Year: 2014 (page 26 of 61)

Thor’s a lady. Captain America is a black dude. Ms. Marvel is Muslim. Spider-Man is a Hispanic kid. Groot is a tree. Adam Christopher and I, along with artist Wilfredo Torres, have reimagined the original patriotic superhero — The Shield, once of Red Circle comics, now of the Dark Circle reboot — not as Joe Higgins, but, rather, as a full-figured ass-kicking woman.

It’s exciting stuff. I’m like, It’s not enough! It’s addictive. Let’s see Idris Elba as James Bond. Or Emily Blunt as Jane Bond. Hey, Japanese Batman. Or flip the Luke and Leia roles in Star Wars.  Transgendered Pakistani Doctor Who! More, more, more!

*flips the table*

*then gender-flips the table*

*now the table is a chair and also a Chinese lesbian*

Actually, a while back I suggested flipping the gender of the Doctor, and dang, you’d think I was dropping a hot deuce on a Gutenberg Bible. Some people get mad when you say stuff like that. Like, religious war mad. Like, you just insulted my mother mad.

And I’m seeing that again. Not about our variant of The Shield — but about beloved characters like Thor. Like, ahhh what the fuck if Thor is a woman then anything can happen what if my Mom becomes my Dad and my dog becomes a plant and then I fuck the plant and then we have dog-plant babies holy snack-nuts this is worse than global warming.

People rail against this. They find excuses why it shouldn’t happen — “But Thor is mythology,” they say, as if mythology is history and as if comic book fiction is meant to be an accurate, factual depiction of historimythic events. (Sidenote: I now quite like the word “historimythic.”)

Thing is, I kinda get it.

Fifteen years ago (cough cough, maybe even ten), I probably would’ve been in the same camp. In my 20s, geek shit was more important to me. You bind yourself up with these things — Star Wars isn’t just a movie you like, it’s an emblem for things you believe, a sign of who you are, acting as both aegis and mantle. Someone fucking with that feels like someone fucking with your DNA. (Doubly ironic then when it’s troublemaker George Lucas mucking about with the work of legend George Lucas.) You say, “But I am That Thing, so if you change That Thing, then who the fuck am I?” Geeks don’t like change. That includes anybody who geeks out about anything. Washington Redskins? GASP HOW DARE YOU. Changing the name wouldn’t change the team. It would simply be a name that stops pissing in the eyes of Native Americans. But changing it is like saying, “If you change of the name of the team I love, what does that say about me?”

It says nothing about you, of course, but we’re weird creatures, we humans. Hard-wired, it seems, to associate with the things we love in a way that goes beyond mere appreciation. We aren’t distant. We mesh. We merge. We braid ourselves up with the things we adore.

And so, we rail against it.

Let’s hack away at some of the issues surrounding the gender-flip.

But This Thing I Love Is Different Now

It is. And I know that’s hard. I don’t say that glibly — I mean, yeah, no, I get it, change is hard. Even in something simple as the comic books we read. But, here’s a vital reminder:

The whole reason you have the affection you had is because the original version existed in the first place. Which means it still exists. Nobody is taking away your old Thor comics and drawing boobs and a vagina on him. You still have those things. The version you loved hasn’t gone away. Now it’s time, as all children must learn, to share. Let somebody else drive the Big Wheel around for a little while, okay? Someone who maybe doesn’t look like you or sound like you.

It Breaks The Rules Of The Story

Again, Thor can’t be a lady because Thor is a dude in the mythology. The Doctor can’t be a woman because [insert some cryptic rules-lawyering from some episode 20 years ago].

These are made-up stories, though.

This isn’t science we’re trying to defy. We’re not spitting in the Eyes of the Gods. I can literally, right now, go write a story where Harry Potter is a pansexual goat-being. It’d be absurd and I’m sure somewhere J.K. Rowling would quietly harrumph in her tea, but I’m just saying: this stuff ain’t gospel. Stories are meant to be flexible, malleable — even religion and mythology allows the teller to adjust the tale to the listener. That’s a feature, not a bug.

This Is Tokenism

You misunderstand tokenism. Tokenism is, and here I’ll quote The Internet:

the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.

