Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 88

Dear Writers: A Book Needs Time To Cook

I’m working on something now that’s three years in the making.

And when I say, “in the making,” I mean, “I’ve been making it inside my head.” Translation: a bunch of random ideas were invited to a random idea orgy, and for years they’ve been sticking bits into other bits and sloppily flopping around until eventually they don’t so much have a baby as they glom together and form a slippery, goopy Idea Voltron.

What I mean is, I’m working now on Exeunt.

Exeunt appeared as a collection of half-ass ideas in my head three years back, while taking a walk. And by the way, my judgment on ideas in general is this: ideas are mostly worthless. They’re dross. We like to imagine that all our ideas are pearls, but the reality is, I fear, most of them are fucking driveway gravel. They’re just hunks of broken limestone. But the secret there is: limestone is a building material. It forms the base of roads. It helps make up the recipe for concrete. And further, once in a while you find a piece of gravel that’s interesting to look at — it’s got a vein of quartz running through it, or it’s got a little mollusc fossil in there, or maybe it’s actually a goblin tooth and if you put that tooth under the pillow of an enemy they will lose all their teeth and you can laugh and laugh and laugh at your foes as they feebly gum their food.

Point is, ideas aren’t precious gems. They’re just stones.

But stones have value, too, in aggregate.

And over time, they build up, and the ideas you have keep tumbling around and around in your head. And maybe they polish up into something pretty, or maybe they start to form the karst and bedrock of something bigger, some structure, some story, some vital tale. That’s why when I get an idea, I don’t write it down. I let it go. If it’s a real idea, if it’s going to be the basis of something bigger, it will return. It’ll keep kicking around. It’ll get stuck in a shoe.

Exeunt was that. It kept coming back. Again and again.

Obsessively.

But I never knew what to do with it. It had a core, it had characters, but it didn’t have shape. It didn’t have a point. It was just this half-formed thing in the dark, gibbering and moaning.

I knew if I started it, it’d just be me struggling to slap that mewling glob into some kind of meaningful shape, like I was a bored kid kicking a can. It wouldn’t feel right because I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d tried this previously with other books: my novella, The Forever Endeavor, is literally based on an idea I had almost twenty years ago, and periodically over the years I had tried to dip my toes in it, write a chapter or two, and every time it felt like I was on a date with someone and we just weren’t connecting. Each of us making sad small-talk, staring down at our water-glasses, trying to find some spark, some reason to keep on keeping on. My book, Atlanta Burns, was three different things: it was a name (the titular “Atlanta Burns”), a thing about dog-fighting, and a thing about white supremacy in a small Pennsylvania town, and it wasn’t until one day that those three things collided randomly in my head and the book was born. My first book, Blackbirds, somewhat infamously took five years to write — and it took five years because I didn’t know what the sweet hot fuck I was doing with it.

I say all this as a lesson to you — but more as a reminder to myself! — that this shit takes time. Yes, some books appear like vengeful whole-bodied specters at the moment of creative inception, and you can sit down right after and exorcise the spirit right onto the page. But some books… *whistles* man, some books take weeks, months, even years to figure out. It’s like cooking. Sometimes it’s high-heat and a quick-fry and the dish is done. But other dishes are low and slow. The flavors take a long time to come together. A pot of chili tastes better the next day because all those ingredients need time to cool down and join forces. Some books are that way, too.

Sometimes, with a book, you spend more time thinking about it, ideating upon it, then you do actually writing the damn thing. Sometimes the story is as much about rejecting ideas and finding shape and direction as it is about actually putting it on the page. It’s a pot of water set to boil — slow to heat, miserable to watch, until the moment comes and it’s boiling over the edge.

The problem is, this doesn’t always feel like working.

It doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything.

And that’s okay.

You can set that pot on the back burner and let it simmer for a while.

But here’s the trick:

Don’t get complacent.

Don’t let that be the only thing.

And don’t let this be the excuse not to ever write it.

You get a book that’s taking a long time to bubble and froth, hey, okay. Work on something else. Something short, something long, something that’s ready. And that’s part of the trick: you’re never just silently working on one book. I think we all have lots of pots on lots of burners at various stages of potential deliciousness — some are still missing ingredients, but you should always have something ready to go.

And then when it’s time, you gotta do it. You have to stow away the fear — because the longer the book takes the simmer, the bigger and scarier it may loom in your mind, its shadow long and deep — and you have to sit down and do the damn thing. You can’t waffle. You can’t lean on this as a crutch. Just as you know the book needed its time to come together, you also have to know when it’s time to stop fucking around and fucking write the fucking thing. Problem is, you don’t have any reliable test for it. You can’t dip a hot copper wire in a petri dish of its blood. You can’t ask it. You can’t smell its ripeness like it’s a fucking pineapple. You just have to do it. Or, at least, try it. Sometimes a book needs you to wait. Sometimes the book needs you to write it. Best you can do is put pen to paper or fingers to keys and see what happens.

It’s what I’m doing now.

Fingers to keys.

Ideas stapled to the page to stop them from running.

Exeunt, coming soon.

Years in the making, an orgy-baby purged in a rough birth.

Wish me luck, and I wish you luck, too.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Fire-Owls, Magic Bands, Wizard Vans, Otter Gods

Go to this tweet.

That begins a series of Choose Your Own Adventure-style tweets (currently at this point, posted yesterday). I’ve been doing it since before the new year, though some of the early ones didn’t thread, but these do, so you should be able to look through the whole thing on a single web- or app-client.

