Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 90

Robyn Bennis: Five Things I Learned Writing The Guns Above

They say it’s not the fall that kills you.

For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back.

On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.

So when the enemy makes an unprecedented move that could turn the tide of the war, can Josette deal with Bernat, rally her crew, and survive long enough to prove herself?

* * *

Math, It’s Not Just for Science Anymore

I’m a scientist, so I already get to use math for all kinds of cool stuff. From multivariate dynamic regression models to a simple count of how many intelligence-boosted rats escaped from the lab this week, math is an essential part of my research.

Until I started The Guns Above, however, I didn’t realize how useful math could be for my writing. With the power of math, I was able to estimate my airship’s carrying capacity, her top speed, the rate of buoyancy lost from various types of battle damage, and the distance to the horizon at any given altitude. Trigonometry even allowed me to draw carefully scaled sketches of airships, people, and other potential targets, so I could stand in my apartment and see them as Mistral‘s crew would, at any arbitrary distance.

Math! Who knew?

Love Is Hell

I love to write. A lot of you love to write, I bet. But, as with any love, there are days you hate it. Some days, writing feels like endless toil. There are days when writing acts distant for no apparent reason, because writing can be a passive-aggressive jerk. Writing is the sort of lover who breaks up with you, then slinks in naked while you’re taking a shower, like nothing happened. You’ll stay up all night with writing and regret it when you have to go to work in the morning. There’ll even be times when you’re trying to focus on something else, but writing won’t stop talking to you no matter how politely you ask.

Simply put, writing is an asshole. Writing steals your money and spends it on stupid things, like another gimmicky book on how to write better, and then it acts like it bought that book for both of you. Writing will take you to heaven and back all day long, but the next morning it’ll be gone without even leaving a note.

Because writing is love, and love is hell.

The Secret to Reader Immersion

In the course of writing The Guns Above, I discovered the secret to keeping readers immersed in a complex, unfamiliar fantasy world. It requires two steps:

1. Research or invent every single possible detail of every single aspect of the world you can think of.

2. Put the absolute minimum of that detail into the book.

For example, I didn’t just research steam engines when I was working out the mechanics of Mistral‘s powerplant. I also considered the history of steam power itself, and what economic and technological forces might have resulted in earlier development of an efficient, powerful steam turbine. I eventually settled on a history in which spitjacks—an obscure, 500-year-old kitchen gadget used to turn meat on a spit—were adapted to power a whole host of convenience and industrial items, such as ventilation fans and powered spinning jennies. The drive to improve power output led to a better understanding of the aerodynamics of fan blades—sadly absent in our world, where we were still mucking about with the piston engine at this point. This understanding hurried the invention of Mistral‘s powerful “steamjack.”

Almost none of that can be found in the final novel, because, while I’m sure it’s absolutely fascinating to the rest of your nerds, you don’t want a page of it interrupting your action scene.

Writing the Damn Thing is Just the Beginning

I started writing The Guns Above in 2013 and finished in 2014. It took until 2017 to see it heading to bookstores. I put more time, work, and effort into the book after I finished it than I did while writing. I suspect this would have been true even if I was one of those freaks of nature who can write a perfect first draft, because there was still the question of publishing, production, and promotion. I knew these would be a big part of the job going in, but I had no idea how big.

This Is What I Want To Do Forever

For the past year and a half, I’ve been sorta-kinda living the life of a pro writer, and there’s a lot to hate about that life.

I know that’s a weird way to follow such a heartwarming heading, but stick with me here. As I write this article, I have no idea how well my book will do. It may be a humiliating failure. This year may prove to be a stain on my resume, forcing me to explain why I neglected my career to chase after a silly childhood fantasy. Or my book may be a success, the opening chapter of a prolific new career as an author. My entire future stands poised over the abyss, ready to fall or fly. Worse still, I may not know whether it’s falling or flying for years, because it can take that long for a debut author to build an audience large enough to pay the rent.

