Author: terribleminds (page 57 of 457)

A bit of a preamble, if Chuck will allow it, for those who may be wondering, “Full Deck Roleplaying? Is this a book? A game? Weird title for a novel.”

Full Deck Roleplaying is a book. And a game. It’s a tabletop roleplaying game or RPG, kinda sorta like Dungeons & Dragons which is everywhere these days. I’ve been making RPGs for almost twenty years. They’ve done well for me. They, in no small part, are responsible for my career in making video games.

Now, RPGs run the gamut as far as how they’re played and what they do. D&D is a dungeon crawl. You get together with friends and another person, the Dungeon Master, sets out challenges the players have to overcome to be heroes and get loot. Some RPGs are story engines. They are all about giving people the tools to tell engaging narratives. Some RPGs have lots of rules and some have very few. And there’s tons of options in the middle and all over the place. Tabletop roleplaying is a vast and varied landscape.

Full Deck Roleplaying is built around telling stories which might be why Chuck invited me to write something for his blog. Stories are my passion. Games are one of the ways I tell them.

In Full Deck Roleplaying, players create characters, create worlds, and create drama through the use of standard playing cards. But the cards are not just there to do your bidding. They influence the game by narrowing your choices and adding new details, forcing you to adapt to the hand that life—or at least the game—has dealt you.

You can try out Full Deck Roleplaying for absolutely free or you can kick in a few bucks if you want, no pressure. The beautifully-illustrated 66-page PDF contains the core Full Deck Roleplaying game system—setting creation, character creation, and the rules of play including handy reference sheets so you don’t have to dig for information during a session.

Full Deck Roleplaying puts the story in your hands.

What follows are five things I learned while writing this game, my first major game release in over eight years.

* * *

Write Where the Comfort Is

The past four years of my life have been defined by terrible things. I lost my brother and my father almost a year apart. (My brother died after a long battle with sepsis. I found out my dad had cancer on Christmas of that same year, he died only months later.) The top of my left femur literally started decaying and I had to have my hip replaced. I pulled up roots and yanked my family across the country away from friends and an established community for a bad career move. My recently-widowed mother relocated to be closer to us just as the studio I was at and I decided to part ways and just as I was told I was being divorced after almost 26 years. Soon after, my two kids—the light of my entire life, folks—moved back to Illinois and far far away from me.

It’s been a bad ride, friends.

Now, there have been bright spots. Even though the job didn’t work out, I met some good people there. I got to hang out with friends in the area and get to know them better. After that job and I shook hands for the final time, I was offered an opportunity at a great studio working with some fantastic people—and it’s only three hours from my kids. Plus I’m near a Trader Joe’s and that’s always nice.

But. Still. I have never carried this much pain in my life. It weighs on me every day. I feel its shadow over me in the morning and its breath on my neck at night. I never thought my life would so utterly implode. I’m still trying to find stuff amidst the debris.

I let the feelings of the past four years—all of which culminated in the greatest middle finger from the universe I’ve ever seen—keep me run into the ground for months. But one good thing came from it. Well, one good thing in regards to writing. I stopped caring about market trends and zeitgeist. I stopped caring about marketability. I started to just write. For me. I started to write where the comfort was.

In February, I wrote a Middle Grade novel that I’m currently shopping to agents. In March, I wrote a new roleplaying game that I just released in May. Those two projects may not seem to have much in common but the link there is that I wrote what I wanted. I wrote to comfort myself. In the novel, I wrote the story that came to me after my father’s passing. With the game, I wrote a system that I’d like to play. I didn’t know if anyone else would connect with it or not but it’s what I wanted. Those projects, well, I won’t say they “made me happy” but they gave me a joy I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I found a lot of comfort in both them. They were cathartic in different ways. In the novel, I got to see my father again. In the game, I got to see myself again. My younger self who took more risks and swung harder for the fences. I found a fire again. And it wasn’t the crackling embers of Hell at my feet. It was flames in my belly giving me the strength to pick up and move.

Editing is Alright

You could fill a book with chestnuts and platitudes comparing writing versus editing—and people have. Some writers love the editing process. To me, it was a necessary evil. I did it. Like I said, it’s necessary. But I didn’t enjoy it. It was rushing up river, it was playing in traffic.

But now, for whatever reason, I have found enjoyment in editing. Maybe it’s just narcissism but I like reading what I’ve written. I like rethinking how a chapter is constructed, how something is worded. I like making sure all the right seeds are planted throughout the text so, when the tree sprouts at the end, you want to sit in its shade.

I honestly don’t know what happened there. I don’t know what switch got flipped. Maybe it’s because, for the first time in ages, I feel connected to the material so revisiting it and making it stronger isn’t a chore. It’s helping a friend get better.

Routine is Nothing; Routine is Everything

I wrote the entirety of both that novel and that game in Google docs on my phone. 30,000 words on the novel. 8,000 on the game. I’m currently writing these words in a Google doc on my phone. It’s how I’ve been writing for the past eight months. I’ve written this way on my couch, in my car during lunch or in the parking lot of a grocery store, on a lumpy half-broken bed way too late at night, on the floor, on my back, on my stomach, on my side.

Which to say, anything I thought I needed to write—a comfy chair, the perfect software, the right atmosphere, the proper routine—were all excuses. What I needed was to write.