I want you to go through those, and base some flash fiction off of any part of the completely deranged fantasy thread going on there. You can be faithful to it or stray wildly from it or build on the worldbuilding inanity, whatever you wanna do, do.

That’s it. Go write.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: June 2nd, Friday, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Link back so we can all read.

Enjoy.

David Kazzie: Five Things I Learned Writing A Sequel

The stand-alone sequel to the IMMUNE series…

Thirteen years have passed since the Medusa plague wiped out nearly 99 percent of the world’s population and pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. 

Climate change triggered by nuclear skirmishes in the last fevered days of civilization decimated agriculture and livestock, and the hardened survivors battle for what few resources remain.

Rachel Fisher is one of the lucky ones. In her small community in Nebraska, she and her family have access to food, clean water, weapons, and medical care.

And her 11-year-old son Will is the only child known to have survived infancy since the plague.

But everything changes when someone comes looking for him.

* * *

Real quick. The Immune was about a man looking for his daughter during and in the immediate aftermath of a civilization-ending plague. The Living is the sequel, set 13 years later.

Anyway, here are the things I learned. Your mileage may vary.

It Can’t Be Book-1-in-A-Different-Location or Do You Really Need to Write a Sequel?

Writing more than one book in the same story universe requires a certain level of chutzpah. Whether it’s two books or a trilogy or seven-book-ology or a continuing mystery series, you’re telling the reader that it’s going to be worth their while to invest their free time in multiple books set in the same world with at least some of the same characters.

The Immune was inspired in part by Stephen King’s The Stand, one of the classics of post-apocalyptic fiction, and you don’t see a sequel to that sonofabitch in bookstores, do you? My favorite novel of all time is probably Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, also devoid of a sequel. Hell, even Stephen King admits that the Dark Tower books are really one long novel (and you’re not jumping into that story anywhere but with The Gunslinger).

Think of your five favorite books of all time. Are any of them sequels? Do any of them have sequels? Probably not. Be honest with yourself about whether the sequel needs to exist or if you’re just hiding from the scariness of moving onto a new fictional world. You need to be as committed to this story as you were to the first. In this case, I decided that I had a good enough story to tell, one that was not simply riding on the coattails of its predecessor, one that could stand on its own but also add some depth to the mythology laid out in the first book.

Book 2 Should Probably Stand On its Own

Books are a tough sell these days, and the last thing you want to do is limit your potential audience. I hadn’t planned on writing a sequel when I wrote the first book. When putting together the storyline for The Living, I wrestled with how dependent it would be on its predecessor. If you make it too dependent, only folks who read the first would be able to enjoy the second – that really limits your potential audience.

In the end, I wrote the story to stand alone, sprinkling in enough backstory so anyone could start with this book and not feel lost. Then I asked someone who hadn’t read The Immune to read it. When she told me she had no problems understanding the backstory, I knew I was in good shape. Now there are two doors to this fictional universe I created, and a reader can come into it however they like. For a relatively unknown writer like me, the last thing I want to do is make it harder for people to come to my books.

Now before you come at me with your sharpened pieces of avocado toast – I said Book 2 should probably stand alone. You may have a sweeping story arc that’s going to take three or seven or eight hundred books to resolve and a reader absolutely cannot start anywhere but with the first book. Great, fine, you do you.

For those interested in how the sausage was made – meaning how to do this and make sure you’ve put in just the right amount of backstory, this was a really helpful exercise: I went through the manuscript, plucked out every reference to things that happened in the first book and pasted those into a separate document. I ended up with a two-page synopsis of all the things someone would need to know from The Immune without having read it, and it showed me that I had parceled out the pieces of backstory at the best possible moment and in the right order.

Your Characters Have Changed a Lot Since Book 1

Of course, this is going to vary, depending on the story you’re telling and the time frame involved. Your sequel might pick up immediately after the conclusion of the first book or it might pick up six jillion years later. The Living is set 13 years after the events of the first book, and so my characters are all older and no longer the shell-shocked survivors who just witnessed the end of the world. They’ve moved onto living their best lives in this empty world – staying alive and trying to find meaning in a world they hadn’t prepared for.

But regardless of where your sequel falls on the timeline, your characters are not the same people they were at the beginning of the first book. Their lives have changed in fundamental – possibly terrible – ways, and you must be aware of that going into the sequel. I’m not the same person I was 13 years ago and I suspect you’re not either.

Writing a Sequel Is Harder Than You Think But It Is Also Very Comforting

You know how at Thanksgiving, at the beginning of the day, “this is gonna be great” and then by mid-afternoon, you’re like “I got left on the porch as an infant and my real mommy kills dragons and shit because no way am I related to these people” and then by nightfall everyone is full and happy and you’re all laughing over eating the rest of the Boston cream pie.

This is the best analogy I can come up with for writing a sequel. This is a familiar world, one you know really well – even if this story is set in a different corner of that world. You’re not creating characters out of whole cloth, and you have an understanding as to what makes them tick. And remember, without memorable characters, you’ve probably got a forgettable book.

That being said, it can wear on you a little. I’ve spent more than four years in the world of The Immune, and it’s been a lot of fun – mostly. And they mostly come at night. Mostly. BUT I DIGRESS. In some ways, the sequel was the harder book to write, but it was very rewarding to spend that much time with the same characters – those mother-effers are ALIVE (or you’re insane, one or the other). You find out new things about them that didn’t come up in the first book. If I’d passed on writing the sequel, I would have missed out on seeing the heroine in a whole new light, with years of experience and hardship under her belt.

