Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
The power of fiction is a slippery, elusive thing — what it provides is not scientific, and often ephemeral. But stories matter. Stories shape the world. And sometimes we don’t necessarily realize how it’s shaping the world — or how it’s shaping us as the writer and those who read what we put out there. Sometimes I get emails, though, about how a book of mine affects people, and that’s what starts us ON THIS GLORIOUS STORIFIED JOURNEY.
Let us begin.
It’s not the greatest photo I’ve ever taken, but really, I quite like it. Those are, of course, the spiny spines of the luna moth (Actias luna) caterpillar, spines that, should you touch them, will give you a nasty little passive sting for your intrusion.
If you want to see something really freaking weird, PEEP THIS:
BEHOLD THE MOUNTAIN OF FLESH
ALL HAIL THE SQUIRMLORD
BE CONSUMED BY ITS QUIVERING PILE OF TENDONS AND MEAT
Okay, fine, it’s not a mountain of flesh, nor is it a Squirmlord —
Those are the mouthparts of Zorak, our resident mantis (here is Zorak, posing for the camera):
In other, sadder news, the voiceover and animation artist who voiced and drew Space Ghost’s Zorak, C. Martin Croker, passed away, and that’s not cool. 2016, you are shit.
Anyway.
So, what’s going on? Well —
This coming Thursday, I will be at the new Emmaus, PA location of Let’s Play Books, and I will be talking about Invasive and Star Wars and really whatever else you want me to talk about. I will be bringing BUG-ENCRUSTED FOOD-STUFFS (entomophagy ftw), and I will also be featuring cupcakes from the best cupcake place from which I’ve tasted cupcakes: Sugar So Sweet, also in Emmaus. The cupcakes will not contain bugs, so you can thank me for that mercy. I’ll sign books. I’ll sign children. I’ll answer questions. I’ll try to get you to eat crickets. And so on. Come! Say hi! Thursday, the 22nd, at 6PM.
Now, behold: the Pelee Island Writers Retreat IndieGoGo campaign. Click that and you will see that it is a writer’s retreat on an island (!) in October 2017 which at different times will feature Margaret Atwood and, at the complete other end of the spectrum of literary shenanigans, me. But, you need to go, sign up, donate, if you want this to happen. You! Me! Margaret Atwood! Birds! Words! Probably swearing! I don’t know! Go sign up.
DID YOU SEE ME ON COOKING THE BOOKS WITH FRAN WILDE? YOU SHOULD. It’s me! And Fran! Talking about food and bugs and also there’s a recipe so go clicky.
Also, three new reviews for Invasive:
Awesome author Harry Connolly talks about the book a little: “Terrific. Wendig has a way with words, which is not to say that his writing is delicate and lovely, but that it’s very inventive, specific and filled with vitality.” (Thanks, Harry!)
At Skulls in the Stars: “The broad strokes of Invasive may seem familiar to those who have read the works of Michael Crichton, in which there is often a remote high-tech research facility in which the experiments go horribly wrong. First I should note — and I think this is vague enough to not be a spoiler — that there is a dramatic, indeed catastrophic twist about 2/3rds of the way through Invasive that is surprising and very different from anything I remember of Crichton. There is a bigger difference between Wendig’s writing and Crichton’s writing, however…” (read the rest to find out what that is)
And at Ian Hiatt’s blog: “So I finished INVASIVE within 48 hours of starting it. I highly recommend doing this. It’s not that the book is so good as to warrant dangerously speedy devouring. It is—but my warning comes from a place of squirminess. You don’t want your mind resting on the main stars of this book. Ants. Lots and lots of ants. Thousands. Probably millions.”
(Anyway, point is, hey, yay, Invasive: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N)
Two more things, then I’m out:
First, my NYCC schedule is mostly done baking, and I’ll post it soon as it is.