Indeed, with the industry as it stands, many authors are destined to live at the quivering edge of financial viability forever. If I end up in the lost souls room with them, every launch and every reprint will leave me wondering whether I get to continue as an author or be forced, hat in hand, back to a day job. Between sweating sales of the current book, preparing for the launch of the next, trying to get a deal on the one after that, and writing the one after the one after that, I’ll be lucky if I have two days a year that aren’t spent in terror, waiting to see if I still have a career in the morning.

But, then again, wouldn’t it be worth it? Because it would mean I’m a writer in love with writing, and there are few things as wonderful as that.

Robyn Bennis is an author and scientist living in Mountain View, California, where she consults in biotech but dreams of airships. She has done research and development involving cancer diagnostics, gene synthesis, genome sequencing, being so preoccupied with whether she could that she never stopped to think if she should, and systems integration. Her apartment lies within blocks of Moffett Airfield’s historic Hanger One, which once sheltered America’s largest flying machines. The sight of it rising above its surroundings served as daily inspiration while she wrote her debut novel, The Guns Above.

Robyn Bennis: Website

The Guns Above: Indiebound | Amazon

Carnival and Chess and Boxes of Bees: Politics In America, 2017

Nobody wants another hot take on yesterday’s marginal-yet-special-yet-still-marginal elections, and yet here I am, with a take as hot as a plate of cold fajita meat. Just the same, I use this space to spout off mouthily — or mouth off spoutily? — and so here I am, doing exactly that.

A thousand things vex me about politics today, and that’s right, I said vex, so you know it’s fucking serious. Politics in America is a mess. There aren’t two Americas — there are three, or ten, or twenty, and it’s made all the worse by having only two parties to represent them. (And no, this is not a plea for more third-parties, because at this point, we can’t figure out two of these groups much else accommodate another gaggle of assholes.) The GOP side is — well, listen, I have no idea what’s going on there. I feel like I’m watching a train barrel down one track toward a cliff. A cliff whose valley below is full of biomedical waste and werewolves. They’re doing this all so ineptly, so indelicately, without any awareness or fear. It’s like I’m witnessing adults running around town hitting babies with hammers and we all know it’s happening and we all know it’s bad — and in theory there will be punishment for the baby-whacking monsters, but they seem to be doing it so brashly, so brazenly, that you’re afraid consequences may not be forthcoming? “Who will save those babies?” we ask. “Will anyone demand justice for the hammerstruck children?” And all of us stand around shrugging. “Hopefully? Shit.”

I’ve posited that the GOP either is:

a) stupid

b) compromised / kompromat

c) greedy

d) aware of something we aren’t, like, say, secret vote hacking

e) in possession of a secret moon base to which they will retire

f) some untasty combination of the above flavors

Because they just keep going. They’ve got Trumpcare, which is somehow less popular than anal cankers, and yet they’re like, YEP, WE’RE FUCKING GOOD, WE’RE GONNA PUT THIS OUT THERE AND WE’RE GONNA VOTE ON THIS GURGLING SHIT BUCKET AND I’M SURE IT’LL BE FINE. Further, they continue to tie themselves to Trump again and again, which feels a lot like trying to ride an elderly bison through quicksand. It’s sinking. The old-ass bison is sinking, get off the bison. Get off the bison, you guys. But they whistle and ki-yaa the bison further and further into the muck. Blissfully ignorant.

So, at this point, I dunno what to think about the GOP, except that it’s fucked up and I’m pretty sure at this point they hate us and will rip off their faces to reveal the reptilian Visitors from the ‘V’ TV show. And even there maybe I’m being too optimistic.

On the other side, the Democrats.

The heart and soul of the Democrats are up for renewal.

They need that, some kind of revival.

Problem is, nobody can agree what that means.

Shit, I don’t know what it means. I have no real answers.

