One: Anything that’s NOT Paranormal Romance. Especially in YA. YA can be a pretty awesome market when you find the rare book where it isn’t about a Sued up teen girl fucking (or not) a vampire/fairy/werewolf/demon/butterfly/platypusbear. And I’m with you on good horror. It seems the whole Paranormal Romance thing has sort of made all the good monstrosities into gentle, loving wimps out for poon instead of blood.

Two: It’s not so much advice as a little off the cuff comment from my college days. The professor was lamenting that fact that she was getting so much bad porn stories in her introductory classes. So she looked at us, her advanced class and said “I don’t want any of you to ever write anything pornographic ever. Except Katrina (which is what Kate is short for). She can write porn and I will read it.” It’s a nice little reminder to myself that, if all else fails, I could have a career in writing erotica for really deranged old Israeli women.

Three: Dude, that’s too hard. I’ll be back with an answer later. It’s going to take some thinking.

1. Genre books for adults that amuse and delight, that aren’t so serious. Princess Brides, if you will.

2. How to outline, from Daniel Abraham. The joke theory out outlining, if you will (everything leads up to the punchline).

3. Granny Weatherwax. At times, I find myself saying, “WWGWD?” The answer is usually a snort.

I’m with you on number 1. I want to see good horror (or even paranormal thrillers). I think you have to go back to the 1980’s to find the genre healthy and not “bled out to the edges” as you say.

That said, I would love to see fewer paranormal romances, especially those involving vampires and werewolves. I want to see something that takes vampires back to being scary badass mofo’s who will rip you apart, not whiny emo punks who just want to date your daughter.

1. I think it’s the signal to noise ratio. As you pointed it, it’s that it seems homogenous. I think that (and I think this is something that is true of most things) the internet has changed so much, and our silly ape brains are still trying to catch up. We’re trying to noodle through how to FIND the stuff we want to read, when, due to the incredible increase in noise, it’s hard to find anything.

2. That writing is not the airy feeling of inspiration, then manic work that it is sometimes portrayed as. It does not flow out of you magically, like Athena bursting from Zeus’ brow. It is painful, bitter, clawing work. It’s blue collar artistry.

And I dig that. It means I don’t have to be some ultra talented human being to make it. I just have to have the gumption to work my ass off at it.

3. I’m going to cheat and name a movie character: Keisuke Miyagi. Him or Alfred Pennyworth. I’m always intrigued by a wise old mentor character, because you have to think that there’s a reason they’re so wise. Every wise old mentor was a failed (or successful) hero in his own right one day long ago. He was the protagonist of his own story. It reminds you that every character is the protagonist of their own stories.

1) I’m sort of with Patrick on this one. It’s partly signal and noise, but it’s also my own laziness in not seeking out what I say I want: competent hard sci-fi. I enjoy reading popular science books and like mixing the scientific chocoloate with my literary peanut butter. My current fave in the hard sci-fi department is Alastair Reynolds, despite his shortcomings with structure. I’ve tried Iain Banks (the Culture novels), but I don’t think I was in the right mood at the time. I love hard sci-fi because of its basic optimism about the human race, which contrasts with my usual outlook.

2) It pains me to speak it aloud (if you will) because of it’s ubiquity, but the best writing advice I’ve ever received is simply “Writers write.”

3) Fuck you with this Sophie’s Choice! Like Kate, I will set my favorites against each other in combat (MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!) throughout the day. At day’s end, we’ll see who’s standing after this gruesome thought experiment. I do this to honor your question, since nothing pains me more than seeing people waffle on this question and squeak two or even three “favorites” into their answer. There can be only one, Highlander.

I agree on real, good horror.

And I’m right with DeAnna. Granny Weatherwax is my favorite character ever.

As I’m still receiving writing advice I’m not sure I have a favorite yet.

I’m totally with you on the first point. Horror (lovecraftian horror, not “gore-ror”) is blatantly missing. I miss the suspense and dread crafted masterfully by Lovecraft and the like. I will venture to say that some Poe’s book feel better as “horror” than most books we have these days. I think they describe everything too much.

For the second subject, I would say that the advice that was the must useful for me was when one of my Creative Writing teacher told me that creativity is good, great even. But it’s nothing without some order. It’s easy to think differently. Any crazy man can do it. Creativity is to take these ideas and to make them useful, understandable by others. If you’re the only one that understand your text, you failed miserably somewhere. It could be something entirely new and original, it could even be something very special. But it won’t ever be “good” if it’s not organized at a minimum.

As for my favorite character, I can’t seem to choose between Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu. I seriously think that a face-off between these two is the most epic thing that can happen. (A guy that understand anything he encounter, versus a thing that can’t be understood. Yeah! Epic confrontation!)

Man, has anybody yet written a good Lovecraft + Sherlock mash-up yet? You’d think that those two things would play so nicely together. I have a feeling that Eddy Webb has talked about this in the past — @Eddy, you around? My mind’s a sieve, but if anybody would know, it’d be the Deadly Doctor Webb.

– c.

There’s actually a small collection of Lovecraft/Holmes short stories. Shadows over Baker Street, I think. The only one I’ve actually read was Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald”. Which was absolutely fantastic.

1. Epic fantasy that doesn’t take it self too seriously.

2. Not really a writer, but I will say that I got some great advice from my high school English teachers. “Learn the rules so that you can flout them in a way that gives you impact.” Actually, that’s pretty good advice in general.

3. Bean from Ender’s Game and the Shadow series, but I liked him best as a minor character in Ender’s Game. I really liked the way he played off of Ender.

I think the signal/noise problem is there, but it’s not the real problem, just one of the symptoms of our modern society. Crap gets written, gets published, sold, bought and read, and it becomes a “best-seller” because its been marketed to become one. Top-ten? Holy shit, it MUST be good! Everyone likes it, so I must like it too. And so crap that sometimes encourages you to STOP thinking sells a bajillion copies and gets movie deals and people will go see Avatar over and over for the shiny blue boobage while the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with its tiny budget, all too-real characters and weirdly complicated morality doesn’t even break even. This is what happens when George Lucas boots out Irvin Kirshner, when Frank Herbert’s legacy gets handed down to that hack, Kevin Anderson. Not only is there so much crap out there, it’s being peddled to the masses with words like ‘gripping,’ or ‘ground-breaking,’ when it’s just the same boring manufactured shit you threw away after the plane ride last year! Good books by good writers become harder and harder to find to the point where you’d spend more time finding a good book than reading it!

Sorry. Pet peeve.

2. In college I took a fiction writing class. One of my classmates said to me, “I had a friend take this class last year. She says the prof wont give you an A unless you write like Hemingway.”

“Good Christ!” I said. Then I banged a nurse. We went to Switzerland. She died. I walked in the rain.

Fucking Hemingway. What does it all MEAN? The people in charge like what THEY like, and since they’re in charge, they must be right, right? (See question 1)

Favorite character? Ever? Jeremiah Dixon.

Blog donkey eh? Did Wendig just call me an ass? Hmmm . . . something to chew on betwixt now and Bouchercon when we find El Chuckbo’s battered corpse floating in the bay . . .

OK, what do I miss? Elegance of expression. Not in any particular genre overall, just across the board. I think sometimes the “say it in as few words as possible” mantra gets over used and authors end up sanding all the grace notes off everything. There are a couple that don’t — in the crime and related categories, James Lee Burke and John LeCarre come to mind. Of course, what do they both have in common? They’re both old — they both developed their voices before this whole minimalist thing really took hold maybe. Anyway, that’s something I miss.

Favorite character. Tough one. But, since I’ve mentioned Burke and LeCarre, I’ll toss Dave Robicheaux and George Smiley into the mix. And Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson. (Hey, Chuck, you ever try the Deighton? What did you make of it?)

Advice? I’ll throw a Prof out there too, the late and well-missed David Stocking at Beloit College. Two stories, and I think I’ve told them before. One day, I’m in the commons with some other wanna be writer types and this particularly pretentious in the way only a 19 year old can be pretentious schmuck is carrying on about how he can’t be bothered with this or that banal concern because he is a WRITAH. Dr. Stocking was walking past. He stopped and said to the kid “So, you’re a writer?” The kid says of course. Stocking asks “What did you write today?” and the kid said nothing. Stocking said “Then not today you’re not..” Flash forward a few weeks. We are in fiction writing class and Stocking had given us 15 minutes to do a quick paragraph on something or another as an exercise. Same kid is sitting there, staring out the window. Stocking asks what the problem is. Kid says he can’t write anything good under pressure. Stocking says “Then write some crap.” The message was clear. You gotta freakin’ write. Period.

Got me thinking, Wendig. Jerk. It’s Saturday.

1) Y’know what I’d like to see? 2nd (3rd?) gen Choose Your Own Adventure. Written by lovers of the concept. Meraswriters seeking to elevate the form past fantasy-scifi pulp. Imagine a horror CYOA.

2) “Writing isn’t art; it’s a craft. It’s never done, you keep working at it.” Jim O’Neil, Journalism 101.

3) 1st to mind is Harrison’s Slippery Jim DeGris. The Stainless Steel Rat.

Fun stuff. My brain no longer resents you.

K

1. I think there’s a certain clear-eyed optimism missing in the fiction I see lately. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some clever black-humored cynicism. But it gets a bit heavy after a while, it seems unrelenting. Everything I pick up seems to be trying to out-gritty the last paranormal romance (“Yeah? Well, *my* spunky detective heroine is a Cleveland-based chain-smoking quadriplegic who blows mummies!”)
I’m not looking for the gee-whiz stuff from the sixties, but some sense that the present/future doesn’t/won’t totally suck would be a refreshing change of pace.

2. Jim Macdonald said at one point to “Do the work, then send it out till Hell won’t have it.” Out of all the advice I’ve gotten, it seems like everything boils down to that.

3. No question: Sam Vimes

@john
Oh yes, Sam Vimes. There’s that line from Thud!-
“Given then, a contest between an invisible and very powerful quasidemonic thing of pure vengeance on one hand and the commander on the other, where would you wager, say, one dollar?”

“I wouldn’t, sir. That looks like one that would go to the judges.”

“Yes. Yes indeed…”

After long and harrowing thought, it came down to Chief Broom or McMurphy, both from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In the end, I have to go with McMurphy. I’m a sucker for redemption, and his comes in giving redemption to everyone else around him. Actually, that whole damn book is full of great characters.

All right.

Fave character.

Damn if I just don’t know.

I love me some Hap and Leonard from Joe Lansdale — two characters, I know, but each is necessary with the other.

Jimmy Blackburn, too, from Bradley Denton’s Blackburn.

Biff, from Lamb (Christopher Moore).

Hurrrm.

Requires more thought.

– c.

Alright, this has finally brought me out of my usual mode of lurking. These questions are just too good to pass up.

In terms of what I’d like to see more of on the shelf… *kicks the manuscript of his YA trilogy under the couch* I’ll jump on the horror bandwagon, with an amendment. Vampires, werewolves and zombies are great, but so overused that they’re being misused. There are plenty more scary things out there – creepy dolls coming to life, spooks and shades, unknowable horrors that predate mankind. Let’s see more variety in horror, dammit. And on a different genre but related note, I’d like to see more urban fantasy that doesn’t involve paranormal romance or detective stories. I know they sell, but c’mon, variety doesn’t hurt.

As far as writing advice I’ve received, I’d have to say that the one that keeps me going is from Jim Butcher. Being a writer – a published writer – is all about perseverance. You can’t falter, you can’t give up, no matter what obstacles are thrown in your way. If you keep at it, keep going when others are throwing in the towel, keep forging ahead and WRITING, you will succeed.

Finally, favorite character? I’ll have to tap some Greek mythology and go with Dionysus. He’s got some exciting adventures under his belt in the old myths.

Lord Hevelock Vetinari is the most lovable dictator ever conceived.

Man, I’m so far behind on stuff I want to read, that I haven’t had the chance to miss anything.

Best writing advice? “It is perfectly okay to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly.” -C. J. Cherryh

Favorite character? That’s tough, but I have to go with Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. So fun, so deep, so many facets. I loved him when he was 18, I loved him when he hit 30, and I’ll follow him till Bujold kills him (again.)

I actually just answered your second question in this interview over here. Though, fair warning, I ramble a good bit.

Damn, Will. Great stuff over there — well-said, well-learned, and well-deserved!

– c.

I think we need more editing in books today. Ten of the last twelve books I read could probably have been trimmed at least 50 pages and had a sharp, neat story. Rowling’s _Order of the Phoenix_ could probably have had ten times that amount cut and been a good story and not so bloated. I think it goes quickly to my second pet peeve which is everyone having to sell a trilogy.

Best writing advice? Hah. “Do it.” Second best writing advice? “Don’t believe your friends and family when they tell you you’re great.” Third best? “If you hit them too much with the exposition stick they’ll eventually stop twitching.”

As for favourite character, what, you’re making me choose who’s my bestest friend forever out of an elite group… and too many are assassins. Not a good idea. Nope.
Generally, though, I like the runners-up, the best friends of the protagonists, the ones that keep them in line.

Alright, Chuck, your third question is damnable, but I’ve got to follow through in some feeble way. So I’ll go with:

Jeeves.

The driest wit, a kind heart, a sharp eye for people and place, and for being the consummate gentleman’s gentleman.

@Dave:

Well-played. Jeeves. Huh.

– c.

Shadows over Baker Street is your most common collection of Cthulhu/Holmes love, although the actual stories are a mixed bag. I’m told the Frogwares game The Awakened is good as well, but I haven’t gotten around to playing it.