Second, question to the crowd — I’m considering closing up shop on the Flash Fiction Fridays. They’ve been… less trafficked recently and I wonder if it’s maybe time to quietly close the door on them. (I didn’t post one on Friday.) Though, sometimes summers can be quiet, too, so maybe we’ll be ramping up more soon? Let me know!
So, yesterday on Facebook I asked about Ambien, given that my doctor had prescribed literally a few pills of it as kind of an “emergency, break glass when needed” insomnia fix.
Well, after reading the thread on Ambien, I think it scared my mind straight or something since I got a great night’s sleep last night.
One of the side benefits of that thread was the wealth of completely bizarre stories from those who have experienced side effects from it. I mean, some of them were eye-goggling. (“I woke up with a loaded gun in my bed.”)
I figure, hey, why not bring that out into the open?
If you have interesting AMBIEN TALES to tell, well, hey, do tell.
*leans forward to listen*
*face melts*
*bees exit new face holes*
*bees all buzz together GO TO ZZZLEEEEEEP*
Ah, dear Jason Arnopp. Satanist. Sexual healer. 30 squirrels in a human suit. And now, an author. He’s gone ahead and written a crackingly funny — and scary — book, The Last Days of Jack Sparks. It’s kind of like if you took a found footage horror movie and turned it into a book except made it as hilarious as you did horrific? It’s really quite brilliant. Anyway, Jason wanted to come by to talk about some stuff, and since he has those pictures of me, I decided to let him.
* * *
If there’s one thing I’m certain about these days, it’s the glut of certainty in this world.
My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks started life with the idea of a guy who becomes obsessed with tracking down the makers of a creepy YouTube video. Sometimes isolated notions like this resemble ice floes, spending years adrift in search of a connection. For two years, I didn’t know who the obsessed guy would be, until finally, the arrogant celebrity journalist Jack Sparks was born from something I noticed about social media.
As one character notes in the novel, you never see anyone on Twitter say, ‘I’m undecided on this issue – let me come back to you once I’ve had a chance to properly think it over!’ Nope, we all dive straight in, don’t we, to nail our colours to any given mast. And I’m curious as to why that might be.
Let’s clarify what we’re talking about here – or rather, what we’re not. Clearly, having right-minded morals and values (aka not being an asshat) is important. Most of us naturally wouldn’t have much time for someone who questioned whether various prejudices were good or bad. Neither am I talking about actual facts, which you either know or you don’t.
So we’re talking more about issues for which there is no single answer, and often no way of gaining any definitive closure. From God to gun control to Ghostbusters to the truth about what happened to Malaysian Airlines’ Flight MH370, the fact that everyone has an opinion isn’t so much the fascinating thing here. What fascinates me is our apparent reluctance to express uncertainty. To occupy that bewildered middle ground. Why? Why has it become almost taboo to appear uncertain or undecided about any given topic?
Here’s one answer: we’re all broadcasters now. We all have our own cyber-platform, with a number of viewers theoretically open to what we’re putting out. So when we think of ourselves as broadcasters vying for attention bandwidth (and the resulting dopamine hits, which we underestimate here at our peril), it’s easy to assume that our audience will find shiny granite-hewn opinions far more interesting than namby-pamby uncertainty. Received wisdom suggests that people are more likely to show up for news and views than someone scratching their head or sitting in cross-legged contemplation.
Furthermore, a kind of race memory assures us that strong leaders make strong decisions. If we buy that logic and crave respect, it follows that we need to be seen to be assertive. Even if it means making a situation seem more binary or simplistic than it really is, as long as we deliver our vital hot take, that’s surely the priority, right? Hmm.
Perhaps another reason we rush to serve up a steaming slice of opinion pie, is that uncertainty creates unease. It leaves items in our brains labelled Action Required. Unticked items on our mental to-do list. Deciding what we feel and believe ASAP helps to clear our psychological decks, which are already cluttered enough on a daily basis.