Do the Dems move further left? Maybe, but remember, “left” is less a direction and more a gaggle of subjective principles. Bernie is super liberal, until you realize he’s soft on guns and soft on women’s rights and grouses about identity politics, which makes him economically progressive but not socially progressive. So, do the Dems move away from social and identity politics? Sure, if they don’t mind alienating a fantastic chunk of human real estate called everybody who is not white, cis-male, straight. Do they stress Medicare-for-All instead of Let’s-Make-The-ACA-Work? Do they stress Free College despite that sounding like Dreaded Socialism? Where do they focus their efforts? If they move to the middle, to where much of the country reportedly sits, we view them as too milquetoast, too easy, too middling meh bleh poop noise. Do they focus on climate change? It’s essential, mighty essential, because literally nothing else matters if the seas are boiling and the skies are made of lightning, but climate change isn’t sexy, either. “We need to save our increasingly doomed planet” is starting off on a broken foot. Essential as the message is, hey maybe we won’t die, wow, what a sexy-sexy message, god, I’ve got such a voting boner now that I am reminded that we’re sprinting merrily toward our own extinction!

So then, to the soul of the party —

Not the topics, but how they approach those topics —

Do the Dems embrace a more populist approach?

Do they fight dirty?

Do they finally take the low road?

I see that again and again, this plea to the Democrats, do more, do more, fight more, get nasty, break the rules, fuck the system. And I feel that, too. One day I want Kamala Harris to walk into Congress with a shipping container full of bees that she opens like in that essential Oprah GIF (referenced so neatly at the fore of this post). I want them to throw batteries at Santa. I want to hear, Tammy Duckworth sends her regards just before some serious shit goes down. (Never mind the fact that the problem with this all is, asking the Dems to “do more” before we’ve voted them into power is dishonest, at best.)

At the same time, maintaining decorum and walking the high road is… kinda why we like them, isn’t it? At least a little? We like that they’re the adults in the room. It’s kinda part of their brand — it didn’t used to be a thing you had to say, “Hey, I’m not a diaperbaby who will sell the nuclear codes for a handjob by a winking Russian,” but now, maybe you need to say that. Getting down in the mud with the pigs just makes you another pig. On the other hand, politics has become — or perhaps has always been — a nasty pig-wrestling contest, and you don’t win it by sitting in a nice chair two miles from the mud-hole. You win it in the mud. With the pigs.

And that really is the only thing I think that I know:

Government is complex and full of nuance. Like life. Like most things.

And politics is complicated, too — it’s a filthy, overgrown pubic tangle. It has lice. It has an old lollipop stuck in there. It has early, sinister, truly Satanic drafts of the Constitution tucked up under its snarl, along with the bones of Nicolas Cage from National Treasure.

But people are fundamentally dumb.

I don’t mean individual people.

I just mean people-people. The collective. The aggregate.

An ant colony is as good as its best members. But humanity is only as good as our worst, and we will always have the worst among us. Those people are loud and dumb and they vote.

Politics needs to look simple, for the simpletons. And it needs to look simple even for us smartletons, too, because sometimes we don’t like nuance. Sometimes we want to pretend that everything really is Black and White, Good and Evil.

We don’t want nuance. We don’t want all the fiddly bits.

It comes down to this, I think:

The Democrats are playing a chess game.

The Republicans are running a carnival.

Only problem:

Nobody likes chess, and everybody loves the carnival. I don’t want to watch Knight to Fuckface 4, I want to eat cotton candy and ride the Gravitron until I vomit on a small child. I want to eat fried foods until I shit my pants. It’s not smart. It’s a bad instinct.

But chess is dumb and the carnival is fun.

Trump is a carnival barker.

He gets up there, and he yells and he claps his hands. Clap, clap, clap, yaaaaaay. Look at me, look at me, he says. He tells us, this way to the great egress, and we follow, doo-dee-doo.

The Dems are telling us about their chess moves. They’re explaining to us, in great detail, the many moves they could make — they’re strategy nerds. Min-maxing D&D players. They’ve got decks of Magic cards and deep thoughts about Excel spreadsheets.

And we tune out.

(Okay, I don’t tune out, because I once had a red-blue deck that was aces, man.)