Maybe This Should Have Been the Book You Wrote First and Not a Sequel At All

I’ve saved the hardest lesson for the end (and this is more directed to folks who want to sell a book to a traditional publisher, although it applies to self-publishers as well). I won’t lie, this was the most painful lesson, in part because I learned it too late. Although I’ve had decent success self-publishing, I have yet to sell a book to an American publisher. A Bulgarian publisher bought the rights to my very first book (a crime thriller) a couple years back and I have cool pictures of that book in bookstores around the Bulgarian capital. But a book in an American bookstore? It’s still on my bucket list.

My agent loved The Immune, and a number of editors had very nice things to say about it when we sent it out on submission. But in the end, it didn’t sell (I ultimately self-published it), and some of the feedback was that the as-it-happens end-of-the-world story had already been done, so there really wasn’t demand for another book in that vein.

I’ll never know, obviously, but I have a hunch that if I had written The Living first (and The Immune had never existed beyond that two-page backstory), it would have sold. I think it has enough interesting story elements that might have set it apart from other books in the genre. I’m not saying I re-invented the wheel of apocalyptic fiction here, but I do know the genre pretty well; I’m just saying that The Living might have stood out just enough to pull in an offer.

Don’t get me wrong – I loved writing The Immune, I was happy with how it turned out, and it’s sold a goodly number of copies. But the experience was also a lesson in story development. If you think of one story, there may be a better or more interesting one hiding just underneath. Perhaps I wasn’t an experienced enough writer then to think deeper than “I’ll write an apocalypse book now!” Now when I think up a story idea, I try to think of another story behind it, or even behind that one, one that might not be as readily apparent.

I am in no way trying to force you to write solely to the market or discouraging you from writing whatever your precious little heart desires. But you should also be trying to stretch yourself as a storyteller, challenge yourself, find stories that are just a little farther off the beaten path. This could be the difference between getting a book deal or not; if you’re self-publishing, this could be the difference between breaking free of the pack and your book getting lost in the shuffle.

* * *

David lives in Virginia. The Living is his third novel. He’s also the creator of a series of short animated films, including So You Want to Write a Novel, which have been viewed nearly 3 million times on YouTube and were featured in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post.

David Kazzie: Website | Twitter

The Living: Amazon

Let’s Turok And Roll Oh God I’m Sorry I Made That Pun

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*opens the cage*

*lets the news out of the cage*

*the news swiftly pounces on and devours a goat*

HEY LOOK

NEWS

That’s right, I’m writing the new Turok comic for Dynamite.

Art duties are by the incomparable Álvaro Sarraseca. Covers by him, Aaron Conley, Andy Belanger. With a backup story (Magnus!) by Aubrey Sitterson. Thanks to Matt Idelson and Matt Humphreys for having me onboard.

You may note this is very clearly not the same Turok you know (er, if you know Turok, that is) — though based on the original Gold Key property, this is a new take, with a new character. You may also know that I’m already writing Turok in the form of short backup stories contained in the issues of The Sovereigns. So, though Turok #1 comes out in August, you can start checking out his story now. So, go and do that. Or you’ll be eaten by a pack of starveling compsognathus.

Hope you check it out.

*dinosaur shriek*

Macro Monday Snags Snap Wexley

That there is a macro of a toy Temmin “Snap” Wexley figure. I like it.

I HOPE YOU LIKE IT TOO.

Let’s see. What’s going on?

I might have the blog up and down this week as I try to get through and figure out the whole “suddenly it’s sending mails from WordPress and not terribleminds” problem.

I’ll have a cool COMICS-RELATED announcement today or tomorrow, so watch this space.

Oh!

I have some release-date shuffles, which will disappoint some, I fear.

The Raptor & The Wren and Vultures have both moved — SAGA / S&S felt it better to spread the release dates out instead of keeping them close. They were originally scheduled to all come out within one year — so, Thunderbird, then six months later, R&R, then six months later, Vultures. But they want to spread them out — which was not really the plan, and I’m bummed that this is the case, but that’s life in Big Publishing, yo.

So, new dates, roughly, will be that the next two books will come out each January, respectively. The Raptor & The Wren will hit in January 2018, and Vultures will hit in January 2019. The good news, one supposes, is that Miriam’s journey won’t be over quite so quickly — you’ve got new Miriam Black books for the next two-ish years.

Also! It looks like Damn Fine Story, my next writing book — this one focused not on writing so much as the act of storytelling — lands in October. Currently, October 4th, I believe. Cover reveal incoming soon, I expect! You can pre-order now at Indiebound and Amazon.

OH and one final disappointment:

I will not be making it to the Bay Area Book Fest. I know. I know! I am bummed. I love that area and was excited for this one. Though the desire is high, some other local obligations are keeping me here, so regrettably I’m having to bow out. I hope to make it there one day yet.

I AM MISTER DISAPPOINTMENT TODAY

As recompense, I offer this photo of two doggos.

Flash Fiction Challenge: X Versus Z, Redux

Another classic challenge, of which I am a fan.

Way this works is, below you will find two tables — X and Y! — and you will pick (or randomly draw) from those tables. That will leave you with a set of X versus Y — and from there, you will write a piece of flash fiction based on that parameter set. You can even use the match up (SKELETONS VS. SCIENTISTS!) as the title to the work, or come up with a new title.

Length: ~2000 words

Due by: 5/26, Friday, noon EST

Post at your online space, link back here so all can read.