That said, the intimacy of being inches from my phone, the familiar motion of tapping letters on a screen with my thumbs became my routine. When I think of writing anymore, that’s what I think of. It’s comforting. And, most importantly, it gets the writing done.

This method didn’t come about as a personal challenge or a deliberate means to break some unhealthy writing barrier—

Actually. Well.

That’s a lie.

It came about because I was deep deep in the thrall of depression and would spend my entire evening staring at my phone, watching YouTube, checking Facebook, texting friends, and, of course, reading TerribleMinds.com, RELIGIOUSLY. I couldn’t watch TV much less sit in front of a computer and write.

But I knew I needed to do something, to distract myself if nothing else. So I gave myself a project—a book for adults about a cult deprogrammer on his last assignment. Which is weird because I see myself more as a kid lit author but I also knew I had some stuff to work through that was better suited for an adult audience. Anyway. I figured since I was staring at my phone all evening anyway, I may as well put that to use. One night, I opened up the Google docs app and started tapping away. The next night, again. The third night, the same. Then every night for a month. Multiple sprints every evening. Anywhere from 500-2000 words a night. Day after day. I didn’t want to break the streak.

I started to feel that rush. I was building momentum, chapter after chapter, and I would be up until 2a some nights writing away. The dopamine hits started coming. I was writing. After years of not doing much of nothing for myself, I was getting words down and building a story.

The routine came from that. And, y’know, writing on a phone isn’t hard. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking his left eyelid. Tapping a screen is cake.

Sure, it has its frustrations. App notifications, text messages, the dreaded phone call, making sure you have enough battery, autocorrect’s helpful edits but all that can be managed. And I don’t find myself switching apps to check Twitter or Facebook but I do switch apps to quickly open Wikipedia or to Google something. I love it. Anymore, I can’t imagine writing any other way.

You Are Building Towards Something

I’ve been making games for almost twenty years. My first published effort, Little Fears, was a great setting with an okay system. In the years since, I’ve released other game books—some entirely of my own creation, some based on established systems and lines. With every release, every project, I strove to make the best book I could. There’s something different about Full Deck Roleplaying. I don’t mean that as ad-speak. There was something different in how I wrote it. Not just that I was writing for comfort, like I said above, but I felt like all the little lessons I’d learned in my years as a game designer were coming together. Full Deck Roleplaying is the culmination of everything I know about making tabletop games. And there was incredible freedom that came with that. I knew what I wanted this to be. I scrutinized every rule to make sure it was doing what it needed to do. I stripped out anything that didn’t belong. It was the first time, if not ever then in a long while, where I felt strong. A musician nailing a solo. A surgeon intuiting a procedure. It gave me a level of confidence and clarity that I had been missing for years. I didn’t feel meek. I didn’t second-guess and compromise. I had a vision and I worked hard to make something that fit that vision.

Full Deck Roleplaying is what I’ve been building towards as a game designer. And the plans I have for it are what I want to do. I see a road where nothing was before. It’s an amazing feeling.

All this is to say that, whatever it is you’re doing, you’re growing. In skill, in endurance, in wisdom. Even the work you look at it and spit on has given you something. If that something doesn’t manifest soon, it will eventually. Just keep going.

I Have the Best Friends

Okay, maybe I didn’t learn this while writing Full Deck Roleplaying. Maybe I knew it way before. But it’s certainly been made evident in the days following the game’s release.

I was blown away when Chuck asked if I wanted to do a Five Things about this little self-published game book of mine. I’ve known Chuck for about a decade now and we both come from the tabletop mines but he is all National Bestseller and Awesome Writing Advice Guy and he wrote a book that maybe caused the pandemic? I dunno. I skimmed the headline. But he’s Chuck Wendig, y’know? He’s someone that I feel awkward mentioning in the list of people I know because it sounds like a name drop. I’ve read his work. Turns out? It’s really really good. You might say he’s a Kick-Ass Writer. [ed — goddamnit, blair — c.w.]

Me, I make my living as a game designer. I make video games during the day and tabletop games at night. Sure, I have aspirations to be a novelist—and I’ve self-published a novel—but I’ve yet to make that transition to Writer With Books at Barnes & Noble or Author With a Respectable Amazon Ranking.

Still though, I was totally gonna take him up on the offer. I’d be an idiot not to. Which, I mean, I’m an idiot—but not that kind of idiot. Chuck was doing me a real solid—and he wasn’t the only one.

My friends have been spreading the word about this new game of mine, retweeting and sharing posts, talking it up to people. In 20 years of working in games—and 40+ years of working at life—I’ve made some amazing friends who have my back.

Full Deck Roleplaying may seem like just another game book. Easily made and easily ignored. Plenty of RPGs come out every day. But this game means a lot to me. It’s an attempt to crawl back from total life failure in some way that I own and control completely. I cannot overstate how wonderful my friends have been. Maybe they sensed something special in this game. Maybe they’ve kept up with what’s been going on in my life and just want to help. It doesn’t matter why. It just matters they are. I know it and I see it.

Thank you to Chuck, for the platform to reach more people and just to talk about things I usually only talk about in filtered groups on Facebook. Thank you to all my friends who have helped make navigating the River Styx that much easier. Thank you to my mom and aunt for the immeasurable support. Thank you to my kids for knowing how hard this has all been. I can’t even imagine how it’s all been for you.

