Author: terribleminds (page 166 of 480)

Okay, I don’t know that this fried rice recipe will make you want to marry the fried rice and have its fried rice babies, and honestly, I don’t know what “fried rice babies” would look like, except that they’re probably mushy and really gross. But you will want to marry me for giving you this recipe. But I can’t marry you. I’m married to my work. Also, my wife. Also, I’m having an affair with a cup of fried rice. You shut up. Don’t you judge me.

*whispers to the cup of fried rice, it’s okay, baby, it’s okay, shhh*

And yes, I know that picture up there is of a pea pod and not of fried rice, but whatever. I tried taking a nice photo of fried rice and it doesn’t look nice, because fried rice isn’t a nice-looking dish. It tastes great, but it looks like, you know, food garbage.

I AM TIRED OF YOUR JUDGEY-FACED JUDGEYNESS.

*stares*

*stares longer*

*stares so hard, eyes begin to dry out like grapes gone to raisins*

*blink blink*

Yes, we can now begin the recipe.

So.

In Hawaii, many breakfast places serve breakfast options that are not traditional here in the Upper 48. The loco moco, for instance, is a miracle health food, and by “health food,” I mean “food that will lodge itself in your heart and, provided that it does not kill you with a massive myocardial infarction, will provide you with a steady stream of nutrients for at least 60 days.” The loco moco is: a bowl of rice, topped with a hamburger patty, topped with an egg, topped with brown gravy because hey why the fuck not just dump some gravy on it. It is delicious. I was in Maui in November and I still have a loco moco clogging my aorta right now.

Another thing you might get on Hawaii for breakfast is:

Fried rice.

(For triple death points, you can get a loco moco made with fried rice.)

As such, I have brought that tradition home with me, and sometimes I make fried rice for breakfast. It is a surprisingly warm and comforting start to the day — the food equivalent of a cozy Christmas sweater. Except now I’m imagining eating a sweater? Which is not appetizing at all, is it? I am not very good at this writing thing, I apologize.

POINT IS, IT’S FUCKING SCRUMPTIOUS.

My family loves it. And they’re not just saying that because of the trap doors underneath their chairs that trigger whenever they say anything negative about me or my food.

Here now, is how you make my version of breakfast fried rice.

First, you need some rice. And you need some old rice. I don’t mean that you need ancient, antediluvian rice. I don’t mean you need moldy rice stuffed in a dirty gym sock and left to ferment. I mean that you need to have cooked rice on hand, rice that has cooled all the way, where the starch has settled down, where its texture is firmer and ensures that your fried rice won’t be gummy, like you’re eating something that was pre-chewed. I either make the rice the night before, then pop it in the YETI CLOSET to cool down, or I just say fuck it and I used the rice from last night’s Chinese dinner. I like to use a quart (two pints) of rice, or maybe two cups if I’m making it here. And two cups of uncooked rice becomes around six cups of cooked rice, I guess because rice is basically some kind of wizard food.

Next up, you need the SAUCE. Except it’s not really sauce, because — well, I dunno, it doesn’t sauce the rice, it just blends in with it because each grain of rice is cooked. Whatever. Shut up. I’m not a chef. I don’t know the magical chef words like saucier and mirepoix and cocaine. Point is, you need some goddamn liquid to flavor the rice, and here is the liquid blend I make: two TBsp soy sauce, two TBsp fish sauce, one TBsp oyster sauce, two TBsp sherry vinegar. If you want it a little sweet, substitute hoisin for the oyster, or use a sweet balsamic vinegar instead of the sherry. Also add in: three garlic gloves, minced, and about an equal amount of ginger, also minced.

Sometimes I add in a splash of mirin, because I’m wacky like that.

WHISK IT. WHISK IT GOOD. /devo

Now it is time for

BACON.

Okay, bacon is overused culinarily, I get it, but bacon — a good, smoky bacon — adds a nice layer of flavor, so clap your trap and get out four or five slices of bacon, chopped.

Put it in a pot, medium-high heat.

(Technically, a wok, but I don’t have a wok, I have a pot.)

Cook the bacon until its precious bacon essence begins to fill the room.

