Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 94

Flash Fiction Challenge: Ten More Titles (Round Two!)

Okay, so, a couple weeks ago I asked you guys to come up with three-word titles, and you did, in spectacular fashion. It fueled last week’s challenge.

And, because you were prolific and I am nothing if not a tremendously lazy human being, I’m going to dip back into the well for another ten titles. Pick one or use a random number generator to choose, then write a piece of short fiction to go along with the title.

One change this time around is my picks for title are not random –

I’m hand-picking ten that sound interesting.

Also, we’ll up the word count a little.

Get writing, word-nerds.

Length: ~1500 words

Due by: Friday, Feb 24th, noon EST

Post online, give us a link in the comments.

Your ten titles to choose from (title creators in parentheses) are:

She Broke Gods (thomasmhewlett)
Gunslinger Ridge Experiment (EGUW)
Wolves of Sorrow (powerjacob)
Tomorrow’s Mirror Today (stephen cowles)
Stars That Bleed (kirajessup)
To Forbidden Passengers (lydie h)
The Porcelain Cat (d.moulou)
It Wants In (mollons)
Sincerely, Your Mortician (AN)
Burr Edge Jitterbug (m. oniker)

Is It Time, Dear Writer, To Ditch Your Literary Agent?

It used to happen once every couple of months. Then once every month, now I’m up to about once a week. What I’m talking about is, authors emailing me to see if it’s time to leave their agents.

When this happens, the writer often frames it like, “Well, how do you and your agent do things?”

And I say things like:

ME: She sells my books? I dunno, I write them, and then Stacia helps them navigate the BOILING CHAOS STORM that is the publishing industry?

THEM: But what about emails?

ME: Emails, like, Hillary’s emails?

THEM: No, does your agent answer your emails?

ME: Well, of course.

THEM: In what timeframe?

ME: A reasonable one? Actually, an unreasonably fast one, usually — within the day, sometimes within the hour. Pretty fast turnaround to questions and stuff.

THEM: She not only responds to your emails, but she responds to them quickly?

ME: She does, and in fact endures a great deal of nonsense from me, including occasional Career Freakouts and other psychological gesticulations. But given your response, I’m guessing yours doesn’t… respond at all?

And from there, we uncover a host of uncomfortable sins. And this can be for a lot of reasons. Maybe the agent is wrong for you, or you’re wrong for her. Maybe she’s too new. Maybe she has too many clients. Maybe you’re too small a client and she’s got bigger beasts to hunt. Maybe she’s a terrible agent — or maybe you need to recalibrate your needs.

I never really like to recommend that a writer leave her agent — not because that’s a bad idea, but because I’m not comfortable being the one to say, YEAH, TIME TO JUMP OUTTA THE PLANE, as that’s awfully easy for me to say, because I’m buckled up in a nice, cozy seat. Telling you to do the hard thing is easy when I don’t have to do it with you. Plus, then you jump out of the plane, get sucked into a turbine, are turned into a red mist, oops.

That said, there is a calculus involved in determining whether or not to persist in the relationship, and that calculus is different for every author. But — but! — I do think that there are things, mmm, nnny’know, you should look out for, just in case. If enough of these boxes are checked, maybe it’s time to consider moving on. Let us discuss some of these:

1. Your agent doesn’t communicate with you in a timely manner — or at all. That’s not good. Your agent is the champion of your book and ostensibly, your career. They are its babysitter — and I don’t mean that dismissively, I mean, you want your child to be in capable hands, and further, you want that babysitter to answer the phone if you would like to find out how your baby is doing. If you go weeks without hearing anything from an agent, or months, or forever, you have a problem. It probably means they forgot your baby at the mall.

2. Your agent has little idea about your career. I am a firm believer that an agent should rep more than a book — the agent reps the author and, by proxy, the author’s drinking habits I mean career. I’ve had long conversations with my agent about strategy and about different editors and publishers and genres and also about where you can get a really good margarita. Okay, the margarita thing is secondary, but just the same, my career is viewed as having a trajectory — an arc, not a single point in time — thanks to talks with my agent.

3. You pay the agent. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but if you’re paying the agent up front — as in, not a commission off sales — you probably got yourself a scammer on your hands. Remember: the money flows to the author, not away from the author. A reputable agent is one you pay a commission to — meaning, they’re only making money when you’re making money.

4. Your agent doesn’t seem to like your books. This is a thing. I’ve seen it. I don’t understand it. But any time the agent gets a new draft of your book, they tell you in words minced or unminced that they don’t like it, they can’t sell it, won’t rep it. Now, a good agent will tell you the truth about a book if it doesn’t work — it’s not their job to pass a hunk of crap up the publishing ladder just because Baby Huey will throw a tantrum otherwise. But it’s also possible there’s a very real disconnect between you and the agent in terms of what they like. Worth a look at the rest of the agent’s catalogue in terms of authors and books she reps. If you’re made to feel like an ugly duckling in a flock of preening peacocks, might be time to scout elsewhere.

5. Your agent doesn’t seem to like your chosen genres. This is also a thing. You write erotic epic choose-your-own-adventure books, your agent reps self-help books for narcoleptic parrot-owners, and ne’er the two shall meet. You want an agent familiar with the genre of what you write, not just in terms of the books themselves but also in terms of the industry circles and imprints that support that genre.

6. Your agent is not the right size. It sounds great having a rock star agent who reps mega-clients, and certainly it can be. But having known a few authors who were with some high-profile agents at the time they were debut authors, they often felt lost or under-sized in comparison — they were not, quite simply, a priority.