Finally, thank you—YOU—for reading. I hope your friends are as wonderful as mine are. You deserve it.

* * *

Jason L Blair makes video games by day and tabletop games by night. A recent transplant to the Chicago area, he is currently enjoying the confines of his tiny apartment and longing for IKEA to reopen. In what time is left over, he likes to write Middle Grade novels and chapter books that he hopes, one day, kids of all ages will get to read. You can keep tabs on him over at JasonLBlair.com and see what kinda games he’s cooking up at FunSizedGames.com.

Jason L. Blair: Website | FunSizedGames | Twitter

Full Deck Roleplaying: DriveThruRPG

Welp, it’s out. Wanderers has landed in paperback, finally (all 800 pages of it) — the tale of mysterious sleepwalkers moving their way through a pandemic-throttled America. If you’re looking for a good time, look no further, because America’s hottest bookclub is Wanderers — it’s got everything: artificial intelligence, bat fungus, washed-up rock stars, white supremacist militias, shady corporations, an election year, social media, a beloved theme park. Hashtag Stefon voice.

It’s obviously, um, weird having a book out like this right now because… you know, it’s surprisingly on-point. Now, to be fair, sci-fi and horror authors aren’t out there to really predict anything — if we’re talking about the future in our books, we’re really using that as a way to talk about our present. I just, um, didn’t anticipate this to be so presently present. At the same time, a lot of what’s in here aren’t things we couldn’t have seen coming. Hell, we did see this coming. Pandemic-level diseases are not new. They pop up every 10 years or so. It’s just, usually, they don’t get a foothold, and often they don’t get that foothold because we are somewhat ready for them. This one, we were not and here I could devolve into talking about the failure of a “””president””” who encourages people to make bleach smoothies and stick lightbulbs up their asses, buuuuut we already know all this.

There were a few bits of the book I wasn’t ready to have mirrored in reality (predictive AIs like BlueDot, or the comet called Swan), and there were quite a few bits I totally missed. If I were writing the book now I’m sure I would’ve written a chapter on toilet paper hoarding.

Hey, look at this — the back of the book has this little bit right here:

That’s pretty rad. It hit a lot of best-of-year-lists. Was nominated for the Stoker. Hit a lot of national bestseller lists. It’s gotten quotes from some people who… well, the list blows my mind (and culminates in five [!] pages of blurbs and comments at the fore of the paperback edition). I’ve honestly been very fortunate that people have responded as well as they have to this little (er, big) book. Am I humble bragging? No, I’m actual bragging, because I think authors should be proud of their books, and this one, I’m genuinely proud of.

Let’s get some of your procurement options out of the way, and again, given the era in which we live, it is worth considering buying from a local indie store, if you find yourself able to — independent bookstores are trying to stay alive (as are we all) in this peculiar epoch of pandemic bullshit, so helping them helps the industry which helps the authors and which creates a strong bookish ecosystem, and bookish ecosystems help books thrive so readers have them:

Paperback: Indiebound | Bookshop.org | Doylestown Books | Let’s Play Books

Or you can check out the book’s page at the publisher for more buy links.

Here’s the review aggregator from Lit Hub (ooh, look at those raves).

Also, I’ve updated my FAQ from when the book launched in July…

Is there a content warning?

There is. I’ve concealed it behind a ROT13 filter so that those who desire the warning can simply unscramble it by c/p’ing the encrypted text into the window at rot13.com.

Pbagrag jneavat: fhvpvqny vqrngvba, fhvpvqr, gbegher, enpvfz naq ovtbgel, qvfphffvbaf bs zragny urnygu naq zragny vyyarff, tha ivbyrapr, naq n tencuvpny qrfpevcgvba bs Z/Z encr (sbhaq ba cc 434-435 bs gur uneqonpx, ng gur raq bs puncgre 50).

Who will like this book?

YOU WILL, OF COURSE. You, specifically you. *stares unswervingly*

More seriously, this book is for fans of things like The Stand, Station Eleven, Lost, Swan Song, The Passage, The Book of M, The Strain, The Hot Zone. 

Wait why would I buy this pandemic book during a pandemic?

Well, that’s kind of on you, I guess — I don’t really know. Some readers will seek pure escapism during this time and others will go the opposite way. (I read McCammon’s Swan Song during the height of nuclear panic in the 80s and… well, it helped. YMMV.) I do think this helps contextualize a lot of what’s going on, and further, because what goes on in the book is so much more cuckoo bananapants, maybe our current reality will feel a little better. Plus, the book is, despite its grim matter, full of what I wanted to be heart and hope and humor. As Kirkus put it, “A story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together… equal to Stephen King’s The Stand.” SyFy said it “makes the Apocalypse beautiful.” Kinda depends on your gut, but I like to think it’s still a worthy book to read right now.

Is this part of a series?

It not part of a series and is currently a standalone. (Though it’s big enough for 3-4 novels, I guess.) I’ve always said that there could be a sequel if the sales warranted it and if I had a story in mind and… *coughs into hand* I CAN SAY NO MORE.

What genre is it?