Then, as the bacon cooks (you don’t want it hella crispy, you just want it where it has begun to yield its unctuousness to the bottom of the pot), add in either one bigger onion or two smaller onions. Chopped, obviously, don’t just thunk it in there like it’s a fucking softball — do I need to tell you all this? God, you’re the worst. This is why I won’t marry you, I swear.

Now, it is time for the second meat.

And I want you to know, the second meat is Spam.

Yes, the pink quivering can-shaped ham-blob.

Yes, it is a canned meat.

No, it is not some kind of scrapple-based offal.

Yes, it might be a gelatinous cube from D&D.

Yes, it has enough sodium in it to mummify your internal organs.

AND YES, IT IS GODDAMN DELICIOUS.

Okay, listen, my Mom-Mom used to fry Spam in lard. It was stupidly, disgustingly amazing. I stopped eating Spam at one point because I became convinced it was something gross, as if it was just, I dunno, a can full of pulverized pig anuses or whatever, and hey, maybe it is. Though honestly, the can says it’s basically just ham made from pork shoulder, and it tastes mostly like ham, and also, did I mention it’s goddamn delicious? Sure, yes, you have to sometimes scrape off gelatin, and that can seem off-putting until you realize that gelatin is a natural byproduct. The gelatin makes it fancy! Just think of Spam as hillbilly terrine. Sidenote: my grandmother lived till she was 89, and she was tough as a brick wall. I credit the Spam in lard.

So, you need a can of Spam.

Just do it. Just go buy the Spam.

Cube it.

Put it in the mix with the bacon and the onion.

You can drain off some bacon fat at this point if you really want, or you can just leave it in there. I don’t care. I’m not your Mom. I don’t control what you do. I tried to control what you do but the bio-chip I inserted in your brain through your nose while you sleep is presently malfunctioning, and every time I push the reboot button, you pee yourself.

(Oh, uhh, yeah, P.S. I’m the reason you keep peeing yourself? Sorry.)

Lower heat maybe at this point? Medium heat.

Once that cooks down a little bit, I make a little room in the center of the pot, I scramble a couple of eggs, then I put them right in there. I scramble them real quick, then mix them up with the rest of the business.

Now: rice.

Dump the rice in.

That’s all you do with it. Nothing more complicated than that. You don’t need to whisper secret entreaties to it, there are no safe words, no gentle caresses are required. Just dump it in there unceremoniously, as if it has offended you and you are discarding it, unloved and disregarded.

Mix-a-mix-a-mix.

I like to let the rice settle for a couple minutes, till it starts to stick a little to the bottom of the pot — not burned, not exactly, but so some of it starts to get crispy.

Then: dump in your liquid.

No, not your pee, GOD, YOU’RE SO GROSS AND WEIRD —

I mean the soy sauce business. With the garlic and the other stuff.

Get it in there, mix it around, use a hard metal device (not a sex toy or a hunting knife) to scrape up the rice bits from the bottom so it’s all starting to incorporate.

Now, you’re saying, CHUCK, WHERE ARE THE VEGETABLES.

I NEED HEALTH, CHUCK. I’M DYING. WE’RE ALL DYING. SCURVY IS RAMPANT.

And I answer: THE VEGETABLES WERE IN YOU ALL ALONG.

Then your heart glows gold and your chest opens up and maaaaagical vegetables fly out, and they sing a hymn to your greatness. Also, I may have dropped acid. Or maybe you dropped acid. Did we both drop acid? What a coinkydink.

Okay, you also need to add some real vegetables into the mix, and here’s where it gets pretty nicely customizable: you can add in whatever goddamn vegetables you want. Frozen is fine. Leftovers are great. Get cuckoo with it. I tend to like to add in a mix of frozen peas and corn. Carrots, too, though if I don’t have frozen, I’ll grate fresh carrot into the mix. If you want some greens, add in spinach. Or some pre-cooked broccoli. I don’t care what you put in there. It’s your fried rice. Mix in some kiwi fruit and marbles. Elk teeth and crickets. Don’t care. It’s your food. I’m not the one who has to eat it afterward.

Again, I let that go a little while until the vegetables are nice and green but have not yet lost that brightness and color. Now, it is time for the finishing touches.

