Category: The Ramble (page 154 of 462)

DEAREST AUDIENCE,

I write to inform you of a recent change regarding my debut original novel, Blackbirds, which features the first adventure of the heroine, Miriam Black, a scalding cup of rat poison in human form. Miriam is a psychic and is able to see how and when you die simply by touching your skin to her skin. This has, quite clearly, left poor Miriam feeling less and less pleasant as regards humanity and the rest of its sweaty ilk.

That novel is presently on sale for a mere one dollar and ninety-nine pennies, and it is for sale at this price at B&N for your Nook, though you will also find it price-matched at Amazon and at Apple and yes, also at Kobo and even at something called Google Play. I do hope that if you have not yet enjoyed the Frisbee-to-the-face that is Miriam Black that you will choose to begin her venomous adventures here with the first book, with the consideration that oh my oh my, there are two more books published (Mockingbird and The Cormorant, respectively) and three more on the way (Thunderbird coming out next month, The Raptor & The Wren out by end of year, and the final book, Vultures, out at some point before your inevitable demise).

If you remain uncertain, please enjoy this book trailer.

I promise, it’s actually a very good trailer.

If you don’t enjoy the trailer, I will in fact compensate you for your lost time, as I am a chronomancer with power over the temporal threads that bind the universe. But please don’t spread that around as it causes me trouble.

Enjoy Blackbirds, should you endeavor to pluck it from the digital ether. If you were inclined to pre-order the newest, Thunderbird, I would be positively ebullient. Further, if you are caught up on the first three but have not yet read the novella called Interlude: Swallow that ties together Cormorant and Thunderbird, then behold the collection in which it sits: Three Slices.

See you on the other side, goodly folk! Ta!

With deepest disregard,

CHARLES Q. WENDIGO, THE THIRD

p.s. the art is by the mighty Galen Dara

AND SO IT IS DONE.

The votes are tallied.

The awkwardness is codified and canonical.

Here then are the top four winners —

#14 (by a long shot), #22, then in a tight race, #27, and #15. #2 also came in close enough where I’m gonna just go ahead and count it as five winners as much as four, because those last three were one vote off apiece, and god only knows if I fucked up the vote count.

Congrats to you winners.

I mean, “congrats,” because c’mon. *side-eye*

YOU WINNER HUMANS, you need to email me at terribleminds at gmail dot com and gimme your deets. By which I mean, your mailing address so I can mail you a book.

Here, then, are the top five:

#14

#22

#27

#15

#2

Every year I try to offer up some kind of writerly resolution, some goal, some quest, some authorial charge to lead you into and through the New Year. It’s half-bullshit, as everything here ultimately is — because I’m not you and you’re not me and a single resolution is just a brick in the wall. And writing advice is mostly bullshit, anyway.

I offered up a metric fuckload of resolutions in 2013.

I had a lesser gaggle of resolutions in 2014.

In 2015, I said that as a writer you should be big — and you should be small.

I don’t think I said squat in 2016, because I was just getting over pneumonia? And pneumonia, as it turns out, feels like someone has defecated inside your lung sacks. (EDIT: nope, wait, I did write one: be the writer that you are, not the writer other people want you to be.)

This year —

*whistles*

Listen, 2016 was a nasty beast who nested in a cradle of our heroes’ bones. The year was good for me personally and professionally but, outside that, also felt like a year where we were slowly watching the Death Star being built in front of our eyes and we couldn’t do shitsquat to stop it. And though I hope 2017 has dull teeth and bad eyesight, there’s also a very good chance it is a far greater monster than we can imagine. Best case scenario, the next 2-4 years are gonna get weird.

As such, it feels both necessary and also unmercifully glib to offer up writerly resolutions in any form. I want to say, WRITE YOUR REBELLION, and that’s not a bad idea, to put to paper all your fears and your ideas — give voice to your own idea of resistance. I want to say, BURN IT ALL DOWN TO MAKE GREAT ART — some snarl-mouthed snaggle-toothed middle-finger assertion to leap into the mouth of the monster and cut its throat from the inside with a sword made from your own wordsmithy. I want you to be bad-ass. I want to be bad-ass, too. I don’t want resolutions. I want revolutions. I want fire and steel and anger, I want politics and rage and poison, I want Hunter S. Thompson and Spider Jerusalem and Nine Inch Nails. I want brimstone and batshit. I want heartsblood spattered on the walls that dries in the form of your stories.

At the same time, that’s not going to be all of us.

I don’t even know that it’s me. I don’t know how brave I am or how good I am. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know who I’m going to be as a writer by the end of this year, or next, or in five years. I don’t know who you are or who you will become, either.

What I know is this:

We’re writers, and writers write.

And so, this year’s authorial resolution is far humbler, far smaller —

Write, despite.

What I mean is, no matter what happens, keep writing. No matter how exciting or terrifying the news becomes, write anyway. Force the time. Look away. Focus up. Eyes on your paper. Demand of yourself the creation of stories. Carve out the mental and emotional territory, and the temporal and physical landscape, in order to keep doing what you’re doing. In times like this, the distractions are endless. It’s easy to stop. It’s all too simple to feel overwhelmed by what’s going on and to stare at the Eye of Mordor as it fixes its gaze upon you. And yet, no matter what, you gotta do the thing. You gotta tell the stories. You gotta write it all down.

Write, despite. Or if you’re so inclined, write in spite of everything.

Your art does not need to be rebellious for you to rebel against everything. Just making art is an act outside the natural order. It is already a contravention of the status quo. And it’ll only get moreso in the coming year(s). Write despite. You needn’t aim any higher than that. You can. But the best thing you can do is to give yourself that mandate:

Write no matter what, write anyway, write always.

Have a great 2017. Carve your words into its hide. Tell the monster your tales.

(penmonkey logo above by Amy Houser)

My son associates Star Wars with Christmas a little bit, I think. In particular, both Empire Strikes Back and The Force Awakens, maybe in part because both films have snowy planets? Or maybe it’s just because he watches both around this time of the year and they get stuck in his mind like a seed between the teeth. No idea.

What I do know is, during our most recent rewatch of ESB, I responded particularly to one Han Solo moment. Now, Han Solo gets a lot of moments in ESB, arguably more and better ones than Luke does. This moment, however, is close to the beginning. Luke has gone out and is promptly mauled by the cantankerous Wampa. Han and The Gang learn that Luke has not returned. Night is falling. The temperature on an already frigid planet is dropping.

And Han says, fuck it, I’m gonna go look for my buddy.

So he mounts a Tauntaun — hey, did you know those are lizards? — and rides out.

But! But.

Just as he’s riding out, a short exchange occurs:

Rebel Deck Officer: Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!

Han Solo: Then I’ll see you in Hell!

I joked at the time with my wife, that’s an astonishingly aggressive overreaction by Han. It’s like, “HEY DUDE YOU MIGHT FREEZE TO DEATH,” and Han’s response is basically a nuclear, “THEN FUCK YOU, GUY WHO WAS PROBABLY JUST WARNING ME ABOUT THE SUB-ZERO DEATH TEMPERATURES AND HOW MAYBE MY FUZZY DINOSAUR FRIEND WASN’T EVEN GOING TO SURVIVE OUT THERE SO HOW COULD I POSSIBLY SURVIVE. EAT POOP, JERK!”

We also joked that it was a very good response to really anything anyone ever says to you.

“Have a nice day!” “THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL.”

“That’ll be $7.63.” “THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL.”

“Sir, you can’t park your Tauntaun here.” “THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL.”

But then, of course, as 2016 continued to harangue the world with news of new POUTUS appointments and sad deaths, the phrase came out of my mouth as sort of a grim, teeth-clenching rejoinder to whatever 2016 had on order. It became an automatic response to the year in general, both in what it still brings and retroactively as to what it already gave.

THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL, 2016.

But it occurs to me —

2017 isn’t likely to be much better.

I mean, 2016 wasn’t a blip. It was the beginning of something. All the bad news that’s arisen isn’t isolated. It’s part of a pattern. This shit is just getting started. The bump that was 2016 isn’t a hill we’re climbing over. It’s the top of Cthulhu’s head as he emerges from the deep. Sure, maybe 2017 won’t be as bad as we think. (Alternatively, maybe it’ll be worse!) Yep, 2017 will likely bring some good news along with some bad news, because that’s how things are.

Just the same, I expect it will have some unpleasant surprises in store.

And when it springs its many traps, I will remember Han Solo saying:

“THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL.”

And yet, I’ll also remember what goes into that phrase and why he said it.

I’ll remember this exchange, too:

Rebel Deck Officer: Sir, the temperature’s dropping too rapidly.

Han Solo: That’s right, and my friend’s out in it.

The reason he gets on that tauntaun and rides out into certain icy doom is because his friend’s in the middle of that shit. Night’s falling. The cold is seizing the planet. And he goes out anyway. That’s where we’re at, folks. The mercury in the thermometer is dropping like an elevator with its cable cut. The night will be long. The year ahead will have sharp teeth and and a big mouth and some of us will do better with that Wampa than others. Just the same, our friends are caught in the storm. And we’re going to have to mount up anyway, and ride out even if our snow lizard will be a popsicle by the first marker. Because others need our help.

So, 2017 and all your tricks and all your traps:

I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL.

* * *

I feel like I should also follow up with a personal year-in-review. I tend to do them each year, though this one feels a bit strange given all the utter shitnanigans going on in the world. The year brought with it a lot of personal good, but much of that tastes a bit ashen because I don’t really know what’s coming down the pike for people. (I know, I’m a white dude in America, I’ll be okay. That’s true to a point, though I’ll add that I still need healthcare, and Obamacare has been helpful even with its increased costs. I also have a kid who will have to contend with education in America theoretically sliding down the poopchute.)

Just the same, sure, I’ll play.

I wrote two Star Wars books this year. Life Debt is out, obviously, and Empire’s End is on its way in February. (And Life Debt landed me on the NYT list again, so I certainly won’t be mad at that.) I wrote the fifth Miriam Black book, The Raptor & The Wren, too — plus 2017 will see release of Thunderbird in February.

I also wrote a goodly portion of a new writing book, Damn Good Story, coming next year.

Which means really, I only wrote three (and a half) new books this year, which is light for me.

Of course, I also edited a bunch, and then I got to be a cool kid for a little while and write some comic books — Hyperion and the Force Awakens adaptation, both for Marvel. (Though the latter was really less of an adaptation and more of a translation.)

And I might have some more comic work coming up… *coughs into hand*

As for books released in 2016 —

Atlanta Burns: The Hunt (February)

Star Wars: Life Debt (July)

Invasive (August)

The Forever Endeavor, a novella (October)

Hyperion: Daddy Issues (November)

The Force Awakens TPB (December)

And as to what’s coming out in 2017:

Star Wars: Empire’s End (February 21st)

Thunderbird, Miriam Black #4 (February 27th)

The Raptor And The Wren, Miriam Black #5 (4th qtr, 2017?)

Also sold a pair of books to Del Rey — the first being Exeunt, which will come out in 2018 and is kind of… well, I’m hesitant to say too much and spoil the soup, so let’s just call it my take on The Stand, Swan Song, Station Eleven, The Fireman, and other epic apocalyptic horror stories.

It’s been a good year, overall — at least personally. And I’m hoping to retain some of that as I go forward. The new book deal lets me write a little less per year — so I can cut my output (which is doable, if occasionally a little punishing) and concentrate all fire on Exeunt. Life’s fine, the family’s good. Not sure where 2017 will leave us in terms of everything else, though.

Be well to all of you and best of luck in the New Year. We’re going to need it. And, I suspect, we’re going to need each other. Mount up. Get ready to ride. Because 2017 is almost here.

Thanks for coming by. Thanks for being readers and pals.

Onward, fellow weirdos.

*tauntaun gargle-bleat*

This is an interesting article and you should read it.

(Hi, sorry, popping out of Holiday Exile long enough to write this.)

You will discover, via that article, that there exist people who are ‘truthers’ about facts that are provably false — they believe that it’s the Berenstein Bears and not the Berenstain Bears, they believe there was a genie movie called Shazaam starring Sinbad instead (or in addition to) a genie movie called Kazaam starring Shaquille O’Neal, they believe that the Vader line is “Luke, I am your father,” rather than “No, I am your father.”

And these people are insistent about these points, assuring that their memories are correct. They further believe these truths so hard that their memories are, perhaps, a sign of an alternate universe, or that we’re all living in a giant simulation. Surely, this is proof. It’s proof of a glitch in the Matrix, or evidence that some people have slipped from one universe to another.

Except, no.

Fucking no.

What the —

I mean — god, shit, fuck — what? What?

Stop that.

Stop that right now.

We all get to hold different opinions. I can say, “I think Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie,” and you can say, “Well, I think it’s Return of the Jedi,” and neither of us are wrong because it’s a matter of taste. It’s subjective. But you cannot say, “The line in ESB is ‘Luke, I am your father,'” because it’s jolly well fucking not. You can’t say, “The best Star Wars movie is The Undiscovered Country,” because that’s not a Star Wars movie. You can’t just say shit and have it be true. You can’t just decide that the information you contain in your head somehow automagically defeats the information that exists in reality. This isn’t some kind of rock-paper-scissors game where MEMORY beats EVIDENCE. Your memory of something is not perfectly reliable. Personal truth does not trump empirical evidence.

You just think it’s one way because somehow, that got into the cultural consciousness. It’s like how the word “literally” sometimes is used to mean the opposite of its original intention — there, the definition can change, because the definition of words is (over time) malleable. But empirical evidence is not. The line that Vader speaks will not one day subtly shift to the other thing just because enough people assert it. (Though in the long-view, in two thousand years when no such copy of the film exists, it is possible to change that narrative. That doesn’t change reality, though, it changes our cultural memory based on misinformation.)

We have to cut this shit out.

This is how fake news happens. This is how echo chambers strengthen their walls. This is how we — and I’ve done it, too, trust me — share bad information, because we find people who also believe the same dippy bullshit. And sometimes it’s not even a matter of confirmation bias, it’s just a matter of repeating a lie long and loud enough until the truth of the lie enters into our memory banks. It over-writes other information and begins to code as “true.” And, solipsistic ding-dongs as we all are, we trust our memory of a thing far more than anybody else’s memory of a thing, even so much so as to concoct fuck-brained theories about we’re not wrong so much as well clearly there’s just a multiverse and I’m from Galaxy 5A73B — ha ha ha, that’s all this is, just a common misunderstanding between multiversal citizens!

No! Fuck! Nooooo.

You don’t get to have your own boutique reality! Your artisanal data might be locally-sourced, but bad news: it fell out of a bull’s ass. Sometimes? You’re just wrong!

And it’s okay to be wrong!

School teaches us that it’s bad to be wrong — but fuck that, it’s okay to be wrong! I dare say it is often necessary to be wrong, provided we discover our wrongness, because being wrong — and learning that we are wrong — is how we then course-correct and learn true shit. We have to be very careful in this Brand New Supposedly Post-Fact Post-Truth I-Believe-In-Political-Unicorns age not to let empirical evidence slip through our grip like so much rope. We must accept information. We must trust in experts, actual experts. We must not diminish or disregard entire bodies of data and expertise merely because it does not conform with our memory or with what our gut tells us. Yes, we can test information. Yes, we can shine a bright light on facts to try to hone and refine and seek deeper data. But that doesn’t mean simply diminishing, disdaining and disregarding actual provable information just because, “Enh, fuck it, I’m pretty sure it’s Berenstein and I’m the expert on my own reality, so eat a bucket of duck dicks, Fake News.”

Trust me. It’s Berenstain. My mother worked for the Berenstains as a house-cleaner, and she did this for many, many years, and at no point did they change their name just to be weird. They did not go and seek out all the copies of their books and with infallible pen change the covers just to fuck with us all. They are not Refugees from a Collapsing Multiverse.

It’s always been Berenstain.

The world has always been round.

Climate change is really real.

Obama isn’t a Kenyan Muslim space alien who’s going to steal your guns.

Just because you think something doesn’t make it so.

Just because you feel one way doesn’t confirm it to be true.

This is going to be a real challenge in the next four years. Hell, it’s already been a challenge. We’re looking down the barrel of a government who wants to give you its own version of facts — which is ostensibly always true of governments, but fascist, autocratic governments are far more interested in delivering worldview and agenda and ideology as facts. It’s an abuse narrative, a cult narrative, where they set themselves as the center of the universe. The sun orbits around them, not vice versa. Real news becomes fake news. Science is sold as propaganda. They insist that they possess truth, they have facts, and all they have to do is tell them to you and have you believe them. But that’s not how reality works. Denying climate change doesn’t stop climate change. Closing your eyes and insisting that the train roaring down the tracks straight toward you will not turn that train to vapor. You cannot believe hard enough to change actual reality. Magical thinking feels great, but it also risks endangering us and shackling us to cuckoopants motherfuckers who happily confirm to the beliefs that come up bubbling out of the pool of our own magical thinking. We have to be hella careful not to give too much life to opinions just because they feel good, or sound right, or because someone else gave them to us on a platter but labeled them as REALLY REAL TRUTHY FACT-FLAVORED STUFF.

Facts are not opinions. They’re facts. They’re things we know. They’re not conspiracies or proof of a multiverse. Reality will never neatly line up with our beliefs, no matter our political stripe.

Reality does not conform to us. We must conform to reality.

Or, to reiterate —

Sometimes, you’re just wrong. And that’s okay.

Practice the phrase with me, and you might need it, because we’re all about to engage in THE HOLIDAYS where we’re thrust up against different people with different viewpoints about things. Practice the phrase, “I could be wrong.” And then practice the phrase, “That is not correct, and here I can prove it.” And then prove it. And if none of that works, flip the table and jetpack right the fuck out of there because you’re arguing with a houseplant.

Now read this, as homework: How To Convince Someone When Facts Fail.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

*sets fire to your holiday decorations*

*guzzles your egg nog*

*vurps*

*climbs out through the chimney with all your presents*

I received over 40 entries for the Awkward Author Photo Contest.

Well-done, everyone. Well-done.

*thunderous applause*

Here, then, are those photos.

You will find a couple famous-faced authors in there, including Jeff VanderMeer, Alethea Kontis, James Sutter, and Yvonne Navarro. Those cheeky little penmonkeys.

Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to go through these photos, find your ONE TRUE FAVORITE, and then go into the comments below and put down the corresponding number. Write only the number, if you please. I need the number to be plainly visible and easy to tally.

You have a week to vote — vote by 12/27, noon EST.

At that point, I’ll note the top four vote-getters, and those people will get a copy of THUNDERBIRD apiece. And they’ll also earn our neverending love. In a diabolical pact.

In the meantime, I’m going to pick my favorite right here and right now.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE:

Huzzah! Congratulations, Jo Anderson. (She has her own Flickr account here.) I chose it because literally every time I look at it I break out into laughter. It’s just so glorious weird. What did that banana do to deserve such dubious scorn? Are the other fruits complicit? Why would this ever be an author photo? IT IS SUBLIME.

So, congratulations!

Which means, voters —

Do not vote for this one. (I’ve tagged it with no number so you know.)

Congrats to Jo, and to the rest of you:

Get to the voting booth below.

*insert some coy reference to the electoral college*