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For Fuck’s Sake! – The Art Of Swearing And Cursing In Fiction Writing

George Carlin said it best:

“There are no bad words. There are bad thoughts, bad intentions… and words.”

If you don’t believe that, then you should stop reading this post. Right fucking now. Because having been both an angry young man and served time in the military, I’ve grown and sharpened a fairly salacious tongue.  But even I know that there’s a time and a place for swearing, and it’s useful for authors to know when and where it’s OK to do so.

Whether you SHOULD swear or not is often obvious. Swearing probably isn’t a good idea if you’re writing for a children’s market, religious market, or for something that will be publicly read/displayed such as a newspaper or contest. Swearing at all  in these cases is like swearing at your boss during a performance review, so you might want to check out “Alternatives to Swearing” below.

But when writing fiction, it’s not a question of whether you can or can’t – it’s the art of HOW MUCH SWEARING IS TOO MUCH that gets writers in hot water and poor reviews.

One author’s ‘Realistically Portrayed Character’ is another reader’s ‘Pottymouth.’  [Click to Tweet This!]

Less is More

One of my beta readers for Evil Looks Good pointed out my overuse of swearing in my rough draft manuscript, which surprised me until I went back and read it again. The story involves characters who were members of a Minneapolis rock band, and they swore a fair amount.

I’ve been in bands for years, and hung out with plenty of musicians, both on and offstage. There’s all kinds of unacceptable backstage behavior, and swearing is the least of it. While writing Evil Looks Good, I wanted to bring that verisimilitude to the story. But one author’s verisimilitude is one beta reader’s ear-burning.  After re-reading the draft, I decided that she was right.

Overuse of swear words in fiction waters down their impact like using too many exclamation points. I fixed this by choosing only a few characters in the novel as “pottymouths” (or “blue” if you prefer.) This helped my story in two ways. First, limiting the swearing to certain characters made those characters “blue” instead of the entire book. Second, because only those particular characters swore, it give them a more distinct personality. In fact, I was able to remove some speaker attributions (“He said” or “she said”, etc.) which helped the dialog flow better.

If you’re telling an entire story in first-person and the first-person narrator is the swearer, this can be tricky, but it can still be done. Simply limit their swearing to certain situations. Perhaps they don’t like crowds, they get frustrated and irate, and their language becomes more crass. Or perhaps they only swear when they are with people they know and trust, letting their real feelings show. Perhaps they only swear when they are around people they don’t know and trust, keeping them distant on purpose. Perhaps they only swear when things aren’t going their way, something many of us can relate to.

The overuse of swear words in fiction waters down their impact, like using too many exclamation points. [Click to Tweet This!]

Cutting back on swearing makes it more powerful when it does occur. You can use this to your advantage. In the movie Aliens, the line “Get away from her, you bitch!” is used to awesome effect. It occurs at exactly the right time and place, and it’s one of the most recognizable and quotable lines from the movie. Less is more.

Be careful not to overdo this. I guess I mean ‘underdo’ this. If you write six books in a series without any swearing and then suddenly break out a curse word, audiences will get their feathers ruffled. Ask J.K. Rowling, because this is what she did in the Harry Potter series, which had NO swearing until the seventh book, when Mrs. Weasley says, “Not my daughter, you bitch!” To some readers, that’s like getting most of the way through a meal and then biting down on a jalapeno pepper. And while it brought J.K.Rowling a slew of media attention, much of it was negative.

Keep in mind that some people are very sensitive to swearing, and the more you use it, the less they will like your book. Here’s an area where knowing what your target market likes/doesn’t like can help guide your writing.

When To Swear, And When To Keep Your Fucking Mouth Shut

So we’ve established that “less is more” when it comes to swearing. But that doesn’t mean we have to cut it out completely. There are many cases where swearing can be a useful author’s tool:

Swearing to Set the Tone

If your novel is filled with horrific monsters, terrifying situations and /or tentacle porn, you might wanna set that “R” rating right on page one. One way to do that is by enlisting unsavory language. Those who are easily offended will  be offended, but you may be better off establishing that this is an adult book on page one, rather than letting them get to the part where the couple having sex in the woods are devoured by spider-leeches.

Swearing to Establish Character

A hard-boiled detective whose default curse word is “golly” is bound to get some laughs. If that’s what you’re after, fine. But if you want people to take your tough-as-nails characters seriously, you may have to give them some tough-as-nails language, especially when we first meet them. Similar to setting the tone of the novel, a first impression of a character swearing can help your audience to get a quick lock on the character’s personality.

Be careful with this tip. Some people think swearing is a sign of lack of intelligence. It’s reassuring to see someone else as baffled about this as I am.  But you can use this to your advantage, as well. Wanna make a character seem dumb? Make them swear like a sailor. Wanna make a character seem complex? Make them swear like a sailor, but reveal their occupation as an astrophysicist.

Swearing to Heighten Tension

Swear words can make a scene more dramatic. A normally docile person who breaks out a swear word can help the audience realize how upset that character is without ever dipping into their POV (point of view). A group of people disarming a bomb might start dropping swear words as their stress level increases.

Swearing to Break Tension

Sometimes, swearing can help transition tension to the breaking point, triggering a resolution.  This is used to great effect in many Hollywood movies. I’ve already mentioned Aliens. In the movie Jaws, just before Sheriff Brody pulls the trigger, he says, “Smile you son of a bitch!” And the Die-Hard franchise wouldn’t be what it is without the properly placed “Yippie Ki-Yay, Motherfucker!”  This would be the part in the movie where the audience cheers. Consider it the cherry on top, but it should be carefully placed and used in moderation.

Alternatives to Swearing

It never fails. As soon as society picks out a word that describes a negative aspect of a person, group, or situation, the word itself gets labeled as “bad” and using it becomes taboo. So we find another word, and the cycle continues. My philosophy is that writers use words, and can’t afford to be afraid of them. But if you’re writing under restrictions, or the editor or beta-readers ask you to kindly remove all the “assholes” from your story, then here are some alternatives to swearing that you can use in your fiction writing:

Create Your Own Swear Words

If you’re a writer, then hopefully you are creative enough to make up your own swear words. I really enjoy it when authors do this, because it adds a layer of depth to the story world.

In Joss Whedon’s series Firefly, slang Asian words were used as swear words. This lent a feel of futuristic, cultural blendedness to the show’s sci-fi mythos. In the Harry Potter series, you might run across a “Merlin’s Beard!” or the like. My favorite swearing is done by Spongebob Squarepants. “Tartar Sauce” and “Barnacles” get the point across and add humor at the same time. In my own short story, Homeward Through Darkness, the protagonist Cyan uses the curse word “Static!”

“Shut The F…ront Door!” – Implied Swearing

Flipping. Frigging. Frak. F-bomb. N-word. Anyone old enough to masturbate knows what these words really mean, but for many people, implied swearing or Curse-Lite is completely acceptable. This works great… around the swear-tip-jar in the office, or when the kids are within earshot. But in fiction writing, it often has a comedic effect. If that’s what you’re after, then flipping go for it, you Son Of A Sea Biscuit.

Show, Don’t Tell – Working Around The Word

The very best way to work around calling someone a “bitch” or an “asshole” is to SHOW, DON’T TELL. You’ve only heard that advice a billion times now, but here is one of the billion reasons why.

If Character 1 calls Character 2 a bitch, then that’s just their opinion, which may or may not be true. But, if you show us Character 2 doing bitchy things, then the audience will fill in the blank for you.

You can also encourage audience  participation by holding the blank out there for them:

“Oh you are such a…,” Character 2 turned and stormed out of the room.

This works better than swearing, because people will fill in the word this is most meaningful to them. Swearers will fill in the word “bitch” and non-swearers will fill in the word “crabby” (or whatever adjective non-swearers use to describe bitchy people). We all get the point, and no one is offended.

Lets Just Sum This Shit Up, Eh?

