they were born with larger reservoirs of fortitude, or perhaps trained themselves to that point.

Others have smaller cups.

Cups that fill easily and spill over more often.

I like to think those people are people with anxiety.

So, for me, anxiety becomes less a thing to conquer and more a thing to mitigate — you find the things that fill the cup quickly, and you make effort to avoid those things. You also find the things that can help you pour some back out, and you make the effort to do those things, too. Like, okay, looking at the news is probably a thing that fills up the cup — honestly, I have to expect it fills up the cup for everybody, not just anxiety-sufferers — so, you either need to stop looking at it, or, if you’re going to (“I looked at the trap, Ray”), you need to countermand it with ways of emptying that cup, too. Balance it out with nice things. Funny stuff or doing some art or some meditation or hunting your enemies through the woods with an axe — every solution should be tailored to you, not to me, you have to find what works. What empties your cup?

(And by the way, you have to really attune yourself to this. “A thing I like to do” is not automagically synonymous with “a thing that empties the cup.” Certain video games and or media consumption can fill the cup rather than emptying it, even though I technically feel good about the thing I’m doing. Going out and taking photos is meditative for me, so I try to do it to empty the cup. I like coffee a whole lot, and it helps me write, but both coffee and writing do not empty the cup, really. You have to be astute, aware, and constantly measure and re-measure how you feel after Doing A Thing to see what effect it has on the Cup of Anxiety inside your heart.)

This isn’t an exhortation to JUST GO OUT INTO NATURE BECAUSE IT’S THE BEST MEDICINE, either — maybe the best medicine for you is actual medicine. Anxiety meds? No shame. You do what you gotta. Therapy? Also good in whatever form that takes for you. I’m not your boss. At least, not in this timeline. In Timeline 47199-B, I am your boss, however, and I’ll have you know that I know you stole my hole-punch, you motherfucker.

Point is, this is normal, you’re not alone, and if you treat this like it’s an average run-of-the-mill problem, I think you gain some power over it instead of letting it be this mythic thing, this monstrous wave, this all-consuming identity. It’s not that, it’s just a disorder, like allergies, that can be managed up or down. You don’t control it, precisely, but it also doesn’t control you — you can balance the scales and file down the monster’s teeth.

Know what fills the cup.

Know what empties the cup.

Practice self-care accordingly.

Have a nice day.

* * *

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THE RAPTOR & THE WREN: Miriam Black, Book Five

Miriam Black, in lockstep with death, continues on her quest to control her own fate!

Having been desperate to rid herself of her psychic powers, Miriam now finds herself armed with the solution — a seemingly impossible one. But Miriam’s past is catching up to her, just as she’s trying to leave it behind. A copy-cat killer has caught the public’s attention. An old nemesis is back from the dead. And Louis, the ex she still loves, will commit an unforgivable act if she doesn’t change the future. 

Miriam knows that only a great sacrifice is enough to counter fate. Can she save Louis, stop the killer, and survive? 

Hunted and haunted, Miriam is coming to a crossroads, and nothing is going to stand in her way, not even the Trespasser.

Indiebound  |  Amazon  |  B&N

Macro Monday Shells Shellseas On The Shoresea

Macro Monday would also very much prefer to be somewhere beachy and warm instead of this cold damp. (Though, I’ll note, I do kinda like the foggy Twin Peaks vibe our woods have been giving off lately.)

I don’t have much to put here — I have various snidbits of news, none of which I can properly share, as yet, so mostly I’m sitting here biting a belt, wincing as I say nothing. Meanwhile, if I’ve been a bit scarce here recently, it’s because I’m face down in the Editing Trench with Wanderers. Currently, I’m on page 400 of… *checks document* 1100 which ha ha ha is only 700 pages to go, that’s fine, I’m sure that’s fine.

So, that’s where I’m at.

Waiting on Vultures edits, soon.

Here’s a nice review of The Raptor & The Wren from Adventures in Poor Taste (excerpted below, click link for whole enchilada):

The Raptor and the Wren pulls off a near perfect balance of new revelations connecting with prior knowledge and events. Story-wise, it’s another fantastic chapter in Miriam’s unending (and possibly futile) quest to send her demons back to where they came from. As always, the supporting cast is brilliant, terrifying, and tragic. Just like her.