7. You’re doing the work. Some authors end up being the ones to pitch editors and seal deals, with the agent there mostly skimming off the success of the author. This isn’t common, but I’ve seen it happen — the author is the one doing the leg work, the submitting, the everything, and then the agent just passes along the contract and boom, 15% collected.

8. The agent seems to be on the side of the publisher, not the author. An agent who defends unethical publishing behaviors is not an agent you want to have. You certainly don’t want an agent who is hostile to publishing, and who has a realistic view of what you can get away with and what slings and arrows you’re probably going to have to suffer — further, you also don’t want to be a prima donna to the agent, acting like, WELL, YOU DIDN’T GET ME A MILLION DOLLAR ADVANCE SO OBVIOUSLY YOU LOVE THE PUBLISHER MORE THAN ME. But at the same time, an agent who seems to be more interested in protecting his relationship with the publisher than the relationship he shares with you, the author… eek, yeah, no, not good.

9. Your agent just ain’t selling your books. Something just isn’t coming together, but your books ain’t moving. Assuming you have confidence in those books, it may be time to look further afield for a new agent. It’s not a personal thing — but if a real estate agent were not helping to sell your house (or at least helping you to understand why the house isn’t selling), then some new blood may be necessary. And by “new blood” I do not mean human sacrifices, please be advised. Human sacrifices are a no-no. That’s how publishing used to work but new regulations have strictly forbidden it blah blah blah, so now it’s no longer “politically correct” to sacrifice humans and — well, it is what it is, so you may just need to find a new agent.

10. Something just isn’t right. This is an unquantifiable thing, I know, but sometimes in any relationship — things aren’t jiving. The gears keep slipping. The agent doesn’t like you. Or you don’t like him. You don’t ever feel on the same page. Something feels off, weird, like you’re forever out-of-sync. You and your agent don’t need to be friends, but this is ideally a relationship that will go on, so if something isn’t right, it’s worth figuring out what it is and if your gut is trying to tell you something.

Listen, I get it.

Getting an agent is tough. It feels wildly special, like you’ve been given the keys to the first gate of the kingdom, and you feel like losing the agent is giving away the keys. But understand now that a bad relationship with an agent is almost certainly worse than no relationship at all. And if you were good enough to get an agent on the first go around, I’d argue you have a good shot the next time, too. (Plus: self-publishing remains a viable, if crowded, arena. Though even there I’d argue you should eventually get an agent. I’ve sold some self-published stuff to publishers domestic and foreign, and that happened only because of my agent.) You need to recognize that you’re the one with the power — meaning, you’re the one with the kick-ass book that needs a home. The agent is a liaison, a loose partner, a valuable player with real insight — but the agent is not your boss. The agent is not the only agent that exists. The gate to the kingdom isn’t even real in the first damn place. You do what you gotta do for you and your book.

Before you go voting your agent off the island, though, do a few things –

First, make sure it’s not just you. Like, ask the tough questions — are you being unreasonable? Are you overreaching and creating unfair expectations?

Second, talk to some other authors — successful and unsuccessful. Ask around how they do things with their agent. Talk it through. Establish a baseline for “normal.”

Third, talk to your agent. Be upfront and honest about your concerns — politely, duh — and try to suss out what’s up. Maybe the agent feels it too. Maybe the agent can course-correct. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can save the baby for later, because babies make great baby jerky when brined and smoked and dried and — wait, I’m doing the thing where I talk about eating babies again, aren’t I? Ha ha ha, my therapist told me I needed to stop doing that. *smacks self in forehead* STUPID WENDIG. STUPID STUPID WENDIG.

Then, if it’s time to truly say goodbye to your agent, you do it the right way, the correct and kind way, which is to say you gently pull the lever next to your desk and open the trapdoor beneath the agent’s feet, thus plunging them into the ACID BATH or BARRACUDA TANK that you built and –

*receives note*

*reads note*

Okay, don’t do that.

No acid baths.

No barracuda tanks.

Trap doors also a no-no, apparently.

ALL THAT AND NO BABY-EATING

FIONA APPLE WAS RIGHT, THIS WORLD IS BULLSHIT

*long sigh*

Fine, I guess what you do is, you write a nice letter and blah blah blah you let them go live on a nice farm upstate. Be sure not to procure a new agent before you end your relationship with the former, and also if you have existing books on submission or contracts in play, you need to talk to the agent to see how that gets handled. (If you have an agency agreement, it should outline that. You want to make sure that the agency gets its due for work done, but also isn’t able to invest in you or your work long after you have left them. Like with any publishing relationship, read the damn contracts and protect your booty.)

It’s hard out there in PublishingLand, so do what you gotta. As always try to approach others with empathy and compassion. Be smart, be kind, watch your six, eat your Wheaties, buy my books.

* * *

INVASIVE:

“Think Thomas Harris’ Will Graham and Clarice Starling rolled into one and pitched on the knife’s edge of a scenario that makes Jurassic Park look like a carnival ride. Another rip-roaring, deeply paranoid thriller about the reasons to fear the future.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Out now where books are sold.

Indiebound

Amazon

B&N

Macro Monday Says To Hell With It, Have Some Dogs

Contrary to my desires last week, I did not get to scoot around the house looking for interesting macro photo opportunities, and instead we spent time playing in the snow that fell. Which means I have a new surplus of POOCH PHOTOS of our two dogs, Snoobug and Loa, to post.

So, I’mma post them below.

No, they’re not macro photos, but feel free to pretend the dogs are somehow microscopic and that I’ve just captured them up close with my magic camera.

Please to enjoy, humans.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Ten Titles From You

THE CHOICES HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.

