DANGER RUNS DEEP.

New York. City of millions. Home to the largest subway system in the world. Miles of tunnels stretch far underground, home themselves to a vast, displaced populace.

But now someone—or something—is slaughtering these homeless. Along with anyone else foolish enough to venture underground.

And whatever it is, it is slowly rising toward the surface.

Can a young empath, a finicky professor, a flighty linguist, a foreign hunter, and a lone cop stop the threat before it spills out into the rest of the city?

* * *

Knowing Isn’t Enough

Digging Deep is set in New York City. My parents were both born and raised in New York City. I wasn’t, but I used to visit my grandparents here when I was growing up, my wife and I moved here many years ago, and I’ve lived and worked here ever since. Which means I know this city pretty well. More than well enough to write about it.

Or so I thought.

Turns out, there’s a lot I didn’t know about this city. Oh, sure, I can tell you where there’s a good Thai restaurant in Midtown (Topaz, 56th between Sixth and Seventh) or the nearest Citibank to my office (the one on 53rd and Fifth is marginally closer than the one on 53rd and Park) or which subway is the quickest way to World Trade (the E goes straight there but the 4 or 5 to Fulton is a lot faster, and only a block away). But I didn’t know which subway station was the deepest underground (that would be the 191st Street stop on the 1) or that NYC doesn’t have a SWAT unit (it’s called ESU here, Emergency Service Unit, instead).

These are all things I needed to know for my story, though (well, the subway info and the police info, not the bank or restaurant locations).

Which is why it’s crucial to do your research, even if you think you’re already an expert. Because all it takes is for one reader to go “Hey, wait, NYC doesn’t have SWAT!” and they’re thrown out of your story. Then they’ll tell their friends, “Eh, don’t bother, he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

And okay, maybe it isn’t critical to your story whether the cop is in SWAT or ESU. But it is critical to earn the reader’s trust. It only takes a few minutes of Google-fu to find the right answers, and a read-through by a few other locals to make sure you didn’t miss anything obvious.

Why not take that time to be sure you’ve got it right?

The Three Types

With the exception of the DuckBob novels, I tend to write in third-person limited (“Malana felt the pain and grief and terror washing over her again. She reached out toward the cops with her mind or soul or whatever it was that felt such things, using them to anchor her so that the wave couldn’t sweep her away.”). In Digging Deep, I switch between the main characters from chapter to chapter, so that each one gets proper attention. One of those characters, a rather uptight anthropology professor named Tidijin, refers to everyone by last name (“Ms. Tai” instead of “Malana”). My editor wanted me to change that—not in his dialogue, just in the narrative for his chapters—to keep it consistent.

One thing I’ve figured out over the years is that notes from editors and beta readers fall into three categories, which I call “D’oh,” “Eh,” and “Um”:

D’oh: These are the ones where you say, “Crap, why didn’t I catch that?” This is why you have beta readers and editors, though, because often you’re too close to your own manuscript to see the actual words on the page. You’re still seeing the glorious construct in your head, so you need someone who doesn’t have that to tell you “hey, you’ve got him shrugging on a heavy coat here but a page ago you said it was sweltering out.”

Eh: These are the comments where you think, “Yeah, okay, I guess.” It’s like when you’re getting ready to go out, hold up two shirts, and ask your wife, “Which one?” You don’t really have a preference. For that matter, if your wife said, “Why don’t you wear your green one instead?” you’d probably shrug and say, “Okay, sure.” You’re not sure these changes really enhance your manuscript, but they don’t hurt either, so why not make them?

Um: These are the ones where you scratch your head and wonder, “did I do such a bad job conveying what I meant, or did it just not work for you?” With a good editor, this becomes the start of a conversation, as you explain what you were trying to do and either figure out how to do it better or realize that there’s simply a disconnect between what you wanted and what they think should happen here, and decide where to go from there. The “Um’s” are the ones you fight for, but you need to be careful. Not every comment is an “Um,” and you need to pick your battles. Only fight for the ones that really matter to you because they really change the intent or the feel of your story.

In my case, I thought about it, talked to my editor, and finally said, “no, I’m not changing that. I think the readers are smart enough to remember that Malana’s last name is Tai, and changing the names in those chapters is necessary to convey Tidijin’s mindset.” And my editor said, “okay, fine, have it your way, it’s your book.”

