Year: 2016 (page 25 of 38)

I have the pleasure to know the spectral presence known as “Leanna Renee Hieber,” who does not write books so much as she breathes them effortlessly into being with sheer pneuma. She’s awesome, and so you will sit very politely and listen to her tale of publishing woe — a tale with a much happier ending, a tale that tells the message of how the best thing you can do as a writer is hang the fuck in there. Because you’re only out when you bow out.

* * *

Peoples of the written word,

I’m very lucky to call Mr. Wendig here a friend, and I’m a huge fan of his talent, sense of humor and genuinely being a good guy. I also appreciate how open and unafraid he is to talk about the most brutal sides of the publishing industry, the equally intense difficulties and joys of being a writer. So with this in mind, I bring you my personal tale in hopes of helping someone else who has hit a wall and needs to commiserate as much as needs a sign of hope, to draw back a curtain on the vagaries of publishing and the difficulties of a writer’s emotional landscape when things go wrong and right.

I’ve maintained a writing habit since I could hold a pen. I don’t remember a time without writing. I went to school for Theatre performance, writing on the side, toured around the country doing Shakespeare, got my Actor’s Equity union card and moved to New York City to decide between a life on stage or in the page. I was at a Broadway callback and all I could think about was the book I’d started 6 years prior when I was an intern at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. Turns out I loved The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker far more than I loved Broadway (and that was A LOT). I thought to myself in that moment: if I do ONE thing before I die I HAVE to publish my wildly Gothic novel about Victorian Ghostbusters! I did that thing they tell you to do: I wrote the book of my heart and my heart was ready.

So I stopped auditioning cold, joined writers’ groups, networked, took classes, revised my book countless times after getting any valuable feedback from the few rejection letters that weren’t form- I was earning a huge stack of rejections after going through THE ENTIRE Writer’s Market and querying anyone and everything that might accept Historical Fantasy with Romantic, Suspense, Mystery and Horror elements. (I’m the epitome of cross-genre.) And then finally, after a revise and resubmit, I landed an agent. Thanks to published writer friends pointing me to a specific editor, after another revise and resubmit, my baby sold to a New York house! The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker came out in the fall of 2009, nine years after I’d begun the draft. It was a good first experience, with a great editor and team, a healthy mass-market print run that soon became 4 print runs and a Barnes & Noble bestseller. The book garnered genre awards, critical acclaim, drew some fire because my heroine is the sweetest, dearest creature in the world and some people just didn’t care for that, but the sequel came the next year, and the prequel the following.

Then the bottom dropped out. The publisher, Dorchester, went bankrupt and closed its Madison Avenue doors. Three books into a bright start, right after winning an award for the third book, I was in free-fall. I held out after the very first signs of trouble in hopes the company could turn it around, while other authors yanked their rights, I stayed on that sinking ship until there were no more lifeboats. Let me be clear that none of this was the fault of my editor or the immediate staff around me. The meltdown came from high-ups I’d never met. Authors are the lowest on the totem-pole and we were all out of luck, out lots of money, out of rights and out of print.

I tied up far more of my self-worth and emotional life into these books of my heart than I’d advise another writer to do, simply for sanity and health. It felt like my children were taken away as wards of the state. And the $20k I had put on credit cards to invest in my career, in ads, travel, conferences, author swag, etc, confident at the time that the books were doing well and I’d get that back in royalties, was $20k I was entirely on the hook for. Yes, my agent helped, but there was only so much anyone could do. There was a fight to get paperwork, a struggle to know what to do when, a mess to untangle and when Amazon bought all of Dorchester’s rights, I was in a fog. I didn’t want to be published by Amazon, that much I knew, and I didn’t want to have to self-publish. I wandered lost in the thick of a brutal depression for a long while. I somehow managed to crank out another book to get my mind off of the pain and in a desperate attempt to still stay relevant in the industry.

But there was dark stuff going on within me. Everything in the industry felt like it was on the rocks. Once rights were wrested away from Amazon’s clutches, I knew that I should do what others were doing and self-publish, but I hadn’t enjoyed what little self-publishing I had done and I didn’t have the finances to do it right in terms of hiring formatters, editors and art staff. I didn’t have energy for the marketing. I was exhausted, having a hard time making a go of it as a New York City artistic freelancer, and I was just really, really damn sad.