X

Robots
Vampires
Monkeys
Demons
Pirates
Kaiju
Goblins
Dragons
Ghosts
Gods
Time Travelers
Cops
Librarians
Bards
Skeletons
Interdimensional Floating Jellyfish Creatures
Aliens
Cats
Werewolves
Musicians

Y

Zombies
Monks
Spiders
Heroes
Fairies
Robots
Assassins
Mutants
Cannibals
Mermaids
Scientists
Evil
Serial Killers
Cultists
George Washington
Superheroes
Artificial Intelligence
Swamp Monsters
Cheerleaders
Elves

A Hot Steaming Sack Of Business Advice For Writers

It was a couple weeks back that authorial sorceress V.E. Schwab said that few writers offer good business advice, and she named me among some others like Kameron Hurley and John Scalzi, who do so. It’s been a while since I’ve offered anything remotely like business advice for writers, mostly because, nyeah, it’s boring? I’d rather talk about writing and storytelling (aka the act of hunting down unicorns for whatever salacious purpose you so possess), but just the same, having the occasional injection of business advice into your writerly bloodstream ain’t the worst idea.

So, here I am.

Below, a fairly basic scattering of writer-flavored business advice — mostly 101 stuff — that you are free to behold or ignore at your leisure. Do with this as thou wilt.

The Overarching Rule: Protect Your Ass

This is very non-specific but important nevertheless: always cover your ass.

Protect it.

Cover it with chainmail undies and asbestos trousers. Lock down the hole, the cheeks, the undercarriage, everything. Protect your ass. Don’t worry about protecting a publisher. Don’t worry about protecting an agent. They got theirs covered. You cover your own. Note: this does not mean to help yourself before you help others. It just means to protect yourself, because this is an industry that often inadvertently will step on your neck if you don’t know what’s up. Protecting yourself is about educating yourself and making sure there’s no avenue for you to accidentally — or willfully — get used and abused.

Keep As Many Rights As You’re Allowed

What you eventually learn is that publishing one book needn’t be the end of that book’s financial output. Yes, sure, you have royalties, but a lot of books don’t properly earn out, so what am I talking about? I’m talking about rights, baby. First up, you have foreign rights, which is to say, other publishers in other countries buy the rights to publish your book in that domain. Even selling rights to one other country is like — well, it’s like getting a comical bag of money, the kind with the dollar sign right on it, handed to you by a chummy, benevolent friend. To give you a sense of it, the first three Miriam books sold for roughly $8k a piece. But the foreign deals (Germany, Poland, China, Turkey, France, Spain, etc.) add up. Some of those deals were on par with the original offer — or, in the case of Turkey, considerably higher. (Why Turkey? No idea.) Plus, now I’m earning royalties not just from domestic sales, but foreign sales, too. The books continue to generate life. All of my books don’t do this, but many do, and it helps.

Problem is, some publishers want to keep the foreign rights — either trying to produce the books themselves in other countries, or being able to sell the rights directly, which depending on your deal either pays out to you directly or counts against your advance. Which is fine, but the publisher is not as hungry to sell those rights. They may be equipped to. They may not be. But they’re not hungry for it the way you and your agent can and should be.

Same goes for film and TV rights, or other ancillary rights like games, comics, whatever. Those, again, can be like magic money. No, nobody’s ever going to make your film or TV project, but they might option it. And you get paid for that. Point is, keep your rights. So that you can sell them. Erm. Which means, keep them to get rid of them? Yes! Don’t just give them all away to the first eager beaver, is what I’m saying. In fact, don’t give anything to a beaver. Beavers are notoriously irresponsible. A beaver last year borrowed my car and crashed in into a reservoir. Or maybe that was a gopher. Prairie dog? Marmot? Shit. Whatever, moving on.

Publishingland Versus Hollywoodtown: A Brief Explanation

I’ve said this before, but here is, for me, the key difference between NYC Publishing World and Hollywood Filmteeveeopolis: in publishing, everything is no before it is yes. In Hollywood, everything is yes before it is no.

To explain, it means that in publishing, getting a book published is a series of locked doors and obstacles. And you pick those locks and clamber over obstacles, all while keeping a Damn Fine Book gripped tightly in your teeth. And then, if you survive, they say, “Congrats, this Damn Fine Book will be published.” And, generally speaking, they mean it. It’ll happen. You’re in.

Out on the Left Coast, you step into a room, and you are immediately showered in love and adoration. They tell you how much they love you. They love the book. They want to see it on screen. It is a magical fairy promise made by gilded, golden lords and ladies, and most of it is ephemeral — it is whimsy and candy-floss that breaks apart as soon as it hits your fingers or your tongue. It’s why Hollywood streets are paved in broken dreams. And that’s not their fault. That’s just the industry. In Hollywood, most working screenwriters get paid writing movies and shows that never actually get made. (I cannot imagine this in publishing. Developing books with publishers and editors and agents, only to have them be shelved again and again. It would be heartbreaking. Then again, the money is better there, so…nyeah, maybe I get it.)

Just be advised how it works. Do not be seduced by the promise of that place. Have your expectations sealed in nice and tight. Enjoy the ride, just don’t fall in love with it.

Money Spent Means Money Spent

Simple rule, generally true: the more someone spends on your work, the more they will continue to spend on it. Meaning, they will protect their investment more robustly — that might translate to more marketing dollars, a better shot at film/TV production, more visibility, a magical golden sheep who poops out special coins, whatever. I say this because some writers will be inundated with lowball offers, and sometimes, there is sense in taking them — a dollar film option, or no advance for your book. But generally, that means your window for success is far, far narrower than you would prefer. Camel through the eye of the needle.

You Are Not A Marketing Plan

I say this, because this is A Thing inside publishing, but you are not a marketing plan. Some publishers want you to be. Or they claim you should be. But you’re not.