Art imitates life. And there is swearing in real life. Ergo, there will be swearing in art. Some people appreciate this, and some do not.

Think of swearing as a spice, like cilantro or cayenne. Not everyone likes it. Some people are allergic to it. So use swear words in moderation – not just when appropriate, but when no other word will fucking do.

The post For Fuck’s Sake! – The Art Of Swearing And Cursing In Fiction Writing appeared first on Conrad Zero.

Writing the Unwritable – The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter

Charles Baxter recently gave a rousing speech to writers at The Loft Literary Center, where he discussed his book, The Art of Subtext.

The Art of Subtext (subtitled ‘Beyond Plot’) discusses that aspect of writing that… actually isn’t within the writing.

The Art of Subtext discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted. – https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/art-subtext

Subtext is the Loch Ness Monster of writing tools. There are many examples people point at, but we still have a severe lack of critical, useful details. Many books about writing dodge fluffy topics like theme and voice, but subtext must be the most elusive, because it seems to get the shortest shrift.

In The Art Of Subtext, Charles Baxter dives in headfirst, examining how tools like tone, setting, staging, selective listening, broken filters, and characters who cannot or simply will not listen all help create the void where subtext lives. Each chapter tries lighting subtext from a different angle.

The chapter “Art of Staging” discusses “…putting characters in specific strategic positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed.” It goes on to discuss books that leave little to the imagination, and compares them to the Robert Frost poem “Home Burial” in which the characters are specifically placed, invoking subtext. When reading the poem, I had a massive aha moment. That first-hand subtext experience was no doubt what the author intended.

“Digging the Subterranean” discussed the difference between what a character wants and what a character really wants. It dwells on obsessions like Captain Ahab’s fixation on Moby Dick, and points out (if you didn’t know this already) that he was after more than just a big whale.  Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby, was after more than just the girl he couldn’t have.  This chapter really opened my eyes to the possibilities of writing that which cannot be written.

“Unheard Melodies” deals with what Baxter calls “the unheard” and he divides it into two flavors: denial, which is refusing to hear, and filtering, which is the inability to hear what is important though all the noise of our lives.  What characters will not hear (denial) and what they cannot hear (poor filtering) tell you something about the characters; something that the author didn’t actually write. This section also points out that much of the current literature contains characters whom are all perfect listeners – they hear and understand everything that is said to them. This is not only pretty far removed from our world, but overlooking some interesting storytelling opportunities.

“Inflection and the Breath of Life” discusses the way things are said, while “Creating a Scene” covers how to… well, create a scene. In the Midwest we’d call that behavior “uppity,” something to be avoided. But in fiction writing, it’s something to be sought out. Both of these chapters connections to subtext are more ethereal, but there are examples which show how these things have been used to foster subtext.

The last chapter of the book threw me a bit. In the chapter “Loss of Face”, Charles Baxter makes the astute observation that authors don’t describe facial features the way they used to – specifically, the way authors used to use facial features to insinuate personality types.  You know the ones. “Beady, shifting eyes…” “Strong chin…” “Smile so wide you could damn near land a plane on it…”

I agree that facial description isn’t done as much as it was, and it could/should be done more often. But I don’t agree that the face (or any physiology for that matter) should be considered an indicator of personality. Habits, perhaps, and expressions certainly, and I’m all for describing faces in more detail beyond hair and eye color. But the world will probably be a better place if we don’t encourage personality judgements based on human anatomy stereotypes. There are so many other effective tools available, that I’m not surprised facial description as representation of personality has fallen out of favor. In short, bring back facial descriptions, but leave the stereotypes to soulless marketing executives.

This is definitely not a beginners book. Like many higher level books on the craft of writing, The Art of Subtext does not necessarily give hard and fast advice with bullet-point lists and thin-red-lines. It is less of a ‘how to’ book, and more of a ‘this is the way masters of the craft have done it.’

Layered with personal anecdotes, examples from classic literature and poetry, The Art of Subtext is as pleasant to read as it is informative. It is a well-read and timely examination of an underused technique of master authors.

The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter is available through Greywolf Press.
Charles Baxter – Wikipedia
Charles Baxter – Amazon Author Page
Charles Baxter – charlesbaxter.com

 

Twitter Reviews

The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter is a well-read examination of NOT writing what is there. – [Click to Tweet This!]

The Art of Subtext helps uncover the Loch Ness Monster of writing tools – writing the unwritten. – [Click to Tweet This!]

Add the power of Subtext to your writing toolkit. Check out The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter. – [Click to Tweet This!]

The Art of… Series

The Art of Subtext is the first in a series of higher-level author-improvement books being released by Greywolf Press. I’ll review more books in this series here at conradzero.com as I read them. You can find other books in The Art of… series at the Greywolf Press website.

New Website Domain Name Extensions – What’s In It For Authors?

By now, most people are familiar with the domain name extension “.com” (dot com) that ends the majority of websites. “com” was meant to be short for commerce, but it really gets used as a catch-all for things that don’t belong in other web extensions like .gov, .edu or .org.

Bar Chart of Domain Extensions as of 13 Apr 2014 http://www.domaintools.com/statistics...

As you can see from the report I pulled from domaintools, the extension “.com” is currently the undisputed king of website name endings. But that may change soon.

Since November 2013, new extensions are being released each month: .today, .tips, .photo, .sexy, .vip, .lgbt, .cool, .ninja, .social, .love, and many more are already available,  and there are more coming out each month.

Of interest to authors – .blog, .guru, .diy, .bio, .events, .how, .reviews, .expert and more are already available. These are coming soon: .fans, .new, .buy, and .free. In Jan of 2015, the extension .you becomes available. That should be interesting. And I’m sure we could make all kinds of interesting sites out of the ending “.ing”.  And there are many more soon to come…

…including .author.

You can . 

Since these new name extensions have started going public, the sheer number of new domain name purchases has taken off. Expect to see all kinds of clever new website names, rebranding, redirection, and general mayhem as these new extensions shake up the internetaverse.

Keep in mind that all of this info regards just the website name registration. The website hosting is a separate issue, although some businesses (dreamhost, godaddy, etc) will handle both registration and hosting for you.

The Virtual Land Grab

Imagine entire planets of virtual real estate opening up, and you’ll immediately imagine a “land grab” for the prime spots of short, catchy, clever website names. Imagine all the interest in ilove.berlin or trash.talk or dead.sexy. But there is a process for introducing new top level domains into the wild. There are three generally recognized phases:

1- Sunrise Period / Pre-registration

As domain names are introduced, the first phase is called the “sunrise period.” This phase is intended to protect patent, trademark and copyright holders. In order to register a domain name during the sunrise period, you’ll need a registered trademark or other proof that you do already do business with that name.

For example, if you already own myauthorwebsite.com, you may be eligible to apply to register for myauthorwebsite.author during the sunrise period for the .author domain names.

Note that just because you qualify to register for the name at this phase, you are not guaranteed that you’ll get it! If other people have patents, trademarks, or copyrights using the string “myauthorwebsite” or if they do business under myauthorwebsite.gov or .net or .biz etc, they may also be eligible to register for the name during this period. If there are multiple registrations for the same domain name, the registrar may have an auction or lottery.

Guess what? If you want to register a domain name during the sunrise period, you’re going to pay more than the regular rate. Possibly thousands. Possibly tens of thousands.

You can also pre-register during this period for a specific name. Again, this is not cheap. Some names will set you back $13, 000 for priority pre-registration. But if the name is not claimed by someone else during the sunrise period, those who preregistered will be one of the first in line for the next phase.

2- Landrush Period

This is when the domain name becomes publicly available. There are no prerequisites for purchasing the domain name at this point. All the corporations should have picked up their domains during the Sunrise Period, and unclaimed names are supposedly first-come, first-served. People who preregistered for domain names during the sunrise/preregistration period are first in line here.

