Jay Kristoff's Blog, page 19

Community Service Announcement

I experienced a moment of sheer panty-soiling horror a few nights ago. And since xmas decorations are already up in the grocery store, I'm going to get into the festive spirit and share. Note that some details might be embellished to cast my starving artiste lifestyle in a better light, but you'll get the drift.

I sat down in my calf-leather armoire beside my reconditioned Edwardian fireplace*, booted up my Macbook and went looking for the sequel to STORMDANCER, which a few of you droogies might know I've spent the best part of a year writing. However, Mr Macbook couldn't find it.

"Strange," said I, sipping from my snifter of brandy and raising an eyebrow at my faithful hound.**

Dropping back to the desktop, I did the double-clickeroo and journeyed to the folder that contains my sequel. Inside it, I found a series of documents of indeterminate file type, labelled with names like 'KJBNEUFN' and 'G@&JDNXC'. And in that moment, I realized the entire sequel folder and everything inside it had become corrupted. Only the Macgod knows how. It was only that single folder. But the entire sequel had flipped out and been eaten by gremlins. Every draft. All my notes. My diary of a madman scribbles about where the trilogy was headed. Everything.

A year's work. My baby. Bam. Gone.

"Well," said I. "That's a spot of bother."***

Right before cardiac arrest kicked in, I remembered that a good droogie of mine had turned me onto a program called 'Dropbox' a couple of months earlier. And, astonishingly, I had actually been using it to store my sequel as I worked. Diving into the dropbox, I found my baby there, whole and unsoiled (minus about 5 minutes work that I hadn't saved) and I managed to peel myself off the ceiling. It was all good. Praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I would not be forced to ritually disembowel myself with the TV remote.

How I laughed….

After I'd mopped up the vomit, I got thinking about how capital-B bad this could have actually been. Typically, I've been pretty ordinary about backing up files – it's only really fluke that I'd been keeping that folder updated in an online storage space. But if I hadn't been backing my work up on a regular basis… I don't even want to think about how badly that would have gone for all concerned.

So, my droogs, I know there are a couple of you out there like me. I know you might let your disaster management routines slide from time to time. But I tell you now, I implore you; BACK IT THE FUCK UP.

Have your words living and up to date in THREE separate locations:

Sitting on some kind of physical storage device that never leaves your person.
Emailed to yourself.
Floating in some kind of online storage space. Here's a couple of good free ones (if people know of others, suggestions welcome):

Dropbox.
Humyo.
Box.
4shared.
Snapdrive

Doesn't take a lot of effort. Maybe 3 minutes at the end of each writing session. Save it. Update the online version. Mail it yourself. Done. But those three minutes can save you some serious pain.

Think of the babies, peoples. Don't let the gremlins get 'em.

*Slouched on faux-suede couch in my sweat pants and an old Coal Chamber t-shirt

**"Da fuck?" I said, kicking the dog off my lap.

*** "Oh my fucking god," I said. "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYFUCKINGGOD."

Walk

It's been almost a year to the day since I was plucked from the slushpile and pledged my soul to el Diablo signed with my literary agent. So today, I thought I'd discuss a pit where once I dwelled, neck deep in danky doom, like some 6'7 piece of bearded navel lint. Stick with me through the depressing intro – much like asphyxiating on carbon monoxide, it gets more pleasant towards the end.

Old crusty men will tell you there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes. But old crusty men tell lies and smell of vaguely of urinal cake (have you ever noticed that? BIZARRE). Bollocks to old crusty men. There are actually three absolutes in this rollercoaster we ride.

Death, taxes and rejection.

If you're a writer with aspirations of getting traditionally published, comprehending the third is just as vital as realizing that Frank Miller is a dude who once wrote some pretty good comics but has now turned bitter and gone pantsless hobo crrrrrrazy. The truth is this: the road to autograph-signing-induced RSI, drowning in fangirl undies and throwing TVs out the window at San Diego Comic Con is paved with boiler-plate rejection.

Rejection is someone you'll hear rumours about from your crit-partners, maybe catch a glimpse of in your writing groups, but you'll first become intimately acquainted on your quest to find representation. And when I say 'intimately', I'm not kidding. You'll know where Rejection's birthmarks are. You'll know about that tattoo it got when it was 18 and drunk in Tijuana. You'll know it's not a natural blonde.

People will come at you with gems like "Stephanie Meyer got rejected nine times before Twilight got bought" or "JK Rowling ate a dozen rejections before she got her deal". Let Phoenix Wright, attorney at law, put all such delusional cracky-talk to rest. I know writers who've swallowed three hundred rejections before they found an agent. Three hundred. Before they even got a ticket to the dance. Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to representation.

