Author: terribleminds (page 61 of 454)

It is with great reluctance and sadness that I’m letting you know I won’t be attending one of my favorite events, the Tucson Book Festival, next week. The desire to go is high — but I decided to withdraw for a few reasons:

First, as someone who has been prone to pneumonia in the past, I’m not exactly giddy over the idea of catching COVID-19 or even the flu that is currently spiking there — nor do I want to bring that home to my family or other vulnerable members of my local community (family, friends, school). And traveling to Tucson for me means three airpots, and four plane flights, plus hotel and such. I tend to get sick most trips, somewhat, and in fact last time I went to Tucson I came back with the flu, which progressed to pneumonia (“flumonia!”), which was my second bout with it that year. (And I gave the flu to my family. Oops?) It’s not that I expect to die (though, do we ever?), but I also will have a difficult time reckoning with a serious respiratory illness.

Second, the coronavirus is daily a rapidly shifting situation and one that remains… a little bit mysterious. For every answer, we find out two more questions about it, and though the severity is hoped to be less, we just can’t say with any certainty what this will do. The concern is multiplied by the fact our own country seems to be largely rudderless — the only trickle-down that’s happening here is the trickle of information we’re getting. While that doesn’t mean we should all panic and gargle hand sanitizer until we yarf, it probably merits caution in the sense that maybe we cut out some non-essential things. My wife was already a little freaked out with me going. So.

Third, the author panels I was on were already cut in half — a number of authors had already opted not to go on advice from family, publisher, doctors, etc.

Fourth, I’ve had some fans express reservations about going, but still wanted to go to see me… which is great, but then that makes me feel bad because I don’t want you to put yourself in harm’s way (or anxiety’s way) just to see me or get a book signed.

Fifth and finally, I’m an anxious lad who wrote a book about a pandemic.

So, with that said, I’m so sorry I won’t see you there.

I am as always glad to try to send bookplates, either to the festival in my stead, or to you directly. And certainly I hope the festival would consider having me back again in the future.

Thanks!

Be well, and wash your hands.

(No, wash them again.)

(AND STOP TOUCHING YOUR FACE, CARL.)

It’s weird right now, having written a big-ass pandemic book during the time of a potential pandemic. Obviously, what we’re dealing with now doesn’t compare with the disease(s?) inside Wanderers, and thankfully so — but it is sometimes a wee bit spooky to see the comparisons, and —

Ah, now is when I tell you this post is about to get a bit spoilery? Because by its nature, it must.

So let’s just put some spoiler space in the form of a novel quote from the utterly bananapants book, Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce — after the Joyce passage, THERE BE SPOILERDRAGONS.

haunt of the hungred bordles, as it is told me. Shop Illicit,

flourishing like a lordmajor or a buaboabaybohm, litting flop

a deadlop (aloose!) to lee but lifting a bennbranch a yardalong

(Ivoeh!) the breezy side (for showm!), the height of Brew-

ster’s chimpney and as broad below as Phineas Barnum; humph-

ing his share of the showthers is senken on him he’s such a

grandfallar, with a pocked wife in pickle that’s a flyfire and three

lice nittle clinkers, two twilling bugs and one midgit pucelle.

And aither he cursed and recursed and was everseen doing what

your fourfootlers saw or he was never done seeing what you cool-

pigeons know, weep the clouds aboon for smiledown witnesses,

and that’ll do now about the fairyhees and the frailyshees.

Though Eset fibble it to the zephiroth and Artsa zoom it round

her heavens for ever. Creator he has created for his creatured

ones a creation. White monothoid? Red theatrocrat? And all the

pinkprophets cohalething? Very much so! But however ’twas

’tis sure for one thing, what sherif Toragh voucherfors and

Mapqiq makes put out, that the man, Humme the Cheapner,

Esc, overseen as we thought him, yet a worthy of the naym,

came at this timecoloured place where we live in our paroqial

fermament one tide on another, with a bumrush in a hull of a

wherry, the twin turbane dhow, The Bey for Dybbling, this

archipelago’s first visiting schooner, with a wicklowpattern

waxenwench at her prow for a figurehead, the deadsea dugong

updipdripping from his depths, and has been repreaching him-

self like a fishmummer these siktyten years ever since, his shebi

by his shide, adi and aid, growing hoarish under his turban and

changing cane sugar into sethulose starch (Tuttut’s cess to him!)

as also that, batin the bulkihood he bloats about when innebbi-

ated, our old offender was humile, commune and ensectuous

from his nature, which you may gauge after the bynames was

put under him, in lashons of languages, (honnein suit and

praisers be!) and, totalisating him, even hamissim of himashim

that he, sober serious, he is ee and no counter he who will be

ultimendly respunchable for the hubbub caused in Eden-

borough.