But here’s the trick:

We need that.

We need smart people running this government.

We don’t need carnival barkers. A carnival barker doesn’t run anything. He just looks like the guy who runs the carnival, but really, he’s the guy who convinces you to spend your money at the Games You Can’t Win booth. The carnival barker is a con-man. We love him even as he cons us.

And yet, we also need carnival barkers.

To win elections.

That’s the twofold fuckery of this process — we need someone to both win elections and then run government. Clinton didn’t win the election (though to her credit, she, uhh, won the entire popular vote), but could’ve run the hell out of our government. Trump won the election, but runs the government the way a baby runs a diaper: which is to say, he just cries and fills the white sack around his hip with shit. Trump can’t read a memo that isn’t written on a fridge in magnetic letters, for fuck’s sake — but he could talk, and he could lie, and he could promise the sun and the moon and the sky, all delivered on the backs of coal-crapping taco-bowl-eating bald eagles. Ossoff didn’t win an election because he didn’t have that carnival-barker hook*. Handel did, or at least, had more of it — and the circus of PAC propaganda bought around her filled the gap.

We need someone who sounds like a carnival barker, but who is really a chess player. I don’t know who that is, mind you. I know that Bill Clinton was that guy: a car salesman but also a strategist. Obama was that guy: he had the cadence of a preacher but the mind of a Star Trek captain. I think someone like Kamala Harris has that. Cory Booker, too, maybe. And here I’m not even getting into their politics or their platforms, only who they are and if they have that right sausage mix of charisma-and-cleverness. I don’t know. I don’t know a damn thing**, honestly, except that I’m ready to find a cave to live in until either the world blows up or voters come to their senses. I do know that all of us, of each party, is looking for the heart-and-soul of who we are and where we want to be, and until we find it, until we find both unity inside our groups and unity between the groups, this train is gonna continue toward the cliff. And if we’re not careful, we’ll all be drinking biomedical waste as we’re getting mauled by werewolves.

Good luck to us all.

Fight on. Find our heart, find our soul.

Resist.

* okay, Ossoff also didn’t win because of gerrymandering and dirty tricks, which is to say, more con-artist chicanery, and we need to address that shit post-haste, lest it keep on happening — and maybe this speaks to the ace that the GOP have up their sleeve — they can continue to play dirty and we expect it and worse, we allow it.

** I know nothing, Jon Snow, except the fact that if you were only able to change one thing ever about our political system, the biggest thing is not climate change, but rather, Getting Money Out Of Politics — the moment you stop money from literally purchasing the affections of our politicians and the system, the sooner we can start having uncorrupted efforts to make things better for all and not just better for the selfish motherfuckers holding the biggest checkbooks.

Spider Pals, A Twitter Adventure

Sometimes, authors talk on Twitter and when they do it’s totally normal and not at all weird and hey where are you going? (High-five to Maureen Johnson, who is now a spider nesting in my ear. Which is totally fine.)

Ahem.

[View the story “Spider Pals, Starring Maureen Johnson” on Storify]

And, Scene: Some Thoughts On Writing A Scene

What, exactly, is a scene? I ask.

And you say, “It’s that thing you made at Arby’s last week when you got really drunk and attacked that nice man by rubbing Horsey Sauce into his eyes.”

And I respond with, I was not drunk, I was high on wasp spray, and that “nice man” was actually an “evil centaur” which is why I rubbed Horsey Sauce into his eyes, you idiot, because Horsey Sauce is how you fucking defeat a fucking centaur. And also, no, that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about scenes. Rather, a scene in this context is a unit of narrative measurement that unifies a moment in the story by binding it together with common characters, common setting, and common purpose.

A scene is your most vital building block of fiction — it’s not just a brick, but rather, a whole wall, and of course, walls are what hold up houses. I mean, that and necromancy ha ha just kidding I’m not a necromancer, I’ve just been huffing more wasp spray.