So, to be tokenistic, Marvel might say, “Thor isn’t going to be a woman, but look, there’s a woman in the next issue. She’s a toll booth attendant and she’s a Strong Female Character because dang, look at those biceps. She handles loose change like a champion. She’s her own boss. #feminism.” Instead of making Captain America black, they’d say, “We’re racially diverse because his dry cleaner is Asian, and his real estate agent is a homosexual African-American, and look! Page four! Someone with mocha-colored skin walking a dog.”

Tokenism is doing the bare minimum to look like you’re meeting the maximum.

It’s Just A Publicity Stunt

I do not know the heart of anybody who decides to invoke greater pop culture diversity, but what I do know is that media companies are pretty much always engaging in publicity stunts because that’s how they get attention. If something like this is at the heart of a publicity stunt — hey, whatever. You only do publicity stunts when you think they’ll work, and if they think engaging in greater diversity would net them valuable media attention, that’s suggestive of a better world than I think I lived in ten years ago. The publicity stunt used to be that HOLY CRAP THEY’RE KILLING SUPERMAN. Now it’s HOLY CRAP THEY’RE SPACKLING OUR COMIC BOOK PAGES WITH DIVERSITY IN AN EFFORT TO READ MORE READERS.

Perhaps I’m just not cynical enough, but recognizing that this kind of news will grab attention and hook new readers — readers representative of the diverse world in which we live — uhh, okay, yeah, sign me right the fuck up.

It’s Just Politically-Correct Snarghlewarble

“Politically correct” is a phrase so often (mis)used, it’s entirely worthless. My opinion is that if you’re trying to score points with a political party or with folks to get votes, then that, my friends, is politically correct. If you’re trying to make an earnest change to whatever (media, policy, education, workforce) and that change happens to be about sexism or racism or some other perceived imbalance, that’s not political correctness. What you’re calling “politically correct” is really just someone trying to make the world a better place according to their ideals. “Don’t say that hurtful word” isn’t an expression of political correctness. It’s an effort to be Ask You To Be Less Shitty. “Let’s see more diversity on the pages of this comic book” isn’t somebody trying to score political points. It’s trying to address what the person or company sees as a problem.

Why Can’t They Make New Heroes Instead, Jeez

The logic here is, “Why do they have to make Captain America black? They should make new heroes, instead, that are black.” I get the point — and at the core, the creation of new and diverse characters has value. But you also have to realize that new characters regardless of gender / sexual preference / skin color / nationality / etc. have a hard time reaching new readers right out of the gate. They run the risk of being marginalized heroes. One of the great things about taking iconic pre-existing characters and flipping them around is that it says, hey, these top-shelf characters aren’t just restricted to one segment of the population (i.e. the Straight White Dude contingent).

Also, this excuse runs the risk of sounding like, “Yeah, sure, you can have your super-ladies and whatever, just keep them over there. Go play in your own sandbox. This one is ours.”

No, What We Really Need Are More Diverse Creators

Can’t fault that argument. Entirely true. Thumbs-up. High-five. Put it to a vote — you got mine.

That being said: as a fellow creator, I can only do so much here. I can support and signal boost.

Further, this isn’t a one-or-the-other dichotomy.

But yes, you’re entirely correct: more diverse writers, directors, artists, even executives.

But These Characters Don’t Look Like Me

Nope, they don’t. And they may have experiences not indicative of yours. So what? What do you think everyone who isn’t like you has been experiencing all this time? That same feeling. And yet they still read Batman or watch the same television shows.

Confession time: I’m a jerky white dude. I’m clumsy in my assumptions and preconceived notions and — hey, I acknowledge my privilege. The privilege of privilege is being blinded by it and blind to it. You can walk around all day, whistling like a happy asshole, completely unaware of all the toxic douchebaggery splashing all around. We step on flowers we don’t even notice.

Sometimes, though, you have your eyes opened to it, and it’s a real holy-shit-we’re-in-some-kind-of-sexist-racist-Matrix moment. Rape culture doesn’t seem like a thing until someone starts pointing it out and then it’s a really awful Magic Eye painting, except instead of seeing a dolphin you’re seeing how we ask rape victims what they did to deserve getting raped. Once someone tells you, “That Terrible Thing is really an actual thing,” it’s ants, it’s dust, it’s fingerprints-on-glass. Didn’t notice it before, but now you realize it’s freaking everywhere.