I was overwhelmed by massive, complicated feelings of betrayal, of incapacitating rage at being robbed of thousands upon thousands of dollars of lost payments and royalties, of no small amount of unhelpful self-pity. I was in the throes of vocational materialism; I wanted external achievements like someone else might want a Porsche. Feelings of failure were incapacitating. I didn’t know what to do artistically for comfort. I knew I couldn’t let what happened to me kill my ability to write, writing is like breathing, but my muses were in limbo.

The characters in the Strangely Beautiful saga had been my bedtime story to myself for nearly a decade. I’d envision entering the quaint little London pub where my characters all hang out together and we’d sit, chat, drink and tease Alexi, my Gothic hero until I drifted off. These particular characters are my beloved friends, a priceless flock of treasured souls. But after this happened I couldn’t even think of them anymore. They were covered by a death shroud I couldn’t seem to peel off, buried in my own complicated emotional earth. I was numb, disconnected and fragile. While I hated the prospect of self-publishing and all the logistics it entails, I couldn’t let them languish. And even though I started the process, I wanted there to be another way. Miss Percy Parker has a certain magic about her and I prayed that something out there might see her and me through.

Thankfully, enough of my self-preservation auto-pilot was on to know to say yes to opportunities, so when I was asked to attend conventions, I did, again, to stay relevant in the industry, and to be ‘seen’ even if the books I was most known for couldn’t be accessed. A performer by nature, I took to the stage of public appearances in hopes of figuring out what was next. A Paranormal Romance convention in New Orleans is where I met the knight in shining armor who rescued my children. It was a ‘right place at right time’ for me and Melissa Singer at Tor, and thankfully she was already familiar with Strangely Beautiful and wanted to do something about it. Tor had been my dream house, but I hadn’t been able to get past the front door. Now Melissa wanted to work on a new series (THE ETERNA FILES) as well as publish the STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL backlist, including the never before published finale.

Strangely Beautiful being first published when it was, despite all the things that happened to it and to me, still put me on the radar enough for this second chance. Maybe that whole idea of ‘things happen for a reason’, or even that bit about lemons and lemonade is true and wise. I learned (and am still learning) so much from that initial disaster. I’m much more cautious about how I manage investments in my career versus money coming in the door, (ProTip, by all means make time for writing and make certain reasonable investments in your work but don’t go all free-fall without a safety net). I’m aware that I have publishing PTSD so I try not to let paranoia and anger about the industry color my every thought or displace worry onto the next series. I’ve learned to examine my emotional state and artistic process as separate engines to calibrate, and give both breadth and gentleness. I must keep worry/anxiety about the industry far, far away from my writing, like going into a room where the noisy zoo of the industry isn’t allowed in. I am trying to learn that my self-worth is not defined by my books. That’s a hard one, because I feel that I was put on this earth to be a writer. But I’m better emotionally balanced when I can make that distinction. One cannot take the industry personally. You just cannot.

I’ve learned there will always be another chance, opportunity, way forward, but only if you show up. Even during this fog and tribulation, I did manage to write a YA series, the MAGIC MOST FOUL saga. All the while worried and fretting about my original babies, my favorites. I still had to do something. That writing compulsion thing came in handy. Staying busy isn’t a bad idea, treading water is better than drowning.

But my babies are back today. Today is release day for the STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL omnibus. Tor put the first books in the series together into one volume, Melissa helped me re-edit and polish both, with new scenes and content. It’s a dream come true made all the sweeter for the difficulties. Not to mention the most gorgeous cover! When I first saw the cover I wept. I can envision my precious flock again and can visit their pub in my dreams again, their death-shroud lifted like Lazarus.

I’ve shared all of this because I appreciate when other artists talk about their ups and downs, it helps with perspective. If my worst artistic nightmare can happen and those books can resurrect like the mythical Phoenix I use as a character in this series, let it be a sign of hope for all who struggle with the work that they are most passionate about, through thick and thin.

