Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

January 16, 2025 / 5 Comments

Five Things You Learned As A Writer Writing That Cool Thing You Wrote?

Dear Writer Types: a reminder that this blog is a place where, if you have a book coming out, you can submit to me for a Five Things I Learned Writing [insert your book name here] guest post! If you’d like a good example of one, look no further than Alex White’s Five Things I Learned Writing August Kitko and the Mechas from Space.

How this works is:

You email me, at least a month before the release date of that book — email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com. (Don’t use the contact form here, I’m finding it’s kinda broken and I need to figure out why.)

You tell me what the book is, when it’s coming out, all the details, and then I email back and I say YAY, and then you make sure I have the guest post a week before it’s going to post. (It will usually post on the Thursday of your launch week though that might shift a little given what other posts are going live that week.)

The guest post should be in *.doc or *.rtf format, ideally, and with minimal formatting. I’ll copy/paste right into WordPress here and do the light formatting myself.

I’ll also need a high-rez, good quality copy of your cover! If it’s too small or low quality, I won’t post the post. I tend to lead with that cover and it’s the first thing people see here or, more likely, in their inboxes.

The format of the post is pretty easily discernible from the one I linked above, but the gist is:

[cover image]

[book flap copy/description, sans endorsements]

[no intro, just hop right into the first thing you learned]

[then list, y’know, in order, five things you learned, and these five things don’t specifically have to be about writing — they can be something you learned about yourself, or other people, or weird facts, or literally anything that falls under the umbrella of “I learned this while writing this book”]

[alex wrote a bonus thing; you do not have to write a bonus thing]

[then: author bio]

[finally, any author or book links we need to reach you and buy the book — buy links, author website, any social media we need to see, etc. — and please note that I prioritize Bookshop.org links and use affiliate links there]

And that’s it.

You do not have to be an author to send me this — agents and publicists/editors are welcome to be the ones to submit!

Please also note, this is open to traditionally published authors first and foremost, and that includes from smaller publishers, too. This is not an open call for self-pub folks, not because I don’t like you or your books, but rather, because in the past when I’ve opened to self-pub folks, it has bombed my already-under-duress inbox with a lot of submissions that I have no real ability to vet — and now, in an era of AI garbage and glurge, I don’t want people to buy some awful ChatGPT slurry from a link here. While I’m not responsible for the content of the books, obviously, I can still do my best to curate a trustworthy experience and, as much as it is wise to be wary of gatekeepers, sometimes a kept gate is a good thing when it comes to stuff like, again, Gen-AI slop. Apologies in advance!

Why submit for this at all?

Well, it won’t make your book a bestseller. But it does go out to over 11,000 subscribers (and you can also subscribe below, at the bottom of this page, to receive this blog and therefore receive the excellent FIVE THINGS I LEARNED entries that roll up in here), and is probably better than most social media posts thrown into the void.

How best to write such a post?

You know, I kinda feel like your best approach is not to try to sell the book. Obviously, you want people to read it, and you want to talk about it — but I just mean, don’t view this as a Capital-M Marketing opportunity so much as a chance for you to speak earnestly and excitedly about the thing you wrote. Naked promotion is pretty easy to reject — BUY MY BOOK is just noise. But telling us a story about the book — because all stories have stories — is interesting, and personal, and I think connects us to you and the work.

Can I just send you the guest post directly?

Hey, please don’t! I’d rather give you a green light first.

Do you edit the post?

If I see light tweaking is needed, I may do that instead of passing it back to you. If more than that, I’ll just not post and ask you. (Though please also recognize my time is limited, sadly.) If the post is just a hot mess, then I’ll let you know sorry, it’s not going up. So, y’know, please don’t send me hot messes! Please and thank you.

What if you don’t respond?

I try to respond quickly when these come in, but also, life is both busy and my inbox is a garbage scow moving down a river on fire, and further, the spam folder is occasionally randomly hungry. Pinging me again usually does the trick, and apologies in advance!

And I think that’s it!

January 14, 2025 / 2 Comments

Wanderers Is a Buck And Change

If you have one dollar and ninety-nine pennies laying around, you could take that filthy lucre and shove it into your computer or other digital device and that device will then give you 800+ pages of pre-peri-post-apocalyptic goodness, a sci-fi-horror AI-slash-pandemic novel.