I don’t know. I mean, I guess technically it’s either “speculative fiction” or “science fiction,” but I also wrote what I feel is implicitly, if not explicitly, an epic horror novel. Certainly it seems to be working well for readers who like, say, Stephen King books. Hey, whatever. Thankfully, genres are just a thing people made up. So find whatever narrative taxonomy works for you!

What if I can’t afford the book?

Then I slyly but pointedly direct my gaze at Your Local Library. Libraries are where the free books — and essential community services! — live. If they do not carry the book, you can always contact them and ask them to, or perhaps request it through ILL (inter-library loan).

[Note, libraries are not all open right now, but many still lend e-books and audio!]

What can I do to support the book?

The story goes that what is most likely to convince someone to read a book is not me telling you to, or advertisements, or a blog tour, or a tweet, or, or, or — but rather, word-of-mouth. Meaning, the best thing you can do is talk about it. Online, in meatspace, wherever, however. Reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Tweets, blog posts, incoherent wails of joy. Tell friends and family and random strangers and cherished villains. If you read it, and you like it, and you’re feeling particularly enthusiastic, that’s the best way to help — just try to get other people to read the ding-dang thing. That’s the hardest part, and I really can’t do it. This part falls to you. If, of course, you like it (and me) enough to do so.

Can I come see you and get the book signed?

So, once upon a time, the paperback was going to come out in July and I was going to go on a book tour. As a bit of inside publisher baseball, we looked at the sales numbers of the book and where the book overperformed were in places that, drum roll please, I went on book tour. Proving that book tours work — at least, for the right kind of author, and with the right kind of event. Were I a brand spanking new author with little “platform” (ugh) or “brand” (uggggh), maybe that wouldn’t work so well. But, I do okay in that department, and so I am fortunate enough that people come to my events to hear me talk. As such, Del Rey was intending to send me out again for this one — in this case, to states and cities I had missed the first go-round. Except, oops, that’s not happening now.

I will be doing some online gigs, of course, as we do now. I’ve got a great podcast interview about it coming up with Ana Marie Cox. Today I’ll be recording with Del Reydio, talking to my amazing editor, Tricia Narwani. I’ll also be doing an Instagram Live thing this Friday with Paul Krueger (2pm EST, at the Del Rey IG account), and may also have some other bits and bobs in the works.

As to whether or not you can get a signed book from me…

Welp, you can check with Doylestown Books, and it’s possible if you buy a copy from them, I can sign it? I think we can maybe facilitate a safe, socially-distant, mask-on way of doing that.

Are there Easter Eggs in the book?

There are, indeed. Lots of references to other books, other authors, my own books, and so forth. A hundred points to the Hogwarts House that finds them all.

What’s next for you?

Initially, Book of Accidents was coming out late Summer/early Fall, but we decided to move it based on the coming election, since media attention would be hyperfocused on that shitshow, and it seemed best to get out of the way of that screaming cultural locomotive lest we become blood paste on the tracks. So that is now coming out in Summer 2021. It’s done — though I should have a copy-edit pass to go, and a cover yet to reveal.

There’s also You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton, coming out in 2021 — my inane “motivational” tweets with art by the awesome Natalie Metzger.

And there’s Dust & Grim, my MG, coming out in 2021.

Gonna be a busy year.

That’s not even accounting for SECRET BOOKS 1, 2, AND 3.

So, please tell folks. Spread the word.

And don’t forget —

Black Swan says “hi.”

First and foremost, let’s talk free ice cream. I said I was giving away some free Jeni’s ice cream contingent on a donation to the RERF (Restaurant Employee Relief Fund), and we had 26 people donate, each for $25 or more, meaning a $650+ contribution to the RERF. Thank you all! Winner of the free ice cream was Kim Nelson! YAY KIM.

Also, let’s get the self-promo out of the way early. Reminder: the Wanderers paperback is out tomorrow! I might pop up some places here and there to promote it. Like, in your bathroom mirror.

Where the fuck is Flick? Where the Flick is Fuck? What? Huh? Shut up. Yes, I’m still playing Animal Crossing and I have an island full of cool rare bugs and I haven’t seen that motherfucker Flick in like, three weeks. Is this important? No. Am I mad about it regardless? Yes.

I might have fresh strawberries this afternoon. I know, you’ve got a soul boner for this hard-hitting content I’m laying down. But hey, fresh strawberries are a true joy of spring, and seems like we might be getting some today. And I didn’t know if we’d see much by way of fresh berries this year. Though we did plant some blueberry bushes, even though blueberries are, by and large, a disappointing bullshit fruit that consists largely of fruit that tastes more like the ghost of blueberries than actual blueberries. And yes, someone will say, BUT THAT’S JUST THE SUPERMARKET VERSION, except I’ve also had some farm market local blueberries too and they were also just little Baron Harkonnens full of berry-scented water. I’ve had maybe two pints of blueberries that tasted like blueberries, were delicious, and required naught but popping them in your maw. The rest were merely purple sadness balloons.

So, wait, why plant blueberries, then? For the birds, duh.

Speaking of birds! Seen some new ones recently including — whoa, what, a cuckoo? A literal goddamn cuckoo? Yep. Cuckoo. Photo at the bottom of the page, plus some other finds.