Your desire for your art and talents to go out in the world has to outweigh the fear of what will happen to it out there, because anything could. There is no more safety for your art than for any of us on any given day. Things happen. Keep writing. Keep being ‘present’. Say yes to opportunities even when everything in you wants to curl up and cry. Network, work hard and consistently. Be nice to people in the industry because you never know who might be your knight in shining armor when you most need help. Learn about the craft and yourself in equal measure. Face your fears and do it all again the next day. Because none of this ever stops or gets any easier. If it was easy, no one would write any books, because easy is boring to read.

Now this story of renewal can really grow. It is release day, so your support, purchase and interest in this series is at critical peak, and I appreciate your participation in this second chance. STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL is a Gothic styled Historical Fantasy saga (two books in one edition!) about Victorian ghostbusters saving the world, featuring quirky and lovable characters, Greek Mythology, Jack the Ripper, and love conquering evil and death. PG-13 content, good for a wide range of ages and interests. It will certainly scratch your every Gothic and Victorian itch. (Please help me make some money on these damn ghosts for once…)

Thank you and happy haunting…

* * *

LEANNA RENEE HIEBER’s first novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, won two Prism Awards from RWA’s Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal Chapter: Best Fantasy Romance and Best First Novel and is currently in development as a Broadway musical, with Hieber writing the script. Her YA novel, Darker Still, was a Scholastic Highly Recommended Title, an INDIE NEXT selection, and a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award.

Leanna Renee Hieber: Website | Twitter

Strangely Beautiful: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Two years ago, I wrote ten things that I’d like to say to young writers, and I find that a lot of young writers — WEE TINY BABIES WITH HOPE GLINTING IN THEIR DEWDROP EYES — email me. They want to be writers but they don’t know if they can or if they should. And as I recently turned 40, that means I received from the doctor a booster shot of the Wisdom Vaccine, so right now I’m shedding wisdom like the flu virus and so you should all expect to get a little on you.

Vitamin C won’t help you.

Here are some more things I’d like to say to the YOUNGER WRITERS amongst you — though certainly a goodly portion of this might apply to those of any age and experience level.

Now please watch as I run circles in a meadow and yell wisdom at clouds.

You Can Do It

Writing is a hard gig, but it’s not like, botany? A lot of things in life are hard and require years of training and schooling. Writing isn’t that. Writing doesn’t require you know how the covalent bonds hold sentences together or the anatomical atomic rules of thematic narrative application. Writing obviously has rules, and you should know them. But those rules duck and feint, shift and change, and they’re just rules that someone made up. Writing is less an act of rigorous academic study and more a childhood act of riding your wagon down a steep hill and off a ramp and over a stream. Most times you’re going to fuck it up and break a limb, but at least you’ll have a good story to tell after. And once in a while you’ll get perfect air and score a gorgeous landing.

Point is, you can do it because others have done it. It isn’t an impossible thing. Especially at this stage, when you can separate career out of the equation. Right now, you can just concentrate simply on reiterating. Speaking of that —

Doing It Means Doing A Lot Of It

You write one story, you’re a writer. Hell, you write one page, you’re a writer.

You’re probably not a very good one, though.

Writing is this:

write write write write write write

write today

write tomorrow

stop writing for weeks

months, maybe — a year?

get back to writing, feels good, feels good

write a short story

write half a book

write ten halves of books, none of which match, all of which aren’t finished

write one book holy shit it’s finished

write bad stuff

write really bad stuff

course correct and write better stuff that’s still mostly bad but not like kill-your-momma bad

learn that oh shit you have to rewrite

rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and then you edit and you edit

feel bad because it just isn’t working and you repeat this cycle for one year, five years, ten years, and then, only then, do things start to click into place.

Admittedly, some of you are probably maestros of language and story the moment you begin — but even you, you precious moonstones, have to do the work lest your talent go fallow.

Enjoy Your Muddling Fuckery

Something I wish I would’ve realized earlier? You can enjoy the part where you don’t know what you’re doing. I think in a work-and-career-focused society, and one where choosing to write means becoming A PROPER PROFESSIONAL WRITER, you can early on lose the part where you have fun with what you’re doing. More to the point, it’s not that I don’t have fun now — but coming up as a newbie neophyte novitiate in the Ancient Order Of Ink-Fingered Penmonkeys (the AOOIFP, pronounced the AH-OOOOO-EE-FFFPPP), I was often frustrated and wanted my work to be MORE BETTER FASTER. And I forgot the part where I was doing this for kicks.