What I mean is this: I think when social media became such a big damn deal that some people inside publishing were quietly cheering — first, because it genuinely provides a new axis of access for book discovery, but second because the writer can shoulder the burden. We can each become the darling epicenter of a glorious online CULT OF PERSONALITY, and we can command our hypnotized followers into buying copies of our books, the end.

Except, that bubble popped.

Maybe you don’t know that it popped. But it fucking popped.

You can maybe, as an author, sell 10s, even 100s of copies on social media. And you can do this semi-regularly. Problem is, for your book to make real money — the kind of money publishers need you to make! — you need to sell 1000s of copies, maybe more. A publisher who pretends you’re their only marketing plan is a publisher who isn’t spending money on your book, and your book will succeed more by happenstance and luck than by any engineered effort on their part. (Also, if they’re acting like you’re their marketing plan, might I suggest billing them for marketing hours, because that’s very seriously supposed to be their job, part and parcel of the relationship you enter by signing with a publisher in the first goddamn place.) Some publishers just wanna cover you in Velcro and fling you at a wall in the hopes you stick, but that doesn’t always work, either. It’s best to demand that they actually have some plan in place, and ask to see that plan. You can even ask before you sign the contract. And you should.

So Wait, What Marketing Should You Do?

Note: I’m not saying you won’t do marketing and self-promo on your own. You will. You will shimmy and you will shake. You will dance that dance and sway that tail, sexy author monkey.

First, because selling those 10s to 100s books still has value — every book is a pebble thrown, and a pebble can create ripples. One reader likes it, and they tell their friends, and now you’ve sold more books. Or, at least, you’re now on a collective radar: maybe those friends don’t buy this book, but they take a chance on your next one. Pebbles and ripples, pebbles and ripples.

Also, your publisher can and should create marketing opportunities for you — but that still requires work on your part. They get you interviews, or article opportunities, or panels at cons — so, you go do them. More pebbles, more ripples. (One thing I’m a bit dubious about: blog tours. As the value of blogs wanes, I’m not sold on the efficacy of blog tours. Especially when the blogs are a smattering of no-name never-heard-of entrants.) And you can drum up those opportunities for yourself, too. You don’t need to rely on the publisher. But if you’re the only one drumming up those opportunities and the publisher is simply cheering you on: they’re not doing their job, because you’re doing it.

The Bestseller Machine

There exists a common myth in publishing that publishers can make a book a bestseller “if they want to,” just by spending money on it. It’s nonsense. Provably false. Some books just don’t hit — not because the books aren’t good, not because the publishers didn’t support them, but because, ha ha, who fucking knows? The stars didn’t align! Mercury in retrograde! You were cursed by an old wizard! You angered the gods with your breakfast choice! Shit happens. Life is weird. *puts in Ian Malcolm sunglasses and affects a Jeff Goldblum mumble* CHAOS THEORY.

That said, a publisher spending money means you’re not just an author throwing pebbles — they’re joining you in that act. In fact, they are a catapult flinging a fusillade of pebbles. Lot more ripples. Meaning, a far greater chance at achieving success. And note, too, it’s not just about spending money, but about smart marketing strategy, which is why you again should always ask for their strategy in marketing your book.

Beware: Failure As Proof Of Failure

Here’s a thing that sometimes happens: a publisher will agree to publish Your Book, not support it, and then when it comes time to support the next book or sign you up for more, they say, “But your last one didn’t sell.” So, your next book gets fewer marketing effort or they make a reduced offer. I think this happens less than it used to, as I hear (anecdotally) about it less often, but just the same, it’s crap. It’s like shooting out your tires in a race and then saying next time, “I won’t bet on you, because you lost that race.” “But you shot out my tires!” “Excuses, excuses.” Bookstores can do this, too — a big bookstore chain might say, your book didn’t sell well last time, so why carry your next one?

Beware Non-Competes, First-Looks, Etc.

Since we’re all OOH BEWARE right now, also beware contracts that want to lock you down with too many non-competes and first-look-deals and exclusives — y’know, just narrow your eyes at these. Does the contract prevent you from doing your job? Does it prevent you from earning a real living? Then get worried. Now, there are some caveats to this. The publisher has some skin in this game, and some of these clauses are not automatically demonic — after all, if they’re publishing your brand new BDSM EPIC FANTASY PICTURE BOOK AIMED AT READERS AGES 33-36, then you shouldn’t also be able to go and immediately sell a similar book to a different publisher. Bookstores only have so much finite shelf space, and you do not want to compete with yourself or your publisher. At the same time, if the publisher also wants to stop you from publishing non-fiction or young adult or unrelated work, then that’s a concern.

Now, if the publisher wants to pay you well to be a kept author, so be it. You pay me enough, I’ll be your fucking cabana boy. I will exfoliate you tenderly with my beard-loofa.

But you gotta pay to play, suckas.

Also Beware The Sinister, Mustache-Twirling Rights Grab

More beware: rights grabs. I covered that a bit above, where publishers want to lock up rights that don’t really belong to them, but there are other ways — they want the book in perpetuity, they want you to pay them for various privileges, etc. You can check out a site like Writer Beware, run by Victoria Strauss, to get an understanding of some such rights grabs.

Beware The Small Press

Controversial assessment: beware a lot of small presses. I know, I know. They often mean well. They’re often quite earnest. They’re not often malevolent. But I’ll tell you: most of the times I’ve seen writers have real struggles with publishers, its been small presses. Because small presses, however earnest and well-meaning, don’t always know what they’re doing.