Got an agent? Awesome! Achievement unlocked! Now comes level two: Submissions. Your work gets sent out to publishing houses – one blind, wriggling little tadpole thing amidst a thousand others, all struggling together up that long, moist tunnel, vying for…

Nonono, wait. I'm putting a stop to this spermatozoa analogy right now.

Point is, the odds of getting picked up by a publishing house are long. You might get lucky. You might win the lottery on your first round and not have to dwell in the stinky ass-crack of Submission Hell for too long. But chances are, this isn't gonna happen. I know plenty of writers who've gone from the dizzying high of landing an agent only to watch their book get passed on by every editor it's sent to. Revise, Resubmit, Rejection. Until their fingers are worn down to little nubby stumps and signing with James Frey starts to look like a viable alternative. I even know of an author who got signed, edited, then dumped by her house as her book was in artwork stages. And to get so close just to watch it slip away? Wedding tackle, meet steel-toed boot.

Yes, okay, it's hard. We get it. What's your point, Jay?

My point is this: Walking this road is a slog, and some days, it's going to seem like it's too hard and too far away. You'll do the math (never do the math – math is your enemy), work out the odds and wonder why you're wasting your time. But as you walk this yellow brick road of rejection slips, you should take a moment to listen. The soft squishing sound beneath your Chucks? That's the bodies of the people who walked this road before you and let it get on top of them.

You don't want to be them.

As hard as walking is, as long as the odds are of you getting to the end, the odds are longer if you stop walking entirely. The probability of you getting to the finish line if you lay down? It's nil. And ten-thousand-to-one odds are a damn sight better than an absolute impossibility.

About twelve months ago, I went from zero offers of representation to four in a single week. In the space of two months, I went from a guy with an inbox full of boilerplate rejection to having three different publishing houses bidding on my book. Two months. That's not even a season of Metalocalypse. You couldn't gestate an even halfway-decent xenomorph army in that time. That's how fast this worm can turn. And it can start turning tomorrow. But not if you lay down. Not if you stop moving.

If you stop moving, you die. And your dream dies with you.

So my point?

Keep. Fucking. Walking.

1,667 words a day

Well it's NANOWRIMO again, and for all you brave souls leaping into the breach, I salute you and offer Big Scary Hugs. Cranking out 1,667 words a day every day for a month is no easy task. So in the spirit of the occasion, I've knocked up some down and dirty hints and tips to help you climb the mountain.

The thing you should remember first and foremost during NANOWRIMO is that time is currency. Your life is kinda like that Justin Timberlake flick, except without to Dolby Digital Surround and Amanda Seyfried looking all at you all pouty and doe-eyed. No Cillian Murphy either, in all likelihood (sorry ladies). In fact, thinking about it, your life is nothing like a Justin Timberlake film.

But TIME IS STILL CURRENCY.

Prepare.

I'm not an outliner. I'm a pantser all the way. But NANOWRIMO is all about getting words down on the gorram page. 1,667 words a day in fact. You can't afford to spend time wondering What Happens Next. You need a plan. Even if it's a plan that you're updating weekly or daily. You need to know where you're going or you'll waste time staring at the Blank Page of Doom™ and wondering why god hates you.
Understand the point of the exercise.

NANOWRIMO is about word count. Many of the words you write will be less than sparkling. Some of them will be downright awful. A few will make the gods themselves avert their gaze. That's okay. You can fix the words later. What matters is that you have the words to fix.

Quality is awesome, if you can afford the luxury. I'm not discounting the importance of quality at all. But for NANOWRIMO, quantity is more important.
Forget tools. 

People spend a lot of time and research trying to find the right 'tool' to use: Scrivener, Storyist, Storymill, Manuscript, Copywrite, yadda yadda. And then they spend time figuring out how to use those tools. And time is something you don't have.

Seriously peoples, all you need for NANOWRIMO is a word processor. Hell, you don't even need that (you shouldn't be checking spelling tbh – it costs you time), you just need something that counts the words you've written. I recommend acquiring the services of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, who burst into cartwheels and pom-pom waving and "Gimmee a " every time you write a new one hundred words.

But I realize they might be hard to get hold of.
The Fortress of Solitude. 

Even Superman needed a place to get away from the noise and rush of the world. If you want to get 1,667 words a day done, you'll need one too. A closed door. A room without phones or interwebz. An understanding partner, who can comply with the request "do not open this door unless the child/dog/house is on fire". If you can retain the services of several burly gentlemen in cheap suits to stand outside said door cracking their knuckles at anyone who draws near, that's awesome.

An attack leopard would be even better.
Get a run up. 

