Author: terribleminds (page 406 of 450)

WORDMONKEY

November 9, 2011 / 50 Comments

When In Doubt, Just Say, “Fuck ‘Em”

Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo.

Maybe you’re just writing a novel. Or a script. Or an epic YouTube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts by a wrecking ball covered in Christmas lights.

Inevitably you hit that point in any project where you feel like you’re in the weeds. Vines tangled around your feet. The forest’s hissed warnings telling you, You’re just not good enough. The mud pulls at your feet. Red eyes stare from the darkness — the pinpointy stares of winged monkeys waiting in the shadows, waiting to swoop in and steal your shoes and, I dunno, probably poop in them or something. (Because winged monkeys are uniformly dicks. Total assholes. And terrible tippers, to boot. I mean, five percent on a bar-and-dinner tab? You go to hell, winged monkeys.)

Point is, the wheels are coming off the cart.

And you start to think, “I could just give up. No. I should just give up.”

Fuck that frequency, homeslice.

I’ll brook none of that babble around these parts. Because around these parts? We finish the shit that we started or we get our precious widdle toesy-woeises broken with a ball-peen hammer. (“This little piggy went to market, this little piggy got thrown into a car crusher where all his tender bones were pulverized into pork dust WHAM WHAM WHAM.”)

Over there, you’ll see a wide open field of lonely writers milling about. Millions of them. Slack-jawed and bumping into each other, sometimes saying, “Oh, let me tell you about my novel,” before voiding their bowels and pawing at one another while making sad moosey noises. Then, over here, you’ll see a much smaller group of writers. Easily a fraction of the wider herd.

You know the difference between the two groups? The big herd never finished a thing. Endless novels begun, and just as many never completed. The smaller group — the ones breathing rarefied air — are those writers who have finished something. Most don’t. That’s the big separation. Most never finish what they start. And you cannot ever be a successful writer if you don’t complete the stories you begin.

It’s the first and most critical step.

And you’re going to finish what you’re doing.

You’re going to do it, because you’re going to say —

(say it with me)

“Fuck ’em.”

Fuck The Haters

A writer encountering dissenting voices is like a fish encountering water molecules — it’s going to happen. And it’s going to hit you from all sides and it’s going to take myriad forms. “Nobody reads,” someone might say. “Being a writer isn’t a career.” They’ll have a list of reasons to check off. Unsteady income, general lack of health care, a supposedly failing publishing industry, whatever. Or maybe they’ll take specific aim at this one task: you can’t finish, why waste your time, that story’s not that good, what a terrible idea, blah blah blah. It could come from family, friends, strangers, even other writers.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em right in the eye with a yellowlicious stream of sweet, steamy urine. They don’t get it. They don’t have to get it. It’s not their life. Not their dream. You wanna write this thing, you can’t be bogged down by the naysayers and shit-birds. Maybe they’re jealous that you’re making a go of something special. Or maybe they think they really have your best interests at heart. Tell them it’s not like you’re trying to climb K2 in your fucking underwear. You’ll do what you like, thanks-very-much. Squeeze your teat at them and tell them, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me ROCKING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS BOOK. Now have a body-temperature blast of Haterade, hater-face!”

(Haterade is really just pee. So we’re clear on that point.)

Fuck What Everybody Else Is Doing

In NaNoWriMo in particular, it’s all about the community and commiseration of all the nutty wordmonkeys wordmonkeying together. That’s cool. It’s a good thing — if it helps you.

But it can also be a real bummer. On the one hand you see people less than two weeks in and they’re like, “I WROTE 400,000 WORDS — THAT’S EIGHT NOVELS, BITCHES!” and suddenly you can’t help but feel woefully, dreadfully behind. On the other hand you get the tireless self-pity party, “Oh, I’m still behind, oh, I don’t know if I can pull it out of the fire, ohhh, I didn’t write today, muhhh guh fnuh.” Those folks have their own kind of… contagious inertia, their own infectious ennui. You start to think, “Well, if all these people can’t do it, maybe neither can I. And maybe it’s okay if I’m not going to finish because, hey, a lot of writers don’t!” You become attracted to the commiseration. Misery, after all, loves company. (It also loves old lunchmeat. So if you leave out some month-old ham, you’ll find fruiting misery-spores! Science.)