First, take either some unrefined coconut oil (it must be unrefined, like a dockworker) or some sesame oil, and mix it around. The coconut will lend an almost-sweetness. The sesame oil will lend a sesame-ness. Or you could just use motor oil, but I’m pretty sure that’s poisonous.

Second, some chopped scallions are nice. Or cilantro. Or bean sprouts.

Finally, I then fry up an egg or two — sunny side up — and pop it on top of each bowl.

And that’s it.

That’s all she wrote.

I don’t know who “she” is but literally, that’s all she wrote.

What now? Shut up and eat it, I guess.

AND THEN THANK ME IN THE FORM OF CASH AND ADORATION.

*stares*

*waits for cash*

*waits for adoration*

Stephen Blackmoore is a friend — and I have photographic evidence where obviously he is not screaming in terror from standing nearby, how dare you suggest that — but even more, the guy’s a bad-ass with the WORDS and the STORIES and the NECROMANCY. Fictional and otherwise. Seriously, his book, Dead Things, is easily one of my favorite urban fantasy novels of all time, because it’s grim and funny and bitter — it’s just the right mix of horror and crime, with an unctuous underlayer of dark comedy. Anyway! The newest Eric Carter book is out, and you want it, but more to the point, Stephen has some things to say about (dun dun dun) deadlines. (Oh, and P.S. don’t forget about his Fan Art Photo Cosplay Whatever Contest, which goes to the 15th, and might win you a set of bad-ass Loteria art by Galen Dara.)

* * *

My latest novel, HUNGRY GHOSTS, is the third in the Eric Carter urban fantasy series about a modern-day necromancer who makes stunningly bad choices. It was supposed to come out July 15, 2015. It is now coming out February 7, 2017. That’s about a year and a half late.

So, what the hell happened?

The simple answer is I missed the deadline. Lots of reasons why. Most under the heading of Shit Happens. But the biggest by far is the fact that the book sucked great, big, yeasty donkey balls.

I fought with that manuscript trying to hammer it into some kind of shape that didn’t look like dog vomit. And as the deadline got closer I finally had to admit it wasn’t working. I needed to scrap it completely and rewrite the whole goddamn thing from the ground up.

Something like 50,000 words down the toilet. Some of them were okay words. Some of them were really good words.

None of them were salvageable.

I have never missed a deadline like this. Oh, sure, I’m late to shit all the time. We all are. But this was a DEADLINE. For my BOOK.

So, in the interest of others who may one day find themselves in a similar situation, here are a couple things that helped me. As with everything, YMMV and your experiences will undoubtedly be different from mine. But I hope this helps.

DON’T LOSE YOUR SHIT

Try not to panic. Okay, maybe a little panic. You’re going to, anyway, so you might as well get it out of your system.

Done? Good.

Even though it’s called a deadline, they won’t actually kill you. They don’t have the budget for ninjas these days and sexy international assassins are all out killing more important people than you.

Though they may be upset, chances are nobody at your publisher actually hates you. It’s a business, you owe them a book, shit happens. It’s not like you just shot their dog or anything. And you’re not the first person who’s ever been late.

OWN IT

Once you realize you’re going to be late take responsibility for it. There are reasons and there are excuses. Reasons are good data points for later when you’re figuring out how not to do it again, but excuses fly like lead balloons.

You are part of an economic ecosystem that begins with you. Agents, editors, copy editors, artists, marketing people and on and on. These are the people who make it possible for your book to get out there. Sales of your book pay for their salaries. Sure, it’s pennies, but those pennies add up. They need your support as much as you need theirs. So don’t hide the truth from them. It’ll just make things worse.

And how about the people who actually want to BUY your book? Maybe they’ve pre-ordered it. Maybe they’re just really looking forward to it. You’re letting those people down. Apologize. Explain it. Don’t hide under the covers and pretend it isn’t happening.

When I finally called it, I decided to write a public blog post about it that explained the situation. I’m late, here’s why. Best thing I could have done, and one of the most terrifying.

But all the responses I got were from people who appreciated that I’d told them what was going on. Not only did it get the information out, but it also made me realize that I have actual fans. This was a revelation. And it made me that much more determined to not give them a shitty book.