In all likelihood, your energy for the project will be greater at the beginning than the end. With this in mind, try to break the 1,667 words a day count whenever you can, particularly at the beginning. If you're on a roll, don't stop. If it's 1am and you need to work the next day, but you're WTFPWNing this scene, don't stop. If the child/dog/house is on fire… yeah, maybe you should stop.

Briefly.
Don't go back check it. 

Seriously. Don't even stop for a spell check. It's all about the words, my friends. You are Orpheus and your book is Eurydice and if you stop and turn around, she's going to disappear and Hades will be like 'damn, what up with you Greeks can't you follow a simple set of instructions I mean how hard is it' and you'll be all forlorn and whatnot and wind up getting torn apart by crazy drunken naked ladies on the slopes of Mount Pangaion.

Or maybe not. But you probably won't finish.
Don't let anyone read it.

You're not in this for praise. Writing at this speed, you're not turning out your best prose. This is not the point of the exercise. You are in this for words. At the end of the month, you go back, beat them into shape, get the story into a place where it's worthy of review. For now, having someone read it is only going to a) Waste time, and b) Sap confidence (when your reviewer fails to turn cartwheels over the words you're churning out like an underage worker in a Chinese sweatshop)
Back it up.

My god, don't forget to save your work. In two separate locations. Every day. Haste makes waste, and NANOWRIMO is all about haste. You don't want your hurried CTRL+S to ruin a day's work.
Remember why you're here.

Writing is supposed to be fun. If you're not enjoying it, you need to ask why you're doing it. NANOWRIMO shouldn't be a chore. It's more like a mission. You are James Bond, and your mission is to get into the swanky ball, make sweet love to the billionaire heiress on her arch-criminal husband's desk, steal the plans to the Doomsday Device from her unmentionables and get out without a wrinkle in your $5,000 tuxedo (maybe getting into a punch-up and car chase on the way out). You must succeed, or else the world will fall into chaos and misery. If you view NANOWRIMO like you view doing the laundry, you're never going to make it through to the end.

You are a secret agent super spy in expensive threads who makes sweet love to billionaire heiresses.

Repeat that to yourself in the mirror every day.
The end is not the end.

NANOWRIMO is an exercise in discipline. But it also leaves you with a product: 50,000 words of perhaps less-than-stellar quality, which you can nevertheless beat into serviceable shape with more hard work.

The next step is to take the raw clay you've produced and make something awesome out of it. But the important thing is that you get that clay first. Everything else is secondary for now.

And never forget the feat of writing those 50,000 words in itself is frackin' awesome too.

You can do it. Believe it, and make it so.

Good luck, my pedigree chums!

Avoiding Suck

I'm in the Revision cave atm, working on draft 2 of Book 2. So while my head is in the space, I thought I'd write down some of the sins I commit in first drafts and some of the tricks I use when revising, that you may avoid my magnificent suckitude. I know in last week's post, I said thinking your work sucks is a good thing, because it's a catalyst for improvement. This is all still true. But if it actually sucks in RL, as opposed to in your head, that isn't so awesome.

As always, YMMV.

Dialogue tags – I used to think I was a Very Clever Writer™ when I replaced 'said' with something like 'rasped' or 'growled' or 'gasped'. And yes, there's certainly times when a more evocative dialogue descriptor will help. But don't be afraid of 'said'. Don't think you're a Bad Writer if you use 'said' – it still usually does the job better than 'exclaimed' or 'guffawed' or another 'Hey, look at me, I'm a Very Clever Writer™" word.

Ain't nothin' wrong with 'said'. Most of the time. Just sayin'.

Ninja dialogue - The important thing about dialogue tags is that they're meant to be invisible. They serve two main functions – to tell the reader who's talking, and to describe how the words are being said IF you can't do it with punctuation. Try avoiding dialogue tags and using motion/action to indicate who's speaking. This really helps in a conversation with more than two participants – when you're constantly having to tell readers who's doing the talking, but 'Curly said' 'Mo said' and 'Larry said' are all getting older than the concept of Reality TV.

"Those are extraordinary trousers, old bean," said Mr Bingley.

"You flatter me, sir," Darcy bowed.

Wickham looked up from Mr Collins' twitching corpse. "Damn his trousers, man, pass the cleaver."

Overused words – Everyone has a handful. I throw around the word 'slick' like cheap hooch at an Irish wedding. And 'splayed'. If I had a dollar for every time someone's slick hair was splayed over their face in this sequel, I could totally buy me some beachfront property in Fukushima right now.