Or worse, you start comparing your first draft to published books. That’s an epic no-no, the kind of no-no where you should be shaken like a baby until you lose consciousness. The midpoint of your first draft need not possess the quality of a book plucked off the shelf. Your first and most significant goal is to complete that which you are writing. Quality is great if it lives in the first draft. If it doesn’t — that’s why Book Jesus invented the “rewrite” process. So, just go ahead and sacrifice a white bull — or at least a nearby homeless guy — to Book Jesus and thank him for his gift to all penmonkeys everywhere.

Fuck what the rest of the writers are doing. Fuck ’em right in the ear with your middle finger, a finger sticky with honey and dipped in wasps. Concentrate on your own world. Blinders on, and write.

Fuck The Industry

“But the trend right now is Young Adult golem romance! But all the bookstores exploded! But the average price for e-books right now is thirty-seven old buttons! GNEAAAARRRGH.”

Thinking about the industry is just going to harsh your buzz, man. So, fuck it. Fuck ’em under the armpit with a cranky Bohemian pit viper. You can worry about the industry — and trends and book prices and what agents want and what the average advance is and which publisher tried to screw which writer and which self-published author just became an overnight success and then took a four billion dollar contract from Amazon’s new “golem romance” publishing company — later. Now is not later, and now is the time to write your book and ride that pony until it dies and then keep riding it till you get where you’re going.

Fuck NaNoWriMo

If NaNoWriMo is working for you — then ignore this.

But maybe it isn’t working for you. And that feels like an indictment against you.

It’s not. Not yet.

NaNoWriMo offers you one path toward completing a novel.

That novel is a short novel by many standards, and the time frame is also a fairly short one. Further, it asks that you write this novel during one month of the entire year and during a pretty shitty month, to boot (Daylight Savings! Thanksgiving! Black Friday! Christmas Shopping! And don’t forget about the Sadie Hawkins Day Under The Overpass Hobo Prom!).

Sometimes you go to the doctor and you say, “Doctor, I got a sixth toe growing out of my left foot and this sinister leftmost toe has a little face on it and it’s trying to convince all the other toes to revolt against me,” and the doctor prescribes you some antibiotics. You take ’em and they don’t work. So maybe he prescribes you an oily unguent and that works for a little while but then the toe grows back, bigger and meaner and now it’s got fangs and a little Viking hat. So finally the doctor prescribes you a meat cleaver and a bottle of cheap Canadian whiskey and that’s the prescription that works.

Every writer, and indeed, every book, demands its own prescription. No, I don’t believe that every writer is a glimmering glittery snowflake — at the end of the day, it’s all about boots on the ground and words on the page, and work is work and we all gotta commit. But how we do that work — pantser or plotter, 1k per day or 3k per day, Scotch or Bourbon, coffee or tea, self-pub or trad-pub — is ours. You can try to cram the square peg in the circle hole but all you get for that is frustration.

So, if NaNoWriMo is the square peg but your book is a circle hole…

Fuck it. Fuck NaNoWriMo. Fuck it right in the word count. Fuck it right in the win conditions. Fuck it in its silly name with a sexual device known only as “The Gauntlet of Hephaestus.”

Fuck Yourself

All that crass and disruptive noise is coming loudest from inside the broadcast station of your own silly head. Those swirling self-doubts. That thorny tangle of fear. The whispers of winnowing confidence, the demons of diminished patience, the ugly ducklings of unease and uncertainty. You’re the one who gives into all this stuff. You’re the one with his hand on the stick, his fingers on the keys, his pen in the inkwell. If you don’t finish this thing it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Take the blame. And then claim the power — because it’s never too late to drive this motherfucker across the finish line.

So, fuck you for not finishing. Fuck yourself in all those moist grottoes where fear clings to the ceiling and the fear guano piles upon the floor. You’re going to do this. Don’t stare at me like that. Don’t give me that look. You’re going to finish that which you began. You’re going to become one of those writers who does what he wants, not one of those pretenders who falls under the wheels of his own bus. You can do this. It’s one word at a time. Many words make a sentence, many sentences make a paragraph, and many paragraphs make a chapter. And many chapters add up to a completed manuscript.

There’s your angry, surly pep-talk from your unfriendly neighborhood penmonkey drill sergeant: head down, nose in the word salad, fingers on the story machine.