Moreover, you don’t only have the opportunity to enjoy what you’re doing, but you also have the chance to operate at a level where really, nobody is paying attention. You can do whatever you want. The page is your hallucinogenic wonderland. You own it. Nobody’s looking. It is an isolated bubble realm separate from all others, and in that, you have the freedom to take storytelling risks, to be super-weird, to experiment with language and character and motifs, to fuck around with the big questions that bother you, to mess with form, to explore straight up silly shit. This is a glorious time for fan-fiction. This is a wonderful time for breaking all the rules with nary a fuck left in the bottom of your gorgeously thatched fuckbasket. You do not have to care right now. You merely have to write.

So, do. And do so with great joy. Sing in the shower because nobody is listening. This is like a virtual simulation. You have minimal consequence and maximum freedom. As Beck once said: GET CRAZY WITH THE CHEESE WHIZ. … though I never really knew what that meant. Is cheese whiz a drug? Is he fucking the cheese whiz? It better not be hot whiz if he is, because ow, goddamn. Maybe he’s just slathering himself in Cheeze Whiz and running through a shopping mall. That could be fun. What were we talking about again?

Read Widely And Read Voraciously

The world is full of books. It is full of books good and bad. It contains books about dragons, birds, bees, sex, love, hate, government, parasites, parasols, alternate dimensions, alternate lifestyles, food, drugs, bugs, spaceships — I mean, really anything at all. It’s all out there, slathered into these glorious KNOWLEDGE SANDWICHES called books. Read fiction. Read non-fiction. Read things that the writer thinks is non-fiction but probably isn’t. Read things that are fiction but that speak to truth. Do not read in one genre. Do not read in only the genre you want to write. Paint with shotguns. Look beyond your comfort zones. Other readers can read for comfort.

You are not other readers. You want to be a writer.

And writing is very much about discomfort.

Read to enjoy. Read to get angry. Read to be challenged.

Read Lots Of Writing Advice, And Question It All, Then Question Yourself

This is the internet, and it contains mostly writers. I don’t say that glibly, I mean, a great deal of what exists on THESE HERE WEBS AND TWEETS has been fucking written down by people going tippy-tappy-typey with their keyboards. The internet is made of words. People — plus a few cats and robots — wrote those words down. Further, a great portion of the internet — at last count it was 22% — comprises writing advice. I should know, I’ve contributed at least one percent of it.

You need to read it. Not just what I say, but what Stephen King says, and Anne Lamott, and Delilah Dawson and Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman and — well, the list goes on and on. Any writer that exists has opinions on how to write. And they will probably write those opinions down, because, well, writers.

Read it all. Shove it greedily into your THOUGHT CAVE where it will be slowly digested by the shadow beings that dwell there. Consume. Absorb. And then —

Question every last bit of it. Writers have all these opinions and on writing and they don’t agree with one another. I frequently don’t even agree with myself on how to write. (Spoiler: most of it is bullshit. But bullshit still fertilizes.) My own advice is an impatient chameleon forever changing the color of its skin — and it’s not because I’m confused or seek to be confusing, it’s just, this isn’t math. This isn’t codified truth. This is drawing pictures in the dark. The day changes and so do the rules. Question what you read.

And then question your own questioning of it. The young are bullish with ego, which is good — you think you know everything, and you can seize that gallumphing confidence to get a lot of shit done. But at the same time, the wisdom of those who came before you is at least worth considering and not immediately dismissing out of hand. Question them. Then question yourself. Then question reality because none of this is real, and we’re all just holograms designed by a giant cat named Mister Tinkles who lives in the center of the moon.

Sorry, just seeing if you’re still paying attention.

Focus On Storytelling

How language works matters. Language is the lens through which we study and project story. You need to know how language works in order to be clear and concise and in order to sometimes go the other way — to fortify ambiguity and to fill the tale with oxygen and uncertainty.

