Curtis Edmonds's Blog, page 23

Music to Self-Publish By

I was stuck at a stoplight, I remember that much. Somewhere in Princeton, I think, not that it matters. I took my phone out of my pocket and reflexively checked my e-mail.

It was a rejection letter. That’s not such a big deal; I have a large collection of those. But this was a rejection from an agent who’d asked for the full manuscript, and then turned me down with a form rejection – someone that I’d spent a lot of mental energy on in wishing and hoping that she would say “yes,” at long last.

It didn’t happen. What did happen was that this song came on the radio:

The pivotal phrase here, in my view, is: I am done with my graceless heart / tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart. I think that’s exactly what I did when I finally decided that traditional publishing wasn’t going to happen for me – it was like cutting my heart out and starting over again.

What follows here is kind of, if you will, a soundtrack of self-publishing – just a few songs that sort of illustrate what it’s been like for me, personally, in dealing with the decision to self-publish.

First, I kind of think that anyone who’s been through the mill of trying unsuccessfully to get an agent has to relate to Beck:

I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.

It’s natural to feel that way, especially if you’ve been swimming upstream in Rejection River for a year or more. But rejection doesn’t make you, or your book, a loser. Only you can do that.

I think this one is a lot more to-the-point. I identify with the Boxer here like you would not believe. I remember every scar of every rejection and every slight. I carry them with me. But they aren’t important, any more than anger is important or pain is important. Sure, you feel anger, and you feel pain, but the important thing is that you remain, in the center of the ring, and keep punching, because you’re the Boxer and that’s what you’re here for.

And more than that, you don’t give up. You just don’t. You keep plugging away.

And then, you have to hold on. I am not saying anything profound here, really, because it’s not a really profound settlement. You have to wait for good things to happen sometimes, and in between, you have to hold on to whatever it is that you hold on to. (I have a cushy blue pillow, but you probably didn’t need to know that.

And then, you go back to writing the book everyday. (I am struggling with this one myself right at the moment.)

If these songs help you out or inspire you, great. If you have others to share, do so in the comments.

[SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION ALERT: My book, RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY, comes out March 1.]

Thor Slaymaster’s Dark Angel

Thor Slaymaster hated after-action reports, the way that he hated light beer and heavy body armor. But they were a necessary part of his profession. More than once, he had made it through a narrow scrape because of some piece of information that had been written down in an after-action report. So the first thing that Thor Slaymaster did after he got back to Team Slaymaster headquarters was to ask Andy to bring the recording equipment for the AAR. Then he asked Charlie to bring disenfectant and bandages.

“You’re a mess,” Charlie said. Thor Slaymaster’s alien girlfriend examined the mass of scratches and scrapes that covered Thor Slaymaster’s upper body. “And here I thought that you were out there on business. What was her name?”

“I do not know,” Thor Slaymaster said. “But I am going to find out.”

“I was teasing you, sweetheart,” Charlie said.

“You misunderstand,” Thor Slaymaster said.

___

The city was rebuilding the ancient subway system, which was good news for commuters but bad news for the mutants. The city had offered to relocate all mutants affected by the expansion to Baltimore, but quite a few of them refused, for the obvious reason. The city contracted Team Slaymaster to remove the remaining mutants with as little bloodshed as possible. “As little bloodshed as possible” wasn’t really in Thor Slaymaster’s wheelhouse, but it was a good opportunity to try diplomacy for a change.

Thor Slaymaster asked the subway conductor to hold the train for him at the end of the line, and when you’re a subway conductor on a subway line populated by rebellious mutants, and Thor Slaymaster asks you to wait for him, you wait for him. Thor walked down the tracks to the largest of the mutant settlements. There, he met with the mutant leadership, and explained the (admittedly, relative) advantages of moving to Baltimore, and the disadvantages of facing Team Slaymaster in a small, enclosed space.

“We will discuss what you have said, Thor Slaymaster, and give you our answer tomorrow,” the mutant spokesman said, out of one of his three mouths. Thor Slaymaster shook the less scaly of the mutant’s hands and headed back to the subway, confident that he had done a good day’s work and had earned a big plate of General Tso’s chicken, two or three cold beers, and a deep-tissue tentacle massage from Charlie.

There was one other person on the subway, and she was waiting for Thor Slaymaster. She was tall. That’s the first thing that Thor Slaymaster noticed, because he didn’t notice it all that often. She was tall, and she was wearing a dead-white mask, high black-leather boots, and a long, black dress with huge bat wings at the back.

“How did it go?” she asked.

Thor Slaymaster didn’t answer random questions from strangers on public transportation conveyances.

“Are you going to slaughter the mutants?” she asked.

Thor Slaymaster shrugged.

“Is that supposed to be an answer?”

“Yes,” Thor Slaymaster said.

The winged woman with the white mask whipped out a whip, which wrapped around Thor Slaymaster’s chest.

“That was uncalled for,” Thor Slaymaster said.

“So is the senseless murder of innocent victims,” the woman said. “Now, tell me, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Thor Slaymaster said. “They must choose. If they will live, they will live. If they will die, they will be killed. All men choose their own path.”

“What path will you choose?”

“The one that gets you to take your whip back, before I wrap it around your neck.”

“You disappoint me, Thor Slaymaster. I did not think that you were given to idle threats.”

“You will find out if it’s an idle threat,” Thor Slaymaster said.