You can do this.

You will do this.

This is who you are and what you want.

Don’t stop.

Don’t blink.

Keep writing until the writing is done.

The end.

November 8, 2011 / 30 Comments

25 Things You Should Know About Suspense And Tension

It doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re writing — doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a script, a game, whatever, you’re better off learning how to implement suspense and tension into your work. It’s been on my brain lately, and so it seems a good time for another straight-up “List of 25.” Read. Digest. Comment. And above all else, go forth and write like a motherfucker.

1. True Of Every Story

We assume suspense and tension are reserved for those stories that showcase such emotions. “This is a suspense-thriller about the mad ursinologist who runs around town leaving being enraged bears and the beautiful scientist lady who seeks to undo his sinister plans.” Bzzt. Wrongo. Every story must offer suspense and tension. Will Harry get together with Sally? Will the Millennium Falcon escape the gauntlet of TIE fighters? Will Ross and Rachel finally consummate their love and give birth to the Satanic hell-child that the prophets foretold? Suspense and tension drive our narrative need to consume stories.

2. Predicated On Giving A Shit

A small disclaimer: suspense and tension only work if the story offers something for the audience to care about. If the audience neither likes nor cares to discover the truth about La Bufadora, the Assassin Baby of Madrid, then any suspense or tension you build around this infantile killer will flop against the forest floor like a deer with its insides vacuumed out its cornchute. VOOMP. Just a gutted pelt. Never ignore the Give-A-Fuck factor. And stop fucking with deer and their deer buttholes. Weirdo.

3. Ratchet And Release

Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.

4. Harder, Harder, Haaaaarderrr, Ngggghh

In winding tension tighter, escalation is everything. How could it not be? Tension is about hands closing around one’s neck: the grip must grow tighter for the fear to be there. If the grip relaxes, then the tension is lost. A roller coaster doesn’t blow the big loopty-loop on the first hill. Rather, you see it in the distant. You know it’s coming. Each hill, bigger and meaner and faster than the last. The final hill is the culmination, the climax, a roller coaster loop where you crash through plate glass windows and have jars filled with bees pitched at your head. Mounting danger. Rising fear. The hits keep coming. The Jenga tower teeters…

5. The Bear Under The Table

It’s the Hitchcockian “bomb under the table” example — you create shock by having a bomb randomly go off, but you create suspense and tension by revealing the bomb and letting the audience see what’s coming. The first day of a new school year creates tension not because it’s random (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER IT’S 4TH GRADE) but because you know all summer long that shit is coming. Also, for the record, I think we should revise the “bomb under the table” example to a “bear under the table” example. Bombs are so overdone. But two characters sitting there with a Kodiak bear slumbering secretly at their feet? Oh, snap! Sweet tension, I seek your ursine embrace!

6. Danger A Known Quantity: The Power of Dramatic Irony

This, by the way, is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is best friend and old frat buddy to Herr Doktor Suspenseuntension. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Suspense is created whether or not the characters are aware of the problem, but if the audience is the only one in on the secret, that may go a long way toward heightening tension.

7. The Question Mark-Shaped Hole In All Of Our Dark Hearts

That’s not to say every quantity must be known: the most refined tension grows out of a balance between known and unknown elements. Yes, the boy knows that the first day of 4th grade is coming, but inherent to that are a number of unanswered questions: did his bully and elementary nemesis Brutus “Smeggy” Smegbottom get held back? What will his new teacher be like? Who will he sit next to? Will Peggy Spoonblossom finally accept his Valentine’s Day card? (Smegbottom? Spoonblossom? The fuck is wrong with me?) The first day of school is a known quantity, but what will happen on that day is not.

8. Always Tell Han Solo The Odds

Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.” But we need to know the odds. It’s another component of the transparency sometimes needed to create tension: we must know when the stakes are high and the odds of success are totally astronomically fucked.

9. Save The Date!

Let’s say you’re a total dickhead parent to the aforementioned soon-to-be fourth grader. If you wanted to foment tension in that child, all summer long you’d occasionally remind him: “Hey, summer’s fading fast, kiddo. School’s on its way!” Every once in a while you’d lay on him a little something extra: “Hey, I heard Brutus Smegbottom got a new pair of brass knuckles.” Or, “I think I saw Peggy Spoonblossom down at the mall eating a froyo with her new boyfriend.” You’d needle him. Remind him of his tension. That’s what the storyteller does because the storyteller is a total fucking asshole. The storyteller must occasionally — not constantly, but just enough to keep it hovering, to keep it orbiting — remind the audience that, hey, don’t you fuckers forget that something wicked this way comes.

10. Character You Love Does Something You Hate

An easy way to create tension: when a character the audience loves does something the audience hates. It’s the whole, “Oh, I’m going to go investigate the creepy noise rather than flee from it and load my shotgun and call all the cops.” John McClane jumps off the building’s edge! Harry ruins his relationship with Sally! They mysteriously elect Jar-Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate! It’s a moment when the audience winces. One’s butthole tightens up so hard it could pulverize a walnut. You say, “Oooh. That was a bad call. This is not going to end well.” That septic feeling in one’s gut — the anticipation of worse things to come — is the splendor of effective suspense.

11. Character You Hate Does Something You Hate

Of course, it’s also effective to have a character the audience hates do something bad, too — that, then, is the power of a killer antagonist, nemesis, and villain. That sense of OH GRR GOD SO MAD RIGHT NOW is a powerful one. Tug on that puppet string whenever you need to for maximum storyteller cruelty!

12. Physical Tension Is The Shallowest Of Tension

A threat against one’s life and limb is totally workable — a character in physical danger is a good way to create fast tension. But sometimes you want to go deeper. You want to stab your sharpened toothbrush shiv into the heart and the brain. Emotional tension is the most palpable and troubling to the reader (and that’s a good thing): fear of damaged love and intimate betrayals and irreversible emotional wounds creates a more vibrant and spectacular tension in the audience. It’s cruel, yes. But as noted, it is not the storyteller’s job to be kind. The storyteller should not be a safe haven. She is not to be trusted.

13. The Pain Sandwich

For maximum evil, ensure that the tension is multi-layered. The protagonist’s wife being in danger represents both physical (she might die) and emotional (he might lose her) tension. Apply with the mayonnaise of escalation and the bread-and-butter pickles of dramatic irony for one dastardly sandwich.

14. Personal Suspense Above Global Suspense

Sure. The world’s gonna end. That’s tough. Mos def. I feel it in here. *thumps heart with fist* Except, really, I don’t give that much of a fiddly fuck. I never do. The global threat is never ever (and once more for good measure: ever) as interesting as the personal threat. Yes, all the world is going to die but if that happens so too shall the protagonist’s daughter die. Boom. Personal. Connection. Meaning. Suspense and tension are best when personal in addition to (and ultimately above) the global or cosmic.

15. The Tongues Of Tension, The Speech Of Suspense

How you write matters in terms of creating suspense and tension. If you’re trying for a tension that is fast, frenetic, a tension born of collapsed moments and microscopic beats, then you wouldn’t use big ponderous paragraphs to tell that tale. Just the same, you wouldn’t hope to convey that slow creeping sour-gut dread with short sharp truncated sentences. As with all things, language matters. The architecture of your language means something — are you building a Gothic cathedral, a one-room studio apartment, or the Winchester Mansion?

16. Drug Dealers And Cliffhangers

The storyteller is a drug dealer dealing out pain and pleasure in equal measure — a hard slap to the face and then a free taste of balm and salve to soothe the sting. Once they’re hooked, you keep them hooked with cliffhangers. Not all the time, no, but whenever they might start to pull away, you surge within the audience that sense of suspense by leaving them dangling from the edge of the cliff. “My favorite character is in danger! Who just walked into the room? Is that a Kodiak bear under the table?” Mm-hmm. It is. Come on back and keep reading and keep watching. Daddy Bird will feed you, little baby.

17. Flaws And Foibles And Frailties And Other Awesome F-Words

Character flaws. Use ’em. Excellent tension creators. Knowing that a character has a drug habit or a propensity to break hearts lets us know that at any point they might fall off the wagon and lash out with the whip of their most intimate frailties, sending ruination far and wide. But we must know that the flaw is on the table, or at least have it hinted at — this does not work in a vacuum. You know what else doesn’t work in a vacuum? A vacuum. True story!