Also, if you thought the ending to the Thunderbird made you mad, then make sure you have something to hit and/or squeeze after the last page of this one.

Also, here’s a couple reviews of Damn Fine Story.

This one, from Milliebot Reads:

“Wendig is comical and relatable, yet delivers excellent writing advice. Oftentimes writing guides can be dry, or maybe too full of personal experience to be helpful (depending on what style works for you). Wendig’s book is primarily filled with his “rules” and the pop culture examples he uses to help illustrate them – which I found insanely useful – and then a few personal moments here and there. I’ve never enjoyed a writing guide so much before.”

And another, from Reads & Reels:

“For me, this guide is a must-read, and a must-reread, that will serve as a reference right near my writing desk. Wendig puts his unique spin on some craft techniques you may already be familiar with. I found myself making notes and underlining valuable passages throughout the book, but even more so in the second half. The section on the building blocks of tension, the one on character motivation—I can’t thank Wendig enough for those. He covers almost every aspect of craft, including pacing, dialogue, character arcs, themes…and symbols, motifs—and on and on. Get your highlighter handy!”

SO YAY BOOKS.

Have a great week, humans.

AND FUCK YOU, ROBOTS

YEAH I SAID IT

The Raptor & The Wren: print | ebook

Damn Fine Story: print | ebook

Yes, You Can Hiss Without Sibilance

This is for you writers and copy-editors out there, since I see it pop up from time to time on YE OLDE TWITTERS, so here is my opinion as a writer (though most certainly not an editor) —

Yes, goddamnit, you can jolly well “hiss” something without there being a sibilant sound (i.e. an “s-sound”) associated with it.

If you’re a copy-editor who unswervingly believes this, that’s nice, but weird, and you should maybe uncurl your pale, bloodless fingers from the idea for five minutes to hear my take on it. And put down that red pen. I know you want to stab me with it.

So. Hiss.

Some copy-editors say that to hiss something, a character must be hissing something with the letter S in it, as in, “I STUDIOUSLY ASSERTED MY DISSERTATION ON THE SUBJECT OF ASSONANCE IN THE SONG STYLINGS OF PHIL COLLINS’ SUSSUDIO, STEVEN,” Mary hissed.

But, is that accurate?

I SSSSSAY NAY, IT ISSSSS NOT.

Let’s assume that Merriam-Webster is a fair authority, yeah?

Go to their definition of hiss, please.

You will note that their definitions include:

1: to express disapproval of by hissing

2: to utter or whisper angrily or threateningly and with a hiss

Just in case we’re not clear, let’s look at their sample sentences, one of which is:

‘“Leave me alone!” he hissed.’

See? It’s okay. Some people get caught up in the literal definition where it requires sibilance — but even there, you’re in tricky territory, because writing fiction is not like writing a fucking software manual. Not everything has to be literal. If I say someone growled something, they don’t first have to be a wolf or a fucking Yeti to do that. When I say, “We dug up new information,” it doesn’t require a literal shovel, nor is a backhoe required when I say, “She dug the idea.” We all understand she liked the idea, not that she had to excavate it physically. And when we say that someone hissed something, we do not explicitly require them to have snakily-sibilantly-hissed it at them. Because language is a fucking playground and we can have some fun with it. We can attempt to evoke with metaphorical or phrasal verbs. Language is fluid. It shifts and changes. So must our expectations of it.

Now, of course, the caveat to that, dear writers, is you need to calm down a little, too. Everything can’t be HISSED GROWLED SNARLED SPAT EJACULATED. Dialogue tags are best when minimal. Evocative language is at its greatest effect when used sparingly. It’s not a machine gun, you don’t need to chew up scenery with it.

Though, hey, maybe that’s your style, I dunno.

Point is then to know what is your style, your voice, and what is not. You shouldn’t rely on bad writing or error-filled prose by calling it your ‘style,’ but you also can’t lean too heavily on technically perfect writing, because technically perfect writing is bland as unpainted drywall.

Increasingly, as I deepen this writing career of mine, I have learned more and more to cultivate the intuition necessary to know what darlings must be killed…

…but also, what hills you gotta die on.