Last week I said, hey, gimme a three-word title, and a lot of you complied. I randomly chose ten, and here are those ten (in parentheses is the creator of the title).

All Flags Fall (lbstribling)
The Gallows Girls (travishall)
Discount Skin Ticket (boydstun215)
The Last American (mags)
Guppy Must Die (jeanette hubbard)
Omen of Seven (stella winters)
Not Tonight, Honey (squeg)
One Fell Swoop (kaitlyn)
Not Today, Satan (momgoth)
Long Way Home (alisa russell)

Your job now:

Choose one either freely or with a random number generator.

Then, write a story using that title.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: 2/17, noon EST.

Post at your online space. Give a link in the comments so we can read it.

Go write.

Lara Elena Donnelly: Five Things I Learned Writing Amberlough

Amberlough is a vintage-glam spy thriller, set in a world with all the glamor and terror of 1930s Berlin. The economy is faltering, the government is riddled with corruption, the shadow of fascism is creeping across the political landscape, and the populace is partying hard enough to ignore their precarious situation.

Secret agent Cyril DePaul has betrayed his country to protect his lover, black market kingpin Aristide Makricosta, but when he gets in over his head he turns to street-smart stripper and drug dealer Cordelia Lehane for help. As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means — and people — necessary. Including each other.

* * *

I learned a lot writing Amberlough. These five things are just the things that changed me the most. Some changed the way I approach writing. Some changed the way I evaluate relationships, the way I consume media, the way I see the world. Some of these things feel eerily, unfortunately timely.

1) The second book is harder

This is technically cheating, because it’s something I learned as I moved on to my next project after Amberlough. I remember Amberlough coming out in a giant surge of joy and inspiration and furious typing. That is not what happened. What happened is I struggled and moaned and gave up a few times and then came back, and tweaked, and reordered, and killed off some characters, brought some back to life, and ascribed different actions to different people.

I was really, really beating myself up, wondering why the next project wasn’t as easy, why it wasn’t coming out as effortlessly. The truth is: human brains are bad at remembering pain and unpleasant experiences with clarity. My brain wrapped the difficult process of novel writing in a clever disguise. Well, brain, I have news for you: it just makes the second novel harder.

2) Question your unconscious bias

Amberlough is an anachronistic novel — I based a lot of the culture on late 1920s and early 1930s Europe. Which meant I kept defaulting to familiar norms. Female secretary, male boss, white people everywhere, etc. for no particular reason. But I knew I wanted the book to be about the forcible streamlining and homogenization of a messy, diverse place. And I couldn’t do that if I didn’t start with messy diversity.

Creating a diverse fantasy world full of fair representation is a worthy pursuit, but it’s also an excellent narrative tool. Diversity instantly creates tension. For instance: Cyril, one Amberlough’s main characters, is an affluent white man from a politically-powerful, old-money family. His boss Ada Culpepper is the daughter of two black immigrants—asylum seekers from a nation essentially destroyed by Cyril’s family. Though the race and gender politics in Amberlough are different than those in our world, and even though Cyril and Ada’s differences don’t contribute directly to the plot, they don’t see the world quite the same way, and this colors every interaction between them.

Similarly, Cyril’s beard Cordelia is an orphan from one of Amberlough City’s worst slums, who works as a burlesque dancer and drug dealer. She and Cyril become close friends, but there are certain things they will never, ever understand about each other. Those things create excellent opportunities for character development. For instance, when Cyril is telling Cordelia how he became a spy:

“When I was younger,” he said, ignoring her, “it seemed so exciting. Everything was a game, and ruthlessness had a kind of . . . romantic appeal.” Then, he looked up, and his eyes widened, flashing like mercury. “I’m sorry. You’re from the Mew. I wasn’t thinking.”

She licked her teeth, tasting good tobacco and clean gin. “Nah. I ain’t pinned. We’re all idiots when we’re kids. Only difference is, I stopped being a kid a lot sooner than you.”

The shame was plain on his face, and satisfying.

3) Espionage isn’t glamorous

Ian Fleming did a great job convincing us all that spies are sexy, and Amberlough follows in those scandalous footsteps. Very seldom do spies act like James Bond. Far more often they are like le Carré’s Smiley, or even less assuming. They’re usually just normal people, gathering information that might be useful handlers who hope it’s relevant. Intelligence is built on a foundation of thousands of separate, simple reports that make one complex picture.

One of the sexiest things about espionage is that important secrets are traded among people who generally have access to them by virtue of their position in life. This means ambassadors and their families (or their lovers); old money, society journalists, high stakes gamblers; well-known authors, actors, and other famous people who travel around the world in wealthy and elevated circles.

These aren’t generally the same people who are trained in Krav Maga or sharp-shooting. More often, they’re in the camp of people reporting on seemingly banal overheard conversations that, in the context of a larger operation, can become vitally important. During World War II, for example, one man was selected as an agent for Operation Doublecross simply because he bore a startling resemblance to General MacArthur. He had no training in tradecraft whatsoever.

4) We’ll root for anybody if they’re compelling

When I sent a draft of this book to my mom, she called when she was done and asked me where I’d learned to write such awful characters. And, more than that: how had I made them so likeable?

The people in this book are not good or nice. They are scheming, manipulative, devious, selfish, secretive, meddling, violent, and destructive. They commit horrible crimes and destroy other people’s lives to save their own. But my beta readers loved them. I loved them. I reveled in coming up with new ways for them to connive and conspire. It’s amazing how invested you can become in someone’s awfulness, if you’re sympathetic to their motivation. Amazing, and a little scary.

