Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Year: 2012 (page 1 of 49)

25 Writer Resolutions For 2013 (And Beyond)

Tis that time of the year when the year’s just born — pushed from its temporal womb, squalling and wriggling. That means it’s also time to put forward a list of upgraded attitudes and mission statements for the year ahead. Some of these are for me. Maybe some of them are for you.

I don’t buy that we should rely on a single day to cleave to shame and fix mistakes — but I think the first of the year is a nice temporal marker to push ourselves to re-examine, to evolve, and to keep asserting our ability to kick as much ass as we are able and allowed.

With that said, let’s get to it.

1. Level Up, Ding

Up your game. Always. With every paragraph, every chapter, every script scene and blog post, we should be looking to level up our work and ourselves.  We level up, we gain new weapons in our fight against Shitty Writing (“I HAVE THE ANCIENT SWORD OF THE HAIKU MASTERS, IT IS +1 AGAINST RUN-ON-SENTENCES”) and we face new challenges in the road ahead (“NOW I MUST DEFEAT THE LITERARY AGENT IN BATTLE USING NOTHING BUT A QUERY LETTER AND SOME BAD-ASS DANCE MOVES”). We must never sit on our hands. We must pull our boots out of the mud. We must move forward and improve ourselves and our work. We must better our shit.

2. Let Art And Entertainment Have A Little Creative Love Baby

Once upon a time I thought, my goal as a writer is first to entertain. And that remains true, to a point — but the more I think about it, the more I realize “entertainment” is a lowest common denominator. If my only true goal was to entertain, I could achieve that by uploading a series of YouTube videos where various things hit me in the dick (Frisbee! Coconut! Bowling ball! Charging goat! A goat driving a lawnmower!). A good story connects beyond mere amusement; its tendrils sink into deeper earth, winding around the human heart. Let’s aspire to do more than merely entertain. Let us reach for meaning, for connection, let us present stories with purpose and power. (Or, at the very least, we could write porn. HEY PORN COUNTS SHUT UP.)

3. Cleave To The Human Condition

It’s oh-so-easy to get lost in all the fiddly bits of storytelling. All the plotty twists, all the crafty and conjurous worldbuilding, all the clever turns of phrase, all the wonderful ways to describe a person’s naughty bits (dangle rod love canal wizard’s wand swamp grotto turgid shillelagh lusty sex-pond). Thing is, we write stories for one reason: to talk about people. And we read stories because we want to read about people. Every story is a Rosetta Stone attempting to translate the human condition to the humans gazing upon it with knitted-brow and quizzical sneer. When we as writers drift away from that, we lose what’s powerful about stories: we lose the character. Stories are written by people, for people, about people. I mean, at least until the day comes when they’re written by robots, for robots, about murdering all the meatbags.

4. Face The Fear, Best The Beast

(Man, if those aren’t some of the lyrics to You’re The Best Around, then the 1980s has failed me.) Let every tale be a cage match between you and something that scares you. Death, life, rats, clowns, disease, lost love, parasites, credit ratings, God, Satan, the apocalypse, being awake during surgery, Kentucky, the dark, wizards, tiny children with straight razors in their jam-smeared hands, otters — find a thing that frightens you and write about it. Mine that struggle. Writing with that measure of genuine of emotion behind it creates a palpable effect: the prose grows stronger, the story becomes richer. Think of it as upgrading the story’s megapixels. Every page contains so much more when you write with passion and authenticity.

5. Have A Fucking Point

Every story is an argument. Have the argument on the page. Give it to the audience. Make the case for why love conquers all — or why love can suck a big quivering tube of elf dick. It’s not about being preachy; it’s about threading your fiction with theme and meaning.

6. Embrace The Unanswerable

On the other hand, just as sometimes we go into fiction with an answer already in mind, other times we approach the page with an unanswered question hanging over our heads like a reaper’s sickle. The ending of the tale, uncertain — its conclusion both in terms of event and theme existing as a Schroedinger’s Cat inside the narrative box, the outcome ever in flux. Can love save the day? What is love? Will human monstrousness win out over selflessness? How do I remove this skin tag? Do bears really shit in the woods or do they share a series of secret bear toilets?

7. Stop Letting Passion Ferment Into Poison

Passion can be a paintbrush — or it can be a gun. It can be a warm cup of go-go juice or an icy syringe jacked up with blowfish toxin. Passion is a horse that either carries you racing across the sunlit plains or stomps you bloody into the mud. Creators are passionate people; they have to be. Passion drives us to do what we do. But that passion easily goes septic and next thing you know, instead of pointing it toward our work and our desires, we’re instead letting it fuel some bullshit argument or be the rope that binds us into some crass emotional tangle. Writing the next great story from the deep of your heart is so much more valuable than EGADS SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERTUBES I WILL EXPEND MY CREATIVE ENERGON CUBES ASSERTING MY SUPERIORITY.

