Category: The Ramble (page 125 of 464)

K.C. Alexander wrote a helluva book with Necrotech, and now she’s back with a sequel that, I expect, will probably break your nose with a hard high-kick and make you like it. Here she is, talking about Generous Orthodoxy, and how that relates to — well, gender, and religion, and progress and — I’ll just let you read it.

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Do I have your attention now?

Let’s be honest: if I am here on Terribleminds, most readers don’t need me to grab ‘em by the neck and shake the stupid out. Nevertheless, I can only hope that this will reach the greymatter of those who need to hear it—or their callused skulls, anyway.

To make this easy as possible, I’ll save everyone the trouble of looking it up (or explaining it to everyone for me). The following is (one of several) definitions, spoken by Malcolm Gladwell on his podcast, Revisionist History.

“That phrase, Generous Orthodoxy, comes from a theologian named Hans Frei. It’s an oxymoron, of course. To be orthodox is to be committed to tradition. To be generous, as Frei defines it, is to be open to change. But Frei thought the best way to live our lives was to find the middle ground because orthodoxy without generosity leads to blindness and generosity without orthodoxy is shallow and empty.”

Some claim orthodoxy applies only to religion. If so, this post is for you. And if you, like me, believe that orthodoxy refers to all and any traditions, this post is also for you.

In short: pay a-fucking-ttention. Because change is upon us, and you can either embrace generosity or you can continue down the path of social warfare—where we will grind the hidebound into the dirt with spiked boots. And probably defecate thereabouts, too. Because naturally.

(I’d like to point out that my website does say that I am a struggling Buddhist.)

Okay, so having thoroughly buried the lede, here we are: at the crossroads of hatred and acceptance, intolerance and change. Where the orthodox views of generations before have come full circle and the generosity of modern generations is met with disgust, denial, scorn and violence.

I’m genderqueer. I’ve mentioned this before, but for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it means that on the spectrum of male to female, I fall somewhere in between. And I like it that way. Even so, I have in my life people who love me, but who do not understand, accept or even tolerate this facet of my world. It defies centuries of tradition, rejects the concept of the gender roles our world believes in, and they feel that it forces change upon those who have never known (or felt) anything like it before.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with Generous Orthodoxy? A simpleminded question with a so-simple-people-can’t-grasp-it answer:

It means that one can remain within their orthodoxy (male and female is a Thing™ and it remains in this world) while also embracing generosity (there are people who do not feel male or female, or perhaps feel both, and this does not affect my belief in male/female as a whole, but I can respect them and call them what they wish anyway).

When it comes to religion, of course, it can get so much more complicated. I do recommend you check out “Generous Orthodoxy” on Gladwell’s podcast. It’s a deeply emotional and passionately intellectual view at this concept, using real people, places and events.

Anyway, in terms of the gender binary, in terms of trans folx, in terms of gay and lesbian, in terms of other religions, all the skin colors, other languages, all the peoples, my point here is that we cunting well exist and the choices you make from here boil down to only a few.

Change is Inevitable

Everything changes. Everything. Tradition, for all it has existed for millennia, has never not changed. The way Germans celebrate Christmas is vastly different from a hundred years ago. The way we treat Halloween has changed wildly over the generations.

The way we mind the house, raise our kids, even the way we care for our bodies and attend church has changed. (Used to be tradition that one bathed only on special days, or that whole families share one bath, one at a time. Fucking hell, right? We changed that happily, didn’t we?)

So, why not embrace those changes, a little at a time from generation to generation, and retain that orthodoxy as well? It’s, after all, only a matter of time before your bigoted, hate-filled ass is left to rot. Why not ensure that your world is as wide and cultured and educated as possible instead?

Take It to the Grave

Do you like…arguments? I bet you do, I bet you do! Say no more, man, say no more… A rock’s as good as a brick in a window.

Which you may or may not know already, but if you’re going to take your intolerance and inability to accept change to the grave, you deserve it.

The thing about the world is this: those who do not embrace change are doomed to bitterness and suffering, forever bemoaning the loss of others’ respect, attention and love. (Whyyyyyyyy, you will whine to the nursing home caretaker who doesn’t give two shits and a used condom about you.)

This consequence may not happen immediately, and you’ll do a lot of damage on your way down (yay, you), but it will happen. Even a beloved grandmother is often avoided between holidays because her “well-meaning” racism causes discomfort.