We are told that everything will now change. The pandemic, the lockdown, it’s changed us, changed society, changed what we do going forward. And I’m sure it has, to some degree, but I suspect those degrees are small — weird chaotic cascades. We’re expecting a BIG SOCIETAL SHIFT, but… then you see people lining up for bars, and wanting to hop on the next cruise ship, and refusing to wear masks because MAH FREEDOMS or some horseshit. Maybe nothing will change. Maybe this is, as others have noted, more like the gun debate, where we simply accept a tithing of blood and flesh to some disturbed, distorted idea of personal liberty. Personal liberty and American exceptionalism, each throttling the health of the community, and by proxy, the health of the individuals in that community. Because, though cliched, it really does take a village. And when we value the individual over the village that raised them — well, that’s how shit gets fucked up.

I keep hearing about a vaccine in the fall, but how? I’d think that’s too fast, isn’t it? Not that I don’t want one. I do. But a rushed vaccine that either doesn’t work well or that has deleterious side-effects will only widen the reality gap between science and anti-vax propaganda. It’d arguably give them ammo to push for that anti-science agenda. I mean, again, I want the vaccine soon — but given that a 12 month turnaround time would already have been abnormally fast, what’s it mean if that timeline is halved again to six months? What gets lost?

Here’s a thing that happens. Whenever any new Star Wars property comes out, I get tagged in a lot of articles about Aftermath, often due to speculation or because I decided some portion of the post-OT canon. Which is fine! It’s nice, even. But then I get a series of people who assure me that they have the inside scoop that XYZ thing from the New Star Wars property is actually a thing from Aftermath. This is also fine! I don’t think it’s problematic or anything, I just mean to say, it’s never been true. Some little Aftermathy bits have crept in — the valachord reference in Solo, or the general sort of vibe of Palpatine’s end game in ROTS. Needless to say, I’m again hearing things about how XYZ in Mandalorian Season 2 is from my books and — all I’ll say is, I will caution you to not believe it. Generally things in SW don’t jump from print to screen; they go the opposite, from screen to print. Screen leads the way. It’s a giant connected canonical universe, yes, except all revolves around a single star, and that star is the film and TV properties. This is not a rendered judgment against it. It’s just… how it tends to work.

Rise of Skywalker hasn’t stuck with me. I really liked it when I saw it in the theater, but haven’t yet been able to sit through it all the way now that I have the home version. I tried. But it’s just kinda soggy to me at present. It feels really pacey, like someone impatient is behind it, snapping fingers and asking it to hurry the fuck up and just get it over with. It doesn’t take any time to breathe. I should try skipping to the second half, see if that helps. I recall the second half feeling more paced out, more drawn, more consequential. Hrm. But my kid hasn’t really cared much about it either, which surprised me. For him it’s mostly about The Mandalorian. (As a sidenote, this is about me and not about you, and whether you hate the movie or love it, it says nothing about you, nor your tastes, nor mine. We really need to get over the idea that our pop culture preferences — or even our general preferences at all — are in any way an assault on anyone else’s own feelings.)

We’re doing No-Mow May. Which is, like, the most wonderfully lazy way to support the environment. We just don’t mow. The front yard is getting leggy as hell, but seeing a lot of wildflowers pop up, and a lot of native pollinators. Already got bumbles bumbling, but also mining bees. And we have what I think is a huge sycamore maple which has these dangling scrotal blossoms on it, and they are COVERED in bees. And now we’re all imagining scrotums slathered in bees and I’m sorry, but also, I’m not that sorry.

Also planted some native plants. What did we get, let’s see — helianthus, phlox, blueberry, asters, bee balm, mountain mint, hazlenut, hyssop. Will get more as we can. Also have some actual veggies growing now: radishes, kale, snap peas, carrots. Put in some temporary beds too and will plant some more post-frost seeds.

Sorry, back to Star Wars. Damn, though, the Clone Wars final season was… aaaaghghrbrbble, so good. I honestly have a sort of sour gut feeling whenever I think of Star Wars these days (too much time in those trenches, I guess), but this was a hump I didn’t have a hard time getting over. Honestly, feel how you feel about the prequels — but TCW series and even Rebels truly contextualize the prequels in a meaningful way. One thing that’s interesting to me is that the character of Anakin in the films and the character of Anakin in TCW are… pretty different. TCW is a more confident, subtle version of Anakin, one whose fall feels more natural — and one who, I think, you like more. It’s interesting to see that divergence, and ponder if it’s just a stylistic authorial choice or a willful kind of course correction.

That’s it, I think. Photos, and see you tomorrow.

Before I get to the part where I give you some free ice cream, you first must endure a carousel of self-promotion. You will sit there, and it will whirl about you, dizzying and hallucinogenic, until the end, whereupon you are successfully inculcated and now inhabit THE WENDIG CULT, which is mostly just a cult where we wear beards and look at birds. Also there’s a modicum of human sacrifice but we’ll talk about that later ha ha ha ahem.

So, let’s see.

First up, Wanderers is out in paperback on this upcoming Tuesday, May 19th. If you care to check it out, an independent bookstore is the most wonderful place to buy it (indiebound, bookshop.org, doylestown bookshop, let’s play books). If you’ve already read it, please tell others, and if you could leave a review, that’d be great. If it’s not a nice review, then please yell your review at a blue jay, who are the canonical carriers of bad reviews. The blue jay will surely pass the review along to those who require it. I mean, hey, the Washington Post said you should read it.