AH, good, there we go.

As I was saying, it’s a bit eerie some of the similarities. Black Swan event. AI prediction models. Election year with one candidate being a belligerent bigoted businessman. Rise of white supremacy. Incompetence and indolence from the top-down responses. Asymptomatic transmission of a cold-like sickness. Zoonotic jump from, theoretically, bats. Drones. And so on.

I was in many ways attempting to write about 2016, but ended up writing about 2020.

(I also didn’t expect people to still be reading it by this point, but it seems like more people are reading it now, not fewer. I do like to think the book lends hope and light to a dark situation, even if it’s not precisely a “happy” book. Plus, sometimes if you’re scared of sharks, you read about sharks.)

Regardless, I sometimes get questions about the book, and I’m not always able to answer them all — but I did get a small battery of questions from a friend for their book club, and further, I figured I could source a few more questions from social media.

So, I’mma answer some Qs with some As and we’ll see where we land.

Again, as above, WHO RULES SPOILERTOWN, MASTER WENDIG RULES SPOILERTOWN.

If you had to describe Black Swan as a character, how would you describe it?

Oooh. Oh. Hmm. That’s a curious question because ultimately, Black Swan is a character, and the description of it is… spread out all across the book, as prose ejecta. Is it ultimately good, or bad? I don’t know. Is it utilitarian? Almost surely. A bit narcissistic? In its way. I don’t even know if I can pin down its D&D alignment? Lawful evil? Chaotic good? True neutral? Hmm.

As a reader, I really enjoyed how the pacing of the novel was a reflection of what was happening in the novel itself – i.e. slow when the characters were feeling the slog of the long walk and fast when the action was quick and (perhaps) overwhelming to the characters. Was this an intentional crafting choice of yours as an author?

Yes, to some degree — I think action and event is married to prose in its shape and tenor. Not to say you can’t do interesting things by making, say, a thriller scene feel slow, or a slow scene feel tense, but those are tricks more than they are trade, maybe. If I’m to take people on a journey, then the goal is for the writing to match the shape and the speed of each step of that journey.

Part of this too is just rhythm — music is best when it isn’t just one thing over and over again. A meal is best when it’s not one food on our plate. Which calls to mind that study they did as to why we always have room for dessert — it’s sensory-specific satiety. We tire of the same thing again and again, but when you change it up, our brain craves it.

This is true, I think, in fiction as it is with music, or food, or anything.

We need that rhythm change — we need slow parts and fast parts, we need humor and horror, we need a lot of different flavors and feelings. And the bonus with going slow and taking your time in certain books is that you’re filling up the room with pure oxygen, and it’s that oxygen which neatly ignites and allows us to blow shit up. The creation of tension isn’t in the blowing-up-of-stuff, but rather, in the filling up of oxygen — or, more crassly, the tension isn’t lightning the match, but watching one person get splashed with gasoline as another with an unlit match stalks nearby. Further, the more we can give ourselves time to care about characters, the more we actually worry about them.

Storytellers are monsters.

How was the title chosen? Can you discuss its meanings for you as an author?

Its original title was “Exeunt,” which is a fancy Shakespearean word that means Exit, or Egress. An eschatalogical word — the eschaton of leaving this world.

It’s a cool title.

It’s also an awful title. Nobody could pronounce it. Nobody could spell it.

So, we ached over titles and this idea of those who wander are not lost became a thing — the Sleepwalker flock walkers have purpose. They’re not lost. Even as the rest of the country most certainly is.

How important was it for you as the author to make the Shana character a female character? What went into that decision?

I don’t know, exactly — she always was who she was. It felt right. But I was also conscious of making the rest of the cast more inclusive, as well — though I don’t think inclusion stops at white dude authors like me, and is best when it’s about way more than characters on a page (meaning, about people working across the industry, about broad author inclusion, about embracing all readers).

I think there’s still value in it because, hey, if this thing gets made into a movie, maybe you see that inclusion translate to actors and roles on screen, too.