But, but, but — language is just the mechanism. It is a middleman — a transformative middleman, but just the same, it’s the thing standing between THE READER’S BRAIN and THAT DELICIOUS STORY. We can’t eat story, we can’t drink it, we can’t insert it rectally in a story suppository (but one day the power will be mine). But story is why we’re here. It’s what we want. And so, story is what matters most. It is the reason we read and the reason we write. We don’t write just to hear language. We write to say something.

Focus now on what story is. Look at how story works. The stories you love unabashedly and without examination? Keep loving them, but start examining them. What moments excite you? What moments scare you? How, do you think, the storyteller articulates those emotions? How does one manipulate the audience so that they do not feel manipulated? Don’t just read stories. Listen to stories. Let your KOOKY OL’ GRANDPA JOE tell you about that time he fought the LIZARD PEOPLE on the RINGS OF KRANG. Listen to podcasts. Listen to drunk people tell stories. Listen to stand-up comedians. Don’t just passively sit. Actively take in what they’re saying and dissect it. Try to find the secret of the magic trick.

How are stories told? What makes them work? What makes them fail?

Find Your Process

Nobody writes the same way. It’s why writing advice is a dubious proposition to begin with — I can only tell you about how I do things, or how I’ve seen things done. I don’t know what you do. I’m not your Dad. NOT YET, BUT ONE DAY I WILL MARRY YOUR MOTHER AND THEN WE’LL SEE WHO HAS TO CLEAN UP HIS ROOM. … uhh, sorry, what I mean is, you gotta do you.

Thing is, how you do you isn’t set in stone. Further, it isn’t a known quantity. You’re not a computer with a program, you’re a human being with lots of human foibles and peccadilloes, some known, some not. Your process is mysterious to you. It is a giant neon question mark hanging over your head. I don’t know how you do things. And neither do you.

A lot of being a writer is becoming a writer: a journey never completed.

Go on that journey. A writing life is the archaeology of uncovering your own writing process. Some people write a fair amount every day. Some people write a little. Or write a lot only one day a week. I write in the mornings. You might write in the evenings. I like to write while sometimes bathed in the heinous heart-choking gas that comes out of my dog’s butt. You might like to write with a cat on your head. I write drinking coffee. You write while guzzling antifreeze because you’re secretly an Alien Person from Krang-Ring V. I outline. You don’t. It’s all good. But you gotta try a lot of things to find out how you write, what you sound like, who you are on the page.

Then Forget Your Process

Find your process, then promptly fucking forget it. Or, more to the point, become very flexible about it. My process is ever-evolving. It evolves with circumstance (I have a soon-to-be-five-year-old, I have a writing shed, I have dogs that demand attention). It evolves with life and age and experience. It evolves with every book — I write outlines for every book I write, and I don’t think I’ve written those outlines the same at any point. Just as every book demands its own way of being told (POV, tense, chapters/no chapters, one protag or many, etc), your own writing life demands many processes. Finish your shit, but be flexible in how you do that. Discipline is good, until discipline becomes a prison from which you can’t escape.

Have Adventures

We are what we write and we write what we are, and your life is the fuel that drives your creative engine. Use it. And you’re young, so that means to go out and have adventures. That can mean whatever it can mean — a hike can be an adventure. So can a party. Traveling for me is always an adventure. Also an adventure: waking up in a casket in the Sonoran desert, wearing only rattlesnakes as a thong and a mezcal hangover as a hat.

Go, fill your sails with the wind of life. Which sounds like an overly gassy metaphor, so instead let’s maybe go with: we don’t write only what we know, but we definitely can and should write what we know. It is an opportunity, not a prohibition, and part of that opportunity is going out and EXPERIENCING EXPERIENCES. Whenever anyone questions your judgment or scrutinizes your choices, just say: “It’s for a book.” Then leap into the chasm, cackling.

Hang In There, Goddamnit

A creative life is a bucking horse.  The best thing you can do is commit to hanging on. It throws most people off, and right now, it seems to you like everybody and their mother wants to do what you do. But time will see them fall. The horse will buck and kick them into the fencerow while you still cling to the beast’s froth-slick mane. In writing, stubbornness is a virtue. The first and most important thing is that: just staying with it. Most won’t. So you must.

* * *

Miriam Black Is Back (In Print)

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die. This makes her daily life a living hell, especially when you can’t do anything about it, or stop trying to. She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides. She merely needs to touch you—skin to skin contact—and she knows how and when your final moments will occur. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But then she hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, and she sees in thirty days that Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and Miriam will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

“Fast, ferocious, sharp as a switchblade and fucking fantastic.” — Lauren Beukes

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

ICYMI, I manifested the true power of the Internet and wrote an “open letter” to the intrepid reality stars of Tiny House Hunters, and I have only fallen deeper down the rabbit hole on this show since. I just can’t quit this shit, especially now that I found past episodes on Netflix.

And I thought, hey, if you really wanted to get just tore up, if you wanted to lubricate your soul with flagons of liquor, then you should turn Tiny House Hunters into a drinking game.

(There’s already one for regular ol’ House Hunters, by the by.)

First up, though, you’re gonna need some dranks.

I recommend the Tiny House Iced Tea, which is:

– 1 oz white rum

– 1 oz dark rum

– 1 oz vodka

– 1 oz ginger beer

– 1 oz triple-sec

– 3 oz Coca-Cola

Then pour it all into a 1.5 oz shot glass.

Most of it won’t fit, so you’ll have to slurp the rest off the table and floor with a straw.

Then when you’re proper crunk, barf it up into a composting toilet, and let one of the three dogs you keep in your tiny house drink from the dung bucket in sloppy, claustrophobic misery.

Or, you know, you could just drink hella wine. You do you.

And now, onto the drinking game.

The Rules

When you witness any of these shenanigans on the show, take a drink.

– Whenever someone says, as if totally fucking shocked they’re in a tiny house, “It’s really small.” Variations include: “It’s cramped,” or ironically, “It’s really tiny?”

– Someone bonks their dumb head

– They say they wanna: “simplify,” “downsize,” “save the environment,” or “travel”

– When they end up parking their tiny house on the lawn of some incredulous family member

– “It’s a great starter home,” they say, as if not realizing it’s not so much a home as it is a car, and unlike a house, that motherfucker is going to sink in value like a brick in a lake soon as the tiny house trend-bubble goes ‘pop’

– There is a toilet inside the shower

– The toilet is a composting toilet

– Take two drinks if there’s just a fucking spooky old outhouse

– No sink in the bathroom

– “Where’s the closet?” (answer: this house is a closet)

– Someone wonders where all the appliances are, or asks for a specific appliance (“I need a full-size fridge, a washer and dryer, and a walk-in freezer to store my racks of bison meat.”)

– They see a dorm fridge and stare at it like it’s a cancerous sore

– They ask for something entirely unreasonable for a tiny house, as if this is an episode of MTV’s Cribs and not jerks taking a tour of a 150 square-foot lawnmower shed (“I need an office,” or, “Where is the four-car garage?” or “Where will I keep and train my two Bengal tigers?”)

– For every child, take one drink

– For every pet, take one drink

– If the children or pets look extra-horrified, like they’re imagining being forced to live in an airless and oppressive cubby-hole like a bunch of trapped miners, take an extra drink

– One of the tiny house hunters cannot get down the ladder leading to and from their spacious funerary box SORRY I MEAN “bedroom loft”

– When they figure out that they’re going to have to use that library ladder whenever they get up at night to pee, and that they’re probably just going to pee the bed or try to stunt-piss and aim for the sink — which is doable, because really, it’s right down there

– When someone realizes that the loft bed is basically a chest-crushing, sarcophagal sex-free frottage zone and as soon as you put anything beefier than a ratty blanket up there you’re going to break your nose on the ceiling and then smother to death

– “I was hoping for steps,” because sure, that’s reasonable, why not also wish for a talking pony

– When one of the tiny house hunters is a really tall or wide person and they look like a giant stomping through a child’s playhouse and yet, they still wanna live here I guess

– The real estate agent looks at the camera as if she’s Jim from The Office

– Curtains instead of doors

– Someone says, “There’s no privacy in here,” as if they expect this birdhouse to have a quiet Zen garden or a personal sensory deprivation chamber

– Someone contorts themselves into an improbable and painful human knot trying to prove to everyone that sure, yeah, no, we can totally use this space as a living room or an office or whatever and no ha ha ha I don’t have a leg cramp right now

– HIPSTERS SPOTTED

– When one member of a couple looks like a hostage (“I don’t want to live here, Maureen” “OH WE’RE FUCKING LIVING IN THIS SHIPPING CRATE, BILL, YOU CAN BE SURE OF THAT”)

– Someone says the word “cottage”

– We all collectively realize the house is smaller than the pit Buffalo Bill used for his victims (“IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET oh wait we don’t have room for lotions or baskets”)

– You realize you hate these people

– Finish the bottle when you wonder why you’re even watching this show

– Grab another because you just can’t quit AND LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES LOOK AT YOUR LIFE

What I like about macro photography is the ability not only to get close and see the microscopic rendered macroscopic, but also the ability to get so close that what you’re looking at becomes obscured, obfuscated by proximity, and what you get is instead something otherworldly. That is transformative and fascinating to me. And so, I thought, I’ll toss off a few shots at macros that look like they don’t belong on this planet.

BUT FIRST, some quickie-poo updates.

Today is the last day I’m running a sale on some of my e-books. The Gonzo Bundle, featuring eight of my writing books, remains $10 till the end of today. And both Blue Blazes and Hellsblood Bride are both $2.99.

Also, if you haven’t picked up Hyperion #2, well, dangit, it’s out. It features disgusting worms! And an adorable dog! And sinister body horror! And fun banter! And also the page of which I am the most proudest as a writer in comics yet, and really that’s only because Nik Virella did it so awesomely. Nik has done such an epic job on that book. Much love.

I feel like I haven’t mentioned here that Star Wars: Life Debt — the second book in the Aftermath trilogy — has gotten the special excerpt treatment at Entertainment Weekly. For bonus fun, read the comments! (Spoiler warning: don’t read the comments. It’s like looking into the sewer. Nearly all internet comments sections are perfectly represented in this single image.) Anyway! The excerpt has a SPECIAL GUEST, so go clicky clicky.

What else? I’m doing a Star Warsy-themed event in Cherry Hill, NJ on MAY THE 4th (get it?), and it’s a ticketed event, so peep it now while SEXY TIMES WITH ME ARE STILL AVAILABLE wait no not that kind of sexytimes ha ha ha what. But there are VIP tickets, so, you know, wink wink. You get to spend SPECIAL TIME with YOURS TRULY for MAGIC SEXYT… uhh, I mean, a “private catered reception.” Elbow elbow. Saucy pout.

And I think that’s all she wrote.

Time to take a trip to another world.

It’s macro time.

Your task this week is woefully simple. Go to the comments, and deposit into these comments a title for a short story — not the story itself, and nothing in fact beyond the title.

Then, next week, I’ll pick a handful of the best, and we’ll use those as springboards for the next round of stories. Dig it? Good.

You.

Comments section.

A title.

GO.

Due by next Friday, April 29th, noon EST.

[EDIT: Only ONE title per person, please.]

Jon McGoran writes a cracking thriller — I love the ecological spin his first two books took, books with murder at their heart but that also deal with biotechnology or honeybees. Original voice with an original premise. He’s back with a new Doyle Carrick book, and he wanted to jump in and talk about a real juicy subject: BAD GUYS.

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There is a piece of writing advice I often hear, that your bad guys shouldn’t be all bad. This makes good sense. Nobody is all anything, and depicting them as if they were makes for shallow and unbelievable characters. But there’s a related dictum that bad guys don’t think of themselves as bad guys — that in their minds and in their stories they are the stars, the protagonists, the good guys. To this I say: yes, yes, and …maybe not so much.

When writing any character, no matter how minor or major or good or evil, it’s important to keep in mind their point of view, their motivations and justifications. But make no mistake, some people are just assholes. Look at the news. Look at any comment section. Look at human history. There are plenty of villains out there who are pretty unabashedly villains.

There are some very interesting antagonists in fiction who are conflicted and misguided, doing terrible things for what they consider justifiable reasons. And I love them, the sick, twisted, confused bastards. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of jerks out there knowing full well that what they are doing is wrong. And that doesn’t mean they’re twirling their mustaches and cackling while rubbing their hands together and contemplating “evil” (that’s “ē-vĭl,” not “ē-vəl”). Most of them simply want something, and they are willing to let bad things happen to other people in order to get it. They know the collateral damage is wrong, they just don’t care. Or they don’t care enough.