But there may be many people who preregistered for popular names, including those who didn’t want to pay the high cost of registering during the sunrise period, but also land barons. Land barons are people/companies that buy up website names that they think will be inherently popular, usually to turn around and sell them for a profit. For example,  so there is definitly some money to be made/lost in virtual real estate.

It’s because of people like this that you shouldn’t go to whitehouse.com. Because if you were looking for the place where the President hangs out, then where you MEANT to go was actually whitehouse.gov, and not whitehouse.com which is a porn site, purchased by a clever land baron who snapped up the name before anyone else.

Registration during the land rush can still be expensive as the registrar may still hold the price higher than normal during this initial public release period.

3 – General Availability Period

When all the pre-registrations and land barons have finished fighting over the prime cuts, the unclaimed sites fall into the category of ‘general availability’ during which anyone can register them for the standard rate.

The standard rate for webname registration varies. According to  a .com name will set you back $11 per year, while .rich costs almost $3000. Go figure.

How Does This Affect Authors?

First of all, don’t panic. You don’t have to sign up for every extension for your name or your existing website(s). You need to consider how static websites play into your overall digital portfolio, and look through the name extensions that are coming up, and think of how they apply to your business so you don’t miss out on useful opportunities. If you’re trying to be a guru or expert, you obviously want to look into how those domain names could contribute to your image, SEO and other aspects of your business. The most important website extension for authors is probably “.author” which will become available within the next couple years.

There is no guarantee that adding a .author or .guru or .expert domain to your online virtual estate will give you any more or less credibility. Keep in mind that the ‘.biz’ extension has been available for a long time, but has seen little use.

You’ll want to decide how much it is worth to you to get that site name, long before the sunrise period. Forbes has a great article regarding Seven Things To Think About Before You Register That New Domain.

Check with name.com or your webhost for both pre-registration and general-availability pricing.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

2014 Writing Process Blog Tour

Fellow Minnesota Author Michael Merriam asked if I’d participate in a virtual blog tour about writing process. Actually, he told me if I didn’t do it, “terrible misfortune was certain to come my way! Very soon!” 

Fortunately, I know Michael is a liar. The man makes up stuff all the time. Good stuff. Check out Michael Merriam on Goodreads if you don’t believe me.

But it sounds like fun to participate. (And why take a chance, right? I mean “terrible misfortune”? Yikes!) So here is some info about my current work and writing process:

What am I working on?
The Invisible Flying Pony Series

Those familiar with my horror-comedy short story, Pinky The Invisible Flying Pony Vs The Giant, Carnivorous, Poisonous, Exploding Spider-Leeches will be thrilled to learn that there are more adventures of Payton and her B.I.F.F. (Best Invisible Flying Friend) coming soon! Their adventures with the Spider-Leeches kick off a series of stories that ramp up the monster-factor till even H.P. Lovecraft himself would be proud.

Each of the short stories will stand alone, but the overarching series involves a global battle between The Shadow Government of the United States (complete with a Shadow President voted in by Shadow Constituents, natch) and a sinister occult group (is there another kind?) Alien Robot Zombie Dinosaurs! Ghostly Demonic Were-Vampires! Superpowers! Classic Rock! Squeezy Cheese! And more! Did I mention illustrations? Shhhh….

Join the Cult of Zero mailing list to be notified about the horrific fun. http://www.conradzero.com/cult-of-zero/

Lure

Lure is a short story that haunts me. I mean, it keeps me up at night. Not because it’s about a spooky lake-town called Hill City, MN. Not because the town really exists. Not because it’s about a fish that catches people. It haunts me because the damned story isn’t finished yet. The genre and tone are very similar to my first published story, Big Game.

The story starts with our hero, Shannon – a sports reporter who uses a cane to walk due to a spinal injury. Shannon is called to Hill City to manage the affairs of her father who has gone missing. When his fishing boat turns up covered in blood, Shannon puts her journalistic investigation skills to use. What she discovers will change herself and Hill City in ways too terrible to mention…

…but what fun is that? So I’m gonna mention it, and you’re gonna read it. Um, when it’s finished, that is.

Evil Looks Good

I’m also working on a novel called Evil Looks Good. The story starts with your standard-issue good vs evil in the form of modern-day demons (the people-possessing kind) and the modern-day demonslayers who fight them in the modern-day shadows. But a new power is rising. Something so terrible that the demons actually turn to the demonslayers for help! What could be so bad that it makes demons and demonslayers consider working together? Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? You’ll be surprised.

More than just a novel of dark fiction, This story is outgrowing the confines of a novel, and it’s quickly becoming a multi-media event that I can’t wait to share with you.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

A Bachelor’s of Philosophy Degree gives one a… compelling perspective on life, the universe and everything. Cross that with a dry sense of humor (thanks, Dad) and a lust for the gothic (thanks Mom) and I think my story ideas and storytelling style are distinctive .

I try to write on the edge of genres where things are more interesting than the norm. I call my work Dark Fiction and not Horror. Horror is easy. It’s harder to write stories that can still scare without the excess gore and violence. It can be difficult to ride that line between brooding and bloody, but I enjoy reading things that frighten you much more once you realize what’s really going on, than those that hand you fear on a silver platter. The unique flavor is worth the extra effort to me as both as a reader and a writer.

Oh and Abra Staffin-Wiebe once called my writing as “coy as a virginal village maiden.” So there.

Why do I write what I do?

I previously answered the question Why Do Authors Auth? but the short version is that writing is my happy place. It probably sounds absurd that anyone would consider impossible monsters, imminent death and the inevitable end of the world to be a happy place. But there you are. At least, that explains why I write, but why do I write what I do?

I’ve always had an interest in the paranormal. In middle school, I decided I was going to be a parapsychologist and read all I could on the subject. I distinctly remember the disturbed look I got from the county librarian when I checked out the entire 133.x section of the library. All thirteen books at once (both the limit of what one could check out at one time, and what would fit in my backpack.) ESP, psychokinesis, astral/ethereal travel, vision questing, the afterlife, ghosts, demons, possession, exorcism, etc… All of which make for great storytelling fuel.

How does my writing process work?

I read a lot of authors claiming to have THE ONE AND ONLY BEST WRITING PROCESS EV-AR. Yawn. I believe their process works for them, but none of their processes worked for me. It took me a long time before I finally realized that each author has to find a way that works best for themselves. So I constantly analyze and dissect other writers’ processes. I try. I see. Through trial and error, I take what works for me, and throw out what doesn’t. My current process goes more or less like this:

Ideas – I have more story ideas than I’ll ever be able to write. As ideas come to me (mostly while in the car) they tend to gestate in my brain, sometimes for years. I don’t usually write them down. If they are good ideas, they will stick around. If they keep coming back to me, and if they expand beyond a core concept, I’ll make a note in Evernote under Story Ideas. Sometimes the idea expands into something more. I might actually open a word doc file and start writing a scene or two. When I actually decide to ‘work’ on a story, it graduates out of the idea process and this is the general iteration:
Chase the Muse – Most of the time I don’t know what I’m going to write (or even which story I’m going to work on) till I get there. I don’t have a goal, and I don’t count words. Some evenings are unproductive, but sometimes I’m up till 4AM and write a few thousand words, so it all averages out. At this level, I’m living with the characters, grammers n’ spellng be damned.
Check the Structure – I spend a lot of time at the 20,000 foot view, looking at the big picture/plot/structure to see how things are laying into place. I might shift around or even delete large sections as the story takes shape. Sometimes I adjust the structure of the story to better fit what’s happening with the writing, and sometimes I adjust the writing to fit the structure of the story. I tend to use the Document Map feature of MS Word to keep an eye on this general outlining. I might actually work in Evernote or scratch paper for this part of the process. In the case of a novel, where there are lots of plot threads, I’ll import the project to y-writer and perform this “structure check” by printing out and reviewing/editing the actual story outline.
Tighten the Writing – As the sections ‘gel’ into place, I get more meticulous with word choice, voice, surroundings, transitions, etc. I’ll tighten sections of writing that are too long, or too loose, or add details to areas that are too plain, or break up dialog with narrative, etc. Show don’t tell, active not passive, etc.  This is also where I lose entire evening writing sessions to research of the strangest subjects. Author Tip: Delete that browser cache…
Repeat- I keep going over these last three steps, writing content, checking that the structure holds, and cut, cut, cut till the story bleeds.