8. Lock The Bastards In A Box

We will forever meet those who don’t believe in us, whose apparent goal is to hold our heads underwater rather than teach us to swim. Those are our bastards, and fuck every last one of those human speedbumps. Don’t engage. Shut them out. Close the door and lock it. Let this be the year we populate our lives with people who challenge us and help us be better, not punch us in the balls (or lady-parts) and leave us groaning and gasping in a pile of canine excrement.

9. Read Widely

Our reading habits are creatures of comfort: we know what we like (urban fantasy novels where bad-ass were-dolphin girls wage war against a parliament of sexy demon-priests) and so we hew to those books we know will please us. But again, look beyond the boundaries of entertainment. As we challenge ourselves with our writing, so too should we seek similar challenge in our reading. Read that which you would not normally read. Seek new input. Don’t let your mind grow indolent and complacent, a sluggy psychic blob covered in mental Dorito dust.

10. Know More Shit, You Clod-Headed Ignorasaurus

If we are to assume that write what you know has any value at all (it does, in a sense, and more on that in a moment), then we can also assume that it is our mission as official penmonkeys to know more shit. Your mission: learn more, read more, do more.

11. Dig Into The Dirt Of Your Own Experience

Let’s talk a little about that last one: “do more.” When we write, we tend to write more effectively when we milk the udders of our own experience rather than come to the page cold and unaware. That’s not to say we must literally write what we know — otherwise, every story would be a biographical transcript. Rather, our experiences are filtered through the various sieves and strainers of fiction: we translate and teleport the events of our lives, finding those sensory moments, those essential elements (or elemental essentials), those core authentic “truths.” What that means is: strive to bring yourself to the page. And further, it means to do more. Have more experiences. Travel. Eat new foods. Try new things. Apply it to your fiction. (“Hey, honey, I went to a gangbang last night with a bunch of strangers. Don’t worry, it’s just me bringing authenticity to my novel. Yes, I smell like lube: a detail for my fictions.”)

12. Find Comfort In Discomfort

Fuck safety. Jump, then stitch the parachute on the way down. Comfort is the enemy of good fiction. As an author, seek some measure of discomfort — put it into your work, try new things, challenge yourself to take the difficult path because that is the path that will yield greater reward. Hell, break a drinking glass and pepper your office chair with the shards so that you’re experiencing constant enlightening buttock pain. *receives note from the official terribleminds lawyer* Oh, umm, wait, yeah, don’t do that last part. Just do the other things.

13. Find Opportunity In Change

The winds have shifted. The earth trembles beneath our feet. Genres warp and mash together. Age ranges for reading spawn hydra heads (Middle Grade! Young Adult! New Adult! Adult Zero! Pre-Adult! Post-Toddler! Geriatric Erotica!). The shift to digital is a change. The fact that big publishers are glomming onto big publishers and creating some kind of drug-resistant super-mecha publisher-kaiju is a change. The rise of self-publishing is — drum roll please — a big-ass change. And more unseen changes are surely on the way in the coming year. Each change is bad for those who cannot adapt, and great for those who can. So, adapt. Find opportunity and challenge instead of difficulty and misery. Surf the turning tide.

14. Find Signal In Noise

We can either fill our lives with meaning, or bog it down with distraction. The latter is easier, frankly: it’s so much simpler to lose ourselves to the Internet or video games or stupid arguments or Russian elk porn. But a life of writing requires focus. It demands that we tune out the noise and zero in on the signal. Signal will save us. Noise will drown us.

15. Stop Pooping In The Temple

They say the body is a temple; mine is probably a back alley pawn shop. (“Want to buy a cassette player and an off-brand Samurai sword?”) Just the same, I shouldn’t be savaging the architecture of my flesh with gross indolence and needless diet. The mind and the body are inextricably linked — it’s time to stop dragging down the mind with the negligence of the body.

16. Stop Defining Yourself By What Other People Think

Everybody wants you to be something. Some people want you to be nothing. None of that matters. The tiger in the cage doesn’t think, “The zookeeper wants me to wear this jaunty hat.” He just eats the zookeeper and then pees on that hat. Be the Most Awesomest You-Version that you want to be, and let everyone fall in line behind your ideals. Don’t fall in line behind theirs.

17. Love What You Write, Write What You Love

The thing about writing is, it’s easy to get caught up in work that isn’t “for” us — rocking out some freelance word count, or maybe in a pitch meeting you pitched something on a lark and under pressure (“Uhh, something-something astronaut family sitcom in a future world owned by robots who have not yet learned to love”) and you really don’t like the thing you pitched but now, here you are, writing it for money. You find it miserable and that misery translates. It always translates. The miserable threads wind around each word like a choking vine or a pubic hair caught in your teeth. Here’s how to fix this: first, make sure to save projects Just For You. Write projects that speak to you. But you can also reverse that: you can bring your love to the project at hand even if that project is not one you enjoy. There’s always a way “in.” Always an angle. Always a way forward that you don’t hate. Find that path through. You’ll feel better for it.

18. Be Inspired By All The Crazy Penmonkey Motherfuckers Out There

Jealousy is an ugly thing: it’s bitey like a plague monkey, empty like a mummy’s scrotum. The way we see other writers is sometimes through lenses smeared with the greasy unguent of envy, or worse, we think, “They did it, but I can’t, and now I’m just going to lay down and take a thousand-year-nap on this pillow soggy with my tears.”  Going forward, let your proper response to other writers be awe. Let it be inspiration. Let the collective efforts of a thousand penmonkeys be the fist of wind that punches your sails.

19. Forge Partnerships In The Raw Metals Of Awesome

Time to get shut of the notion that we do this thing alone. The author is always the tip of the iceberg: beneath the hoarfrost waters is forever an unseen pyramid of supporters. Editors! Agents! Book designers! Artists! Other writers! This year, go out. Find one other person in your creative ecosystem. Press your two magic artist rings together — bwing! — and form a partnership. Use that creative energy — and yes, sometimes, creative agitation — to be the fist of wind that… what? I already used that metaphor? Fine. Use that energy to get shit done.

20. Create Before You Consume

We often gain our desire to tell stories from consuming the stories told by others. This often becomes our default mode: we read! We watch! We play! The problem is when it remains our default mode and we never switch tracks from consumer to creator. That’s not to say we shouldn’t still hungrily stuff our mind-mouths with the narrative meals cooked by others — but there comes a time to give our own work that priority. Both in terms of time and in terms of regurgitating staid, tired tale-telling. Your story comes first. All other tales trail after.

21. Write Fiction Red In Tooth And Claw

Punch. Kick. Grab. Bite. Fuck passivity. We don’t get to be paid penmonkeys and crackerjack creators by lying on the ocean floor like a bloated sea cucumber letting food glom onto his turd-blob body. You’re not a morbidly obese shut-in who can order opportunity and creativity from Amazon (delivered with Prime Shipping to your double-wide trailer!). You are shark. You are wolf. You are shark-wolf hybrid with machete-flippers and fire-eyes and a deep and unabiding creative hunger. Creators must take aim at their goals. They must sniff out opportunity and stab it with their steely knives. You want that pound of flesh? You want your novel on shelves, your script on a screen? Move, motherfucker. Or get out the way.

22. Realize: Yesterday’s Gone And Tomorrow’s Too Late

Today is what you have, so use it. Don’t even think about what you didn’t do yesterday. And fuck putting aside things for tomorrow. It’s today. It’s Right Goddamn Now — a sharp dagger stuck in the pages and maps of this very moment. Grab the knife. Start cutting words off the block. Start arranging them into sentences, and start shoving those sentences together to make a story. Don’t look back. Don’t wait. Now is the only time you are promised. Now is the time to create.

23. Just Keep Swimming

Regret is for assholes. Hell, regret is an asshole — a giant flappy asshole that works opposite as it should, vacuuming up instead of purging out, suctioning up optimism and motivation and light and also, the cat. (Poor cat.) It’s easy to get caught in this mode, to have the thought running laps in your head that says, I fucked up, I did something wrong, that thing will haunt me. A query letter with a typo, some pissing match with another author, a book that nobody bought, a self-published tale with a cover so ugly it should be on trial for war crimes. Forget regret. Aim to repair. Seek to reclaim. (And other re- words!) Very little you do will mark you as a Permanent Dickhole or Forever Dumbshit provided you are earnest about moving forward and upping your game. Stop getting caught on the carousel of remorse. Stop turning in circles.

24. Fuck Good. Go Great.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. But does that mean we shouldn’t aspire to be better? Hell no. It doesn’t mean we can’t push ourselves and reach a little further. It damn sure doesn’t mean that we cannot seek to elevate that thing we do beyond the realm of merely “good” and — one hopes — into the stratosphere of “great.” (“THIS MONKEY NEEDS A PROPELLOR. THIS ICE CREAM NEEDS BACON! THIS BACON NEEDS CHOCOLATE! THIS TOASTER NEEDS A PINK FLOYD LASER LIGHT SHOW AND A BELT PUNCH AND THE INTERNET.”) I don’t know what makes something great. More of this? Less of that? A stronger flourish? A simpler elegance? Nobody knows. But that’s no reason not to try, is it?

25. Know Thyself

The biggest and bestest resolution going forward? Know who you are as a writer. This is, I find, the curse-iest curse that plagues us — and it doesn’t just plague us at the beginning of our journey. Oh, if only. It’s a nettling, nibbling, nattering imp riding on our shoulders years into the great egress from our old, uncreative lives. Find your process. Uncover what works for you. Find your voice. Find what you like. Discover why you tell stories. Discover your desires. Find your frailties. Find yourself in your fiction and find your fiction in you. The faster we can start to figure out who we are, how we work, and what we want, the faster we can move forward telling the kinds of stories we want to tell — and the more confident we become in doing it. So ring in the new year by… if not answering these questions then at least asking them, having them staple-gunned to the front of your cerebral cortex. Let your work and career be less of a question mark, and more of an exclamation point. And now for…

26. Shh, The Not-So-Secret Secret Resolution

Write till your fingers bleed.

Want another hot tasty dose of dubious writing advice aimed at your facemeats?

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING:

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY:

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

The Final Battle

 

Blackbirds is in the Ranting Dragon Cover Battle 2012! Round after round it fought —

And now?

It has reached the final round.

*crash of thunder*

*timpani boom*

*a distant wolf howls*

It is up against the mighty cover of Seanan McGuire’s equally mighty Discount Armageddon — Seanan is, of course, my spirit animal and the profane yin to my vulgar yang, and she is a damn fine writer (sweet Sid and Marty Krofft, have you read her Feed series under the name Mira Grant? Do yourself the favor and read, read, read).

So, were Blackbirds to lose this battle — it would be a glorious loss.

BUT WE AIN’T GOING DOWN WITHOUT A LOT OF KICKING AND FLAILING.

When I saw Joey Hi-Fi‘s cover for Blackbirds (and the follow-up, Mockingbird), I about fell over, dizzy. I’d won the cover lottery. It is a truly incredible cover, a cover that sells the book far better than my own writing ever could — I cannot tell you how many people told me they picked the book up to check it out by dint of that cover. It is a single image that contains myriad images: dozens of little scenes and snippets from the book.

So, I beseech you here today — pleading eyes searching, sweaty palms turned heavenward, manly tears streaking my gore-caked beard. I ask you to go and place your vote for your favorite cover of the year. If that cover is Blackbirds, then I shall high-five you when we both arrive in Valhalla. If it’s not, then so be it. I mean, I might drive over you with my car if I see you crossing the road, but that’s the way it goes. No harm no foul, right?

The vote is close! Split down the middle! Hurry! Hurry!

Congrats, of course, to Seanan and her cover artist, Aly Fell!

(The contest is open until December 30th.)

In The Corpse Of 2012, The Fungal Seedpods Of 2013 Bloom Bright

The years pass like ships in the night. One pulling into harbor. The other drifting out to sea.

Of course, the way time is, 2012 will drift out to sea and hit the carcass of a frozen whale. It’ll punch a hole in the hull. Then the USS 2012 will take on slushy water and begin to sink. Its inhabitants will drop into the churn where they will all be summarily consumed by ICE SHARKS.

Point is, 2012 will soon be gone.

And 2013 will take its place.

Which means — time for the requisite looking backward to look forward post!

Truth is, 2012 has been one helluva year.

This is the year I really became that thing I always really wanted to be: a dude who gets to write novels for a living (aka, “a novelist,” or “an author,” or, “that bearded, pantsless recluse”). I’ve been a professional writer for, sheesh, almost 15 years now, and many of those years were spent as a full-time freelance writer. But this is the first year I can feel 100% comfortable tacking on “novelist” to the ol’ resume. And to do it full-time? To support my family?

Holy fucking wow.

This year alone, I published:

Blackbirds: in which snarky damaged psychic Miriam Black can see how you’re gonna die.

Mockingbird: AKA the continuing adventures of that snarky, angry psychic, Miriam Black.

Dinocalypse Now: two-fisted pulp featuring heroes, apes, Neanderthals, psychic dinosaurs.

Bait Dog: teen detective/vigilante Atlanta Burns solves a murder by way of a dog-fighting ring.

Bad Blood: an e-novella featuring the return of Coburn, a vampire in Zombieland.

Plus, got to help put together the supremely bad-ass Don’t Read This Book collection for Evil Hat, featuring some incredibly potent writer-fu.

The Miriam Black series really got a lot of attention and so far has sold well beyond my expectations. Then both Dinocalypse Now and Bait Dog were the product of two kickass Kickstarters that proved to me what a valuable asset crowdfunding will be to the creatives of the future (sorry: THE FUTURE; sounds better when you caps lock that shit).

Plus, 2012 is a year where I signed on for bevy of new books. Some already written.

I’ve got:

The Blue Blazes: In which criminal Underworld meets the mythic one.

The Cormorant: Miriam Black is back with a face full of murder and Mommy Issues.

Heartland, Book One: My “cornpunk” YA adventure novel (new title soon announced).

Heartland, Books Two & Three: THE CORNPUNK CONTINUES.

Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits: The gods are in exile on Earth! Hijinks ensue!

Beyond DinocalypseOur heroes trapped in a pulp-sodden psychosaur dystopia.

Dinocalypse Forever: Our heroes must travel to where — er, when — the psychosaurs began!

Harum Scarum: Atlanta Burns in, “Fear and Loathing in Dark Pennsyltucky.”

Holy hell, that’s a lot of books.

(Also: holy hell, it means my 2013 is going to be at near-psychotic levels of busy-ness.)

But, of course, it isn’t all about the books.

This site, terribleminds, is still going strong as an ox on bath salts — 2010 I had 438,000 views, 2011 saw that number jump to 1,474,000, and 2012 saw that number jump again to 2,650,000. (I mean, it’s no Scalzi’s Whatever, but whatever.) Plus, I got to do a redesign and get most of what I wanted out of it — all for a handful of stress-tangled man-hours and $45.00. I’m very happy with it and my hope is that you readers are, as well.

This year I also got to release both 500 More Ways To Be A Better Writer and 500 Ways To Tell A Better Story and both seemed to land well — particularly the latter, which contains a bunch of stuff I think really clicks. The writing books continue to sell nicely, many of them hopping in and out of the Top 20 books on writing at Amazon.

Life progresses. It progresses in a way I can find little fault with — it’s been a hard year for the world, I know, but honestly, I’ve been really fortunate on a personal level. I hate to use the term “blessed,” because I’ve no idea who is doing the blessing (Jesus? Shiva? The Large Hadron Collider?), and I also like to think I’ve earned some of the fortune, but there’s no denying that life and luck have been kind to me even when I’ve had no hand in it.

We got a new puppy.

I went to WorldCon, met a bunch of great people — a list of names too endless to recount, but c’mon, Adam Christopher, Gwenda Bond, Laura Lam, Kim Curran, Mike Underwood, Saladin Ahmed, Myke Cole, LA Gilman, Elizabeth Bear, Mur Lafferty, Ramez Naam, Wes Chu, Seanan McGuire, so many inspiring minds that really put more coal in the creative furnace. Plus, I reconnected with an old friend while there. FTMFW.

I spoke at the very lovely and highly-recommended Crossroads Conference in Macon, Georgia. (Macon’s tagline is, “It’s Hotter Here,” which I thought was trademarked for Hell, but apparently Macon snatched it up first.) New friendships made: Delilah (aka “Derlerlah”) Dawson, Jeremy Foshee, Chris Horne, Paul Barrett, Matt Jackson.

I also got to speak at both Storyworld and Writer’s Digest West in Los Angeles. Read at Noir at the Bar with a handful of talented blokes. Got to meet JC Hutchins, Johnny Shaw, Eric Beetner, Greg Bardsley, Caitlin Burns, Jay Bushman, again another endless list of talented humans. (And I was in LA in April, too, for the Blackbirds launch, where I got to finally meet Sabrina Ogden and Priscilla Spencer! Seriously, I know some of the most awesomest people.)

And 2013 promises some new and interesting things, too — something-something film stuff, something-something international travel, something-something new writing book (with physical copies!), something-something doom-laser robot that will destroy the Eastern Seaboard with a transmedia boombox made of human corpses.

You know. THE USUAL.

Thanks to all you crazy kids for hanging around here and listening to me rant. Hope you see fit to keep coming back in the new year, to keep reading my bloggerel, and maybe checking out my books, too. I only get to do what I do because of you fine people out there in Internetsville (aka “Pornopolis”). We creators are only as good as the audience that carries us, as the friends who support us, as the family members who love us.

Oh, and speaking of family:

Let’s finish up with a brand new rockin’-out B-Dub video:

A Holiday Hiatus, And Other News

THINGS! STUFF! CAPS LOCK! LOUD NOISES!

Some real quick news-flavored snidbits (now in nacho habanero salted caramel):

Holy crap! Blackbirds gets a nod as being amongst the best of 2012 at The Independent. This is alongside some alarmingly talented, er, talent — Paul Cornell, Nick Harkaway, Cherie Priest, Joe Abercrombie. Very happy to be in such great company. Humbled, honored, and more than a little tingly in all my pink parts. (Check out Blackbirds here at Amazon.)

Blackbirds has flown into the Novel of the Year running at This Is Horror! But to fly to the furthest flung heights, that means I need your vote. (If, of course, you enjoyed the book.) You can check it out and vote here, if you so choose!

Blackbirds continues to also flutter forward, round after round, at the Ranting Dragon Cover Battle 2012. We’re currently in the Quarter Finals, with Blackbirds in the Coverdome against N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon. Two covers enter, one cover leaves. (As authors we have decided to both of us will reprise the Tina Turner role; I will take Tina’s wardrobe, and N.K. will take the hair.) Whether or not you like the book, I happen to believe that thanks to the mighty magic of Joey Hi-Fi, the Blackbirds cover is THE BESTEST COVER TO HAVE EVER COVERED A BOOK. Which means, yet again, I’d appreciate your vote if you’re feeling all votey.

From Book Monkey, a Blackbirds review: “There is often something about urban fantasy series that don’t pull me in enough to make me want to read more. But Blackbirds is definitely the exception, and I literally can’t wait to read the next instalment Mockingbird.”

Let’s see. What else?

You’ll find me yammering over at ThrillerCast.

The terribleminds revamp is largely complete. We now have a way to subscribe to the blog. Or to comments. And we have nested comments, too. I now have a full portfolio on the front page for the work. The blog font size is increased. The widgets are still… changing, maybe, I dunno? But we’re at least in done for now territory.

Love to get your thoughts on it when you have but a free moment?

I’m currently almost through the second draft rewrite of The Blue Blazes.

While also editing Popcorn (which has a new title I’ll share after the new year).

While also editing Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits.

While also prepping Beyond Dinocalypse.

While also drunkenly veering toward Christmas and New Year’s.

WHILE ALSO SAVING THE WORLD FROM DIMENSION-HOPPING TERRORISTS WHO WANT TO DESTROY THE TENDER MEMBRANES BETWEEN UNIVERSES AND SEE IT ALL COME CRASHING TOGETHER DAMN YOU TERRORISTS DAMN YOU.

Okay, maybe not that last part.

But all this leads me to the final crunchy snidbit of news:

Terribleminds is going on hiatus!

Relax, relax, it’s not like, a long one. Or even a complete one.

We’ll be back just after the New Year. Probably that Wednesday, the 2nd.

Further, you’ll see another post between now and then — a personal year’s end wrap-up.

But meanwhile, I’m gonna go crawl back around the word-war trenches.

Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. May Lucifer light your way. I mean, uhh, not Lucifer. What? Who said Lucifer? Was it you? Weirdo. *runs away, disappears in a cloud of incredulity*

Transmissions From Toddler-Town: The Devil’s Dictionary

He talks a lot, now, this kid. B-Dub’s got a whole contingent of words, some of them known, some of them guessed-at, some of then Lovecraftian gibbers that summon gray-skinned amphibious monstrosities from the deep. It all started with Mommy and Daddy, of course, but it always does and those don’t make particularly exciting first words — far more compelling to have a first word like “Pasketti.” Or “Bah-Bah.” Or “neo-anarchist regime.” Or, “Hey, lady, I got a diaper here that’s as heavy as a wet sweater and it’s killing all the plant life in a ten-yard radius. Can a little guy get a change or what?”

But for him, the first most persistent word was “truh,” for “truck,” which is his most beloved thing in the world. He will hold his toy trucks and he will hug them and kiss them on their windshields. He will try to feed them his food, making little pretendy-eating noises as he forces a green dump-truck to nosh on a couple green peas or a quadrant of sliced banana.

Now, of course, the trucks are waning in importance as the era of the “choo-choo” begins.

* * *

I should note that I fucking can’t stand Thomas the Tank Engine. I just can’t. I can’t do it. Especially the older versions where it’s all stop-motion? Something sinister going on there. Thomas has dead eyes. A blank face. I’m reminded of The Dark Tower whenever I see him. And he’s dumb as a bag of back hair, that Thomas. He’s like, the worst train ever. If he were a real train, by now someone would have decommissioned him and melted him down to slag. Not the least of all because he talks, and trains aren’t supposed to talk. THE EVIL BLUE BASTARD.

* * *

B-Dub knows most of his colors. Blue is blue. Purp is purple. Pink is pink. But then the next three are a bit… muddy. Oro for orange, roro for red, elro for yellow. At least all three of those colors are basically next to each other on the spectrum? I dunno.

The most confusing one is ebwee, which is — green?

That’s the thing. Sometimes he says things clear as a bell — “tractor,” for instance, or “camera.” But then some words are utter mysteries as to how they come about.

Elmo is Nen. Sleeve is Heebwee. Peanut is Pebble.

The real bite is that sometimes he’ll say a word perfectly clear — clear as like, a radio personality from the 1950s, all enunciated and everything.

Then he’ll never say it right ever again. Every time you get him to repeat it, the word dissolves further, like a sand castle eroded one splash of seawater after the next. Until the end he’s just squinting and noisily filling his diaper to mimic the word. Or perhaps just to shut us up.

* * *

That’s the other thing. He’s now aware of his diapers. And his bathroom habits.

He wants a potty. A proper potty. He’s a year-and-a-half and he wants to potty train?

Can’t we just keep him in diapers a little longer? Hell, can’t wear diapers? It sounds so easy!

* * *

He loves music. Particular favorites:

The entire “Join Us” album of They Might Be Giants.

The song, “Do It With A Rockstar,” by Amanda Palmer.

And, of course, “Gangnam Style.”

He rocks out to “Gangnam Style.” He even pauses his dance in the quiet space before Oppa Gangnam Style at which point he sometimes spaz-dances not like a well-mannered genteel Kentucky horse but rather like a bucking stallion who is also covered in fire ants.

A month or so ago, after listening to “Gangnam Style” for the 80,000th time, the song ends and he suddenly rips off his diaper and yells:

“Peepee!”

Which, I figure, is how that song should basically end anyway.

* * *

He has a handful of pre-established B-Dub dance moves.

He has, “The Traffic Cop.”

He has “The Invisible Teacup.”

He has “The Sassy Garden Hose.”

He has the “Horse-in-a-Mosh-Pit.”

He has the “Pocoyo Up-And-Down.”

* * *

Some things that B-Dub says aren’t words. They’re gestures. He knows “mustache” somehow, and lays his finger across his upper lip to let you know. “Beard” is him scratching his face. He has gestures for “more,” for “up,” for “down.” He makes sounds to indicate wanting to eat (he smacks his lips) or drink (he makes a sound like he’s slurping through a straw).

He also has words that have no apparent meaning. “Abuway.” Or “Dabooty.” Those two get a lot of play. I think they’re probably just him playing with sounds, having fun with language. But I also secretly hope they form his secret DJ name. Like, we take him to bed and then he quietly slips out and puts on his sequined DJ outfit and then he runs to the club as his secret identity, “DJ Abuway Da-Booty: Mixmaster Elite.”

* * *

Of course, “quietly slips out” is a joke. B-Dub doesn’t “quietly” do much. In fact, we’ve entered the tectonic tantrum portion of Toddlertown’s history, where sometimes he will throw an atomic shit-fit for no reason at all. Or sometimes there’s a reason so insane you just have to laugh. Like, yesterday, the new puppy had chewed up a dog toy and left remnants on the floor. B-Dub grabbed one. Just a little thumb-sized piece of black rubber. I quickly reached over and grabbed it away, and for like, ten seconds, he lost all semblance of sanity.

The toddler was a shrieking banshee, a rampaging ape, a tiny tornado in a truck shirt and sweat pants. And then I forget if he got distracted by something else or what, but he basically must’ve thought, “Oh, I don’t know if I really wanted that?” and then went to do something else.

* * *

He threw the first real scary tantrum the other night. A two-hour nuclear meltdown that had no cause and so we thought no solution. It was the point where we thought something was wrong. Like, if you’re a new parent, you sometimes see shadows on the wall where there are none, and if you’re a new parent who has ever read anything about “meningitis and children,” you have a brand new boogeyman. Because here’s the drill with meningitis for kids: you probably don’t know they have it and your doctor won’t know they have it and by the time you figure it out you’re probably too late and they’re probably going to die or be brain-damaged and so now — me, already a fucking hypochondriac — worries that every strange behavior by the boy is the first sign of meningitis. “Is he constipated? Is that a freckle? Hiccups? OH SHIT MENINGITIS.”

So: two-hour-long shit-fit felt worrying.

Thing is, there was a clue to the shit-fit buried in an earlier rage-fueled wail — B-Dub had called out for “Tar-uh,” which is to say, he wanted to go to Target. He loves Target. And he knows the name because, hey, I guess branding works on young minds. (Whee.)

We didn’t listen to him. We did not take him to Target.

And two hours later, I decided to ask him again: “Do you want to go to Target?” In part because we had to go. We had a list of things we needed. And suddenly, like that, the tantrum vanishes, whisked behind a curtain as his eyes light up. “Tar-uh?” “Yes, Target.”

Tantrum over.

We took him. He has never been happier. He ran around like that loose Ikea monkey.

And of course, we got totally fucking played. Because he wanted a train pillow and, normally stalwart against buying him everything the kid wants (“Sure, kid, you can have that machete and those cigarettes”), we crumpled like a tinfoil tent. He won that battle. But now we know.

We will stay frosty for the war to come.

* * *

For days he’s been saying, “Debuh.”

We thought it was one of his mystery words.

But then the other day he points to my bookshelf.

“Debuh,” he says.

On the shelf is a — well it’s an ornament, but I dunno that it’s a Christmas ornament, per se, and the reason I don’t know if it’s really appropriate to the season is because it’s…

…okay, it’s The Devil.

A red Devil in a nice suit with a pitchfork.

“Debuh,” he says. Devil.

I taught him that six months ago and I haven’t mentioned it since.

And suddenly, the Devil resurfaces. HIS TRUE FATHER. Or not.

Children are sponges. All they do is absorb.

* * *

We’ve finally — er, mostly — curbed our profanity. At this, the final hour, where he’s mimicking us and saying new words daily. We were once going to find new words to replace the vulgarities but instead settled on the surprisingly fun “letter replacement.” GD for goddamn, S for shit, F for — well, c’mon. So, if you’re really mad at someone, it’s all, “EFF THAT EMMEREFFING ESS-HEAD IN THE BEE-HOLE, GEE-DEE-IT.”

It’s fun because you can do that in public, too. And adults still know what you’re talking about.

It’s like stealth profanity.

* * *

It times out well because at the same time our profanity is reduced to letters, B-Dub is learning his letters. He’s got maybe half the alphabet down. Sometimes you ask him what a letter is and he gets real quiet and whispers it to you — “Beeeeeee” — like it’s a secret cipher he doesn’t want the rest of the world to crack.

Some letters are better said than others, of course. “H” is “Hay.” “F” is, perhaps appropriately, a fart noise. “Q” is B-Dub mimicking someone vacuuming, which took us a while to understand, but when you say that word, “vacuum,” you hear the non-existent “Q” in there.

It’s weird how kids see the world in pieces and sometimes bring strange pieces together.

* * *

He has an iPad.

I feel terribly privileged and terribly stupid for saying that — our 18-month-old has a goddamn iPad. Which is absurd, really. But we were looking into toddler-aged tablet computers and it’s like, a couple hundred bucks for some plastic Fisher Price “computer” and you pay $15 for the “apps” and — c’mon. So, I had my first-gen iPad and he really loved it and so I figured, why train him on some kiddie piece of plastic?

So, he has my old iPad.

(Which means, yes, I got a new one. Hey, whatever, work expense, DON’T JUDGE ME.)

He’s freakishly good at it. He’s so good he taught me multi-gestures I didn’t know existed. Because he has no rules. He has no sense of what you can and cannot do. The tablet’s all faux-tactile so he just touches the screen and fucking wiggles his fingers like they’re magic squid tentacles just to see what happens. And by now he knows how to open and close apps, how to pull up the tray or turn the screen off or whatever. He wants Grover, he gets Grover. He wants to draw on the drawing app, he closes Grover and pops that sumbitch open.

It’s already a sign that he’s going to know things I don’t when it comes to — well, technology, but really, everything else ever. At first that was terrifying but then it became really liberating, really wonderful. He should know things I don’t. That’s how we move forward, isn’t it? That’s how generations tumble one after the next, picking up things that the previous generation could not — or, even stranger, would not have even conceived of in the first damn place. It’s a beautiful thing watching him learn, watching him figure stuff out with his big blue eyes wide as moons, with his mouth slackened in some kind of puzzled bliss. Even through the tantrums, even through the misunderstood words, even through diapers that smell like a dump from a lion that ate a vulture that ate a hobo corpse, it’s a weird and beautiful thing watching a tiny human become not-so-tiny in both the body and the brain. As they grow, so do we.

It’s Not One Thing

Children are dead.

Shot by a bad man for reasons as-yet-unknown.

Some voices cry out, “We need more gun control.”

Others say, “No, no, it’s a mental health issue.”

A third voice claims that, “The media is at fault.”

Or that there’s a “culture of violence we need to solve.”

“It’s not this, it’s that.”

“It’s not that, it’s this.”

And we are paralyzed because nobody can find the one monster and cut off its head.

The problem is, as with most problems, a nuanced one. It isn’t a problem with one-color: it is a rainbow of fucking issues that blur and blob together into a muddy, bloody mass.

It’s not one monster. It’s many.

Guns are easier to get than good health care.

Mental health care is a black hole for those who try to get it.

The media shoves camera in the faces of kindergardeners to get a sound byte.

We adore violence in our media and abhor love and sex.

It’s all of these things. Not one to the exclusion of others.

That can’t paralyze us.

That confusion and complexity cannot give us pause.

Something has to be done.

One thing at a time. One bite out of the rotten apple, then another, and another until it’s gone. We can’t just nuke the problem. We can’t just drone strike it, or hit it with chemo and radiation, or plug in a cheat code and make it all go away. It’s a many-headed hydra. But we still have to start attacking the heads or the hydra will live on and people will still die because we couldn’t get on the same goddamn page. The time to talk — and act — is now. Not in six months when we’re back worrying about what the fucking Kardashians are up to.

The time is now! When we feel something.

When we have the fire in our bellies to write our politicians and make our voices heard. Not when our hearts are hardened but when we feel raw and in pain.

That’s why you can’t listen to people saying this isn’t the time. That’s shutting down the conversation. That’s putting up walls instead of opening doors. Not wanting to talk about it is okay. Wanting to step away from the discussion? Completely understandable. But anybody who tries to shut down other people continuing this conversation? That’s an obstruction. Calling it “politics” is false. Wanting to stop kids from dying, wanting to get busy navigating the complexities of our human experience is not “politicizing.” What someone means when they say, “Stop politicizing the issue” is, I don’t agree with you, so shut up. It’s not politics to ask that we figure this out. It’s not politics to seek solutions to suffering. This isn’t related to governance of the state. This isn’t related to political relations between people. This is about dead children, teenagers, and adults. This is about standing up and saying that we want something done, and that while we may not agree on what that something is, it’s time to move the needle one way or another because the worst thing we can do is sit on our hands in defiance of progress, in the paralysis of fruitless indecision.

P.S. — the one thing it’s not is the lack of God in our schools. If you believe in America, then God is in the schools when one wants him to be and not there when one doesn’t because that’s how freedom of religion is supposed to look. If you believe in God, then God is everywhere, and you don’t need prayer in schools to stave off a vengeance that involves killing children. And, by the way, if you believe in a God that not only allows for child murder but actively invokes it as payment for pulling prayer out of school, you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and you should probably be put on a boat with the rest of your fucked-up brethren and set afloat so we can stop listening to your delusions of self-importance.