Here’s Dan and Kate Malmon to talk briefly about a charity anthology you can buy right now (print, e-book) — get some stories and support the fight against Multiple Sclerosis.
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Sometimes – often times – life is weird.
In 2014, Crimespree Magazine held an online flash fiction contest. The theme? Somewhere in the story, “Dan Malmon” had to die. Funny, sad, serious, or scary, Malmon had to meet his maker. Flash forward to 2016, when Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine is talking to Eric Campbell of Down and Out Books (UGH, namedrop much?) and Jon says, “I think the stories should be collected.” Eric says, “Yeah, cool. Let’s do it.”
Kate and I say, “WhaHUH?”
The whole concept was always equal parts flattering and equal parts oogie to us. But, bind the stories up into a for-real book? That for-real people could buy? With for-real money? Call it old fashioned Midwestern values, but we weren’t down with that.
But, how about if we could sell it for charity? I’ll always put myself out on a limb for a laugh, er, good cause. Down and Out was down for it (Oh, come on). We have always been deeply invested in the fight against Multiple Sclerosis. Kate has had her own Bike MS team, Saint Kate’s Cycling Saints, which has been raising money for the MS Society for years now. We figured we could use KILLIING MALMON as another way to keep the spotlight on this horrible disease, and keep throwing cash at a good cause. But the collection needed more words than the initial online contest provided. So, we turned on the Bat Signal. Or Facebook Messenger. You get the idea.
Anyway, we put out the call. Friends, old and new, sent us story after bloodthirsty story. 360 pages of gleeful gunshots, disgusting decapitations, and pitiful poisonings. Eric Beetner created the eye-catching cover. Now the rest is up to you, the reader. KILLIING MALMON is a great experiment: How would 30 different crime writers, both amateur and professional, off the same, poor schlub? While everyone is getting their bloodthirsty kicks, the MS Society is getting 100% of the proceeds.
Now everyone can feel good about getting their bloodthirsty kicks.
KILLING MALMON is available now from all the usual suspects (click here).
First up, Turok #3 is out today. TAKE A TRIP TO THE STORMLANDS, Y’ALL. Meet some new friends. Ride some dinosaurs. I’m new to the comics thing, relatively, but this has been a blast to write. And Alvaro’s art continues to kick me in the teeth in the best way possible.
Second, the big-ass mega-ultra holy-shit whamma-jamma book bundle is still 50% off until November 1st — all to help you get ramped up for Nanowrimo. It’s 8 writing books and two novels, and using code NANOCTOBERgets you it for ten bucks instead of twenty.
Third, if you have read and enjoyed Damn Fine Story, please leave a review somewhere. If you didn’t like it, please paint your negative review onto the side of a goat, then feed the goat to a crocodile. If you liked the book, please tell a friend! If you did not like it, please tell an enemy that you did like it, in the hopes that your deception will cause them to read the book and be disappointed — victory for you. If you still need to check out the book: print, e-book.
Gonna try to keep this short and tight, like a hobbit sock.
[Edit: I fear I have failed to keep it short and tight, like a hobbit sock.]
As you well know, I WROTE A STAR WAR, and in fact, I wrote THREE STARS WAR, plus a STARS WAR SHORT STORY and a WAR STAR BOOK OF COMICS and it’s been pretty great except for the fact that sometimes I get some, ahem, interesting reviews, tweets, and emails.
Last week, a wonderful hashtag spun around the Twitters — #SWRepMatters — which is to say, Star Wars Representation Matters. Go read the tweets that line up behind it.
Someone responded to one of my tweets and said the following:
My response was:
1. everything is forced in a story because they’re not magic
2. stories are not a natural state and so nothing occurs naturally within them, nor can they “call for” anything
3. inclusivity is part of good storytelling
4. not being inclusive is also a political choice
This person deleted his tweet and went on to clarify that he in fact totally supported a pairing like, say, Finn/Poe, but he wanted it to have a purpose in the story and not simply be included for political purposes. Abstractly, what he’s saying is, he’s not a bigot, not a homophobe, he just cares about storytelling. Which is fine, in theory, and I’m not suggesting this person is worthy of excoriation. I’m sure he means well. But I think it’s really worth shining a big, bright-ass light on this, because I think there’s a soft, unacknowledged prejudice at work.
It assumes that there exists a default in storytelling — and that default is one way, and not the other. The default is straight relationships, or cisgendered characters, or able-bodied white dudes, or whatever. One of the criticisms Aftermath received was this very special kind of softball phobia, right? “I don’t mind LGBT characters, but these were forced into the narrative for a political agenda,” assuming that the characters are somehow not characters at all, but rather protest signs or billboards advertising THE WONDERS OF GAYNESS or THE FABULOSITY OF THE NON-BINARY SPACE PIRATE LIFE. The complaint then becomes that these characters are political levers, identified as such because their natures (be it LGBT characters like Sinjir Rath Velus and Eleodie Maracavanya, or a character of color like Admiral Rae Sloane, or women characters like Norra Wexley and Jas Emari) do not somehow factor into the plot. Like, Sinjir’s homosexuality is not a plot point. He doesn’t shoot gayness out of his eyes to blow up the Third Death Star, oh no, he’s only there as a commercial for GAY PEOPLE EXISTING.
And the defense these critics make is that, “Well, Anakin and Padme’s relationship is plot-entangled, because their heterosexual coupling yields children of destiny.” So too with Han and Leia. (Erm, less so with Luke and Leia, unless we are to believe Rey is the child of incest, and boy, wouldn’t that be a twist?) Basically, Anakin and Padme do blow up the Death Star with their heterosexual coupling by proxy, because their two children literally work together to do just that very thing.
Problem is, that’s a shitty defense for a lot of reasons, first because it assumes characters are on the page only to serve plot, rather than to be on the page creating plot with their wants, their needs, their problems, their fears. Characters are who they are, and are not all driven by some kind of mythic quest — it’s okay that they want love, or respect, or are the products of their history and circumstance. It’s also a shitty defense because it assumes that the existence of a relationship is not itself plot — even if two characters have an untroubled relationship and exist together, they’re still making choices based on that relationship. Sinjir and Conder have a relationship in Aftermath, and it literally affects Sinjir’s character arc. It changes who he is. Each character has gravity and affects the other accordingly. Which in turn means they make decisions based on this, and those decisions do not follow the plot — they become the plot. So, the characters actually do affect the plot with their relationship.
But so fucking what if they didn’t?
So what if they’re just… together? And it affects nothing? So what if they’re simply visible examples of LGBT characters in a relationship? Who gives a shit? (Answer: a lot of turd-people, admittedly.) So what if The Doctor is now a woman, or James Bond ends up being played by a black actor? Someone says, “WUH, PFFT, WELL, THAT’S JUST SERVING A POLITICAL AGENDA, THEN.” Except, I got bad news for you: not including LGBT characters is similarly a political choice. Same as it is to not include disabled characters, or characters of color, or women, or, or, or. You just don’t see it as a political choice because it’s the politics in which you already swim. Like a fish, you have no context for the water all around you because it is your automatic default. If you view the presence of these characters as being political in the story, then you likely view them in reality — in your really real life! — as similarly political.
As I said above, stories aren’t alive. Yes, we tell tales ideally in an organic way so that all the widgets and flywheels in the mechanics are hidden from view, and yes, sometimes it feels like the stories somehow “flow” from us, as if we are simply summoning Cosmic Creative Energy, but the truth is, none of this is natural. Believing anything to be natural about stories allows us to create uncomfortable crutches for the stories we tell. Storytellers are engines of creation, not conduits for it. We force them into being. We conjure pyroclasm and lightning to tell tales. We make deliberate choices in our narrative — and, if you don’t make those deliberate choices, then you’re likely relying on lazy tropes or outmoded prejudices to tell those stories. A lack of inclusion in narrative is one such choice — based on lazy tropes and outmoded prejudices, it’s a choice that refuses to acknowledge actual people and actual reality.
None of that is an excuse, by the way, to make the opposite choice lazily — it’s entirely worth seeing the line where inclusion stumbles into a host of other problems (white savior stories, appropriating narratives that are not yours to tell, injecting such inclusion with other shitty tropes), but that’s a reason to do it and try to get it right rather than simply not to do it at all. Because it bears repeating: not being inclusive in the work is a political choice. Stories are not real. We tell them. We make them up. We will them into being with our fucking minds.
It’s up to us to make them right and to tell them to the widest audience we can reach. Further, it’s also up to us to help support inclusivity outside the stories and among storytellers — inclusion shouldn’t just be on the page or the screen, but also behind the camera, behind the executive desk, behind the editorial and authorial pen. We have a lot of work to do, and choosing not to do it is no longer acceptable.
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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.
(I’ll likely miss things, so forgive me. It was a joyous blur.)
Last Sunday, I landed in San Francisco.
Apparently, so did Aaron Mahnke, creator of a little podcast-now-book-now-motherfucking-TV-show called Lore, and as we landed at roughly the same time and had hotels within (not-literal) pissing distance of one another, we got together for coffee and later, for dinner. Our forbidden romance knows no bounds.
Then, Monday, I hopped-skipped-and-jumped to a little upstart unknown company called Lucasfilm, where they told me I would be writing and directing Episode 9, and I was very excited, but then I accidentally — in my excitement! — tripped and fell into a glass case of vintage thermal detonators, which all exploded and sent Pablo Hidalgo rocketing, cartoon-like, into the bay. He could be seen in the distance, shaking his smoldering fist, so I lost the job.
The disappointment on The Carpathian’s face is as plain as my own.
But! They did let me do the Emmy-nominated STAR WARS SHOW as a second-place prize, and you can check me out on that show, just palling around with my pal, Anthony Carboni.
(Or you can just watch it here)
Tuesday, I went to the SF MOMA, and had a lovely time there, and at some point I will crystallize my thoughts on modern art and pop culture and some other random brain-squozenings, then I met up with super-pals Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde. Kevin, of course, has emerged with a brand spanking new epic fantasy series: the Seven Kennings, which begins with Plague of Giants. It is a blast. It has eleven point-of-view characters. It is a fresh take on epic fantasy. You want it. Fran was here to celebrate her now-completed planet-killing battlestation — wait, no, her now-completed trilogy of bad-ass Bone Universe books, which are dense with worldbuilding potency and sung with lyrical love, and again, are books you must read. (And I see Updraft is, right now, $2.99 for your e-book machine.) It is a wonder that I am friends with so many talented writers. Why they hang with me, I can never know.
— where we did a slam bang event and they sold their books and I sold my newly-released book about storytelling, Damn Fine Story, and then we went out for tacos, as is necessary to please the word gods. We got to hang briefly with some awesome folks like Richard Kadrey and Charlie Jane Anders and all was well in the world.
I also stayed in a hotel where you could buy “sex dust,” which to my surprise is not cocaine and MDMA mixed together.
Event complete, we zipped off to Portland in the morning.
Kevin and I had face-explodingly good ramen at Boxer Ramen:
And then had ice cream at Salt & Straw:
And you might say, hey, Chuck, what’s the ice cream? And I’d say, well, the bottom scoop is strawberry balsamic, and it was — you know, imagine my face making the most pleasurable face (ew, not that way) you can imagine, and that’s how good it was. Then I’d say, but the top scoop was even better. What was the top scoop? Well, it was Dracula’s Blood Pudding flavor, which is clearly a funny name for a normal flavor, right? HA HA HA NO, it’s motherfucking blood pudding flavored, people. We tasted it and the counter dude was like, “This has actual pig’s blood in it,” and I was like, okay, I’ll vamp it up.
It was maybe the best ice cream I’ve ever had.
It was warm and chocolatey without being chocolate, exactly? It had a Mexican hot chocolate vibe to it, it was richer than expected, it was creamy, it was not bloody or mineral-ish, it was just deeply, intensely satisfying. Also I am now a vampire.
Here, have some Essence of Ghost —
Then Kevin and I trekked to the downtown Portland Powell’s, where I completed a precious ritual of the SFF writer: I signed the pillar.
SEE THERE I AM SIGNING THE PILLAR.
Garbed in the PDX attire of “flannel.”
Here is Kevin, next to Plague of Giants:
We signed their stock, which was considerable. (I also like that they shelve some of my books in horror. I know that horror is anathema in the publishing world right now — a vile curse turning to ash upon the tongue — but really, I tend to write books that skew to horror. Especially the Miriam Black books.)
So, I’d also like to apologize to Powells, because I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. I’m from the East Coast, and people would proselytize that store to me, and I’d be like, well, I like bookstores, so that sounds great. And they’d clearly see the lack of passion in my eyes and say, NO, MAN, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, and then I would just assume that, because they were from Portland, they were really high on like, sex dust or something, and would blow them off. Great, yeah yeah, sure, fine, it’s a bookstore, cool.
My turn to say —
NO, MAN, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.
It is a fully-operational book battlestation. (Second Death Star reference in a post? Shut up, it’s on-brand.) It is a temple to books. The downtown one is epic in size and stuffed to the rafters with endless books, including an awesome rare books room. I have not viscerally enjoyed a bookstore as much as I did visiting two different Powells that day.
Speaking of the second Powells —
Off to Beaverton to rejoin with Wild Fran Wilde, where we did an awesome event and answered lots of questions and sold lots of books and met scads of rad people.
(Annie Bellet! Fonda Lee! Dongwon Song!)
Clearly, we are living our best author life:
Then in the morning, Fran wisely eschewed eating GIANT DUTCH BABY PANCAKES, unlike Kevin and I, pictured here in our pre-carb pre-coma state —
And then it was off to Seattle. We drove. Fran kept the conversation smart and literary, whereas Kevin and I talked about secret buttholes? We’re sorry, Fran. Then, a brief rendezvous with Cherie Priest and her Famous Doggos, followed by Thai food with Holy Shit It’s Kace K.C. Alexander, Y’all and why haven’t you read Necrotech yet?
Finally, onto the signing at the University Bookstore in Seattle, except they actually did the event in a church? Thankfully it was a very nice church and not the kind where, y’know, all three of us authors burst into flames upon entering the building.
Scads of cool-ass writer mofos were there: Laura Anne Gilman, Adam Rakunas, Jason Hough, Phil Brucato and Sandra Swan, E. Lily Yu, Cherie Priest, Harry Connolly, Dennis Bakriges, Luke Matthews, Amanda Cherry — and surely more that my jet-laggy brain is missing.
Bonus excellence: Kevin and I met one of the narrators of our books, Xe Sands, who helped narrate Plague of Giants and who narrated Invasive:
You can see we were having no fun at all:
And clearly none of us were the least bit drunk there. Not me, nor Kevin, Amanda, K.C., Adam, nor that guy in the background. I was definitely not drunk on an $8 (!) pint-glass sized gin-and-tonic (!!) featuring a really lovely gin called The Botanist (?!). Point of trivia, the only reason Kevin in this image is not joining our orgy of delight is because he’s buying us all shawarma, because he is just that kind of best person.
Then it was time to say goodbye to people — Kevin was off to MORE TOUR, Fran was off to DIFFERENT MORE TOUR, and I remained in Seattle for a day, where I met with a kick-ass artist named Steven Belledin, who does work for Magic: the Gathering amongst other things (seriously goddamnit go look at his art right bloody now)– oh, and he’s also my second-cousin? — and then I wandered the city, taking in the sights, eating piroshky and BBQ pork buns and then passing out because I had a 6AM flight back home.
Seattle did not leave me disappointed, of course:
I love all three cities immensely and miss them already.
Not as much, though, as I miss my traveling companions — if you ever get the chance to hang with Kevin and Fran, do so immediately. And if you can’t hang with them in person, by gods, go buy their books. And thanks too to Del Rey for helping arrange this tour.
And that’s it, that’s me, I’m out.
More soon.
*ejects*
P.S. don’t forget about Damn Fine Story, out now in print and e-book — if you’ve read it, please tell folks, leave a review?
Hey, I wrote a book! You’ve probably heard me mouthing off about it.
This book is Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative.
It is not, precisely, a book about writing advice.
Rather, it is a book about storytelling.
Further, it’s a book about why we tell stories, how we tell them, and what we can do to tell them in a way that is clear, clever, and confident. It’s about understanding the shape of narrative and letting characters be architects, not architecture. It talks about the value of theme — giving your story an argument and a deeper point to make. It’s about how, while formats change, the bones of story are the same. It’s about squirrel sex talks, wayward surfer dogs, Star Wars, Die Hard, missing pinky fingers, the jokes of 4-year-olds, and lots and lots of really weird footnotes*.
Amongst other places where disreputable, deviant books are sold.
As always, if you dig it — or any of my books, or really, any book by any author you’ve enjoyed — please leave a review, tell a friend, yell your adoration into the ear of a magic goat, whatever you gotta do to share the love.
And again, if you’re out on the Leftmost Coast, you can find me at a trio of events with Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde —
October 17th, San Francisco, Borderlands Books, 6pm — details here.
October 18th, Portland/Beaverton, Powell’s Books, 7pm — details here.
October 19th, Seattle, University Temple Church, 7pm — details here.
It is time, good people of the intertubes, for me to leave you.
*gets in a spaceship*
*waits for spaceship to take off*
*finds out spaceship is actually just a pillow fort my 6-year-old built*
*stays in there anyway, drinking cocoa, because fuck yeah, pillow forts and cocoa*
OKAY NO I’m not actually escaping the gravity of this planet.
I’m hitting the road in support of Damn Fine Story, out tomorrow. (And, if we’re being totally honest, I have already left on a big airplane and should already be on the Leftmost Coast.)
(*waves*)
While out here, I am joining Kevin Hearne (Plague of Giants!) and Fran Wilde (The Bone Universe!) and popping off to a trio of really cool events that you should totally go to. No, I don’t care where you live, you should go. Go now. Get there. Steal a car. Cling to the wing of a plane like a gremlin, I don’t care, just get it done.
Where we will be:
October 17th, San Francisco, Borderlands Books, 6pm — details here.
October 18th, Portland/Beaverton, Powell’s Books, 7pm — details here.
October 19th, Seattle, University Temple Church, 7pm — details here.
Here’s Dan and Kate Malmon to talk briefly about a charity anthology you can buy right now (print, e-book) — get some stories and support the fight against Multiple Sclerosis.