When I think I’m actually finished, I’ll turn it over to crit group and peers for review/feedback. Then revise to what I call a rough draft. If I’m self-publishing I’ll start working with an editor towards a final draft. Or if I’m seeking traditional publication, I’ll start on the querying process.

Tag! You’re It!

Here are some fine, fellow authors I’m tagging to perpetuate this virtual blog tour. Check out their posts next week!

Author Lyda Morehouse

Lyda Morehouse

Lyda Morehouse leads a double-life.  By day, she’s a mild-mannered, award-winning science fiction writer and major otaku, but at night she dons a slinky nightie and writes best selling romance novels as Tate Hallaway.  Lyda has written five published  novels in her AngeLINK universe: Archangel Protocol (winner of the Shamus award for best new paperback of 2001), Fallen Host, Messiah Node, Apocalypse (winner of the second place Philip K. Dick) and Resurrection Code.

Tate, meanwhile, is far more prolific having written nine novels five in her Garnet Lacey Series (Tall, Dark & Dead, Dead Sexy, Romancing the Dead, Dead If I Do, and Honeymoon of the Dead), three in the Vampire Princess series (Almost to Die For, Almost Everything, and Almost Final Curtain), and Precinct 13.

Lyda Morehouse on Goodreads

Tate Hallaway at Goodreads

http://www.tatehallaway.blogspot.com

Author Jamie Schultz

Jamie Schultz

Jamie Schultz is an author of dark fantasy and horror. He has worked as a rocket engine test engineer, an environmental consultant, a technical writer, and a construction worker, among other things. He lives in Dallas, Texas, having long since departed the frozen arctic tundra of Wisconsin where he grew up. His first trade published novel, Premonitions, is due out in July from Roc.

Jamie Schultz on Goodreads

http://www.jamieschultz.net/blog/

Carole Lanham

Author Carole Lanham

Carole Lanham is the author of twenty-four short stories and three books, The Whisper Jar (Morrigan Books, Oct 2011), Cleopatra’s Needle (Black Daisy Press, coming in 2014), and The Reading Lessons (Immortal Ink Publishing, Jan 2014). Her work has twice appeared on the preliminary ballot for a Bram Stoker award, she was short listed for The

Million Writers Prize, and she has won two national writing contests.

Carole Lanham on Goodreads

http://carolelanham.com/

 

Yours Darkly,

Conrad Zero

What Is A Birthday Ungift?

Photo Credit  - Rebecca Selah

In addition to all other inalienable Birthday rights, I hereby add – The Birthday Purge and the Birthday Ungift.

Birthday Ungift (noun) – Something you give up on your birthday that makes you happy to have it out of your life.
Birthday Purge (verb) – The act or process of choosing and removing Birthday Ungifts from your life.

In addition to receiving gifts on your birthday, you are allowed to get rid of a thing you no longer want, without question, regardless of the value or source. That thing that you are giving back to the world is your Birthday Ungift. The process of ungifting it is called a Birthday Purge.

Examples of ungifts would be crappy appliances or just cancelling the subscription to that magazine you never read. Could be that gaudy figurine that your aunt left you in her will.  Or that stupid bowling trophy that you never liked anyway. Could be that bent fork that annoys you every time you pick it out of the silverware drawer.

Maybe you recycle your ungift. Or maybe you give it away. Maybe you throw it in the trash. Maybe you pour a gallon of gasoline on it and burn it at midnight while dancing and singing praises to the elder gods.

How you get rid of your ungift doesn’t matter. If it makes your life simpler, easier or less cluttered, or if it just makes you happy to be rid of it, your birthday gives you permission to choose an ungift for yourself and remove it from your life.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

Snickers #MonsterSatisfaction Giveaway!

Godzilla + Snickers + Fandango + FREE!

In case you didn’t know, there’s a new Godzilla movie being released on May 16th 2014! Yes, the Heavyweight King of the Kaiju is back! No doubt, Godzilla will  go for an afternoon stroll through some city, leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. (Including a train. There’s always a train. Can you have a Godzilla movie without a train? Apparently not.)

To help promote the new Godzilla movie, the folks at Snickers Brand have given me a prize pack to give away! Some lucky person out there is going to win Five Free Snickers Bars and a $15 Fandango gift card!

With $15 on Fandango, you’ll be slippin’ right on by the movie theater ticket counter when you go to see Godzilla! And with a pocktefull of Snickers candy bars, you’ll be slippin’ right on by the overpriced movie theater candy counter! (But keep it on the down-low. And if you get caught, it was all YOUR idea. Jus sayin.)

So how do you win? Easy! Just be a member of the Cult of Zero! I’ll pick a random person from the list on May 19th. And even if you don’t win, you’ll get free ebooks from me (I’m not kidding. Free stuff coming soon to Cult of Zero members, promise!)

Sign up to be included in the drawing right here:

Join the Cult of Zero
to get Free E-books!



Name:



E-mail:

 

Godzilla is cool…. except when he’s hungry!

I always knew that Godzilla was pretty cool, but who knew you could stop his rampaging behavior with a Snickers candy bar? (Does the army know this? Maybe they should just start putting Snickers bars in glass cases on trains – “In case of Godzilla, break glass.”) Probably a good thing they are giving away five Snickers bars in this prize pack, so you’ll have enough to smuggle into the movie theater, share with your friends, AND keep a spare on hand to thwart any Godzilla Rampage in your town. (Especially if you plan to ride a train…)

Check out the Snickers #MONSTERSATISFACTION video player below. It shows just how awesome Godzilla really is… except for when he gets hungry…

 

Legal Stuff That Nobody Reads

This post is sponsored by Snickers Brand

Giveaway open to the U.S.A. only.

Each household is only eligible to win One (1) Snickers Movie Prize Pack containing 5 Snickers Bars and 1 $15 Fandango Gift Card via blog reviews and giveaways. Only one entrant per mailing address per giveaway. If you have won the same prize on another blog, you will not be eligible to win it again. Winner is subject to eligibility verification.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

New Tips For Making The Best Password Ever

One of the most popular posts on this website about DARK FICTION is my method on How To Make The Best Password Ever.  (Go figure.) But a lot has changed since I posted that back in 2011, and I thought I would share how I’ve recently improved this method to both increase my online security and make it easier to manage.

When companies like Target get their data (actually Your data) frisked, you don’t need me to tell you that cyber-crimes are getting worse. Organized crime has discovered the value of hackers. They aren’t just kids having fun anymore, they can be the sharp-but-morally-flexible folks hired by organized crime syndicates to work together in hacker farms. And the miracle of distributed computing means hackers can network thousands of hijacked home computers (called ‘bots’) together into the most powerful computer on earth and control it from anywhere in the world using their ipad.

Sorry if I sound paranoid. Truth is, anyone who wants to steal my identity can have it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy for people to get at my data. Until some new and better security measures come along (like this)  internet users have a responsibility to use quality passwords. If you’re using a password with less than 8 characters, or one that is nothing more than a word or name, then you are both asking for, and deserve, your data to get jacked.

Why AES-256 bit encryption can’t help you

“50 supercomputers that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made) would, in theory, require about 3×1051 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.”  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute_force_attack

Awesome, right? Not exactly. Because there’s no encryption method that will stop hackers from guessing your password using brute force attacks, especially if your password is weak. (A brute-force attack is when the computer creates and guesses passwords and tries them one at a time very quickly.) Why bother to decrypt your password when they have a super-computer-network that can guess every combination of 6 character passwords in a few days? I ran a brute-force test on my own network and hacked a half a dozen 5-character passwords in just a few minutes. There is also a new method of brute-force attack that simply tries common passwords against many different known accounts. I guarantee you there’s someone on gmail using a password of “123456″ or “password.” Running through the list of baby names is also a well-known password hacking shortcut that no amount of encryption will stop.