And one of those “it’s freaking everywhere” moments is when you realize, oh, yeah, okay, our pop culture has been speaking very directly to heteronormative middle-class white-guy culture for a long time. Comics, television, novels, whatever. It’s time to share the storytelling. Time to pass the Talking Stick. Besides, maybe if we saw more diversity on the page, we might be willing to acknowledge the diversity outside our doors. I often say that the most valuable multitasking we can teach our kids and express in ourselves is to dual-wield Empathy and Logic, and if this helps in that, so be it. If this makes people more open? More aware? How is that possibly a bad thing?

You want to talk about Kindle Unlimited.

I know you do because folks have tweeted me, asking me about it.

I even got a couple e-mails. A whole couple. Almost a few.

(People, when will you learn I’m no expert on anything?)

First up, if you want to talk about it, I will point you to Mike Underwood’s post here. Also, this GigaOm article is worth the direction of your uncertain, questioning gaze. (If you don’t know the core gist of the Kindle Unlimited service, it’s this: unmoored from the Prime Kindle lending library is another service which you can pay $9.99 a month for in order to read a whole host — around 600,000 e-books — on your Kindle device or app. It consists mostly of Amazon Publisher books and KDP Select author-publisher books. You can do a free month trial right now.)

My thoughts — unfocused and rambly, because it is Friday and at this point I’m not even sure I’m sitting here typing on a keyboard and not nude in the woods somewhere banging on a yellow-jacket hive, hallucinating from anaphylaxis — are as follows:

a) Amazon is interesting because it is a big company and yet it moves like a spry, tiny company. Which is awesome and scary because when big companies move quickly, it is often tectonic.

b) I don’t know yet if this is tectonic. It is interesting to me as a reader and a little scary to me as a writer because all new things are scary to me as a writer because writers are ultimately flinchy since being whacked in the nose so many times with bad deals. I think if this becomes a truly dominant model, then it will be tectonic, shaking How Books Are Consumed and How Authors Are Paid to the molten, trembling core.

c) I think it’s a good price point.

d) I think there’s an argument to be made where this devalues books.

e) I think there’s an argument to be made that high e-book prices hurt authors more than low e-book prices, so, blah blah blah book value exposure something snore.

f) I think Spotify was bad for bands but this isn’t Spotify.

g) Most of the time, your money triggers based on people reading to a certain point in the book — 10% or so. If this becomes a dominant model, maybe easy to game? It’s like, someone reads as far into your book as they would the available free sample, that triggers payment. Which is nice. But potentially subject to some kind of abuse.

h) Contrary to the narrative about Amazon, this could be interpreted as them hoping to keep actual e-book prices high. If you look at the language that’s being reported (this bit found at Publishers Lunch) —

Filling in one of the unanswered questions for authors, Amazon Publishing authors will be compensated in a manner similar to that to for authors of publishers that agreed to participate. As Amazon Publishing executive Jeff Belle wrote to agents in an email, “every time a customer reads more than 10% of your author’s book through Kindle Unlimited (about the size of the current free samples available for Kindle books), your author will earn their full ebook royalty rate based on the average sale price of their book for the given month.”

— that suggests an incentive for keeping your e-book prices higher, not lower, particularly if Kindle Unlimited becomes truly popular, or even as noted, dominant. (I bolded the relevant bit suggesting this.) The higher the e-book price, the better that average becomes. It ostensibly even discourages sale prices. Prices too low, too often, and authors will be paid less.

i) You will find some of my books there, including Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn, and the short fiction set in the Heartland world, The Wind Has Teeth Tonight. You’ll also find Kick-Ass Writer there. (Full list here.) None of my self-published work is there, as this appears to be only open to those in KDP Select. KDP Select is the “I’m with Amazon exclusively” program, which I don’t dig because I do well selling my author-published work elsewhere.

j) No, I didn’t know about Kindle Unlimited before a couple days ago. I was not given a chance to opt-in or opt-out. This isn’t exactly abnormal for publishers, mind you. I do not believe KDP Select people received any warning, either — so, if they’re in, they’re in for at least 90 days or so, I believe. They can, I expect, opt out thereafter. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

k) That said, worth realizing that Amazon not giving authors any overt choice or head’s up suggests they’re more like regular old publishers than you might believe. Which isn’t good or bad — it’s just worth noting.

l) Ten bucks a month isn’t as good as I’d like, but one assumes (hopes?) that the roster will grow, and not shrink. Then again: could this be tied in at all to current publisher discussions? Did publishers know much about this? Some did, presumably.

m) But but but, it contains audio, which is big.