5) Injustice has no signpost

Reading history, it’s easy to point to a juncture and say, “That’s where things went wrong. I would notice something as crazy as a rigged election, or a fascist coup, or the dismantling of democracy.” But not if it looks like business as usual. And usually, it does.

For instance, I did a lot of research about rigged elections, though much of this information didn’t end up in the book. Mostly because, like spy work, the details are a little boring.

Rigging an election is as simple as workers at certain polling places saying, “Did you bring your ID?” Or people “losing” ballot boxes. Or candidates telling bald-faced lies, saying they’ve won when they haven’t, and steamrolling any objection. Or, I don’t know, making a stink about some emails at a critical point one week before people head to the polls.

As I read my research material (sent to me by a friend who consults on electoral conflicts) I remember wondering, “That’s it? Why didn’t people…do something?” If rigged elections were decided by one momentous handshake in a dark, smoky room, I could understand—no one would see the problem to stop it. But these weren’t cloak and dagger operations. These were the end result of many banal injustices, piling up in the open.

There is no moment of “This Far and No Further.” These things happen by slow increments, a current growing swifter each moment as the river approaches the falls. Change is wrought by small actions, multiplying and metastasizing into something huge.

* * *

The all-singing, all-dancing Lara Elena Donnelly is a graduate of the Alpha and Clarion writers’ workshops. Her work has appeared in venues including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Mythic Delirium. Her debut novel, vintage-glam spy thriller  Amberlough , drops on February 7, 2017 from Tor Books. A veteran of small town Ohio and the Derby City, Lara now lives in Manhattan. You can also find her online at @larazontally or  laradonnelly.com .

Lara Elena Donnelly: Website | Twitter | Facebook

Amberlough: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Goodreads | Book Trailer

Kameron Hurley: How to Keep Writing Through Times of Great Political Upheaval

I am never not in awe of Kameron Hurley’s writing. Whether we’re talking about her essays (ahem) or her fiction — like, say, her newest, The Stars Are Legion — I’m always eager to get my hands on the next Hurley book. Further, I’m always excited to have her here, because one day she’s going to be a literary rock motherfucking superstar, and I can say, I KNEW HER WHEN.

* * *

My grandmother grew up in Vichy France, under a regime propped up by and answerable to the Nazi regime. These last few months, I’ve wished she was still alive more desperately than any time since her death. I wanted to ask her how you coped when terrible things were happening all around you.

While we understand the necessity of writing during these times, figuring out how to persist in one’s writing when everything around you is so incredibly uncertain is tougher. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, and anxiety can kill your ability to do anything but go through the motions of bare bones survival. It’s in realizing that it was the anxiety unleashed by the sudden uncertainty in this country – when will the government declare martial law? Will we become a Russian puppet-state? Did a city explode in nuclear fire overnight? – also helped me figure out how to address it. If we can’t control the world around us, at least we can control the work we do in the face of it.

So here are my coping strategies. Hopefully some of them will help you too:

Ration your news. This may seem counter-productive. We all want to stay informed! The resistance needs us! But staring at a screen that’s beaming nightmares into your eyes for hours on end isn’t helpful; it’s actively harmful, because it will convince you that the problems out there are too big to address. I subscribed to The Washington Post, which I now read once a day. That’s news enough. I use Tweetdeck to view Twitter, which allows me to mute keywords from both my feed and mentions. I’ve muted, easily, over 200 keywords at this point, and I generally add a new one or two every day or so. This has also reduced the likelihood I’ll get suckered into a fake news meme. I also don’t have a personal Facebook account, which is a blessing. I recommend that you trim and mute there as well if you want to stay on it. But, again: Facebook is where fake news and your racist Uncle Joe are, so. I dunno. Your call.

Take up a hobby you don’t need to be good at. Like many writers, writing started out as my relaxing side gig. It was something I did in my spare time, and I found it deeply soothing. When I turned pro, the mad crash of deadlines and the need to level up my writing game to compete in a crowded market made the writing, well, less soothing. Sure, it’s still fun sometimes. But it became work. I needed something else to do with my brain that didn’t require angst. Then Netflix started streaming old episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, and I found them so relaxing to watch that my spouse got me an oil painting set for Christmas. I’ve now painted something like 16 paintings, and it’s OK that they aren’t good! I don’t owe them to anyone. No one is paying me for them. I can just enjoy getting better at a new skill. It’s deeply satisfying to watch your skills level up from one painting to the next. Painting, like learning a new language, has also changed how I view the world. I’m starting to look at the angles of things when I look at building and mountains. I pay attention to the play of dark and light. I’ve also moved on to watching other painting shows. While watching a show by William Alexander on YouTube, he says, “You must add dark. You can’t have light without the dark,” and it was what I really needed to hear right then. Find something you enjoy that you don’t have to be good at, and go do it.

Chillax on the booze and other drugs. I spent a couple months post-election drinking way too much. Bad for my health and bad for my wallet. I cut myself back to once a week again, largely by replacing the booze behavior with the painting behavior. Watch your intake and reliance on drugs right now, legal or illegal, clearly. It’s easy to make “just one more because the government has imploded” into a habit, because the government is going to be imploding for a good long while. Caffeine isn’t great for anxiety, either, so stick to those two cups of coffee a day, or go cold turkey (I’m still working on this).