Make yourself a list of the words you overuse. Seriously. Write them down. Do a 'Find' on them in MS word. More than a few hits? Back to the thesaurus, you must go. (Note: in the awesome On Writing, Stephen King says any word you chose in a thesaurus is the wrong word. But maybe his vocabulary is better than mine.)

Extraneous words – There's a couple of prime suspects here. 'That' is Lord of the Extraneous, ruling alongside his beautiful concubine 'Was' and their malformed twins 'Began to' and 'Started to'.

'That' succeeds only in cluttering your sentences. You can almost always do without it.

The trousers that all mortals feared.

The trousers all mortals feared.

'Was' makes your sentences weaker, particularly preceding a verb. 'Began to' and 'Started to' just delay your reader from the point. There's usually a better, shorter way of saying the same thing.

Mr Elton was running down the street with no trousers.

Mr Elton ran down the street with no trousers.

Mr Bennet began to put on his trousers.

Mr Bennet put on his trousers.

Note: 'Was' works if you're providing a snapshot of a scene your PoV has stumbled into, ie "Emma was in the process of sniffing Knightley's trousers when I entered the boudoir."

Redundant anatomy lessons – there are some Very Famous Writers who are guilty of this one. I speak of the terrible sin of adding body parts to a verb that can only really be performed by one part of the human body.

She nodded her head.

She pointed her finger.

She pouted her lips.

You can't pout your shoulders, right? You can't nod your legs. And yes, while you can point with many parts of your anatomy, some might get you arrested, and pointing does have a default body part associated with it.

If your protag kicks someone, we're already assuming it's with their foot. That's all I'm saying.

Assuming your reader already knows – I do this one all the time, assuming my reader already knows how something sounds/feels/looks/smells and not bothering to describe it.

Eg, I catch myself using the phrase "The sound of…" – "The sound of thunder", "The sound of engines" "The sound of me hitting my delete key over and over during draft 2". Maybe I'm the only one. But I do it so often, it rates a mention.

"The sound of thunder" doesn't tell us anything. It's lazy writing. Thunder booms, rolls, crashes, it shakes the dust from the eaves, it makes the earth tremble, it fills the sky. It does so many interesting things, your passage will probably be more evocative if you spend one or two words describing it. And while sometimes you just need to get to the point, SFX be damned, doing this too often is wasting opportunity.

Beating around the bush – I do this all the time, too. Taking too long to actually say what I mean. Draft 1 was riddled with the following construct: The [noun] of the [noun]. Sometimes it can add gravitas to a statement. Most times, it's just me being a tosser.

The Lord of the Trousers.

The Trouser Lord.

The trousers of the King.

The King's trousers.

Other times, I just waste timed getting to the point, using four words where one will work just as well (often better)

His trousers were filled to the brim with happiness.

His trousers brimmed with happiness.

Ten percent – I try and cut at least 10% of word count between D1 and 2. Is this an arbitrary figure? Yes. Is it hard to cut that much? Yes. Is my writing tighter after applying this arbitrary rule to what should be a free-flowing, take-as-long-as-it-needs love-fest of verbiage? YES.

Finally:

Read aloud – Honestly, if you never believe anything else I say (can't blame you), believe this. Reading your work aloud helps you spot repeated words, typos, passive voice. It'll help with flow and rhythm. Most importantly, reading insipid prose aloud will embarrass you, and you'll want to make it better. (reading 80,000+ words aloud hurts though, you might wanna have a Swiss masseuse or at least some lozenges on standby)

That's all I've got.

Looking through the above, most of these rules boil down to one asset that I'm trying to cultivate: Brevity. In most situations, shorter is usually better. Don't state the obvious. Don't waste words. Get to the frackin' point and get out before you send them to sleep.

Unless you write bedtime stories, I guess…

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The Importance of Suck

Writing a book is almost like suffering from schizophrenia. Every writer I've spoken to tends to go through 'swings' with the book they're working on, alternating between arm-flailing enthusiasm and absolute loathing.

The highs are extraordinary – when the words you've written fill your soul like the laughter of carefree children, or that scene in Top Gun where Tom Cruise murders all those commies and then Val Kilmer is like "You can kiss me on the mouth be my wing-man any time" and they hug in a completely platonic, heterosexual kind of way and the music swells, guitars all wailing and…

…

But the lows are equally extreme, despair inevitably coalescing into two words – an inescapable truth that sours your stomach keeps you awake at night:

YOU SUCK.

It's true. You do. Everything you write is hackneyed drivel. Every idea you've got has been done a million times before, by someone who's far more talented, likeable and has better hair than you. The people who've read your stuff and said it's good? They're lying to spare your feelings. All the stuff you've written before that got sold? Pfft. Flukes. Because now it's just you and the word processor and that Blank Page of Doom™, the cursor blinking like the twenty-foot high neon above your head, illuminating the truth you've always known.