Understanding scenes and their construction is so very vital — and yet I feel like writing a book is often this act of clumsily speed-running through a story with great, woeful inelegance, all pinwheeling arms and clomping feet. As such, I know I often pass by the invisible demarcations between scenes and don’t really give as much pause to that as I should. A scene requires thought. A scene requires some construction. Maybe not in the first draft, and maybe over time it’s something we intuit rather than architecture we actively build.

Just the same, I think there’s value in highlighting what goes into making a [insert overly positive adjective here like “bad-ass” or “radical” or even “totally tubular”] scene.

SO HERE HAVE SOME TIPS.

*loads some tips into the WRITING ADVICE cannon*

*fires it into your face, boom*

0. As always, writing advice is bullshit, but bullshit can be fertilizer. Maybe this page of scene-writing advice helps something grow in your narrative garden, or maybe it’s just something to shovel out of the way. Use or discard at your leisure.

1. A scene is a microcosm for the greater whole. Meaning, a scene is a little story in and of itself. It should have shape. It should have a beginning and an ending. It should have conflict, characters, and drama. The scene should begin, and then escalate. It ideally presents a challenge unique to the scene, but reflective of the larger story. It should have characters in the scene who want shit — and the scene is a power dynamic expressing characters working together or against one another to solve their own particular problems.

2. More to the point, a scene represents a bend in the maze. Characters have problems, and they have solutions, and between the problem and the solution lies the maze — the maze is thing you put there, as storyteller, and the best version of that maze is one that is grown organically out of the character. In other words, the bends of the maze are what happens when the characters do shit and say shit — taking action and grabbing agency! — and effectively make problems for themselves. That’s not to say these problems are self-destructive, only that in solving a problem, one experiences difficulties, right? No good deed in fiction goes unpunished. It’s like trying to clean off your desk — the idea is good, and maybe you succeed, but you still accidentally spill coffee onto your Roomba and then the Roomba goes mad and murders the cat and then the Cat Council wants revenge and next thing you know, you’re being hunted by the Cat Council’s most talented assassins (sorry, meowsassins) all just because you wanted to clean your desk. MORE TO THE POINT, the bends of this maze — these flashpoints of conflict, action, dialogue, decision, agency — are best examined in scenes.

3. Never let a scene go on too long. A scene is rope. Too much and readers will hang themselves with it. It should be taut, like a strangling cord — not loose, like loops of elephant bowel.

4. As with the story, start the scene as late as you can. Every scene doesn’t need to happen omg in the middle of some real shit, but you also don’t need to start every scene at, like, the character’s birth. Think of it like a challenge: how late can you start the scene while it still makes sense and feels vital? Enter the scene at a point that’s interesting. Begin at a point that affords us a question: why are we here, what is the character doing, who is that dead guy, is that cheese, I love cheese, mmm, cheese.

5. Speaking of vital, consider how the status quo breaks. Storytelling is an act of contextualizing a breach of the status quo. Story begins when something has changed — *thunder rumbles* — and the narrative that unspools from that seeks to explore and exploit that shift in the status quo. Something is broken. Things are not as they were. And so the story begins. But scene shifts represent smaller pivot points, too — at the fore of each scene, consider either how the status quo has changed and led to the scene, or how the scene will change the status quo by its end. A good story constantly pushes-and-pulls with this fundamental narrative motion: it breaks normal, establishes a new normal, and then breaks that new normal once again. Sometimes in big, brash ways. Other times in more subtle ways.

6. Don’t fuck with centaurs. I know it has nothing to do with scenes, but I just wanted you all to know that. I mean, I guess if you want advice, go ahead and write a scene involving centaurs? Or the fucking and/or not-fucking-with of centaurs? Shit, I dunno. *sprays more wasp spray into mouth* *eats cheese to cover up wasp spray taste*

7. Present You can do Future You a big honking favor. Future You is stupid, but Present You can make Future You smart if Present You does his, er, your fucking job. What I mean is this: at the end of the day’s writing, noodle on the next scene you’re going to write. Then jot down like, three quick sentences for tomorrow’s work. Leave your desk. Turn off your monitor. Pull up your pants. Then go walk, shower, mow the lawn, whatever you need to do to get the blood moving. Think about the scene, then think about it some more, then push like you’re pooping and think even harder about it. Before bed, think about the scene one more time — set your brain like a slow-cooker, then plunge into the dark waters of sleep. What needs to happen in that scene? What if this happens? Or that? What if centaurs?! Wake up. Go write. Look at your notes from the day before. Summon your DREAM SOUP and see what lies in that turbid broth. Past You left you a present. Seize the information and the energy and go write.