18. Agitation And Discomfort

Comfort is the enemy of tension. You want characters and readers alike to remain in a state of agitation and discomfort. Even during times where the tension is relaxing rather than ratcheting up you still want to create a sense of dread and foreboding, using language, circumstance and situation to deepen discomfort.

19. Failure Most Certainly Is An Option

The audience needs to know that things can go wrong. If they become trained by you as a storyteller that you’ll save everything and everyone at the last minute, the storyteller will no longer suspect you of being an untrustworthy malefactor. You are not the reader’s buddy. Failure must be on the table. You must be willing to let things go all pear-shaped once in a while. Tension without fear is a defanged and declawed tiger dressed as a banana. Harmless and deserving mockery over fear.

20. Speak Of Ke$ha And Ke$ha Shall Appear

Sorry. Tic-Toc joke. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. (And shut up, I actually like that song.) (I SAID SHUT UP.) Never be afraid to use a ticking clock to instill tension and suspense. Character’s only got one week to save the little girl? One day to get the random? One hour to defuse the bomb? Works in any type of story — “The girl of my dreams is about to board a plane in 30 minutes! Can I make it to the airport on time to profess my life and tell her that I got her cat pregnant? Uhh? What? Nothing! I didn’t say anything about a cat being pregnant! Let’s go back to talking about Ke$ha.”

21. Deny Your Audience The Satisfaction As Long As You Can

Storytelling is Tantric. You withhold the audience’s orgasm as long as you can. The audience wants to know that everything’s going to work out, that it’s going to be all right. They want answers. Comfort. Solace. Don’t give it to them. Not until late (if ever). The longer you can hold out on ’em, the deeper the tension digs into the meat and marrow.

22. Look To Your Life For Suspense

Seriously, that example of the first day or school? Or a new job? Or that feeling you get when you speed past a cop car? Or when your mother goes sniffing around your closet and almost finds the leather-clad gimp you keep in there? That’s suspense. Harness those feelings from your own life. Find out what makes them tick. Replicate in your fiction. And seriously: gimps are so 199os. Get a hobo butler like the rest of us.

23. The Fear-Maker’s Promise

Suspense and tension are about fear. Plain and simple. Not just fear in the characters, but fear — actual honest-to-Jeebus fear — in the audience. Find a way to invoke fear and dread and you’ve won.

24. Suspense Keeps Them Reading

This’ll be a future list — 25 Things That Keep Them Reading — but for now, be content to know that effective implementation of suspense and tension will keep them coming back and turning pages.

25. Suspense Keeps You Writing

Thing is, it’s also what keeps you going. Creating powerful suspense takes you along on a journey, too — the writer is not immune to his own magic, or shouldn’t be, at least. If you feel like you’re not engaged or that your own sense of suspense and dread just isn’t in play, then you might need to look at what the problem is. Just as readers need a reason to keep reading, writers need a reason to keep on writing. And you, as writer, are the Proto-Reader, the first line of defense. If the tension is as limp as a dead man’s no-no stick, you’ll feel it. And that means it’s high-time to find a dose of high-test narrative Viagra to tighten everything up.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

November 7, 2011 / 20 Comments

Transmissions From Baby-Town: “The Face Of My Father”

It happens once a day, maybe.

My son will be looking at me — he’s five-and-a-half-months now, you see — and then comes this moment. It’s not one thing: it’s the alchemy of muscle movements, facial tics, of whatever unseen elements constitute our faces. All of it adds up to a single sum, an equation answered by my father’s face. Staring back at me.

It’s pretty weird, seeing your father’s face. In infant form. It’s like seeing a ghost. A ghost that has taken over my baby — but then you realize, that’s not it, that’s not right at all. The ghost hasn’t taken over my baby.

This is my baby.

Holy shit.

I mean, it makes sense, of course. Genetically, the baby is in part the product of me and I am the product of my father and By The Mighty Scepter Of Science I conclude that, yes, indeed, it totally tracks that certain physical traits will make themselves known over the course of our lives. It goes deeper than that, however. Our faces are more than just the features. It’s more than just a delicate twining of DNA spawning certain recurrent elements. This equation has imaginary numbers.

Here’s what I mean:

When my father passed away, I was present. And when he died, I knew he was gone — no longer present — before any of the signs and signals were made clear. It wasn’t merely the slackening of features — you could tell that something had gone. Poof. Vanished into the ether. I don’t mean to suggest you have to believe in a soul, but just the same, life is different from death (a-duh), and so when life vacates the body, the body changes. The body and the face become reflective of that inert state.