I’ll tell you a story, with names redacted to protect the innocent, but –

I was at a con, and a writer came up and said, “I pitched my novel during the pitch session and I got a bunch of full requests,” meaning, publishers requested the full manuscript. Which is great. Except I knew of zero big publishers at this con. So, I said, who requested it? And this writer named off a bunch of publishers I had never heard of — which is not necessarily an indictment against them, as I have a brain like a sieve. Either way, I said, okay, that’s good — and I didn’t want to bust said writer’s bubble, but — maybe just maybe consider sending it elsewhere? If the book is good enough to warrant small press attention, maybe it’s good enough to warrant the attention of an agent or an editor at a bigger house. It’s worth the shot, at least — and if it doesn’t work, and only a small press is interested, well, okay. (Though there you gotta ask: if only small press is interested, it’s a Come To Book Jesus moment. Is your book actually good?)

Look, the tests for this are easy enough. Does the small press publish reputable authors? Have they been around for a lot of years? Do their books look professional and not like some dickbird with Microsoft Publisher 1998 sloppily slapped it together? Can they identify a marketing plan? Can they demonstrate being in bookstores? If not, nnnghyeah, then either aim for a bigger publisher, or self-publish that motherfucker.

Don’t publish with UNCLE DAVE’S BASEMENT PRESS, okay?

Yes, Self-Publishing Is Viable

I’m glad this part of the conversation is well-established, but self-publishing is a great path for those who are equipped to not just be writers, but also publishers. It’s particularly good with some genres — romance, space opera or military sci-fi, etc. — though it’s less good for middle grade and YA, because younger kids and teens aren’t shopping at Amazon as eagerly as we might have hoped. Still. It’s worth it. Try it. Fuck yeah, self-publishing.

Safety Through Diversification

You can protect your pooper by diversifying wildly. Write across: formats, genres, publishing models. E-book, physical, comic book, novel, self, traditional, hybrid, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, whatever. Do it all, if you want to, if you can. If one door closes, you’ve carved out other tunnels through which you may move. It’s like driving — stuck in traffic? Know your exits and your back roads. Something something eggs and baskets. Have multiple baskets. Have multiple eggs. I have chicken eggs, emu eggs, dragon eggs, elf eggs. That’s right. Elf eggs. I breed elves. Not just the cookie elves, either, but all kinds — haughty elves, trailer park elves, tiny elves, big elves, forest elves, city elves, sex elves ha ha what I did not say “sex elves,” you said sex elves. Pervert.

A Bad Agent Is Worse Than No Agent At All

You want an agent if you’re going traditional. Even if not, you may still want an agent because agents are good. I just sold rights to a self-pub book to a Russian publishing company.

But watch out for bad agents. A bad agent is like a bad critique group, except now the consequences are not just creative, they’re professional. A bad agent will lead you in the wrong direction, likely for a year or more, and it takes time to recover. Find an agent who gets what you write and who wants to curate your vision and your career, and not cram your gorgeous circle pegs into an uncomfortable square hole. That is not a sexual metaphor, by the way, so calm down. Also if you need sex elves, I know a guy. And I am that guy.

Make Sure Your Agent Is Equipped To Do All The Things You Need Them To Do

Again, your agent should not just be able to sell books domestically, but also foreign rights or film and TV rights. And if your agent can’t directly, the agency that supports you should have people. Or you should have access to sub-rights agents. Something. If those doors are closed to you, then your success and your financial world will be limited.

Sidenote: sometimes you need to fire your agent.

The Truth of the Trilogy

Small but necessary point: in genre fiction, publishers often buy trilogies or series. They scoop you up for a three-book deal, yay, hurrah, huzzah. And if your book is by necessity and design a trilogy or a series, go you. If it’s not… then maybe don’t force it.

Here’s the reality of selling to series: subsequent books in the series will never sell better than the first book. You’ll never sell 1000 of Book One, and 5000 of Book Two. So if Book One: Sword of the Sex-Elf, doesn’t do well, then Book Two: Song Of The Dragonfuckers, will do worse. And publishers… you know, I’ll be honest, publishers don’t always handle this part well. They pump money into the first book and expect it to carry the second. And it might. That can work. But if it doesn’t, then you need to pump more money into the second book and the first book to get people to buy into the series. And then the bummer part for you as an author is, suddenly you’re caught for three years writing into a series that isn’t selling well and you know won’t land well. It’s emotionally difficult, time-consuming, and not financially ideal.

Plus, I actually kinda miss standalone books.

When To Work For Free

Mostly, don’t. Don’t work for free. Rarely worth it. Exposure is something hikers die from, and authors can die from it, too. If you do work for free, know the concrete benefits, and be sure to control the work — as I am wont to say, if you’re going to be exposed, then goddamnit, expose yourself. Not like that. Put your pants back on. What are you, some kind of Sex Elf?

I’ll note here too that the FREE WORK request doesn’t always come from disreputable weirdos — sometimes, it comes from big publishers. “Oh, with your new book coming out, we think you should also write a short story and a novella that we will release alongside it for free.” Yeah, great, but you should be paid for those. I mean, YMMV, but the book is the book — the story and the novella won’t sell them, so you should see money for them.

You did the work. Get paid for the work.

What you do has value, so claim value for what you do.

Seriously, Get An Accountant

Yeah, do that. Get an accountant. Your taxes as a writer just got infinitely more fucked up, so you want someone to help you navigate this new labyrinth of pain. And it can help you, too, because as a writer, you can deduct all kinds of shit now. Also, if you make enough money, might be time to form a business — an LLC or something. I did it recently, because it was worth it to do so for the tax savings. At lower levels of yearly income, the value dissipates.