Second, I was on… a talk show (wait for it)… inside Animal Crossing (no it gets weirder)… run by Gary Whitta, the guy behind Book of Eli and Rogue One (hold on)… a show that recently also hosted T-Pain, Danny Trejo, and Elijah Wood? Yeah. It’s a thing. It’s called Animal Talking. It’s fucking weird. It’s awesome. Gary is good people and it’s a neat thing, so here’s the YouTube of my episode. Check out the show live, too, because what fun.

Also, guess who wrote a spot on Polygon about Calvin & Hobbes in our era of the Quarantimes, and how Lockdown makes it all the more relevant? It’s me! It’s true! Holy shit!

Anyway. I think that’s it?

ONTO THE FREE ICE CREAM

HA HA THERE IS NO FREE ICE CREAM YOU FELL FOR A CLASSIC RUSE

*sigh*

Fine, I am assured by my lawyers that if I said there’d be ice cream, then there’d be some goddamn ice cream, so uggggh whatever. Stupid law. So! The other day I was the recipient of some free ice cream myself, when Jeni’s sent me some of their new SUNSHINE ice cream, which is a luscious gray ice cream (honestly, it’s so fancy it should be grey with an e) that tastes in stark contrast to its color like you just blended up a smoothie of lime sherbet, Froot Loops, and Skittles, and then injected it with some of that vampire-killing Sunshine from Blade II. Point is, it’s fucking tasty, containing a hefty measure of one of my favorite flavors — passion fruit! — and I’m glad I got some, but I also feel like, do I deserve free ice cream? Probably not. Do you deserve free ice cream? Of course.

So, I wish I could give it to ALL OF YOU, but I can’t, because who am I, Scrooge McDuck? Swimming in Ice Cream Riches? (Certain sections of the internet will suggest to you that I am a MILLIONAIRE, full of money like some kind of money pinata, but, uhhh, haha have you met a writer before? Anyway.) At the very least, I feel a contest to give some free ‘scream is fair. I’ll send five pints of Jeni’s — one pint will be Sunshine, the other two will be dealer’s choice (but I intend for them to be fruit-tropical-adjacent). All you gotta do to win is the following:

a) be in the United States, upper 48

b) donate $25 or more to the RERF, the Guy Fieri-led Restaurant Employee Relief Fund

c) email me your receipt (screenshot or FWD or whatever) of that donation to the RERF to me at curious_spider@yahoo.com by Sunday night at 11:59PM.

I’ll randomly pick someone by Monday, will announce the winner here, I’ll get your address.

Then: ice cream for you. A tiny dollop of sunshine and sweetness.

And that’s it.

Here’s a photo of that ice cream, by the way:

Aboard a notorious criminal syndicate’s luxurious starliner, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his crew race to steal a mysterious artifact that could shift the balance of war…

Still reeling from a former teammate’s betrayal, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his band of misfit spies have no time to catch their breath before being sent on another impossible mission: to pull off the daring heist of a quasi-mythical alien artifact, right out from under the nose of the galaxy’s most ruthless crime lord.

But their cold war rivals, the Illyrican Empire, want the artifact for themselves. And Kovalic’s newest recruit, Specialist Addy Sayers, is a volatile ex-con with a mean hair-trigger who might put the whole mission at risk. Can Kovalic hold it all together, or will the team tear themselves apart before they can finish the job?

Must go faster

My first two books were written on spec—which is to say, I wrote them, and then my agent pitched them to publishers. But The Aleph Extraction was the first time I wrote a book on contract, meaning the publisher paid me to deliver it on time. Which meant that if I didn’t deliver it, it wasn’t one of those “nobody will get upset at me but myself” situations. No, many many people would be upset. Least of all me.

No pressure.

Look, I’m no stranger to deadlines. I’ve been a working journalist for almost fifteen years, and in that time I would regularly punch out an 800-word piece in about an hour. But getting into the creative zone and spinning an entire world out of whole cloth? It takes a little more energy. My first book took nine years to go from being written to getting published.

When Aleph came around, I realized I had about nine months. Nine months to write it, get feedback from beta readers, incorporate that feedback, send the draft to my agent, incorporate his feedback, and then eventually send it on to my editor. Doable? Well, if a human child can develop in nine months, seems like I ought to be able to dash off a book with spaceships and pew pew pews.

Believe me, I am as flabbergasted as anybody to discover that not only can I write a book in nine months, but it’s actually pretty good. Luckily, deadlines are one of the few things in the world that can motivate me to plan ahead, so I ended up creating a schedule for when my first draft had to be done, when I needed to revise it, and when I needed to send it to various parties. Did I hit all those milestones? I mean, do I look like Idris Elba, the handsomest man alive? The answer to both of those questions is “no—but close.”

It’s worse

A lot of writers advocate torturing your characters. That is because writers are, at heart, sadists. Well, maybe just Stephen King. But we are definitely control freaks, which is why we delight in creating realms in which we have absolute, godlike authority.

Anyway, I once read some writerly advice that coincidences in stories are no-nos if they help your characters along—oh ho, here just happens to be the exact MacGuffinator that will destroy Kirkon the Unfathomable’s invulnerable Battle-o-Gon. The day is saved!