Listen Closely and Learn to Parse

After I finished the first draft I sent Digging Deep out to several friends, most of whom have beta-read for me before. Two of them are fellow writers, two of them are avid readers. All four of them came back with really good feedback. Not all of it consistent, of course—one character annoyed the hell out of one beta-reader, for example, but the others didn’t have a problem with him at all. But all of it useful.

Of course, once I’d gotten their notes I had to collate them and compare. As a general rule of thumb, I divide comments into the three categories I mentioned above. Then I look at frequency. If all four readers gave me essentially the same “Eh” note, that’s reason enough to make that change. If more than one reader gives me the same “Um” note, I really need to take a hard look at whatever they thought needed to be changed, because clearly it’s not working for a number of people. But if only one person made an “Eh” comment, I probably wouldn’t bother. If only one made an “Um,” I queried the other readers, like I did about that one character, to see if it was really an isolated incident or if they’d also had problems with that element but hadn’t even realized it consciously.

It’s crucial to be able to make those distinctions between what’s affected several readers and thus is a real concern and what just tweaked one person the wrong way. If you were to make every change every beta-reader or editor suggested, you’d wind up with a horrible mish-mash—book by committee—and it wouldn’t be recognizable as your story anymore. But you don’t want to ignore feedback either—you are ultimately writing for an audience, and if a significant portion of that audience has a problem with some aspect of the story, you need to figure out why and address that.

I had several “D’oh”s on Digging Deep, thanks to my beta readers, and wound up rewriting a large chunk of it. The book was infinitely better as a result, which is why I make sure to send each story out to them and the others on my list every time.

Change Is Good

Some of the characters in Digging Deep are new, but four of them had shown up elsewhere:

• Wendell “Mack” Macklemore, the founder of OCLT and its resident tech-guru, first appeared in my OCLT co-creator David Niall Wilson’s novel The Parting, and then showed up again in my first OCLT novel, Incursion;

• R.C. Hayes, OCLT’s head honcho, first featured in my OCLT novella “Brought to Light” and then again in Incursion;

• Isabella Ferrara, the Italian monster hunter, appeared in Incursion;

• Malana Tai, the young empath from Tuvalu, was the main character of my short story “Clarity of Mind,” which was included in the anthology Apollo’s Daughters.

Mack and R.C. are only incidental in Digging Deep, but Malana is one of the main characters. This was the first time I was writing her as part of an ensemble, though—or, for that matter, the first time R.C. wasn’t taking center stage. That’s a very different dynamic for both of them, which meant I had to handle them differently.

I could have gotten myself all tied up in knots worrying about how writing them like this was going to affect them both. They’re both really good characters, and I really like them, both in the sense that I enjoy writing them and in the sense that I think they’re actually good people, and I didn’t want to screw either of them up.

But in the end I forced myself to relax about it. I had a story to tell, and they were in that story, and if I worried too much about bending them out of shape I’d wind up distorting my story instead.

So I just wrote it. Wrote them. And they were fine. In fact, they were better than fine. Seeing R.C. as just support cast him in a whole new light, illuminating facets of his character that weren’t evident when he was forced to carry the weight of the narrative. And forcing Malana into situations where she had to react to, and work with, other people, people with their own unique skills and traits but with the same mission she had acquired, allowed her to grow a great deal.

Trying to keep those characters who they were in the previous stories would have done them a serious disservice, and marred Digging Deep as a story as well. I’m glad I let them change and grow instead.

Nothing Wrong with the Occasional Deviation

I get flack from my friends sometimes for how rigid my writing process is. I come up with an idea, then write up a short pitch, then turn that into a full summary, then flesh that out into a proper chapter-by-chapter outline, then sit down and start writing. Once I start, I work through from beginning to end, start to finish, with all my focus on that one project alone.

Except when I don’t.

The first time I deviated from this was when I wrote the first DuckBob novel, No Small Bills. A friend had dared me to do something different, and I hadn’t written comedy before, so I decided “what the hell?” It was also the end of October, and I’d always meant to do NaNoWriMo properly (I’d written parallel to it a few times), but that meant no time to outline. So I wrote the entire novel by the seat of my pants, no outline at all, only a vague idea of where I was going, mainly just letting DuckBob bang into things along the way and seeing what happened next as a result. That worked out pretty well—at least, I’m happy with the book, and the people who’ve read it have told me it’s a ton of silly fun—but I’ve never been able to replicate that completely carefree, no outline approach.

