Year: 2016 (page 31 of 38)

Once in a while someone says to me on social media that they need a little motivation to write, and could I motivate them? Could I yell at them? Calls have been made to product a bobblehead or stuffed animal of me that you can place on your desk and said replica will gibber and wail in a most beardly of fashions, encouraging you to write with the blunt mania of the truly deranged.

I have no such bobblehead, sadly.

But, I figure, I have this post.

And in this post, I will motivate you in the bluntest, most brutal fashion I can muster. Which is to say — it won’t be kind? Kindness is sometimes required as a motivational tactic, and a soft touch is there to remind you that no, you don’t really need to write every day, and yes, writing advice is generally a smoldering sack of rat-crap, and that indeed you need to do you and your gut instincts are your best friend when it comes to ARTING HARDER LIKE A PROPER ARTFUCKER. And yet? This is not that post. This is not the soft touch. This is the, “Me filling a sock full of inspiration coins and bludgeoning you about the skull and shoulders with it until you sit your ass down and juice the art from your body like blood from a throttled squirrel” touch.

Now, as always, hold still and let me yell at you.

Occasionally in all caps.

*noisily sucks on a lozenge*

*takes a sip of water*

*clears throat*

GODDAMNIT SHIT FUCK WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE

WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING

WHAT THE WIGGLY WANGDONG ARE YOU THINKING

oh no no no I know it’s so hard being a writer

*rolls eyes so hard they pop out of my skull and drop down a sewer drain*

*am now blind*

*bees fly out of empty eye sockets*

ha ha ha you know what’s actually hard?

BEING A JANITOR IN AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IS HARD because kids puke basically all the time and they don’t make that kid clean it up, oh no, they call the janitor, and that poor fucker has to show up with sand and a bucket and he has to deal with barfspatter full of milk and roof-shingle pizza and like, four Sour Patch kids, and he’s gotta suck it up and make the child-retch go away — and then those same barfy turd children have the gall to make fun of him for it because nobody respects janitors even though they are performing a vital function that nobody wants to do

BUT SURE IT’S VERY HARD TO SIT AND MAKE UP FANCY WORDS AND CHARACTERS ALL DAY

*shrug emoji*

look I’ll just make up a character right now:

REGINALD P. SNURLIQUE, the first regent of Zoldovia; he has a thing for pointy chairs, waltzes, and public masturbation, and he has a parrot with a goiter who insults religion.

here is another character:

COMMANDER JESSIE BEAGLE, the oneironaut, a dream-rider scouring the depths of the slumbering human subconscious in search of her lost love, LIEUTENANT STEVE MCSCROOGLE, either that or she’s just looking for a really good Monte Cristo recipe because a good sandwich can not be underestimated or overlooked.

hey here are some words I just made up

DONGFEATHER. JIZZOLOGY. GUMPUS. FARPTUM. PAGALOPHY. SNUP.

here are some more words

TZZNORP. VWOMMMZ. HYPRODELPHIA. SCIZZARD. WRINJILI.

here are a few insults

SHITWIZARD. BARF-GARGLER. SPACKLEHUMPER. FUCK-APE. CANKERNIPS.

ohhhh here have some motivation — *writes an inspirational message on a Post-It note, tapes note to end of steel-toe boot, kicks note up into your colon, wriggles toes to release note*

WRITING IS JUST YOU STARING AT AN EMPTY SPACE AND THEN LIKE AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLER BARFING UP THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SKULLSTOMACH — WHATEVER WEIRDO SHIT YOU’VE GOT DIGESTING IN THERE, YOU JUST GO graaaaaaaabbllatch AND THAT FOUL-STINKING SLURRY SPLATTERS EVERYWHERE AND THEN LATER YOU KIND OF TAKE YOUR EDITORIAL HANDS AND GO pat pat pat AND slip slup snup AND THERE YOU GO, A SECOND DRAFT WHERE YOU SCULPT HOT BARF INTO SOMETHING RESEMBLING A SHAPE

Some people can’t do this shit! Some people don’t want to do this shit! But you do. So do it! You have a privilege to take your bizarre imagination and headbutt it into the world. Behold your desire! Do what compels you! Seize the privilege.