Overall: it’s interesting.

I am cautiously optimistic.

I like being read and I like being paid. I hope this does both.

I am, as always, wary of Amazon corralling all of the book world under one tent — e-books! Kindle! Goodreads! Audio books! Publishing companies! Print-on-Demand! And now, subscription services! — because monoculture makes my butthole clench.

Still — I’m trying the free month because free month.

Still: stay tuned, surely more to come, with further clarity.

Feel free to comment: what do you think about Kindle Unlimited?

Play nice in the comments. (None of that “Amazon Is EEEEEEVIL” rhetoric, please.)

Last week’s challenge: @YouAreCarrying

Next week is SDCC — San Diego Comic-Con. Which means this week is a lot of comic booky superhero-flavored stuff. News bits in particular (including my own bit of good superhero news with author Adam Christopher). As such, I’ve got superheroes on the brain.

Which means this week, you will have them on the brain, too.

I want you to write 1000 words of superhero fiction. Except — except! — I also want you to mash it up with another genre. So, superhero fantasy. Or superhero horror. Superhero romance? Whatever. Pick another genre, smash it into the superhero one. Go nuts. Post it at your online space. Link back here. Due by next Friday, noon, EST.

OH, HEY, WHAT’S THAT.

Oh, y’know, maybe it’s just Adam Christopher and Yours Truly tackling the rebooted, gender-flipped The Shield for the Archie comics Red Circle revamp, Dark Circle Comics.

We’ve got Wilfredo Torres making magic on the art machine.

(And we’re totally in USA Today talking about it.)

And we join other creators revamping the Red Circle titles, too — Duane Swierczynski and Michael Gaydos on Black Hood, plus Mark Waid and Dean Haspiel on The Fox.

Really excellent company, yeah? Yeah.

All this under the editorial iron fists of Masters Alex Segura and Paul Kaminski, both of whom deserve eternal thanks for letting us two cuckoopants novelists play in their comic book sandbox and create our own “Daughter of the Revolution.”

So, in other words: holy crap.

Adam and I have worked on some other comic ideas before this — honestly, we work well together. He’s a pal and a gifted writer. If you don’t know Adam, you will. (You should familiarize yourself with his work, stat. If you want a free taste, check out Cold War at Tor.com right now.)

More soon (including, I think, some thoughts on gender-flipping and diversity in comics).

In the meantime, you can find Adam and I at our Tumblr: Adam And Chuck Make Comics.

I’d like to thank those amazing comic writers who inspire me (and, I’m sure, Adam as well): Gail Simone, Greg Rucka, James Robinson, Marjorie Liu, Kieron Gillen, Kurt Busiek, Kate Leth, Alex de Campi, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Christopher Sebela, Paul Tobin, Caitlin Kittredge, Faith Erin Hicks, Kurtis Wiebe, Matt Fraction, Neil Gaiman, Devin Grayson, Mike Mignola — you know, that list goes on and on and I could be here all day.

HA HA HA I GET TO MAKE COMICS NOW WHEE

MY ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON ALL FORMS OF WRITING AND STORYTELLING CONTINUE

Ahem.

I’m excited, what can I say?

Oh, and one last parting shot of The Shield…

Two petty criminals find themselves inextricably linked when a stop at a roadside bar leads to murder. On the run and out of options, they reluctantly rescue a stranded boy and his dog from a lonely crossroads in the Mojave Desert and decide for the first time in their lives to do the right thing. But this one selfless act unleashes a terrifying onslaught of demonic trouble as they struggle to save the boy—and themselves—from an evil far greater than they ever imagined.

1. We Were Somewhere Around Barstow

Barstow, California has a Home Depot. Who knew?