YOU. <blink> SUCK. <blink> YOU. <blink> SUCK…

The certainty that you suck leads you to developing a dark and almighty hatred for this thing that you're working on – this so called 'book' (Lies. Books have plots. And decent dialogue. And characters with more depth than the flap of a Wheeties box – YOU HAVE NONE OF THESE). And suddenly, you find yourself not wanting to write this 'book' anymore. You'll do anything but – Clean the yard. Sort laundry. Engage in meaningful conversation with your Significant Other. Watch Top Gun.

Thing is? Avoiding writing is the last thing you should be doing. Instead? You should be relishing your inescapable loathing for this damnable 'book'. You should go back to the 'book', regardless of how bad it makes you feel, how much you hate it. Despite the fact that you know 'book' is no good for you, and succeeds only in making you feel like roadkill.

…so actually, now that I think about it, writing a book is like being in a really dysfunctional relationship.

So why should you put up with 'book's' crap?

Well, because I firmly believe hating your book can make you a better writer. Truth is, parts of your book probably do suck. And even if suck-age is remarkably absent, it can almost certainly be better.

If you hate what you've written, your mind can be opened to new ways of writing it. Hating what you've done brings possibility, clarity, creativity. There is power in your suckage, there is life and motion and energy.  All you need to do is channel it back into the manuscript rather than a back-to-back screening of S1 of Vampire Diaries in the company of some ultra-choc chocolate ice cream.

Any emotion, love, hate, fear – these things let us know we're alive and breathing. Don't waste it. Use it.

Because, as with all things, the MS blues will pass. Though it will almost certainly be torturous, the blank page will fill with letters and the neon sign will fade. And, if you didn't abandon it, you'll probably be left with a manuscript that's stronger than it was before. To paraphrase a lunatic who murders another beloved portion of my childhood with every film he releases, your hatred will have made you powerful.

…So actually, writing a book is more like being a Sith Lord. I guess?

Yeah, lets run with that.

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Calling Bollocks

So the Mad Hatter (@MadHatterReview) sent me a link to an article over at Tor.com the other day, saying he'd love to see my response to it, probably because he knows I rant like a pantsless hobo at the drop of a hat, and everybody enjoys a fireworks show.

It was 5am, and was on the wrong side of a half bottle of Gentleman Jack at the time, which would seem like fertile ground for a full-on psychobilly freakout, but surprisingly, instead of getting all angry-face ranty-pantsed, I wrote back to the Hatter thusly:

"Feels like a flamewar waiting to happen. Post is pure antagonism, from the title on down. Point of engaging would be…?"

And then I went to bed.

(Cool story, bro.)

BUT, the thought of it wouldn't leave me alone. I gave it the 24 Hour rule. Hell, I gave it 48 hours. And in the interest of avoiding a flamewar, I've decided to respond here, where people can ignore me at their leisure. But I have to say something, because straight up, folks, this article strikes me as a work of astonishing ignorance.

The article btw, can be found here.

As I said to the Hatter, it's pure troll-face from the word go. Apparently there's a 'problem' with Asian Steampunk, being that authors/gamers/cosplayers 'limit' themselves to a narrow set of archetypes – a habit which western Steampunk (apparently?) avoids.

I call bollocks.

Firstly, I'm baffled anyone thinks there's enough Asian-inspired Steampunk around for there to be a problem at all, other than the problem that there isn't enough Asian-inspired Steampunk. AFAIK, Scott Westerfeld's Goliath (released about 30 seconds ago) is the first major release with Asian-inspired SP to hit shelves, albeit set in the 20th, not 19th century, and the Asian section is only one portion of the book. Steampunk aficionados aren't drowning in a sea of samurai and ninja – they're surrounded by retroVictoriana and post-colonial Americana, with bustles and corsets and parasols as far as the eye can see. A body might be forgiven for thinking that it's actually awesome for Steampunk creators to be exploring locales other than London or the Wild West.

Nevins however, claims these creators are 'limiting themselves' to certain Asian archetypes (samurai, geisha and ninja). First off, I'd like to know exactly which creators he's talking about (mainly because I'd really like to read/see them – No examples are actually cited). Secondly, even if Nevins could pull a barrow-load of examples from the aether (see what I did there?), who the fuck says those creators 'limited' themselves?

Maybe they WANTED to tell a story about a geisha within a Steampunk framework. Maybe they WANTED to explore the notion of a ninja cabal in a steam-mechanized age – I don't know, again, no examples were cited.