On a very obvious level, uncertainty can be downright scary. In 2016, it’s easy to see the world as more chaotic than ever before. There are strong arguments against this. Plenty of folk maintain it’s less chaotic than before and internationally we’re actually more united than ever, in almost every sense, but an understandably widespread sense of unease prevails nonetheless. Faced with such perceived levels of chaos, perhaps we feel the all-abiding need to cling to rock-solid views, even if those views might only unhelpfully spawn more fear (“Hey everybody, we’re all fucked! KTHXBYE”)
It’s no coincidence that we find the most certainty clustered around the human condition’s biggest question mark of them all. We have no idea of what happens to our spirit when we die, or even whether our spirit is a thing. And yet endless millions get in line to place their bets. They stack their chips on the roulette table, even though the wheel won’t be spun till they stop breathing. I understand and respect anyone’s right to place such bets, but it’s an interesting phenomenon – or at least, it is until seemingly irreconcilable certainties clash and people die, at which point it becomes deranged.
Even people who don’t believe in a creator or an afterlife, they feel the need to place their own bet and share that with the world, sparking whole new certainty wars. Me? I’d love a planet on which everyone just lounges around, shrugs and says, ‘Ah, who knows? Let’s play Doom.’
In The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, avowed non-believer Jack regularly clashes with people of faith via social media. The man doesn’t seem to have an undecided bone in his body, and yet his friends and family alike are mystified when he sets out to write a whole non-fiction book debunking the supernatural. Could it have any connection with Jack’s older brother Alistair having locked him in a dark room at the age of five? Only Jack’s labyrinthine mind holds the answer, and it’s no spoiler to say that the story takes him from a place of certainty to an altogether different place… and ultimately death.
My friend John Higgs (whose own books like Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense Of The 20th Century are must-reads) introduced me to the counter-culture icon Robert Anton Wilson. Not in person, sadly, since Wilson died in 2007. The man would warrant a whole post in himself, but when it came to (un)certainty he popularised two concepts that appeal to me greatly and seem relevant here.
The first concept was the reality tunnel. A term originally coined by Timothy Leary, this means that we all see reality in our own unique way, filtered through our beliefs and experiences. We’d do well to bear this in mind, next time we try to pass our opinions off as facts. The second concept could also be considered a tonic for the internet age: multiple model agnosticism. This doesn’t just apply to God but to everything. It involves acknowledging that we see the world through our own reality tunnels, while remaining open minded about switching to any number of new tunnels. Whole new grids of belief, further down the line. Whatever feels right.
If the internet so often seems to say I know I’m right, Robert Anton Wilson was saying I know I’m wrong. His whole self-deprecating attitude made him so diametrically opposed to Jack Sparks that it felt spectacularly right to start the novel with a Wilson epigraph: ‘If you think you know what the hell is going on, you’re probably full of shit’.
So many readers seem to find Jack Sparks as compelling as he is infuriating. Like some kind of existential duck, Jack appears perfectly calm on the water’s surface, while his legs swim furiously away underneath. Perhaps it’s appealing for us to explore the less desirable traits that social media might nurture in us, but to do so through Jack, without having to interrogate ourselves too closely.
All high-falutin’ philosophical considerations aside, of course, the idea that we have no clue what’s really going on in the universe works nicely in a novel that aspires to scare the ever-loving Christ out of readers. But the next time we don’t know what the hell is going on, we might consider plucking up the courage to say so. For every one person who thinks less of us as a result, I’m totally certain there’ll be ten who think, ‘Thank God it’s not just me’.
Jason Arnopp: Website | Twitter | Facebook
The Last Days Of Jack Sparks: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound
This owl knows that it is Monday, and is accordingly surly about it.
VERY SURLY.
Also, dubious.
Super dubious.
(I have more macros coming soon — got a camera full of ’em, but need to process the photos.)
Anyway.
So, hey, hi, how are you?
Here’s what’s going on in this neck of the woods:
– Our tiny human is now in kindergarten. He does not approve of this turn of events and would much rather spend his time staying at home and playing LEGO thank you very much.