I write a series of biotech thrillers in which some of the villains are people in control of big corporations. Much of the wrongdoing in the books is collateral damage these characters are willing to accept in order to achieve the goals of the company.

I, personally, am not an bad guy (I’m pretty sure). But there are parts of my brain that think like one. I take great delight in coming up with dastardly and ingenious schemes (I don’t have a mustache to twirl, but I’ve been known to wring my hands and cackle). Every now and then, though, I find myself thinking: “That’s pretty harsh. Would someone really do that?”

And after a moment of reflection, I am plunged into an emotional abyss as I realize that yes, of course they would. That kind of wrongdoing goes down every day. Think Enron, the mortgage crisis, the daily willful and tragic violations of workplace safety regulations that get people killed to save a few bucks, even Volkswagen, doing its best to carpool us all to the carbon tipping point.

A few years ago, a book called Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children detailed how the lead industry worked to hide the dangers of lead paint. For fifty years — from the 1920s to the 1970s — they pushed back against regulations and forestalled the banning of its products. One expert says that, among other consequences, the lead exposure from that delay led to a five-point drop in the American population’s average IQ — doubling the number of children considered “retarded” and reducing by one half those considered “gifted.” But the lead companies made tons of money.

Maybe the best example of the worst was in the 1970s and 1980s, when companies like Nestlé marketed infant formula in developing countries by sending sales reps dressed like nurses into the maternity wards. Breastfeeding was “old-fashioned,” they explained to the new mothers, and infant formula was the “modern way.” Never mind that breast milk was free and infant formula prohibitively expensive, or that many of these mothers didn’t have access to clean water to mix the formula. The “milk nurses” would even give the mothers free samples to last just long enough so the mothers would stop lactating and were no longer able to breastfeed. Countless babies dies of malnutrition and parasites from unsafe water, but sales skyrocketed. Brilliant! (Nestlé continued to provide villain-fodder a few years back when Chairman and former CEO Peter Brabeck defended privatizing water supplies with the assertion that humans do not have a right to water.)

People sometimes ask me why I write thrillers about big food and biotech corporations. Partly it’s because I think it’s fascinating and important. But I also think it’s scary. Part of what makes thrillers thrilling is tapping into legitimate fears of real threats. Corporate malfeasance is far from the scariest threat out there, not compared to the likes of ISIS and Boko Haram. But I’ve seen some bad stuff done in the name of shareholder dividends, and I’ve seen it directly impacting more people than any terrorist attacks.

The people responsible for these things might be kind to their friends, loving to their families, and generous to their charities — as with all people, they are complex and multifaceted beings. But when they make decisions that hurt thousands or millions of people, they know they’re doing evil. In their minds, in their stories, they might think of themselves as the stars or the protagonists, but they know they’re not the good guys. They’re the bad guys. They’ve chosen to be, and they’ve chosen to be okay with it. And lots of times, that’s the biggest part of what evil is.

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Jon McGoran is the author of the ecological thrillers Drift and Deadout, from Tor/Forge Books, and their sequel, Dust Up, is out now.

Detective Doyle Carrick is awakened in the middle of the night by frantic banging on his front door, followed by gunfire. Ron Hartwell, a complete stranger, is dying on his doorstep.

A halfhearted investigation labels the murder a domestic dispute, with Miriam, Ron’s widow, the sole suspect. Doyle discovers the Hartwells both worked for a big biotech company and suspects something else is going on, but it’s not his case. Then Miriam tracks him down and tells him her story.

Miriam and Ron had been working in Haiti and visiting her friend Regi Baudet, the deputy health minister, when they stumbled upon a corporate cover-up of tainted food aid that sickened an entire village—and was one hundred percent fatal. They were coming to Doyle to blow the whistle. Before Miriam can say more, they are attacked by gunmen and she flees, then disappears.

Doyle tracks her to Haiti, a country on the brink of political chaos. Working with Miriam and Regi, he must untangle a web of deceit and unconscionable corporate greed in order to stop an epidemic of even greater evil before it is released onto an unsuspecting world.

Jon McGoran: Website

Dust Up: Indiebound | Amazon