THE DOMINOES ARE NOW TIPPED

When you’re late, a few things are set in motion.

Book releases get scheduled a year or more in advance and include a lot of moving parts to make it happen. Cover art, copyediting, printing, setting up distribution, etc. These are all put in the calendar so everybody’s on the same page.

So, when you fuck up your deadline, you fuck up everything else, too. It’s like that I Love Lucy episode where she’s working at the candy factory and the candy doesn’t stop coming and starts to pile up.

If they slow down the conveyor belt to wait for your book, they would have to reschedule a bunch of other things like other people’s release dates. Authors who you might actually be friends with. Do you want that to happen? Do you want to screw up your friends’ book? Do you? Huh? DO YOU?

Of course not.

Which is good, because it won’t. Train’s already moving and you missed your slot. They’re going to reschedule your release into the earliest time they can support in the production schedule. It can be a while. For me it happened to be a year and a half later. Nut up and accept it.

Remember, your publisher does not have an army of people at their disposal. Sometimes all they can throw at something are an intern with a helper monkey named Bobo, and a pothos plant sitting in a 3×3 room that used to be a broom closet. Or, more likely, still is. They are doing this not just to make money (which is good because there’s not a lot of it in publishing), but because they love books as much as you do.

BE REALISTIC

Now that you’ve blown that deadline like… ya know let’s just leave that simile alone, shall we?

Anyway, now that it’s all out in the open the next question is going to be, “When can you get it done?”

Take a deep breath. Lay it all out and take a good, long, look at what you have to do. is it just getting to the end? How many chapters do you have to do? A lot? A little?

Do you have to scrap the book completely and start from scratch like I did? Do you need to clean some scenes up and rearrange chapters and make sure it still all works? Do you have to ditch troublesome characters and patch up the holes in the scenes that they filled?

Once you have that, you can figure out how long you think it will take. Days, weeks, months? Put together an estimate based on all of that.

Then take that number and throw it in the trash, because it’s wrong.

Whatever you come up with I guarantee it’s not enough. Shit happened before. Shit will happen again. That’s life. There are day jobs, spending time with your partner(s), children, dogs, natural disasters, family, recovering from family, realizing that natural disasters and family aren’t all that different, mental health crises, accidents, angry revenants from the grave thirsting for revenge, medical shit, natural disasters, assassins, car problems, international espionage, getting locked up for protesting an authoritarian President, and so on and so forth and such and whatnot.

So, tack on more time. Adding another month or three to your estimate isn’t a bad idea. It’ll still probably be wrong, but it will be less wrong than what you already came up with, and you’ll be less likely to blow ANOTHER deadline. And believe me, having that conversation is even MORE fun than the first one.

Me, I told my editor I thought I could finish by end of September. It turned out to be the end of December. I got lucky, because the new release date actually gave me more time than I thought it would take, so it didn’t cause any other issues. But goddamn did I feel like an idiot.

GET YOUR ASS BACK TO WORK

Now that you’ve gone through all that, said your mea culpas, done your outstandingly wrong math, and felt like a shitheel to your publisher and your fans, you need to actually FINISH the book.

I know, right?

Now is the really tough part. The rewrite, or the clean-up, or the finishing, or whatever it is you need to do. No matter what it’s going to be rough. All of the work that you have to some extent is now suspect. One change can ripple throughout a story and what you thought was a simple tweak has massive repercussions down the line. You have to look at the entire thing all over again.

Whatever it is you have to do doesn’t matter. Because it always, ALWAYS, comes down to one thing. You need to get your ass in the chair and make it happen.

So, go make it happen.

* * *

Stephen Blackmoore’s dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts • “Gritty, emotional and phenomenally imaginative.” —RT Reviews

Necromancer Eric Carter’s problems keep getting bigger. Bad enough he’s the unwilling husband to the patron saint of death, Santa Muerte, but now her ex, the Aztec King of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli, has come back — and it turns out that Carter and he are swapping places. As Mictlantecuhtli breaks loose of his prison of jade, Carter is slowly turning to stone.