That’s right, Wanderers is on sale today in its electromagnetic book format for $1.99 for some reason? It’s a book I wrote before 2020, I book I started before 2016 — and it definitely has a lot to say, somewhat inadvertently, about our present moment and our emerging future.

So, should this tickle your bits, go grab it from any of the electric bookmongers out there — Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc.

And hey, maybe you’re like, but that’s too cheap, I feel bad, and I say to you, don’t! Get what you can while the gettin’s good! But if you were so inclined to give a little more, you could add on its sequel, Wayward, and wouldn’t that be fun?

Anyway. Wanderers. Cheaper today, so maybe go grab it if you haven’t, and check out the sequel, too, if you’re so inclined.

January 13, 2025 / 1 Comment

The Standard Reminder About Preorders

Hello! Preorders of books are good! I’m just over here saying that for no reason at all, and definitely not because I have a book called The Staircase in the Woods coming out on April 29th ahem ahem cough cough. Why are preorders good, you ask? Well! For one, they’re good for the bookstore — a bookstore can ensure that they have the stock in place and also, hey, it’s an early sale, which is a win for them. It’s also good for the publisher but who cares, they’re publishers, they’re fine. But it’s good for, y’know, the author because it’s good for the book. A bookstore receiving some preorders knows to ensure that book is on their shelves in good number — maybe even putting it on a display. It also sends a good message to the publisher about the author, saying, hey, this person has readers who are willing to preorder their books.

And hey, one could argue it’s a good thing for you, the reader. In part because, hey, you guarantee you get the copy you want on the day you want it. And sometimes, preorder comes with other little bonuses or swaggy bits. (More on that as to how it relates to Staircase in a moment.)

Of course, you don’t have to preorder. It’s not essential and you should never feel bad for not being able to do it. Listen, the book will be out there whether you preorder or not. It’s just a nice thing you can do, if you wanna do.

(You can also instead ask your library to order a copy for you to read.)

And Staircase is getting some nice early press.

It’s on Paste’s Most Anticipate Horror of 2025.

Screenrant shouts out 15 of 2025’s horror releases to watch out for.

Goodreads calls it one of readers’ most anticipated horror novels of 2025.

And hey, I also remind you that if you pre-order from my local, Doylestown Bookshop, you’ll also get some bennies —

a) it’ll be signed and personalized to you, and mailed to you directly

b) you’ll get some very excellent Natalie Metzger STAIRCASEy stickers

c) you’ll receive a personalization that includes your very own

havdhr ebbz va gur ubhfr orlbaq gur fgnvef

(no, that was not a cat walking across my keyboard, I don’t have a cat, unless maybe there’s a ghost cat nobody told me about — it’s a code, which means you’ll need to use a ROT13 generator to solve that, as it contains a spoiler for the book, so decipher only if you want that spoiler)

You can get that pre-order here from Doylestown Bookshop.

If you don’t care about the signed/personalize/sticker/secret thing angle, you can also preorder from your own local, or from Bookshop.org.

OH, and a final reminder —

Book clubs!

If you’re choosing this book for a bookclub, and that club is five or more people and we can finagle a time, I will gladly do a 30ish minute virtual visit with your book club to discuss the book after you’ve read it. (These are a blast to do because at a book launch, I have to talk around a book rather than address a lot of the fiddly fun bits. At a book club we can get right into it.)

(You can ping me at terribleminds at gmail to set that up — don’t use the contact form on here, it seems to be busted and I’m working on it.)

OKAY, that’s it, thanks for checking out the book and spreading the word.

January 10, 2025 / 13 Comments

The Wildfires In LA

The wildfires in Los Angeles are as devastating as they are horrifying, upending lives and livelihoods left and right — and some people are going to need some help through this nightmare, so I’m dropping a couple links here, and you’re also free to pop into the comments to leave some donation outlets (though please note, some might get flagged as spam automagically, and I will endeavor to pluck them from that oubliette).

First up, two folks, two writers in fact, who have lost their homes —

AC Bradley, who is a most excellent writer and delightful person (and who is connected to a REDACTED project of mine) — the GoFundMe for her, her daughter and her sister is here.

And Ben Mekler, wonderful TV writer (and also very funny human online) just got a new house and had his second child, only for him and his wife to lose that house in the fire. The GoFundMe is here.

