So. Seems like a good time to, before the new year rises out of the desert sands and opens its jagged maw to swallow us and digest us in a belly thick with temporal juices, revisit the books you read this year.

Your top three reads this year?

Doesn’t have to be books published in 2011.

Go.

Anyway, this past week, Internet Ubermeister John Scalzi said, “Hey, come here to parade your traditionally-published books, come here to parade your self-pub works, come here to tell us about your other awesome arts and crafts.” Awesome for him to open his blog that way. Here I’ve opened the circus of pimpage from time to time, and Scalzi’s posts reminded me — hey, I have not done that in a while.

So, here we go. Just in time for the (un)holy daze of the holidays.

We’ll toss it all into one big mash –

Pimp whatever you want.

Book of any published pedigree, comic, toys, ARG, blog, Tumblr devoted to your mustache, anything and anything that can be pimped should be pimped.

Further, don’t think you have to pimp your work. The true Christmas spirit is pimping the work of someone else. Call out things you love by people you respect and tell us how to procure them.

Most important — pimping needs you to answer that “why” question. Don’t just say I WROTE BOOK HERE LINK NNGGHH — what were you, raised in a blog-barn? Sell us on it, by gum and by golly.

Now go forth! And share thee well.

THE FIVE

That may not sound like a good thing.

You’d be wrong.

See, this is a novel about the last days of a hardscrabble indie rock band — the titular “The Five” — and the horror they endure at the hands of a schizo sniper, a horror that ultimately brings them together before properly setting them apart. Contained within the story is this ghostly vein of the supernatural, a delicate component of good versus evil that never shows its full face, that always remains hidden in the margins of shadow that McCammon paints.

So, when I say “messy” and “strange,” I mean it in the truest rock-and-roll sense. Think if you will of the The White Stripes. Or The Doors. Or Jimi Hendrix. Or late Beatles. Or Sleater-Kinney. Or any garage band playing music that isn’t about perfection but about what lies beyond and within each note — the messy thump of a bass drum, the fuzz of a grinding guitar, the trippy vertigo strains of an organ. We’re not talking the measured bleeps and blips of pop music: we’re talking about the unkempt margins of rock-and-motherfucking-roll, son.

I don’t know how McCammon does it, but both the story and the execution of that story mimic that kind of garage band rock. It’s loose and messy, it deviates from expected courses, it escalates just when you think it’s going to ease off and eases off just when you think it’s going to escalate, it’s trippy and slippery. Above all else, it offers a kind of genius from a storyteller who has in my mind achieved a mode of transcendence — here, then, is McCammon as storytelling Bodhisattva, staying around this crass publishing arena to show the rest of his what it’s like to write from the heart and make it count.

Another way of thinking about it is by talking about James Joyce. Weird, I know, but bear with me: if you read Joyce’s work, his fiction doesn’t become more buttoned-up — it gets bigger, broader, more personal, and certainly weirder. Even comparing PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN with ULYSSES is a fascinating exercise: the first fairly lean, the second similar but with a far greater storyworld. ULYSSES shows Joyce beyond the top of his game — he’s climbed the ladder, gotten to the top, and kicked it down behind him — and reveals an ultimate expression of the novel. He’s not afraid to deviate, either. He wanders down alleys you didn’t even know where there, with Leopold Bloom as our vehicle through the mundane chaos, the heroic normalcy of an everyman’s day.

(Let’s not talk about FINNEGAN’S WAKE right now.)

THE FIVE is McCammon’s ULYSSES.

That’s a wacky statement. I know. But I think it’s true. This tale of “The Five” — Nomad, Ariel, Mike, Terry, and Berke — takes those same trips down dark alleys, concerning itself less with a mechanical thriller-slash-horror plot and more with the nature of these characters and the power and madness of rock-n’-roll in this day and age. This is actually marketed as a horror novel, and… it is, I guess, but only barely. That’s not to say it’s not scary. It’s rough stuff at times. But again the supernatural component, while present, is barely there — a stroke of subtlety rather than overt paranormality.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure about the book for the first… 20, 30 pages. But then you slip into the vibe of it and it reveals itself. Soon your heart’s thumping like a kick-drum.

If I had one complaint it’s that early on McCammon seemed more interested in describing the technical beats of the music as it played — problematic for a guy like me who has the musical inclination of a cantaloupe. (Confession: I once played the drums. Second confession: I probably wasn’t very good.) But eventually he moves away from that and describes the music in cleaner, more poetic beats — paving the way to let you know how the music’s supposed to feel rather than the rote mechanics of how it’s played. It conjures to mind that this is a novel with the potential for transmedia extensions, if only in the form of us getting to hear the music of “The Five.”

Anyway. Point being, I recommend it. Two drumsticks thrust up and twirling. It’s a powerful, profound, trippy novel that’s troubling and unsettling throughout. This isn’t like anything else McCammon has ever done — again, it’s far fuzzier at the margins. But Stephen King was right to call it “full of rock and roll energy.” It isn’t McCammon’s easiest read. But, ULYSSES isn’t an easy read, either. Even still, both novels are some of the best of the form.

The caveat applies here that McCammon is easily my foremost “totem spirit” in terms of writers who influenced me. The guy’s one of my literary heroes and it’s nice to see him not just working, but at the top of his game. I’m looking cuh-razy forward to THE PROVIDENCE RIDER and whatever horror novel he’s got after that. (I still need to see if I can get my hands on his new WOLF’S HOUR stories, though. Dangit.)

All right, cats and kittens.

Your turn.

Recommend a book.

And go read THE FIVE while you’re at it.

I kid, I kid.

Seriously, though, it gets me thinking about other books of writing advice. I never understood writers who shirk writing advice because I’ve always found it so useful. I also don’t really grok those who absorb so much advice but then never actually… ohh, I dunno, put pen to paper because whenever I read great writing advice, all it makes me want to do is take what I learned and put it into play. Like reading the Kama Sutra for the first time. “Sun-Burned Donkey On Ravenna’s Porch? Upward Tilting Samsara With A Side Of Bhel Puri? Monkey Steal The Plums? I want to do all of these right now!”

Here’s the writing advice that lives on my shelf:

Ray Bradbury, ZEN AND THE ART OF WRITING.

Lawrence Block, both WRITING THE NOVEL and TELLING LIES FOR FUN & PROFIT.

Stephen King’s ON WRITING.

Robert McKee, STORY.

Elements of Fiction Writing: CONFLICT, ACTION & SUSPENSE.

Alex Epstein, CRAFTY SCREENWRITING.

Alex Epstein, CRAFTY TV WRITING.

Blake Snyder, SAVE THE CAT!

Syd Field, SCREENPLAY.

I’ve got other stuff, too — some stuff about writing horror (DARK THOUGHTS: ON WRITING), lots of grammar books (GRAMMAR GIRL, EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES).

Bradbury’s book is cool — lots of personal tales, very bite-sized stuff, a book of wildly-roving advice. I like the way he wrote many of his original stories: he penned a list of cool titles, then one by one wrote stories to go with ‘em. King’s book is pretty standard, and a truly great book — it was one of those books though that got me on some good habits and some bad ones. McKee’s story is nice enough, and there’s some valuable information, but the book is way too long for what it’s trying to tell you, and at times feels soulless. Epstein and Snyder show you the formulas that persist in film and television, and add new twists to those formulas.

I love what other authors have to say about the writing process. I lean toward advice that’s equal parts philosophical and practical and that lists into “hard-ass” territory, but then again, you already knew that: it’s ideally what you read here at terribleminds. I find it motivating. Thought-provoking. Never enervating.

How about you? What books of advice do you have on your shelves? Why are they there? Any books you didn’t like? Feel free to extend this out to blogs, too. I’m curious: where do you get your advice, and why?

As you may know, once in a while I like to open up the Circus of Pimpage — I undo the ropes, open the tent-flaps, and let the drunken elephants in velvet robes and grill-mouthed clowns with ruby-encrusted pimp cups come tumbling out. (That sounds like a creepy sexual metaphor. I assure you, it is not.)

What it is, then, is this:

Some of you have projects out in the world: books, e-books, games, movies, comics, webcomics, blogs, etc.

Others among you have fallen in love with projects that are not your own — books by other authors, films few have seen, comics that remain undiscovered, blogs that demand eyeballs. Etc.

So, drop down into the comments. Pop us a quick cheer and a link. Got something you’ve done or something you love? Let us know about it. Sometimes Twitter moves so fast I miss stuff. Or I think, “I should click that,” but then I forget to and next thing I know I wake up in an open grave just outside of Albuquerque and Lord knows I won’t remember then.

Plus, it’s neat to have the pimping contained. Like a self-promotional tempest in a tea-cup.

Some of you may be saying: “Chuck, this is you being lazy. It’s like you don’t have a real post for today.” To which I respond, “Duh.” That said, I still like the idea, so fuck it, I’m running with it.

What the hell are you waiting for? You got the invite. RSVP already.

You. Comments. Now.

I’ve been watching a lot of film noir from the forties and fifties over at Noir City, the noir film festival going on this month at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, and I’ve noticed something that’s been bothering me.

There are a lot of happy endings.

Sure, people die. There’s betrayal, shattered dreams, physical and psychological torture. But come on, you don’t have that you don’t have film noir. But with few exceptions the protagonists not only survive, they fall in love and live happily ever after.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Take the film THE HUNTED (**spoilers ahead, but that’s okay because chances are you’ll never see this movie**) with Preston Foster and Belita, who’s got to have one of the weirdest careers in film noir history. It’s about a cop who sent his lover up the river for robbery four years before and she might not have done it. Now she’s out on parole after vowing (cue dramatic chord) vengeance.

There’s a creepy factor, Foster was 48 when he made this movie and Belita’s character is 20, which means his character was banging her when she was sixteen, so that’s nicely disturbing. But that one scene where everything is supposed to climax in a hail of bullets and they kill each other before discovering she’s been cleared of the robbery and a subsequent murder?

Doesn’t happen. He gets shot in the shoulder. Shrugs it off. Her Electra complex is in full swing so she forgives him for railroading her into Tehachapi for four years. They jet off to Paris.

This is film noir cock block at its worst. Instead of walloping you with the haymaker you’re waiting for it taps you on the cheek in a pissy little slapfight. An otherwise interesting little film gets ruined because it pussies out at the last minute.

And that’s the writer lesson for today. Don’t pull your punches.

Everybody’s got a line they don’t want to cross. Ideas they’re not comfortable with. And those lines tend to extend into the things they like to read. I’m not saying it’s a one to one. Most of us, well, most of you, don’t really want to murder people.

But we’re just fine watching it on teevee. At least until we run into one of our lines.

There’s this thing in publishing I keep hearing about how if you hurt animals or children in your book you’ll alienate readers and get hate mail. Everything else is fair game.

Go ahead, eat the dismembered corpse of your antagonist. Lop off his head and ram it onto a stick. Just don’t shoot the baby.

You know what? Fuck that. Shoot the baby.

Your readers’ boundaries are there to be used. Violence, sex, torture, whatever. Those lines they don’t want you to cross, beat on them with a baseball bat. They’re chinks in their emotional armor. They’re exploitable. And whether you like the idea or not, as a writer you’re a dirty, lying manipulator.

Case in point, the novel BOULEVARD by Stephen Jay Schwartz. It’s about an LAPD vice cop who’s a sex addict. So, you know, it’s got sex. Lots of sex. Oooooh. Sex. Sex sex sex.

And it makes your skin crawl.

Schwartz has got sex scenes in this book that make you want to bathe in turpentine. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, explicit. There’s nothing erotic in it. It’s like watching an alcoholic go on a weekend bender.

He doesn’t pull his punches and instead of titillating, it’s tragic. And when it clicks just how fucked up this guy’s life is Schwartz owns you.

Now there is one thing about this I will say you can’t, must not, never, ever, ever do. Really.

DO NOT FUCKING WASTE IT.

It’s like that Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck cartoon where they’re competing for the best vaudeville act and Daffy wins by blowing himself up. The audience cheers and Bugs tells him they love the act. His response?

“I know, I know, but I can only do it once.”

You got one shot at this. Do not fuck it up. The only thing worse than pulling your punches is swinging and missing.

You see it all the time. A killing that’s just there because the writer is trying to be edgy. There’s no emotional impact. It’s not there for the story, it’s there so the writer can jump up and down and go, “Look at me! I’m one of the cool kids! Watch me swing my dick around! It does tricks!”

That right there is what we mean by gratuitous. Don’t be gratuitous.

Unless you’re showing nudity. Then be as gratuitous as you like.

I mean, come on, that shit sells.

Some of his stories, you know, I was a kid. I maybe didn’t get them or didn’t really care. But even still, I listened and I absorbed that — and, outside of realizing, “Hey, if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I’m trusting my old man to lead the charge against the undead horde,” I also eventually came to realize that some of my inclination toward storytelling is very much nurture over nature. I wasn’t born with it, but rather, it was kind of passed to me — not genes, probably, but memes. Skills and ideas that survive against others.

Of course, even still, it’s reasonable short-hand to call it DNA, I think. Because over time, even though it’s something you pick up rather than something that you’re born with, it still changes your fundamental material, still tweaks your human code a little bit.

So, the question I’m putting forth to you is, who’s in your storytelling DNA? It can be writers, too — hell, I know I’m the turbid broth of Robert McCammon, Douglas Adams, Joe Lansdale, Christopher Moore, and others. But go beyond just those you’ve read and look too to those in your life. Who flipped on that storyteller switch inside your head? Who taught you to love hearing and telling stories?

No, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

What I do know is this: I’ve had some good weeks of reading, and I know I’ve got good weeks coming up. First, I read Stephen Blackmoore’s DEAD THINGS, which is a book you can’t buy yet and will be available in… erm, 2012? But fuck it, you need to know about it now. It is urban crime fantasy that is brutal, bloody, and pretty damn hilarious. A very cinematic book, too. Opens with a bang, ends with… well, let’s just go with a much bigger bang. It’s got mages, ghosts, Santa Muerte, fire elementals, murder, Tasers, and snark.

Then I just read Joe Lansdale’s DEVIL RED. Hap and Leonard, the two protagonists, are the clown princes of moral darkness. If you haven’t read any Hap and Leonard, well, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you hate fun? Are you allergic to good books? C’mon. Go grab SAVAGE SEASON and read the — what’s he got, now? Ten books about those two good ol’ boys? Hap is kind of a… what, a liberal softie who can’t help but be a bad-ass, and Leonard is his gay black vet buddy who breaks even worse bad on folks and is twice as funny as any other protagonist you’ve read. DEVIL RED, like VANILLA RIDE, gets back to the darker heart of these two characters. Funny. Sad. Violent as fuck.

Then, after that, I’ll soon get to read the newest from Robert McCammon: THE FIVE. Been eager to read this for a long time, since it’s his first horror book in a good while. McCammon, if you don’t know, is my favorite writer. If you tell me you haven’t read anything of his, beware. I may push you down some steps.

Anyway. I like sites like Goodreads well enough, but I never really use or explore the site to its maximum — social networks with such specificity are very cool, but they sometimes lack in context.

So, here we are. And here I am, asking you: what are you reading right now? Are you digging it? Or, what did you just finish reading? Give recommendations if you care to. Let’s talk the books that currently exist in your ecosystem. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Hell, if you’re reading something self-published or “indie,” share that, too. Anything you got, we want to know about it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am not Chuck Wendig.

Chuck Wendig is in this box here [points to large wooden box wrapped in chains. The box shifts as though something is struggling to get out]. But don’t worry. I’ve left him a couple of airholes.

I think.

Anyway, my name is Russel D McLean. If you have any trouble understanding me, don’t worry. That’s because I’m Scottish. I’m also a writer – author of two noir novels, the second of which, THE LOST SISTER, has just been released upon your United States. In celebration I’m doing a series of invasions of other author’s blogs in a manic attempt to shill… uh, I mean spread the beautiful word.

Anyway, while Chuck’s locked away I figured I’d talk a little about sequels. Because, ya know, the new book is kind of a sequel (or at least the second in a sequence that started with THE GOOD SON) and I found myself thinking a lot about what that meant.

A sequel has to achieve a lot of stuff. It has to pull in new readers while pleasing old ones. It has to remain true to established facts while giving something new. It has to stand on its own and yet acknowledge the past.

It has to do something different.

Oh, yes. That’s the one that most people forget. While it’s considered the safe action to rehash old glories – see National Treasure 2, The Mummy 2 etc etc – what you wind up doing is boring people. Because while people think they want the same experience, what the really need is that same sense of excitement and unpredictability they got the first time round. It’s just tougher to put that into words than it is to say, “more of the same please”.

Why is THE GODFATHER PART II considered a perfect sequel? It expands upon and gives new life and new perspective on the first movie while still telling its own perfectly logical narrative. You could see GFII on its own, conceivably, and catch up to this world without having seen the original. Sure, some of the grandeur would be lost, but you wouldn’t be so confused as to throw the movie away and then batter your head against a brick wall until your brains dribbled out your ears.

Sequels.

They’re tough.

And not just when it comes to movies.

With THE LOST SISTER – which is a novel, not a movie* – I wanted to tell two stories. First there is the story that stands on its own. The one about the missing girl. Mary Furst, a girl who has no apparent reason to run away, is missing. There are questions about her disappearance, facts that don’t add up. As Our Hero – J McNee – digs into her life, he uncovers some very uncomfortable truths.

That’s my A story. And sure it could have been enough to hold the book by itself. After all, we established our hero in book 1 and if you want, you can keep a series character static. Many people enjoy that kind of thing. Some writers do it wonderfully. Robert B Parker kept Spencer is stasis for decades. Lee Child rarely changes Reacher or gives us any more about him than we need to know.

But I’m not that kind of writer. I need to let my characters change. Be affected by events. So THE LOST SISTER became a chance for me to explore my central character and find more about what makes him tick. I wanted him to confront some of his own choices over the course of the book, to see things in the case that made him question his own ideals and motivations. I wanted there to be something different in his outlook by the end of the book. In short, I wanted to tell a different kind of story with the same characters. Because otherwise… what’s the point? It’s like eating lukewarm leftovers. There’s something in there you recognise, but really it’s not the same.

I also wanted to explore the supporting cast and to see how they reacted in different situations. People I hadn’t expected to see again. Susan Bright, for example, who was supposed to be a throwaway character in THE GOOD SON and became something far more important. And David Burns, local “businessman” who is one of my favourite characters to write for: a man who does bad things for what he believes to be all the right reasons.

THE LOST SISTER changes all of these characters by the end of the book. Not all of them get to “learn” from their experiences, of course. I think we’re all lucky that I’m not God. Because as cruel as He can (allegedly) be, I think I’d be even worse in charge, winding folks up just see how they’d react. But then that’s the job of a writer – wind those characters up and watch them go!

Word so far on THE LOST SISTER – both at home and now in the US – has been positive. I like to think that it’s a good sequel, that it does more than rehash former glories, that it changes things for our characters, that it presents with new challenges and new situations. I’ll tell you what, I had a bloody ball writing it.

The Lost Sister is out now from St Martin’s/Minotaur as shiny hardcover or e-book.

*At least, not yet, if any prospective producers out there are listening…

– THE LOST SISTER at Amazon, and B&N

Russel D. McLean is an author, reviewer and general miscreant from Dundee, Scotland. You can read more about him here, at his website and author page. Click the pic to follow him on Twitter.

Finished Mockingjay.

Loved Mockingjay.

But wondering: why all the middling reactions toward Mockingjay? I wouldn’t call it “hate,” exactly — but I was warned repeatedly that the third book was essentially a big disappointment from the high of the previous two. Lots of “ehh,” “mehhh,” “pbbbt” reactions.

To which my jaw drops, my eyes launch out on springs, my tongue rolls, and the floor drops out from under me. Dang, I did not find that to be the case.

Your job, then, is to explain your disappointment (if you desire) in the comments.

I will not fling aspersions toward your general character. The question is not subject to any wrong answers. I mean, sure, I’ll throw flaming bags of poo at your head. I kid! I kid. They won’t be on fire. Sheesh.

My thoughts (and this will contain some very light spoilers):

The book was unflinching. Unflinching. This is not a shiny happy book. It is a book about children and war. It is a book where lots of characters you care about die. It is a book that again puzzles me and haunts me with the question: “How the hell are they going to make this into a PG-13 movie?” Seriously. Blood. Gore. Children dying. Nightmarish images. Murder. War. It’s not splatterpunk, but it’s not Harry Potter, either. Any effort to water this down to an acceptable family-friendly rating potentially does harm to the story’s message, a message carried on purpose by such grim, unceasing nastiness.

The book felt to me as the natural conclusion to the series — it carries the “game” motif back into play, this time on the battlefield. It pays off on things to which it was building. Nothing out of left field. For the most part the characters we care about are… concluded properly, I suppose you could say. Only one sticks out (Finnick) as feeling narratively inconclusive (and actually a little strange).

And yet, the book remained surprising, too. At no point did it feel rote.

The ending was pitch perfect, for me: like a shot of espresso, the book was super dark with a very bittersweet finish. I’ll say it again: not a happy book. And it does exactly what I was exhorting the other day — the storyteller is an emotional manipulator and the best and most memorable stories are the ones that truly made us feel something. Collins doesn’t fuck around. She’s constantly kicking you in the spleen, punching you in the kidneys, wrapping her hands around your throat. The woman knows how to hurt her audience. And the ending doesn’t do much to salve the wounds — a little. But not much.

So, chime in.

You read it?

You like it?

You find it disappointing?

Color me curious (which is actually a robin’s egg blue!).