…

…

WHAT THE DEEP-FRIED FUCK ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE

WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING

IF YOU WANT TO WRITE THEN WRITE

HOW DIFFICULT IS THAT

look goddamnit IT’S NOT GOING TO WRITE ITSELF it’s not like you go to sleep with a pen duct-taped to your hand and then you wake up with a masterpiece written (though that actually explains James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE) — no! You have to have to fuse your sexy writer ass to the chair and go CLICKY CLACKY TAPPY CLACK with your fingers on the keyboard and summon words out of the ether like some kind of word-wizard and shit.

I mean SWEET HOT HELL, human history is in part the history of humanity making up letters and words and punctuation for you to use and if you willfully choose not to use them then you have just SQUANDERED THE EFFORTS OF ALL OF HUMANITY and that’s just rude is what it is.

JESUS PISS ON AN BICYCLE whuh whah I mean what the crap, other people are more successful than you? YES. DUH. Did you expect to be LORD ROYAL NUMBER ONE WRITER? Like, the bestest-selling, most award-winningest ink-slinger that ever done slung ink? You have to be BEST OF ALL or NOTHING EVER? Oh, and what else, you’ve got IMPOSTOR SYNDROME? Hey, get in line. We all stowed away on this boat. None of us belong here. We’re all hiding underneath blankets hoping none of the real writers figure out we’re here, except those people you think are real writers are also hiding under blankets — probably like, four feet away. We’re all trespassers, and you know how we get away with it? Just by doing it! By committing. By hunkering down. By making it happen with effort and thought and by shuttling off our myriad neuroses and anxieties for some other day, some other situation, some other problem. Oh, you didn’t get that publishing deal you wanted? Or the agent? That sucks. It does! And it also doesn’t matter because that’s how this business goes, that’s how life is, that is is the cost of existing. Did you think every day would offer an eager line of people serving you up your wishes on shiny platters? Or did you expect that — gasp — it would take work and improvement and effort and iteration and reiteration? Because it does. It does require that. All things require that. Writing isn’t a hula hoop — you don’t just pick it up and give a couple hip-shimmies to get that motherfucker spinning. Writing is a complex act. It takes time and failure and more failure and a little success and a little luck and more failure and then REAL success and then hey oops more failure again.

GOD FUCK SHIT

Let’s say you’re riding your mount (horse, camel, motorcycle, taun-taun) across the desert and then the thing just keels over and dies gassily — do you let it fall on you and then you lay there? Sun beating down, sucking you dry, crows picking out your soft bits? Breathing in the carcass’ death-emissions? Or do you crawl free and then look for the next horse? OF COURSE YOU LOOK FOR THE NEXT HORSE. Because you don’t want to die.

Writing is making stuff, and making stuff is the creative version of NOT DYING.

So, don’t die.

Go out there.

Make shit.

Create stuff.

Yes, it’s hard.

And also, it’s easy.

It’s as easy as tapping words on a keyboard and it’s as hard as flensing your body of skin and exposing your soul to cutting winds and scouring rains.

And if it’s what you want to do, then you need to do it. No amount of mental calisthenics will excuse you from that act. Writing is so much more than moving a couch, but it still begins with there being a couch in your way and if you want it out of your way you either have to hope it magically decays on its own (it won’t) or you have to put your back into it and GRUNT WITH SURLY EFFORT as you move it out of your path.

*gnashes teeth*

*tugs angrily on beard*

*tugs angrily on nipples*

*thrashes about*

shut up

quit looking at me

don’t waste time responding to me how right I am or how wrong I am

GO

NOW

MAKE WITH THE WORDS

BARFSPACKLE YOUR STORY

MAKE / CREATE / DO

WRITE / REWRITE / WEEP / WAIL / REPAIR

ART HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER

…

And, I’m done.

*turns into seven lemurs, all of whom scatter to various boltholes*

* * *

The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

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Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest

I suspect some people might be shuddering or shivering right now, but I gotta warn you: some bug macros are gonna pop up here now and again. I’ll be kind enough and keep spider macros behind links, but insect macros are a total delight for me. And besides, this shot? It’s awesome! I don’t mean specifically my capture of it, but rather, what it captures.