And beyond that —

California Fire Relief

California Fire Foundation

California Community Foundation

Global Giving’s CA Wildfire Relief Fund

World Central Kitchen

Pasadena Humane Society

And as always, going forward, be sure to get out and vote for people who actually believe in climate change and who endeavor to help in crises like these. Be additionally wary of misinformation and disinformation about the wildfires — seek not just information from reputable sources but confirmation from multiple reputable sources before sharing. We are in a fractured, unstable information environment and remaining vigilant against bad actors and those invested in our harm rather than our future is key.

December 31, 2024 / 13 Comments

Writer’s Resolution 2025: Change Your Story

The author makes a story. But a story also makes the author.

What I mean is this: I think as writers, as authors, as storytellers and artists, we build ourselves along the way out of the narrative spare parts we find on the journey of growing up. We collect them unconsciously, a crow snatching up buttons and coins, and we edit them into our own personal narratives. Some of this is obviously good and necessary; as we figure out who we are as a person, we also figure out who we are as writers. We figure out what we like, what we don’t, what challenges us, what drives us, and those becomes part of our tale. But sometimes, it presents a problem. We pick up unnecessary expectations, we gather jealousies to our chests, we clutch close many falsehoods disguised as truths, and we fuse them brutally to our idea of who we are as storytellers in this world — branches from someone else’s tree that we graft to our own.

Sometimes instead of finding our own motivations, we are handed motivations and accept them.

Sometimes, we accept the negative thoughts and problematic outcomes told to us, and they become so much a part of our story we think we told them first instead of having inadvertently copied them into our narrative.

Sometimes, the ever-shifting industry leaves us feeling rattled and false-footed and makes us doubt who we are, why we’re here, and if we can even tell the stories we once set out to tell.

We hear that we have to write this kind of story, not the one we want to write; we see that oh this writer is doing better than us so we have to change ourselves to be more like them; we make permanent decisions based on temporary conditions.

(And here I am reminded that recently I read an article about how the Broccolis, the family in charge of the creative side of the James Bond franchise, are keeping Amazon — who now own Bond! — at arm’s length because they don’t like how Amazon calls Bond “content.” And in that article there was a great quote from Barbara Broccoli when she recounts advice from her father: “Don’t have temporary people make permanent decisions.”)

Put differently, I know a lot of writers across the spectrum of experience — from neonates to published authors to bestselling ones — who are really going through it right now. They’re questioning their place in the grand spectrum of things — trying to see themselves and where they belong in the world of both authors and their stories. And to some degree, this is good! We’re supposed to gaze inward. We need to evaluate and reevaluate that about ourselves and the tales we tell. It is perhaps essential to keeping dynamic, to being active in our own upkeep and not just settling into a rut.

At the same time, it can be hard because that reevaluation can leave us wanting — it can make us feel lesser than we are, or not up to speed, or simply undeserving of a path forward. This forms a rut all its own.

I’ve noted in my book (sorry to plug, but Gentle Writing Advice is out there for you if you choose to find it) that self-doubt isn’t always a bad thing. Doubt can open a door to a better place — it can tell us, okay, the doubt is instinctive, something is off, it’s urging me to through the door to somewhere I need to go. But it can also hamstring us. It can poison us. It can be a lie, doubt born of falsehood, doubt with teeth, doubt serving only to halt our momentum through that door instead of pushing and prodding us forward.

New writers can feel like they’re never going to get there. Midlist writers can feel like they’re never going to break out. Veteran writers can feel like they’ll never do anything new. You worry you’re writing the wrong genre, the wrong way, the wrong this, the wrong that. The story we tell about ourselves darkens, suddenly turbid with this pollution of uncertainty and self-doubt, and so I think for me, maybe for you, 2025 can be a year where you change that story. Because we are authors of it. It doesn’t author us. We have the power of narrative and the power of editing that story.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can magically change conditions on the ground — you can still only control what you control, but what you control is the story in front of you and why you bring yourself to tell it. It’s that last part that maybe matters most, here. The story you tell can be less about the weight of expectation and certainly less about all the external valuations — but rather, the story you edit and rewrite and tell anew can be one about how, no matter what anybody else thinks, no matter what the conditions of the industry are, no matter what poison has been dripped into your ear —

You’re still a writer, and the writer writes.

Is this oversimplistic? Sure. Does it pave over doubt? It shouldn’t — like I said, some doubt is good. Some doubt is clarifying. A knife at your back pushing you forward, forward, ever forward. But you can relearn why you do the thing you do. You can tell the story that you’re a person who finishes what you begin, who tells the story they want to tell, who cares about the craft rather than the industry, who is good to themselves rather than cruel. You can change those parameters of your story. You are author and editor.

So, for me, and maybe for you, that’s my way forward in 2025 — just making sure that the story I tell about myself as a writer is the one I want to be telling, not the one I’ve just unconsciously and unwittingly accepted. It’s about a surefootedness and confidence in myself, and less about the outcome others control and more about the outcome I can command.

Don’t like the story you have about yourself as a writer?

Tell a simpler story. A kinder story. And most of all, a better story.

I should note here I was going to do a RAH RAH RAH FUCK ‘EM 2025 IS GONNA BE A KICK TO THE DICK SO KICK IT IN THE DICK INSTEAD kind of a post, but that just feels like — well, you’ve heard it before. You know it already. We’ve been there on and off for the last eight years. It’s gonna get bad and weird and we will have to meet it on the battlefield, and we can use our work as opposition, as therapy, as vengeance, as admonishment and as optimism and as escape. But for today, I felt like it was better to get at the deeper heart of who we are as writers, and how our own perverted (no not that kind of perverted, relax) narratives about ourselves can fuck it all up.

Maybe that helps you.

Maybe it doesn’t.

Either way, I hope 2025 is a year of many words for you. And I hope just as you give those words your power, those words give you power, too.

See you in the new year, little chickadees.

(You can find 2024’s resolution here, if you care to click.)

December 30, 2024 / 15 Comments

The Time Elder Is Dead! The Time Baby is Born! (Bye, 2024, Hello, 2025)

Blah blah blah, some stuff happened in 2024, stuff’s gonna keep happening in 2025, woo hoo, we did it, there’s your recap and your look forward all rolled up in one HASTY AND MEDIOCRE BURRITO, huzzah, *kicks sad burrito under couch, sits down on couch to play more Balatro*

*waits*

*stares*

*stares harder at you*

*because you’re still here*

UGH GOD OKAY FINE

I usually take this time at the end of the year to recap the year prior and to gaze longingly ahead at what’s to come, and as noted in an earlier post, I’m feeling this year like my mind is firmly rooted in the present moment, unwilling as it is to step one foot backward or forward lest my aforementioned mind get swept away in the whole uh-oh oh no of it all.

Globally, news-wise — I mean, haha, what the fuck is there to even say? The enforced rise by rich techbros of shitty environment-killing resource-stealing content-thieving AI? The ascent of the combo-pack of oligarchy and kakistocracy (oligkakistrarchy?)? The incoming administration? The less said at this moment is probably for the best. It’s all going to be very very stupid and very very demented and we all have a front row seat. I’m not looking forward to it! The end.

Personally, you know… for me, I think things are good? Happy family, a pleasant existence, still two dogs (though one is really slowing down now, poor Loa) — and I dunno, surrounded by good people. Went to Portugal for a couple weeks and that is the most delightful, most beautiful place. The soft, gentle decay of it! The street art! The thousands of hills! The food, the people, the architecture, the natural beauty. Truly a favorite place.

Speaking of travel, I also had the fortune of getting to hang with a couple of my besties, Kevin and Delilah, this year, as we went on a short mini-tour of the Midwest, and found that fun and impactful. Which I suppose bleeds over into the professional, but note that first and foremost those tours are personal, because I like those two people a whole lot and would gladly follow them into heaven or hell just for the company. It’s simply convenient that we’re all writers and have a tax-deductible reason to hang out and meet readers and booksellers and the like.

Professionally, things are… also good, for the most part? This past year, Monster Movie! came out and, I dunno, middle grade is tough right now but I had a blast with it and hope readers do, too. I did some school visits there and found them both a) really rewarding and b) very very difficult, like, off-the-charts hard for me. Not because I don’t love hanging out with students and talking about books and horror and stuff, but boy, if you’re in any way an introvert who drains their batteries having to be “on” in front of people, ha ha holy crap, talking to kids is triple the energy drain for me. It’s a lot, a lot a lot, like, you can’t just be on, you gotta be ALL THE WAY ON, every slider set to max, every knob spun to the top and then broken off. (I think this is a controversial opinion as, having talked to a lot of kids’ authors, they don’t seem to suffer this effect, so this is very likely just me!)

(You can order Monster Movie! here.)

Paperback for Black River Orchard landed, and I will say it’s gaining its second — or even its true — life in that format. I’m sure a cheaper buy makes it easier, but also the new cover is slick, and also maybe it just needed time to find its readership. But I think it has! Big jump in readership on that one in just the last few months. (Weirdly, or maybe not weirdly, actual apple-picking season seemed to be the biggest juice-up for sales?) I’m glad people are finding it and ohh hey it won the Dragon Award for best horror?!

(You can grab Black River Orchard in paperback here.)

I guess there were new editions of my Star Wars Aftermath books out — these in trade paperback. And if that makes you happy, then I am happy for you. I understand those books are controversial to some people, and not much I can do about that, but I had a lot of fun writing them and playing in that sandbox, and I try not to succumb to abject bitterness at how I was treated by those in charge of that storyworld, but mostly I fail, and bitterness continues to be the primary taste in my mouth after having worked in that universe. But if you enjoy them, I am truly glad. And if you don’t like them? Then hey, sorry, can’t be helped, go write your own.

Ummm. What else?

I post APPLE REVIEW REELS now at Instagram. Why? I dunno! I like doing them though. Maybe I should start a TikTok account, perhaps mere hours before it is made illegal and ejected from the app stores!

(Don’t worry, I won’t pollute anybody’s TikTok with my presence.)

I’m on Threads now, obviously, though I still far prefer Bluesky. A lot of user control there, and zero algorithm. That said, social media is a slow poison! But it tastes like candy, so there I go, like a squirrel slurping up antifreeze.

What does 2025 hold?

I’ll probably get to soon announce the two-book-deal I can’t yet really talk about (just know it’s about demons demons demons baby woooo demons).

I might get to talk about some of the new Wanderers TV developments.

I might get to talk more about my next middle grade, too, which is less horror and more “weird Wendigian meta-take on portal fantasy.”

In April, I get to release a book I am truly proud of, The Staircase in the Woods — it’s still very much a Chuck Wendig book, but at the same time, I feel like it’s something different for me, too, in a variety of ways. It already has a lot of early reviews over at Netgalley, and I’m really happy to see people responding well to it. The book means a lot to me and maybe it’ll mean a lot to other folks, as well. I almost think of Book of Accidents, Black River Orchard, and now Staircase in a kind of thematic trilogy. Maybe you’ll see what I’m talking about. You can preorder from Doylestown Bookshop, to remind you, if you want an early jump at the book and also some additional book-related goodies. I also might have something neat to announce about Staircase soon enough.

I will almost certainly be doing some bookstore-a-go-go visits for that book, so keep your apples peeled for that. Trying to figure out with my publisher what the shape of that tour can and should look like!

Where else will I be? Updated schedule so far —

Jan 10th, at Doylestown Bookshop in support of Clay Chapman’s wild new horror, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. (Details here.)

Jan 30th, I get to chat with Eric LaRocca at the NYPL in NYC, in support of his darkly wonderful At Dark I Become Loathsome. (Deets.)

I’ll be at Emerald City Comic Con in March, I think.

More stuff as I have it!

EDIT: oh fuck obviously too there’s THE STAND anthology, holy crap. I’ll be doing a signing for that, too, more as I know it. You can preorder it here.

I’ll be traveling, only semi-professionally, to Scandinavia over the summer — kinda doing a Denmark -> Norway -> Sweden thing. For kicks, and also for some researchy things.

(So if you have advice on traveling in that region, GIVE ME IT NOW.)

(Please and thank you.)

As to what else 2025 brings? Man, I do not know. I really feel like we traveled off the edge of the map, into that hazy, unwritten “here there be dragons” part. At least from a professional standpoint I’m… growing concerned that publishing is really starting to build for itself a certain genre bubble (I say that without any issues regarding any genres or the writers of said genres) and I worry what happens when that bubble pops, as it inevitably will. (And if TikTok really does go the way of the dodo, what happens to BookTok? Which is, as with many things, both an excellent and problematic influence on books, authors and publishing?) I dunno. I think it’s gonna get weird. All of it. Everything. Gonna get weird. So I’m gonna get weird in response, and maybe you can do the same and we will overwhelm the Bad Weird with the Good Weird and return balance to the Force.

Whatever the case, thanks for being here, thanks for reading. I’ll see you tomorrow with a fresh tasty WRITERS RESOLUTION 2025.

And away we go.