2. The Method

Writers can learn something useful from method actors. Back in the 20^th Century, two schools of acting battled for prominence. Classical actors sought to create a lifelike portrayal by studying people and applying the knowledge to their performance. They worked from the outside in. Method actors searched for an emotion similar to what the character was feeling and used that information to inform their performance. They worked from the inside out. Up until I wrote Ceremony of Flies, I used the classical approach. I can’t quite remember why I had the idea to try the method approach but EUREKA. This was a breakthrough. Infusing a scene with a specific emotion bumped up the quality of my writing a level or two.

3. Scary Nuns And Cool Mythology

Christian mythology is more interesting than I thought. I’ve shied away from Christian themes because the world has enough stories about Satan and hell and clergy battling demons, and what do I know about it anyway? I discovered there’s plenty of other cool myths to explore. Also, Nuns are scary. Really, really scary.

4. The Power Of The Novella

Novellas aren’t short novels or long short stories. They’re a distinct literary form with interesting limitations and possibilities. Subplots and multiple point-of-view characters belong in novels. The most successful short stories are told in a single scene with a single point-of-view character. (Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Please list all instances that prove me wrong in the comments. Start with Beowulf) Novellas fit in an interesting middle space. Like short stories they are best when they stick to one point-of-view character and like novels they have the space for multiple scenes. It’s an intriguing form to work with. Novella’s dip a little bit deeper into the world without going in for full emersion. An added bonus is that novellas are especially well suited for reading electronically. Readers seem to like being able to finish a book in one sittings. It appeals to the movie watching instinct.

5. What Happens In Vegas

In 1910 a law was passed in Las Vegas that forbade all forms of gambling including flipping coins. This harsh law inspired gamblers to take their games underground. The lesson here is: fun cities like Las Vegas develop when conservative law makers are in charge, so elect those folks… No, maybe there is no lesson. Las Vegas is still pretty cool.

* * *

If you are a writer:

Consider self-publishing.

Not everything.

But at least one thing.

A short story. A novella. A novel that’s too weird and too risky to crack the carapace on the traditional system. A sex manual. A cookbook. A baboon fart story. Something. Anything. It’s like achieving carnal pleasure from a vibrating home appliance: everybody should try it once. I’ve spoken to plenty of authors who are increasingly going in the hybrid mutant miscreant deviant direction of making out with all forms of publishing, and they seem pretty damn happy doing so.

Here’s why, in short, you should at least dip your toes in these warm waters:

1. Because Yay Money

Selling through most online outlets nets you somewhere between 35-70% of the cover price of your work. This percentage is even larger when you sell direct (and do believe me: you should consider selling direct). It’s easy to conflate this with suggesting that self-publishing will earn you more money overall — this isn’t automatically the case, mind you, because while traditional offers lower percentages, you might sell more with them (and further, the advantage of an advance is notable for many authors who can’t foot the bill to self-publish everything).

Just the same: acting as your own author-publisher gives you a greater return per individual books sold. It’s a good deal, not a bad one, and while it cannot replace the advantages of what you get by being with a larger publisher, it brings this as an advantage all its own.

2. Because Yay Steady, Fast Money

The money isn’t just good — it’s pretty close to immediate. (It really is immediate when you sell direct.) Traditional publishers pay more slowly — some pay so slowly you’ll think they’re shipping your check on some icebreaker sailboat shattering its way through frozen polar waters. Even if the money you earn from your author-published releases is small, it remains steady — steady enough to potentially supplement income, maybe even enough to let you do what too few authors can: go totally fucking pantsless. Uhh, I mean, “go full-time.”

3. Because The Sweet Taste Of Freedom

Publishers, understandably, have a stake in what you publish with them. They are, for better or for worse, your partner in the endeavor, so they want to sign off on what you’re doing. They’re invested in you, but like any stakeholder, that gives them a say into what you actually do.

Self-publishing offers you total freedom. Which is scary and dumb sometimes and might lend itself to drunk-publishing (“I GOT BLITZED ON GIN AND TONICS LAST NIGHT AND ENDED UP PUBLISHING EVERY HALF-FINISHED ABERRATION OF A TRUNK NOVEL I WROTE SINCE I WAS 13. IS THAT BAD?”), but it also grants you a weird breath of fresh air. Publishing is about business, but writing is about craft and art — and if you want to take the risk to publish some really off-kilter genre mash-up: that’s your right to do so. Erotica featuring your favorite NPR on-air personalities? Go you! Shine on, you kooky cubic zirconium.

4. Because The Iron Glove Of Control

When you’re with a publisher, lots of things remain out of your control. This can be blissful in a lot of ways — because not every author wants to be involved or invested in every step of the publishing process. Just the same, eventually you might hit a point where you feel like your publisher isn’t doing everything you want them to, regardless of your expertise (or, equally likely, lack of expertise). You think the cover is ugly as a possum’s asshole. You think they should be targeting libraries more. You’re persnickety about fonts. Whatever. When you’re an author-publisher — ta-da! All that falls into your mashing, sweat-slick hands. You set the price. You determine all of the marketing and advertising. You can design the prettiest cover or just put a picture of a dog humping a bunny rabbit on the cover. The control is yours. You have all the levers, all the buttons. You’re the Doctor and this is your TARDIS. Flip switches! See what happens.

5. Because You Actually Learn What A Publisher Does

Once you publish yourself, you start to learn more about what publishing actually entails. Which means when it’s time to talk to your other publishers, you’ll have a real clue what they’re doing, and why, and if they should be doing it better. Listen, part of why publishers have power is because they own that power. Deservedly. They know how to do the things you don’t do. That is, frankly, part of the arrangement. But — but! — if you learn more about their role, you at least buy yourself a greater investment into their role, and can determine more completely whether they’re actually working for you or abusing the arrangement.

Learning more about the business side of your writing life? Never a bad thing.

6. Because Faster, Pussycat — Kill Kill!

You should not hastily self-edit your work, slap on some kind of horrible stock photography as your cover, then flick your literary booger onto Amazon’s windshield in the hopes that careless readers will get drunk enough one night to lick it off. That’s what bad author-publishers do (*swats them with a newspaper*). Right? Right.

But, even if you take the proper amount of time to outline, write, edit, edit, edit, rewrite, edit, re-edit, format, design, and then post — you’re still doing it faster than larger publishers. This is often a knock against those publishers when it really shouldn’t be — the time it takes them to put together a book is a team effort, and requires a lot of careful threading to marry it into the schedule with all their other books while simultaneously helping to ensure it gets space at the bookstore shelf level. What this means, though, is that in the gaps between traditional releases, you can slot in books you are publishing yourself. You are the mortar between bricks.

6. Because More Pebbles Means More Ripples

A creative career — meaning, actually making money being a person who crafts the fuck out of art — is a a hard row to hoe, but despite what many might say, nowhere near impossible. Part of it just means throwing a lot of pebbles and making a lot of ripples. Ripples run into other ripples and have interesting effects — some go far, go wide, and reach the shore.

The more pebbles you throw?

The more ripples you make.

Author-publishing affords you the chance to make more ripples.

It might lead to new and interesting deals with larger publishers.

More importantly: it might actually earn new readership. Gasp!

(And remember: we do not build our audience. We earn our audience.)

7. Because You Might Like It

It’s like with anything. You need to try new things because, hey, guess what?

You might enjoy it. You might decide you enjoy the opportunity to be bit more independent. It tickles some part of you — maybe it’s the freedom, maybe it’s the control, maybe it’s that you can write a fictional instruction manual for a time-traveling VCR and post it to the Internet and charge three bucks for it because why the fuck wouldn’t you?

As always: diversification is rad. Publishing with publishers large, small and so itty-bitty the publisher consists of you-and-only-you brings a host of advantages and disadvantages unique to each path. The truly amazing thing about being an author right here, right now is that you aren’t required to pick one path: you can multi-class like a dungeon-traipsing dragon-hunting bad-ass. You can explore every aspect of publishing and mine them for their advantages — which further helps to obviate their notable disadvantages.

You don’t have to go all-in with author-publishing. (I’d advise not doing this, actually. This is business, which means baby-steps to see if the ground if stable beneath your feet.) But it remains an opportunity — a real option. But how will you know that if you don’t try?

Would love to hear about your experiences as an author-publisher. Good and bad!

Drop ’em in the comments below if you’re willing to share.

* * *

500 Ways To Write Harder aims to deliver a volley of micro-burst idea bombs and advisory missiles straight to your frontal penmonkey cortex. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? This book contains a high-voltage dose of information about outlining, plot twists, writer’s block, antagonists, writing conferences, self-publishing, and more.

All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.com, one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (as named by Writer’s Digest).

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