How did you decide who would “make it” in the end (i.e. live)?

I decided early on that I wouldn’t decide this until the end. Usually with a book I know my ending pretty much down to the paragraph, though certainly I’m able to and willing to change that if I see a better “exit” off the highway, so to speak. But this one was way more intuitive. Whole book was like that. I outline nearly all my books but this one did not have so robust an outline. It was definitely more feeling my way through the darkness of a night-time forest.

As to how I ultimately decided that, I am honestly a coward, and more survived than I expected. But part of this too is that I think it’s interesting when characters live — not just in a shit, I chickened out way, but their continued existence is a complication, whereas their death is a solution. It’s a finality — a door closed. I like them left alive. It’s more interesting to watch them deal with the world and their choices instead of knocking them off the chess board. Because stories aren’t chess.

Would you be wiling to talk a bit about the intersection of art and politics from your point of view as an artist?

This is one of those big unruly questions that has no great answer. I think all stories and all art are political, not in that they must include modern politics as in conservative and liberal parties and votes and processes and such — but at the base level, the politics of people interacting with people, people interacting with systems that govern them, people dealing with the power they possess and the power that rules over them in a socio-political way. Once upon a time, some ding-dong on Twitter challenged me to explain, gotcha-style, how THE THREE LITTLE PIGS was a political story, because of course it could never be.

You can find that thread here.

But the tl;dr is, it’s hella political.

All things are. Even attempting to write something apolitical is itself political — you’re a fish swimming in water who doesn’t know what “water” is. Just because you’re ignorant of it doesn’t mean you’re not soaking in it, and further, choosing what “politics” to keep out means some politics are left in. You just don’t see it because it’s wallpaper to you — it’s your chosen decor, and so it doesn’t contrast with or disrupt your comfort levels.

So, do you have to be political? No. But you will be, anyway.

So you might as well think about it and be willful in your narrative choices.

As it stands, Wanderers is more explicitly political because it includes actual American politics, as it’s about America, and there’s an election. How the hell would I tell that story and not be staring down the double-barrel of American politics?

Who is your favorite character in the book and why?

HARDEST QUESTION EVER. Easy to say I don’t have one, but I do — it just changes from time to time. They’re all glorious disaster children. I can say with clarity though that Pete Corley was the most fun to write, because any time you have someone who is a force of chaos, you end up with interesting choices and with someone who jukes left whenever regular people would go right.

And now, let’s move on to some social media questions! (Some of these are paraphrased, but I’ve linked to the original tweet asking the Q.)

Sequel?

I’ve always maintained that if sales supported it and the story demanded it (meaning, I had a story in mind), I’d write a sequel. *furtive glances*

ok QUESTION ONE is HOW IS THIS BOOK SO DAMN GOOD AND ADDICTIVE, IS IT MADE OF COCAINE and question two: is cassie ok?!??

The book is in fact made of cocaine, and I hope Cassie is okay. Maybe we’ll find out some day.

How are you feeling about the whole “the book is prophetic” thing folks are talking about now that Covid19 exists? I know I’ve teased you at least once saying “What did you do!?!?” But are you ok with folks kidding around or are you like, “That’s the point! It’s inevitable!”?

I don’t mind the comment, I’m just glad people are reading the book. Like I said, I wasn’t trying to write a warning about 2020, I was trying to write about 2016, and also about… like, history. I mean, it’s a little eerie that some of this stuff has lined up how it has, but I also didn’t just pull this stuff out of the clouds. The trick, I guess, was in the arrangement.

When you were sketching out the book, did you have an inkling it was going to be an epic tome?

(No link, because sourced from FB.)

I had a pretty good idea it would be long, but I figured like, 150-175k, not 280,000 words. Oops? It just kept getting bigger and bigger and then I blew my first deadline and ahahaha oh shit. Thankfully, the publisher was cool with it. All of it. Wonderful publisher, amazing editor in Tricia (Narwani).

The book is the length that it needs to be. Stories are like that, sometimes. It’s not about filling space — but about growing to the size that accommodates the story.

Did you have any concern over backlash from offering a frank, brutal, and honest depiction of the NRA/Hard Right crowd?

I mean, I don’t really worry about that sort of thing — Aftermath taught me I was gonna catch shit for whatever I wrote anyway, just for the gall of including different types of people in the GFFA, and I figured if I was going to write about this kind of thing, you can’t avoid it. I grew up in a gun-totin’ family, my father was a gunsmith, and so I’m comfortable with guns — and the protagonists in the book are wont to use them when necessary, too. It’s the characters in the book (and the people in reality) who fetishize those firearms, who think their right to carry a military-grade rifle is more than the right of someone to not get shot by one, that you need to worry about.

How do you approach writing something that is reality-adjacent without it coming off as gimmicky? I’m thinking of the politics, specifically. Creel & Hunt could have come off as overly “hot take” but didn’t.

Not to endeavor to “both sides” this thing, but it’s always interesting to me when people come into the reviews of this book to claim, I dunno, I hate Republicans and love Democrats — I did endeavor to give some nuance and depth to that, and ensure that the Democratic president was not particularly effective in her leadership during this thing, and that politics as a whole was standing in the way of good science. And I also see reviews that say I’m demonizing Christians, even though two of the protagonists are Christian characters — one, admittedly, gets a bit suckered in by the Evangelical white supremacy going on, but that’s not an indictment against Christianity, just a particular brand of it. And that’s ultimately the thing — I suspect anybody who feels attacked by this book feels that way because they’ve recognized something of themselves in the antagonists. Which is to say, they’ve seen white supremacy, which is at the heart one of the big thematic enemies of the book.

That’s not really an answer to the question, I guess. Mostly for me it’s about letting characters be characters and not mouthpieces. Some people will still see them as mouthpieces, and I can’t help that, but I endeavored not to make it that way.

Did you do any research on the impenetrable skin? Once I saw flesh that needles can’t pierce, I figured it was supernatural. But then bullets worked, so now I’m wondering if that was realistic and I don’t know about it. I mean, we have needles that’ll go into rhinos, right…?

I mean, it’s not supernatural, but it is firmly in the realm of imaginative science-fiction — so, the answer is in the book (it’s the nanites, silly), but it’s definitely a more science-fictiony answer and less a science-y answer. It’s make-believe. But the key part of make-believe is… making you believe.

So hopefully I did that.

When dealing with real world things like pandemics, how hard do you try to stick to facts and when do you take creative license. As the narrative dictates? Was there a “this would be too cool, but I can’t make it work” thing that didn’t hit the page?

At the end of the day it’s all as the narrative dictates — the whole thing is creative license because if it weren’t, it’d be non-fiction. But there are ways to make it work, I think, to make it seem real, and part of that is a sort of connect the dots process that goes like this:

You have to tell three true things before you tell one false thing. And those things, the three truths and one lie, connect. If I’m going to make up this weird science behind this, I need real science to back it up, so I have to find facts that move in the direction of what I want, so when I take the leap to the lie (aka the fiction), it feels like a natural course. It feels like instead of just making up something out of nowhere, I’ve given you three stepping stones, and on the fourth stepping stone, I’ve simply chosen to direct you to a nearby lie instead of the next truth.

So, if something feels too out of line, too impossible to connect to the chain of true things, it becomes magic, and then it’s not really science-fiction anymore. But even with magic, in fantasy, you still have to draw that line to make everything feel organic and connected.

There’s some stuff with Father Matt and Ozark that was… hard to read. (trying to avoid spoilers. Are we still doing that?) Did you ever quibble whether to include those bits at all? What swayed you in the direction you ended up choosing?

That was a hard section to write and there was some question as to whether it should remain. At the end we decided it should remain for a handful of reasons. First, I wrote the assault from the victim’s POV, so I did my best to center it that way. Second, it wasn’t written to be lurid or sexy, as sometimes those scenes are. Third, I do feel like male sexual assault scenes are not common, and they’re often written in a way that feels like an attack against women, but assaults on men happen, too, and I felt like maybe there was some value in centering that fact. Fourth, you know, thematically and metaphorically there’s something to be said about what happens there, about how Matthew is used, about how his faith is used, about who Ozark is and what he represents and, ultimately, about the dynamics of power and the dangerous crossroads of white supremacy and vicious masculinity.

What was your research process like, and how long did It take?

A lot of it was a kind of rolling research — I was reading about this stuff already because I was fascinated in it. A lot of it was just reading books and asking questions, which is admittedly super-boring sounding, but BOOKS and QUESTIONS are kind of the best weapons in a writer’s arsenal. But I did take a road trip, too, to get a flavor for some of the places and routes they’d be traveling.