Awesome encryption also won’t help if the decrypted password is accessible by an unscrupulous website admin and tried on other websites. Paranoid much? Maybe, but any CSCI major out there can make an app that actually works, but is also a farm for email/password lists to try on other websites. If you’re using the same email/username/password on multiple websites, no level of encryption will protect you from this kind of hacking.

Account hacks will become more of a problem since the list of possible password characters is limited, but computing power continues to grow exponentially. So there’s really only one solution to keep your online accounts safe:

You have to make your password longer, and you need to use a different password for each website/online service you use.

My ‘Best Password Ever’ Method
1 – Make Your Password Longer

To start, you need to make your password LONGER. Eight characters is the minimum now, and if you can get closer to 16 or 20, that’s even better. The graphic below from xbcd.com shows this brilliantly.

Using several random words in sequence is a fantastic password method, and this will work well with my previous advice about using song lyrics. But instead of reducing the song lyrics to an acronym, use the full words. JumpingJackFlash, StairwayToHeaven and GabbaGabbaHey are all decently long passwords. The random word method would be more secure because that random series of words would be harder to guess, but we’ll modify the song-lyric password below and make it better.

2 – Make It Memorable

Remember that with my song-lyric method, you should sing the password as you type it in. In the graphic above, xbcd.com recommends using a visual memory trick. Both methods make use of the fact that you are accessing multiple areas of the brain to memorize your password. Whether visual or auditory, try to tie some second sense to your mental password storage, this will help you recover it with ease.

3 – Make It Unique

Keep in mind that you need a unique password for every website you use. So, simply add on a memorable identifying feature of the website you are logging into. Gmail could be StairwayToGmail or GStairwayToHeaven. Microsoft could be StairwayToMicrosoft or MStairwayToHeaven, etc.

4- Back it Up

Some websites and services have different rules regarding punctuation, numbers, password length and such. So you might run into places where this lovely password system won’t work. You either need a good memory, or a file to store the passwords in.

Password managers can help with this. After reading lots of reviews, I decided to give Lastpass a try.

Lastpass Password Manager

Lastpass runs as a browser plugin, and saves/fills in website passwords for you. This allows you to make a single password for Lastpass (the last password you’ll ever need, apparently) and let Lastpass create a long and complicated password that it can remember for you, and enter them in the appropriate field as you browse.

You’re probably wondering how sharing all your passwords with a third party like Lastpass can be MORE secure? Well, the info is encrypted on your computer before being sent to Lastpass for storage. So the company Lastpass only receives your data in encrypted form. No one at Lastpass can see your unencrypted passwords. Also, using Lastpass means you’ll only need to remember one password, (Make that master password a good one, using the tips above!) while allowing you to strengthen all your other passwords, and even change them to long-random gibberish without worrying about remembering them later. You can log into your Lastpass account from other computers if you need access to your passwords from a computer without Lastpass installed.

You can also use Lastpass as a failsafe password archive. Simply continue to enter your awesome passwords manually,  but let Lastpass run in the background, archiving your passwords in case you ever forget them. This also makes things easier if you kick the bucket, simply put your Lastpass account info in your will, and your heirs will be able to see the list of all the websites and their passwords. Lastpass tracks the last time you logged into each site and it can audit all your passwords pointing out weak ones which should be updated.

There are other password managers out there. I link to a review of password management utilities at the end of this blog post.

Multi-Factor Authentication

A SecureID key generator for multifactor authentication.

Some websites offer what is called 2-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication. This means you not only enter a password, but you also have other form(s) of proof that you are the account holder. These generally come in two forms that can be mixed and matched:

Hardware – For some enterprise banking applications (and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, lol) you are given a fob with an LCD display that has a constantly-changing code that must be entered along with your password. There are also consumer versions that require a usb ‘dongle’ to be plugged into your computer before you can access the website. Yubikey is a very popular off-the-shelf solution, and Sesame (by lastpass) allows you to create your own dongle (this lifehacker article shows how.)

Txt/Phone/Email –  When you try to login, you are sent a one-time temporary code via email, txt or phone call to enter (along with your password) before you can login. This method is very common with consumer online banking sites, and some gaming platforms (like Steam). Some sites allow users to set this up by registering an email or phone number. Gmail allows users to set up their own 2-factor authentication by tying your phone number to your account.

This seems like a royal pain to me, but if you want real security, multifactor auth is the way to go.

Make A Better Password And Protect Your Data

There will always be a lovely dance between security and usability. You want your  data kept safe from others, but easy to access for yourself. No matter what method of password protection you use, the end goals are the same:

Make sure all your passwords are STRONG, which means 8 characters or more (ideally closer to 20.)
Use a UNIQUE password for each website.

If you really want to be Conspiracy-Theorist-Secure, then you simply don’t use computers at all, or enable multi-factor authentication and make unique 20+ character passwords for every online service and commit them to memory.

That’s too much work for me. Like I said, I’m not going to make it easy for hackers to get my data, but I’m also not going to make it hard for myself. For me, a password management program like Lastpass seems like a reasonable compromise between security and usability. Regardless of what you decide to use, passwords under 8 characters really should be outlawed at this point. Any web or network admin who allows them might just as well post them to the internet.

So screw the hackers! Strengthen your passwords today! And don’t forget to share this info with others.

 Password Resources

The Best Password Managers – PCMag Review – 28 Jan 2014
Keepass Password Manager
Lastpass Password Manager
Make Your Password Manager Even More Secure with a $25 Yubikey – Lifehacker.com – 16 Oct 2013
How to Build a (Nearly) Hack-Proof Password System with LastPass and a Thumb Drive – Lifehacker.com – 25 Jan 2012
Sesame Authentication for Lastpass


Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

Bridging The Author / Audience Gap

The Gap Between “What The Author Meant” And “What The Audience Got”

Recently, I attended/recorded a live reading by Minnesota author William Alexander at Dreamhaven Books. William read/acted out a section of his latest book, Ghoulish Song. William has professional theater training and experience, and if there was any doubt about this, it was resolved by his live performance, which was glorious.

The section he read describes when the protagonist, Ailie, gets separated from her own shadow and has a discussion with it. The shadow spoke in hushed tones that gave me goosebumps as William read them aloud.

I purchased a copy of Ghoulish Song from William and took it home. While reading the story, I came across the part that William had performed. As I read it to myself, I realized that William’s reading was quite different from my own. His tone was dark and disturbing, while my own interpretation was subtle, almost bland. I was interpreting it as a kids book, and not as a scary book.

There was a definite difference between what William was thinking when he wrote it, and what I got from it when I read it. I’m not sure if there’s already a name for this difference, so I’ll simply call it The Gap.

Mind The Gap

There will always be a difference between the author’s intention while writing the book and the actual picture created in the readers’ minds while reading the book. This is bigger than just the audience and authors of written works. It’s an inherent side effect of the way the world works, and how we communicate. 

To illustrate this difference, imagine that you and I are looking at the same blue painting. Now imagine that you were born with a vision impairment that left you with a damaged perception of the color blue. Then there would be a difference between what you are seeing and what I am seeing, even when we look at the same blue painting at the same time.  While I see the real blue, you see a kind of dark teal color. But wait! What if I’m the one who is seeing it incorrectly? How do we know? Whose perception is correct?

What if we’re both color impaired in different ways, and the rest of the world sees the real, true color blue?

What if no one actually sees the real color blue at all?

Some people have no time for this nonsense.  Some people would say that despite this gap in our perceptions, we can all agree to use the term “blue” to describe the painting we’re both looking at. Some people would say that even if we don’t actually see the same thing, we can all label it “blue” so we can all talk about the thing, even if we don’t see it the same way.