Digging Deep started out the usual way, for me. Except that the process got interrupted. I wound up having to set the manuscript aside when it was only half done and take care of a few other projects with more urgent deadlines. A few months later, I was finally able to sit down, get back to Digging Deep, and finish the first draft. It was strange for me, though. I’d never taken a break halfway through a novel before. I had to reread Digging Deep from the beginning, of course, and that was odd too, because it had been enough time that I’d gained some distance. I felt like I was reading it for the first time. There were pieces I really liked, which was cool. And others where I thought, “What was I thinking?

In the end, I’d say Digging Deep was a lot stronger because I got that new perspective on it. Because I deviated from my norm.

Which doesn’t mean I’m going to be taking a break in the middle of all my novels from now on. But maybe when something forces me out of my usual pattern I’ll see it as an opportunity instead of an irritation.

* * *

Aaron Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling DuckBob SF comedy series, the Dread Remora space-opera series, the Relicant epic fantasy series with Steve Savile, and the O.C.L.T. occult thriller series with David Niall Wilson. Aaron’s tie-in work contains novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, World of WarCraft, Stargate: Atlantis, Shadowrun, Eureka, and more. He has written children’s books (including the original series STEM Squad and Pete and Penny’s Pizza Puzzles, the award-winning Bandslam: The Junior Novel, and the #1 best-selling 42: The Jackie Robinson Story), educational books on a variety of topics, and over seventy roleplaying games (such as the original games Asylum, Spookshow, and Chosen, work for White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight, Pinnacle, and many others, and both the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets and the Gold ENnie-winning Lure of the Lich Lord). He is the co-creator of the ReDeus series, and a founding member of Crazy 8 Press. Aaron lives in New York with his family. His new novel Digging Deep is available now from Crossroad Press.

Aaron Rosenberg: Website | Twitter

Digging Deep: Amazon | Crossroad Press

The workshop I gave this past weekend was about characters — specifically, how you make characters become architects of narrative rather than part of the architecture. Meaning, they build the house around them as they move through it. They design their space by making choices. They decorate. They are like earthworms chewing dirt and excreting plot behind them.

That’s right. I said it.

Your characters are best when they’re PLOT-POOPERS.

Crawling through the dirt.

Poopin’ plot as they go.

Or something, shut up, don’t @ me.

The point is that, as storytellers — specifically when we’re telling stories in the genre space — we can at times be a little over-reliant upon building the world (aka, the house) and then hastily shoving characters into it instead of letting characters lead the way.

And when asked to further explain this during the workshop, I came up with a suggestion to think about the dichotomy this way, as a manifestation of:

History versus Destiny.

Destiny, in this context, is a thing you cannot escape. It is a framework of mythic narrative that the character does not choose and is, ultimately, a prison — whether we’re talking a literal destiny in the context of the story or an enforced plot structure from the storyteller, it’s effectively a trap. (/Ackbarred)

History, on the other hand, is a thing that people make up as they go. What I mean is, in the truest sense, history is a thing you create for yourself and your world. We may view history as predesigned, but that’s only because it involves us looking back on it in reflection, but while it feels passive, it was active when a person helped to make it. Alexander Hamilton, as our largest historical-figure-slash-pop-culture-crossover, was not destined for shit. He carved his name on the bedrock of American history, changing fate instead of falling prey to it. (Now there’s an argument there too that he falls prey to a certain kind of destiny, but I’d argue that’s literally untrue and serves more as a literary device of him engineering his own downfall, which is a feature of the best tragedies. The difference here being he as a character and an actual historical figure created this for himself rather than the storytellers [Lin-Manuel Miranda and, I guess, American Jesus?] creating a paradigm for him and then forcing him into it.)

Point being, you can over-design a world and over-construct a plot — which threatens the agency of the characters in that world.

And to remind you, this is how I presently define character agency, as seen in this post:

Character agency is, to me, a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.

Multiple characters with agency creates an opportunity for a lot of interesting drama and conflict — which is exactly what you want in a good story. What you don’t want is a lot of characters feeling like, no matter who they actually are as characters, they have been given a role and a fate as dictated by plot: aka, a destiny. And again, I don’t necessarily mean a destiny in the world of the story, I mean a destiny outside the narrative, one levied by you, the storyteller, to force them into the plot you’ve created.