Get a dog. I mean, I’m a dog person. Dogs love you unconditionally. Pets make great therapy for folks suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD, or any combination thereof. So you could get any kind of animal: a cat, a chinchilla, a turtle. When you want to just lie around in bed and not get up, knowing that you have to get up because you’re responsible for the care of another living thing is pretty motivating. Dogs also remind you that there is love and loyalty and pure joy in the world, even if you have lost your faith in humanity. Dogs have the added bonus of making you get up to take them outside for walks, which will get you out of your chair and increase the amount of exercise you get. Recent studies even found that people with dogs tend to get more exercise, and as a result, are healthier, than non-dog owners. It’s science, people.

Do what you can. Listen, yeah, resistance is great. Change the world! We need it. But we can’t do everything, and this is going to be a long, long haul. Pace yourself. Figure out what you can do, and do that. I subscribed to 5calls.org’s newsletter, which sends you a list of five issues every week to call your representatives about. I make my calls and check the local Ohio Resistance (yes, really) calendar to see if there’s a protest downtown that I can attend. So far I haven’t made it to one of those, but it’s on my radar now. Persist.

Write your way out. The world has not fundamentally changed. Only our understanding of it. The sun still comes up. There is still the work to do. Certainly, I’ve found that my own writing has shifted in tone and scope now that my view of the world is altered. I want to write more hopeful futures, futures where bad things happen, sure, but there are still good people out there doing good work. I want to be one of the people who makes a little more light in all this dark.

Rage against the dying of the light. Listen. When I’m feeling REALLY bad, and the dogs are curled up with me in bed and the booze is gone and I don’t want to get up, I remind myself that this is what the bad guys WANT. They want me to hide in bed, to get weary, and most of all: to shut up and stop working. On the very worst days, it is pure, blinding spite that gets me out of bed, because fuck those guys. If the only way you can get out of bed and put ass in chair to work is to yell “FUCK YOU!!” repeatedly at the clouds every morning, do it. I often say aloud, “Get up, Hurley” in the same cadence one would say, “Get up, Trinity.” And it helps. It really, really does.

So get up, folks. And get back to work.

* * *

Kameron Hurley is the author of the space opera, The Stars are Legion and the essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution, as well as the award-winning God’s War Trilogy and The Worldbreaker Saga. Hurley has won the Hugo Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer. She was also a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, and the Gemmell Morningstar Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Popular Science Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and many anthologies. Hurley has also written for The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, Bitch Magazine, and Locus Magazine. She posts regularly at KameronHurley.com.

Kameron Hurley: Website | Twitter

The Stars Are Legion: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Why Persist As A Writer In Times Of Such Heinous Fuckery?

So, ICYMI, in the last 24 hours:

- The GOP voted to confirm DeVos because they were unabashedly paid by DeVos

- The GOP voted to censure and rebuke Senator Warren, thus stopping her from reading the Coretta Scott King letter about Senator Sessions — they voted to silence her unanimously, which means even the so-called “maverick” McCain has fallen right in line at the feeding trough

- On CNN, Ted ‘the President called my wife ugly and said my Daddy killed JFK and I stood up to him by sitting on his lap’ Cruz told a woman with MS, “Congratulations on dealing with MS, it’s a — it’s a terrible disease, and congratulations on your struggles dealing with it.”

- On Twitter, Trump continues — with all the subtlety of a blue whale dropped out of a C-130 onto a school bus — to point the finger at the judicial branch as an enemy in need of a culling.

Soon, the GOP will just unmask themselves, revealing moist vortices of twitching fangs, and they will wantonly eat kittens and babies on live TV. They will outlaw birds and mixtapes and hope before fucking off to their moonbase while the rest of the Earth burns.

So, with this Age of Heinous Fuckery unfolding, I continue to get emails or tweets from writers who are just saying, I can’t do it, I can’t commit words to the page, I can’t muster the feeling that any of this is worth a damn. Especially with education being one of the roots of the American tree that the madmen continue to hack at, why write? Why do it? What’s the fucking point?

On Twitter, I attempted to answer that question, and I’m putting those tweets here for you to read. (You can also just click through to the full Storify post, if that’s easier for you.)

[View the story “Art As Resistance, Stories As Seeds” on Storify]

You Want To Marry This Breakfast Fried Rice And Have Its Babies

Okay, I don’t know that this fried rice recipe will make you want to marry the fried rice and have its fried rice babies, and honestly, I don’t know what “fried rice babies” would look like, except that they’re probably mushy and really gross. But you will want to marry me for giving you this recipe. But I can’t marry you. I’m married to my work. Also, my wife. Also, I’m having an affair with a cup of fried rice. You shut up. Don’t you judge me.

*whispers to the cup of fried rice, it’s okay, baby, it’s okay, shhh*

And yes, I know that picture up there is of a pea pod and not of fried rice, but whatever. I tried taking a nice photo of fried rice and it doesn’t look nice, because fried rice isn’t a nice-looking dish. It tastes great, but it looks like, you know, food garbage.

I AM TIRED OF YOUR JUDGEY-FACED JUDGEYNESS.

*stares*

*stares longer*

*stares so hard, eyes begin to dry out like grapes gone to raisins*

*blink blink*

Yes, we can now begin the recipe.

So.

In Hawaii, many breakfast places serve breakfast options that are not traditional here in the Upper 48. The loco moco, for instance, is a miracle health food, and by “health food,” I mean “food that will lodge itself in your heart and, provided that it does not kill you with a massive myocardial infarction, will provide you with a steady stream of nutrients for at least 60 days.” The loco moco is: a bowl of rice, topped with a hamburger patty, topped with an egg, topped with brown gravy because hey why the fuck not just dump some gravy on it. It is delicious. I was in Maui in November and I still have a loco moco clogging my aorta right now.