We had an oothica — that’s like, Moon Language for a Mantis Egg, by the way — in the back yard of our last house, and I wandered past just as the damn thing was hatching. And it’s fascinating to watch because this crusty pork-rind-looking egg busts open and starts disgorging bugs that do not look very much like praying mantises, at least not at first. No, when they pop out they’re kind of grub-like, somewhat unformed, and then, as they enter reality from their transdimensional oothica gateway, they begin to take shape, filling their exoskeletons with extraplanetary insect ghosts and becoming proper baby mantids.

Praying mantises are super-fascinating to watch. They’re smarter than your average buggy, it seems — like spiders, they can be capable hunters. I have literally thrown a mantis a bug and the mantis has caught it. In rare instances they can catch and kill birds. Watching them calls to mind what it would be like regarding an alien. I sat and watched a praying mantis one day regard each car that passed it by. As if it pondered catching one and eating it, just for the laughs.

I have other shots from that hatching, too, that I like:

And

Interesting point of trivia, actually —

That first photo, the one at the top, is my first published photo credit.

It’s in this book: The Field Guide to Insects.

My second professional photo credit was the cover of this book — The Bones: Us And Our Dice, edited by Will Hindmarch. I don’t seem to have that photo uploaded to my Flickr, so the cover is right here (ah, back in the days of my RPG-writing life):

(That book is sadly not available in e-book format.)

Anyway, so, yeah.

I don’t count myself as a professional photographer, to be clear — just a lucky amateur.

Let’s see, what else is going on?

Ah, yes.

This is your last day to get in on some very big e-book sales.

All three Miriam Black books, all three Heartland books, and Atlanta Burns?

All on sale this month. And this month ends today, so.

Please to enjoy, and may Monday whimper beneath your boot.

*wyverns away*

I’d like to note that last week’s post garnered 500+ entries.

Holy poopsnacks.

(Though I’ll also note that some of you went well and above contributing an entry, which is against the spirit of the thing if not against the law. Also a number of folks broke the proscriptions — a lot, in fact, mentioned death despite the restriction. Tsk tsk tsk.)

Getting ten sentences out of 500 is tricky, but I’m gonna try it.

The challenge is simple:

Pick one of the opening sentences below (or choose one randomly), then write. The story that results should be between 1000-2000 words. Post it at your online space and link back here. Due by next Friday, March 4th, noon EST. Note the sentence you choose forms the first sentence of the story.

1. “Of all the things I expected to find in my tomato soup, this wasn’t one of them.” (Stella Wood)

2. “The clock strikes 12:17 and all I can think is I should have called tails.” (HB McCarthy)

3. “The emerald ring was pretty enough, but the man offering it wasn’t.” (kirajessup)

4. “Getting into the program was the easy part; it was getting out that would take every skill she possessed.” (Diedra Black)

5. “Eyes shut against the darkness, counting back from ten, I hope to god it’s gone when I open them again.” (Jonny B)

6. “The first breath shattered her world, the second shattered her heart.” (Fred Yost)

7. “Every building has a secret entrance, one even the architects somehow overlooked.” (LP)

8. “It was Hadeon’s lie that saved the world.” (Berti Walker)

9. “The bald man grinned and capered madly in the alley.” (Sam Brady)

10. “A year ago, this would have been an unthinkable act.” (Sarah Brentyn)

Rogue cop Stanford Runstom blew open a botched murder case and was given a promotion – of sorts. But doing PR work for ModPol, the security-firm-for-hire, is not the detective position Runstom had in mind, particularly when his orders become questionable.

Despite being cleared of false murder charges, Jax is still a fugitive from justice. When ModPol catches up with him, keeping his freedom now means staying alive at any cost, even if that means joining Space Waste, the notorious criminal gang.

When ModPol and Space Waste go head to head, old friends Runstom and Jax find themselves caught between two bloodthirsty armies, and this time they might not escape with their lives.

The middle child wants to be her own book.