In a roleplaying game context, think of how a subpar dungeon master might overly try to control the narrative. Five players create five adventurers in a tavern, and the DM lets them know, “You hear the roar of a dragon somewhere near, burninating the countryside with his fire breath.” The DM then leans back, confident the players will have their characters run out into the countryside with their swords and scepters drawn, but of course, people are like cats, they’re utterly uncontrollable, and so instead the players say, “Our characters have devices that we will remain inside, and we board up the doors and windows and drink a lot of Goblin Ale and we fight the orcs by the bar who have been giving us the literal stink-eye all night.”

Now, a a bad DM here cleaves to destiny and says, but that’s not the story that I, the mighty Dungeon Master, created for you, and finds some way to force them outside to fight the dragon. He keeps pushing and pushing until they have no choice but to address the dragon’s scourge. This is, of course, the act of “railroading,” and can be done both at the game table and in video games, too.

A good DM instead relies on the characters, via their players, to write their own history and say “eat shit, destiny.” The DM helps them facilitate their drunken barfighty “shelter-in-place” moment, realizing that a) it makes more fun for the players (aka, the audience) to get to do what they want to do and b) it makes for a more interesting story because we’ve all seen the ADVENTURERS FIGHT DRAGON narrative but maybe haven’t seen the ADVENTURERS SHELTER IN PLACE AT A TAVERN DURING A DRAGON ATTACK AND USE THAT TIME TO SWILL MAGIC BEER AND PUNCH EACH OTHER. The latter also has the narrative advantage of being something that isn’t predictable, because it doesn’t fall into known patterns.

The ‘tell’ that comes when you’ve pushed characters into a narrative destiny is that you have a moment when you realize, “I need Character A to perform Task B in order to reach Outcome C.” Meaning, you’ve created for yourself a performative, outcome-based model for the story — “I really need Dave the Barbarian to be at Castle Ogredong by morning to stop the Kobold Incursion, even though he’s a barbarian and really shouldn’t have any interest in stopping the Kobolds.” Which means you’re arguably closing off more narratively interesting options in order to cram Barbarian Dave into the outcome you’ve set. It shows a lack of flexibility and creativity and fails to let the character make his own destiny — would it be more interesting if Dave joined the Kobolds, instead? Maybe. So do that. Let Dave find his history and fuck the tropes and the standard scope of the tale as you have designed it.

You’re not designing adventures (aka, destiny).

You’re empowering characters (aka, history).

(This is good storytelling both in books and in games, by the way.)

(At least, IMNSHO.)

Curiously, the Star Wars prequels can, depending your (ahem) certain point-of-view, fit both of these modes — on the one hand, internal to the narrative, Anakin Skywalker does a very good job of rejecting his destiny as some kind of chosen one / Force-balancer / midichlorian private-dancerer character — he is too stubborn and willful to be trapped in the rules and life that this destiny demands of him. The Jedi Order says, “You’re the Chosen One!” and then Anakin says, “Actually, I’mma kill these baby Jedi just to show you how little fucks I give about that,” and then he gets punted into some lava.

On the other hand, externally, prequels often suffer from the problem where the fate of the story and its characters is already written. Not only written, but precisely pinpointed — the end of any prequel narrative must line up perfectly with the anchor-point beginning of the subsequent (but already told) tale, or the two will be out-of-sync. In that case, prequels are nearly always a case of destiny over history, and you have far less wiggle-room in terms of creating characters who can Be Interesting and Make History. Because history has already been made for them.

This, by the way, invokes the danger of overrelying on architectural story design, like the kind you’d find with Save the Cat — I dearly love that book and the pattern it sets as a starting point, but it dictates a series of milestones almost as if they’re sales targets. Art and story do not do well when they follow patterns and tropes and stereotypes again and again — yes, you can still use those patterns and tell a great story, but it’s also just as likely you’ll find them overly restrictive in how fluid it allows the characters to be when making their own way through the world you’ve given them. It forces us to declare that the plot is more interesting than the characters, which is almost never the case: we like stories and choose to enter them and remain in them precisely because of characters, because of the empathic bridge a good storyteller builds between us (the reader) and the characters on the page.

Note that this isn’t an anti-outline approach, should you be the type of person who is called a “plotter” rather than a “pantser.” It may seem anathema, but it’s really not: you just have to write an outline that’s character-driven, one that unfolds due to character choices rather than storyteller choices. (Yes, technically that is a bit artificial in its definition — character choices are always storyteller choices, because characters aren’t fucking real. They’re not prancing about in the ether just waiting for you to be their conduit into the CORPOREAL NARRATIVE PLANE, though it’s certainly allowed to feel that way.) What I mean is, the choices you choose to make in the story are better when executed based on the characters you’ve created rather than the exoskeleton of plot or world. Characters represent an organic, internal musculature and skeletal structure — plot and world represent something far too external and artificial.