To make matters worse, both gods are trying to get Carter to assassinate the other. But only one of them can be telling him the truth and he can’t trust either one. Carter’s solution? Kill them both.

If he wants to get out of this situation with his soul intact, he’ll have to go to Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead, and take down a couple of death gods while facing down the worst trials the place has to offer him: his own sins.

Stephen Blackmoore: Website | Twitter

Hungry Ghosts: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

As I’ve noted many times in the past, photography for me is not a professional outlet — though I do sometimes have to remind myself I’ve a few paid photography credits under my belt — but rather, a therapeutic one. And often, grabbing the camera occurs to me less during the winter, which is stupid, because (especially regarding macro photography) the beauty and weirdness of the world does not only manifest on warmer days. One of the best ways to get original and compelling macro photos is just to wander around the house, looking for things that deserve a closer look — food, kitchen utensils, tools, a child’s toys, cellar spiders, sex toys, discarded human corpses, the tribe of microscopic chimpanzees that live inside your inner ear canal, whatever.

So, I’m going to take a little time this week to grab the camera, wander the house like a restless specter, and find some cool things that demand photographic representation at the macro level.

I’ll report back.

Some quick bits:

Atlanta Burns — still a buck at Amazon.

Atlanta Burns: The Hunt — also still a buck at Amazon.

Star Wars: Empire’s End is out soon. Preorder: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

A week after that is the newest Miriam Black book, Thunderbird. Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Meanwhile, here are some other pics snapped inside the house, not outside on a warm day. Please to enjoy these. And if you don’t enjoy them, HA HA HA I DON’T CARE YOU’RE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME AND THE TINY TRIBE OF EAR-MONKEYS THAT CONTROLS MY MIND

This week, it’s pretty easy. The burden is light — all I want you to do is drop into the comments below and create the title to a story. I’ll add in an extra restriction in that the title must be three words — not one, not four, not two. Three words specifically.

Next week, I’ll randomly pick ten of those titles and those will form the basis of a new flash fiction challenge. It should be awesome. So —

Get to titlin’.

(THEY SEE ME TITLIN’)

(THEY HATIN’)

(ahem)

Due by Friday, February 10th, noon EST.

EDIT: one title, don’t spam with several

Hey, I figure we all need some news that does not melt our collective faces as if we just foolishly opened the goddamn Ark of the motherfucking Covenant, so here I am, delivering some news that — at the very least — is very cool to me.

Behold, if you were to procure a special edition copy of Empire’s End from Barnes & Noble, you will in fact receive the B&N Exclusive Edition, which has the following poster (I assume it’s double-sided) in it — one is our first image of Norra Wexley, New Republic pilot, mother to Temmin “Snap” Wexley, and all-around bad-ass; the other is a glimpse of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, the kick-ass woman fighting to save her vision of the Galactic Empire.

(Art by Steve Thomas.)

Also, were you wanting an excerpt of Empire’s End? Well, I’ve got one for you at io9— this one, which is part of (but not an entire) interlude, features Lando and Lobot retaking Cloud City and talking about a baby gift for a certain bundle of Dark Side named Ben Solo, future Knight of Ren and mopey emo First Order dude. (Also note Lando’s position on refugees…)

Empire’s End comes out in just under three weeks.

(And one week later: the new Miriam Black, Thunderbird.)

Other news:

Both Atlanta Burns and its sequel, The Hunt, are on sale for $1.00 apiece (!) at Amazon for your Kindle, and the paperbacks are on sale, too. (I believe this deal is US or NA only.) The books fit snugly in what you might consider the PUNCH NAZIS genre, because it features a girl (the titular Atlanta Burns) taking the fight to a town in thrall to corruption and, of course, Actual Nazis. It’s about talking on bullies and standing up for your friends and, well, I didn’t mean for the books to feel prescient, but here we are in 2017 when shit’s gone sideways. That said, please note: these books are not escapist fun. They’re dark stuff, so trigger warning for — well, let’s just go with trigger warning.

(Note, too: I think this $1.00 sale is far-reaching across a lot of Amazon titles — f’rex, you’ll find Marko Kloos’ bad-ass Frontlines series gets the one buck treatment. And I see Gwenda Bond’s Girl Over Paris graphic novel is, too. So poke around, see what else is in the deal.)

Anyway, that’s the news.

Good luck out there. I heard the groundhog popped out of his hole, heard who was president, then sealed his burrow shut with a vault hatch from Fallout.

It’s been a century of peace since Earth became a colony of an alien race with far reaches into the galaxy. Some die-hard extremists still oppose alien rule on Earth, but Donovan Reyes isn’t one of them. His dad holds the prestigious position of Prime Liaison in the collaborationist government, and Donovan’s high social standing along with his exocel (a remarkable alien technology fused to his body) guarantee him a bright future in the security forces. That is, until a routine patrol goes awry and Donovan’s abducted by the human revolutionary group Sapience, determined to end alien control.

When Sapience realizes whose son Donovan is, they think they’ve found the ultimate bargaining chip . But the Prime Liaison doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, not even for his own son.  Left in the hands of terrorists who have more uses for him dead than alive, the fate of Earth rests on Donovan’s survival. Because if Sapience kills him, it could spark another galactic war. And Earth didn’t win the last one . . .

* * *

HOW TO FAIL AT NANOWRIMO

Exo started out as a flaming car wreck of a NaNoWriMo project. At the time, my agent was shopping around my first book, Zeroboxer, and I knew the best thing to do was distract myself with a new project so that I wouldn’t fall prey to the disease of refreshing my email like it was going out of style. “A lot of people swear by this NaNoWriMo thing,” I said to myself. “I ought to give it a try.” I’d written novel manuscripts before. I knew I could stick to a writing schedule. The idea sounded fabulously appealing: Sit down on November 1^st and just let the words flow from my fingers! Get 50K of that first draft done in a month! Win a virtual medal! Piece of cake.

This is how it went: I wrote 35,000 words by November 20^th or so, and stalled out. It wasn’t working. At all. I read the manuscript from the beginning and hated all of it with the nauseous loathing that writers feel when looking at their own disgusting word messes. I had a shiny story idea in my head but it was emerging as dog vomit. So I quit. I failed NaNoWriMo hard.

I trashed everything I’d written and started again. I wrote a new draft over several months, and then rewrote 50% of that one. And did it again. After the book sold, I did another major revision with my editor. I was relieved and excited by how it was getter better and better, but part of me was also surprised and disheartened. I mean, Zeroboxer was picking up accolades and awards, and whoa, I got to go to the Nebula Awards as a finalist and dance on stage, so why the hell was it so hard to write another book?! This whole writing thing ought to be easier now, right?

Wrong. In talking (griping, whining, crying) to wiser authors, I learned there was wide agreement that the second book is often a complete bitch to write. A very loud voice in your head is telling you that because you’re now a Published Author, you should be writing better and faster, plus doing author promotion stuff with an effortless grin. But the truth is that every book is different. The second, third, or fifteenth book is not easier. Just different.

“Winning” at something like NaNoWriMo is meaningless. My 35,000 garbage words eventually turned into a published novel I’m very happy with. I have to wonder how many far better 50,000 NaNo projects sit out there languishing, unrevised, unpursued. NaNo is means to an end, not an end in itself.

Elizabeth Bear said something like this to me: “It will seem like it’s getting harder and you’re taking longer, but that’s because you’re getting better. If it’s getting easier, you’re not challenging yourself.” In the end, I’m even more proud of Exo than I am of Zeroboxer because while my debut proved that I could write, this book proved that I could be a professional writer.

EVERY STORY YOU WRITE IS PERSONAL IN SOME WAY (AND SOMETIMES YOU DON’T KNOW IT)

When we started working together on Exo, my editor told me that she loved how the story was an allegory for the experience of first generation children in America. “What?” I did not say that out loud, but that was my initial reaction. “It is?!” Mental pause. “Huh. How about that.”

My editor pointed out that my main character, Donovan, and his fellow exos, are considered too alien by unaltered humans, yet still nothing but human to the aliens. Exo was already personal to me because it’s about a broken family, and as a child of divorced parents, I knew I was bringing some of my own worldview and experiences to the page. I had no idea, honestly, that as a second-generation Asian American I was also infusing elements of mixed identity into the narrative. Which goes to show that sometimes we writers can turn out to be all smart and subtextual without even trying, just by letting more of ourselves filter into the work.

IT’S FUCKING HARD TO WRITE WITHOUT PROFANITY

Exo is published by Scholastic Press, of Harry Potter and Hunger Games fame. One of Scholastic’s enormous strengths is its distribution reach into schools. Didn’t we all love getting those colorful flyers in class? In order to ensure my book got a showing in the Book Fairs and Clubs market, my editor asked me to remove the abundant amount of profanity in my novel.

“But my characters are soldiers and terrorists,” I protested.

“I’m sure there are terrorists in the world today who don’t cuss.”

“But these are American terrorists! They would cuss all the time. Teenagers in the military aren’t going to be like, ‘Aw, gosh darn it!’ Come on, tell me what I can get away with here. Like, can I have one ‘fuck’ and three ‘shits’? Two ‘shits’ and a couple ‘goddamns?’

“No, none of that. I don’t think your book even needs the cursing. Besides, it’s set in the future so make up your own swear words if you want.”

“There is no way I am pulling a Battlestar Galactica and using ‘fraking!’ I won’t do it! This is untenable! I can’t write without profanity!” (Dramatic teeth gnashing.)

(Sigh.) “Look, the school market can give you a shit ton of sales, but if you want to cling to your precious swear words for the sake of artistic integrity, it’s your fucking career funeral.”

Okay, I made up that last bit. My editor is a lovely person and didn’t say that, but you get the idea. I took out the profanity. Unless you have a really good reason, you do what your publisher tells you will help them market and sell your book. I ended up thinking of it as a professional writing challenge: how do I stay true to the tone of the novel without full and unfettered use of colorful vocabulary? Writing under constraints can be instructive and it’s what professional writers often have to do. And more kids reading my books? Well, gosh darn, I’ll fraking take it.

LIQUID ARMOR IS A THING AND IT’S REALLY COOL

In the world of Exo, certain people have adopted alien biotechnology that gives them an organic body armor that they can manipulate at will. To get an idea of how something like this might plausibly work, I did a bunch of research into current and future body armor. Naturally, military forces are investigating ways to make armor far more lightweight and flexible. Kevlar on steroids, basically. The idea of liquid body armor is based on the concept of shear thickening fluids: non-Newtonian fluids that can harden in milliseconds and act like solids when force is applied to them. Yes, much like that weird goop of cornstarch and water that you might have been introduced to in a science class. Permeating fabric with shear thickening fluid makes for something that is light and flexible like a piece of ordinary clothing but is bulletproof.

Another advanced body armor possibility is spider silk, which is one of nature’s toughest substances. Scientists have already speculated in a science fiction-y way that the protein in spider silk could conceivably be placed in human skin to create, you guessed it, armored humans.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE GOOD VS. EVIL THING

People like their good vs. evil stories. Especially in young adult novels. I worried that writing something like Exo would go against the popular grain. I wanted to tell an alien invasion story that was different from the typical aliens-conquer-earth plotline. I wanted to get past the arrival, invasion, and war part of the narrative and explore the idea of a world post-colonization, one in which humans have both benefited and suffered from the new world order. I wanted it be filled with moral ambiguity and have no “good” or “bad” sides. We’ve seen plenty of plucky, brave, YA rebels who want to overthrow the system, but how about the story of someone who is in the system, who benefits from it and defends it despite all its flaws, yet is still heroic and tries to do the right thing? Could I make the reader root for someone who enforces alien rule over Earth? Could I write a story that would make teenage readers ponder difficult issues while entertaining them with scads of sci-fi action? I think and hope I succeeded, but regardless of how the book is received, I’m glad I followed through on that vision.

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Fonda Lee is the award-winning author of young adult science fiction novels Zeroboxer (Flux), which was an Andre Norton finalist, and Exo (Scholastic), a 2017 Junior Library Guild Selection. She is a recovering corporate strategist, a black belt martial artist, and an action movie aficionado. She loves a good Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Calgary, Fonda now lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.

Fonda Lee: Website | Twitter

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