The second book in a trilogy is a bridge between the start and the finish of the full arc of a story. But she’s also her own book, and she wants to do her own thing. The trick is to find a balance between getting the novel to go where you want it to go, and giving it the room to be a complete story unto itself. In the long run, this is better anyway: even when a book is planned as part of a trilogy and never meant to stand alone, it still needs to have an arc that can stand alone. You have no guarantee that your readers are going to burn through all three books in one sitting, so the second book should feel complete on its own.

The second book is an opportunity to Go Big and Go Deep.

There are two aspects to this that come to mind: characters and world. In the first book, characters are introduced and their backstories drip in as appropriate. Stretching into the second book, these characters need to go even deeper into their former selves, into their histories, their failures and accomplishments of days past. They also need to start looking harder at their futures, because there needs to be more at stake. Likewise with the world of the story: the scope can expand to include more of it, and the conflict can expand to put more of it at stake. This might mean more politics, deeper conspiracies, and more ambitions, cultures, and ideals butting heads.

Finding the right place to end the second book is hard.

There is a balance between hooking the reader for the third book and not leaving too many open threads. This lesson builds on the first two: it’s because the scope of the story has expanded that more questions arise. And in some ways, because the middle book trying to be its own story, it starts acting like a first book: it wants to create new threads to build off of. Fortunately, my editor helped me immensely during the revision process by identifying all those unanswered questions so that I could choose to answer some and move some out to be asked (and answered) in the third book. Her perspective was such a huge help!

It’s still important to set the table.

The second book wants to move: it’s all action. My editor called the first draft “pacey”; which is not really good or bad, but something that needed addressing in any case. Since I had built up such a satisfying plan to carry the end of the first book over into the second and on to the third, I too wanted to move, and it became clear in the writing as it jumped from action scene to action scene. But a good meal isn’t all steak! During revision, I went back and added space, and added breathing room. Action scenes sometimes work better with the right setup. And I needed to take the time to immerse my readers in the setting, as well as take the time for characters to be able to reflect post-action. The good news is that I found this process easier than the reverse, which is to take a sluggish manuscript and cut out the fat to speed up the pacing.

My support system is more important than ever.

Putting the first book out there was a thrill, and a dream. But with the second book comes enormous pressure. What if it’s not as good as the first? What if readers are sick of these characters? What if none of this makes any sense? These questions can make you feel like a crazy person, but the reality is that they’re all perfectly normal. In fact, when it comes to any creative endeavor, to have zero doubt is an abnormal state. But when you’re stuck in your own head, it’s hard to remember this. That’s why it’s so important not to close yourself off from the world, and to seek the counsel and support of other writers. They’ve all been there.

And it helps to talk to friends and family members, even if they aren’t writers, especially those closest to you. Those are the ones you’re going to have to look at and say, “look, I know I’m acting aloof lately, but I’m writing a book right now.” Writing a book is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. It’s always in your head. It just won’t shut the fuck up, and what’s more, you don’t want it to shut the fuck up. So it’s ever more important that the people closest to you don’t make you feel guilt or shame – whether intentionally, or most likely unintentionally – by reminding you how much effort and energy you’re pouring into the act of making stuff up. It’s hard enough to ignore the internal voices that are telling you this is all a waste of time, and to counter those you need cheerleaders. The ones that get that? Hold onto them the hardest.

* * *

Born and raised in Upstate New York, Jason LaPier lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and a couple of dachshunds. In past lives he has been a guitar player for a metal band, a drum-n-bass DJ, a record store owner, a game developer, and an IT consultant. These days he divides his time between writing fiction and developing software, and doing Oregonian things like gardening, hiking, and drinking microbrew.

Jason LaPier: Website | Twitter

Unclear Skies: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Google | iTunes

AND THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE.

My third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant, has returned from the briny depths — it’s been back in digital for a while now, but as of today, it returns to print.