We come for the characters.

So let the characters lead.

To sum up, when it comes down to characters either creating plot or falling prey to it, it’s worth realizing which is the cart and which is the horse — all that PLOT DESIGN and WORLDBUILDY GOODNESS and those COOL RULES don’t mean shit-on-toast if you have to cram the characters into it like a squirming, bitey raccoon into a trash bag. Characters are the center of the story, even if they don’t know it. Let them be makers of their own history…

….not victims of your railroaded narrative destiny.

* * *

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

Honestly, I didn’t really believe it.

A lot of times, people hold a kind of hometown pride belief in some local manifestation of food — and sometimes it holds up (pizza and bagels in NYC, f’rex), other times, not so much. With Austin, people said, tacos and barbecue, and okay, fine, I thought, I’m sure the tacos and BBQ there are just great. In terms of tacos, I’m near some pretty solid taco options here in Pennsylvania, which always shocks people until I remind them that immigrants are not bound to one area of the country. You can make great tacos anywhere. And I thought the same about BBQ.

Anybody can smoke meat, I said to myself.

People say, BUT AUSTIN IS THE BEST BBQ, and sure, fine, great. I’ve been to Georgia, I’ve lived down South, I’ve had BBQ in both the Carolinas, and… I’m dubious about best ever BBQ claims. Shit, we have a pork place nearby my house that does BBQ during the summers and it’s like — boy howdy, it’s good.

So, I knew in my heart, Austin will have great BBQ.

But the best?

C’mon.

And then I went.

And I had beef brisket you’re looking at.

I was there running a workshop for the Austin Romance Writers Association (ARWA), and upon being met by my wonderful handler Tracie (aka Sloane), she said, “Do you want to go get barbecue?” And of course the answer to that is yes. I don’t care where I am, whether it’s terrestrial Earth or the moon, yes, I want barbecue, because it’s meat, and meat is wonderful. Except if you’re vegetarian or vegan, but I do not have the strength of character to be those things, and so I am a lowly meat-eater. Meat is wonderful especially when it is cooked in the Ancient Ways of Barbecue.

So, she took me to a place called Freedmen’s. It’s not Franklin’s, no, but we also didn’t have to wake up at 6AM to get in line to eat lunch by 1PM.

I went. They had whiskey. I did not partake because I had just come off of two plane flights, and desperately needed coffee. So I had coffee and barbecue, which works… surprisingly well together? And I thought, well, it’s cattle country, I should eat cow, and so gimme dat brisket.

And they did.

And mirth exploded from me in a shower of meaty, fatty embers, each alighting like a firefly as they erupted out of me — and okay, that’s a gross metaphor, to be sure, and we’re just going to pretend I didn’t say any of that. Point is: it was fucking sublime. It was definitely the best piece of brisket BBQ I’ve ever had, and not by a little bit, but by an epic margin.

So, go there.

In fact, go to Austin and eat — I didn’t have a single bad meal. (No tacos, regrettably, for me.) The workshop was aces all around, and I always love giving talks and workshops to the RWA because the audience always brings it — they bring great ideas and questions and a heavy craft focus which, y’know, is what I’m there to talk about. Some audiences sit and stare at you and don’t want to interact, and that’s never been the case with these workshops, and certainly wasn’t the case this past weekend, so thanks to the ARWA for having me there, and I hope I was able to bring something to the table in terms of talking about writing and storytelling and about creating kick-ass characters.

Sadly, I missed one of my extra days in Austin due to the sixteen inches of snow that dropped on us last week, so I didn’t get to see everyone or do everything I wanted to. Was hoping to hang with cool folks like Stina Leicht, but didn’t get the chance — I did get to meet Meg Gardiner (holy shit!) and have porch whiskey with Cargill, so it wasn’t a total wash, but I was kinda ping-ponging around with little time and not quiiiiiite enough sleep.

Next up for me is the Doylestown Books signing with Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde (April 7th!), and then Ravencon in Virginia after that (April 20th-22nd!).

And that’s it.

SEE YOU ON THE INTERNETS

*dissolves into pixels*

Let’s talk about Brussels sprouts.