– I’ve been battling sudden bouts of insomnia, as if I somehow fucking forgot how to sleep? And goddamnit, I love to sleep. Sleeping is the best. It’s weird when autonomic processes become hard — it starts to feel like something is broken, because, hey, sleep is obvious and easy. I’VE BEEN TRAINING MY WHOLE LIFE TO SLEEP. And suddenly my brain is like, “Hey, it’s night-time, is this a good time to talk?” And then my heart races and the room feels hot and woo, boy. It’s anxiety, probably and maybe a little bit of reflux, too, and I don’t know if it has a source or it’s just a shift in things and the schedule with B-Dub now in kindergarten. I’m sure it won’t last and I’ve had some luck the last couple of nights changing up my routine a bit, so we shall see. (If any of y’all out there deal with insomnia, shout out in the comments. Got tricks to deal?)
– Next Thursday, I’m at Let’s Play Books! I’ll bring cupcakes! And, cough cough, some edible bugs. NO, the bugs won’t be on the cupcakes. (Or will they?) Let’s Play Books is a marvelous kids’ (or mostly-kids’) bookstore in Emmaus, PA. They’re changing locations so I’m doing an INVASIVE-slash-STAR WARS event in support of their grand reopening and you should totally come. 9/22, 6PM. Be there or be covered with ants.
– The following Tuesday, 9/27, I’ll be at the Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Noble in Philly with YOUR PAL AND MINE, Fran Wilde! She’s there launching her newest, Cloudbound. I’ll be there to sign books and give Fran dubious surly owl looks for her Knock Knock jokes. 9/27, 7pm, details here.
– HEY LOOK AT THIS COOL PANEL FROM THE FORCE AWAKENS, ISSUE 4
– Hey, a very kind review of Invasive has popped up at BiblioSanctum:
“I loved Hannah as a protagonist. She’s complex, well-written, and sympathetic. Raised by parents who were diehard survivalists, Hannah grew up seeing the end of the world behind every corner. From a young age, she was taught the skills to prepare for any possible doomsday scenario. In spite of her upbringing though, or perhaps because of it, Hannah chose not to focus on the end, but instead decided to pursue a career related to studying the future. Her current relationship with her parents is complicated, strained. She maintains that human advancement will either lead us to great things, or destroy us all. As a character, Hannah is shaped by this duality, and it’s also a recurring theme that pops up throughout the novel.
The story is also tight, fast-paced, suspenseful. It’s very reminiscent of Michael Crichton, but Invasive also carries all the elements that make it a Chuck Wendig novel, with its dark humor, snappy dialogue, and hard action. I had a great time with this book, so much so that this might have just become my favorite work of his after his Miriam Black series. And if you know how much I love those books, you know I would not say something like that lightly.”
– My NYCC schedule will be formalized soon, I hear.
– I have a handful of other COOL THINGS to share, but can’t share them yet or assassins will take my head as punishment. So, keep your grapes peeled.
– Buy INVASIVE or your flesh will be colonized by ants. You can grab it here:
Indiebound | Amazon | B&N
Here’s a bit of a noodle —
I want you to take a scene from, mm, let’s go with a well-known story. Ideally, it’ll be something we’ve all seen or read — so, Die Hard, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. Even better if the scene you pick is something iconic — the showdown between John McClane and Hans Gruber, the OH SHIT YOU’RE MY EVIL SPACE DADDY scene between Luke and Vader.
Take that scene.
And rewrite it.
The trick is, rewrite it with a new genre.
What genre it ends up with is your call. Star Wars as a horror film? Die Hard in an epic fantasy context? Your call. You can change the characters and situation appropriately — though again, ideally it becomes something iconic and recognizable even with those changes.
Write it down, ta-da, that’s this week’s challenge.
Length: ~1500 words
Due by: September 16h, Friday, noon EST.
Post at your place.
Drop the link below.
Go.