Keeping in mind Justin Cronin also had a bat related virus in his books, I have to ask, wtf is going on with bats?!

Bats are wonderful, necessary creatures that get a bad rap — technically, and again, spoilers here, but what’s in Wanderers is not actually a bat virus but actually something modeled off of white-nose syndrome, a fungus that affects and kills bats, but that also has cousins that kill snakes and frogs and such. You think we’re not ready for a virus? Hahaha, you better hope we don’t meet a fungus we can’t beat. Because we really don’t know how to beat them easily. Anyway. Bats are great, they’re not cauldrons of disease or anything, but our intersection with them (and their intersection with other animals that we eat) is the problem. Leave them alone and we should be good. Definitely don’t kill them. Let bats be bats.

How did you make your decisions about which societal institutions would break down first and which would keep going for a while? Like, at one point people can’t get ambulances but the late-night talk shows are still on the air. How did you plan that out?

It’s mostly like… creepy apocalyptic thinking. It’s extrapolating what’s already true. Healthcare is already hard to access; ambulances aren’t guaranteed, hospitals aren’t either, hell you might not even have a fire company nearby. But you’ll still see late-night TV. A not-small part of this country already experiences something semi-apocalyptic every day — a kind of poverty and illness that I don’t think we really have a grasp of, as yet. But life goes on just the same, and sometimes in weird, eerie-seeming disproportionate ways. We think the apocalypse ends everything all at once, but it really doesn’t, and won’t. It would more likely be slow and erratic and strange.

As hopefully we will not find out any time soon!

Be good. Stay safe. And wash your damn hands.

* * *

WANDERERS: A Novel, out now.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. An astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls “a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”

A sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America. The real danger may not be the epidemic, but the fear of it. With society collapsing—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers and the shepherds who guide them depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Print: Indiebound | Let’s Play Books (signed) | The Signed Page | B&N | BAM | Amazon

eBook: Amazon | Apple Books | B&N | Kobo | Google Play | BAM

Audio: Audible | Libro.FM

Hey, so, I’ve got some travel upcoming here in the next handful of months — Tucson Festival of Books in March, Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference (Colorado Springs) in April, and I’m giving the keynote address at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC in August. There is also, in case you haven’t heard, a probable pandemic attempting to throttle the globe right now.

Let’s talk about the pandemic part.

Now, let’s say up front that, presently, COVID-19 or SARS2-COV or SARS 2: VIRAL BOOGALOO, represents no need to run around with your head on fire. In the wise words of Douglas Adams, DON’T PANIC. We have relatively few cases here in the USA, and outside China, it remains so far slower than maybe some have expected. And presently, it would seem as if the overall illness is mild for most, excepting those over 60 or the immunocompromised.

But, let’s also be clear, those over 60, and the immunocompromised, aren’t nothing. They’re a sizable population and are (gasp) people, just the same. Further, novel coronavirus (which is not, sadly, a coronavirus that reads novels) is a fast-moving unknown. We don’t know everything about it yet. It presently seems to have a mortality rate of 2%, which is low, though considerably higher than you get with an average flu year, which is ~0.2% — but, again, those numbers could change. Ideally, it goes down, because as we understand it more and get ahead of it, it cuts fatalities. But it could also go up. (Let’s recall that the 1918 Spanish flu started out mild.) And two percent is still pretty scary! If even 20% of the global population catches it, as they did with swine flu in 2009, that’s 1.5 billion people. If two percent of them die, that’s 30 million people.

And so we’re looking around the world and you’re seeing China’s quarantine, Italy’s quarantine, Japan canceling schools for the next month, and so forth. WHO and CDC have both said it may leap containment efforts, and of course, we had our president* last night get on TV to ensure us that everything was in good hands, which is the surest sign we’re in very bad hands. (Worse is that he gave over control of the response to Mike Pence, who to be fair is very good at outbreaks, given that he helped cause one — HIV — in his own state. I’m sure this charisma-zero homophobic human thumb will gladly relegate our fates to The Lord, given he seems to deny science at every turn.) It is a fair bet that, were this to become a pandemic, we’d see some troubling pressure on our own healthcare system, which is currently stacked against those without robust insurance (like, say, writers and other creatives), and which often features hospital systems whose funding has been cut.

Anyway, point is, we don’t know how serious it is, only that it has the potential for seriousness. This doesn’t mean panicking. This isn’t The Stand. Or, ahem, cough cough, Wanderers (though I am aware of uhh some of the similarities!). But it probably ain’t great.

Am I an expert in any of this? Hardly. I just try to keep up to date on what’s up while simultaneously not fall for conspiracy theories or mis/disinformation. (Harder than you’d think in this age, sadly.)

So, now we circle back around to say —

Hey, there are a lot of conventions, conferences and festivals coming up.

For me, these are writing- or book-related, but again, I see a lot on the horizon and some that just recently passed: toys, electronics, food service, etc.

It’s convention season.

And, apparently, coronavirus season.

So, if you’re running just such a conference, lemme give you some advice:

Get ahead of this now.

Do not make us e-mail you to ask you what’s up.

This isn’t about causing panic — it’s about undercutting it. It’s about reassuring us that you have this in your mind, with plans forming.

You should let us know:

a) What if we have to drop out? Whether we have a health issue or fear one, whether we have immunocompromised or elderly folks in our life that we don’t want to infect, what-have-you, can we do that? It’d be nice to have that option. As a writer, a lot of our creative ilk don’t have the kind of money in our lives or time to get sick, much less suffer the slings and arrows of an as-yet-mysterious respiratory illness. This goes double if you’re not paying us to be there.

b) How you will ensure healthy best practices at the event? Ideally, you’ll give out hand sanitizers and not require us to share them. Perhaps have masks available, though recognize the value of such masks is debated, and are often best for those with symptoms. Will you remind attendees that shaking hands with guests is not advisable? Because it isn’t. Let’s encourage elbow bumps or waves or bowing to each other or whatever. Long-distance mime greetings!

c) WILL YOU OFFER US PROTECTIVE BUBBLES okay no not that one

d) Are you considering canceling the event? Presumably you have insurance that handles that, but again, let us know, keep us in the loop. Let us know what that looks like, and by when you would make that decision. This sounds extreme, but consider that a lot of industries have begun to cancel their industry-wide events. I can’t speak to other attendees, but I actually want to know if you’ve considered it, because it means you’re taking this seriously, and care more about your attendees than you do your bottom line, difficult though I know that would be.

e) Recognize that we’re probably anxious about this. Many of us will go to our events via two or more airports, likely international ones. We will then be at your event with hundreds to thousands of people. If we’re writers, we’re gonna be theoretically up close and personal with folks, signing their books, some want photos — and trust me, writers are already a pretty anxious lot. Our brains are carousels of crawling ants. We’re already imagining worse case scenarios. (Seriously, have you read Wanderers?) You talking to us about that before we have to talk to you about it would be very nice.

f) Recognize too we don’t want to get stuck anywhere. We have families! Pets! Extreme introversion! Note that some people who have traveled overseas have found themselves in exactly this scenario. Best case scenario, it’s a travel delay. Worst case, it’s full restriction or quarantine. Who knows how the fuck this current administration will bungle this up — they might not do anything, or they might clamp down hard when it’s not needed. Either way? We don’t wanna find out. So, what happens if it does? Are you gonna cover our hotels if we’re guests? One night? Ten? Certainly your responsibility ends somewhere, but I’d sure like you to be thinking about that.

g) Don’t just tell us, “We have no cases,” because that isn’t super-relevant right now. It might be more relevant if that’s true the day of the event — but unless your event is today, we are being warned to expect clusters to pop up all over. Will it? I dunno. I’m not Nostradamus. But this is a contagion, and contagion gonna contage. Which isn’t a word, I know, shut up. Also, you having no cases is not relevant to us traveling through airports, which do not abide by the laws of containment. More to the point, don’t make us feel like assholes for being anxious about it, or concerned, or curious.

And surely there’s more you can do — linking to the CDC/WHO, offering up good tips on hygiene and hand-washing, and the like. And I’m certainly missing some things, too. Just, again, don’t make us bug you about it. You bug us. Stay in contact. True too if you’re a workplace or a school. Don’t assume we don’t care or aren’t concerned. Be proactive.

Thanks!

A queen of a divided land must unite her people, even if they hate her, even if it means stopping a ruin that she helped create. A debut epic fantasy from an exciting new voice.

“I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.”

Born under the crumbling towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves that nearly tore her nation apart. Her upcoming marriage to the son of her father’s rival heralds peaceful days to come.