8. Visit earlier scenes. Before writing a new scene, go back and re-read the scene that happens chronologically before it. Not necessarily the one that happens in the draft, but the one that connects most directly with character and setting. This will help you launch into the new scene. Y’know what will also help you? Wasp spray. *rattles can* *rattles it harder* Mmm.

9. Don’t overdo the scene. Just as earlier I say to get in as late as you can, you also want to get out as early as you can. That doesn’t mean you need to make a scene short and stumpy, and some scenes do need to breathe — breathe yes, barf no, so you need to control how much you’re regurgitating into that narrative space. Give the audience just as much as they need to continue. Storytelling is often an act of ushering the audience through a dark forest — you need to give them some light in the dark to help them find their way, but too much light leaves them blinded, and it exposes the mystery. It’s like a haunted house attraction with the lights on. Not enough light, and the reader becomes lost and frustrated. A scene succeeds by finding that balance of how much they need versus how much you can leave out. Further, if a scene is going to be transitional — getting characters from Point A to Point B, or getting them to understand Plot Point X, consider ways to fold those scenes into something more active, more dynamic. Try not to let a scene be purely transitional. Double-duty is welcome. No unitaskers. Let the scene multi-task — it can transition us, but also explore character, advance plot, and tongue its theme seductively in the reader’s ear. DID IT JUST GET HOT IN HERE

10. Scenes do not exist in isolation. They are part of a chain — maybe the start, maybe the end, or maybe one of the many motherfucking links in the middle. Either way: they braid together. They are not isolated. They are pockets of cause-and-effect. One scene is a cause. Another demonstrates the effect. One scene reveals truth, and the next three scenes deal with the consequences stemming from that truth. Scenes introducing questions are quantum-entangled with scenes demanding or providing answers. Scenes of lies told will lead to scenes of the outcomes of that lie — and those outcomes will create new directions of the story, which are written as, drum roll please, more scenes. (See earlier comments re: “the maze.”) Scenes must impact the story — which means scenes create other scenes. They are generative. If you write a scene and no other scenes suggest themselves as a result, you have not done enough. You have not asked enough questions or introduced enough conflict. Characters make plot. Which is to say, characters make scenes, quite literally: they create the context for why a scene is happening, and are driven by the character actions. Sometimes it involves an evil centaur at Arby’s, sometimes it doesn’t, I dunno. Point is: characters make scenes, and then, scenes beget scenes. Scenes facehug the plot and plant other scene-eggs that will burst out of the chest of the story. That’s just good narrative science, is what that is.

Now, go read this bit by John August.

And don’t forget to check out my book, The Kick-Ass Writer, whose initial cover once had a wonky font on it and made it look like it was instead called The Kick-Ass Waiter, which one assumes is a very different book.

P.S. don’t actually huff wasp spray, jeez

Macro Monday Sleeps At The Dew Drop Inn

LOOK MA I MADE SOME NEW WATERDROP MACROS.

(Rest seen at the bottom of the post.)

Anyway hey hi how are you guys?

I’m good over here. Just chugging my way through THE BIG GIANT BOOK THAT WOULDN’T BE SMALL. It’s increasingly a very different book for me — past-tense (I know, gasp), not-really-thriller-pacing, bigger, sprawlier, more epic in its scope. Also not part of a series, so, a big ol’ standalone. I’m trying to be patient with it and myself.

What else?