And yes, it’s Brussels sprouts, not Brussel, because Brussel isn’t a thing, and Brussels is a real place in Belgium, and this is important, historically. Because it was in Brussels that, in 1815, an occultist named Amandine Olivier first conjured these tiny demon cabbages into existence. Amandine got drunk one night on a rare Belgian liqueur called Le Pipi du Diable, and then he cast a 9th-circle summoning spell which brought a woody stalk of sprouts — once used as Baphomet’s walking stick — over through the fontanelle separating our world and the Hell-world, and on this stalk were the first Brussels sprouts.

That’s important to know, because for a very long time, I thought Brussels sprouts were bullshit. I assumed, quite correctly, that they were little demon cabbages. I mean, I was right. They are. They’re like if you took a full-size cabbage, with all its implicit cabbageness, and then you used some kind of magic(k) to compress that cabbageness into something roughly the size of a golf ball. For a long time I had assumed that their best use was to freeze them and slingshot them at your enemies as they besieged your home. I also assumed that if you broke one open, angry fart ghosts would be released to wreak havoc on the world of the living.

But I have since learned that Brussels sprouts are not bullshit.

Well, not always. Most people don’t know how to cook them. I don’t know exactly why, but in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, people didn’t realize that sometimes the best way to treat a vegetable was to SCOURGE IT WITH FLAME, roasting those motherfuckers until they’re crispy and delicious. Instead people steamed vegetables, or worse, boiled them, and it is this latter preparation that plagued many of us, I assume, in our childhoods. Asparagus is a lovely spear of deliciousness, except when you boil it, in which case it becomes less a spear and more a fallen log long gone rotten in the woods. Veggies in this form become mushy, sad things — almost as if they have been pre-chewed in the mouth of a mournful widow.

Thing is, you can still roast Brussels sprouts and they can still turn out a hard, angry, bitter result. They can still emerge from your FIRE BOX still maintaining their demonic veneer. And so, many people — after long having learned to love difficult vegetables — still hold onto the belief that they do not, and will not, like Brussels sprouts.

Not in a box.

Not with a fox.

Not in some socks.

Not with the pox.

And I am here to change that.

And you will thank me.

You will lay a garland of laurels upon my brow, for I will be the champion who has rehabilitated the demon cabbages and given you a new FACE SENSATION inside your FACE. You will like it so much, you will try to send me money, and I will say nay, do not send me money, but buy my books, for I am a humble word-herder, nay, a simple and unassuming penmonkey seeking readers in this dark and tangled world.

Let us begin.

First, you need Brussels sprouts.

I suspect this is already where you resist.

DO NOT RESIST. Go. Get them. If you want the best, wait until the season where your local farmer’s market has them.

You want to buy ones that are not discolored and surly. They should be green and firm, not mushy or brown. They should also not have mouths and eyes. If they have mouths and eyes, the eggs have hatched, and now they are not merely sprouts, but rather, sproutlings, and they will bite off the tips of your fingers and thumbs because that is what they like most to eat.

Also, smaller sprouts are better.

Buy them.

Bring them home.

Show them your knife.

It is vital you show them the knife. You must hold the knife to them and let them know what’s coming. These are demon cabbages. Eggs from the devil’s own cloaca. They must be shown that humans control them — you have summoned them, and only the blade can truly tame them.

Now, cut off any stemmy bits. Up to a quarter inch into the sprout.

Then peel the outer leaves. The outer leaves are the exoskeleton. They are often tough and unpleasant and you must be rid of them. Get to the tender, soft leaf-meats within. One layer is usually good, but if they’re big-ass sprouts, maybe another layer down is necessary.

If the sprouts are small, bisect them.

If they’re larger — say, nearer to a golf ball size — then quarter them.

Scream at them as you cut them. Curse at them.

Then, let them sit and think about the horrors they have wrought.

Now, get your HELL BOX up to temperature.

I go 425, but if your oven runs cooler, go 450.

As the COALS OF HELL begin to fire, it’s time to make our sauce —

Whisk together:

4TB of real maple syrup

3TB of fish sauce

a blob of minced garlic

a bloop of minced ginger

the juice of half a lemon

the juice of half an orange

bit of salt

bit of pepper

four tears from a sad yeti

a bad dream

a good dream

and ten whispered promises that you will break

Already I feel you resisting.