Then again, some people are boring and easily placated.

But not Philosophers! Oh sure, we could just agree to call the painting “blue” and go drink some scotch, and talk about other kinds of gaps, but that doesn’t change the fact that the gap actually exists. Besides, Philosophers have to justify the thousands of dollars in student loans and the entire semester they spent desperately trying to comprehend Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

The language gap is a fundamental issue with human communications, and an entire language branch of Philosophical studies still manages to churn out reams of papers analyzing the subject from every conceivable angle.

So what chance do you or I have?

Maybe we can’t solve the problem, but there are three things you as an author can do about author/audience gaps in your writing. You can avoid the gap, you can bridge the gap, and in some cases, I’ll tell you how you can even use the gap to your advantage.

Avoiding The Gap

Ever meet someone that you only knew through radio or over the phone, and you built a picture of them in your head, but then you see them for the first time and they look nothing like what you expected? Ever get halfway through a book and then have someone tell you the character’s hair color, height,  or some other aspect was different than you had imagined?

That’s the Gap. When you first ‘met’ the character, and the author gave you little/no visual reference, your brain made an assumption. And the longer you lived with it, the more ‘fixed’ it became, even though it had no basis. Once that assumption runs into reality, that’s when the gap manifests. At best, it takes you out of the story. At worst, book meets wall.

As an author, you can avoid this by not holding off on the details. Bringing up details (especially physical details) early in the story prevents your audience from establishing their own incorrect reference in their minds.

This gap can also be avoided by not adding details later in the story which would reveal such a gap. Be aware that if you’re describing hair color, height or other physical descriptions late in the story, it may not match what the audience has in mind. If it’s critical to the story, then establish it early. If it’s not critical, then leave it out. Either way, this kind of jarring, “That’s totally different than what I thought” can sometimes be avoided.

Because you, as the author, are aware of all the facts in your story, you’re effectively “blind” to these gaps. Having your work edited and proofread by fresh eyes is critical for finding gaps like this. Reviews by critique groups, beta readers and editors who have not read the story before will be your best line of defense against artist/author gaps in your work.

Bridging The Gap

“Curse the gap anyway? How can I get the audience to see the picture in my head?”

Sometimes you can’t. Not directly anyways, but there is a sneaky trick authors can use to bridge the gap to the reader.

Let’s say you want to write something absolutely horrific. Something so terrible that it would make the reader wet their pants with fear! Good luck with that. I see it tried all the time. And it always fails. (At least, I’ve never wet my pants with fear from reading a book.) But there is someone you can control, someone you have complete control over.

Your OTHER characters.

You can use other characters in your story to bridge the gap for you. Simply have another character in the story experience the horrific event and wet their pants with fear. Or have them die of fright. The reader now understands that the character saw something scary enough to warranty pants-peeing and/or death, and they don’t have to make that value judgement for themselves. Gap, bridged.

Another example: if you want your readers to picture your protagonist as very very beautiful, then don’t just tell them that the protagonist is beautiful. (And please don’t have the character gawking at their own ‘beautiful’ reflection. That makes people believe that your character is both ugly and stupid.)

Instead, show the effects that character’s beauty has on the world. Show people going out of their way to talk with them, or trying to catch their attention, or fighting over who will win their affections. All these people falling over themselves for the protagonist implies to the reader that the protagonist must be beautiful. Again, you use the other characters in your story to bridge the gap to the reader for you.

In effect, this is the well-known trick called “Show, Don’t Tell” and this is one reason why it’s still good advice.

How Authors Can Use The Gap To Their Advantage

The gap is not always a bad thing. In fact, once you understand what it is, you can use it as a tool in your writing arsenal.

At my writers critique group, one author wrote in a fight scene, “…the sword had fallen three feet away, just out of reach.” One of the critiquers took issue with this, stating that three feet is actually not that far. An argument ensued in which someone nearly acted out a three-foot lunge for an imaginary sword on the conference room floor.

I resolved the issue (and possibly prevented a brawl) by pointing out that the author should keep the subjective phrase “…the sword had fallen just out of reach.” and leave off the objective measurement of “three feet away.” How does this resolve the problem? Each person reading the story is forced to fill in the distance for themselves. My “just out of reach” and your “just out of reach” could be quite different, but we can both read that same phrase (without the measurement) we each fill in the gap with something that makes sense to us.

In this case, the gap is used to the author’s advantage. It adds realism to the story, unlike inserting a measurement that wouldn’t work for everyone because it didn’t match some readers’ assumptions or beliefs. It forces the reader to participate in the construction of the story world in their own head. It doesn’t seem intuitive that making your story world Less real by removing objective data would make it more Real to your audience, but that’s exactly what it does.

Summarizing The Gap

The Gap isn’t just an issue between artists and audiences. It’s not just a problem with the way we each perceive reality in our own way. And it isn’t just a bland clothing store.

The Gap is not an altogether bad thing. Once you understand it, you have some options. You can avoid it. You can use proxy characters to bridge it. Or you can even use it to make your writing more real to your audience by involving them in the image-creation process.

I hope you found this information useful. If so, please help this blog post bridge the gap to the rest of the world by sharing it on your favorite social media.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

Is That All? 2013 in review

2013 was an altogether odd year. Keep in mind that we weren’t even supposed to HAVE a 2013. The world was supposed to end on 21 Dec 2012, and… well, it didn’t. Kinda like that old roommate of yours from college who dropped by to stay “for a couple days” and now he’s been living with you for several months…. Yeah, it’s kinda like that. No one really knew what to do with this bonus year, and I can safely say that few people made the most of it.

So what exactly did we do with our bonus year?

Photobombing? Funny. But rude. But actually, quite funny. But actually, quite rude.

Twerking? Not sure why it’s popular now – I saw people doing that back in the 80′s, although we didn’t have a name for it then. Guess it couldn’t become popular till we had a fun name for it. Go figure.

Japan’s Fukushima Diaichi 3 reactor pissing radioactive waste across the ocean at the U.S.? That’s probably just a karmic debt for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So the lovely chemical haze over Los Angeles will change from red to green, and maybe Hollywood will gain some superpowers of originality or something. But I still don’t think we deserve the Twerking. Although twerking can be cured, I’m not aware of a good method of putting out a Japanese reactor gone China Syndrome. What did they ever do with Cherynobyl? I think they just dumped ten thousand pounds of cement on it and some Febreeze and called it good. Have they tried that yet?

The Boston Marathon got bombed. Harlem got shook. Obamacare caused a government shutdown and an unintentional registration website shutdown. No one can explain to me why anyone should use Instagram when we already have a dozen well-known image delivery systems available. Pope Francis became the first Super-Pope. Nelson Mandela died, which helped his popularity immensely. (Note to self…) And we still don’t know “What does the Fox say?”

Compared to all that, my 2013 wasn’t bad at all. Here’s some highlights from a year in the life of a dark fiction author:

Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony – THE SERIES!

I’ve decided to go forward with my plans of world domination and publish a series of Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony stories. I met up with the lovely and talented Jen Silverman, and she is working on illustrations for the first story in the series, Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony vs the Giant, Carnivorous, Poisonous, Exploding Spider-Leeches.

The second story in the series is also completed. Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony vs the Alien, Robot, Zombie Dinosaurs has been critiqued, rewritten, and ready for editing/illustrating!

My goal is to release five short stories in an earth-shattering series of epic dark-fiction-fun.

From Left, Conrad Zero, Joel Arnold, Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Dana Baird and our host, Terry Faust

Radio Interview on KFAI

In January 2013, I was interviewed on KFAI radio, along with fellow MNSpec members Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Joel Arnold and Dana Baird. The program was hosted by Terry Faust, and we talked about many writerly things. An interesting experience which you can read more about here.

MNSpec Writers’ Group

2013 marks my fifth year with the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group. I did quite a bit of administrating early in the year, booking our meeting space for a stretch, and hosting a few meetups. In January, I gathered a star-studded panel to talk about Successful Query Letters. In March, I brought in entertainment lawyer, Dan Boen to discuss Legal Issues for Authors.

The podcast that I make for the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writer’s Group was becoming a high-maintenance, low-payoff endeavor, so I changed the format to use Google’s Hangouts on Air technology. The goal was to add video and interactivity to the content, and reduce post-production time. Unfortunately, the frustrations of #HOA kept me from achieving the media-gasm I was hoping for. So I’m working on other methods to improve the quality of the online content.

The 2013 Speculative Fiction Writers’ Showcase

Definitely one of the biggest MNSpec events I put together in 2013 was booking/hosting/recording the 2013 Speculative Fiction Writers Showcase at Acadia Cafe in Minneapolis. It was great to “get the car out of the garage” for our members who don’t do a lot of public-facing events. Many people asked me if I planned to host the event again, and it was such a success that I see no reason we can’t make it a yearly event.

From Left To Right: Terry Faust, Michael Merriam, Jason D Wittman, Conrad Zero

2013 Bloomington Writers Festival

In March, I worked a booth with my MNSpec cohort at the Bloomington Writers Festival and Book Fair. Results were less than awesome, so in 2014, I’ll be attending the myriad of author/writer seminars instead of working a table.

TEN YEARS of conradzero.com? SEO much?

Believe it or not, conradzero.com goes back to the 90′s, but it wasn’t till 2003 that I started the blog (via blogger) and started posting on whatever nonsense filled my noggin. I’m working up a Best Of the past decade of conradzero.com, so check back for that. 

After such a long run of focused material, conradzero.com has a metric ton of SEO, and still occasionally taps the #1 spot when you search for “Dark Fiction Author” (among other things.) This also means I’m getting railed with requests for reviews, link-backs and advertising. I had to eventually create a review policy. But entertainment companies are giving me free DVDs, Blu-Rays and movie tickets to hand out to members of the Cult Of Zero in exchange for promotion on my blog, which is a rare case of advertising where everyone wins. But I have to be careful not to let my site get watered down and lose the SEO I’ve worked so hard to build up.

Oh, and with the help of my graphic-savvy friend James, I’ve created my own ‘seal of approval’, the Shadow of Approval award for Arts of Darkness.

Jagged Spiral – Fire and Dice

We were playing these songs back in 2008. But somehow, it took us 5 years to finish our second album. In Winter of 2011, we handed the raw tracks over to a studio for mixing/mastering, and in the spring of 2013, the audio master was approved by the band and CDs for Fire and Dice were finished.

Unfortunately, the band members have gone their separate ways, and now it would be a challenge to have us all meet in the same place for a drink, much less make any kind of music. Even more unfortunately, there were no venues willing to have a CD “listening” party for a band that wasn’t going to actually play the songs live. So in order to meet the “2013″ release date in the album graphics, I finally just picked out a date in late December, shared the audio online, and called it a Virtual release. (What did we do before the internet? It’s so handy!)

Listen and download Fire And Dice FREE from soundcloud or bandcamp.

 Z.B.C. – Trouble With Green Eyes

The collaboration between myself and B.C. (called Z.B.C.) was low maintenance, high payoff. In less time than it takes Jagged Spiral to pick out what they’re going to wear to band practice, we had jammed, arranged, wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered this tiny gem of audio fun called Trouble With Green Eyes:

Skyrim – Complete!

Over 2 years in the playing. Over 376 hours of gameplay. 100% of the 75 steam achievements accomplished. I feel I can now safely say that I finished Skyrim. I feel like I should get a tattoo or a trophy or something. I suppose I get my writing/sleeping time back, which I am grateful for.

Glorious

In 2013, I declared the word Glorious is the new Awesome. It might take another year for that to catch on…. or not.

Joe Hastings Speed of Light Video

The music video project Xtna and I helped with was finally released on youtube. Check it out!

What Does 2014 Hold In Store?

With both Skyrim and Jagged Spiral behind me, you’d think that now I’d have plenty of time to work on writing and you’d be almost right. But I also have a backlog of projects that were set aside for these things. Music projects. Video projects. Writing projects. Trust me, I have no shortage of things to shock and eww you with.

Writing-wise, Pinky will probably need a kickstarter, and I should set aside the novel Evil Looks Good and the short story Lure. But I won’t.

Video-wise, I’m building my production chops on the writer’s group, live author readings and a secret project (code name: Uberbullet).

Audio-wise, I still have to do some spring cleaning of the Jagged Spiral archives before I can put that WMD (Weapon of Musical Destruction) completely out to pasture, but I do have an audio project of fairly epic proportions to rock the city of Minneapolis. (If the world doesn’t end first.)

Blog-wise, as I mentioned, there’s a conradzero.com 10-year retrospective coming soon, so stay tuned!

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

What Is Speculative Fiction?

The Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers Group (aka MNSpec) occasionally does some public events, such as the 2013 Speculative Fiction Writers Showcase which I hosted at Acadia last month. Whenever we show up in public, the question always comes up:

What is Speculative Fiction?

For the record, no one has ever asked me to explain the categories of Fantasy or Science Fiction. Most people learn at an early age that if a story has dragons in it, then it goes in the fantasy section, and if it has time travel in it, then it goes in the science fiction section. But then someone came up with time-travelling dragons and pitched a spanner in the works. Imagine the poor librarian, trying to decide where to put a book about cybernetic fairies, or spaceships powered by dwarven runes!

So the lie I like to tell is that “Speculative fiction encompasses sci-fi, fantasy and horror.” This isn’t necessarily a lie. It’s a common use for the term, which is no surprise. Due to its very nature – that of speculation, or ‘what if?’ – it does lend itself to stories with elements of the fantastical or the bizarre. Wikipedia agrees:

“Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres…” From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_Fiction

Given its cutting-edge content, you might assume the speculative genre is a relatively new concept. Robert A. Heinlein is credited with using the term back in 1947. But speculative fiction has been around for almost as long as we have been telling each other stories.

One of the earliest examples may have been by the ancient Greek Euripedes who shocked and offended his audience by writing a play in which the goddess Medea, rather than having her children killed by the Corinthians, killed and even, in some versions, ate them herself. This changed mythology forever and gave us the Jungian archetype of the devouring mother. Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was the speculative fiction of its day, bringing together an Amazon queen, an English fairy, a Roman God and a Germanic king in a fictional Fairyland.

Speculative fiction (or ‘spec-fic’)  is used to describe stories ranging from simple alternative, to cutting-edge, all the way to the weird and disturbing. It’s much more than simply the collection of  sci-fi, fantasy and horror. And it’s more than just ‘fiction that speculates’, because all fiction does that.

Some have even asked “Isn’t all fiction speculative?” And to some extent, it is.

So why the distinction? Why have the term at all? And if speculative fiction isn’t just a meta-genre for sci-fi + fantasy + horror, then what is it?

Speculative Fiction, Un-Defined

Much of the discussion about speculative fiction is… speculative. Read a dozen blog posts, and you’ll get a dozen answers. (For even more fun, search for Venn diagrams of speculative fiction.) You’ll find that not all bloggers are in agreement, and even the definitions between ‘authorities’ differ. They clamor over one another, muddying the waters with overly simplistic or overly complicated attempts to draw the line between what is and what is not speculative fiction. Read them all to find the essence of speculative fiction and you’re likely to come away knowing less about the subject than you did when you started.

The very worst part is that none of them are necessarily wrong. One thing they all agree on is that speculative fiction does exactly what its name implies - it speculates.

Spec-fic poses a ‘what if?’ scenario and runs with it, often into deliciously dark places. It speculates about the big questions, about what it is to be human (or not human). For example, a sci-fi novel may explore humans in the future who discover a way to travel faster than the speed of light. But in a speculative novel, the whole concept of ‘speed of light’ turns out to be a vast inter-galactic conspiracy run by the descendants of the dinosaurs. A typical horror film may feature a schizophrenic trying to cope with his delusions only to discover he is, in fact, not mentally ill but possessed by demons. In a more speculative tale the schizophrenia sufferer uncovers that the disease itself is a result of humanity’s interrupted evolution towards its true demonic state.