Have People You Can Trust Behind The Scenes — Embrace Community

The community is your friend. Other writers can tell you their experiences. Anecdotes are artisanal data, sure, but it can still help you traverse these tumultuous seas. And a note to editors, agents, publishing folk: writers talk. We know when you’ve been naughty, we know when you’ve been good. Publishing as an industry is often cloaked in robes of MYSTERY and MYSTICISM, but it doesn’t need to be. Talk to writers. Help ‘em. Let them help you. Onward.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Penmonkey

A lot of writers, I find, are eager to eject from their day jobs and leap into the writer career, naked and cackling. But the writing life — the career part — is a series of cliff mitigations. I am constantly aware of when the next cliff is coming — and it times out always with the end of my last contract. That’s when I drive over a cliff and die, so I have to pack in time and strategy to figure out how I’m going to make it over the next cliff — how I will leap that motherfucking chasm. That means writing this book but then also writing another or pitching another at opportune times to build a ramp or a bridge over the cliff.

You, too, have to worry about building that bridge or that ramp — and if you leave your day-job too soon, you will plummet into the void, not naked and cackling, but nude and screaming.

My advice for WHEN TO QUIT THE DAY JOB is plainly this:

Keep the day job until you cannot keep it any longer.

Keep it until you hit a crisis point: a point where you must sacrifice either the day job or the writing career. You are unable to do both, so you must do only one, and that is the time to ditch the day job because the writing job — meaning, one in which you are presently paid Actual Survival Money — cannot survive in the shadow of the day-to-day work.

It must become the day-to-day work.

And That’s It

Long post. I could keep talking, but I won’t.

I’m out.

*slings rifle over shoulder*

*goes to hunt unicorns*

* * *

THUNDERBIRD: Miriam Black, Book Four

Miriam Black is back.

In the fourth installment of the Miriam Black series, Miriam is becoming addicted to seeing her death visions, but she is also trying out something new: Hope. She heads to the Southwest in search of another psychic who can help her with her curse, but instead finds a group of domestic terrorists in her deadliest vision to date.

“This gritty, full-throttle series is what urban fantasy is all about, with bitter humor rounding out lyrical writing. It’s easy to root for this mouthy, rude, insensitive, but innately good young woman, and her story hits the reader like a double shot of rotgut.” — Publishers Weekly

Thunderbird: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Macro Monday Smells Nice And Flowery

Okay, so strictly speaking, that photo up there isn’t a macro. It’s not properly 1:1, but it’s getting all up in there, so we’re just going to handwave away the macro specifics.

*hand waves*

Took that one on the desert floor at Arches National Park.

No idea what kind of flower it is, so we’ll just say it’s a Southwestern Articulated Elkblossom. Good? Good. We’re all in agreement. At the bottom, I’ll toss in a couple more flower photos because yay spring.

What else is going on?

First up, I know that those who subscribe to this blog are no longer getting emails sent from terribleminds and are instead sent from WordPress. If anybody has any idea how to fix, give a shout. I’ve tried everything.

Second, since occasionally I am struck by folks who don’t realize or have forgotten Thunderbird is out — aka, the fourth Miriam Black book — hey, looky here, it exists, woooo, go grabby. It’s got the desert and drugs and psychic shenanigans and a creepy militia and vultures and domestic terrorism and Miriam saying snarky mean shit and woo and huzzah and whatever. I dug it, hope you dig it, too. (Thunderbird at Indiebound, at Amazon.)

Third, you can watch my interview at SyFy while sitting inside a landspeeder, motherfucker. Er, I’m the one sitting in a landspeeder, not that you can watch it from inside a landspeeder.

There’s probably something else, but it’s Monday and my brain is poop.

*flails wildly*

*flings flower photos into your eyeballs*

Flash Fiction Challenge: The SubGenre Smash-And-Grab

AND WE’RE BACK.

And we return with an old favorite.

We shall make subgenres dance together for our whims.

I will give you 20 subgenres. You will pick two from the list either using a d20 or random number generator (or use monkey knuckles or coffee grounds or whatever), then you will write a short story that mashes up those two subgenres.

Length: We’ll say 1500 words.

Due by: Next Friday (5/19), noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Link to it in the comments below. So we can all read it!

THE SUBGENRE LIST:

Political Thriller
Erotic
Fairy Tale / Fable / Folklore
Haunted House
Weird West
Body Horror
Near-Future Sci-Fi
Sword & Sorcery
Occult Detective
Historical Fantasy
Comic Fantasy
Vampire
Superhero
Bodice Ripper
Heist / Caper
Space Opera
Biopunk
Medical Thriller
Paranormal Romance
Splatterpunk

Carrie Patel: Five Things I Learned Writing Song Of The Dead

With Ruthers dead and the Library Accord signed by Recoletta, its neighbours, and its farming communes, Inspector Malone and laundress Jane Lin are in limbo as the city leaders around them vie for power.

A desperate attempt to save Arnault from execution leads to Malone’s arrest and Jane’s escape. They must pursue each other across the sea to discover a civilization that has held together over the centuries. There they will finally learn the truths about the Catastrophe that drove their own civilization underground.

***

IT FEELS LIKE A YARD SALE

Writing a series can be an endeavor of several years and hundreds of thousands of words. You spend multiple books developing a story, creating a world, and tormenting your characters. You craft myriad shiny details with loving care. You draft and revise your books until every page and paragraph is bursting with life and drama. And then, when you finally reach the last one, you realize a fact both horrible and wonderful:

It all has to go.