And if we’re not lucky enough to have a “well-meaning” racist in our family, but a rabid and intolerant bigot whose prejudice and politics demean and invalidate us, then we sure as hell aren’t gonna go out of our way to visit, right?

This goes for everybody under the age of dead, too. Sure, you have all your racist, bigoted, intolerant troll-friends, but Jesus monkeytits, is that the life you want to live? Drowning in a cesspit of anger, violence, self-loathing and invisible “points” nobody else is keeping track of? Winning the game of troll is kind of like winning a one-way trip into the Bog of Eternal Stench—no matter how you spin it, you still come out smelling like an asshole.

Live and Let Live (or Don’t Stick Your Nose in Other People’s Business and Nobody Else Will Get All Up In Your Ass)

Okay, so say you just can’t accept that trans is a thing. Say you just don’t believe in lesbians being allowed to marry. Say you refuse to admit that the person over there with the brown skin probably isn’t a sanctified woman-beater.

Say you believe women belong in the kitchen.

Fine. I get that. Well, no, I don’t get it, and I don’t respect it, but I can and will leave you alone if you leave me alone. I’ll let you live your tiny-minded little narrow life while I live my expansive (and yes, bitter because fuck you) and open-minded life, and may our paths never cross.

And if they do—say at the crossroads of hatred and acceptance, intolerance and change—I will meet your eyes so that you know that I exist and so that I acknowledge that you exist, and then I will turn left onto Change Boulevard while you ride that assbike of yours right up Hatred Lane.

Here’s the thing that I cannot understand but do accept: I will never, ever change your view of the world. But here’s something maybe you can accept, too: your view of the world doesn’t have to change in order for you to live the life you choose.

Unless, of course, your chosen life includes active or passive involvement in lynchings, beatings, shootings, hate-preaching, deliberate acts of bigotry and proselytizing about the glories of the good ol’ days (y’know, when eugenics was a thing and we were interring hundreds of thousands of our own country’s people because stupid fucking assholes decided that was the perfect chance to be racist af to a different class of non-whites).

But I digress.

In the end, these three choices are the root of every semantic and pedantic version out there: generosity within your orthodoxy, orthodoxy without generosity, or merely staying in your lane where you are most comfortable.

There’s a trick choice in there. Can you spot it?

(Hint: staying in your lane is just fine, but you can bet that beloved asshole of yours that we’ll be in there, too. Kissing our queers. Succeeding in our black and brown skins. Majoring in liberal arts and marine biology and something other than math with our various Eastern- and South- and Euro-Asian features. And cracking that glass ceiling with our female-minded fury.)

I guess what I’m saying is this:

Don’t start none, won’t be none. But in the meantime, maybe give a real hard thought about where you want to be in ten years. Do you want to be the one riding the wave of progress (and all the riches that come with it)? Or the one drowning in the wave of violence you, with your undying need to feel superior, brought upon yourself.

I mean, if you ask me, I figure getting stomped by the tides of change, and the people that come with it, is one hell of a fast-track to losing your shirt. And your dignity.

And your money.

So make your choice.

We’re gonna live, a happy mix of orthodoxy and generosity, and at this point, you can do the same… or you can sink into the bog. I hear drowning in a bog is the perfect way to remain unchanging; each limb, each bone, hair and teeth untouched by time. Forever alone. And long forgotten.

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K.C. Alexander is the author of Necrotech and Nanoshock (out now!)—profane transhumanist bloodbaths that take no prisoners and name no corpses. And she does not tolerate shit, but in the most infuriating way possible.

K.C. Alexander: Website | Twitter

Nanoshock: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

I first discovered Molly Tanzer through her book, Vermilion, which really has one of the greatest covers I’ve ever seen. And, as it turns out, it has an equally awesome book underneath that cover. So, at this point, Molly can do no wrong, and she has my sword. And by my sword, I mean, my blog. Enjoy her talking about her newest, Creatures of Will and Temper.

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No one I know of has asked this about my latest novel, Creatures of Will and Temper (yet). Rather, it’s something I asked myself when I was considering the idea of writing a retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Victorian era is such a common setting for just about every sort of media you can think of, be it books, films, games, comics… was there a burning need for yet another “carriages and parlors” novel?