Life has left the building.

The body, given up the ghost.

But now sometimes I see the ghost — my father’s life — on my son’s face. The way he moves his nose. Or the way he smiles. My father used to get this puckish grin on his face — curiously, the same look I sometimes saw on my grandmother’s face, even after she had her stroke — and now there it lives, sometimes floating to the surface on this cute round little baby head. Again, I don’t know that you can even pinpoint it.

It’s just… there.

I have it in me, too. Maybe not the face. I don’t look at myself often enough to see it. But I hear it. In my voice, in my words. Something in the tone or tenor. Word choice, maybe. (My father, after all, is where my love of profanity was born. He celebrated profanity, and now I do, too, for better or for worse.)

I’m named after my father.

My first name is his.

My first name and his first name is also my son’s middle name.

Charles.

It’s too early to see how else or how often that glimmer of my father will appear in my son — maybe it’ll come and go and then leave for a time, or maybe it’ll always be there. My son is strong. Independent and stubborn. Like my father and, perhaps to a lesser degree, like me. He’s already good with his hands — my father worked with his hands. Maybe I’m just making all this up. Perhaps I’m hungry to see connections that aren’t there. That’s what some will say. That’s what some will think. Maybe they’re right.

Maybe they’re just assholes.

Who knows?

What I know is, I’m sad my father never knew my son. While the last thing I want to think about is my son one day passing on, but perhaps some day long and far away from here and now the two of them will travel together in the great Happy Hunting Ground up in the sky. Some of the things my father taught me, I’ll teach my son. Some of the things he taught me, I won’t. But other things I can’t stop and don’t want to stop. The ghost lives on. The ghost persists. The soul — or whatever that passes for it, whatever uncertain and spectral vehicle is the thing that carries that ember of life, that living mask, that visage as unique as a fingerprint — is here in my son’s eyes and smile and in the shape of his nose.

And I’m happy for that. It’s the only way he’ll know his grandfather.

That, and the stories we’ll tell.

Putting the name and the life to the face.

Filling in the ghost.

Happy birthday, Dad. You would’ve been 68, today, I think.

Go bag a great big heavenly elk and use his antlers to fight the Devil and give him what-for.

November 6, 2011 / 7 Comments

Blackbirds: Now Up For Pre-Order

“Blackbirds is a horror story, a traveling story, a story of loss and what it takes to make things right. It’s a story about fate and how sometimes, if we wrestle with it hard enough, maybe we can change it. Blackbirds is the kind of book that doesn’t let go even after you’ve put it down and nobody else could have made it shine like Chuck Wendig.” — Stephen Blackmoore, author, City of the Lost and Dead Things

Psst.

Hey, you.

That’s right, BLACKBIRDS is now up for pre-order.

You can pre-order at Amazon.

You can pre-order at B&N.

An e-book is in the cards, of course, but you can’t pre-order that. Not yet, anyway.

It’s a buck cheaper at B&N, but my assumption is that discount will also be the case at Amazon. (Amazon has that pre-order price guarantee, wherein you’ll get any price drops that occur between now and delivery.)

Why pre-order? For one, it lets the publisher know of demand for the book. That’s valuable information. For two, it lets the publisher know of demand for the author — and that’s good to know, too.

Got other cool things in the works for BLACKBIRDS, including two special treats at the back of the book. But I shan’t talk about those — not yet, anyway.

If you’re looking for fiction from yours truly right now, I might recommend:

SHOTGUN GRAVY, about a troubled teen girl taking on some high school bullies with naught but spunk, grit, and a .410 scattergun. (Oh, and Adderall!)

Or:

DOUBLE DEAD, about a pissed-off vampire who awakens only to discover that most of his food supply has been turned to the shambling undead. He must transition from predator to shepherd to protect his food supply. This ain’t Twilight, folks: the only way Coburn glitters is if he kills and eats a stripper.

And that’s all she wrote. Thanks, folks!

November 4, 2011 / 31 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “Corporate Abuse”

Last week’s worldbuilding challenge –“The Gods of Blackbloom!” — is still open. Going to leave it open until 12:01AM on Friday, so when I wake up, I will choose the gods and begin a new worldbuilder challenge.