But, on the flip side, they pointed out, you can always have coincidences that make things worse for your characters. Trapped in a space station that’s slowly falling out of orbit into a planet of such crushing pressure that Dirkly Massivepecs will soon be nothing more than a cube of compressed flesh? Thank god there’s an escape hatch right here that will let him jettison to saf—OH NO, IT’S FULL OF SPACE BEES.

No one ever expects the space bees.

A point with a view

Both of my previous novels featured two narrators, but was that enough for The Aleph Extraction? Nope. I’ve added a third character, because I believe in increasing the difficult every time I start on a new ordeal. Like that guy in The Crucible. “More weight!” Never stay still. That’s when the space bees get you.

Addy Sayers, my new narrator, is very different from my previous POV characters, Simon Kovalic and Eli Brody: she’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of a small asteroid, and she’s not here to make friends. Growing up on the street, eking out a living as a petty criminal, Addy’s had a hard life and she doesn’t expect anything from anybody.

Putting Addy into the mix with Kovalic and Eli not only means an opportunity to take a different perspective on what’s going on in the Galactic Cold War, but also means I got to explore some parts of the universe that we haven’t seen before. And let me tell you, they’re not pretty: thieves, gangsters, arms dealers. A big war is a perfect time for them to thrive.

Timing is everything

Of course I worried about timelines in my previous books: time, as the only saying goes, only exists so everything doesn’t happen at once. But neither of those earlier books included an elaborately plotted super space heist. Does Tom Cruise leave anything to chance when he jumps out of a plane to land on a nightclub in Paris? I mean, I don’t know, he’s kind of crazy, maybe? But does Ethan Hunt? Heck no.

Telling a heist from multiple viewpoints means that I had to make sure that everything lines up correctly, otherwise one character might de-ionize the neural explainotron before their partner remembers to invert the retro field’s dynamic quotient, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Ha ha, we would not, let me tell you!

For me, that meant going through and isolating every place in that chunk of the story where one of the characters makes any reference to time, and then making sure that all of those times agreed. Not only so that things happened in the right order, but—much more importantly—so that eagle-eyed readers won’t write in to point out that it doesn’t align. Because it sure would be embarrassing to have a basic math error make it to print in one of your books, not that I’d ever know. Ha ha ha.

Unexpect the expected

I wrote the book. I turned it on time. I lined up some publicity. I even planned for the space bees.

But the crystal ball neglected to tell me that there was a pandemic waiting in the wings. LOUSY PIECE OF GLASS. Point is: no matter how well you think you’ve planned your latest endeavor, life invariably finds a way to mess with you. Release dates get moved, copies don’t get shipped on time, audiobook production gets held up. That, as my father would say, is the way the cookie crumbles, which also explains why I eat all my cookies in one bite now.

What to do? Well, the only thing to do. Roll with those punches. Paper copies get shipped before the official release date? Encourage those folks to write reviews or share pictures on social media! Book launch gets canceled? Consider a virtual reading instead. Can’t handle the crippling doubt of whether or not this book will succeed and you’ll get the opportunity to write another one? Spend hours building a utopic island paradise in Animal Crossing. I mean. What?

The things that are in your control, you do your best to be flexible and to adapt to the new normal. The things that are out of your control? Well, in the words of the ice queen herself, let them go.

Just remember: in space, no one can hear the bees.

* * *

DAN MOREN is a novelist, freelance writer, and prolific podcaster. A former senior editor at Macworld, his work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Macworld, Popular Science, Yahoo Tech, and many others.

Dan Moren: Website | Twitter

Aleph Extraction: Indiebound | Bookshop | Elsewhere

Instead of one delicious cookie, here you get a stepped-on cookie, fractured into many crumbly bits! What a special gift! Anyway. Here, again, are my SLAPDASH DISORGANIZED THOUGHTS during what I think is Week 349 of the Quarantimes. You’re doing great, sweetie.

I’ve started to finally work again with some effect. I’m not like, hard-charging at 100% or anything, but I have a measure of focus I didn’t have weeks ago. And when I say “measure,” it’s exactly that — it doesn’t last as long as it used to (before ALL THIS BULLSHIT began), but it also lasts a whole lot longer than it did, say, the week prior. Helps too that I have the story I’m working on more or less figured out. But “figuring it out” took me longer, too, than it normally would. Again, I just try to remember, we’re all walking on broken legs. Doesn’t mean we can’t get from Point A to Point B, but we’re gonna do a lot of hobbling about and crutch-walking, and that means it’s gonna be slower. Still gotta move. But gotta take it easier, too because you shouldn’t try to run on a broken leg.

Paul Vasquez, the Double Rainboy guy, died from COVID. And that’s a helluva thing to write. He had what I consider an outsized impact on how we view beauty and nature and honestly I think he gave people permission to feel that way about what they see out in the world and to express that feeling in a big way. To see the disease take him away from this beautiful world is a decidedly not-beautiful thing. But he left beauty — and recognition of beauty — for us.

My baking situation has become a real problem. I’ve baked so much fucking bread I’m pretty sure I’m just a big sack of carbs. I baked so much bread I had too much and it went stale and then I took that bread and turned it into bread pudding, which I’ve also never made before, and it was delicious, and now my heart is just a crusty loaf of bread. I am bread. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside, sour throughout. I still haven’t cracked the “sandwich bread” thing, though — each time it’s come out like a brick. It’s still good, just not… sandwich bread. I’ve also been sourcing flour from small mills around the country, like a fucking weirdo. What is the deal with bread? Is it an emblem of being able to do a kind of Frontier Survival Act? Is it the fear of not being able to get bread? Or is it merely the comfort of smelling fresh baking bread? Have we all been colonized by sourdough starters? Maybe we have.