But his sudden departure before their reign begins fractures the kingdom beyond repair.

Years later, Talyien receives a message, urging her to attend a meeting across the sea. It’s meant to be an effort at reconciliation, but an assassination attempt leaves the queen stranded and desperate to survive in a dangerous land. With no idea who she can trust, she’s on her own as she struggles to fight her way home.

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Pronunciation

Do not smash your forehead on the keyboard, stick vowels in, and call it a day. Do not make names up when drunk. Do not let your cat tap-dance on your keyboard and then keep the results. Audiobooks are a thing now, and they’ll make you pronounce everything first. Xyyxthththth’lllagonddir might seem really cool on paper, but you’re going to hate yourself once you realize you have to say it out loud for real people to hear.

Profanity

When you title a series CHRONICLES OF THE BITCH QUEEN you’re going to run into some very interesting problems. I originally self-published the first two books, and trying to run a promotion for it was next to impossible. Ads were constantly denied. I found myself arguing with Amazon employees for weeks on end. “Look,” I’d say, posting screenshots from Merriam-Webster.com. “The first entry says that it’s the term for a female dog and other members of some carnivorous mammals. Seriously, guys, I am not making this up. You guys—you’re discriminating against wolves, dogs, and otters. You wouldn’t flag THE MARE QUEEN, would you? Or the COW PRINCESS?” One employee will often give in and allow it, only for another to flag it a few days later, which means I’ll have to start all over again.

Reviewers have also contacted me about Amazon flagging and holding their reviews, probably out of confusion over why this particular book is attracting so much profanity. Some people turned to creative ways to bypass the filter: “For a complex, nuanced woman character with a very deep, profound, serious character arc, check out the Biatch Queen!” The worst part is that I haven’t actually cursed that much in this book. The main character is royalty. She usually lets her sword talk first.

Do I regret this? Let me get back to you after my mom’s Bible study group is done with it.

Love Interests

Could you have too many? Probably, although I’ve been told this doesn’t count if most of them suck…

Difficult Women

Some people are so used to seeing two-dimensional women in fiction that when one is presented as many male characters are—with not only a character arc, but fully realized problems, challenges, relationships, and desires—it is suddenly too much.

Queen Talyien is not playing second fiddle to anyone’s story. This story is completely hers—and her story is multi-faceted for the very reason that all of us are. Multiple desires, multiple challenges. Complexity not for the sake of, but because humans are complex.

I came across the analogy that writing women characters is like walking on a tightrope. Fictional women are judged as harshly as women in real life. There are acceptable standards of behaviour, and anything past that is scrutinized to the highest degree. A woman can’t be ruthless, but also can’t give in to her emotions; she must be calculated, but not too cold. Often it feels as if she must be able to bend her personality on a whim, depending on what people want from her at any given time. She must be able to read minds.

In many ways, I learned that writing fictional women has a way of breaking the fourth wall, especially when these women are dealing with the consequences of the same sort of harsh judgment readers bestowed on them. It has the interesting side effect of extended conversation beyond the pages.

Gaze

What many people see as “diverse” is my default. This took a while to get my head around. There are so many problems about this, the least of which is that whether I like it or not, my existence is suddenly deemed political. There is also the sense that many people seek diversity in ways that don’t match what I do. Perhaps they are looking for more of the same, just dressed up a little differently. Or they are looking for something different, but easy-to-understand, palatable—a guided tour over a trip into the unknown.

We are all the heroes of our own stories. The world may not always see it that way, though, and redefining your narrative requires care and thought. The struggles we share and relate with may not match the dominant culture—what one sees as heroic, the other sees as weak. Bridging your culture and the dominant culture requires a thorough understanding of both. Sometimes you have to make a decision: play that interpretative tour guide, or decide not to give a fuck altogether and throw the readers into a whole new world that little resembles what they know and understand, with only the promise that it will all be worth it?

I chose the latter; I decided that telling my stories unapologetically is my way of asserting that the struggles of people like me are just as valid and belong in this world. I’m here, doing what I do, and I’m not going away anytime soon.

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K.S. Villoso writes speculative fiction with a focus on deeply personal themes and character-driven narratives. Much of her work is inspired by her childhood in the slums of Taguig, Philippines. She is now living amidst the forest and mountains with her husband, children, and dogs in Anmore, BC.

KS Villoso: Website | Twitter

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N