Author: terribleminds (page 166 of 454)

Ah, that common refrain.

You shouldn’t just get a trophy for participating.

When everyone gets a trophy, nobody wins.

If everybody is special, nobody is special.

Second place is last place.

And on and on.

It’s a criticism pointed at millennials. Or, wait — Gen Y. No! Wait. Gen X.

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY SOMEONE DECIDED THAT YOU ONLY DESERVED A REWARD IF YOU ACHIEVED TRUE APOTHEOSIS. YOU ONLY GET THE GOLDEN CUP IF YOU SLAUGHTER THE OTHER TEAM AND WEAR THEIR SKIN AS A CAPE AND TRANSFORM INTO THE GREAT BEAST WHO WILL DESTROY THE WORLD. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE CHAMPION, HIGHLANDER. EAT YOUR WEAKER FOES. REMAIN STANDING ATOP A HILL OF INFINITE CARCASSES.

Except, that’s kinda horseshitty, isn’t it?

When did we become so cynical about participation?

So sour-faced about people who are doing stuff?

This is usually aimed at children — or the environment around children (meaning, parents, schools and other institutions), and it is aimed very squarely as a criticism, but let me tell you something as the parent of a five-year-old: getting a child to participate in something can feel like a Herculean task. Just getting your kid to sit down and DO THE THING THAT IS PRESENTLY BEING DONE can feel like the completion of an epic quest. You’d have an easier time stimulating the prostate of a galloping bison. Getting children to do the thing is difficult for an unholy host of reasons. Maybe they’re scared of the other participants. Or scared of failing. (Or scared of what you’ll think of them when they fail.) Maybe they’re bored. Could be that they don’t understand what’s being asked of them, or instead that they’re obstinate and would much rather do the OTHER THING instead of THIS THING. This only gets worse as a kid gets older because kids gather a lot of baggage about doing things, and sometimes that baggage is weighted with the (arguably capitalist) rhetoric of success and failure: you either WIN or you LOSE, it’s either PASS or FAIL, you’re the CHAMPION or you’re a SUCK-FACED SHITBABY. And teenagers kinda figure out that game, and they check right the fuck out. They stop participating, in part because it’s not cool, and in part because I think teenagers are actually surprisingly good at smell-testing bullshit. They can detect these cultural shenanigans, and so they cynically give the middle-finger to the entire process and they piss off somewhere to get drunk and grope each other.

But doing stuff? It’s how the world works. It’s what makes the world happen. Participation is pretty much everything. Winning is a narrow selection without much meaning. Most of life is just showing up and doing the work — whether that’s work with family, or school, or friendships, or a proper job. Show up. Do the work. Do the best. Be the best you. And if you do that? That’s amazing. Because most people don’t actually do that.

So.

When I was a kid, I did soccer afterschool. I hated it. Fuck soccer. Fuck everything about soccer. Fuck practice and the drills and the coach and any of the kids who liked soccer. I was young — this was elementary school — and even then the focus was on leagues and getting better not to get better but getting better to win. It was a competition.

Now, to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with competing. At a certain level, that’s what you’re in to do, and why you get involved. But at that level, at the elementary school level, the purpose is — or should be — different. The purpose is, hey, here’s how you work on a team. Here’s how you follow instructions. Here’s how you exist as a physical being who moves his body around in the world instead of sitting in front of a television. Here is how you participate.

But that’s not how they treated it.

I didn’t get an award for participating even though that’s the whole point of me being there. Everyone should’ve been hopping up and down because HEY HOLY CRAP YOU’RE HERE ON THE FIELD AND YOU’RE SCARED AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND THAT’S EXCITING AND DAMNIT IF IT’S NOT A VICTORY JUST FOR SHOWING UP AND PUTTING IN THE TIME. Doing a new thing! Being present! Partaking in the task at hand! I wanted to feel good for that, not for enduring an onerous afterschool program driving me to be an elementary school soccer champion and by the way did I mention I fucking hate soccer. I would’ve been happy with a participation trophy — and no, I wouldn’t have gotten confused thinking that somehow it was equal to actually being the winner, because winning still feels like winning. Kids aren’t confused by participation trophies. They’re not idiots. Yet we disdain participation because it is expected.