Anyway! All this is just my opinion, and you are free to discard it.

But I say, writers, use hiss, use it sparingly, and use it even without sibilance.

And copy-editors, it’s good to check our shit, thank you, you do the good work — but on this one, maybe relax just a little tiny itty-bitty bit. Because I’m gonna stet the shit out of it anyway.

* * *

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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.

Out now!

Indiebound  |  Amazon  |  B&N

Flash Fiction Challenge: Strange Photos

Here is your challenge this week.

Go to Google.

Go to Google IMAGES.

Type in “Strange Photos.”

You will find a panoply of, well, weird-ass images.

Pick one.

Use it as inspiration for a piece of flash fiction. (In the fiction, make sure to link to the photo or post to page, with all credit to photographers or designers, please.)

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, 2/16 noon EST

Post at your online space.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

Brooke Bolander: FIVE THINGS I LEARNED WHILE WRITING THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING

[image error]In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

* * *

PATIENCE WILL SAVE YOUR ASS

I originally got the idea for this book back in the misty Before Times of 2013 or thereabouts, when the world was slightly simpler. Colours back then were brighter. Birdsong was louder. People went about their business without worrying if they and everyone they loved were under imminent risk of re-enacting Sarah Connor’s dream sequence from T2 because a demented elderly version of Veruca Salt had thrown a spitball at the wrong world leader’s head.

Setting the scene, folks. It’s hard to remember, but there was a Before Time.

In those days, before the seas bent and the oceans drank Melmac, Twitter was a lot more fun. We talked about a lot of stuff that wasn’t vitally important or vitally depressing. One afternoon, a fellow writer friend of mine, the lovely and talented Helena Bell, took a poll asking what she should write about next. The choices, so far as I recall, included:

– Elephants

– Radium poisoning

– Painting

Me being the sassy little contrarian I have always been and will probably be unto my gravestone, I said, “Well, why not all of them?”

And then the idea alarm went off in my head. It sounds a lot like the “Ironside” sting from Kill Bill, for the record.

“… Wait. Shit, no, hang on, I think I want to do that. Can I do that?”

I studied History & Archaeology at university, and my subconscious is a drifting garbage barge of weird historical facts. Occasionally my brain, gull-like, will swoop down and pluck one of these tasty noms half-buried out of the muck. If I’m lucky, it may come up with a couple. Occasionally I think I can make them work together and after much gnashing of teeth and weeping of blood realize I can’t. Seagulls aren’t great gourmands, unless they’re some kind of crazy Ratatouille seagull working part-time in a fancy cocktail bar and boy, that might even be more unsanitary than a rat chef.

In this case, it was a little of both. I knew about the story of Topsy, the elephant electrocuted at Coney Island in 1903. I knew about the Radium Girls, the factory workers of New Jersey & Illinois who succumbed to radiation sickness after their employers let them ingest toxic radium-laced paint in the of their jobs. I had seen elephants wield paintbrushes in their trunks as deftly and delicately as any human artist, trained to paint ‘art’ for tourists and zoo-goers. All these things bubbled to the surface and combined and I knew I had the seeds of a story.

But it wasn’t enough yet. Cool ideas are great. In the age of the Internet, they’re frickin’ everywhere. You can’t click an Atlas Obscura article without getting bombarded by interesting facts that would make a bomb-ass story handled the right way. Here’s the thing, though: That doesn’t always mean you should write a story about them. There has to be more to a story than HERE IS A FACT WITH A HASTILY GLUED-TOGETHER STORY THROWN OVER IT, ISN’T THAT RAD? I’ve read those stories before, and while I get the impulse, nay, the need, to turn your favorite fact about Teddy Roosevelt into a story, a lot of times they’re rushed and aren’t great. The idea has to work in service of the story, not the other way around.

I wrote a couple of early drafts, and they were garbage. The seagull/giant industrial ACME magnet/Katamari of my brain had not collected the right themes, throughlines, and critical plot mass to turn it from a weird mishmash of historical facts into a story worth writing. So I trunked it. I waited. I let it ferment like the finest Kentucky moonshine, the choicest prison hooch. Either it would turn into something, I figured, or it wouldn’t.

it took THREE YEARS for things to finally come together. Three. Fuckin’. Years.