Another thing you might get on Hawaii for breakfast is:

Fried rice.

(For triple death points, you can get a loco moco made with fried rice.)

As such, I have brought that tradition home with me, and sometimes I make fried rice for breakfast. It is a surprisingly warm and comforting start to the day — the food equivalent of a cozy Christmas sweater. Except now I’m imagining eating a sweater? Which is not appetizing at all, is it? I am not very good at this writing thing, I apologize.

POINT IS, IT’S FUCKING SCRUMPTIOUS.

My family loves it. And they’re not just saying that because of the trap doors underneath their chairs that trigger whenever they say anything negative about me or my food.

Here now, is how you make my version of breakfast fried rice.

First, you need some rice. And you need some old rice. I don’t mean that you need ancient, antediluvian rice. I don’t mean you need moldy rice stuffed in a dirty gym sock and left to ferment. I mean that you need to have cooked rice on hand, rice that has cooled all the way, where the starch has settled down, where its texture is firmer and ensures that your fried rice won’t be gummy, like you’re eating something that was pre-chewed. I either make the rice the night before, then pop it in the YETI CLOSET to cool down, or I just say fuck it and I used the rice from last night’s Chinese dinner. I like to use a quart (two pints) of rice, or maybe two cups if I’m making it here. And two cups of uncooked rice becomes around six cups of cooked rice, I guess because rice is basically some kind of wizard food.

Next up, you need the SAUCE. Except it’s not really sauce, because — well, I dunno, it doesn’t sauce the rice, it just blends in with it because each grain of rice is cooked. Whatever. Shut up. I’m not a chef. I don’t know the magical chef words like saucier and mirepoix and cocaine. Point is, you need some goddamn liquid to flavor the rice, and here is the liquid blend I make: two TBsp soy sauce, two TBsp fish sauce, one TBsp oyster sauce, two TBsp sherry vinegar. If you want it a little sweet, substitute hoisin for the oyster, or use a sweet balsamic vinegar instead of the sherry. Also add in: three garlic gloves, minced, and about an equal amount of ginger, also minced.

Sometimes I add in a splash of mirin, because I’m wacky like that.

WHISK IT. WHISK IT GOOD. /devo

Now it is time for

BACON.

Okay, bacon is overused culinarily, I get it, but bacon — a good, smoky bacon — adds a nice layer of flavor, so clap your trap and get out four or five slices of bacon, chopped.

Put it in a pot, medium-high heat.

(Technically, a wok, but I don’t have a wok, I have a pot.)

Cook the bacon until its precious bacon essence begins to fill the room.

Then, as the bacon cooks (you don’t want it hella crispy, you just want it where it has begun to yield its unctuousness to the bottom of the pot), add in either one bigger onion or two smaller onions. Chopped, obviously, don’t just thunk it in there like it’s a fucking softball — do I need to tell you all this? God, you’re the worst. This is why I won’t marry you, I swear.

Now, it is time for the second meat.

And I want you to know, the second meat is Spam.

Yes, the pink quivering can-shaped ham-blob.

Yes, it is a canned meat.

No, it is not some kind of scrapple-based offal.

Yes, it might be a gelatinous cube from D&D.

Yes, it has enough sodium in it to mummify your internal organs.

AND YES, IT IS GODDAMN DELICIOUS.

Okay, listen, my Mom-Mom used to fry Spam in lard. It was stupidly, disgustingly amazing. I stopped eating Spam at one point because I became convinced it was something gross, as if it was just, I dunno, a can full of pulverized pig anuses or whatever, and hey, maybe it is. Though honestly, the can says it’s basically just ham made from pork shoulder, and it tastes mostly like ham, and also, did I mention it’s goddamn delicious? Sure, yes, you have to sometimes scrape off gelatin, and that can seem off-putting until you realize that gelatin is a natural byproduct. The gelatin makes it fancy! Just think of Spam as hillbilly terrine. Sidenote: my grandmother lived till she was 89, and she was tough as a brick wall. I credit the Spam in lard.

So, you need a can of Spam.

Just do it. Just go buy the Spam.

Cube it.

Put it in the mix with the bacon and the onion.

You can drain off some bacon fat at this point if you really want, or you can just leave it in there. I don’t care. I’m not your Mom. I don’t control what you do. I tried to control what you do but the bio-chip I inserted in your brain through your nose while you sleep is presently malfunctioning, and every time I push the reboot button, you pee yourself.

(Oh, uhh, yeah, P.S. I’m the reason you keep peeing yourself? Sorry.)

Lower heat maybe at this point? Medium heat.

Once that cooks down a little bit, I make a little room in the center of the pot, I scramble a couple of eggs, then I put them right in there. I scramble them real quick, then mix them up with the rest of the business.

Now: rice.

Dump the rice in.

That’s all you do with it. Nothing more complicated than that. You don’t need to whisper secret entreaties to it, there are no safe words, no gentle caresses are required. Just dump it in there unceremoniously, as if it has offended you and you are discarding it, unloved and disregarded.

Mix-a-mix-a-mix.

I like to let the rice settle for a couple minutes, till it starts to stick a little to the bottom of the pot — not burned, not exactly, but so some of it starts to get crispy.

Then: dump in your liquid.

No, not your pee, GOD, YOU’RE SO GROSS AND WEIRD –

I mean the soy sauce business. With the garlic and the other stuff.

Get it in there, mix it around, use a hard metal device (not a sex toy or a hunting knife) to scrape up the rice bits from the bottom so it’s all starting to incorporate.

Now, you’re saying, CHUCK, WHERE ARE THE VEGETABLES.