It’s the fish sauce, I know. You’re thinking, why the fuck am I taking delicious maple syrup and mixing it with heinous fish sauce, and you’re right, fish sauce is heinous, if you go by the smell. The smell of fish sauce is like brined corpse-feet. Have you ever seen how they make it? Don’t. Don’t look. Spoiler warning: it’s dead fish. Left to get worse than dead fish already are. Left to break down into liquids. And then they just tap that briny death-keg and — ploomp — there’s your fish sauce. And I know, I know, Brussels sprouts are already bullshit, and now I’m asking you to put rotten fish slurry in there, too?

I am.

Your trust will be rewarded.

(Real-talk: fish sauce also kicks up soup. Chicken noodle soup is amazing with even one tablespoon of fish sauce into the pot. Failing your ability to use and possess fish sauce, you can instead use Worcestershire sauce. Which, ha ha ha sucker, is also fish sauce. But seriously: if you want to take nearly any soup or stew and kick it up a bit with an umami-bomb, use a little fish sauce and use a little sherry vinegar.)

Put this whisked concoction into a small saucepan.

BACK TO THE SPROUTS.

Get them in a bowl. Mix them with olive oil. Get them lubey, like they’re fooled into thinking they’re going to a vegetable orgy. Then, once sufficiently lubed, get them onto a cookie sheet onto some non-stick foil. Sprinkle salt over them.

Roast them for 20-30 minutes.

You want them brown and crispy, but not black and coal-like.

While the demon cabbages are being transformed by the fiery alchemy of your HELL BOX, get that saucepan on the stove, and turn it onto medium heat, and you want to reduce the sauce down — like, what, halfway? I dunno. You don’t want it loose and liquidy — you want it to become syrupy, like the maple syrup once was. Enough to coat the back of a spoon, but not so much that it, well, burns into some kind of napalm tar.

When the sprouts are out of the oven, get them in that bowl.

Then pour your reduced sauce over them.

Mixy mixy mix.

Then shove them into the BONE CAVE that is your MOUTH.

I mean, let them cool down first? Don’t just cram molten-hot Brussels sprouts in there, that’s fucked up, what’s wrong with you.

But once cool, eat them.

And then send me your infinite gratitude.

Oh! Here’s the other thing:

That sauce is also good on other roasted veggies — particularly other cruciferous veggies like broccoli. (They call these vegetables “cruciferous” because they crucified Jesus. It’s true, read your Bibles, kids.) If you want to mix other veggies in with the sprouts, you can: onions in there? Sure. Bacon in there? Sure. (Bacon is too a vegetable, shut up.) Note though that this does not require bacon — bacon, which I love, is also a cheat. You can stick bacon in a lot of terrible things and make them better. No, this recipe is good without it, and it is not required.

But it is nice.

(Last thought: this sauce also does well in fried rice.)

(And you can make it into fried breakfast rice with an egg overtop and Spam in there and okay fine bacon too, just shut up and make it.)

Go eat your vegetables.

And buy my books, thank you.

The epic first novel in the Dark Arts series.

On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade Martin but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front — the Allies’ top-secret magickal warfare program — and become a sorcerer himself.

Unsure who will kill him first — his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick — Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines. But he learns too late the true price of revenge will be more terrible than just the loss of his soul, and that there’s no task harder than doing good with a power born of ultimate evil.

* * *

Don’t Be Afraid to Think Big

You’d think I’d have internalized this notion before trying to write a years-spanning World War II epic fantasy. But it wasn’t until I tried to craft something “epic” that I saw how hard it was.

In this case it meant trusting my instincts with regard to my supporting cast. There are sections of the novel that are unrelated to the main character’s mission. During development I worried that these might be seen as digressions. Now I think my multiple point-of-view characters are part of what gives the novel its “epic” quality — a broadened perspective on the war.

When I was younger and less confident, I might’ve cut all those secondary narratives. Instead, I chose to treat this book as an ensemble piece. Weaving all of its tales into a tapestry of causality made them all stronger and provided a foundation for my larger story universe.

Research Pays Off When You Least Expect It

One reason I’d never before tried to write historical fiction was that I’d been daunted by the degree of research it would entail. Though I felt as if I had a reasonable grasp of the World War II period in Europe, I knew that readers of historical fiction are quite demanding when it comes to accuracy. So I dug in and did my homework.

I spent over a year reading both online and in libraries. I visited the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

The great thing about researching a subject in such depth is that it’s like soaking your brain in smart juice. It works its way into your gray matter’s fatty squiggles and comes out when you least expect it.

Several such moments of serendipity graced my work on The Midnight Front. The most notable instance came late in the writing of the book.