Writing is not a job for the impatient, but I try not to let that stop me. Because then I sat down and wrote it all in two weeks and it was done and it wasn’t a short story, it was a BOOK, and no extensive rewrites were called for. But it definitely taught me to let things mature in their own damn time, rather than rushing out something sloppy and forgettable just to have it done.

That brain-seagull makes a mean cocktail if you let it, turns out.

RAY CATS. JUST—RAY CATS.

A few things finally pushed the initial idea over the edge from “weird and mildly interesting mashup of historical events I desperately want to write about” into a shape and a form that didn’t look like it had gone through a telepod making out with a camel spider. One was the world at large turning from “kinda fucked, needs work” to “WELCOME TO YOUR 24/7 WAKING NIGHTMARE.” I dunno about you, Dear Reader, but it has made me dedicate a lot more thinky-thoughts to the old classics: The pervasive evils of capitalism, crushing feelings of powerlessness, women’s anger, and acts of rebellion and solidarity. Stuff that was already there in massive quanitites, but which suddenly demands a lot more space in my brain a lot more of the time. I also read a really great book on the history of uranium by Tom Zoellner, which you should pick up even if you think you don’t give a good god-damn about uranium. I didn’t! And now look at me, married to a hunk of uranium ore.

Zoellner’s book has a chapter on the ongoing issue scientists have come up against in leaving a warning sign for future generations regarding the heaps and heaps of nuclear waste we still have no solution to discarding other than “I dunno, grab a shovel, whatever.” You’ve probably heard about it before, but if not, it’s a deeply interesting topic that gets everybody from folklorists to anthropologists to historians to linguists involved in its orbit.

Oh, and color-changing cats. Which is the bit I didn’t previously know about, because we don’t talk about just how brilliantly batshit cuckoo bananapants some of the solutions posited have been.

At some point during the early ‘80s—when, I might point out, there was a rather heroic amount of cocaine floating around in the atmosphere—a French writer and an Italian semiotician put their heads together and came up with an idea. Simplified, they figured that humans fuckin’ love them some kitty cats and that doesn’t look likely to change at any time in either the near or distant future. If scientists could somehow breed cats whose coats changed colour when in proximity to radioactive materials, the story of these “ray cats” could be passed down in humanity’s folkloric tradition. Stories and songs would spread the legend and the warning, outlasting scientific knowledge and maybe even civilizations. There’s a great and deeply amusing little documentary about it at The Ray Cat Solution ; it is totally worth 15 minutes of your grim daily slog.

For a number of reasons not even including the part where flashy colour-changing cats would have to be genetically engineered, the whole thing has never seriously caught on with other semioticians. But coming across the tale of the Ray Cat Solution made me think about a lot of things—how we twist stories to our use, how we use animals, how the stories that make up history are passed down and how they shape the narratives of our cultures. Boom, as they say, went the dynamite.

EDISON DIDN’T HAVE A DANG THING TO DO WITH TOPSY, BUT AS USUAL HAS BEEN POSTHUMOUSLY TAKING CREDIT FOR IT

Everything you know about Thomas Edison’s involvement in Topsy’s death is probably horseshit.

The story most of us know is more or less this one: During the War of the Currents, Thomas Alva Edison, noted asshole inventor and archfiend rival slash fucker-overer of Nikola Tesla, electrocuted a disgraced circus elephant—Topsy—and filmed the entire thing to prove that alternating current was way more dangerous than direct. Parts of this are absolutely true. Edison was an A-plus, major league asshole and all-around bad human being who screwed many over during his long and illustrious career. In 1888 he oversaw the electrocution of four calves and a horse at his West Orange laboratory and made sure the members of the press were there to witness it as well. It was cruel and self-serving and the experiment was also used in future development of the electric chair. All well-known, nasty Edison stuff.

Here’s the catch: Topsy’s execution didn’t take place for another fifteen years, well after the War of the Currents and Edison’s crusade had petered out. As far as anyone can tell, Thomas Edison wasn’t even in the crowd that day to see her die. Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, the two showboating owners of Topsy and Coney Island’s then under-construction Luna Park, saw a way to both get rid of the troublesome elephant and drum up publicity for the park’s opening. The cultural confusion arises from Edison’s past as an ardent animal-fryer, combined with the fact that the film crew who shot what would later be known as Electrocuting an Elephant worked for the Edison Film Company.

So, yeah, Edison was a dick, but in this one instance his dickishness had nothing to do with whether or not Topsy lived or died. Other factors and other men signed her sad fate.

RADIUM CONDOMS ARE A THING THAT EXISTED, AND YOUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS PRESUMABLY BOUGHT AND USED THEM

I knew about the radium craze of the early 20th century. I knew about the tonic waters, the soaps, and the hot springs where people would go to have a nice irradiated soak. What I did not know about—and may God forgive me for this sad oversight—was the radium-laced condoms.

So, backstory: Before people realized that in large enough doses it would eventually snuff you like a candle, radium was considered a healthful and beneficial element. Nobody was quite sure HOW it benefited the human body, or to what degree, but it was new, it was radioactive when that word meant about as much to people as ‘organic’ does today, and it occasionally glowed in the goddamned dark. That was more than enough cause to make it an additive and a selling point in everything from chocolate bars to cigarettes to patent medicines. It was like probiotics, if probiotics eventually replaced the marrow in your bones and murdered you.

And, of course, it was in condoms. Because what good was science if Mankind could not insert Himself into it?

Yes, Nutex actually sold radium-dosed condoms from roughly 1927 until 1940, when the FTC shut them down for ‘false and misleading’ advertising regarding the disease-preventing properties of their product. Now, I’m pretty sure by 1940 the dangers of putting radium into literally everything were more or less known. In 1932 a fabulously rich industrialist’s scion named Eben Byers died from drinking too much radium-laced tonic water and was eulogized by the Wall Street Journal, who ran his story with the headline “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off”. The first of the sad trials of the Radium Girls was settled in 1928, and the last, in Illinois, didn’t come to a close until 1938.

But it won’t prevent syphilis any better than your competitiors! Stop telling people that! Oh, and (cough) also it may make your junk fall off.

TOPSY THE UNDEAD ELEPHANT WILL HAVE HER REVENGE ON CONEY ISLAND

I have gone on about this at LENGTH in many other places across the Internet, because it’s my favorite thing that I learned and also I learned it too late in the process to actually use it in the book. Which is maddening. I don’t know WHERE I would have used it, but when life gives you furious spectral elephant ghosts in the historical record, you damn well find a place for them to go.

But I didn’t. It’s all on me. And now I have to tell literally everyone I meet about Topsy’s vengeful spirit and how she roams the streets of Coney Island seeking, if not revenge, then the opportunity to scare the bejesus outta some people.

Topsy was electrocuted on January 4th, 1903. A taxidermist took her skin, her legs were turned into umbrella stands, and her 300-lb skull was buried on site. The crowd dispersed and that was that, until a year later when workmen at Luna Park began to see some seriously weird shit late at night.

Quoth the Bristol Banner from March 4th, 1904—and I’m quoting the blurb in is entirety because there is no possible way anything I could write would match up to the real deal:

Elephant’s Ghost Haunts Coney Island and Seeks Revenge on Destroyer!

There’s a ghost at Coney Island—an astral body of huge dimensions that treads the windswept streets of Luna Park, and with clankering chains and hollow bellows turns the heart of the hibernating hot-tamale man to ice. It is the specter of Topsy, the unruly elephant which was electrocuted, come back from the elephant hades to wreak vengeance for its untimely taking off. The apparition made its appearance last Wednesday night, just as the clock in the sleeping quarters of the workmen in Luna Park was striking 12. Antonio PussianI, a ditch digger, saw it first. He fainted. A comrade opened one eye and was temporarily paralyzed. The huge form stood over him, its feet wide apart and its trunk issuing sparks of fire. The eyes blazed, then faded. The place was in an uproar in an instant. Several others witnessed the uncanny thing’s exit and heard shrill trumpetings rising and dying away on the wind, and the rattle of chains. On the following night, the Frankfurter man was seen to drop on his knees on Tilyou’s Walk. He was so scared that he couldn’t tell of the elephant for an hour afterward.

Then reports came in from other places. They were not restful. As the elephant took advantage of privileges accorded to ghosts, doors were no bar to him. He just went through without noticeable squeezing. One laborer, who had drunk two bottles of chianti, said he had seen the beast doing trapeze acts on the tight wire between the top of the chutes and the electric tower. He hung by his trunk and wigged his toes in the vicinity of the base of his proboscis, he said. He is not believed.

Yesterday six laborers, headed by Pucciani, waited upon Hugh Thomas, who sent Topsy into another world, and demanded their pay. Mr. Thomas said the ghost was all hocus pocus, but he paid the men off and came to the city. He’s here yet. At last accounts the elephant was fussing around for its destroyer.

Nobody can ever tell me historical research is boring ever again. I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear it. History is AMAZING, and sometimes it is filled with vengeful ghost elephants.

* * *

Brooke Bolander writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy or general all-around weirdness. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Uncanny, Tor.com, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a repeat finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards, much to her unending bafflement. She currently resides in Brooklyn and has the haircut to prove it.

Brooke Bolander: Website | Twitter

The Only Harmless Great Thing: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Macro Monday Is Made Of Birds

YAY THE EAGLES WON THE SUPERBOWL

GO BIRDS

GO IGGLES

There, I have fulfilled my contractually-obligated Philadelphia-area enthusiasm.  Above is a picture of not just a bald eagle, but a motherfucking sea eagle — this one seen in Brisbane at the koala place. Whatever the koala place is called. There’s a place with koalas, and you go there on a boat, and then it’s not just koalas. No, I’m not going to Google it, we’ll just call it… mmm, Koalatown. Or Koalaopolis.

*cue Kristen Bell saying, This is the Koala Place*

Actually, since we’re showing off birds, here are more raptor birds —

(Including, of course, some very Superb Owls.)

This is a Kestral, which is a great name and I think I’m going to change my name to it, Kestral Wendig, don’t @ me.

Here’s Steve, who is obviously high as shit on mice right now —

Steve obviously has a real problem.

All this is of course a very good segue into, HEY, DON’T FORGET, THE RAPTOR & THE WREN IS OUT, YOU WACKY KIDS. Seriously, it features an owl named Bird-of-Doom. I’ve received a number of emails and tweets now about this book, and many of them amount to people both mad at me  while simultaneously asking when the next one is out (hint: January 2019), which excites me deeply. I wrote a book with lots of twists and turns engineered to, ideally, rip your brain and your heart out of your body and maybe force them to switch places. I hope it did as I hoped it would do — no spoilers. (And holy shit, just wait to see the shit I pull in Vultures. Whoof.)

You can grab the book in print or e-book.

If you’ve read it, I very seriously would love a review — one of the ways I get to keep doing the things that I do is when you perform the one-two punch of a) buy my book and then b) review the book after reading it. Part of this is because reviews help others find books, but another part is that more reviews lend strength to the algorithms that help people find the books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. And it also opens the book up to different kinds of promotional opportunities in the future. Sad that we are in some ways locked to those numbers, but here we are, welcome to The Internet.

People sometimes ask me where the best place to buy a book is — in terms of how much I make, I guess — and I’ll answer now as I always answer, which is, I hope you buy the book from whatever location and in whatever format that gives you maximum pleasure and/or bang-for-your-buckitude. I won’t judge. (Er, long as you don’t pirate the book, then I’mma probably judge a little.) My emotional preference is, when buying print, you buy from your local independent bookstore, because many such bookstores are the true bridge between a reading community and the author — libraries, too, form the same function, and if you’re not buying the book, please request the book at your local library.

I’m adding a local date to THE SKED, by the way — I’ll be again joining the Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde show at Doylestown Bookshop on April 7th at 4pm here in Pennsylvania. Kevin’s launching the last in his Iron Druid series, Scourged — which is the ninth (!) book. So, you should go to that or you will be punished in eternal torment.

I think that’s it for me.

PEACE.

*drops mic*

*on foot*

*gets an ingrown toenail*