The disdain of participation is tied in with our disgust surrounding failure. Participation is barely above loserdom, and many associate the two (remember: second place is last place). But that’s not how the world works. Or, more importantly, it’s not how the world needs to work.

As a writer, I meet lots of aspiring writers who want to write but are, for various reasons, afraid to do so. They’re afraid they’ll get it wrong. They look so far ahead they see a world where they won’t be able to accomplish the thing, so why bother? They have the desire to do the thing but are somehow afraid to participate for fear of failing and not winning.

Except, there is no winning.

There exists a sliding scale of various milestones, sure — cascading victory conditions that open up, but this is less like WIN THE GAME AND GET THE GOLDEN TROPHY and more like PLAY YOUR CHARACTER IN THE RPG SO YOU SECURE MORE EXPERIENCE POINTS TO BUY COOL UPGRADES TO YOUR LIFE. Writing doesn’t come with a golden cup. It’s not like once a year one writer gets to shed her carapace and emerge as J.K. Rowling to become the temporary headmaster of Hogwarts’ School of Storytelling Magic. Further, failure is an essential part of what we do. I wrote five books before I got the sixth one published. I wrote countless unfinished books in and around those first five. Life is constant failure. I’m sure I fucked up the first sentence I ever tried to write. I’m sure I shitted up the first paragraph. I have one of the first stories I ever wrote in elementary school, and newsflash: it is about as entertaining as watching a turtle fuck a hot jockstrap. (Actually, that might be pretty entertaining.) Failure is a critical state. My son does things all the time, and most of those things he does poorly — then he does them better, and better still, until he succeeds. And you might say, THERE, TA-DA, HE WON, and that’s true.

But I didn’t chide him for trying all the while until he got there.

Every time he tried and failed to write his alphabet, I didn’t play a fart sound buzzer and boo him from the bleachers. I did not merely champion him upon success, I cheered him for trying. For doing. For participating. Because that’s how you get there. And it’s the hardest part!

My writing career has been all about participating. Participating when it was hard. Participating when I did not know what the floppy fuck I was doing. Participating when other people told me not to bother because I was going to fail, because it was an impossible career, because I would make better money if I just dug ditches instead. Why try when you might fail? Doesn’t participation just lead to failure anyway? Why bother at all?

Participation has been my everything. And rejection has been vital to that. Rejection is a battle scar. It’s proof I’m in the arena. It’s some Viking-level shit. It’s two gladiators showing off their injuries: “I GOT THIS ONE WHEN I FAILED TO UNSEAT THROMGAR THE INCONTINENT FROM HIS WYVERNOUS TIGERWOLF. I LOST THE FIGHT THAT DAY, BUT I HAVE THIS COOL-ASS SCAR TO SHOW FOR IT. AND I LIVE TO FIGHT AGAIN.” Rejection is a sign of doing the thing and surviving. You know who doesn’t ever get rejections? People who don’t participate. Most people write a novel once every never, and if you’re writing a novel — or doing whatever the thing is that you wanna goddamn do — then that is a victory worth celebrating.

Here’s the thing: we say, we shouldn’t reward people for the bare minimum, and when we say that, we mean participation. But participation is not the bare minimum. Observing? That’s the minimum. Watching instead of doing is about as low as you go. The kids on the field kicking the ball? They’re doing shit, man. That’s awesome. Good for them. The parents in the stands decrying the trophies those kids will get for participating? They’re fucking spectators. They’re only bystanders, not doing a good goddamn thing except placing their own proxy hopes and dreams on their little genetic champions.

I cheer my kid when he tries a new food. I cheer him when he draws, or reads, or does something he’s afraid to do. I cheer his participation in life, because that’s what matters. That’s all we have. Winning is hollow. Getting to the end of the road only happens by walking it. Participation is its own special victory, and fuck anybody who says different. Double-fuck you if you hate on your own kids for not coming home with the win. Huzzah to adults for participating, too. You vote? Good for you. You participate in a charity? Fuck yes. You DO THE THING THAT MUST BE DONE? Have a lollipop, you wonderful person, you.

Get shut of the illusion that winning is everything, participation is nothing, failure is the end.

Perfection is the enemy. Failure is more important to us than victory. You will fail a lot more than you win, and you learn a lot more when you lose — you don’t improve through victory. Victory is a plateau. You improve by capitalizing on your loss.

Be present.

Participate.