The answer I arrived at was, “sure, why not,” for two reasons. One, I like carriages and parlors. I also like pumpkin spice lattes, catch me outside. Two, every once in a while I get that feeling that I’ve hit on something genuinely cool—or at the very least, something I’d think was genuinely cool if I saw it explored in someone else’s novel—and I got that feeling about this wild hare to do a Dorian Gray novel with a gender-swapped Dorian and a gender-swapped Lord Henry Wotton. And épée fencing. And demons!

I studied Victorian literature and culture in graduate school, and so I felt well prepared for the task but…no lie, it was also extremely intimidating. Wilde’s style is distinctive and masterful, and Dorian Gray is one of those literary figures whom almost everyone knows reasonably well. Even people who haven’t read the original novel know that Dorian Gray has a magic picture that becomes increasingly gross while he stays young and magnificent even as he does terrible things. If I was going to do something interesting, I’d need to nod at what everyone knows about that classic work of literature, and then go beyond it. Otherwise, why bother?

I’d also need to prove why another Victorian novel was necessary, if only to myself.

I actually considered doing a modern-day retelling of Dorian Gray, but that didn’t excite me in the same way. I also considered a second-world fantasy setting that hearkened to Victorian England, but involved like… a bee-based religion, and some other weird stuff. That was very obviously the wrong choice. Even in the planning stages the worldbuilding was taking too much of my energy away from what I wanted to be the focus of the book.

What I wanted the focus to be was something not found in the original: relationships between women. Specifically in my project that manifested as the relationship between two sisters, the vivacious 17-year-old Dorina Gray, who longs to become a lady art critic and aesthete, and her older sister Evadne, who would like to be left alone to practice her fencing and think proper thoughts. I also wanted to play with Wilde’s themes of mentorship and the consequences of decadence, and construct an extraplanar cosmology, for lack of a better way to put it.

All of that made it clear to me that Victorian London was ideal setting for this project. One can only have so many moving parts in a novel, and late 19^th century England was a setting I was already pretty familiar with. It’s also a setting other people are pretty familiar with. You say to someone “The streets of London were misty that night” and for better or for worse they can immediately picture what you’re talking about. Therefore, the work I needed to do to establish setting was blessedly minimal—I think it is what I think people younger than me call a “hack.”

That’s not to say I didn’t indulge my impulse to research. I did, and I learned things I didn’t know before—like that women at that time didn’t dine in public. A big action sequence was added to the book after I spent an enjoyable, if wet, afternoon in the famous Seven Dials area of London. But I also relied heavily on the reader’s assumed knowledge borne of reading some other book or seeing some other film, such as A Christmas Carol or Dracula.

So… that’s why Victorian London. Again. I could go on, nerding out about how that time and that place is also fascinating to me for a lot of reasons like changing social roles, and fin de siècle anxieties, and other stuff… but the truth is, I needed something easy to be the backdrop as I wrestled with the bigger thematic issues in Creatures of Will and Temper.

(Also, carriages! And parlors!)

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Creatures of Will and Temper: Indiebound | Powells | Amazon | B&N | iTunes

I joined Mastodon at the behest of Greg Pak.

You can find me here.

I have thoughts, if you care to read them. (Note: these are thoughts from a NON-TECH PERSON, who is increasingly more interested in technology that does not challenge me with literally any difficulty at all. Because I am lazy and old-ish, shut up.)

1.) It’s like Twitter. Mostly?

2.) Clarification: it’s like Twitter at the surface level. It’s a bit off in that regard, in much the same way it’s different going from the United States to Australia, but it’s not that different. Ostensibly, things work the same, even if the names are different and some of the minor processes vary. “Oh, cookies here are called ‘biscuits.’ Toilets are called ‘salad bowls.’ Spiders are called ‘venomous terriers.’ Otherwise everything is the same!” In Mastodon, tweets are toots (heh), and your timelines are a little different, but otherwise, it’s kinda Twitter. There exists, however, a deeper level here, with instances serving as communities and chat rooms, but I suspect you never really need to engage with that level if you don’t want to. Arguably, it could serve as a reasonable Twitter clone without you ever leaving the circle of comfortable firelight you’ve long enjoyed.

3.) Upon joining, I was instantly talking to people with little to no effort.

4.) It reminds me of the early days of Twitter. In a good way!

5.) Instances are confusing. The prevalent metaphor seems to be, “Well, see, it’s like how if you have a GMAIL address, you can write me at my HOTMAIL address,” and here’s where I yell at you for still having a HOTMAIL address because, really? Who are you, my grandmother? But it’s really nothing like email except in that background way — it’s far, far more like old-school BBSes, which is too old for you to probably remember, but I ran one as a SysOp so it clicks for me. Or, imagine an MMO server on a major MMO that you create, moderate, administrate.

6.) Instances are essentially little fiefdoms — communities controlled by admins, but right now, if I want to join a different community, I need to create a new account, which means any followers I have accumulated elsewhere do not follow me. That can be a feature if you want your follower community to be similarly limited, but a bug if you use social media as an aggregate (which I do). I’m told that they may be working on creating universal logins or ways to port followers over, but I’m also told that they’re so strongly opposed to any kind of centralization that it won’t ever happen. No idea. Fingers crossed.

7.) The fiefdom thing is… well, okay, on the one hand, I do kinda miss the old days where you had things sliced up more finely, whether in terms of forums and LiveJournal and chatrooms or what-have-you? But as anyone who lived in those eras knows, you also open yourself up to drama. Like, it’s great to have more local, decentralized admins, but it’s also possible that those admins could subject their entire communities to drama and fickle application of rules. BBS drama was a real thing once upon a time and could easily replicate itself here. You could build a following somewhere, and a fickle admin could wipe that away in a moment. That’s fine if Mastodon remains small and not important — but as your community gets bigger, as your following means more to you (as it does now on Twitter and Facebook), it puts a lot of power over your online experience in the hands of a lot of smaller, more random admins. Some of this has reportedly already happened, with some admins up and deleting whole instances. Another point in favor of centralized logins, and treating instances like “rooms” rather than entirely separate island-nations that require entirely new visas to enter.

8.) Mastodon was sold to me as “Twitter, but without the Nazis!” Which is great! But I’m no longer so sure. They’re not there now, but I also don’t see exactly how enforcement will work better than the already-craptastic Twitter. Like, I get that individual admins can create strong enforcement against them! And that’s dandy. And I get that one instance can arguably ban another instance because they have Nazis in them. But leaving control to a bunch of little digital city-states is not promising. It leaves a lot of room for Nazis (“Nazis” being shorthand to include any number of turd-humans) to, say, mob a single instance and force the admins to do constant defense. It also leaves Nazis room to exploit their presence in one instance to get that instance banned — say, you join mastodon.sjw.wonderland, and you believe that Nazis will stay on nazi.shithead.island, but really, they’re going to 4chan their way into your SJW instance just to fucking tank it if they can. Mastodon as a small entity of social media will handle this problem well. If it gets bigger, too big, I don’t think it will. It’ll feel too much like the Wild West, which is a step backward for social media, not a step forward, in my mind.

9.) “Toots.” Like, I get it’s an elephant tooting, but, c’mon. I have a six-year-old. Toots. Toots. It’s funny, shut up, don’t @ me.

10.) Still, though, it’s worth mentioning that I had more fun on Mastodon yesterday than I had on Twitter yesterday. If you can curate a more boutique experience there for friends and community, I’m all for it. And they’re forward-facing with content warning tags and such, and it felt light and fun, if a little bewildering at first. (And, honestly, still a little bewildering. It feels like it’s catering more to people who grok tech well, not your average, easily bewildered user. I used to be a tech-grokker, but am no longer all that savvy in that regard.) I’m hopeful for it, and I do feel like we need an alternative to Twitter given that Twitter seems way, way behind the curve when it comes to creating a moderated, maintained environment — they’ve got rats in the walls, and seem comfortable giving the rats blue checkmarks and letting them run the joint.

More as I know it, assuming I don’t at some point just mentally check out of it (remember Ello? yeah me neither) and go back to Twitter because fuck it.

Last year around this time, we were revving up our trip to Maui, so I thought I’d pop a macro shot from our trip into this post — behold, an anole, chill enough to let me get in macro-snappin’ range. The anole is wise. Listen to the anole’s wizardly wisdom. Or whatever.

A quick hose-down of what’s up:

Invasive gets a shout-out at Sword & Laser, one of the greatest SFF podcasts of all time, so give a click and go listen. Don’t make me make you.

If you’d like to hear Ahmed Best — the voice of Jar-Jar Binks — talk about his thoughts on Jar-Jar’s portrayal in Empire’s End, look no further. Bonus: he does a reading from the book!

Also, a bunch of us Star Wars author types give some thoughts in this SyFy article about how it is to write for the Star Wars universe.

(Related: I’m also told Battlefront 2 may have some Aftermath-adjacent content?)

Lessee, what else?

The collected edition of my first proper comic book work, writing alongside Adam Christopher and with art from Drew Johnson, is finally coming out — The Shield: Daughter of the Revolution awaits. It had an, erm, erratic release schedule, so maybe you didn’t read these? Go read!

Turok, Issue 4 comes out next week, too — “Captured by cultists and recruited by rebels! The mystery of Turok’s past is illuminated as he, Nettle and Marak escape into the darkness of the tunnels beneath the Storm Lands – and their rebel guide attempts to convince Turok to kill a living god – the leader of the Varanid Empire, Imperator Vex!” GO READ IT. The penultimate chapter before everything goes holy-shit-shaped.

The third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant, is $1.99 for your ELECTRONIC BOOK DEVICE, and I don’t know why, and I don’t know for how long, but it is, so go grab it if you haven’t.

The fifth Miriam book, The Raptor & The Wren, is up for pre-order now (out January 23rd!), and also I believe ready on Netgalley for ARC review? I apologize in advance for the contents of that book, ahem. (Print, e-book.)

Thanks everyone who has so far checked out Damn Fine Story (print, e-book). I’m hoping for some of you it’s providing interesting narrative fodder to help you through the CHAOS BLENDER that is NaNoWriMo.

AAAAAAAND here is the classic, old-school authorial reminder that if you liked that book, or any of my books, please go to your nearest Review Receptacle (Goodreads, Amazon, social media) and leave a review, if you so please. Unless of course you did not like the book, in which case, please staple your negative review to the nearest goat, and then force the goat into the wastelands where it may die or be consumed by hill cannibals. Please and thank you.

If I’m scarce here this week, it’s because I’m 233,000 words into a novel and need to finish this Epic Monstrosity this week if at all possible (I literally crested 1000 pages in the Word document, which, while not equivalent to 1000 pages of printed novel, is still a Whole Lotta Motherfucking Pages). So, it is now that I put on my headlamp and go into the word-mines to dig my way clear of this rich vein of narrative ore.

BE WELL, WORD NERDS.

*disappears into the dark with a canary*

*gets hungry*

*eats the canary*

*is probably a cat*

So, I love the predictive text meme, where you tell a short little story or poem or sentence based on the predictive text your phone or mobile device gives you —

Like, last week, one was to type in “I was born” and then let predictive text fill in your autobiography, and mine came up with:

“I was born a perfectionist and a monster

I had no idea what I was doing”

And I thought, goddamn, that’s fucking good.

That’s “opening line of a memorable novel” good.

So, let’s play with predictive text here today.

Start with the words, “Once upon a time,” and then let predictive text take over the story. Keep tapping the predicted words (you should get three choices, I think, at least you do on an iPhone) until you’re satisfied with the story. Note: we’re not really looking for complete stories here, just a sentence that could serve as an interesting opening line or weird little narrative. We’re doing this in part because a good number of you are, I’m guessing, neck-deep in NaNoWriMo, so this should serve as a fast and easy steam-release of storytelling fun.

You can drop your predictive tales right into the comments below.

[My example: “Once upon a time I had a great idea, and when it got to the end, the first person who wrote it out for me died.” Commas added by me, not the predictive text.]

[EDIT: Interestingly, you can also change the predictive story by adding bits to Once upon a time — such as, “Once upon a time there was,” or “Once upon a time I was” etc.etc.]

I knew a guy named Gil who faced an incredibly difficult decision: his wife and his teenage daughter were both in the hospital at the same time with failing kidneys, the wife from cancer, the daughter from the trauma of a car accident. Grim coincidence, indeed. Both required a kidney transplant, both put on the list requiring donor organs. But Gil, of course, was a perfect match for his daughter, and as it so happened, also for his wife. Trick is, Gil only had two kidneys — he wasn’t like, loaded down with extra fucking kidneys, so he could only give one away. He could give a kidney to his wife, or he could give the organ to his daughter. The one whom he refused would be consigned to wait, ideally getting a kidney from a donor, but that person could also potentially die in the interim.

This was complicated by, well, complications. His wife was older, in her 40s, so was it wiser to give the kidney to his daughter, who had so much more life to live? But the daughter also had other trauma from the accident, and a kidney would not entirely ‘fix’ her — whereas the wife’s cancer had not yet metastasized, and so his kidney would go a greater distance, so to speak, if transplanted into her. Then one wonders, what are the emotional responses? If both survive, will one resent him? Could both? If one died, what would the response be from the survivor?

Needless to say, it’s a lot to weigh.

It is a very hard choice.

Which did he choose?

Neither, because Gil isn’t fucking real. I just made him up. I don’t think anyone is even really named Gil. That’s just folklore, like Bigfoot. We’ve all told the campfire tales about CREEPY GIL THE KIDNEY DONOR, haven’t we? THE KIDNEY IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE CAR, oh no!

But really, who gives a shit? The point remains the same:

Hard choices are interesting to us. And they are interesting to us in the context of fiction, particularly. Which means they are incredibly useful to you, as an author. Hard Choices provide an excellent, versatile tool in your narrative toolbox.

(Also, I’ve gone and tattooed HARD CHOICES across the knuckles of both of my hands. Whenever I lead a writing workshop, I jump through a paper sheet of bad prose dressed in a wrestling onesie, and then I punch the air with both fists — *punch* “HARD” *punch* “CHOICES” *kicks the air* “LET’S WRITE SOME MOTHERFUCKING STORIES,” I yell. It’s really successful and you can hire me to motivate you.)

Consider, if you will —

A hard choice provides:

a) conflict, because it puts the character in conflict with herself and with whatever consequences will come

b) mystery, because we the reader do not know what the character will choose, and what calculus will lead to that choice in particular

c) drama, because it will generate scenes of discord between characters, not all of whom will be happy with the choice or the decision

d) lingering questions, because the reader will be left wondering what exactly she would have done in exactly the same situation

e) fun for you, because not only do you get to grapple with the choice on behalf of the characters, you also get to imagine how implementing this choice will make the readership squirm as if their butt is infested with pinworms

Of course, there are tricks to using hard choices in fiction, and you might find it useful to hold onto a few key guide-ropes in the process —

a) hard choices cannot exist on every page or you dull their impact, it’s not like Gil can have a LIFE OR DEATH, WIFE OR DAUGHTER, HOLY SHIT WHO GETS THE KIDNEY moment every chapter, sometimes the fiction is about building the narrative infrastructure that gets you to the hard choice

b) the choice has to be sensible in the context of the story, and the story should feel like it’s leading up to it, not that it’s dropped out of nowhere like a fucking anvil onto the reader’s head (clong)

c) it should also be tonally appropriate — if you’re writing a light-hearted comedy then suddenly switch gears to some tragic gut-ripping Sophie’s Choice, the reader will have narrative whiplash

d) the hard choice should actually be complicated — it’s all-too-easy to bunt that wiffle ball and offer the character a false hard choice, and trust me, the reader will smell your weakness like poop on a shoe; if the choice is, GIL CAN EITHER SAVE THIS BASKET OF BABIES OR HE CAN INSTEAD EAT A BURRITO, one assumes that unless Gil is a raging burrito-hound, he’ll make the right choice and skip dinner to rescue the baby-basket

e) a hard choice speaks to the character, and isn’t just external plot

f) a hard choice always, always has consequences — emotionally, yes, but also consequences that resonate outward from the world or from other characters

g) further, those consequences — the stakes (as in, what can be won, lost or incurred) — must be known at least in part before the character makes the choice

So, there you go.

Whether you’re doing NaNiWriMo or just writing a book because, goddamnit, you can, feel free to use HARD CHOICES to juice your narrative and give it some teeth-gritting oomph.

*punches the air*

HARD

*punches the air again*

CHOICES

*high-kick*

*falls down*

*breaks coccyx*

Let’s write some motherfucking stories?

P.S. that photo at the top of the post is not Gil the Kidney Guy, but rather, author Matt Wallace, whose fists are not named HARD and CHOICES but rather, LIPBALM and LOZENGE for reasons that remain utterly unknown to mankind; regardless, please be aware he is a very good writer, and he has the newest Sin du Jour book out today, Gluttony Bay, which for me is an instafuckingbuy and it should be for you, too, damnit.

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DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Out now!

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N