But it’s up to you to make sure it goes somewhere.

All those plots, places, and characters you’ve toiled over—you have to finish them and step away. Because you’re going to send them home with other people, and what happens to them then is out of your hands.

That means answering questions you raised in your earlier books. Bringing character arcs to a close. Finding a target for all the momentum you’ve spent two, or three, or ten books developing.

And that likely means dusting off notes and drafts you’ve long since set aside.

As you’re digging through your old material, you’re going to find some things that surprise you. Maybe even some things you don’t remember putting there. Sometimes, however, those forgotten details can be some of the most valuable.

You’re going to find some junk, too. Plot threads that aren’t going anywhere and story hooks that have grown dull. And that’s okay. You don’t need to follow up on every last spear carrier and supporting player (and you probably don’t have room to). Part of the trick in finishing a series is appraising all of the story you’ve accumulated and knowing where the value is. At the end of the day, it’s fine to quietly sweep the incidental bits into the trash to make room for the things that really matter.

Just make sure you can polish and pretty up the things you keep.

THE END IS REALLY ANOTHER BEGINNING

That doesn’t mean you’re going to write another book about the same characters or even the same setting, but it does mean that the endpoint you’ve chosen for your storyline should be significant enough to suggest a new direction for the people and places that survive your series.

And that’s a subtle trick to pull off. It’s not just about the last few pages, it’s about everything that’s come before—every simmering tension, every inner conflict, every broken system.

Your world and characters are either constantly undergoing change or actively resisting it. The end of your series shows how your protagonist either overcomes her flaws or accepts them. How your supporting characters either achieve the goals they sought or set their sights on others. That the streets either get cleaned up or descend into chaos.

You could say many of the same things about the end of a standalone, of course. But if readers have stuck with you through multiple books, then you face a greater responsibility to show them that all those chapters and pages meant something. That they were going somewhere.

Which sounds simple at the outlining stage, but then you realize your characters have ideas of their own.

YOUR CHARACTERS AREN’T THE SAME PEOPLE

As your series has progressed, they’ve probably grown and changed. They’ve turned against allies, embraced enemies, and done things they never thought they’d do. Their goals may be very different at the end of the series from what they were at the beginning, and their methods of attaining them may have altered, too.

They’ve grown. They’ve changed. And that’s okay, because so have you.

As a writer, you’ve learned how to better tell their stories. You’ve developed new interests and ideas, which have led you to discover new facets of your characters. The best characters, in my opinion, are a lot like real people: endlessly complex and full of surprises.

There’s a lot of writing advice to the effect of “know your characters inside and out, from their childhood traumas to what they had for breakfast.” I think this advice is well-meant but misguided. The key isn’t to know your characters perfectly, but rather to continuously discover them. If you insist on knowing them fully and completely from book one, you may find yourself shoving them into a box over the course of your series, breaking their arms and legs so that they’ll fit into the space you’ve carefully built for them.

And then you’ve got a corpse, and corpses don’t bring much life to your story.

It’s better to leave your characters room to grow and to trust future-you to discover them along the way.

But when you do, you’ll probably discover something else, too.

FUTURE-YOU WILL KIND OF HATE OLD-YOU

Old-you is an asshole. Old-you made promises to your readers and constructed obstacles in your story. Then, she skipped town and left them for future-you to handle.

Worse, old-you killed a lot of the characters who might have helped.

What to do with this flaky, murdering jerk?

Well, once you get past the indignation, you’ll probably thank her. Despite the mess she’s left, she’s given you a lot to work with. And you’ll find that all the commitments she made on your behalf are kind of a good thing. They won’t allow you to sleep in and play it safe. They’ll force you to get out and take risks.

Like a lot of close relatives, you’ll hate her, but you’ll love her, too.

DON’T OVERSTAY YOUR WELCOME

Leaving the end of a book is a lot like leaving a party—once it’s time to go, it’s best to say all of your goodbyes and get out of there. Resist the temptation of long digressions and awkward repeat farewells, or you’ll end up sleeping in the bathtub.

It’s important to give yourself room to wind things down in your story, but you don’t want to keep going so long that you run out of momentum. There’s a principle from something called the Hollywood Formula (explained beautifully here on Writing Excuses) that basically boils down to this: stronger endings execute their various resolutions in relatively quick succession.

That’s not to say your book has to end in one Michael Bay plot explosion, but if you can find a reasonable point of convergence between your character arcs and plot conflicts, you’ll probably end up with something that’s more emotionally resonant, more elegantly plotted, and better paced.

And if there’s something more removed from that convergence that you feel the need to communicate, remember that there’s always the epilogue. An epilogue can show your readers where your characters and world have gone without dragging them through every step of that journey (because, let’s face it, if it were story-worthy, you’d probably just write another book about it). A good epilogue is like a follow-up email—it’s a short, sweet way to thank your readers for the fun you’ve had together, and it’s more likely to get you invited back than regurgitating everything into the bathtub.

And on that note, I’ll take my leave.

***

Carrie Patel is a novelist, game designer, and expatriate Texan. She is the author of the Recoletta trilogy, which includes the science fantasy murder mystery The Buried Life (2015), the political thriller Cities and Thrones (2015), and the upcoming The Song of the Dead (May 2017), published by Angry Robot. Her short fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and PodCastle.

As narrative designer and game writer, she works for Obsidian Entertainment, an award-winning development studio known for story-driven RPGs. She worked on Pillars of Eternity, which was nominated nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing, and its expansions, The White March Part I and II. She is currently writing for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

Carrie Patel: Website | Twitter

The Song of the Dead: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Goodreads