I NEED HEALTH, CHUCK. I’M DYING. WE’RE ALL DYING. SCURVY IS RAMPANT.

And I answer: THE VEGETABLES WERE IN YOU ALL ALONG.

Then your heart glows gold and your chest opens up and maaaaagical vegetables fly out, and they sing a hymn to your greatness. Also, I may have dropped acid. Or maybe you dropped acid. Did we both drop acid? What a coinkydink.

Okay, you also need to add some real vegetables into the mix, and here’s where it gets pretty nicely customizable: you can add in whatever goddamn vegetables you want. Frozen is fine. Leftovers are great. Get cuckoo with it. I tend to like to add in a mix of frozen peas and corn. Carrots, too, though if I don’t have frozen, I’ll grate fresh carrot into the mix. If you want some greens, add in spinach. Or some pre-cooked broccoli. I don’t care what you put in there. It’s your fried rice. Mix in some kiwi fruit and marbles. Elk teeth and crickets. Don’t care. It’s your food. I’m not the one who has to eat it afterward.

Again, I let that go a little while until the vegetables are nice and green but have not yet lost that brightness and color. Now, it is time for the finishing touches.

First, take either some unrefined coconut oil (it must be unrefined, like a dockworker) or some sesame oil, and mix it around. The coconut will lend an almost-sweetness. The sesame oil will lend a sesame-ness. Or you could just use motor oil, but I’m pretty sure that’s poisonous.

Second, some chopped scallions are nice. Or cilantro. Or bean sprouts.

Finally, I then fry up an egg or two — sunny side up — and pop it on top of each bowl.

And that’s it.

That’s all she wrote.

I don’t know who “she” is but literally, that’s all she wrote.

What now? Shut up and eat it, I guess.

AND THEN THANK ME IN THE FORM OF CASH AND ADORATION.

*stares*

*waits for cash*

*waits for adoration*

Stephen Blackmoore: On Deadlines, And The Missing Thereof

Stephen Blackmoore is a friend — and I have photographic evidence where obviously he is not screaming in terror from standing nearby, how dare you suggest that — but even more, the guy’s a bad-ass with the WORDS and the STORIES and the NECROMANCY. Fictional and otherwise. Seriously, his book, Dead Things, is easily one of my favorite urban fantasy novels of all time, because it’s grim and funny and bitter — it’s just the right mix of horror and crime, with an unctuous underlayer of dark comedy. Anyway! The newest Eric Carter book is out, and you want it, but more to the point, Stephen has some things to say about (dun dun dun) deadlines. (Oh, and P.S. don’t forget about his Fan Art Photo Cosplay Whatever Contest, which goes to the 15th, and might win you a set of bad-ass Loteria art by Galen Dara.)

* * *

My latest novel, HUNGRY GHOSTS, is the third in the Eric Carter urban fantasy series about a modern-day necromancer who makes stunningly bad choices. It was supposed to come out July 15, 2015. It is now coming out February 7, 2017. That’s about a year and a half late.

So, what the hell happened?

The simple answer is I missed the deadline. Lots of reasons why. Most under the heading of Shit Happens. But the biggest by far is the fact that the book sucked great, big, yeasty donkey balls.

I fought with that manuscript trying to hammer it into some kind of shape that didn’t look like dog vomit. And as the deadline got closer I finally had to admit it wasn’t working. I needed to scrap it completely and rewrite the whole goddamn thing from the ground up.

Something like 50,000 words down the toilet. Some of them were okay words. Some of them were really good words.

None of them were salvageable.

I have never missed a deadline like this. Oh, sure, I’m late to shit all the time. We all are. But this was a DEADLINE. For my BOOK.

So, in the interest of others who may one day find themselves in a similar situation, here are a couple things that helped me. As with everything, YMMV and your experiences will undoubtedly be different from mine. But I hope this helps.

DON’T LOSE YOUR SHIT

Try not to panic. Okay, maybe a little panic. You’re going to, anyway, so you might as well get it out of your system.

Done? Good.

Even though it’s called a deadline, they won’t actually kill you. They don’t have the budget for ninjas these days and sexy international assassins are all out killing more important people than you.

Though they may be upset, chances are nobody at your publisher actually hates you. It’s a business, you owe them a book, shit happens. It’s not like you just shot their dog or anything. And you’re not the first person who’s ever been late.

OWN IT

Once you realize you’re going to be late take responsibility for it. There are reasons and there are excuses. Reasons are good data points for later when you’re figuring out how not to do it again, but excuses fly like lead balloons.

You are part of an economic ecosystem that begins with you. Agents, editors, copy editors, artists, marketing people and on and on. These are the people who make it possible for your book to get out there. Sales of your book pay for their salaries. Sure, it’s pennies, but those pennies add up. They need your support as much as you need theirs. So don’t hide the truth from them. It’ll just make things worse.

And how about the people who actually want to BUY your book? Maybe they’ve pre-ordered it. Maybe they’re just really looking forward to it. You’re letting those people down. Apologize. Explain it. Don’t hide under the covers and pretend it isn’t happening.

When I finally called it, I decided to write a public blog post about it that explained the situation. I’m late, here’s why. Best thing I could have done, and one of the most terrifying.

But all the responses I got were from people who appreciated that I’d told them what was going on. Not only did it get the information out, but it also made me realize that I have actual fans. This was a revelation. And it made me that much more determined to not give them a shitty book.

THE DOMINOES ARE NOW TIPPED

When you’re late, a few things are set in motion.

Book releases get scheduled a year or more in advance and include a lot of moving parts to make it happen. Cover art, copyediting, printing, setting up distribution, etc. These are all put in the calendar so everybody’s on the same page.

So, when you fuck up your deadline, you fuck up everything else, too. It’s like that I Love Lucy episode where she’s working at the candy factory and the candy doesn’t stop coming and starts to pile up.

If they slow down the conveyor belt to wait for your book, they would have to reschedule a bunch of other things like other people’s release dates. Authors who you might actually be friends with. Do you want that to happen? Do you want to screw up your friends’ book? Do you? Huh? DO YOU?

Of course not.

Which is good, because it won’t. Train’s already moving and you missed your slot. They’re going to reschedule your release into the earliest time they can support in the production schedule. It can be a while. For me it happened to be a year and a half later. Nut up and accept it.

Remember, your publisher does not have an army of people at their disposal. Sometimes all they can throw at something are an intern with a helper monkey named Bobo, and a pothos plant sitting in a 3×3 room that used to be a broom closet. Or, more likely, still is. They are doing this not just to make money (which is good because there’s not a lot of it in publishing), but because they love books as much as you do.

BE REALISTIC

Now that you’ve blown that deadline like… ya know let’s just leave that simile alone, shall we?

Anyway, now that it’s all out in the open the next question is going to be, “When can you get it done?”

Take a deep breath. Lay it all out and take a good, long, look at what you have to do. is it just getting to the end? How many chapters do you have to do? A lot? A little?

Do you have to scrap the book completely and start from scratch like I did? Do you need to clean some scenes up and rearrange chapters and make sure it still all works? Do you have to ditch troublesome characters and patch up the holes in the scenes that they filled?

Once you have that, you can figure out how long you think it will take. Days, weeks, months? Put together an estimate based on all of that.

Then take that number and throw it in the trash, because it’s wrong.

Whatever you come up with I guarantee it’s not enough. Shit happened before. Shit will happen again. That’s life. There are day jobs, spending time with your partner(s), children, dogs, natural disasters, family, recovering from family, realizing that natural disasters and family aren’t all that different, mental health crises, accidents, angry revenants from the grave thirsting for revenge, medical shit, natural disasters, assassins, car problems, international espionage, getting locked up for protesting an authoritarian President, and so on and so forth and such and whatnot.

So, tack on more time. Adding another month or three to your estimate isn’t a bad idea. It’ll still probably be wrong, but it will be less wrong than what you already came up with, and you’ll be less likely to blow ANOTHER deadline. And believe me, having that conversation is even MORE fun than the first one.

Me, I told my editor I thought I could finish by end of September. It turned out to be the end of December. I got lucky, because the new release date actually gave me more time than I thought it would take, so it didn’t cause any other issues. But goddamn did I feel like an idiot.

GET YOUR ASS BACK TO WORK

Now that you’ve gone through all that, said your mea culpas, done your outstandingly wrong math, and felt like a shitheel to your publisher and your fans, you need to actually FINISH the book.

I know, right?

Now is the really tough part. The rewrite, or the clean-up, or the finishing, or whatever it is you need to do. No matter what it’s going to be rough. All of the work that you have to some extent is now suspect. One change can ripple throughout a story and what you thought was a simple tweak has massive repercussions down the line. You have to look at the entire thing all over again.

Whatever it is you have to do doesn’t matter. Because it always, ALWAYS, comes down to one thing. You need to get your ass in the chair and make it happen.

So, go make it happen.

* * *

Stephen Blackmoore’s dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts • “Gritty, emotional and phenomenally imaginative.” —RT Reviews

Necromancer Eric Carter’s problems keep getting bigger. Bad enough he’s the unwilling husband to the patron saint of death, Santa Muerte, but now her ex, the Aztec King of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli, has come back — and it turns out that Carter and he are swapping places. As Mictlantecuhtli breaks loose of his prison of jade, Carter is slowly turning to stone.

To make matters worse, both gods are trying to get Carter to assassinate the other. But only one of them can be telling him the truth and he can’t trust either one. Carter’s solution? Kill them both.

If he wants to get out of this situation with his soul intact, he’ll have to go to Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead, and take down a couple of death gods while facing down the worst trials the place has to offer him: his own sins.

Stephen Blackmoore: Website | Twitter

Hungry Ghosts: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Macro Monday Beholds The Common As Extraordinary

As I’ve noted many times in the past, photography for me is not a professional outlet — though I do sometimes have to remind myself I’ve a few paid photography credits under my belt — but rather, a therapeutic one. And often, grabbing the camera occurs to me less during the winter, which is stupid, because (especially regarding macro photography) the beauty and weirdness of the world does not only manifest on warmer days. One of the best ways to get original and compelling macro photos is just to wander around the house, looking for things that deserve a closer look — food, kitchen utensils, tools, a child’s toys, cellar spiders, sex toys, discarded human corpses, the tribe of microscopic chimpanzees that live inside your inner ear canal, whatever.

So, I’m going to take a little time this week to grab the camera, wander the house like a restless specter, and find some cool things that demand photographic representation at the macro level.

I’ll report back.

Some quick bits:

Atlanta Burns — still a buck at Amazon.

Atlanta Burns: The Hunt — also still a buck at Amazon.

Star Wars: Empire’s End is out soon. Preorder: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

A week after that is the newest Miriam Black book, Thunderbird. Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Meanwhile, here are some other pics snapped inside the house, not outside on a warm day. Please to enjoy these. And if you don’t enjoy them, HA HA HA I DON’T CARE YOU’RE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME AND THE TINY TRIBE OF EAR-MONKEYS THAT CONTROLS MY MIND