While trying to write a pivotal sequence, I realized that Omaha Beach was, for many reasons, the wrong setting for the action I needed to depict. Then I remembered reading about Pointe du Hoc — a D-Day objective less often depicted but in some ways even more dramatic because of what the 2nd Ranger Battalion accomplished there. Once I transplanted my battle sequence to that location, one of the key sequences in my book came into focus.

Marinate your brain in facts and they’ll flavor your story in amazing ways.

In a Thriller, You’ve Got to Keep the Pressure On—Always

One note I received from my agent was to make sure that my heroes felt the pressure of the war at all times. Keep the heat on. Never let your characters feel free of peril. Always have a looming threat, an impending deadline, a ticking clock, a bundle of dynamite with a burning fuse.

This is one of the tricks to making certain the middle of a thriller doesn’t bog down. If you need to deliver exposition, have it happen while characters are under fire, on the run, or bleeding from an open wound. If you can’t find a way to do that, at least have them challenged by a conflict that can ruin some other aspect of their lives.

A scene in which no one has anything to lose is one for which a reader has no reason to care.

You Can Humanize Villains Without Forgiving Them

I wanted Kein Engel, the villain of The Midnight Front, to be as fully realized as the hero. I wanted his motives, if considered separately from his methods, to seem almost reasonable.

Consequently, I decided his plot was to save the world. Of course, what one person calls salvation another might call destruction. So I had Kein blame humanity’s ills on its embrace of technology before we as a species were ready to control such gifts. He argues that the wonders of science are a fast track to danger, environmental disaster, and economic slavery.

What the heroes can’t know in 1942 is that Kein is right—at least with regard to the threat posed by developing technologies faster than we can understand how those inventions might hurt the world. Where Kein goes off the rails, of course, is how he proposes to solve it. But this is why he can’t see himself as a bad guy. He’s willing to do terrible things to save the day … but what hero isn’t?

Ultimately, though his motives might be justifiable his actions are monstrous. We are judged by what we do, not by what we intend. Making Kein’s motive reasonable doesn’t absolve his evil actions. I was willing to give one of his minions a path toward future redemption, but I never let myself forget that Kein himself is a villain.

Adjectives Do Not an Epic Make

The first draft of The Midnight Front weighed in at around 200,000 words, and, according to my agent Lucienne Diver, there wasn’t “a single unmodified noun” to be found anywhere within its pages. My friend fellow author Kirsten Beyer observed, “You never wrote like this before.” This prompted her to ask, “So why would you start now?”

In my desire to craft something “epic,” I went overboard with adjectives (and, to a lesser degree, adverbs). This observation struck me as odd, since I’d thought I’d learned many years and many books earlier to use modifiers with care. But with my mind focused on other goals (“It must feel huge! Grand! Sweeping and majestic!”), I lost my focus on the basics.

With the help of a text-analysis application, I flagged every single adjective in my manuscript. During my rewrite, I cut more than 8,000 adjectives and nearly 4,000 adverbs. That one action improved my sentence structures, clarified my meanings, and strengthened my prose.

I am happy to report that I do not seem to have repeated this error in the writing of the series’ second book, The Iron Codex.

I have, no doubt, committed all-new errors.

* * *

David Mack is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the Star Trek Destiny and Cold Equations trilogies. Mack’s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, short fiction, and comic books. His new novel The Midnight Front is available now from Tor Books. Excerpt here.

David Mack: Website | Twitter

The Midnight Front: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s

New macro photo there.

Is it good? No. Do I like it? Yes.

I’m noodling actually on getting a new macro lens — the MP-E 65mm, would let me do macros up to 5x (!) instead of 1x magnification, which is huge, but would also require greater technique, stability, light, and patience. There’s probably a metaphor in there for something but it’s Monday and it’s early and I’m not quite ready to snatch it, yet. Either way, be nice to up my macro game a wee bit.

Also, I’m now at a point where I don’t really have any deadlines? I mean, I do — but they’re a good ways off? And I’ve only got to write one book this year?

So, with that in mind, I went on a small adventure on Twitter.

Begin here.

Please enjoy.

Otherwise, I’m off to Austin at the end of the week to give a workshop to the wonderful ARWA, so that should be a blast and a half, because I’ll talk about characters and themes and, I dunno what else, probably Star Wars, and maybe spiders. Maybe it’ll just be eight hours on the Spiders of Star Wars. You don’t know. I’m unpredictable like that. Details here!

And that’s it.

Have a nice week, frandos!