Yesterday I talked a little about the Occupy Wall Street movement and how that relates to writers (Writers Are The 99%). And there I talked about the power of fiction to act as lies that deliver truth.

And then I also tweeted something about how, in a way, the OWS movement is (ideally) trying to prevent the worst corporate cyberpunk futures — and even the dystopia of The Hunger Games. (Though one could argue there the abuses are more governmental.)

Just the same, corporate abuse makes a nice theme, then, for this week’s challenge.

So, that’s your task.

Write about…

Corporate abuse.

Any genre is apropos.

1000 words.

Write at your blog and link back here. Make sure we all know how to get there and read it.

You’ve got one week: 11/11/11, at, well, noon.

November 3, 2011 / 34 Comments

Writers Are The 99%

Writers — and, frankly, other creatives — should realize they’re part of the 99%.

And they should act on that realization.

Why?

Because unless you’re Stephen King, a big-time screenwriter, or Snooki, then the one-percent — corporations in particular — doesn’t give trash-truck full of donkey crap about you.

Writers are not considered part of the larger ecosystem. Creativity and art are afforded little value in today’s corporate culture. It’s a lie, of course — writers are everywhere. Our work is ever-present yet our role remains unconsidered. The written word is a powerful support structure, and it’s everywhere you look. Magazines, billboards, instruction manuals, marketing copy, and, oh, I dunno, the entire Internet. Nearly everything begins with the written word, and yet, despite this significant contribution, writers and other creatives exist as a marginalized group. Further, our support system is eroding.

Bookstores aren’t going away because people aren’t buying books. Bookstores went away because mismanagement by large business entities porked the pooch. Some publishers may go that way, too — and other publishers survive by trying to hammer writers into troubling and unreasonable contracts (which many writers sign because they feel they have no other choice, which is of course where the value of self-publishing makes itself a known quantity).

It’s one thing if you’re a writer inside a company — though even there you won’t find nearly as much value placed on the writer as you could and should — but it’s a whole other bucket of ugliness if you’re out there on your own doing the freelance or indie thing.

Ever try to get a mortgage? Or health care? Or, uhh, you know, a little bit of respect for what you do? Despite our omnipresence and the critical support the words of talented writers provide, we’re often relegated to the same bracket of financial and emotional respect as a Medieval rat-catcher. “Yes,” they say, “we know we need you, but couldn’t you go catch rats in the dark when none of us can see you? Bye!”

The question then becomes, how do you act on it? How do you join the occupy protests?

How do you rebel against marginalization?

First, obviously: join the protests if you’re able.

Second, consider looking at and joining with Occupy Writers: OccupyWriters.com.

Third, and here is the real kicker, the corker, the critical 20: you’re a writer and so the way you occupy is you occupy with words. You write support for the movement. You write your own experiences. You tell stories — true and fictional — about it, because stories have power and stories are subversive and a little bit of subversion is what the world needs right now. Your weapon is the pen and the keyboard, so it’s time to join the war. And this calls to mind two more things:

Number one, and I’m probably not the guy to arrange this, but it’d be great if we had a day — one day soon — to write about being a part of the 99%. Or maybe it’d be a Tumblr. I dunno.

Number two, and this is something that came up online between Monica Valentinelli and Chad Underkoffler (two authors and game designers) and I: it’d be interesting to see an anthology based on the 99% notion — not the movement itself, I don’t think that necessarily needs to be fictionalized — but, rather, fiction about the economic circumstances that lead up to and currently inform this movement. Viet Nam had protest songs. Why not protest stories? As I’ve said before, stories are lies that tell the truth, and that’s no small thing. Can’t there be a way to harness that?

As to what you can do as a writer to not be marginalized? That, I don’t know. What you do has value, so claim value for what you do. Make sure you’re not getting screwed on contracts. Make use of self-publishing — not always, but sometimes, as self-publishing can help you assert greater (though imperfect) independence. Be protected. Don’t get borked by clients who don’t pay. Spread the word to other writers if you’ve found an independent health care provider that doesn’t, at the last moment, slide a shiv between your ribs just as you discover you’ve got a medical condition that mysteriously they now don’t cover. Be a part of a community. Keep your eye on the critical resource that is Writer Beware.

In the end: stay frosty, and help others do the same.