Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 98

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

Flash Fiction Challenge: We Only Need A Three-Word Title

This week, it’s pretty easy. The burden is light — all I want you to do is drop into the comments below and create the title to a story. I’ll add in an extra restriction in that the title must be three words — not one, not four, not two. Three words specifically.

Next week, I’ll randomly pick ten of those titles and those will form the basis of a new flash fiction challenge. It should be awesome. So –

Get to titlin’.

(THEY SEE ME TITLIN’)

(THEY HATIN’)

(ahem)

Due by Friday, February 10th, noon EST.

EDIT: one title, don’t spam with several

Star Wars! Atlanta Burns! News That Won’t Hurt Your Soul!

Hey, I figure we all need some news that does not melt our collective faces as if we just foolishly opened the goddamn Ark of the motherfucking Covenant, so here I am, delivering some news that — at the very least — is very cool to me.

Behold, if you were to procure a special edition copy of Empire’s End from Barnes & Noble, you will in fact receive the B&N Exclusive Edition, which has the following poster (I assume it’s double-sided) in it — one is our first image of Norra Wexley, New Republic pilot, mother to Temmin “Snap” Wexley, and all-around bad-ass; the other is a glimpse of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, the kick-ass woman fighting to save her vision of the Galactic Empire.

(Art by Steve Thomas.)

Also, were you wanting an excerpt of Empire’s End? Well, I’ve got one for you at io9– this one, which is part of (but not an entire) interlude, features Lando and Lobot retaking Cloud City and talking about a baby gift for a certain bundle of Dark Side named Ben Solo, future Knight of Ren and mopey emo First Order dude. (Also note Lando’s position on refugees…)

Empire’s End comes out in just under three weeks.

(And one week later: the new Miriam Black, Thunderbird.)

Other news:

Both Atlanta Burns and its sequel, The Hunt, are on sale for $1.00 apiece (!) at Amazon for your Kindle, and the paperbacks are on sale, too. (I believe this deal is US or NA only.) The books fit snugly in what you might consider the PUNCH NAZIS genre, because it features a girl (the titular Atlanta Burns) taking the fight to a town in thrall to corruption and, of course, Actual Nazis. It’s about talking on bullies and standing up for your friends and, well, I didn’t mean for the books to feel prescient, but here we are in 2017 when shit’s gone sideways. That said, please note: these books are not escapist fun. They’re dark stuff, so trigger warning for — well, let’s just go with trigger warning.

(Note, too: I think this $1.00 sale is far-reaching across a lot of Amazon titles — f’rex, you’ll find Marko Kloos’ bad-ass Frontlines series gets the one buck treatment. And I see Gwenda Bond’s Girl Over Paris graphic novel is, too. So poke around, see what else is in the deal.)

Anyway, that’s the news.

Good luck out there. I heard the groundhog popped out of his hole, heard who was president, then sealed his burrow shut with a vault hatch from Fallout.

Fonda Lee: Five Things I Learned Writing Exo

It’s been a century of peace since Earth became a colony of an alien race with far reaches into the galaxy. Some die-hard extremists still oppose alien rule on Earth, but Donovan Reyes isn’t one of them. His dad holds the prestigious position of Prime Liaison in the collaborationist government, and Donovan’s high social standing along with his exocel (a remarkable alien technology fused to his body) guarantee him a bright future in the security forces. That is, until a routine patrol goes awry and Donovan’s abducted by the human revolutionary group Sapience, determined to end alien control.

When Sapience realizes whose son Donovan is, they think they’ve found the ultimate bargaining chip . But the Prime Liaison doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, not even for his own son.  Left in the hands of terrorists who have more uses for him dead than alive, the fate of Earth rests on Donovan’s survival. Because if Sapience kills him, it could spark another galactic war. And Earth didn’t win the last one . . .

* * *

HOW TO FAIL AT NANOWRIMO

Exo started out as a flaming car wreck of a NaNoWriMo project. At the time, my agent was shopping around my first book, Zeroboxer, and I knew the best thing to do was distract myself with a new project so that I wouldn’t fall prey to the disease of refreshing my email like it was going out of style. “A lot of people swear by this NaNoWriMo thing,” I said to myself. “I ought to give it a try.” I’d written novel manuscripts before. I knew I could stick to a writing schedule. The idea sounded fabulously appealing: Sit down on November 1st and just let the words flow from my fingers! Get 50K of that first draft done in a month! Win a virtual medal! Piece of cake.

This is how it went: I wrote 35,000 words by November 20th or so, and stalled out. It wasn’t working. At all. I read the manuscript from the beginning and hated all of it with the nauseous loathing that writers feel when looking at their own disgusting word messes. I had a shiny story idea in my head but it was emerging as dog vomit. So I quit. I failed NaNoWriMo hard.

I trashed everything I’d written and started again. I wrote a new draft over several months, and then rewrote 50% of that one. And did it again. After the book sold, I did another major revision with my editor. I was relieved and excited by how it was getter better and better, but part of me was also surprised and disheartened. I mean, Zeroboxer was picking up accolades and awards, and whoa, I got to go to the Nebula Awards as a finalist and dance on stage, so why the hell was it so hard to write another book?! This whole writing thing ought to be easier now, right?

Wrong. In talking (griping, whining, crying) to wiser authors, I learned there was wide agreement that the second book is often a complete bitch to write. A very loud voice in your head is telling you that because you’re now a Published Author, you should be writing better and faster, plus doing author promotion stuff with an effortless grin. But the truth is that every book is different. The second, third, or fifteenth book is not easier. Just different.

“Winning” at something like NaNoWriMo is meaningless. My 35,000 garbage words eventually turned into a published novel I’m very happy with. I have to wonder how many far better 50,000 NaNo projects sit out there languishing, unrevised, unpursued. NaNo is means to an end, not an end in itself.

Elizabeth Bear said something like this to me: “It will seem like it’s getting harder and you’re taking longer, but that’s because you’re getting better. If it’s getting easier, you’re not challenging yourself.” In the end, I’m even more proud of Exo than I am of Zeroboxer because while my debut proved that I could write, this book proved that I could be a professional writer.

EVERY STORY YOU WRITE IS PERSONAL IN SOME WAY (AND SOMETIMES YOU DON’T KNOW IT)

When we started working together on Exo, my editor told me that she loved how the story was an allegory for the experience of first generation children in America. “What?” I did not say that out loud, but that was my initial reaction. “It is?!” Mental pause. “Huh. How about that.”

My editor pointed out that my main character, Donovan, and his fellow exos, are considered too alien by unaltered humans, yet still nothing but human to the aliens. Exo was already personal to me because it’s about a broken family, and as a child of divorced parents, I knew I was bringing some of my own worldview and experiences to the page. I had no idea, honestly, that as a second-generation Asian American I was also infusing elements of mixed identity into the narrative. Which goes to show that sometimes we writers can turn out to be all smart and subtextual without even trying, just by letting more of ourselves filter into the work.

IT’S FUCKING HARD TO WRITE WITHOUT PROFANITY

Exo is published by Scholastic Press, of Harry Potter and Hunger Games fame. One of Scholastic’s enormous strengths is its distribution reach into schools. Didn’t we all love getting those colorful flyers in class? In order to ensure my book got a showing in the Book Fairs and Clubs market, my editor asked me to remove the abundant amount of profanity in my novel.

“But my characters are soldiers and terrorists,” I protested.

“I’m sure there are terrorists in the world today who don’t cuss.”

“But these are American terrorists! They would cuss all the time. Teenagers in the military aren’t going to be like, ‘Aw, gosh darn it!’ Come on, tell me what I can get away with here. Like, can I have one ‘fuck’ and three ‘shits’? Two ‘shits’ and a couple ‘goddamns?’

“No, none of that. I don’t think your book even needs the cursing. Besides, it’s set in the future so make up your own swear words if you want.”

“There is no way I am pulling a Battlestar Galactica and using ‘fraking!’ I won’t do it! This is untenable! I can’t write without profanity!” (Dramatic teeth gnashing.)

(Sigh.) “Look, the school market can give you a shit ton of sales, but if you want to cling to your precious swear words for the sake of artistic integrity, it’s your fucking career funeral.”

Okay, I made up that last bit. My editor is a lovely person and didn’t say that, but you get the idea. I took out the profanity. Unless you have a really good reason, you do what your publisher tells you will help them market and sell your book. I ended up thinking of it as a professional writing challenge: how do I stay true to the tone of the novel without full and unfettered use of colorful vocabulary? Writing under constraints can be instructive and it’s what professional writers often have to do. And more kids reading my books? Well, gosh darn, I’ll fraking take it.

LIQUID ARMOR IS A THING AND IT’S REALLY COOL

In the world of Exo, certain people have adopted alien biotechnology that gives them an organic body armor that they can manipulate at will. To get an idea of how something like this might plausibly work, I did a bunch of research into current and future body armor. Naturally, military forces are investigating ways to make armor far more lightweight and flexible. Kevlar on steroids, basically. The idea of liquid body armor is based on the concept of shear thickening fluids: non-Newtonian fluids that can harden in milliseconds and act like solids when force is applied to them. Yes, much like that weird goop of cornstarch and water that you might have been introduced to in a science class. Permeating fabric with shear thickening fluid makes for something that is light and flexible like a piece of ordinary clothing but is bulletproof.

Another advanced body armor possibility is spider silk, which is one of nature’s toughest substances. Scientists have already speculated in a science fiction-y way that the protein in spider silk could conceivably be placed in human skin to create, you guessed it, armored humans.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE GOOD VS. EVIL THING

People like their good vs. evil stories. Especially in young adult novels. I worried that writing something like Exo would go against the popular grain. I wanted to tell an alien invasion story that was different from the typical aliens-conquer-earth plotline. I wanted to get past the arrival, invasion, and war part of the narrative and explore the idea of a world post-colonization, one in which humans have both benefited and suffered from the new world order. I wanted it be filled with moral ambiguity and have no “good” or “bad” sides. We’ve seen plenty of plucky, brave, YA rebels who want to overthrow the system, but how about the story of someone who is in the system, who benefits from it and defends it despite all its flaws, yet is still heroic and tries to do the right thing? Could I make the reader root for someone who enforces alien rule over Earth? Could I write a story that would make teenage readers ponder difficult issues while entertaining them with scads of sci-fi action? I think and hope I succeeded, but regardless of how the book is received, I’m glad I followed through on that vision.

* * *

Fonda Lee is the award-winning author of young adult science fiction novels Zeroboxer (Flux), which was an Andre Norton finalist, and Exo (Scholastic), a 2017 Junior Library Guild Selection. She is a recovering corporate strategist, a black belt martial artist, and an action movie aficionado. She loves a good Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Calgary, Fonda now lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.

Fonda Lee: Website | Twitter

Exo: Excerpt | Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powells

Escapism Is Not A Dirty Word

AIIEEEEEEEEEE I AM FREE

We say escapism sometimes in the same way you might describe a mediocre sandwich — like it’s this half-thing, something that’s, ennh, fine, but not really recommended. We have better things to consume, after all, than escapist fiction. Deeper into that is the connotation that we should not endeavor to escape. Rather, we should stare our world and our problems right in the face, hawk up a hard loogey, and spit our gnarly phlegm right in reality’s eye. HRRRK. PTOO.

Yeah, no, fuck that.

Escapism has never been more necessary. I am staring at the news daily (hourly, minutely, secondly) and each time it’s like finding Sauron’s gaze fixed directly upon you — as such, I am looking for any opportunity at all to wince away for a time, just to be reminded that other things exist beyond that UNBLINKING SATANIC STARE. That’s not to say you should remain staring in the other direction, or that you cannot also read fiction or embrace material that is more serious and complicated. But at the same time, man, whoo. We gotta find the equivalent of emotional comfort food in a room full of happy goddamn pillows.

The other night, I posted a list on Twitter (which you can find here) of things that were essentially keeping me sane in this decidedly cuckoopants timeline.

So, I’m opening the comments here for you to do exactly the same thing.

Drop into the comments at least one (but not limited to one!) thing you’ve been using as an outlet for escape. Books, movies, games, comics, foods, people, something, anything, whatever.

Steven Spohn: The Real Value Of Hope

As always, a spot-on post from Steven Spohn, COO of AbleGamers charity for gamers with disabilities. You can find him at his blog, or on Twitter @StevenSpohn.

* * *

The Sun highlighted her light brown hair against the sand like a firefly illuminating a message of love. My arms wrapped around her tightly, holding on as if to let go would be the last I would ever see her. She giggles with the sound of a thousand angels, harmonizing joy right into my soul. Our bodies rolling together across the shoreline of our favorite beach. We laugh as hard as we love.

She stops, causing her body to end up on top of mine. I can feel her heart racing as she lies prone, pressed into my chest. Her eyes dilated, big and bright. I can see the universe. I can see everything in her eyes. I can see my future, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

A warm smile overrides our laughter as the moment turns from play to serious. “I love you, Steve.” Her words breathe life into my mouth, filling my heart and my head with the most joy I’ve ever felt.

We kiss. My eyes close.

When they open again, the white stucco on my bedroom ceiling stares back at me, taunting. I awaken abruptly, realizing that I’ve had the dream again. My heart sinks, and a tear begins to form in the corner of my eye.

Have you ever had a dream that felt so real, so warm and welcoming that when you wake up the realization it was only a dream nearly shatters your spirits?

I’ve had that dream off and on for the last two decades, ever since I was a late teenager and began discovering the concept of love. Although the details change, the color of her eyes, her hair, and even our location, the feeling is always the same. Love in its most pure form and me being able to interact with her as I’d choose.

But it’s not love that shatters my reality. Despite being single now; I’ve been relatively blessed having been in two multiyear relationships that I would say were some form of love. Maybe not the kind of Hollywood writes about that lasts forever and you get your happily ever after, but real love nonetheless.

No, it’s not the love, it’s the physical ability to express that love. For those of you who don’t know me, I have an incurable and untreatable disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. SMA for short. Over time my muscles will continue to weaken, and I’ll lose the ability to do very basic things such as feeding myself, swallowing food, and even talking. As it stands, I’m already unable to walk, confined to a power wheelchair for mobility and on a ventilator to help me breathe.

Even with all of those challenges, I’ve managed to find love. Certainly not easily, but with the right person, love allows you to look past things like the challenges of disability to see the person and their true value.

Yet both relationships ultimately ended because of my lack of physical ability. Things that they wanted to do in life that I simply couldn’t participate in. Deal breakers, as they say.

And every time I have that dream I’m reminded of how close I can get to the elusive thing we call love, only to have it snatched away by an unlucky roll of the genetic dice.

Dawn Breaks

On December 23, 2016, a company called Biogen gave me the greatest Christmas present that I have ever received. The first treatment for SMA was approved by the FDA. This new beacon of light was called Spinraza. Studies done over the last five years have shown the amazing effects of the drug. Children who were stuck lying down, barely able to breathe and unable to sit on their own, were using walkers and breathing on their own after only a few treatments. For the first time in the history of humanity, the treatment would finally be available for one of the most aggressive and terminal infant-onset diseases. Spinraza isn’t a cure, but for many people it’s about as effective treatment as you can imagine.

The range of feelings I went through upon discovering that not only was the drug approved but the drug studies showing remarkable performance is almost indescribable. Imagine believing for all of your life that something you wanted with all of your heart wasn’t possible and then suddenly being told that it is possible and shown real, tangible, undeniable proof.

My head began swimming with possibilities. Would I become a dancer as I had always wished I could have been? Would I see if 36 is too late to join the Air Force as had been my childhood dream? Would I give up writing and become a lumberjack, hacking my way through the forest and looking really hot in my ripped plaid shirt?

Who knows. The possibilities are potentially endless. And I do look good in red plaid. The drug effects everyone differently, some regain more abilities than others. Meaning I could take the drug and only regain the ability to use my hand or I could become a salsa dancer. I simply won’t know until I began taking the drug.

But regardless of what the future will hold for my abilities, I now know there’s hope.

Golden Age of Salsa Dancing

A petite woman, 60+ years of age, sits in her manual wheelchair centered in the middle of the show floor. She beams with confidence like a lighthouse through the fog. Her eyes wander and find each of the audience members. As they lock, she gives a warm smile and nod of the head as if to say “you ready for this?”

The music comes on the loudspeakers. It’s soft, but you can instantly recognize it’s a salsa tune. The woman’s hands move to her wheels, and she begins shimmying, shaking the chair left and right. Then a man, who also appears to be in his 60s, walks onto the show floor. He’s aimed at her, walking with purpose. They meet just as the tempo of the music kicks into high gear.

They start dancing in a way that I’ve never seen before. She spins around him in circles. He bends and moves with her in a rhythm you would see from a professional music video. They are completely in sync. Simpatico in every way.

His arm slides along hers. Her chair glides effortlessly around him. The music slows as the dance becomes more passionate, more intense. Finally, with one swell of the beat, he drops to one knee in front of her chair, and they embrace.

The audience roars. Cheers and applause flood the arena. For just a moment in time, we are all one, amazed by this performance that just broke the stereotypical expectations many have for people with disabilities and advanced age.

They make it look easy because for them it is. They love dancing. They love each other.

Like an infusion of spirit, I can feel why they are so inspiring. They give you hope. Hope that you can still find love no matter your age. Hope that someone with physical challenges can dance like that and make you forget about their disability. Hope that anything is possible.

Love Isn’t All You Need, Hope Is

The Beatles got it wrong. Love isn’t all you need. Hope is.

Life is really hard. As of late, life has been even harder in these extremely politicized, tumultuous times. What gets us through these rough periods of time is hope that things are going to get better. While that may sound like a cheesy Hallmark sentiment or lifetime movie thesis statement, hope is what keeps us going.

When we don’t have hope that things are going to get better, when we don’t have hope that there will be good times after the bad, our minds begin to close as a self-defense mechanism to prevent the pain we think is coming. We start letting fear dictate our actions and letting anger influence our every behavior. The days get longer and the nights get colder.

Because if you don’t have any hope, getting up in the morning is much more difficult, moving forward is that much more difficult.

Watching a woman dance from her wheelchair with the love of her life is inspirational because it gives you hope. Your mind begins to latch onto the idea that love is real, even if you’re not feeling it right now, and love is real, even if times are tough right now.

I woke up from my recurring dream just the other night, and for the first time, I didn’t feel any sadness when I realized that the dream was just a dream. I realized that there is a chance I can wrap my arms around someone I love within the next few years.

Hope is your beacon of light during the darkest of times as the tiniest sliver of light shines brightest just before the dawn. The best advice I can give to you for the difficult days ahead is to find the things and people they give you hope. Follow them. Support them. Do what you can to ensure the things that give you hope can continue.

Do not go gently into that good night. Fight. Hold on to your hopes and dreams for the future. Art harder. Live bolder. Become the best and strongest version of yourself that you possibly can. Take care of yourself and your fellow humans.

Love with all of your might, but whatever you do, never give in, never lose hope.

My 2017 Schedule (So Far!)

Folks have asked, and I keep forgetting to update it here.

SO HEY HERE IT IS.

Where will I be so far in 2017?

LET US BEHOLD THIS WONDERLAND OF TRAVEL.

Feb 3-4th, Moravian Writers Conference

Feb 25th, Let’s Play Books, Emmaus, PA, Signing: Life Debt, Thunderbird — pssssst, you can order signed books from there and either pick ‘em up or have them sent to you

March 31st – April 2nd, Wondercon in Anaheim, CA

April 13th – 16h, Star Wars Celebration, Orlando, FL

April 22nd-23rd, Los Angeles Festival of Books, USC campus

April 27th – 30th, StokerCon, Long Beach, CA

May 5th – 6th, Northern Colorado Writers Conference, Fort Collins, CO

June 3rd – 4th, Bay Area Book Fest, Berkeley, CA

More as I have it!

This Is A Test Of The Emergency Broadcasting System

It is day 10, and the wheels are about to come off this bus.

We have collectively been reminded what history has long taught us: that fascism and corruption creeps in the shadows for a long time, tip-toeing along, but when it’s ready for its big day, boy does it move fast. It’s like a leak in your pipes — maybe you see it, maybe you don’t. And if you let it go long enough, next thing you know, the whole ceiling is coming down, moist with rot. Or, perhaps a better metaphor: it’s like cancer. Ignore the little warning signs for too long and then?

Metastasis.

We are now witnessing an aggressive cancer.

In the last week, we’ve seen a heinous display from Comrade Dumpkov and the Secret Real President, Commandant Gin Blossom. It started off weird and embarrassing, with the administration trying to convince us that optical illusions and variations in the time-space continuum clearly prove that the small inauguration crowd was actually the YUGEST CROWD SIZE EVER. And it ended with a proposed wall and an enacted ban, both designed to keep people out, to wall us up, to isolate us. Children were separated from parents. Citizens were prevented — are still prevented — from coming here. We shut the doors on refugees from countries where they’re trying to escape nightmares — sometimes, nightmares we have helped to foment, by the way, so essentially it’s like burning down your house and then locking our door because we don’t want you in ours. Refugees are vetted. Refugees want to come here because this is — or is supposed to be — a great country. They want to be a part of it. And we’re closing the door on them, on children, on families, on Iraqi translators, on anyone who wants to have a hand in the American Experiment. And, for a bonus round, now we’ve got an Executive Branch who doesn’t want to heed the Judicial Branch. We’ve got institutional knowledge taken off the table and replaced with Commandant Gin Blossom. We’ve got white supremacists writing policy while experts are sidelined and ignored.

This is it. This is the moment. This is our test.

The American Experiment is short-circuiting on the table in front of us. And make no mistake: this is still an experiment. Never before has it been so clear that this democracy of ours is still in its testing phase. We have long treated it like it is a patriotic bulwark, a massive redwood whose presence in the forest is justification enough, whose pillar-like strength is eternal, inimitable, irreplaceable. But now we see: even the biggest tree can have rot in the roots. Even the biggest tree can be damaged by madmen with axes. Even the biggest tree is fragile and needs to be protected if we are to see it stand tall and remain as king of the forest.

This is our test.

For our Democratic politicians, it’s a test to see if you can become what you have not traditionally been: obstructors, warriors, defenders. You have, sometimes to your credit, been the adults in the room. You have been a party of compromise. You have had a big tent with a lot of ideas. But now, though the tent must remain big — bigger than ever — it has become clear that compromise is just a kind of acquiescence. Compromise is appeasement. You don’t convince the monster to leave your village alone by feeding it just a few children. We don’t want Cool Obama. We want Luther, the Anger Translator. We’re mad, and we want you to be mad right along with us. People aren’t protesting for nothing. They’re a giant human Bat Signal, a crowdsourced cry for someone to come and give our voice a vote. The test for Democratic politicians is, will you stand up, stand tall, and stand together? Will you treat this presidency as woefully illegitimate — not merely illegitimate because of the popular vote loss, but also because we have seen evidence of tampering from an enemy government, and because we have seen the structures of command and the architecture of democracy already undergo a grave dismantling. The administration we elected are not builders. They are termites. The test can be, will the Democrats obstruct? Will you say no to everything? Because you have to. You do not negotiate with a cancer.

For our Republican politicians, it’s a test to see where your loyalties truly lie. Are they with a man who barely represents the party, or are they with the nation? Stop scrambling for table scraps, trying to figure out what you can get out of this deal — the ship is sinking, so don’t take time to rob it, take time to try to keep it afloat. Now is not the time to curry favor. Now is the time to have a spine, to put a little steel in your blood. This is no conservative administration. If this were happening to any other country you’d call them a danger, a potential foe. You don’t conserve by making the rich richer but by draining our wallets in order to build some asinine wall. You don’t conserve by selling off our national parks or saying fuck you to endangered species. This administration is overreaching already in its size and power — what happened to your idea of smaller government? The test is, how long will you ignore this overreach? How long will you bow and stoop and scrape, spineless as a slime mold, while this administration steps over you and worse, steps over us, the American public? The test for you is: will you only follow orders? On what side of history will you be? History has shown us what may come, so be wary.

For our press, it’s a test to see if you will pick up the mantle that has been placed upon your shoulders already: you have been called the opposition party, and so it is time to own that with pride, with rancor, with two ink-stained middle fingers thrust up, up, up in a vigorous defense of truth. Up until now, I assume you thought it possible that this was business as usual, that maybe you could cajole access out of this administration, but make no mistake: you are their enemy. This isn’t the usual state of affairs. You can’t just do puff pieces. You can’t give credence to a divergence from facts as it’s all oh ha ha agree to disagree. If given a magical lever to open trapdoors beneath your feet so you could plunge into gator-infested waters, Comrade would not hesitate to pull it. He rails at you daily. He calls you fake news — a moniker earned specifically when you tell the truth. Do your jobs, because if he could take them away, he would.

For the companies of this country, the test is, do you believe only in unfettered profit? Are you in this for the short game or the long? Because the long game means keeping this country around. Money is not neutral. You spend it in one direction or another. The test is, will you stand for what’s happening? Speak up. Speak out. Give to causes. The long game is about keeping this country around — so invest in the hearts and minds of those on the side of good. Do right by us, and we will do right by you. But give into craven tactics or profit-grabs and we’ll boot your ass to the curb and know you were complicit.

For those who were or are Trump supporters, who voted for him, the test is to see how long you feel like this is really working. This bull is bucking hard. Still got a grip on its sweat-slick hide? Do you still feel like this is really where you want to be? Happy he’s made it more costly for some homeowners to actually own homes? Happy he’s going to pluck your wallet to build an impossible wall? Pleased that millions will end up without healthcare — which will only cost all of the rest of us more even as people die? For those who have experienced or expressed regret, good. The test now is, what will you do about it? Will you stand up? The rope is slipping through all our hands, and goddamnit, we need you to close your fists and grab it before it’s gone. For those who have no regret, who see no problem here — the test is one you are failing. Because this is above partisanship. This is beyond two parties. This is somewhere else, some interstitial place beyond the stars and stripes, beyond the America we imagine in our heads. As the old saying goes, if you’re not angry, then you’re not paying attention. And a corollary to that: if you’re not angry at these monsters, then you might be a monster, too.

For the rest of us, well.

For us, the test is not only how we survive, but how we help others to do the same.

The test sometimes is small: finding a calm state, managing to sleep at night. Eating, breathing, taking some time, drinking some water, trying not to drink the whole fucking liquor cabinet or eat every gallon of ice cream in the surrounding dozen zipcodes.

The test sometimes is bigger: protesting, donating to the ACLU or the IRC or CAIR, making your calls, keeping your head on straight for the values that this nation purports to possess. It’s about not being drowned by the noise and the despair and finding some optimism. And optimism is there, some hope is present, if you reach hard through the darkness. The ACLU on average gets ~$4 million in donations per year; this weekend alone, they received $24 million through 350,000+ people (a number that easily eclipses the inauguration attendance). Protests too have been epic, because people are showing up. They’re standing tall, arm in arm, and making it clear that such malevolence does not have our complicity. This weekend there came a moment when I thought, I am ashamed to be an American. But then I thought back to the Women’s March, and I think to all the people I know who are active and engaged, and then I realized: I’m not ashamed to be an American. I’m proud of Americans. I’m ashamed of my government. I’m ashamed of this administration, not of the nation it leads. Ten days in and the president is the most unpopular president in history. It proves that you are not alone. We are not alone. And if we make it out of this — if we can stop this bubbling septic shit-stew from boiling over — then we will have been delivered a timely and necessary reminder that our democracy is not shallow, but deep. That it is not simple, but complex. That even in its pillar-like presence, democracy is vulnerable and demands vigilance and the foreknowledge that axes and rot can still bring down this beautiful tree.

This is it.

This is our test.

And I don’t know what happens if we fail, so study up. Gird your loins. Get clear. We cannot pass it alone, and we’re going to have to hold each other — more to the point, we’re going to have to hold our politicians, our press, our institutions — accountable. It’s bad, but it’s not dire. Not yet. But the checks are unchecked, the balances are imbalanced. Vote. Protest. Support. Obstruct. Demand better. Do better.

And be good to one another.