The subway car went around an unexpected curve, which threw Thor Slaymaster’s balance off, just enough that the winged woman was able to push Thor Slaymaster back a step. “You’ve been riding high for a long time, Thor Slaymaster,” she said. “But you’ve made some powerful enemies.”

“Like who?” Thor Slaymaster asked.

She didn’t answer. Thor Slaymaster looked at her eyes, behind her mask, and saw a deep, bright well of anger, and then a flash of radiant energy which flooded the car. The force of the energy shattered the door, and pushed Thor Slaymaster back towards the edge.

“You’re no match for me, Thor Slaymaster,” she said.

“I haven’t laid a finger on you,” Thor Slaymaster said. “That can change.”

The winged woman laid a finger on Thor Slaymaster, and it felt like a hammer blow. Thor fell out of the back of the subway. He was dragged along the tracks by the whip.

___

“What happened next?” Andy asked.

“She let go,” Thor Slaymaster said. “A full-grown Slaymaster is a hard thing to tow. I unwrapped the whip, walked to the next station, and took a cab over here.”

“You poor baby,” Charlie said. “I think you may have a broken rib or two. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Thor Slaymaster said. “I have never been defeated before.”

“You weren’t defeated,” Charlie said. “You were caught off guard. If you had been properly armed, you would have destroyed her. It could have happened to anyone.”

“It has never happened to me before,” Thor Slaymaster said. “Up until today, the only reason I was still alive was that I had never been caught off guard. Now, the only reason I am still alive was because the dark angel did not kill me. I don’t know what to do with that knowledge.”

“Don’t you?” Charlie asked.

Thor Slaymaster thought for a long moment, and then realized that he was feeling something that he never had before, a desire, a deep-seated yearning for one thing.

“Revenge,” he said.

Charlie’s long, alien tongue darted over Thor’s naked chest, dabbling at the bright red blood that was still seeping from his wounds. “Bet your ass. Nobody does this to my boyfriend and gets away with it.”

“Andy?” Thor Slaymaster asked.

“Leaving now, Mr. Slaymaster.”

Scary Hippopotamus Books – New Logo

One helpful hint for self-publishers is to have the books “publisher” be an entity rather than just using your own name – therefore, here’s the logo for Scary Hippopotamus Books. (There’s a website, too, but I haven’t had time to swot it up the way I want it.)

Beating the Self-Publishing Blues

In March, I am going to publish my debut novel, Rain on Your Wedding Day. Having your first book published should be an exciting, thrilling time in your life. But I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel much of anything other than worry, fear and dread.

What happens if it doesn’t sell a single copy? What happens if everyone I know hates it? What happens if it gets bad reviews? What if it becomes a byword for all that is bad about self-publishing?

I know that most of these doubts aren’t realistic, any more than the occasional fantasies I have about the book doing very, very well aren’t realistic. (Those involve having publishers and agents coming to my house and holding boom boxes over their heads and playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel as loud as it will go.) But they’re there. They bother me. They are probably clouding my judgment. And they are making what should be a proud and joyful moment a stressful and depressing time.

I think there are three reasons why this is so.

1. I am deeply unhappy that the book did not find a traditional publisher. I worked hard to get this book into the hands of a traditional publisher. I tried very hard to make the first draft work for a particular agent, who ended up not even reading it. I worked with two copy editors, a developmental editor, and a proofreader to get the manuscript into top form. I got on Twitter and tried to build my platform there. I went to a writer’s conference and pitched the book there. I researched probably two hundred agents, looking for the best fit. I worked hard on my query letter. I send individualized queries that focused on the agents’ stated interests. And I did all that work for nothing.

I wanted to land an agent and a traditional publisher. I wanted it more than I wanted to play first base for the Texas Rangers when I was ten. I wanted the validation and the sense of achievement that it would bring. I wanted to walk into a bookstore and see my books up on the shelf. I wanted glowing book reviews in major publications. I wanted book tours and radio interviews and a six-figure advance after a vicious bidding war. I wanted all of that, and I am not going to get any of it. It has been the most frustrating and disappointing thing that’s happened to me in the last ten years.

2. i didn’t want to self-publish. This is a corollary of #1, above, obviously, but it’s still true. Rain on Your Wedding Day is my third novel. I never got anywhere close to having the first two published, and after a while I quit trying. But I never self-published either one. It would have been an admission that I wasn’t good enough to get either one published. It would be the easy way out. It would have been a white flag. It would have been an inglorious surrender after an ignoble struggle.

I never wanted to self-publish. I still don’t. There’s a part of me that would rather have the book go down in total defeat and flaming wreckage than to put it out in the marketplace. I am choosing to self-publish, yes, but I am doing so reluctantly.

3. I don’t think the book is good enough. This is a function of the first two. I know the book isn’t good enough, because so many agents have turned it down. I know the book isn’t good enough, because I am having to self-publish it. Add in the standard anxiety than any author faces, and you have a veritable fruit cocktail of doubt and depression. If I did a better job writing the book, and there was an agent and a publisher who loved it, that would give me, well, a lot more confidence than I have now. I don’t have that, and that makes me much more anxious and depressed than I might otherwise be.

Those seem to me to be good, valid, sensible reasons to be, maybe, a bit depressed and downhearted about the prospect of self-publishing.

They are also counterproductive piles of bullshit.