Speculative fiction also provides a safety net for stories that slip through the bounds of traditional genres, or stories which break all the norms of the genre you would typically associate the tale with. Alternative histories such as Robert Harris’s Fatherland (set in Germany in the sixties after Hitler won the war) can be classed as speculative fiction. Dystopian fiction, like Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games,  is another prime example. While there are elements of sci-fi, horror and/or fantasy in these stories, they can’t be neatly categorized into any of them.

Another problem in defining spec-fic  is that there can be some subjectivity as to what qualifies as speculative. A medical thriller  may seem very speculative to me if it contains some weird technology I’ve never heard of, but it might not seem speculative at all to a scientist who works with that technology every day. This is a clue, pointing at the essence of what we mean by speculative fiction.

Speculative Fiction, Redefined

Fiction means non-factual. Un-real. Made-up stuff. All fiction, by definition, contains elements that do not exist. But for something to be called speculative, it has to be more than just made up. It must be about events that we cannot experience, beings we cannot meet, doing things we cannot do in places we cannot go. Elements not just outside of our world, but outside of our very reality.

Spec-fic is about worlds… but not this one.  The more the world is unlike our own, the more we must turn to artists to speculate on what it might be like, and therefore, the more “speculative” it is. This means that speculative fiction is not a hard-and-fast definition marked off with a thin, red line. It is a continuum. A spectrum. This explains why the definition itself is so slippery. So here’s my suggestion:

Speculative Fiction is a measure of un-realness. The more a fiction story contains elements that do not or can not exist in this world, the more speculative it is.

The Shallow End – More Fiction Than Speculative

The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Fiction? Yes. Speculative? Meh.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye is unarguably fiction. The characters in the story do not exist in this world, and the events that take place in the story never happened here. So while The Catcher In The Rye qualifies as spec-fic, it rates low on the scale. Holden Caulfield’s world is very much like our own. It is not much of a stretch to your imagination that he might actually exist. It makes more sense to call The Catcher In The Rye fiction rather than speculative fiction, although neither is incorrect.

In the crime fiction story Darkly Dreaming Dexter, a serial killer becomes a detective in order to hunt down and kill other serial killers. Darkly Dreaming Dexter is definitely fiction, definitely dark fiction, and it is speculative, although it also ranks low on the speculative scale. In fact, the darkness of the story far outweighs the speculative-ness, so it makes more sense to categorize Darkly Dreaming Dexter as Dark Fiction even though it does still qualify as speculative.

Most Romance also tends to rank low on the speculative scale. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë qualifies as speculative fiction, but there’s nothing in the story which makes us believe that Jane Eyre’s world could not be real  (or perhaps I should say, ‘was not real at some point.’)

Notice what all of the above stories have in common – they work best if you believe that they take place in the real world. Your real world. Holden Caulfield might be the moody kid who lives just down the street. You might have sat through college algebra with Dexter. And Jane Eyre might be an autobiography. (In fact, the events in Jane Eyre were drawn from many of the author’s real-world experiences and the story was originally titled Jane Eyre: An Autobiography.) This goes beyond simple suspension of disbelief to belief that these are really real people in the world you know. With this mindset, the story goals of making you think, or cringe or swoon are much more effective.

It’s when we start to add in elements unfamiliar to our reality that the fiction gets outweighed by the speculative.

The Middle Ground of Spec-Fic

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Speculation

As we move from Romance to Paranormal Romance, the fiction becomes more blatantly speculative. Until you can get your hands on a vampire, werewolf or ghost, we must turn to authors like Anne Rice or Charlaine Harris to speculate about what it might be like to fall in love with them.

The bread-and-butter of speculative fiction contains elements that do not exist in our reality. Notice how simply changing from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies moves the story along the speculative scale? Change the location of your story to Pluto, Atlantis, or The Nine Planes Of Hell, and it becomes more speculative. Amusingly, if we ever establish colonies on Pluto, Atlantis, or the Nine Planes of Hell, then that same story becomes less speculative. This brings up an interesting point.

Fiction about future events can become more or less speculative over time, depending on how the real world events play out. A Science Fiction story about what might happen when scientists crank up the Large Hadron Collider in 2014 would be speculative, for now. But that speculative-ness would change drastically once scientists actually push the button. After that, the story becomes alternative history (if the story gets the events wrong) or it becomes science fiction (if it gets the events right). The first case would see the story become more speculative, and the second case, less.

Like science fiction, Fantasy is a shoe-in for the speculative fiction seal, priding itself on speculation, if not outright demanding it.  J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings set the bar for building worlds that are not like the world you live in. George R. R. Martin’s A Game Of Thrones continues that tradition. You would never imagine that these were places you could go to on vacation.

Fantasy also bears special mention because of the distinction between Urban Fantasy (set in this world) and High Fantasy (set in a completely different world.)  This doesn’t mean that Urban Fantasy is less speculative than High Fantasy. Urban Fantasy maintains its speculative  status not by making new worlds, but by taking this world and adding elements that don’t exist. Jim Butcher’s  Storm Front starts with the downtown Chicago that you already know, and adds a real wizard capable of performing real magic. In my own horror-comedy, Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony vs the Giant Carnivorous Poisonous Exploding Spider-Leeches, I start with a thirteen-year old girl attending school in modern-day, Belle Plaine, Minnesota and add… well, I’ll bet you can guess.

In some cases, urban fantasy ‘cheats’ by adding a gateway from the world we know into the one we don’t. We take the train to Hogwarts, or a tornado to Oz, or simply walk through the wardrobe to get to Narnia. These stories tread the middle ground between high fantasy and urban fantasy exactly the same way that their realness treads the middle ground between Standard Fiction and Speculative Fiction.

Guess what happens when they go too far?

Off The Deep End – The World Of The Weird

Weird Tales. If this ain’t speculative fiction, then nothing is.

As we approach the far end of the spectrum, extremely speculative works tend to be obvious. They hit you over the head with their non-realness. These are the stories from The Twilight Zone where your imagination is pushed to its limits and beyond. Stories told from the point of view of monsters, aliens or inanimate objects. The laws of physics are completely different, or no longer apply. Reality twists on itself and sprains its back.

For these stories, simply suspending your disbelief is not sufficient, you have to suspend it from the ceiling in a rubber gimp outfit, feed it LSD cupcakes and show it Lady Gaga videos in High Definition 3-D until it breaks.

I’m talking about Weird.

Weird Fiction is the blanket term for fiction that doesn’t follow the rules. Check out Tales of the Unanticipated. Or Weird Tales magazine. H.P. Lovecraft is probably king of this realm, but I’ve read stories that would make even Lovecraft say WTF, mostly by self-published authors, probably because they are just too weird for traditional publishers.

What is Speculative Fiction?

Speculative fiction is not simply a pass/fail stamp of approval we put on things that are already sci-fi, fantasy or horror. Or some Island of Misfit Genres, a home for genre outcasts that don’t fit anyplace else. True, it can serve these functions, but there’s more to it than that.

The speculativeness of fiction is a measurement on a scale, somewhere between “what if?” and “what the fuck?” Trying to draw a line between speculative and non-speculative is as tricky as trying to draw a line between hot and cold on a thermometer. It’s when the non-realness of the story outweighs the other aspects that we call it spec-fic.

Speculative Fiction is an exploration of You Are Not Here. An imaginary, creative and innovative attempt to make sense of the world, the unconscious, and often, the darkest aspects of human psychology, although not always making use of familiar science fiction, fantasy and horror elements.

To quote Lida E Quillen of Twilight Times ”it is writing that pushes the boundary of the imagination.”

[Many thanks to my assistant Claire, who helped with research and content for this article. -Z]

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero