Category: The Ramble (page 207 of 465)

*makes lightsaber sounds*

*then runs around the room like an X-Wing*

*then explodes like the Death Star*

Hey, so, uhh.

I kinda didn’t think Star Wars: Aftermath was going to make list. In part because why would I assume that, and also in part because most books come out on Tuesday and this book came out on Friday and it was also a holiday weekend and, and, and.

Apparently, that was wrongo of me.

Because Aftermath debuted on both the New York Times list and the USA Today list at number four. Which is extra funny because it’s a pair of fours which is like Force and because my tweet wanting to be hired to write Star Wars in the first place was on September 4th and because the book then came out exactly one year later on September 4th and also because I actually apparently have the Force. *shoots lightning into the sky*

I continue to have people tell me that they really love the book and that they want action figures of Mr. Bones or want to hang out with Sinjir and it makes my heart sing because I’m hyper-geeked to have been able to ignite my own star in the sky of that universe. Good stuff.

Some more quick Aftermath-links for you:

Sci-Fi Now reviews the book, saying:

“Coupled with Wendig’s elegant prose, and you have a journey that is both breathtaking yet restrained, throwing you headlong into a story that reaches it’s crescendo at around the half-way point and maintains this pace throughout, while subsequently making it clear that all these events are just the beginning.

The clues for what lies ahead are there for those who want to look for them (especially during the intriguing final chapter), but for others this is Star Wars fiction at a high standard done well. The Force is strong in this one indeed.”

Drew McWeeny did a cool post at HitFix talking about the 11 things you might learn in Aftermath that links you up to the world of The Force Awakens.

The Mary Sue did a post about the, erm, fan outrage.

Ben Kuchera wrote a neat thing at Polygon about how his favorite thing about the books are the self-loathing totalitarians — an Empire in disarray and under the gun.

(Note, if for some reason all this good news chafes you because of how much rage the book stirs in you, you may want to consult Molly Templeton’s AFTERMATH NERD RAGE bingo chart for ease of emotional use.)

Also, if you want a chance to win this and other books by other awesome authors, note that Kevin Hearne is having a contest drawing for those who donate to UNHCR before 9/20 — you may, in fact, win a copy of Aftermath that he has personally annotated (!). Go check out the details.

Finally, if you’re done the book and require another sci-fi read about a scrappy band of ragtag miscreants who go up against a giant Empire (this one being the United States government) to battle a deranged self-aware NSA surveillance system then — *clears throat* — might I gently point you toward Zer0es? *prod, prod*

You can sell books using social media.

You also can’t really sell books using social media.

The cat is both dead and alive.

Let me unpack this a little bit.

For quite some time, social media has been promoted by nearly everybody, including publishers, as a Very Good Way to SELL YOUR BOOKS. You have a Certified Platform. It is the place where you express your Authorial Brand. (My platform is cobbled together from the skulls of my enemies, and my brand looks like Calvin peeing on a tiny bigot.) Publishers say: YOU MUST TWEET. YOU MUST FACEYTALK. YOU MUST BLARGH ON THE BLOGS. Not-good publishers take this a step further and basically use an author’s social media presence — meaning, her brand and platform, or her “brandform,” if we’re into making up shitty corporate-speak — to sell the books instead of actually levying their own power as a publisher to do the same. (Note: if this is your publisher’s only marketing plan, please bill them for your time.)

And it has become quite understood across both traditional and indie publishing that This Is Now How You Sell Books. And that’s not entirely inaccurate.

But it is a little bit inaccurate.

You can, indeed, sell books on social media.

You can sell, depending on your outreach, 10s to 100s of copies of your books.

That’s not nothing. Every book sold is a pebble thrown into the water. And each pebble has the potential to make ripples that reach shores you had never previously reached. Word-of-mouth is the truest driver for selling your work, and where once our “circle of trust” in that regard was fairly small (and entirely IRL), it has grown much wider given our online networks. So, selling a book to even a single person has meaning. That person, if they like it, may go on and tell their friends (online and off) about the book. And they may tell their friends, and on and on.

Problem is, this is an effect with diminishing returns. You ping your social network a handful of times and after that, they start to feel besieged by the promotion. Here and there, “Hey, I have a book, and I want to speak earnestly about it?” That can work. But a constant barrage of LOOK BOOK LOOK BOOK HEY HEY HEY I WROTE A BOOK I WROTE A BOOK is you being a dog just wantonly humping legs. Maybe we’re not mad at you about it, but it’s still a little embarrassing for everyone involved. If you’re an author with a book out, it’s expected that you’ll advertise it, talk about it, and keep a little momentum going. But it’s also feared that you’ll become a nuisance with it, performing an action equivalent to hitting people in the throat with the damn thing.

So, to reiterate —

Social media can sell some books.

Publishers, however, don’t want to sell “some” books.

They want to sell all the books.

Selling 10s or 100s of copies is not enough to keep your publisher afloat, and it is not enough to justify your advance or their marketing budget (assuming that budget is more than just a shoebox full of bottlecaps and sadness). It will buy them and you too little whiskey.

No, your publisher wants to sell 1000s of copies.

So, how do you do that?

Mostly? You don’t.

The one aspect in your control here is the writing. You write the best book you can. Always and forever. Is this a guarantor of your success? Ha ha ha, fuck no. But it’s something, and at least you can feel good about the book you wrote. Writing a good book is not a prerequisite toward selling well, but it’s a noble, valuable start. Why, do you want to write a bad book? For shame.

Beyond that? Where do the sales come from?

It’s on your publisher.

The publisher has the means to push that book in ways that are both traditional and innovative — a variety of marketing and advertising efforts across the spectrum. Trade reviews and media attention and placement on tables and all that jazz is by and large up to your publisher and how much cachet and cash they have. Again, these things are not a guarantee for success, but remember how I said each book sold is a pebble thrown? Right, your publisher can throw a catapult full of pebbles. They have gatling guns capable of firing hundreds of pebbles a minute. Meanwhile, you just have your two hands. Your two ink-stained, Dorito-dusted hands.

Now, again, maybe you with your two hands can do better than your publisher.

But it’s less likely. Why is that?

Because success in writing and publisher is very frequently a game of luck.

But it’s not purely random luck — this isn’t fucking Chutes and Ladders, man (by the way, FUCKING CHUTES is probably a porn site so I’m sure I’m going to get some great search term hits from that). This is a luck you can tweak. Luck you can add to. Every pebble thrown is (in RPG terms) a modifier to your Luck score. So when the time comes to roll your Luck, well, you get a shot at a more favorable outcome because of all your modifiers.

(For self-publishers, the same thing applies but with the simple reminder that you are more than an author — you are an author-publisher. That’s why I prefer that term, because now you’re doing double-duty. You still can’t count on PURE SOCIAL MEDIA to sell your book. You gotta get savvy. Creative. And if you can’t do that directly…? Then you hire people who can.)

So, social media sells books.

Just not as many as you want.

And more importantly, not as many as publishers might hope.

Now you’re asking:

What, then, is the missed opportunity? The one mentioned in the post’s title?

Social media is not great for authors selling books.

But it is an excellent way to make and cultivate professional connections — and, dare I say it, friendships. Listen, social media is a fucking gonzo great place to hang out with other writers, editors, artists. It’s an awesome place to meet agents, bloggers, booksellers, librarians, readers. It is a fundamental vortex of book-love. You can meet people telling stories across a wide variety of media: books, comics, movies, games. Just talking to folks — and being the best version of yourself when you do it — is another way to throw pebbles. But what you build here aren’t front-end sales. It’s a kind of personal infrastructure. People are awesome. And people make up the industry in which we hope to work. I don’t mean you should get on social media just as some crass promotional exercise — a way to “get work.” But it is a damn good way to meet like-minded folks and learn things from one another. That has huge professional and personal value.

Worry less about selling books online.

Worry more about being a COOL HUMAN meeting other COOL HUMANS.

That last one will take you far.

* * *

ZER0ES.

An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab spring hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains and skills to work for the government for one year.

But being a white-hat doesn’t always mean you work for the good guys. The would-be cyberspies discover that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA program, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an evolution both dangerous and disturbing. And if it’s not brought down, will soon be uncontrollable.

Out now from Harper Voyager.

Doylestown Bookshop| WORD| Joseph-Beth Booksellers| Murder by the Book

Powells | Indiebound | Amazon| B&N| iBooks| Google Play| Books-a-Million

So, hey, uhhh — *clears throat* — anything going on, you guys?

Any, ahhh, books come out recently?

*whistles*

OH THAT’S RIGHT

*orgasmic Yoda face*

A little book called STAR WARS: AFTERMATH came out.

Force Friday And The Launch Weekend

I flew down to DragonCon and the Decatur Bookfest for the weekend — both of which were amazing, by the way, and each the polar opposite of one another — and on Thursday night headed over to the Edgewood Barnes & Noble for an Aftermath launch event. There I got to connect with a passel of fans new and old, and meet rad folks from various corners of Star Wars fandom, and just generally have fun signing books and oh yeah maybe buying myself a remote control BB-8 and a Force Awakens LEGO Millennium Falcon. Ahem.

The launch continued through the weekend, and being at DragonCon for it was like being at Ground Zero for the Joyous Nerd Bomb. I had people come up to me randomly to get me to sign their book. I got to do a really rad Aftermath panel with bad-ass moderator Nanci Schwartz of Tosche Station fame. (Actually, all the folks from Tosche Station were a blast. Big ups to them for making me feel welcome and just generally being a hoot to hang with. Oh, and sorry, Bria, that I can’t tell you ANY SECRETS. Also Luke dies in the book seven times.) Did an interview with the awesome Bryan Young and also with bad-ass drinker-of-foe-tears Donna Dickens at HitFix. Sold out of the book at various places. It was overwhelming in the best way possible.

The online response has been exciting, too — so many folks tweeting at me or emailing me or FACEYBOOKING me about how much they dig it. It’s really nice to see because Star Wars is a beloved thing to me, and having a little acreage of actual canon to cultivate is a dream come true.

(For much of the weekend, actually, the book was the number one novel across all of Amazon. Which is completely head-breaking to me in the best way possible. I swoon. I swoon!)

I’m In The Papers, Ma

[note: a lot of the links below may involve spoilers big and small]

First off, it was surreal to be at my hotel in Decatur and look over at a USA Today — in print — and see my big dumb face staring back. I literally had a moment where I thought: am I stroking out? Did I eat some bad eggs or shrimp and now I’m tripping gonads? Am I staring at myself from inside a newspaper? Am I trapped inside the newspaper? Do I need to get myself out of the newspaper? I was ready to grab the paper and start ripping it up to free me from its prison.

Then I calmed down and realized it was real and also holy shit.

(You can read the USA Today article here. It also features a new excerpt from the book.)

I also had an interview with Anthony Breznican about Aftermath and Zer0es. It was a real pleasure to do this interview and it’s really one of my favorites. Broken into three parts:

Part One: How Aftermath sets the stage for Force Awakens…

Part Two: Aftermath introduces a new gay character…

Part Three: Finding Han Solo…

Grantland did an interview and article about me and the book, too. Read that here.

And I guess I really made it because I have a book referenced in a Penny Arcade cartoon. (!!)

Blastr did “10 important things we learned from the new book, and hints about Force Awakens.”

And IGN offers “9 important new details from Star Wars Aftermath.”

Hollywood Reporter talks about how the book may tie into the new movie.\

From the Nerdist review:

“Wendig neatly captures the current states of the Empire and Rebel Alliance and does so through flawed, real, and nuanced characters. His writing gets you up close and personal with anyone we come in contact with, whether we spend chapters with them or only a few pages. Wendig does wonders with dialogue and voice and carving out space for everyone to breathe. Aftermath is a strong foot forward into unexplored territory and puts down just enough foundation that you can start picturing the Resistance and First Order of The Force Awakens taking shape.”

From the NY Daily News review:

“If the opening chapter of the Wendig’s “Aftermath” trilogy is any indication, the ‘Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ will be every bit as exciting as the movie.”

(also worth noting their comments on the droid character in the book)

“Rounding out the heroes is Mr. Bones, Temmin’s customized Battle Droid. This killing machine serves mostly as a deus ex machina, saving his allies from certain death… However, his scenes are always fun to read and many “Star Wars” fans will be reminded of HK-47 from the “Knights of the Old Republic” game and Triple-Zero from Marvel’s “Darth Vader” series. Bones is also one of the many clever shoutouts to the prequel era.”

From Den of Geek’s review:

“The four heroes work fantastically together, and have become some of my favorite characters in the new canon. They really seem to connect with one another: they hug, they laugh, they make maps out of household objects. Singer, whose job was torturing his own crewmates for information, flinches when he’s presented with a box of thermal detonators – he wasn’t a front-line soldier, after all. Their dynamic is fun and believable. Aftermath is also one of the most diverse books in the Star Wars oeuvre, showing characters of various races, genders, and sexual orientations…

…Aftermath is a wonderful addition to the expanded universe. It brings vivid characters and a strong writing style, and while I won’t be outlining them here in order to avoid spoilers, there are intriguing hints at where Star Wars stories could go next. The Star Wars universe is fresh and new again, and just as rich and mysterious as it always was.”

From Big Shiny Robot:

“The book itself is incredibly readable. I couldn’t put it down, I consumed it rapidly over the course of two days. My time was limited and I had many deadlines, but found myself setting things aside in order to read instead. It moves quickly and is structured like you’d imagine a “Star Wars” book should be.”

From Sci-Fi Bulletin:

“If you’ve not read a Chuck Wendig book before, the present tense third person POV style may come as a bit of a shock, but it’s absolutely right for the story that’s being told. As I’ve said elsewhere about his original fiction, Wendig’s writing is visceral, drawing you into the characters he creates, appealing to all your senses, the pacing matching the emotional temperature of the scene he’s presenting (and presenting is the right word). The original Star Wars movie used fairy tale tropes – farm boy, princess, wise old man etc. – but this story is more about what happens after the ‘happy ever after’, and it needs that realistic edge, so that you feel you know the people – bounty hunter, Rebel mother and rebel teenager, Imperial loyalty officer – and inhabit their feelings…

“Verdict: A highly readable, sharp continuation of the saga.”

From Star Wars Post:

“First and foremost, Aftermath is an engaging, fun, thought provoking ride that will keep you engaged and thirsting for more. To put it simply, it’s just plain great Star Wars. The tempo is suberb and the affection and attachment to the characters is real and complete. There are great personalities here and they feel like they belong in our galaxy far far away.”

From the Eloquent Page:

“Wendig has achieved an accomplishment I thought nigh on impossible. He has written a novel that has left me actively salivating for the next Star Wars movie. Well played, Mr. Wendig, well played. Turns out, thirty two years later, I haven’t changed a bit; I am still completely in thrall to my childhood favourites. If The Force Awakens manages to capture the same sense of adventure that is on display here, then the future of Star Wars is in safe hands.”

The Dark Side

The book has also gotten some… interesting reviews.

A blogger at Allen West’s website has decried me and Paul S. Kemp somehow destroying America with our GAY STAR WARS. Something-something traditional values? I dunno. Probably don’t read it? But if you want a Do Not Link click to it, here you go.

And at Amazon, the book seems to have collected an astonishing number of one-star reviews — many of them arriving en masse, in a row, the first couple days of release. Obviously, some of that is simply that people don’t like the book. That happens with every book release.

Others have suggested that there may be a campaign by some Legends fangroups to “raid” the book’s reviews to tank its ranking with these one-star reviews — an interesting tactic that does indeed tank its actual review score, but not its sales ranking given that Amazon algorithms are interested not in the quality of the reviews but rather the attention that the reviews and the book get. (Meaning, a passel of negative reviews actually elevates the book’s overall sales ranking. Which in turn garners it more sales. Amazon reps have been clear with me on this point: buyers buy books with reviews, period. Not good reviews, not bad reviews. But rather: quantity of reviews impress buyers to make purchases. So, leaving a ton of bad reviews actually increases the book’s sales. Ironic, and not likely what anyone supporting such a campaign intends.)

Some of the reviews seem to take issue with my voice, some take issue with it being, erm, “SJW propaganda,” others still because I’m not Timothy Zahn and because I apparently hate the prequels and the EU. (Neither could be farther from the truth, mind you. We literally just watched some of the prequels last week, and the Zahn novels are three of my most beloved books.)

Jim C. Hines did a post unpacking some of this.

Michael Patrick Hicks took a look at what’s going on with those reviews, too.

Your mileage may vary.

As for my voice: I can’t do much about that. I’m me. My writing is my writing. I took a long time to find my voice and if it’s not your thing, I respect that. (That said, it also doesn’t make it “bad” writing, as some have suggested. It’s just not what you prefer, which is entirely okay.)

And some folks, too, I think may be disappointed that this does not… you know, ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS. I recognize that some readers will be picking this book up hoping it’s basically just a laundry list of details about what happens between this and the new movie. If you’re looking for that, I apologize. This book ain’t it. The principal three characters are only barely featured. (Heads up: Luke isn’t even in the book at all outside a mention or two.)

And on the idea of there being a campaign…

I’ll say only this — if the only reason you didn’t like the book or left a review like that is because of some kind of campaign against it based on the EU/Legends canon, I am sorry. Honestly. I get that it sucks that some of the stories you love will remain unconsidered and unfinished. That’s not awesome. I’m not really sure what else would’ve been an option in terms of carrying that forward, though I also don’t know that Disney has officially put Legends out to pasture in terms of no new content ever. I will say, though, if your love of the EU drives you to campaigns like this, or hate-tweeting me or hate-mailing me, you’ve stopped being a fan. That’s not what being a fan is. Loving something is fandom. Hate isn’t, or shouldn’t be, part of it. Fandom is about sharing awesome things with like-minded people. It isn’t about spreading hate and forming spiteful tribes. That’s heinous fuckery. Do not partake in heinous fuckery.

Oh, And The Gay Thing

And if you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you. Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct. You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.

(By the way, the book also has an older woman, a mother, rescuing a man. So if that bothers you, you might wanna find a bunker for hunkering down. And I dunno if you noticed, but the three new protagonists of the movie consist of a woman, a black man, a Latino man. The bad guys all look like white guys, too. So many meteors. So little time to squawk at them.)

Anyway.

Aftermath’s out if you wanna check it out.

Two more books in the trilogy coming, too. Keep your grapes peeled.

Star Wars: Aftermath: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | iBooks

(t-shirt image at the top by houseorgana)

Holy shit, it’s out!

It’s midnight.

It’s Force Friday.

Which means…

The first of the Aftermath trilogy lands on bookshelves (and ideally into your little robot hands) today. It’s been awesome writing this book and getting it out into the world. I think it’s going to be a book people either love or hate — you know, it’s a book with a heaping helping of HOT EXPECTATION GRAVY slathered over its many pages, so, any time that happens you run the risk of the hype becoming a monster to which the book could never really compare. But this is the book that lived inside my head and it’s what fell out when I turned my head upside down.

I recognize that a lot of people are likely going to read the book with an eye toward spoilers — this is a book that offers up the first tentative steps on the narrative bridge toward The Force Awakens, and so PLOT HUNTERS are going to be combing through the sand and dust of this story, hoping to come away with a few gems of shiny What-May-Come.

So, I thought I’d get ahead of that and list ten whopper spoilers from this book, just to get them out of the way. Just to clear the slate, so you don’t have to do picking through the story like a mother monkey plucking ticks from her baby monkey’s fur. Consider it a favor from me.

I’m aces like that.

Here, then, are ten BIG-ASS SPOILERS in the book. You can thank me later.

1. Three words: Emperor Elan Sleazebaggano. And his cousin, Darth Jerkturd. They rule the Deathsticks trade on seven worlds. And you thought the Empire was dead.

2. Not just one Death Star. But a hundred Death Stars. A WHOLE DEATH GALAXY. And they’re all shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet. And the son of Luke Skywalker, Dave Skywalker (who is played by Simon Pegg in the new movie, FYI), has to OMG figure out how to blow up like, every new Death Star at the same time? He can only do it with his friends — an unlikely assortment of wacky deviants and miscreants: Dan Individual, Chorgbacon the Schnook, the Duchess LeeLee Sobieski, Mando Kardashian, and the two droids: See-Poo-Pee-You, and RU-DTF.

3. HAN SOLO HAS BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME. AND HE’S ALSO YOUR REAL DAD. And he’s very disappointed in you. Not mad, just disappointed. Now hold still while he lightsabers your hand off to teach you about responsibility, young padawan.

4. Jar-Jar gives a buffoonish speech in Space Congress and his vote helps form the First Order, whatever the heck that is? Then Jar-Jar is brutally torn apart by a pack of Lothcats for 56 pages. The lesson here? You win some, you lose some.

5. YODA’S BACK, MOTHERFUCKERS. He’s young and he’s handsome and he’s on the hunt for the ladies. “When a hundred years you reach, look as hella sexy, you will not.” *plays sexy techno music, dances with tiny lightsabers like they’re glowsticks at a rave*

6. I forgot where I was in the middle of the book so I instead started a new book about the wacky fun-time adventures of Drunken Jedi Master Wig Chudneck. He has a lightsaber made of bees. (A “beesaber.”) His beard is made of hyper-intelligent cilia — basically, like, fuzzy midichlorians? He has a duck under his arm. The duck will figure in very prominently in Episode VII, so keep your eye out. Basically Wig just sorta runs around, screwing stuff up and then fixing it for people? Like the A-Team, if the A-Team did that and was only one Jedi Master riding a raggedy old tauntaun instead of five semi-competent mercs in a van.

7. Speaking of awesome lightsabers, in this book you will find a Jedi made entirely of lightsabers. And he carries a cannon that shoots little lightsaber bullets. And each of those little lightsaber bullets have the Force. True story.

8. The entire book, when read backward, is a ROT13 cipher. When you solve the puzzle, it reveals the entire backstory of Kylo Ren and the order of Knights to which he belongs. It also has a mean guacamole recipe that uses bacon.

9. The real spoiler is, you’re adopted. You’ll find out on page 147.

10. LUKE SKYWALKER IS REALLY DARTH VADER WHICH MEANS HE’S REALLY HIS OWN DAD AND ALSO HE’S IN MANDALORIAN BATTLE ARMOR NOW AND ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS REALLY KYLO REN AND KYLO REN IS REALLY DARTH JERKTURD AND SECRETLY DARTH JERKTURD HAS BEEN ADMIRAL ACKBAR THE WHOLE TIME AND THE REBELLION IS REALLY THE EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE IS REALLY JUST A FLOATING EWOK VILLAGE inside a snow globe held in the hands of a young Keyzer Soze, who turns around and sees his father, Bob Newhart, sleeping on the bed next to Tyler Durden, who he also is, and then he whispers, Rooooosebuuuuud, which is the name of his lightsaber, and then we pan out the window only to see that the Death Star was the Statue of Liberty this whole time OMG IT’S AN AMERICAN METAPHOR THE EMPIRE IS AMERICA AND WE’RE ALL MINDLESS STORMTROOPERS boom! Mic dropped! Here comes Episode VII! Woooo! *barfs in your lap and on your book*

Ahem.

Now, it’s your turn.

I’ll be foregoing a flash fiction challenge today in place of this.

Your task, should you choose to accept it?

Pop in the comments and put in a TOTALLY TRUE* SPOILER from AFTERMATH.

* ahem meaning totally fake

Just one. Not two. And keep it fairly short. (Despite #10 on the list, try to keep it under 100 words.)

You can also tweet the fake spoilers using the hashtag: #fakeaftermathspoilers

I’ll be traveling this weekend (by the time this posts, I will be literally at the launch event for Aftermath), so I won’t have a chance to really look at these until Monday. (Which also means some comments may go unapproved by then if I am unable to curate and check the posts due to being firmly ensconced in the chaos of Dragoncon and Decatur Book Fest.)

You have till Monday, noon EST.

I’ll pick a single favorite out of the bunch.

And that single favorite will get from me:

A signed copy of Star Wars: Aftermath. Hardcover.

And I’ll also throw in a signed copy of Zer0es, too.

Available only to participants in the United States — those outside the USA can still participate, but if you win, know that you’ll be paying the shipping.

Again, you get one entry, and keep it short.

(art at the top of the post by @oncomingspork)

Synth is a drug able to induce hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. But it’s brand new, highly addictive, and more than likely dangerous. Even the dealers peddling the pills don’t know what long-term effects the drug will have on its users.

For Markus Olsen, Synth offers an easy escape from his crumbling life. Markus, an ex-hacker, has been caught red-handed. While his friends were sent to jail for thirty years, Markus decided to cooperate, agreeing to lend his services and particular criminal expertise to Viborg City’s secret service, aiding the oppressive state power he’d been fighting to break, in exchange for his relative freedom.

But Markus’s past as an anarchist comes back to haunt him in the form of a credit card with no account but an seemingly unlimited balance and the discovery of a mysterious novel in which he is a main character. How much of his reality is being produced by Synth? How disconnected from real life has Markus become?

Forced to face his past and the decisions he’s made, Markus must decide between the artificial comfort of his constructed life and the harsh reality of treason and the struggle for freedom.

1: Music can cure – or at least, help cure

As the title of my novel indicates, it revolves a lot about music, even if on a subliminal level. Doing research on the therapeutic virtues of music – which I took a mostly New Age crap – I stumbled on very serious articles describing how music, in some cases, can help fight depression, enhance the immune system or even give medicine a better effect. Some researchers also advocate the systematic use of music associated to chemotherapy. Once again, “science-fiction” proved lagging behind reality. Lesson learned.

2: The Real World is Just As Strange

Alexander’s tomb has never been found. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) died in Babylon, but was buried in Memphis, Egypt, by one of his generals. It was later moved to Alexandria, but the mausoleum subsequently disappeared around 4 AD. Nobody knows of its location, and if Alexander’s remains are still there. The body’s gone. It’s not even a locked-room mystery. It’s a “disappearing room” mystery. On a writing point of view, it is excellent material, because it conjugates real history and documented historical facts, with myth, in an inseparable way. It is the canvas on which fiction is painted, the shadow behind the colors, the darkness in the background. With the story of Alexander’s tomb, I learned that it is reality that makes fiction possible, and that, in turn, fiction can augment reality in fantastic ways.

3: Power Can Be A Myth

Power doesn’t know everything and certainly doesn’t know what you’re up to right now. Don’t believe the hype. They might have cameras all over, they still are blind as mice. It becomes obvious when one looks at the larger picture, and moves away from the Hollywood thrillers. When a jumbo jet disappears and cannot be found, when terrorists still manage to carry out bloody and spectacular actions, one realizes that the all-seeing satellites are just a myth. A well-designed one, but a myth nonetheless. This is what I tried to convey in The Song of Synth – the manufactured paranoia and its paper-thin existence. Contrary to what most Medias will tell you, power is not made of steel, but it is a cardboard construction. If you approach a flame close enough, you will realize that. And fiction can be that flame.

4: Drugs Are Good For You

Wait, let me explain! What I mean here is not that that it’s OK to do them – although I have absolutely nothing against them in a purely recreational sense – but that drugs can be a helpful part of a healing strategy, as they can un-frame the world in which the self is suffering. In The Song of Synth, the main character is using the drug called “Synth” not to escape his situation – he thinks it’s impossible – but to momentarily push the walls and change the settings. It is a healing process, although it is not a conscious one. In this perspective, I think the current effort to get psychoactive drugs back in psychological and psychiatric practice is very interesting.

5: Drugs Are Bad For You

With Point 4 being said, let me counter that with this: as I often tell my students (and will tell my children when they get to that age), “If you need drugs to get up and get through the day, then you’re not doing drugs, they’re doing you.”

* * *

Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual French writer, born in Paris in 1963. He has published a number of novels and poetry collections in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He currently lives in Aarhus, Denmark, with his wife and their two children.

Seb Doubinsky: Twitter

Song of Synth: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

My son, four years old, said he wanted to go outside and play Star Wars. I said shit yeah, kid, let’s do it. So he got his Darth Vader lightsaber, and gave me this foam sword that’s more like a medieval knight’s sword, and we headed outside.

He said he wanted to be Kylo Ren. I didn’t even realize he knew who Kylo Ren was.

He told me I was Darth Vader, and that Ren was now a good guy, and he was fighting Darth Vader.

So, we battled for a while and he suddenly said: “KYLO REN’S SWORD HAS THE THINGIES.”

I did not know what thingies he meant, but he clarified when he grabbed my foam sword and pointed to the crossguard (aka the “quillons,” aka the “thingies”). Ah, right, okay. So, we traded lightsabers, which actually is totally appropriate since I’m Darth and he had Darth’s red saber.

We lightsabered for awhile.

And we chopped off hands for awhile, too, because that’s just how Star Wars rolls. (Normally, I’d be appalled at my four-year-old being excited at the prospect of lopping off limbs, but he didn’t seem fazed by it and, hey, man, JEDI GONNA JEDI.)

Then he’s like, “Oh no! My Force powers are gone. Let me see if I can get them back from my lightsaber.” And he presses his sword to his chest and makes BZZRAOW VWOMM noises. But no, sadly, the lightsaber did not give him back his Force powers. (Children, I find, understand that stories need conflict better than many adults do.) So, he says, pointing to the trees (as we live in the woods): “It’s Endor! We can ask the Ewoks to get us our Force powers back.” Which is how I learned that I, too, was now lacking in Force powers. First though, he said he had to lightsaber my armor off so I could be Anakin again.

Which he did.

BZZRAOW VWOMM VMMMMZZ.

Okay, evil Darth armor gone. Anakin returned.

Onward to our Ewok encounter.

He says, “We need to summon the Ewoks.”

Then he says, and by the way all of these are direct quotes because I wrote this shit down:

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was born with a trumpet. But I never blew the trumpet. Let’s see what it does.” Then he makes a doo-doo-doo sound and: “Look, I summoned Ewoks!”

Then he explains that the Ewoks make for him “wood armor” because sure, why not, and then we’re off for more adventures. He tells me that my Darth armor keeps growing back and that I have to occasionally lightsaber it off (and now I’m like, man, that’s awesome, some kind of self-aware dark-side armor that keeps resurrecting itself like the Venom symbiote), and later we hang out with Wookiees on Kashyyyk and we also find a patch of discolored driveway asphalt that he assures me is a “blood puddle” (!) from a clone trooper (!!) who got squished by a “speeder motor” which is a speeder bike but with a bigger motor and then the speeder motor spread the blood around (!?) and that we can use our Force powers to resurrect the clone trooper from his blood (!!!#@&*!). (Also in there, he stirred his sword into the dirt and said, “A long time ago in another different galaxy far far away, this dirt is old. It is from BEFORE THE DARKNESS.” Holy shit, what?)

It was gonzo bizarre-o good stuff.

It’s certainly not the only storyworld in which he’ll play. He’s a huge (and sudden) My Little Pony fan. And other times he just makes up his own weirdo narrative events — this morning he was playing with (no joke), two stuffed lizards, a plastic egg and a plastic potato. (The egg’s name is Eggy, the potato is Angry Potato.) And they were playing some kind of stealth game with the lizards? I have no idea what was going on. And sometimes, too, we’re treated to more stories of robot dog Hamslice and his detective pals, Baloney and Hair.

But Star Wars has stuck. Just as it did me when I was his age. He loves the world and the characters. We’ve bonded over LEGO Star Wars. It’s a thing.

I was his age, in fact, when I first saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater.

A drive-in theater, actually. My sister and her boyfriend took me and his little brother. We watched the movie. I cannot promise that they also watched the movie, but that was their teenage business, not mine. Given that I had no way of returning home and just popping the movie into the Blu-Ray player or pulling it up on the AppleTV, I was content to replay the experience with toys and costumes and crayons and comics. Then when Return of the Jedi came out, we waited in line around the block only to have it sell out. (We ended up seeing a movie called Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, which inexplicably starred Molly Ringwald, was in 3-D, was terrible.) After college, I lined up and actually camped out for Phantom Menace tickets. I’m covered in nerd froth for the new one.

I had the Burger King drinking glasses.

I had a lot of the toys — including ones you had to get by sending away Proofs of Purchase.

I still have a lot of the toys — and my son, B-Dub, still plays with them.

I have the new First Order stormtrooper from SDCC (thanks to Adam Christopher).

I made lightsabers out of sticks when I was a kid.

I used my swingset as an X-Wing.

I still have my ratty, dog-eared hardcovers of the original Zahn trilogy.

And now, of course, I have my own Star Wars book coming out. My own little postage stamp of canon. Actually, my head-canon kind of… became real canon? In one of the biggest narrative universes to have ever existed? That still trips my breaker every time I think about it.

Star Wars informed my early understanding of storytelling. Thankfully, my understanding didn’t stop there, but it was the seed that started it all, I think. It gave me characters I love and a simplistic, elegant view of both narrative and morality that inevitably you push back against while simultaneously reaching for it. It made me friends. It was a love my family shared then, and it’s a love my wife and my son share now. It is the universe that keeps on giving. It made me feel like I could do anything, because if a literal dirt-farmer from some galactic nowheresburg could somehow change the galaxy — along with a princess, a walking carpet, a scoundrel, another scoundrel, and a couple of Laurel & Hardy droids — then maybe I could change the galaxy, too. Or, at least, maybe I could someday write my own chapter in the Star Wars mythology.

That’s what Star Wars means to me.

It means friends and family. It means the power of story. It means the power of possibility. It’s about the underdog versus the bully, about the righteous against the oppressor, about fun and derring-do and heroism and understanding that we all have a little Dark Side in us, and all have a little Light Side in us.

I’m happy to be a part of it.

And I love that my son is all-in, too.

I’m glad you’re along for the ride, too.

May the Force be with you, nerf-herders.

See you when Star Wars: Aftermath releases this Friday.

(And if you’re at DragonCon or anywhere near Atlanta: Thursday night is the release event — I’ll be at the Edgewood B&N starting at 10PM. Come say hi. Or catch me at DC/Decatur!)