Don’t ponder your mistakes or your sorrows; that only puts you in a depressed state of mind. And a depressed state of mind is not equipped to take advantage of that one moment that could arise and save your ass. – Robert Ludlum, The Road to Gandolfo

So what can I do to beat the self-publishing blues? Here’s what I have so far.

1. My attitude matters. Supposedly, when George Jones finished recording “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” he walked out of the studio saying, “Nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a bitch.” That didn’t matter. The song worked anyway, and even Jones credits it for saving his career. If the product is good enough, and if it’s backed by enough people who believe in it, maybe it doesn’t matter that much if the performer thinks it’s not that good. But in self-publishing, it’s all up to me. If I go into promoting this book thinking that it’s a loser, thinking that it won’t sell, that it’s all a giant failure just because some agent said it was, then I’m doomed even before I start. It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy. Wallowing in misery and despair is fun and all, but it’s not a luxury I can afford.

2. There’s nothing wrong with the book. There’s not. I was flipping through it the other day, looking for typos (and finding a couple, much to my chagrin). The emotional parts still ring true. The clever things I did are still clever. The characterizations are still honest. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good book and I think it will find an audience. I’ve spent too much time with the book to be totally fair and objective, but it’s a good book, too good to languish in a drawer forever. (And the cover is really, really good.)

3. I have the ability to be patient. I have three-year-old twins at home. If you’re not patient when you start out doing something like that, you learn it. I don’t have to have the book be a blockbuster right the first day it’s out. I can let it build an audience. I can find reviewers. I can take my time and not panic and have it do well over time.

4. It’s not a competition. So somebody else got a book published and I didn’t. Big deal. I’m not competing with that person. I’m not competing with somebody else’s self-published Young Adult book about a talking teenage octopus who gets octopus acne right before the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. I am who I am, my book is what it is, and neither of those things are defined by anyone else or their book. “I don’t believe in competition,” as Gary Clark, Jr. says. “Ain’t nobody else like me around.”

5. I can do the promotional end of it. I am not saying I will do a great job, or that I really relish it, but I can at least try to get the word out as best I can. Selling is a job, but at least it’s a fun job. (I say that as a lawyer.)

6. I don’t have to write another God-damned query letter ever again if I don’t want to. At least that’s all over with, for this project anyway. I have emerged from the Pit of Rejection, scarred and abused, but tougher and meaner. “What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.” Yeah.

7. I can own the decision. It is my choice to self-publish. This is something that I want to do, and something that I have spent a good deal of time and money to achieve. I take full responsibility and ownership for this decision. Nobody made me self-publish, not the publishers, or the agents, or Amazon, or anyone else. I am doing this because I want to.

And who knows? It might just work out after all.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. — Lincoln

An Oral History Of Our Magazine’s Decision To Print The “Message From The Elder Gods” Advertorial

Sonia Greene, Editor in Chief: I want everyone to know that we didn’t solicit the advertorial. Nobody from this magazine went to the Lovecraft Institute and asked them if they wanted to do an advertorial. They came to us first.

Whipple Van Buren, Vice President for Business Management: We’re hemorrhaging money, just like every other publication. It’s not a secret. Advertorials are a no-brainer, as far as I’m concerned.

Sarah Phillips, General Manager: When we got the offer from the Lovecraft Institute, I wanted to turn it down. But they offered us three times our going rate. We’re skating on the verge of bankruptcy as it is, and we had the printer’s union breathing down our necks for concessions in collective bargaining. We didn’t really have a choice.

Dexter Ward, Shop Steward, Allied Printing Union, Local #1890: Oh, sure, they’re blaming all of this on the union. Typical. Did you ask them about their bonus structure? Anyway, this was management’s decision. We just print what they give us to print. We don’t ask questions. Well, maybe this time we should have asked some questions.

Arthur Jermyn, Account Manager: The guy from the Lovecraft Institute comes in the office, and he hands me this silver key. Very ornate, very elaborate. It’s carved with these words in this foreign language that I don’t even begin to understand. So I say, “This is nice, but where’s the content for the advertorial?” He breaks the end of the key open, and there’s a USB connector. “Just plug this in,” he says. That was good enough for me. He handed me the suitcase with the money inside, and he was gone.

Herbert West, Accounts Receivable: The suitcase turns out to be full of these gold coins with this weird image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or something. I took them over to this cash-for-gold place, and they said they were for-real, and I was able to sell them for just about the amount that the Institute had agreed to pay. I didn’t think anything of it until later, when the blood started oozing out of the walls.

Erica Zann, Senior Art Director: I was very careful with the silver key. It just looked so odd. Beautiful, mind you, Compelling in its way. But it could have all sorts of weird viruses or Trojans or I don’t even know what. I plugged it in to an old computer that didn’t have any network connections. And then I looked at the advertorial. Sixteen pages, beautifully formatted, I looked over it, because when you get stuff like this from advertisers, there’s usually some sort of problem – spelling errors, margins out of place, stuff copied from who-knows-where. This was flawless. Unhinged, a little bit, I’ll grant you, but the design was incredibly well-done. Everyone who looked at it thought so–well, the ones who are still alive, that is.

Henry Armitage, former Associate Art Director, current resident, Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital: When I looked at the advertorial, THE SPIRIT OF YOG-SOTHOTH AWAKENED DEEP WITHIN ME, AND I BECAME COMPELLED TO DO HIS UNHOLY BIDDING.

Greene: We had the money in the bank, and the art department had signed off on the advertorial. So I approved it. You could tell it was a little odd, sure. To the extent that I thought anything about it, I figured it was some experimental fiction of some sort. People have spent money on weirder things, you know.

Phillips: I had the file with the advertorial, and I e-mailed it down to the print shop. It’s a routine thing, something I’ve done thousands of times. I had no idea that anything bad could happen.

Juan Romero, Senior Information Technology Manager: The first person to complain, if I remember right, was one of the receptionists. Some kind of weird virus. I kind of put it on the back burner until I got five different e-mails from people all over the office, complaining that there was some kind of unholy ten-armed octopus horror on their monitors. I told them to reboot, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

Ward: For whatever reason, the network problems were isolated to the upper floors. There wasn’t anything that kept us from printing out the advertorial. We started the run, and didn’t have any problems–in fact, we got it printed out and inserted in about half our usual time. That was weird, now that I come to think about it. It was though someone. or something, wanted us to get as many magazines with that advertorial printed and out in the world.

Van Buren: I was just sitting at my desk when my secretary walks by and says, “Zoth-Ommog! Zoth-Ommog! Prepare for the coming of Zoth-Ommog!” I thought it was a practical joke, so I asked her whether Zoth-Ommog had an appointment. Then she burst into flame. I knew then we had a problem on our hands.

Jermyn: Everyone was panicking. The break room was covered in this green goo. There were tentacles coming out of the air vents. I didn’t know what was going on, but I thought the Lovecraft Institute people had something to do with it. I called and got their voice mail. It said, “Press one to summon the dark spirit of Xalafu The Dread One. Press two to be devoured by a sightless white worm.” I hung up and ran like hell.

Armitage: HEED THE WORDS OF YOG-SOTHOTH. ALL MUST DO HIS BIDDING OR PERISH IN THE UNHOLY FIRES.

Romero: The problem was that nobody had ever taken a good look at the advertorial file. It had been originally designed in Microsoft XML. That should have told anyone who was looking at it that it was capable of great, great evil. Of course, nobody ever calls IT until there’s a problem.

Zann: I can’t tell you how it happened, not really, but all of a sudden I found myself, stark naked, sitting on the grass in the middle of Bryant Park, chanting “Janai’ngo, Janai’ngo, bring forth the Lobster of the Deep.” I’m just glad I wasn’t the only one, that’s all.

West: We ended up only having a third of our staff reporting permanent demonic possession. Everyone else either escaped in time or managed to throw off their psychic enthrallment to the various beings and demi-gods that inhabit the dread Cthullu Mythos. The building was a total loss, but insurance covered most of our losses and we got to write off a lot of old computer equipment. We probably broke even, although I hate to think of what our long-term disability liability is going to be.

Greene: I knew we had to get out an apology as soon as we could. In retrospect, I wish I had said something other than “On behalf of Gol-goroth the Malevolent, we deeply apologize for loosing the eldritch terrors of the Night-World on your fair city,” because I think that made things worse. You just don’t understand the reality of being possessed by the Old Ones until it happens to you personally.

Phillips: We’ve conducted a comprehensive review of our advertorial policy to ensure that nothing like that happens again. The last thing we, as a magazine, want to do is to injure our brand by putting out advertorials that cause mass panic and demon-possession, because that’s not good business.

Jermyn: Sure, we lost a lot of really big accounts over this. But you know, there’s a silver lining. All of a sudden, we’re starting to see new revenue sectors come in, catering to the newly-possessed. It’s kind of a niche market, but we’re taking advantage of it as best we can.

Zann: I still have the key. I keep it in a locked box at home. Every so often, it calls to me in a strange language, and I feel a strange compulsion to plug it in and see what happens. All that is keeping me from resurrecting the horror is fear, fear of the unknown, fear of the power of the Unnamed Ones that still haunt our world and our dreams. And because, let’s face it, it’s probably not a good idea.

Armitage: YOG-SOTHOTH IS THE GATE. YOG-SOTHOTH IS THE GATE. YOG-SOTHOTH IS THE GATE.

Cover Art for RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY

Here’s the cover art for RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. I think it turned out splendid. I’ll have more about the book on this site before too much longer.

Thor Slaymaster’s Dangerous Game

Orson W. Zaroff owned a large yacht, a private island, and an extensive collection of expensive cigars. He was also free with his whiskey. It did not take Thor Slaymaster long to decide that Orson W. Zaroff was his favorite client ever.

“Are you enjoying the whiskey?” Zaroff asked.

“Very much,” Thor Slaymaster said. Thor Slaymaster preferred energy drinks and the kind of cheap vodka that went well when mixed with energy drinks, but the whiskey wasn’t bad. Zaroff explained that the whiskey was a rare vintage that he himself had looted from an Irish farmhouse in a daring raid that involved killing what anyone other than Thor Slaymaster would have considered to be an improbable amount of zombies. It was the kind of story that is best told over expensive cigars and rare whiskey, on a warm Caribbean evening, on board an expensive yacht.

“Anyway,” Zaroff said, “I was in the launch with the whiskey, headed back here, to the Cossack Queen, and there was a zombie swimming after me.”

“Unusual,” Thor Slaymaster said.

“I can’t explain it,” Zaroff said. “Maybe the zombie wanted the whiskey. Maybe he owned the house before he died, and felt protective somehow. Anyway, I was all out of ammo, so I nailed him with a harpoon. Most thrilling moment of my life. Until now, that is.”

Thor Slaymaster stayed silent. It was his nature to stay silent, especially in situations where he had the sneaking suspicion that someone was going to try to drop a boxcar on his head. Up until then, Thor Slaymaster hadn’t questioned Zaroff’s motives, the way that most people don’t question the motives of people who ply them with whiskey and cigars and cruises aboard expensive yachts.

“You hired me to kill zombies on your island,” Thor Slaymaster said. “But I am starting to doubt that there are any zombies there at all.”

“Oh, there were,” Zaroff said. “I killed the last of them three years ago. I thought about restocking it, actually. I missed the thrill of the hunt. The danger of knowing that I could die at any moment–and live on as a foul zombie corpse. You, of all men, must know what I am talking about.”

“You misunderstand,” Thor Slaymaster said. “Killing a zombie is not a sport. It is not even a job, even if you are a Slaymaster. It is a duty that I owe.”

“To whom? Society? Bah.”

“To the zombies,” Thor Slaymaster said. “Not one of them asked to be zombies. Any of them, if given the choice, would gladly throw themselves into a pit of fire to end their existence. I don’t kill zombies because it’s enjoyable, or even because it’s necessary. I kill zombies because I need to. Because they need me to.”

Zaroff took a sip of whiskey. “It is a fine night,” he said. “And here we are, aboard my fine yacht, smoking fine cigars, drinking the very last of my single-malt. It is all very fine. But it is not enough, not for me. So in the morning, my crew will escort you to the island. You will have three hours to run, or hide, or both, whichever you prefer. Then I will join you. Man to man, except that of course I will have a shotgun, due to my old age and comparative lack of muscle mass. Then we will play our dangerous game.”

Thor Slaymaster glanced around the cabin. “There are at least fifteen things in this room that I could kill you with right now.”

“Of course you could,” Zaroff said, “and you probably would, if I hadn’t drugged the whiskey. Don’t worry, it’s a mild sedative.”

Thor Slaymaster tried to get out of his chair, and found that he couldn’t. “Not exactly sporting, Zaroff.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I drank some too, so we’re even. See you in the morning, Thor Slaymaster.”

The next day, Zaroff waded onto the beach of his private island. Thor Slaymaster was sitting in a deck chair on the veranda of the beach house, just outside effective shotgun range.

“I explained the rules to you last night, Mr. Slaymaster,” Zaroff said. “Run, or hide.”

“I hate running,” Thor said. “I am too big to hide. And there are no rules, not here.”

“Just so,” Zaroff said. “But then, where is the thrill of the hunt? Where is the adrenaline rush? If I shoot you now, I get none of that.”

“So drop the gun, and come and face me. Man to man. I guarantee you will have an adrenaline rush that will last you the rest of your life.”

“You’re trying to bait me, Slaymaster,” Zaroff said. “It won’t work. Get out of that chair and start running, or I will shoot.”

“Come and get me,” Thor Slaymaster said.

It had taken Thor Slaymaster half of the morning to dig the pit that Orson W. Zaroff walked into, and the other half of the morning to find a zombie to throw into the pit. He wasn’t surprised. If you don’t use Thor Slaymaster to rid your private island of zombies, you shouldn’t be surprised if there are still a few zombies walking around.

To his credit, it only took a few minutes for Zaroff to emerge from the pit. He was bleeding and badly bitten, but he was still clutching the shotgun. “How do I look?” he asked Thor.

“Not good,” Thor Slaymaster said.

“Well, you ought to see the other guy.”

“Just so. I need the shotgun, Zaroff.”

Zaroff threw the shotgun at Thor’s feet.

“I don’t enjoy doing this,” Thor Slaymaster said. “I want you to know. It is nothing personal. I am doing it because I need to.”

“Because I need you to.”

Thor Slaymaster picked up the shotgun and aimed it at Zaroff. “I can keep the yacht, right?”

“Burn in hell, Thor Slaymaster,” Zaroff said.

Thor went back inside the beach house and found Zaroff’s bedroom. He had never slept in a better bed.

Note: This is, yet again, another Chuck Wending Flash fiction challenge. I will admit freely that I am cheating quite a bit by making all of these challenges into Thor Slaymaster stories, but I DON’T CARE.

Thor Slaymaster’s Shopping Spree

Thor Slaymaster crouched in the ruins of an abandoned Wal-Mart, just outside of the ruins of what had once been Knoxville, Tennessee. A generation of looters and scavengers had taken most of the merchandise, including all of the firearms and ammunition. Thor Slaymaster was annoyed by this, but not surprised. The only useful thing he had found so far was a hideously ugly winter parka, size XXXL. It was made from a horrid green-plaid fabric, and it had multiple loose threads where the Chinese slave-laborer who had sewn it had said, “Screw this, nobody’s going to buy this ugly thing anyway.” Thor Slaymaster did not care. There was a blizzard raging outside, and he reasoned that if you have to be crouched in the ruins of an abandoned Wal-Mart, there was no reason not to be comfortable.

The mission statement for Team Slaymaster was three words long: “We kill zombies.” Thor Slaymaster had been put on this earth to ravish beautiful alien women and kill zombies, and he was running out of zombies. The North American zombie population, in no small part due to Thor Slaymaster, was on the decline. For Thor Slaymaster, that meant that he no longer needed to wait for zombies to attack the remaining human strongholds. He could attack them on their turf–and, preferably, do so when that turf had a bit of frost on it.

Thor Slaymaster set out for Knoxville with his standard arsenal (ten sniper rifles, twenty shotguns and enough ammunition to overthrow a small Central American republic) in the back of an armored vehicle. It would be an easy mission, he thought. Thor Slaymaster liked easy missions, the way he liked lightweight body armor, mini corn dogs, and aggressive foreplay. Temperatures were scheduled to be in the high twenties all week, which meant that the local zombies would be chilled, if not frozen solid.

At first, it was easy enough. Thor found a convenient perch atop an abandoned bank building and started potting away at zombies. As the smell of undead flesh attracted more zombies, Thor Slaymaster waited until they formed a crowd, and then waded in with his shotgun. The below-freezing weather seized up their reflexes enough so that Thor could blast away with impunity.

Everything was going fine until the snow began to fall. The colder weather slowed the zombies to a near-crawl, but it impacted Thor’s visibility enough to the point that he started worrying about zombies sneaking up on his blind side. As the snowstorm turned into a blizzard, he sought shelter in a suburban complex of big-box stores. Thor found a cache of energy drinks and decided to wait out the bad weather. He set fire to a stack of Stephenie Meyer novels in an abandoned bookstore and waited for the cold front to blow through.

Unfortunately, the next thing that blew through was a very small but very powerful missile, which punched a hole in the ceiling and smacked into the makeshift fire, blowing cinders everywhere. Thor Slaymaster was protected from the full force of the explosion by his body armor, but his hair was singed and his ears were ringing. “Killbots,” he said to himself. Thor Slaymaster hated killbots more than he hated snowy weather and talking to himself.

Thor Slaymaster burst out of an emergency exit and looked up to see that there were three flying killbots orbiting the airspace around the bookstore. The other two bots fired their missiles into the burning building, collapsing its roof. Thor ran across the vacant parking lot to a Wal-Mart, which he devoutly hoped had some item available that would help him demolish the killbots and make his escape.

After ten minutes of frantic searching, all Thor Slaymaster had to show for his efforts, besides his ugly plaid parka, was a 38 DD bra, a tire iron, and a double handful of Matchbox cars. It would have to do.

The killbots, drawn to infared signatures, were still hovering over the ruins of the bookstore. Thor used the bra and the tire iron as an improvised slingshot, and fired a double load of Matchbox cars at the closest killbot. The killbot’s targeting software did not recognize the toy cars as weapons, which was too bad for the killbot. A black Pontiac Trans Am with red flames on the hood found its way into the killbot’s jet intake and disintegrated. The metal shards caused the blades of the turbine to seize up. Gravity took over, and the killbot came down with a thump.

Thor Slaymaster dashed back into the Wal-Mart and ducked behind a row of vending machine. One of three things would happen, he knew. The killbot could self-destruct, which would leave him with two more killbots to deal with. The killbot could start shooting wildly at everything, which would require Thor to wait until the killbot exhausted its ammunition supplies.

Thor peeked out between two of the vending machines. Through the curtain of snow, he thought he could see a warm orange light in the distance. That meaant the third option was in play, the one he had been hoping for. It meant that the killbot was still operational, but in maintenance mode. It was a safety feature, allowing technicians to approach wounded killbots and repair them without getting shredded by flechette rounds.

Thor Slaymaster crept up to the disabled killbot. He tapped the “Settings” icon and turned the control for FRATRICIDE MODE to “ON”, and hit the “Global Transmit” button. The two remaining killbots looked around for the most powerful source of infared radiation, and locked their targeting software in on each other.

The ensuing killbot battle was epic, but Thor Slaymaster didn’t stay around to watch. He went back inside the Wal-Mart and picked up a filmy green nightgown he’d seen on one of the racks. It would, he thought, complement the greenish tinge of his girlfriend’s skin. Thor Slaymaster had been put on this earth for something else besides just killing zombies, after all.

(This is, as usual, an entry in a Chuck Wendig flash fiction challenge, which I never win.)

Your Old Pal CDE’s Guide To PowerPoint Presentations That Aren’t Terrible

One of the most awful things, for me, is having to watch someone else do something badly that I know how to do well. It’s like Josh Hamilton having to watch Esteban German take a turn at bat.

I used to do a lot of PowerPoint presentations. I don’t claim to be a PowerPoint expert, but I got to be pretty good at it. And because I am a twenty-first century human being, I have to suffer through other people’s presentations. I notice how these other people (who I’m sure are nice, wonderful people) do their presentations, and most of the time they are simply horrible and wretched.

This is not so much a guide as it is a list of useless and stupid things that I have seen people do, and that I would like them to stop doing.

1. Figure out where you are going to stand. By this I mean DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF THE PROJECTOR. For the LOVE of GOD, people. Look. More than likely, I don’t want to see your slides anyway. But if I do want to see them, I want to see them on the screen. I do not want to see them on your shirt. It’s not that hard to figure out someplace where your audience can see both you and your slides.

2. Figure out how you’re going to change slides. You don’t always have a lot of options. Sometimes you have to put your device (your laptop or whatever, I mean) next to the projector. That’s almost always a bad call, because it often causes you to violate the previous guideline. So my advice is to invest in a clicker, and learn how to use it. That way, you can stand wherever you want and still change slides. If you can’t afford to buy a clicker (they’re fairly cheap), at least figure out how to change the slides without having to ask some random person in the audience to change slides for you. That’s a recipe for disaster every time.

3. Learn how PowerPoint works. By this I specifically mean figure out how to go back and forth on slides. There is nothing, and I say this from years of personal experience, more excruciating for your audience than the moment when you lose your place in your presentation and have to go backwards and forwards to find the right slide. This is even worse when you don’t know how to use the right-click menu and spend ten minutes fumbling through the different options before you finally figure it out. The people listening to your presentation are taking time out of their busy day to listen to what you have to say. This is probably because someone else is making them. Be considerate of their pain. Figure out how to advance your slides. Figure out how to go backwards. Figure out how to switch back and forth from the slide sorter to the slide view if you need to. Stop wasting the time of everyone in the audience who knows how to use PowerPoint and would like nothing better than to hurt you for not knowing how.

4. Put a little color in your slides. If all you do is put up black text on white backgrounds (or, God forbid, white text on black backgrounds) in your slides, that tells me something. That tells me you do not care. That tells me you put zero effort into how you come across in your presentation. On a similar note, if you use a default template – you know the ones I’m talking about, you’ve seen other people use them a thousand times – that tells me you’re lazy. I am not expecting you to be a graphic designer, but I am expecting you to use a little imagination and effort in how you come across.

5. Use consistent formatting in your slides. I am mostly talking about fonts here. Pick a font and stick with it. (I honestly don’t care if you use Comic Sans as long as you are consistent with it and as long as you don’t use Comic Sans.) Pick a font that matches your design. If your design is sleek and modern, use a sleek and modern font like Helvetica. If your design is fussy and intricate, use a fussy and intricate font like Garamond. If your design is stupid and pretentious, use a stupid and pretentious font like Trajan. Just go with what makes you happy. But just use one font, and for God’s sake make it big enough for people to read. You have a huge enormous screen. Use huge enormous fonts. Nobody likes squinting.

6. Don’t use animations or transitions unless you really know what you’re doing. You’re almost always better off not using them, so don’t. (I am looking at you, people who use animations to bring up one bullet point at a time. Stop that. It’s almost never a good idea and it’s painful to watch if you happen to screw anything up.) If you’re thinking about using animations, ask yourself a question. “Am I doing this because the animation will help me get my point across, or am I using it to look cool and impress people?” If the answer is “help me get my point across,” think about whether it actually does. If you have any doubt, don’t do it. If you are trying to look cool, think about a little self-deprecating joke you can use if it ends up not making you look cool. If you’re comfortable with that, go for it, but please don’t do it more than once in a given presentation.

7. Know if you’re funny or not funny. You either are or you aren’t. If you’re not funny, don’t force it. If you are, don’t highlight it unless you’re an actual professional comic. There’s nothing wrong with leavening your presentation with humor if you can do it effectively – but you have to know when your schtick isn’t working. If it’s not working, do a little Johnny Carson golf swing and move along. Oh, and don’t think because you used a New Yorker or a Dilbert cartoon in your slides that a) you’re automatically funny or that b) people even get it. There is something about using cartoons in presentations that doesn’t work. Half the people in the audience aren’t paying attention to your slides anyway and won’t laugh until you point out the joke and hit them over the head, and by that time you’ve lost the half that were paying attention and didn’t think the cartoon was funny to begin with. 99% of the time, you’re better off just telling the jokes and leaving them off your slides.

8. They’re slides. Don’t say “deck,” because it’s pretentious.

9. Please, do not put every single word you have to say up as a part of a slide. The words on the slides are there to do two things: telegraph to the audience what you are going to say, and to remind you of what it is you were planning to say. Your slides should be more like Twitter and less like War and Peace. Fewer words, bigger fonts. And do not make me read tiny footnotes on your slide. Save that for your research paper or whatever it is.

10. Know your content. Knowing what’s on your slides is half the battle. If you know what’s on your slides, you will be able to handle yourself much more effectively.

11. Know your audience. Whatever you do, for the love of all that’s holy, take a minute and figure out who you’re talking to beforehand, and try to tailor your presentation to that audience. This is not always easy. I had one presentation I did, years ago, where a state agency asked me to come in and talk about legal issues for their attorneys. So I did that. It turned out that all the lawyers in the agency–no fools they–went home early, and I was talking to a lot of legal secretaries and support staff. If I had known that before, I would have done a different presentation. Know ahead of time who is going to be there, and talk to them, not just some generic knot of people you don’t know anything about.

12. Know your time limit. Use fewer slides. Put the best content up front so if you have to skip slides you can do it at the end. Don’t run over time trying to squeeze in every slide, and don’t skip ten slides at a time because you ran out of time. Plan ahead. Know how many slides you need to get through and how long it will take you. Respect other people’s time. They are using their few precious hours of their day to listen to you. Make that count.

13. PowerPoint is a visual medium. Use images. (Don’t use cheap clip art, either. Google Image Search is your friend.) You’re using PowerPoint to tell a story, so make sure that the images you use help tell that story in some way.

14. Know thyself. Self-awareness is a curse, but if you have at least some degree of self-awareness, you may find that you do a better job in your presentation. The presenter who sparked this particular rant (who made almost every error on this list and others that I have kind of blocked out) had a verbal tic that drove me up the wall. It was the word “huge.” He had a stereotypical Noo Yawk accent, and the word sounded like “UUUUUUUUge.” And he kept saying it, and he kept stressing it in every sentence he used it in. “This is a UUUUUUUUge problem. It’s a UUUUUUUUUge issue.” It got to be a UUUUUUUUUge annoyance. So, listen to yourself. Understand what you do well or don’t do well. Think about how you come across.

15. Be considerate. This is the most important rule of them all – really, all the other rules are a variation on this one. Think about your audience. More often than not, they didn’t ask to be there. Somebody else made them go. They would ten times rather be anywhere else, most of them. If you can’t be interesting and entertaining – and that’s a hard thing to do for most people – at least don’t make it any worse for them than it already is.

Welcome to Flavortown!

Hi! My name is Joel, and I’ll be taking care of you during your visit to Flavortown. I hope you came hungry.

Here in Flavortown, we’ve got plenty of places to eat, and places to drink, and places to eat and drink at the same time. And they’re all awesome. I mean, we really shred it when it comes to food here in Flavortown. We don’t have much in the way of music or literature, mind you, but we’ve got everything else you’d want. The only thing we don’t have here is Baskin-Robbins. You know why? Because they only have thirty-one flavors, that’s why. That’s not how we roll in Flavortown, hoss.

We’re right in the center of town, at the corner of Chestnut Chili Ginger Lime Street, and Maple Cream Honey Caramel Boulevard. The Cilantro Corridor runs just north of here, and if you keep going you’ll hit the Herbal District, between Savory-Sage Street and Rosemary-Thyme Avenue. If you go the other direction, you’ll hit the Spice Center and Habanero Plaza. That can be kind of a rough neighborhood.

Our special today is the garlic-prune-ginger duck confit. That’s served with a little bit of truffle dust on top, and some tangerine zest, and a pine-nut and cucumber chutney, and you’ve got yourself what I think is a goddamned collision of savory and sweet.

What’ll you have to drink? Jamaican jerk mango iced tea? Pineapple melon tequila lemonade? Vanilla nutmeg hibiscus cola? We make our cola from cane sugar, you know. No high-fructose corn syrup in that sucker.If you want water, we have maraschino cherry water, infused with ground Sumatran pepper, or Thai-chili water with star anise and a slice of kiwi.

Look, I understand. This is your first trip to Flavortown. It can be a little overwhelming at times. I remember the first time I came here. I ordered a hot dog. They gave me a chicken Andouille sausage, marinated in ginger-soy sauce, on a sesame-caraway roll with Dijon mustard, celery salt, and a banana-pepper chipotle slaw. You want to talk about an intense experience, I mean, that was it. It was like ziplining down a mountain with your hair on fire.

People say, oh, well, those guys over in Flavortown, they just jumble up a lot of different kinds of flavors together and don’t really care whether it tastes good or not. There’s a science to it, though. Take the bread here on the table. Okay, this is a sourdough rye bread with a cream-cheese raisin spread with a little bit of balsamic vinegar. The bread itself is fermented, so that gets you the umami going right there. There’s salt in the bread, too, and the crust is browned, so you get a little bit of caramelization. The rye is a little bit bitter, and the raisins in the spread even that out with more sweetness. And the vinegar gets you the sour component. Salty, sour, sweet, bitter, umami, and it all goddamed explodes in your mouth. That’s the Flavortown way.

Do you have any questions about the menu? Since this is your first time, you might want to try a burger. It’s the best way to customize your own personal flavor profile. Don’t order the bison burger, though, it’s overpriced for what you get. My recommendation would be the sriracha-horseradish mayo, on a sesame-rosemary bun with heirloom tomatoes. You know, something simple. That comes with hand-cut Cajun fries with saffron-curry ketchup.

I’m sorry. Really. I know. I’m talking too much. It’s just that I’m so enthusiastic about being here in Flavortown. I know we get a bad rap sometimes. The food critics have been awful. There was that place not too far from here–you know the one I’m talking about? Over in the Cobbler District. They were doing some amazing things with seafood desserts. They had this anchovy-mussel spread that they infused with lemon curd and served on pound cake. It was spectacular. But the critic didn’t order that. He got the vinegar-cured Chilean sea bass with blackberry-walnut crust, which wouldn’t have been too bad if they didn’t slather it with marshmallow fluff. Well, of course, if you’re going to take a big risk like that, you’re going to run into trouble. That place closed down, but we’re still here, and we’ve got a Parmesan-peppercorn grilled shrimp kabob with a blueberry-almond marinade. That’ll knock your goddamned eyes out.

You want the steak? Hot damn. We marinate that sucker in a strawberry-malt vinegar and cook it over artisanal charcoal sprinkled with Old Bay. Then we put a wasabi-Provolone crust with it, and serve it with the sauteed mushrooms with the paprika-mustard sauce. I mean, you came all the way to Flavortown, you might as well live it up a little, am I right? YOLO and all that good stuff.

No, we don’t have Heinz 57 sauce. That goes against everything we believe in Flavortown. The flavor profile is designed to bring out the real taste of the meat, not substitute it for some corporate version of spicy ketchup. No offense. The best thing I can do for you is to serve it without the crust–which I hate doing, you know–and maybe put a little glaze on it. Plum-hoisin, something like that, with a little Worcestershire to give you the similar kind of flavor. Does that sound OK?

And what do you want on your salad?

Ranch?

Seriously? You drive all the way out to Flavortown, and you ask for ranch dressing? What the hell is wrong with you?

Get out. Go back to your bland, boring life, and your inadequate palate. We don’t want your kind here in Flavortown.