Nevins goes onto show us his Google-fu and cites a bunch of Really Cool Shit™ that 19th century Asian people got up to. Problem is, all but one of his examples are Chinese or Indian, which doesn't seem to fit with his beef about samurai/geisha/ninja, given those are Japanese concepts (if you were writing SP in China or India, they wouldn't fit), but moving on…

The real issue is that his entire article is based on the misconception that Asian-inspired SP creators have 'little knowledge' of all this Really Cool Shit™ Asians did, and that we're all ignorant tools who believe everyone living in 19th century Asia slung a katana or was a high-priced courtesan.

Thanks, dude. But we can fucking read.

Pirates? Explorers? Really? Like this stuff hasn't been steampunked to DEATH already? Would treading these already well-worn western roads with Asian protagonists really make a difference? Wouldn't it be cooler to explore concepts that are uniquely Asian? Every culture in the world can trot out the hard-nosed reporter archetype or a pirate trope. You'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on the planet that can boast the cultural tropes found in the Tokugawa Shogunate or Manchu Dynasty.

I appreciate the Wikipedia lesson, but maybe the creators who 'limited' themselves to these archetypes did so because they thought they might be able to do something excellent with them? Asian-inspired SP hasn't really been done before, so almost anything they do in this sandbox is going to be new. But besides that, did George RR Martin 'limit' himself when he constructed a world on the same western medieval fantasy tropes (knights/kings/dragons) we've lived with since Tolkein? Did Patrick Rothfuss 'limit' himself when he decided to tell a story about a gifted man who studies at a magic university and goes on to become the most powerful wizard who ever lived? Can subject matter be considered a limitation at all, especially given the absolute dearth of Asian-inspired SP in the first place?

Is the wandering samurai trope any more 'unimaginative' than the wandering knight? Is an Asian sky-pirate somehow less clichéd than a white one?

Here is truth, and it is the only truth in this debate that matters: A great story is in the telling.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm drawn to these archetypes not out of some dipshit whitebread ignorance or acquiescence to the evil influences of Orientalism. I'm drawn to them because I find them fascinating. Because these cultures contain a beauty and artistry and aesthetic unlike anything else in the world. And if some people's stories do gravitate towards these tropes, it'd be awesome if other folks actually read them before they declared every single one of them to be 'limited' and 'unimaginative' and 'problematic' based on their own narrow misconceptions.

(deep breath)

Just sayin'.

Breathing

I'm a reasonably pessimistic fellow by nature (noooo, really?!). And though I'm fairly good at not sweating the small stuff, I'm usually too busy looking for the Bad Thing on the horizon to enjoy the Cool Thing happening right now.

And this is just a little Cool Thing I'm talking about here. No lottery wins or spontaneous manifestation of mutant super powers (I'm hoping for miiiiiiiiiind bullets). It's just a bunch of zeros and ones on a server half a world away. But the zeros and ones equate to my name and a little thing I've spent the best part of two years building, and it's really cool to see it one step closer to the palm of my hand. So I'm going to stop, and breathe, and enjoy this Cool Thing, right here and now:

The listing is totally bare-bones, but Stormdancer is now officially listed on Amazon UK.

Big scary hugs to Tez for letting me know, and much love to all the awesome people who are helping me make this absurd little dream come true.

Ten reasons you can Follow THIS

I don't claim to be any kind of Social Media Expert™. Let's face it, if I were, I'd be doing seminars in front of hundreds of terrified Fifty-Something Marketing Managers, making up acronyms like SMOS (Social Media Optimization Strategy) and YOBDEKWISDY (You Old Bastards Don't Even Know What I'm Saying, Do You) and watching them slowly panic as they realize that the Ice Age is coming and the T-Rex, it is them.

But I am an expert in what infuriates me. And infuriating me is an awesome way to make me stop Following you on Twitter. So my former twitter sweeties (tweeties?), here are the reasons why I decided we should see other people:

You tweet too much. Seeing your avatar in my feed once or twice a day makes me happy. I like you (that's why I followed you after all) and your face is a tiny ray of sunshine in my dreary day. Seeing it 32 times in a 60 minute period? (yes, Kevin Smith, I'm glowering in your direction) I don't like anyone that much. Fuck you.
You tweet too little. I want to know more about you. I want to share in your life, to know what you feel, what you think. If you're just a name in my list, contributing nothing but another digit to my already worryingly high Follow count and an occasional tweet about your lust for Felicia Day, guess what buddy: Fuck you too.
You tweet about your [insert shtick here] constantly. If I'm following you, you're probably someone who DOES something. You write books, or music, you make films. And honestly, I really am interested in your novel/album/record-breaking gangbang attempt, but I already know the release date. Wanna know how? Because you told me twenty seven times in the last three days . Fffffffuck you.
You tweet nothing but absolute bollocks. Yes, I want to know you. I want a glimpse into your magical Person Who Does Interesting Things existence. That doesn't mean I need to hear about the mind-numbing minutiae of your life. If your spawn lost a tooth? If your cat is asleep on your chair? If you're contemplating having nommy nommy pie for dinner? How about a nice big plate FUCK YOU instead.
You tweet like no-one's watching. You know those twitter conversations you have with your Significant Other? Well guess what, if I'm following you both (as I may well be, if your SO is also someone ultra-interesting) I get to be privy to that entire conversation. And if it's a conversation about doing rails of cocaine off a flaming stripper while you skydive out of an exploding aeroplane, hell yes I want to get all voyeuristic on that shit. If it's a conversation about buying milk, or what you want to watch on Fox tonight (hint: the answer is always 'nothing') then send her a txt message instead, you cheap prick. 3825 968.
You're always NICE. Real people are not always nice. Real people get angry. Real people swear. I understand you don't want your public persona to be negative, but someone who is constantly nice is not a person, they're a frackin' toaster. If I wanted to follow a robot, I'd follow Al Gore. If I wanted to follow a paragon of virtue, I'd follow myself (LAWL). Gimme an F, gimme a U…
You Follow thousands upon thousands people. There is no way in hell you actually read that feed, son. You're not fooling anyone. You're just Following folks in the hopes they Follow you back, neither one of you actually giving a shit about what the other has to say. Like the forty-something divorcee with the freshly pierced ear and his Maserati car keys arranged artfully on the bar before him, this reeks of utter desperation.  Yebi Tebya (this is Russian for, oh you get the idea…)
You Retweet the nice things people say about you. I already like you. I wouldn't have followed you if I didn't. But frankly, I don't give a shit that someone else likes you too, unless that person is, like, the Queen, or the ghost of Bill Hicks or something. If @hipsterdude94  tells you you're awesome, write back to @hipsterdude94 and say "Thanks, and wtf @ your name son…" Don't RT his noise into your feed with a "Thx! " in front of it. I don't need my choice in liking you validated by the knowledge that some other douchbag likes you too. I have more faith in my own shit-filter than that. Doing this makes it harder to like you. In fact? (cue Big Band sting) Fuck youuuuuuuuu.
I messaged you, and you didn't message me back. Twitter is a SOCIAL medium. You and I are meant to engage in some way, shape or form. And yeah, I get that you're busy and Very Important™. But a friend of mine gave Neil Gaiman some shit about his taste in music the other day, and he tweeted her back, like, instantly (she is available for appearances at parties, bar mitzvahs and weddings. She will allow you to touch the mobile device upon which she received the tweet for a moderate fee – I have touched it, and it apparently unlocked my mutant power to rant like a crazy homeless person) Now, Neil Gaiman has a million+ Followers. So if you're sub five-figures on the Follower count, and you don't message me back the first time? Fair enough, you might be busy. After the third time? Yeah, that's kinda rude. After the fifth time? You're just a prick. Fuck you.
You Rickrolled me. Now, I don't mean you actually linked to a video of Rick Astley (if you did this, it should go without saying: fuck you). I mean you typed something ambiguous like "Squeeeee, guess what was waiting for me when I got home today?" + {link}. And I think "Oh man, that could be a pile of first edition printings, or a bouncing castle full of Playboy bunnies, or Charlie Sheen all hopped up on ice and screaming 'WINNINGGGGGG!!' at your mailbox" and I click the link and it's a picture of your cat sitting on the fucking doorstep. Or the pair of shoes you ordered from ebay. Or Rick Astley begging for loose change. This one , my friend, is for you.

That's all I've got. GodDAMN someone took his angry pills this morning…

On the Naming of Things

Normally I'd reveal this kind of news with some extravagant gala event, and a big spinning podium with a curtain drawn all the way around it and booth babes and whatnot. But I loaned my spinning podium to a friend and he hasn't brought it back yet. And my lady, yyyyeah, she's not too keen on the booth babes thing.

But anyway, those of you who've been following me for a little while will know that I've been wrestling with the notion of a series title for, oh, around about eight frackin' months now. I know it seems to be the norm to just name your series after the first book nowadays, but where's the masochism in that?

I totally understand why so many people do it – because coming up with titles is hard. Series titles are even worse, because if you screw it up, you're stuck with it for three, four, twelve books. I mean, just imagine if George R.R Martin had called 'A Song of Ice and Fire' something like 'Every Single Character You're Remotely Fond of is Going To Die'. Would it be selling squintillions around the globe? Maybe not. Although Pete Dinklage might have remembered to thank him in his Emmy acceptance speech at least. (Oooooh, wicked burn)

Titles have gravitas. A series title is supposed to say something about every book within it – to sum up tomes that the author in all likelihood hasn't even written yet. To spell out the meta-plot of your X00,000 word opus in barely a handful. Plus, your editors need to like it too, and they do this word thing for a living and can sometimes be hard to please.

But, we got there. Without further ado, rotating podiums or scantily clad wenches, and because the first thing you probably did after you read the post title was to scroll down to the bright shiny pic at the end anyway, I give you:

From the Edit Cave

There's this scene in the Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo – his tubby fingers no doubt greasy from the bacon or cupcakes he'd been pigging out on with Gamgee – drops the One Ring in the snow on the slopes of Mount Caradhras.

(I'll point out at this juncture that Mr Butterfingers' SOLE job was to drop the Ring. Into Mount Doom. Which he failed at. Nice plan, Sir Ian McKellen.)

Anyways, poor old Boromir walking along behind picks it up, and staring at it all wistfully as it bends his tiny mind, he says: 'It seems a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over such a small thing. Such a little thing…'

Well, this kinda sums up how I feel about commas right now.

Yes, I am COPY EDITING. What's copy editing, Jay? Glad you asked.

Writing a book kinda goes like this:

First Draft – this is where you come up with all your cool ideas and bang them down onto the page as fast as you can and who gives a tinker's cuss about punctuation or proper grammar no time for that if you stop writing you will die just get it down on the page son griffins in feudal Japan goddamn right you can make that work that shit is gold

Second Draft  – this is where you go back and try to fix all the awful mistakes you made in D1. Where is the punctuation? Where is the plot? Is it hidden under that moist, quivering pile of adverbs in the corner? Oh my God, it's LOOKING AT ME.

Third Draft – you've found the plot, and brushed off the lint and shoggoth spittle. You love this MS. LOVE. IT. Everything about it is perfect. You send it to the Agent.

You curl into a trembling ball of pre-emptive rage for the next two weeks, your only movement being the twitching of your mouse finger as you refresh your email every five minutes to see if Agent has replied yet. The thought that anyone would change a single word sends you into fits of garment rending, all stomping about and roaring like Khal Drogo with less impressive pecs.

Agent Draft – this is where your agent tries to tell you all the bits of your MS that SUCK without actually using the word "suck". Agents earn roughly half their commission during this shivering little dance.  Your vows before the Mother of Mountains to  make slaves of your Agent's children and drag his broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak are met with good humor. You see lots of sentences beginning with "Maybe we could…" or "Could we consider…"

And it's always "we", because you're in this together, don't you know, and if your Agent actually reminds you that it's "you" who's going to be making all these changes, armed only with your secondhand Macbook and a tub of ultra-choc-chocolate icecream, your tiny mind might just snap right in two. And then your Agent will have to find another client, which means snatching up a machete and heading back into the slush pile and oh my GOD, fuck that…

Unless you are gifted, or your agent is smoking blunts under his/her desk during lunchbreaks and thinks everything is far out, this stage always ends the same – back to the drawing board for you.

Editor's Notes – you've drained the MS of the obvious suckage, and pulled enough of it and your psyche back together to send off to The Editor. This is the point where your entire book can get dismantled, where your Ed pulls at one lose plot thread and everything unravels like bargain bin K-Mart knitwear. And you find yourself on your hands and knees, scraping together this pile of tangled wool and blubbing "Noooo, I can still make this work. It's still good. IT'S STILL GOOD…"

Eventually, you stitch it back together. And if you're very lucky your editors kick ass, and the book is so much better that you want to travel back in time, accost Third Draft You and just punch him right in the neck for his arrogance.

Copy Edits – this is the part where punctuation becomes The Enemy. A place where you find yourself deleting and re-inserting the same comma two dozen times, and feeling like a completely reasonable, rational human being whilst reading the same sentence aloud to your dog, over and over, like some idiot savant reciting pi to 3,000 decimal places. Pondering the mating habits of semi-colons, staring at the same full-point for 45 minutes at a stretch, as if within its tiny black depths you will find answers to the enigmas of  life, the universe and Dane Cook's popularity.

Someone explain Dane Cook to me, please.

Anyways yes. I'm copy editing. Which means I'm reading the same words repeatedly until I go mad or blind. I think the first part has already happened. This explains my absence on the blog and email and whatnot for the past couple of weeks. For this, I apologize.

In case you're wondering about the pic above, it's the first chapter of STORMDANCER in Wordle. I love Wordle.

Anyways, back to it. These semi-colons are breeding like tribbles.