No, it isn’t the only victory. Yes, it’s only a small one.

But it’s a victory just the same.

We all die. Nobody wins that contest. Life is not The Hunger Games, man.

But we are all here. We can all chip in. We can all do the thing.

Participate, and don’t be made to feel small for doing so.

GO DO THE THING. And celebrate doing it.

That is an old Emperor Palpatine action figure of mine given the macro treatment. I like doing that, sometimes — taking a gander at toys, particularly older ones, from a new angle.

Here’s an older one I took of Nien Nunb:

I may take some more — I have a bunch of the old figures and sets (which I let B-Dub play with because I ain’t no collector who keeps all the fun stuff in boxes, ew).

Anyway, them’s your macros for the day.

And in Star Wars-related news:

For some reason, Star Wars: Aftermath on Kindle is $1.99 — it started yesterday, and I’ve no idea how long it goes. Could be ten minutes, could be ten days. I expect it to actually end early today. So go grabby grabby. And MTFBWY, monkey-lizards.

So, as this week is my son’s 5th birthday, I thought it would be fun to take some of the completely random shit that spills out of his head and use that as the basis for a flash fiction challenge. Below you’ll find a list of quotes from my son.

Select one (or several, I don’t care) quotation and use it inside a piece of flash fiction.

Length: 1000 words-ish

Due by: Friday, May 27th, noon EST

Post at your online space. Link back in the comments.

The quotes:

“Can I put goggles on the dog?”

“There is a three-headed flying werewolf in that tree.”

“I can cut down a thousand trees with my teeth.”

“I will defeat it with Kitten Magic.”

“I will slice you into beef!”

“I can still see without a face.”

“You guys don’t make good choices.”

“They said it was a legend, but I know it’s real.”

“I’m gonna ride you like a turkey.”

“I am queen of the goats.”

This week, the tiny person turns five.

Which astonishes me. He’s a bundle of energy and joy and occasional tempestuous grumpiness the likes of which god has never seen — he’s this wonderful kinetic lightning bolt of pure weird. I love him dearly and have such fun, and further, I have fun recording all his misadventures and goofy things he says. (I’ll miss it when he stops doing this.) So, on this week, I thought it useful to Storify all that, both for my record and for your amusement.

Behold — the wisdom of B-Dub, laid bare, writ large.

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite artists’ colony—Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.

* * *

Not everyone needs to go to Hell.

Roses and Rot is a riff on the medieval ballad “Tam Lin.” And one of the things that has always been my favorite part of “Tam Lin” is that every seven years, Faerie pays a tithe to Hell. And boy, do I love a good trip to Hell. I mean, it’s great in terms of story – the tragedy, and the direness of the situation, the impossible task to bring the lost person back safe, the backward glance.

Actually, you should probably skip that one.

But really, it’s one of my favorite tropes. So I tried and tried to make it work out in early drafts. Nope! Turns out, if you disappear one half of one of the most important relationships in your book for like the entire middle third of the text, things go flatter than a soda left out overnight. So for the sake of the story, I said goodbye to one of my favorite plot points.

Write for an audience.

From the moment I knew I wanted to write Roses and Rot, I knew I was writing this particular story for my sister. Now, you probably cannot write a book for my sister (well, you could, I suppose, but that might cross over into weird), but you can write a book for someone. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s your best friend. Maybe it’s a fuck you to the person who told you that you couldn’t write. But writing a book can be hard, and it can help to have a person that you’re thinking of, where giving them that story can help you keep going.

But don’t write for everyone.

It ‘s a truth universally acknowledged that an author with a book is in want of a one-star review. Someone out there is going to hate what you write, because someone out there hates everything. And there’s something really freeing in acknowledging that you’re not here for everyone, you’re here for the people who like what you do. I mean, if what you want is a book about killer robots, or mind-controlled bee assassins, or a lonely astronaut on a quest for one more inhabitable planet, Roses and Rot is not going to be the book for you. (Though, I might want to write about mind-controlled bee assassins, actually.) But if you want a version of “Tam Lin” set at a modern day artists’ colony that has romance and betrayal and sacrifice and magic, it might well be.

Also, did I mention it has a sea monster? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

Romance novels will save you.

I spent one month doing a fairly massive revision of Roses and Rot. Like, throw out almost the entire draft and rewrite it in a month sort of revision. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my career, and it fried my brain. (I ran into a friend at a local Starbucks, and he literally stepped back when I said hi because “it looks like you might bite someone.”) Not just because of the amount of words that I was trying to write every day, but because there are parts of this book that are not at all nice. Things hurt. Not everyone gets out of the story alive. I needed a way to step out of that world, and let me tell you, fun stories with a guaranteed happy ending? Yes and yes. I read Nora Roberts and Eloisa James and Tessa Dare and I think Julie Anne Long’s entire catalogue. Having the comfort of something that I liked that I could turn to at the end of the day’s writing was the best, and exactly what my brain needed to keep writing. Maybe it’s not romance novels for you – maybe it’s binging on a favorite tv show, or playing a well-loved video game. But have something that you can relax with that isn’t the writing, and that keeps you from biting people.

Sometimes you need a sea monster.

I do this thing, when I am stumped on how to begin writing for the day. I think of the weirdest possible thing that could happen. I figure that once I’ve shaken that bit loose from my brain, the stuff that the story actually needs will fall out, too. And sometimes it turns out that the weird bits were exactly what I needed.

In the case of Rose and Rot – set, by the way, mainly in a forested area of rural New Hampshire – I decided that an acid yellow sea monster needed to show up. I was probably going to edit it out later, once I got into the scene and figured things out, but (spoiler, I guess) it’s still there, because having the sea monster show up was a way for two characters to have a needed conversation. Like I said, sometimes the weird works out. Maybe for you, it’s not a sea monster, but whatever it is that you need to start writing, or keep writing, or distract your brain enough to get to the part of the plot that you actually need, use that. And write.

* * *

Kat Howard’s short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in best of and annual best of collections, and performed on NPR. Roses and Rot is her debut novel. She lives in New Hampshire.

Kat Howard: Website | Twitter

Roses And Rot: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Once in a while, I like to take the myths about writing that circulate, and I like to hunt them, and I like to slay them with my GOLDEN ARROWS OF WISDOM. (Man, how’s that for ego? ‘Golden arrows of wisdom?’ Somebody needs to give me a right good slapping.) Seriously, though, writers are often sandbagged by these persistent goblins of untruth that climb up on their backs and start riding them like ponies. That’s no good. You want to write, then write. And get shut of any toxic myths that would poison your process.

Here goes. Ten — no! Eleven! — myths I wanna kick in the basket.

“Writers have to write.”

The myth is that writers are urged, compelled, forced to write as if by some indomitable, external spirit. It’s true that many writers are driven obsessively to create, but the danger in this myth is that when you sit down for a day of writing, if you don’t feel the sacred wordmonkey spirit move through you, then you’re a bad writer, or not a writer, or that you just shouldn’t write at all. Some days I don’t want to write. Some days I am so uncompelled by the act that I’d rather do anything else at all. I’ll clean my desk, or build a blasphemous icon out of paperclips, or groom my hirsute body of various mites and ticks. It’s bullshit. Writers don’t always want to write. And that’s okay.

“Writers have to write every day.”

BZZT, false, poop, myth alert, no.

I write every day. I write every day because I am a person who a) needs the discipline and b) has a mortgage to pay and c) pays that mortgage with my crass penmonkeying. If I don’t write, I don’t get paid, and so I endeavor to write every day — and by every day, I don’t actually mean every day. I mean Monday through Friday. I take weekends off. I take holidays off. I take random days off to go do random shit.

Every writer is different. Every writer possesses a different process. Some people open their maws and disgorge 10,000 words at a time. Some writers peck through the word count — a hundred words here, a hundred there. One writer takes a year to write a book. Another takes three. I write a first draft in around 30-90 days. Everybody does their thing. No thing is wrong as long as the thing is getting done. Whatever your process is, accept no shame for it. (Shame is a worthless booster anyway.) The key here is: make sure your process works. Some writers get married to a process that doesn’t work, and then they stubbornly cling to it like a monkey riding a tiger, afraid that if they leave the beast, the tiger will eat them. We can always refine our process. And as we grow and our lives change, so do our processes. Just as there is no one perfect process for all writers, there is no one perfect process for you individually, either.

“If you’re not published by Age XYZ, then you might as well be a rodeo clown.”

Mmmnope.

Some writers start young.

Some start middle-aged.

Others in retirement.

OTHERS SCREAM NOVELS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

Who cares? Write if you wanna write. You don’t even need to marry being a writer with being published. If you want to write, write independently of your desire to be published. That secondary part can come later. Write to write, don’t write to be published. It matters little what age you are. Age lends weight and experience to the work. You’ll be fine.

If you’re 15, 50 or 105, go ahead, write.

“Outlining diminishes magic.”

a) writing is not magic, though it sometimes feels that way

b) outlining, or any act, will not kill the magic that doesn’t exist

c) magic does not exist

d) unless you’re harry potter

e) but you’re not harry potter

People worry somehow that outlining like, bottles the lightning or steals the thunder or robs them of some precious elf juice. Like, if they outline, they’ll give away their novel to this ugly process and now it’s all ruined, pouty-pout-mopey-face. Listen, if you ruin your story by outlining it, then your story wasn’t that fucking exciting to begin with — and oh ha ha ha oh shit it’s a good thing you never got to the editing phase, because boy howdy, editing feels less like wizardry and more like plumbing.

To be clear, I’m not saying you need to outline. (Though I’ll always remind writers that though you may hate the idea, some publishers will ask for synopses and outlines, especially as your career advances, so it remains a skill worth learning if not universally incorporating.) What I’m saying is, if you choose to do it, it won’t kill your work.

I compare writing a novel to taking a cross-country trip: in taking that trip, you would likely plot your journey, but plotting that journey does not rob you of all the things you will see along the way. Imagining the journey is not taking the journey. Nor does it prevent you from taking unexpected routes or exits when the sights call for it.

“I don’t need to know the rules.”

You need to know the rules because that’s how writing works. You only break the rules once you know them — breaking the rules willfully is an act of artistic independence. Breaking the rules ignorantly is an act of being an asshole. Knowing the rules is a good way to realize what rules are important to you and which ones are not. That is a way to be stylistically in command and not some Forrest Gump doofus gumping his way around Novel-Land hoping to get lucky and not shit it all up. Breaking rules with knowledge of the rules is some bad-ass, sinister shit. It’s walking away from an exploding building without flinching.

Be that character. That character is awesome.

“I’m not a real writer because [insert reason here].”

Real writers write.

Like, that’s it.

Three words, so simple, so precious. Do you write? You are a writer.

Avoid artistic purity tests.

Actually, avoid most purity tests, because they’re cliquish and elite.

“I need an MFA or some kind of formal training.”

NOPE.

Nobody cares about your MFA.

Nobody cares about Clarion or your degree or what karate belt you’re up to or what you had for dinner last night. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one lick.

That’s not to say MFAs are bad. Or that Clarion is bad. They can be great. They may be useful to you in building skills. Look at it this way: if you submit a manuscript that is shitty, it doesn’t matter if you have an MFA. If you submit a manuscript that is amazing, it really doesn’t matter if you went to Clarion. You do programs to learn, not to build a ladder. (Admittedly, sometimes these programs offer you connections, and those are good. Just the same, they are utterly non-essential and you still have to actually write a good book. Though, more on that in a few.)

“Writing is a talent.”

Nope! Some writers are certainly talented, but talent ain’t shit if you don’t have the work ethic to back it up. Worry about skill. You can build skill. You can practice skill. You can manifest the desire to be a writer, and then you can be a writer by iterating and reiterating and learning and thinking. Sure, some jerks are probably sprung from the uterus with a copy of Scrivener in their hands and half-a-novel already written. They still have to do the work. Talent is like a field of fertile dirt — you still gotta get your hands grimy, you still gotta plant the garden. I’ve known a great many talented writers from my youth, and very few of them made anything of themselves. Meanwhile, I’m a total shithead, and I’ve got a proper writing career because I work very hard at doing it. If talent is real, it barely matters without work. So do the thing you control. Do the work.

“Someone is going to steal my idea.”

They’re not.

Ideas are not precious little snowflakes that melt if you breathe on them.

Ideas are not diamonds people want to take.

Ideas are rugged, brutish, ugly things. Ideas are pieces of wood and hunks of stone. It’s up to you to sand them and polish them and fit them together how you see fit. They’re not rare gems. Your vision of an idea will be different than mine even if they come from the same core concept. I could right now try to write Die Hard and I’d come up with my own version of it without even meaning to. The only thing original about your work is you. You’re the rare gem. The idea is just the light that filters through your many unusual facets.

“Writing is supposed to be easy.”

Ha ha ha ha

Haha hehe ho oh oh oh

ahhh

yeah

*wipes tears away*

*blows nose*

That’s a good one.

Some days writing is easy.

Some days writing is like trying to castrate a unicorn with a BB gun.

If writing does not come easy to you:

Welcome to the club, the club called THE WRITING IS SOMETIMES FUCKING HARD CLUB, where we sit around our treehouse and try to write and bite our knuckles till their bloody and engage in training montages (punching frozen beef, drinking lots of whiskey, running through a gauntlet of readers smacking you with one-star Amazon reviews nailed to wooden paddles). Writing isn’t easy. It’s work. And sometimes work feels like work and that’s okay.

“All it takes is for me to write a good book.”

And here, a hard truth.

Writing a good book matters. It matters to me. It matters to you.

It also doesn’t matter as much as you want.

Here is a true fact: lots of great books have failed either to get published or to sell well once they got published. Here is another true fact: lots of very shitty books have done very well.

This is just the way of things. It’s the way of life. Sometimes mediocre people excel. Sometimes geniuses die alone and broke. It can go the other way, too — mediocre people end up landscaping your lawn while you, the genius, are a billionaire who goes to sleep on a bed of her own bitcoins.

Here’s what I will tell you: writing a good book is not the key to the kingdom, but it is valuable just the same. It’s valuable because a writing career — and really, all of life — is predicated on luck. That sounds suspiciously like I’m admitting that there really is magic in the world, but I don’t consider this magic. I consider the existence of life to be relatively random. A mad confluence of atoms and molecules. A turn of the wind, a cataclysm, a shift in weather.

Luck is the universe walking halfway down the road and stopping.

You have to walk, too. You have to meet luck in the middle.

Sometimes, bad luck happens in life, right? But often when this is the case, it’s like — okay, you still had to do something to catch the glinting flinty eye of the Bad Luck Beast. It was bad luck that you went out and a deer ran out in front of your car and the deer came up over the hood and through your windshield and beheaded you. (That actually happened to a guy outside my house when I was a kid, by the way. Big deer took off his head.) That’s bad luck, but it still required actions to take place, right? You still had to get in your car. Still had to drive it down that road at night. It was random, but it wasn’t impossible — like, deer exist. They crash a lot of cars here. They tend to go down backroads at twilight. And if you’re out, and you’re driving fast enough, and if you’re not paying enough attention…

Wham.

The deer is in the backseat of your car.

Along with your head.

Bad luck. Oops. So sorry.

It’s not that the person deserved that. It’s not that you shouldn’t go driving just in case a deer tries to suicide in front of your speeding bullet of death-steel. But factors lined up in a certain way because you nudged them to.

You met the universe halfway and it fucking killed you with a deer.

Writing is like this.

You cannot control luck, but you can get its attention.

You get its attention in a lot of ways — by engaging with the industry, by going to conventions, by entering an MFA program or by trying to accepted to Clarion. And of course, one of the chiefmost ways of urging luck to your side is by writing a book. You won’t get a book published if, uhh, you don’t write a book. That’d be fucking weird. Not just improbable, but impossible. You write a book, and that ups your chances. You write a good book — and that adds more to your chance. It’s like stacking positive modifiers on a dice roll in a roleplaying game. Sure, you might be able to kill that ogre with a stick you find, but your chances are a lot better if you have like, a chaingun that shoots magical swords.

Writing a book is like forging a sword.

But writing a good book is like forging a magic sword.

I know, I know, I said there was no magic, but damnit, this is metaphor.

The magic sword does not guarantee you’ll slay the ogre.

But it damn sure ups your chances.

Besides, magic swords are fucking baller. And writing a good book gives you the satisfaction of having done so. No, writing a good book is not a guarantee that you will be successful. But it feels great and it ups your chances, so try to do it anyway.

* * *

ZER0ES.

An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab spring hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains and skills to work for the government for one year.

But being a white-hat doesn’t always mean you work for the good guys. The would-be cyberspies discover that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA program, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an evolution both dangerous and disturbing. And if it’s not brought down, will soon be uncontrollable.

Out now Harper Voyager.

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