My sourdough starter is named Steve, by the way. He’s still bubbling and making hooch. The key, and thanks to Seamus Blackley for letting me in on this, the “your starter should double in size” is basically some Instagram bullshit. Mine never doubled in size. Never even grew that much. But it’s vigorous and makes great bread. Good job, Steve. Good goddamn job.

Our dog has cancer. Or had. She grew what would best be called a “sinister barnacle” upon her neck, under her collar — vet at first thought, well, maybe it’s an infected ingrown hair or something, but it got kinda thumb-sized and angry, but then stablized. So they had us watch and wait. It was good for a couple months but then grew, as sinister barnacles tend to. So, we scheduled the surgery and it was last Monday. It went well, though now her neck looks like some real Frankenstein shit. And hard to protect that area because it’s where a collar would go — so we have a towel swaddled around her like it’s a scarf, and she traipses around the yard as if it’s the French Riviera. Got a report back, and it was cancer — soft cell sarcoma or something? Slow-growing, and they got it out with clean margins. So, in theory, as long as she heals well, she should be good, and he said she should live out her normal lifespan. So, bad news turned to good news? Or something?

The vet was all no-contact. An impressive operation. Here in PA, it seems people are taking this more seriously than in other places… buuuuut also not as seriously as they should. I had a building inspector just roll up on me in my shed while I was working. No mask. Tried to just walk the fuck in through the door. We had a propane guy try to pet our dogs while they were in the yard — which is fraught even in non-pandemic times because, uhh, they’re dogs, and dogs can bite off your fingerbits, buddy. Had to get a battery replaced on our old Forester (we’d been running it, but it still died on us) and AAA was like, “It’s non-contact, don’t worry,” but then the guy showed up and it was of course not that at all — he refused to do it all himself, needed someone in the car while he replaced the battery. He was masked and everything was socially distant, so it was fine, but eennnhh. So stressful.

Hell is other people, now. Officially. Sartre knew what was up.

Local politicians of the G-O-P variety are showing their colors. They want our country to reopen all the way and they want the “numbers” for the disease to stop including nursing home and other care facilities, as if those are hermetically-sealed chambers where the disease gets in but never gets out. And it further suggests that the elderly who die from this… aren’t really people, anyway, which is fucking gross. The altar of Mammon is wide and hungry for blood, and they’re happy to throw us on it in order for it to disgorge a few golden coins into their pockets.

You see photos and you increasingly realize there are Two Americas. And we are drifting further and farther apart. It’s not exactly that it’s new — there was the Anti-Mask Brigade or whatever in 1918, and we had full-on Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden in the 30s. But social media and the internet have afforded people the luxury of choosing their own consensus reality (if you ever played Mage: The Ascension, boy will that fuck with your head). They get to pick a world where on some spectrum the virus isn’t that bad, or it doesn’t exist, or it was pumped into our blood due to evil flu shots and now we’re being thought-controlled via 5G by twin gay Satanic puppetmasters, Bill Gates and Tom Hanks, who want to make a new vaccine that will presumably be filled with… I dunno, robots or something. We’ve corroded access to education and eroded people’s critical thinking skills so now they’re happy to swill whatever Flavor-Aid will get them to the Promised Lands. The cult-like thinking is spreading like aerosolized syphilis. We’ve got these concentric circles starting to drift together — Q weenies, and anti-vaxxers on both the left and the right, and Trumpies, and militia-nuts and… is there any way to get the Flat Earthers in there? Probably.

Murder hornets are just a thing they’re using to get clicks and try to scare you, by the way, evidenced by the fact that no entomologist is gonna call them “murder hornets.” That’s not science. And they’re not even widespread. This is like the killer bee phenomenon from when I was a kid. THE KILLER BEES ARE COMING FROM AFRICA AND well, you remember the rest. Also a lot of wasps and such are useful to the world in a variety of ways, often eating or parasitizing worse critters. Unless they’re up in your grill, don’t try to wipe them out, please, because they’re almost certainly not the Asian Hornets you’re afraid of. If they are, call a professional to assess. But also, HOT BEE BALLS.

Hey, look. I got a box of books! Wanderers paperback, out 5/19. Please to buy from your local favorite indie bookstore? If you don’t have one, Doylestown Books will deliver.

Mother’s Day was tougher this year than I expected. And a hard balance because, my son is celebrating his mother (and I am too), and I can’t be all morose, but this is the first Mother’s Day without mine aaaaand. Well. It’s hard.

Oof, this shit is getting depressing. I don’t mean for it to be. Uhh. I’m seeing a lot of new birds recently! Blue-headed vireo. Magnolia warbler. Orchard oriole. (Those sound like launch codes.) Also there are brown thrashers nesting in the hedge by my shed and they are fucking brutal against blue jays. I just saw a BIRB WAR between a thrasher, a jay, and a catbird. Noisily mosh-pitting in the sky. Here’s the thrasher, and then I’m out, byeeeee: