Year: 2014 (page 4 of 61)

So, right now, the Serial podcast is super-hot. And obviously, Night Vale before that.

(I listen occasionally to the latter, but haven’t yet checked out Serial.)

Just the same, seems a good time to re-ask the question: what podcasts do you listen to? What are they, why do you dig them? Are the above two podcasts part of a resurgence, or just two shining examples in an otherwise unexceptional field?

I demand your input.

INPUT. INPUT. JOHNNY FIVE IS ALIVE.

Whoa, sorry, 80s movie flashback.

Anyway: podcasts! Go!

So, this past Wednesday night, that ^^^^ happened.

(L to R — Erin Morgenstern, Some Jerk, Margaret Atwood, Neil Fucking Gaiman, Lev Grossman.)

Holy shit. I know, right?! Ahem. Yeah. So, I was invited to speak at the Happy Birthday, Margaret Atwood event at the 92Y, and to call it “surreal” is like suggesting the ocean is “damp,” or outer space is “chilly.” Upon arriving at the 92Y, I was ushered into the green room where Neil Gaiman (an unsurprisingly lovely person) was just… you know, sitting there? Chilling out? And then Lev shows up (he’s brilliant), and Erin after that (a good friend and an amazing writer), then finally the woman of the hour (the year, the decade, the century) appeared: Margaret Atwood.

She has great presence. She’s funny and wry and happy and yet, takes utterly no shit at all.

Erin did not make cakes with cake material but rather, she made cakes with words (75* of them, which is to say, *not 75 of them). Lev gave an arresting reading of The Handmaid’s Tale. I spoke of those things You Likely Did Not Know About Margaret Atwood, and also assured the audience that she was not my girlfriend. (You pesky gossips, all of you.) And Neil and Margaret had a conversation on stage that was billed as an interview but was far humbler and more comforting than that — it had that rare feeling of sitting in an adjacent room listening to two people just talk rather than sitting in an audience watching two people put on a show. Intimate, warm, curious, writerly. I was lucky to be there to see it, much less be a part of it. I mean, seriously, how privileged to be with such giants. Not literal giants, but literary ones. I tried very hard not to single-handedly diminish the literary legacies of all those attending.

I’m still not certain it actually happened.

My life is super weird, you guys.

Bonus: I got to hang after with some great friends, including my wife, my agent Stacia, my serial killer friend Dave, and awesome humans Eliza and Emma, both of whom flew in from Australia just to see the thing. (Plus, I got to meet Rita Meade from Book Riot, and frankly, anything and anybody associated with Book Riot is badass.)

Anyway, thanks to the 92Y, Random Penguinhaus, and Margaret for having me.

More pics:

The holidays are a fun time, yeah?

From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, a stretch of joyous merriment! Tinsel and blinky lights! Snow and elves and great meals and good cheer and magic all around.

Which sounds to me like a phenomenal recipe for horror.

The holidays are in fact ripe with horror — meat and candy, mythological creatures who spy on you, winter hellscapes, animated toys. So many options for terror!

And so, that is your job, this week. To write a flash fiction — let’s up the story length to 2000 words — where you write a holiday horror story. Theme it to this time of year and to the holidays nestled in over the next month, and have fun with it. You can be gory or reserved, you can aim for psychological horror or more mythic madness. Lovecraftian? Slasher tale? Ghost story?

YOUR MOVE.

Your story is due by next Friday, noon EST.

Post at your website and link back here.

Ho ho ho horror! On monster, on necromancer, on vomit, on cancer!

Ahem.

Oh! And this is also the time when I recommend the EROTIC HORROR CLASSIC —

Santa Steps Out.

By Robert Devereaux.

Now on Kindle.

It is seriously fucking amazing.

No, I’m not kidding.

The other day, Kevin Hearne and I announced the Nerdtivity Contest. It is, in short, a contest to make a nativity scene out of nerdy, geeky, or pop culturey toys.

It’s a fun contest!

Some folks are not entirely thrilled with the contest, believing it to be in some way anti-Christian.

And a couple folks have asked that we stop the contest.

So.

Here’s the deal.

We’re gonna keep the contest going. And here’s why:

We’re not attempting to denigrate anyone’s religion and we don’t think that placing geeky toys in a manger does any damage to one’s faith or one’s ability to practice that faith. We understand if you don’t want to participate! And, regrettably, we understand if for some reason you feel like this is a very good reason to stop reading this blog or our books. But we believe this does no harm to anyone’s religion (and strictly speaking, a nativity is just a birth scene — we’re not mocking Christianity, nor are we mocking any religion that has any kind of sacred birth at its center).

As a personal note, while it is never my goal to offend, I also don’t particularly mind offending people. I do mind hurting people, and that’s usually my metric for these kinds of things. Am I hurting anyone? Persecuting them? I like to think that’s not what’s happening here. (Further, my books are frequently pretty darn offensive. Hell, this blog is offensive on the daily.)

So: contest is still on!

*blows whistle*

Once upon a time, my wife and I took a cheap empty Nativity scene.

And we turned it into the Nerdtivity.

Then we did it three more times.

I have not done it in five years and I was pondering doing when again.

I pondered so publicly on THE TWITTERS, and there my good friend and bestselling bad-ass author extraordinaire Kevin Hearne said (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“Fuck yeah, we should do a contest.”

And I was like, fuck yeah, we should do a contest.

And so, here we are, telling you to make your own Nerdtivity scene and send it to us. Kevin and I will pick our favorite, and then you guys will pick your favorites, and then for the halibut we’ll also pick a couple random entrants.

THERE SHALL BE PRIZES. What Prizes?

Here There Be Prizes

Grand Prize Winner (one chosen by Kevin and Chuck) gets:

A Complete! Signed! Set! (books 1-7) of the IDC UK editions from Kevin! Such a set doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. Seriously.

A turbo-rare SNACK OF THE SEX MANTIS mug from Kevin: a pulp classic by Beauregard Fat!

One terribleminds t-shirt (either: Certified Penmonkey or Art Harder, Motherfucker)

One terribleminds mug (choice of: Certified Penmonkey, Secret of Writing, Art Harder [NSFW or SFW versions!}, or Writer Juice)

One signed set of the Miriam Black trilogy (Blackbirds, Mockingbird, Cormorant), all in mass market paperback (these versions are going out of print December 31st!)

One signed set of the first two books of the Heartland series (Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn), both in hardcover.

Second Prize Winners (two chosen by audience) get:

Any one signed IDC book of their choice from Kevin.

A Rula Bula embroidered polo shirt in either M or XL from Kevin. They don’t make them anymore!

One signed copy of The Kick-Ass Writer

One terribleminds mug (choice of: Certified Penmonkey, Secret of Writing, or Art Harder)

Third Prize Winners (two chosen randomly) get:

One signed IDC book by Kevin (book of your choice)

A shitload of e-books by Chuck (writing books, plus some fiction thrown in)

The Rules

You get one entry. Multiple entries disqualifies you.

Send your photo to terribleminds at gmail dot com.

[Edit: make sure the word “NERDTIVITY” is in your subject header of the email!]

Your photo is due by 11:59PM on the dreaded Sunday the 14th of December.

Kevin and I will pick our favorites that week, and then you guys will have some time to pick your favorites, too. And then we’ll pick the random winners and everyone will celebrate by getting drunk on Kevin’s lawn. I’m pretty sure that’s the plan, anyway?

Contest only open to those in the United States unless you’re willing to front the costs of your own shipping because for reals, that stuff can get hellishly expensive. DAMN YOU, GLOBAL DISTANCE.

The Not-Quite Rules

Your Nerdtivity can be anything, really, outside the norm of the normal Nativity scene, though obviously the intent is to aim for that axis of geeky / nerdy / pop-culturey. Have fun. Be funny. Embrace your own inner nerdtivity. Photoshop is acceptable, though bad Photoshop won’t do you any favors. Really bad Photoshop can be sorta awesome, though, so YMMV.

That’s it.

Any questions, pop ’em in the comments below.

Before we flee, too — here’s Kevin’s Nerdtivity: “The dread lord Morpheus presides over the birth of Neo in the Matrix, who dreams of the Dreaming and Adventure Time while a masked 1920’s Sandman tells him what to fear most in life.”

NOW GO FORTH AND NERD OUT, MY NERDS.

Jim Hines beaned me in the forehead with a d20 and I was out for hours. While I was out, he snuck onto my computer and wrote this post. That pesky Jim! Which is also the name of the sitcom starring Jim, by the way. *plays That Pesky Jim theme music*

Chuck Wendig is known for giving good, blunt writing advice. Of course, he’s also known for writing Baboon Fart Story and for his role in the soon-to-be-released independent film Cock-Waffle. [ed — hey, I didn’t write Baboon Fart Story, I merely conceived of it. — cdw] But I can talk about Chuck’s poor life choices in another blog post. Let’s stick with writing advice for now.

Because it’s one thing to give good advice, but what about all those young writers who desperately need a few scoops of awful advice?

I’m here for you, my friends. Like a flatulent Papio cynocephalus, I have come to fill the air with so much anti-wisdom you’ll be tasting it for weeks. Best of all? It’s all based on personal experience, tested and true and terrible!

Because way back in 1995, I set out to write the continuing adventures of my favorite D&D character. And because I knew all writers made mistakes from time to time, I figured I’d get them all out of the way in that first book so that everything else I wrote would be pure gold.

I’m sure you’re dying to know how I did it. Read on, if you dare!

Step 1.

Start with your favorite character. You know, the one you’ve been playing and building up for years. The one you typed up that gorgeous character sheet for, with artwork you cribbed from the Wizards of the Coast site, and that really sweet Lord of the Rings font, all printed out on parchment-style paper. (You get bonus points if you’ve ever cosplayed the character, or commissioned artwork of them.)

In the case of Rise of the Spider Goddess, it was Nakor the Purple! (The exclamation point was an important part of his name.) Nakor the Purple! was a thief/druid based loosely on a Raymond Feist character. My version was an elf with a bottomless pouch of figs, a magic rapier, and a purple cloak. He was as awesome as a bionic velociraptor in Boba Fett armor.

None of your characters will ever be as awesome as Nakor, but that’s okay. The point is, nothing is more thrilling than listening or reading as someone goes on for 50,000 words about their D&D character.

Step 2.

You know all those notes your Dungeon Master prepares before starting the adventure? Vomit those things directly into your word processor. Infodump the hell out of that sucker!

Spider Goddess was a sequel to a campaign that took our college gaming group more than a year to complete, which meant I had a lot of vomiting to do. I’m talking flashbacks and dreams and flashbacks-within-dreams, not to mention random characters wandering up with no purpose whatsoever except to randomly babble bits of backstory.

Some people would say you should dole out the information as it becomes relevant. Screw those people! You (or your DM) worked hard on all of that research and backstory. You suffered for it!

Your job is to make the readers suffer too.

Step 3.

Introduce the rest of the cast. Don’t waste time with nonsense like character development, backstory, motivation, and so on. They’d all pale next to your awesome protagonist anyway. Just toss in some cardboard bad guys in black robes, a spunky thief, an angsty vampire, an evil goddess, and so on. Maybe a wise monk who knows martial arts, just to round things out.

No matter what happens, do not develop them into well-rounded, interesting individuals. This is your story, not theirs, dammit!

You might want to reference the other player characters from the game, but the other players might not like that. Mention them once or twice, sure. But make sure to do it in a way that’s completely irrelevant to the plot.

Step 4.

Let the quest begin! It’s time for your hero to set out to get to The Place so they can kill Bad Guys and find The Thing!

For Nakor the Purple!, it was an ancient scroll written by a dude with too many apostrophes in his name, destined to help Nakor stop an evil goddess, but first, he must overcome a series of random encounters and obstacles.

Don’t worry about explaining why the characters have to jump through each hoop. For example, Nakor has to flee his home when he’s discovered by bad guys. He retreats to a Mysterious Temple™, after which he returns home again. Risking capture and death. To get rope. I shit you not.

Does it make sense? Who cares? As the dungeon master author, you have the power to railroad these characters through whatever ridiculous or illogical nonsense you want!

Step 5.

Add magic. There are some who would say that the rules used in most gaming systems for magic make no freaking sense when applied to a novel, but don’t let those people spoil your fun. So what if there’s basically no cost to your character’s power, no logical reason they can level up and suddenly start transforming trees into warriors or magically mulch poison ivy into toilet paper.

Your characters’ magic should do exactly what the plot requires. Logic, limitations, and consistency are for lowers. Hell, ignore the gaming system rules too. This is your story, not theirs!

Step 6.

Forget revisions. Forget proofreading. There’s no feeling in the world like finishing a novel, so get to that point as quickly as you can. Remember to give it an awesome title, the longer the better! Something like:

The Prosekiller Chronicles:

Rise of the Spider Goddess

(An Annotated Novel)

For me, there was a seventh step. Almost twenty years later, after publishing ten novels and fifty short stories, I went back and reread Nakor’s story. I cringed a lot. I longed to reach back in time and punch 1995-Jim in the face for his clichés and mistakes and just plain awful writing he spewed out.

And then I decided to publish it. Alcohol may have been involved. If not, it probably should have been. I prepared all 50,000 words, along with an additional 5000 words of commentary, in which 2014-Jim gives 1995-Jim the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.

Because I think it’s important to acknowledge the bad advice and the awful mistakes. We’ve all written crap. Some of us have written more than others, but none of us are born knowing how to write groundbreaking, bestselling novels.

I hope Spider Goddess will be good for some laughs, and that it might also help new writers to recognize and avoid some of the many mistakes I made. My thanks to Chuck for letting me blather on, and to all you writers out there, remember the most important step of all:

Have fun!

Jim C. Hines: Website | Blog | Twitter

Rise of the Spider Goddess: Amazon | Kobo | Smashwords | Google Play