Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. This is his blog. He talks a lot about writing. And food. And pop culture. And his kid. He uses lots of naughty language. NSFW. Probably NSFL. Be advised.

Everything is dumb right now. From nose to tail, we have become the dumbest, saddest pig at the county fair. Historians will not refer to this period as THE DARK AGES, but rather, THE DUMB AGES. The greatest question I get, right now, is how to simply persist creating art and staying motivated and creative in this epoch of syphilitic dipshittery, so I thought I’d bop in here and try my hand at answering that. 1. Stop staring at the news and at social media. This is hard, because presently the... Read The Rest →

That there is some snake skin. I remember seeing my first snake when I was a kid — I was maybe six, wandering through the woods and fields behind my house, and my father was nearby but out of sight. I stumbled upon a rotten, hollowed-out stump, and sitting in the middle of that stump was a garter snake. I lost my shit. I fucking screamed like I had just seen someone get murdered. But I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear. That, or TRANSFIXED BY OPHIDIAN HYPNOSIS. Either/or.... Read The Rest →

Your job this week is easy-peasy, oh-so-sleazy– (Okay, not that sleazy.) Go into the comments, come up with a title* comprising five words. Not four. Not six. Not one. Five words exactly. Pop that sucker in the comments, and next week I’ll grab ten of them and that’ll form the basis of the challenge the following week. Get it? Got it? Good. Due by next Friday, noon. Ramblers, let’s get ramblin. * a title = one title, not several, thanks

The post title alone is one of the greatest things ever. Great in part because it’s true. I think of what I Google for research every single day, and I’m sure I’m currently being surveilled by drone. Laura Lam kicks ass here in this guest post talking about the research that went into her newest — Shattered Minds — and why she should probably expect SWAT to come kicking in her door any minute now. * * * In retrospect, I have no idea why I wrote a near future... Read The Rest →

Scarred by war. In pursuit of truth. Army veteran True Brighton left the service when the development of robotic helicopters made her training as a pilot obsolete. Now she works at Requisite Operations, a private military company established by friend and former Special Ops soldier Lincoln Han. ReqOp has embraced the new technologies. Robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence are all tools used to augment the skills of veteran warfighters-for-hire. But the tragedy of war is still measured in human casualties, and when True makes a chance discovery during a... Read The Rest →

They say it’s not the fall that kills you. For Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back. On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat’s own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision. So when the enemy makes... Read The Rest →