Upcoming event stuff:

July 14th, a reminder that Fran Wilde and I join the effervescent Kevin Hearne at the Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia — event starts at 7:30PM, getcher details right here.

Also, I will be the Guest of Honor at Ravencon 2018, taking place in Williamsburg, VA! April 20 – 22nd, hope to see you there, otherwise I’ll just hunt you down where you sleep.

AND THAT’S IT WOO HERE HAVE SOME MORE WATERDROPPIES

*flails*

*gesticulates*

*opens mouth, photos fly out*

Drink Me: The Velvet Wendigo

I would like to apologize for that mildly pornographic lemon.

I don’t know how he got in here. I didn’t invite him.

ANYWAY here is a very quick drink recipe you should make, and then put in your face. And then you should make it again, and put it in your face again. Because though it’s not summer here, it got suddenly fucking hot. It had been cold. Unseasonably cold. And damp. And then spring was like, “Fuck it, I’m out early,” and it left the door open, and HELL-HOT SUMMER DEMONS SWEPT ON ON WINGS OF STEAM and they just took over the place. Which meant it was time for a nice, refreshing drink.

Thing is, bourbon is — for me! — not really a nice refreshing drink. I love it! I do. But I don’t associate it with hot summer days or anything.

Bourbon tends to be a winter/fall beverage in our house. In summer I tend to lean toward beer, gin, tequila, the iced tears of my foes.

And yet, I wanted bourbon.

So I made this, and you should make it, too.

Into your mixer goes:

Two ounces bourbon

One ounce of ginger syrup*

The juice of one lemon.

The juice of one (small) orange, like, a blood orange.

That’s literally it.

You could add in an ounce of triple sec or other orange liqueur.

You could add in an ounce of ginger liqueur to replace the ginger syrup.

You could add in a couple dashes of bitters, for sass.

You could just drink the fucking bourbon** and nobody would blame you.

Either way, toss that around and pop it over some ice.

Then drink ten of them and write a comment below.

(As a sidenote, Gareth Skarka on FB asked me what I called this drink, and I had no name, so I called it The Velvet Wendigo, so let’s just make that official, shall we?)

* if you don’t know how to make ginger simple syrup GOD I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU NNNGHHH okay fine take a knob (heh, knob) of peeled ginger and chop it up and pop it in a pot. Also into the pot: 1 cup of sugar (I mix half white, half brown), 1 cup of water, and for some silliness, a splash of vanilla. Boil, then reduce to simmer for 20-30 minutes, until reduced. Stir occasionally.

** this is where you’re like WHAT BOURBON CHUCK JEEZ GODDAMN and I will tell you my secret is that for mixing and casual sipping you can’t do wrong with W.L. Weller — rumor is it’s basically a cheap variant of Pappy Van Winkle, and honestly, for $20, it’s really pretty lovely; if you’re wanting something fancier, I have and enjoy a lot of bourbons, including but not limited to, Hudson Baby, Basil Hayden’s, Colonel Taylor, Bulleit, and so on. Scads of smaller batch bourbons are available but I am not as well-drank there as I am with gin***

*** fine I’ll recommend some fucking gin too, you savages: Bluecoat is hands-down my go-to gin, but also love the Botanist (makes a helluva G&T with elderflower tonic from Fevertree) — though, the greatest G&T I have ever been served was in NYC and it used a gin made by a Brooklyn company called Greenhook Ginsmiths. Sadly due to weirdness in PA liquor laws, I can’t really get it here. Then again, some of you don’t like gin, so, there you go.****

**** though if you don’t like gin I might recommend you try a real gin and not like, the RUBBING ALCOHOL PINE TREE variety you get in most bottles. Most gin is shit, or half-shit. Try something lighter, more botanical, and put it with a non-shitty tonic like FeverTree or Q.

Return Of The Gaysaber

HEY THERE.