Sometimes people ask me what book of mine is really my favorite — like, the one book where I think I actually sorta nailed it? And that book is routinely for me this one. I loved writing it, and I think — contrary to how I feel about most of my work — that it actually holds together. In it, a very-wealthy-someone discovers that Miriam Black knows that she can see how people are going to die just by touching them, and this someone summons her to the Florida Keys. The offer: he’ll pay her if she tells him how he’s going to die. Simple, right? Except when she touches him, she receives a murderous vision containing a message just for her — a message that is both a promise and a threat to repay her for the past. Someone is out to get her. But who?

The Miriam series went through interesting genre gymnastics — I sold it as horror-crime, it got initially printed as urban fantasy, and now it’s being presented as supernatural thriller. (“Supernatural thriller” these days is basically code for “horror,” since the latter is perceived as a toxic genre that does not sell well. Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 for instance is referred to not as horror but as supernatural thriller. Which is fine — it’s not inaccurate, exactly, but I am a fan of leaning into the purity of the term “horror.” The Miriam Black books are not pure horror, for the record — in fact, supernatural thriller is pretty apt, I think. Horror-crime still works, too. Urban fantasy far less so.) The goal with these books is to never let you stand flat on your feet with them — you should forever be off-balance. Ideally excited, scared, laughing and cringing all in equal measure, one after the next, sometimes all at the same damn time.

Things I like about the book:

– Miriam in Florida is fun to write. She is a character equivalent of a dark blotch on an X-Ray, so to have her endure the sunshiney heat and light of Florida — well, c’mon. One of the greatest treats for a writer is to put characters in discomfort, and this is very much that.

– Okay, fine, Miriam in general is fun to write. I’m like a dog rolling around in pure profanity. Miriam gets to just say things that none of us would ever say, and that is a ticklish delight for an author like me. She’s kind of a bad person who does good things, which is just as much fun to write as a good person doing bad things. And because the narration (3rd person present) is so intimate and close, Miriam bleeds through always. Her meanness is there, but so is her kindness, I think. She gets a lot of things right and she gets a whole lot wrong and — well, I dunno what to say, but it’s a blast writing an anti-hero with basically zero filter.

– It widens the “mythology” of the story by a good bit.

– It also evolves Miriam’s abilities.

– I got to jigger with the timeline — these books have never been perfectly linear. The Interludes have always served as an opportunity to do flashbacks. But with The Cormorant, most of the book is nested as a kind of flashback into itself — it begins (see photo above) with Miriam held captive by two people claiming to be FBI agents (echoes there of Blackbirds), and then much of the story is them working through how she got there.

– The ending of the book is gloriously fucked up. YMMV, of course.

Anyway! So, the book is out. Grab it if you care to. Spread the word.

The fourth book, Thunderbird, lands next year. And then the following two — The Raptor & The Wren and Vultures — come out in short succession afterward. If you want to read the novella that takes place after Cormorant, that would be Interlude: Swallow, and can be found in the Three Slices anthology alongside Kevin Hearne and Delilah Dawson. Please to enjoy.

(Oh, one more tip: The Cormorant on bookstore shelves will likely be the paperback version, but you can order a hardcover version if you are so pleased.)

(Awesome new covers by Adam Doyle, FYI.)

The Cormorant: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Audible Audio

(Note: If you are curious about the language of the Londons, see this post No Mother Tongue: Language In The World of Magic.)

* * *

A Gathering of Shadows: out today!

Four months have passed since the shadow stone fell into Kell’s possession. Four months since his path crossed with Delilah Bard. Four months since Rhy was wounded and the Dane twins fell, and the stone was cast with Holland’s dying body through the rift, and into Black London. 

In many ways, things have almost returned to normal, though Rhy is more sober, and Kell is now plagued by his guilt. Restless, and having given up smuggling, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila, who disappeared from the docks like she always meant to do. As Red London finalizes preparations for the Element Games-an extravagent international competition of magic, meant to entertain and keep healthy the ties between neighboring countries-a certain pirate ship draws closer, carrying old friends back into port.

But while Red London is caught up in the pageantry and thrills of the Games, another London is coming back to life, and those who were thought to be forever gone have returned. After all, a shadow that was gone in the night reappears in the morning, and so it seems Black London has risen again-and so to keep magic’s balance, another London must fall.

A Gathering of Shadows: Indiebound | Amazon