Read a great Book Riot article by Alex Acks (author of the book, Hunger Makes The Wolf) about LGBT inclusion in Star Wars (or the failure to include LGBT in the cinematic universe of Star Wars), and it drummed up some responses from Yours Truly, which I’ve Storified below for you delight or your discarding. You don’t need to read my piffle, but do try to read the post at BookRiot. Kay? Kay. *ignites rainbow lightsaber, vwommzz*

[View the story “On-Screen LGBT Inclusion In Star Wars, Please And Thank You” on Storify]

Solomon Grundy Born On A Macro Monday

SO, content has been a little thin at this here terribleminds-dot-com, and that’s for a handful of reasons. But first, hey look, new photos! One above and several below, mostly macro — but one is also a photo of BABBY GOATS, because if I can win your hearts with anything, I can win them with a photo of some BABBY GOATS, goddamnit.

Anyway, to continue.

Handful of reasons bloggerel has been a bit light —

First, I’ve had some mild problems with my site — it’s been sluggish and yo-yo’ing up and down. The host is looking into it, and though it’s gotten more stable, I’m not sure the digital turbulence is entirely over. (That said, I did fix the problem where email subscribers were no longer getting posts emailed from this blog but rather from “wordpress.com.” Thanks to all who offered fixes — the fix was ultimately easy, if irritating: I had to update not only WP, but Jetpack, and then initialize Jetpack, and also update all my other plugins for Reasons Unknown.)

Second, I’m currently writing A Really Big Book, like, the kind of book that is both big in plot and idea and SHEER BLOODYMINDEDNESS, so it’s been spending an excess of my Intellectual Energy Points (IEP). Every day the book takes a lot out of me. (In the best way possible, though. I’m really excited about it.)

Third, honestly, it’s a little hard to conjure blog content in this AGE OF DUMBFUCKERY — and I think people aren’t reading as much blog content, either, because they’re devoting a great many of their LFCRP (LongForm Content Reading Points) on articles and posts about this current AGE OF DUMBFUCKERY. So, it gets harder to pierce that veil both creatively and effectively with some little post about, “hey hi here’s how to successfully create narrative tension with artful comma placements OH GOD WHAT DID OUR PRESIDENT DO NOW AND OH SHIT ANTARCTICA IS ON ACTUAL FIRE I JUST SAW A POLAR BEAR COMMIT SUICIDE.”

Still, though, I need to get back into it a little bit, and assuming stability on the site’s part, that’s what I’mma do. Starting this week I’m going to post some shorter form writing stuff, maybe a recipe or three, and always a chance for some manner of frothing rantiness. Look for more STUNNING WENDIG-FLAVORED CONTENT in the coming days.

Sidenote: I hate the word “content.” It ranks up there with “IP” as the most milquetoast way of describing the junction point between art, entertainment, and information.

Then again, I also hate the word “blog,” which is the sound my dog makes before she throws up.

Anyway. Buy my books.

Have some pictures. Either here, or on my Flickr page.

(Warning: last photo on the page contains a spider. A really cool spider! A spider I’d never seen before! A glorious cyclosa orb-weaver trash-spider! But it’s a spider, so if that freaks your shit out, don’t scroll down.)

Flash Fiction Challenge: Ten Random Titles

Always a fun one —

Ten random titles.

I give you a list.

(Gotten from a random title generator online.)

You pick (or randomly choose) a favorite.

Write a story.

Fun and easy.

I mean, y’know. “Easy.”

List at the bottom of the post.

Length of story: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, June 16th, noon EST

The List Of Titles

The Secret Gift
Wave of Destruction
Laughing Lights
The Thief of Moons
The Thorn of Prophecy
Each Game
The Nobody
The Unwilling Word
A Year of Bodies
Cleaning Up The Ashes

Riding The Rides At Comey Island

I went on a bit of a Twitter tear about the upcoming Comey hearing, and in addition, the overall state of this country — with a call to action about trumping Trumpcare in the meantime. I’ve gone ahead and Storified those thoughts for you. Please to enjoy. Or not. I’m not your Dad. Yet.

[View the story “Riding The Rides At Comey Island” on Storify]