When portal-mage Harkon Bright and his apprentice are asked to help select a new captain for the immense skyship Iseult, they quickly find themselves embroiled in its Machiavellian officer’s court. Meanwhile, their new recruit, Elias, struggles to adapt to his unexpected gift of life while suffering dark dreams of an ancient terror.

As the skies darken and storm-clouds gather on the Dragon Road, the crew of the Elysium come face to face with deadly intrigues, plots from beyond death, and a terrible darkness that lurks in the heart of a thousand-year storm.

THE FIRST STEP ISN’T THE HARDEST. IT’S THE SECOND.

So you’ve finished your debut, and it’s launched. It has a slew of 5 star reviews on the Amazons and the Barnes and the Nobles. It’s racking up great responses, and you have your own pile of encouragement words that you can turn to the second you start to feel yourself flag on the next book you’re contracted for, right? This should totally be a breeze, because it’s the same characters and the same setting and you know them and what you’re doing and this is all fine, right?

RIGHT?

God, that third pot of the coffee you’ve been mainlining looks appealing. So what if the world is vibrating? It’s smooth sailing. IT’S ALL FINE.

(It is in no way fine my face is melting please help)

This is the thing about writing a series. The first time you write a book it’s this herculean effort of pole-vaulting, bare-knuckle bear-boxing, and naked oil wrestling with giant naked mole rats. Finishing it is an epic act of catharsis that feels like cresting the final ridge of the highest mountain. Oh wait, no, that’s a foothill and there’s a much bigger mountain. And it’s covered in ice. And skulls. And ice-skulls. Fuck. Picking up your legs and doing it all over again is exhausting.

THE SECOND ACTS MEANS EXPANDING THE SCOPE

SKYFARER had a very focused arc. It’s a combination quest/war story that follows two PoV’s chasing one goal as their stories weave closer and closer together until they both collide. Then the rest of the book is the explosive consequences of what they do when what they were looking for turns out not to be what they expected. The benefit of a story like this is that it forces brevity and focus. Ideally no book wastes words at all, but different story structures have different word-allowances. It’s like a triangle: the narrower the base, the less space there is to work in as you hurtle towards the apex.

DRAGON ROAD is a broader story. You get a lot more of Aimee and Elias as they work and fight together to seek truth and bring justice to the Eternal Sky, but you can also expect to get to know the rest of the cast better, too. More Hark, more Vant with his brilliance, Vlana’s devotion to her chosen family, Bjorn’s wisdom, Clutch’s wit and raw badass talent. Basically, my sequel meant that I had to spend more words on getting to know the core cast better. The plot structure of the book is also bigger, it covers more ground, and the build is slower. On the one hand this was SUPER COOL, but on the other hand I’d gotten used to working on a comparatively tiny word budget. All of a sudden I had a thousand extra crates of nails and nuts and bolts available to me and oh god what do I do with this shit.

EXPANDING THE SCOPE MEANS RAISING THE STAKES

Readers are lovely. They will stick with you through thick and thin, if you’ve made them feel something real. The magic of this job is reaching into people’s hearts and giving them something to give a shit about in a world that—lets face it—is pretty rough lately. But even your most devoted fans have limits to their patience. People are showing up for something specific, and if you jerk their chain around with pointless bullshit, they wont have the stamina to finish. So next to “Always make sure your subversion is cooler than the original implied trope,” my best piece of advice on this is to remember that more words builds a broader base. So don’t waste it. Crank up that fog machine, Fuqua. Summon the bigger racks of fireworks.

SKYFARER had the backdrop of a small, third-world country, and dealt primarily in personal stakes. A small crew, a single, dauntless mercenary leader and his tormented backstory. DRAGON ROAD deals with the lives of millions in the balance, and then more, as the story goes on and it becomes apparent the scale of atrocities that the Elysium crew must work and fight to prevent. It needed NEW characters and MORE THINGS. And DEEPER FEELINGS.

And that means…

HIGHER STAKES REQUIRE GREATER INVESTMENT

You know how much those readers cared about those characters? You have to make them care more. The more you present, the greater the pull to get them through it. Every bite of the apple must taste better. The fever must spike, and the colors grow more vivid. The second act is where the readers caring about the first book needs to pay dividends, so they’ll feel rewarded for placing their faith and hope into these people whose journey they’ve shared. Every fleshing out of a character or bright, vivid set piece needs to enhance, rather than distract. You learn to recognize these things as time goes on, and to detect the merit of something you add based on how much it enhances the experience. The question, through all of this bigger scale, meatier, gear-shiftier work is does this contribute to the payoff?

And that brings us to the most important thing you learn writing a Book 2:

GREATER INVESTMENT NECESSITATES BIGGER PAYOFF

A broader base takes a longer time to cross, and that means more time invested, so if you’re going to make people cover more ground and invest more time in the book, your payoff absolutely must be proportionately better. What does this mean? Well, basically if your stick is bigger, so must be the BOOM. Books are collections of sticks and booms, and the doctrine of explodicism teaches us that bigger, heavier sticks must deliver better booms, or the people who lugged them around will feel let down. This isn’t just about set pieces and blowing up the train and finally taking that Howitzer off the mantle-piece, it’s also about the feelings. Emotions are your stock and trade as an author, and goddammit people are showing up for these people you’ve made real enough that they feel as if they know them, and love them.

There’s a goddamn reason why people will read through six hundred pages for a promised kiss, a validation long sought after by a loved one, a mentors benediction, or the sweet release of a death well-deserved. The point is, as you draw people deeper and further, you need to always keep in mind the fact that you’re pulling them towards something exponentially more impactful than last time. Even as that triangle gets narrower towards the point, the point must be sharper, the edge keener. Reading a good book should be the act of getting intensely drunk on something, and my favorite writing is the stuff that creates a humming, dizzying buzz in the senses.

But the good news is, you can do it.

The thing about hard work is it builds on itself, so the most important takeaway from this is that I learned I can do it again. The thing about finishing the first book is that you’re assailed by the sense that you’ve spontaneously generated something you wont be able to make again, and you wont, because what you made then is a product of who you were then, and humans change… but the good news is that you’ve made yourself something BETTER in the course of making it, and what you make going forward will be better too.

So go fucking forward. Charge. Slay. Consume. Rise like a storytelling phoenix and set it all on fire. Because you can, because your trials have made you stronger, and because this is a Kung Fu movie and it’s time to summon the Glow.

And when you arrive at your final battle, and the beast seems like it can’t be overcome?

Tell em Joe sent you to kick its ass.

* * *

Joseph Brassey has lived on both sides of the continental US, and has worked as a craft-store employee, paper-boy, factory worker, hospital kitchen gopher, martial arts instructor, singer, and is currently an author and stay-at-home Dad (the last is his favorite job, by far). His novel Skyfarer–first in the Drifting Lands series–is published by Angry Robot Books. Joseph was enlisted as a robotic word-machine in 47North’s Mongoliad series, and still trains in – and teaches – Liechtenauer’s Kunst des Fechtens in his native Tacoma.

Joseph Brassey: Website | Twitter | Instagram

Dragon Road: Indiebound | Amazon

When I say we need to talk about it, I mean I need to talk about it.

See, sometimes I like to take big-ass pop culture event movies and then dissect them at least a little on the autopsy table — from a storyteller’s perspective, I like to root through the narrative guts and splash around in the blood that pumps a particular story’s heart. I’ve done it with The Last Jedi, and Mad Max: Fury Road and Prometheus and so forth.

What choices did they make? Why did they make them? How am I feeling? How did the story make me feel that way? Where are my pants? WHY DID THE MOVIE TAKE MY PANTS

I don’t think I’ve done that yet with a Marvel movie.

And maybe it’s time.

I don’t want to get too deep with Infinity War, but I do want to talk about a few things, and that means — well, it means SPOILERS ARE COMING.

And I hate spoilers.

It’s because I’d hate to spoil you if you don’t want to be spoiled. Spoilers foisted upon you rob you of your agency as a reader, as a viewer, as audience for a story. And spoilers too obviate the storyteller’s construction — we put a lot of work into a lot of things, one of those things being the orchestration of revelation in narrative, and spoilers undercut our articulation of the things we want known, and when we want them to be known.

So, with that said, I’m going to put a WHOLE LOT OF SPOILER SPACE here.

In fact, I’m going to just cut and paste a passage from James Joyce’s nonsense book, Finnegan’s Wake, just so you have an absurd buffer between this part of the post and the part of the post where, basically, I tell you the ending of the movie.

Here, have some James Joyce:

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-

core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy

isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor

had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse

to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper

all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to

tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a

kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in

vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a

peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory

end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-

ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-

nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later

on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the

offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,

erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends

an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:

and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park

where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-

linsfirst loved livvy. 

What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-

gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu

Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still

out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-

pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie 

Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear!

Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-

killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired 

and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-

solvers! What true feeling for their’s hayair with what strawng 

voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the

duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and

body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of

soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks

of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if

you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the

pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.

Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen’s mau-

rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar-

back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers

or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely 

struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere

he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very wat-

er was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so

that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!)

and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-

fices in Toper’s Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the

banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie

ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part

inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in

grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like

Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-

les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the

liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days

to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth 

of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, 

We’re good now, right?

GOOD BECAUSE HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

Also, boy, Finnegan’s Wake is fucking nonsense, isn’t it?

Moving on.

I, like the rest of the civilized world, saw Avengers: Infinity War this past weekend.

And I have thoughts.

It’s worth first describing the overall theater experience — I don’t mean this to be emblematic of every theater experience, but it was at the one I went to, 10:30AM on Friday. For most of the movie, the crowd was fucking excited. Lots of applause. Gasps in the right places. Lots of cheers. (So many cheers and laughs actually that it ended up stepping on subsequent jokes or dialogue.) There was this shared energy going on, a pop culture electricity buzzing like bees between us.

And then —

*Thanos fingersnap*

— the movie ended.

Credits rolled.

Post-credits scene played.

And walking out of that theater…

Shit, I’ve been to noisier funerals.

People just… wandered out, like from a disaster, a plane crash or a collapsed building. Shell-shocked. Jaws dragging behind them like carry-on luggage. A look of bewilderment and worry passed between us all. There were some breaks to this: a few guys behind me were like, “Yo, what the fuck just happened.” Next to me, a woman explained to her boyfriend who Captain Marvel was, and what the post-credits scene probably meant. On the way to the parking lot, two late-20s dudes were explaining to a pair of young boys (maybe 10?) that everything would be all right, it’s a comic book movie, they’ll all be okay.

I went to my car.

I sat in the driver’s seat.

I kinda just stared at it for a while?

And then I went home.

And I kinda felt really shitty? Like, inside. Inside my body. Inside my heart. I felt shitty. (Real-talk, I felt a fraction of what I felt during the 2016 election, which is actually apropos when you think about it: big pastel-colored asshole walks away with an unexpected victory, sits and regards his ruination with weary glee, credits roll, good luck, motherfuckers.)

That’s worth picking apart. That movie made me feel something hard. Whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s damn sure a powerful thing, to affect emotions like that, to kick you around like an empty soup can. I went through an array of emotions in the wake of feeling shell-shocked: I felt mad at the movie. Then I felt sad. Then I felt disappointed? Then I was reassuring myself the same way you reassure yourself after any loss, after any failure — “Well, it’ll be fine, Captain Marvel is probably kicking it in outer space, and of course in the comics Adam Warlock just undoes the whole fucking thing anyway, right?” — and then you go through a new wave of disappointment when you realize it is a comic book movie, like that dude said, and everything will probably just be okay. Certainly half the people that turned to void-ash have movies planned anyway — it’s not like Black Panther 2 or Doctor Strange 2 are going to be about piles of dirt blowing around the cosmos for two-and-a-half hours.

Here people will say, and have said, this is the Empire Strikes Back of the Avengers. Or, if you prefer more recent, The Last Jedi. And yet, neither of those movies kicked me in the teeth as hard. My kid loves those movies and doesn’t view them as a one way trip to Bummertown — we think of movies like ESB and TLJ as having down endings, but they really don’t. They take us to the bottom, to the nadir, but then we get sight of the ramp. We see the lift, the upward-angle right at the end. In Empire, we’re granted the scene with the rebel fleet — Luke gets a new hand, Lando goes off with Chewie to find Han, Leia and Luke regard the galaxy as the music swells. In Last Jedi, we not only get a Pyrrhic Victory moment with Luke versus Kylo, but we see Rey take the mantle of the last Jedi truly as she moves some rocks, reunites with friends, and they zip off in the Falcon — not to mention we’re granted the coda with Broomboy and the Stable Gang (my favorite Genesis cover band, by the way).

Infinity War has no such scene.

And that’s why it hurts so hard.

This comes down to a discussion about story structure. I know. Yawn. Snore. Boo. But for us storytellers it’s an important thing to talk about — we know how stories are structured, and that structure is (usually) deliberate. Changing a piece of it, or removing a piece, can have dramatic impacts — impacts you may intend, or impacts that you may not.

Infinity War has no denouement.

(Pronounced with a haughty French accent: DAY-NOOO-MOOHHHH)

Most stories give us an ejaculatory story climax — OH MY GOD SHIT IS HAPPENING, IT’S ALL HAPPENING, NNNGH BOOM — and then we are given narrative time to deal with that. The action ‘falls’ and moves past the climactic resolution and into a glimpse of the fallout of that resolution.

Usually, the more exciting and intense the movie, the shorter the falling action / denouement. The more epic it is, the longer that becomes.

Jurassic Park goes from their climactic escape to a moment of peace onboard the helicopter out — and then the credits roll. We don’t have much there, maybe just two minutes max of that, but it’s not really essential. The kids glom onto Alan Grant, completing the circuit for Sam Neill’s character, and hey, Holdo smiles, birds are dinosaurs, it’s a new day.

Empire Strikes Back has about… five, six minutes of falling action and denouement. The escape from Cloud City, Luke has one last chat with New Dad, and then it’s time for a new hand and talk of a rendezvous on Tatooine to go save Han.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King has 37 hours of denouement.

Infinity War has mostly none. Okay, you get a denouement of Thanos sitting in like, a fucking meadow and being all proud of himself — and that works if you assume he’s the protagonist of the movie. (Spoiler: he might be, though whether that’s intentional or not, I dunno.) We don’t need much denouement if we’re to believe the Avengers are actually the Bad Guys. In that case, Thanos gazing out on his glorious success is not that different from Alan Grant looking out of the helicopter as they flee Jurassic Park. Job done. High-five. Music swells.

(One could also argue that the post-credits scene is a denouement, but I’d rather avoid that as a declaration. Given that it’s set in the middle of people turning to void-ash, and given that it lends us no time to decompress or understand what just happened, I’d argue it’s just an additional moment stapled to the climax of the film.)

If you assume the Avengers are the protagonists, then… the denouement isn’t much of one, is it? We aren’t given any moments with the heroes to deal with what just happened. We don’t have a scene of them dealing with it. No funerals. No conversation. No Cap and Tony entering a room and giving each other a hug. There’s no resolution. Further, we’re given literally no optimism — we’ve spent two-and-a-half hours with our plane in freefall, and you kind of half-expect that right at the end we’d be given a hint that the engine’s gonna start, that we’re about to pull out of this dive before we hit.

But nope.

We just crash.

Snap.

Thanos wins.

It’s kind of brilliant.

It’s also kind of awful?

Because here’s the thing — denouement is, as noted, French. And it’s French for “unknotting.” Meaning, you’ve just spent all this time tying some knots, and now it’s time to loosen them, if even a little. And those knots aren’t just plotty-knots. They’re the knots of our emotions. Infinity War spends a great deal of time tightening those knots, and then no time undoing them.

Brilliant? Maybe. Difficult to deal with? Nnnyeah, kinda, for me, anyway. Maybe not for you! I’m not telling you how you should feel. But I felt like I was kicked in the gut after leaving it — and it’s maybe why I can’t take my kid to this, at least until the next chapter is out — *winces* — a whole year from now.

At the end, Infinity War ends up being a truly astonishing comic book movie through-and-through. It is the realization of Marvel’s dreams, and of my dreams as a comic book reader. It is the perfect example of a brawny, bang-up comic-book crossover translated to the screen.

But perfect example also means that it carries with it the best and the worst of those comic book crossovers. The action is high! The heroes meet! They quip at each other! It’s funny and intense and unrelenting. It also doesn’t give them a lot of time to talk or be their characters beyond their most trope-iest of traits. It also requires you to have seen… most of the MCU movies, which in terms of the movies means you’ve spent a buttload of time and money to get here. It also means that, like with comic books, we’re treated to a real cliffhanger ending. But the problem there is, a cliffhanger in comics means you have to wait 2-4 weeks to pick up the next one. Here it means we have two more movies over the next year to help us pick up the teeth that this one knocked out of our open mouths.

There are other problems with the movie, maybe — the powers are inconsistent and sometimes the movie seems to be willfully plotty even when it betrays characters or logic. The Infinity Stones seem to do specific things until they don’t? Thanos’ master plan is somehow both genuinely sympathetic and really dumb — there are better ways to achieve what he wants to achieve, unless you assume he is just a narcissistic genocidal maniac who is lying to himself about that (and by the way that works for me, I buy that). But those problems are small in the face of what is a movie that gets so much right about the big, bursting bad-assery of a comic-book cross-over event.

But I miss that denouement. That’s where it gets me. That’s where the movie hurt me. For 95% of it, I was in love. For that last 5%, I felt sad and upset and mostly still feel that way now. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. If it was — then, hey, here’s my applause. I don’t like feeling that way but I also appreciate a film that wants me to feel that way and achieves it. But a part of me worries that it’s really just down to marketing — they didn’t want to tell us it was Part One of Two, meaning, the reason we get no denouement is less a willful narrative choice and more because it’s really one half of a movie and they just didn’t wanna tell us. Which means maybe this bit, from this article, wasn’t entirely true:

Two months ago, the Russo brothers told the Uproxx site that the third and fourth Avengers were being retitled in part to clarify that the films would be two separate films rather than one large film split in half.

I loved the movie. I hated the movie. Which is the sign of something interesting, I think. It is a remarkable achievement, if a troubled one, and needless to say I am gnashing my teeth for the next one to find out how our Heroic Resistance undoes the horrors of Purple Space Trump.

NOW GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS, THANOS

Gonna be honest with you: I really love that photo.

I don’t know why.

Just do.

I don’t consider myself a visual artist. I don’t know what goes into making a striking image; the architecture of it, the creation of it, is beyond me. I know how to work my camera, but more as a lucky acolyte and not a capable master. So mostly I point the camera and I shoot my pics, and once in a while I get one or some that I really like, and that one there? I really like it.

PRETTY PRETTY FLOWER.

It’s a “rue anemone.”

And given that it is spring, it’s a great time to take snaps of flowers — flowers like bloodroot, or swamp lilies, or rue — because they don’t have much competition for the camera’s eye. So, at the bottom of this post, you’ll find more photos of pretty pretty flowers, so go look at them when we’re done here.

GO LOOK AT THEM, I SAID.

*clears throat*

If you missed it, I apparently went viral in… New Zealand? For eating a candy called Pineapple Lumps, sent to me by my Kiwi cohort, Adam Christopher? The internet is weird, y’all. Maybe I’ll make it a point to review RANDOM CANDY on Twitter from time to time sent to me by trusted globetrotting pals.

Also, there’s a new Star Wars TV show coming out — a cartoon called Star Wars: Resistance. A lot of folks have asked if it’ll touch on the events of Aftermath, or carry those forward, given that the show seems set between the two trilogy eras and… you know, I have no idea? It would be great if it did. I mean, we still have the lingering question of Rae Sloane, not to mention the future adventures of the Aftermath crew. (You can find some nice callbacks and cameos in Daniel Older’s fantastic Last Shot, by the way.)

Finally, a reminder that the MEGA ULTRA BOOK BUNDLE is only on sale until tomorrow — 50% off, which nets you ten books for ten bucks using coupon code BOOKBIRTHDAY.

Other things are in the works, and I’ve other stuff to announce, but as is the author life, I’m unable to announce them as yet.

So, onward we go!

Hope to see folks at the BCFL Comic Con this weekend here in Bucks County, or at Phoenix ComicFest at the end of May.

NOW HERE LOOK AT THE PRETTY PRETTY FLOWERS

(p.s. I know that Flickr has been bought by SmugMug, a change I welcome — SmugMug looks nice and also! looks like it’ll give me an opportunity to sell these photos in various ways, so look for that transition to happen over the next month or two)

Did a big-ass storytelling thread today about people’s complicated reactions to THE LAST JEDI (don’t worry, next week it’ll be Marvel) — and I’m fascinated by the ideas of how we see heroism, and how hero characters are complicated or changed or tarnished — and the costs of sacrifice that have to go into being a hero.

So, that’s your angle this week —

Explore the complications of heroism.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: May (the) 4th, Friday, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Give us a link to it.

Go write.

[img of the awesome Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY]

The last Saturday in April is Independent Bookstore Day, which is to say: this Saturday.

Which means you should take the extra time, if possible, to hit such a bookstore this weekend — remember, you can find them via Indiebound.org — and if you don’t have one near you, don’t forget too that many will ship books directly to you.

So, I thought I’d take some time to talk about why I love indie bookstores — and, now, this is with the caveat that an indie bookstore is not automagically amazing just by dint of its existence. I’ve been to several that were very anti-genre, or were not friendly, or were overall standoffish both in presence and in their design. But that is the exception, not the norm.

Here then, is why I dig me some indie bookstores:

1. They Tend To Contain Actual People Who Love Them Some Motherfucking Books.

Listen, I’m sure there are bookstore employees who don’t give a rat’s salty butthole about books, but in general, I go to an indie store, I am met with people who are there because they want to work somewhere that they can be surrounded by the sweet natal embrace of the book-womb.

Bonus: the people who work there are also bonafide bibliowizards. (Same can be said of most librarians, too.) They know books. They read them. They can recommend them. They can handsell them, spreading the precious BOOK VIRUS ha ha what I didn’t say there’s a book virus, YOU said there was a book virus. Now here read this book. *you are now infected by books*

But seriously, bookstore employees are magical beings. They may not be real, and if they are, they are likely too good for this world and must be protected.

2. Um, They Actually Sell Books

I got no problem with bookstores that sell not-books — hey, I like stuffed animals and widgets and tchotchkes and book-themed dildos the same as any other RED-BLOODED AMERICAN (wait what?), but you know, I also want books in a bookstore, and indie bookstores tend to be very good ways to show them off and sell them.

Which is great for me as an author.

And even better for me as a reader and as someone raising a kid who will be a reader, too.

3. They Are Community Facing

Amazon is not community facing. They’re just not. They can’t be, because they’re not in a physical space (their kinda-creepy bookstores notwithstanding). And I say that as someone who sells books there and who has a Prime subscription, same as you, I’d bet. But they’re just not there for the community — and one of the things that’s fantastic about books is that, if you care to connect to it, books come with a bookish community.

And what I mean are: people that read, people that write, people that wanna talk about books, people that wanna talk to weirdo-beardo authors who write stories about pissed-off psychic ladies and cool wars in the stars. Bookstores host book clubs and author signings and panel discussions and they, like libraries, are a nexus of that community, bringing bookish folk from all around to share in the book virus WHOA no nuh-uh I did not say book virus, this time I’m really sure it was you that said it. Shut up.

Point is, bookstores are also Book Community Centers.

Go there and be one with the bookishness.

4. OMG, Some Of Them Have Bars

Okay, I know this isn’t all bookstores or even a majority of them, but fuck it, it’s still a thing. And increasingly so! Changing Hands has the First Draft Bar. Or the Wild Detectives in Dallas! Or BookBar in Denver! Or the lovely BookCellar in Chicago! Seriously, it’s a thing. Google it. If I can go to a bookstore and buy a book, get a coffee, or drink a fancy-ass cocktail? Pretty sure that’s what actual heaven looks like.

(Hell, on the other hand, is a defunct Hoboken Toys-R-Us full of wasps and broken prequel-era Star Wars toys. You go there when you don’t buy books, so buy more books and avoid Hell.)

5. A Great Indie Bookstore Feels Like Home

A good bookstore is like a room full of pillows for your mind and for your imagination. The shelves may not match, the decor may be weird, the people may be infected by a book virus, but it always feels like home. They radiate pure book-love. They make you wanna read books. Hundreds of narrative rabbit-holes awaiting for readers of every age. A good bookstore is an astonishing place — it’s cheesy as fuck, I know, but I am never not overtaken with the glorious vertigo of a bookstore, where you’re presented with an unholy host of new adventures and ideas, with new ones coming in every week.

So, hie thee and thine ass hence to a bookstore. Forthwith.

Buy a book.

Read a book.

Join the book virus.

BECOME PART OF THE BOOKSTORE LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY AS YOUR FLESH MERGES WITH THE SHELVES AND — ha ha ha oh you know ol Chuck Wendig he’s just being silly again this is definitely not a thing that happens, ahem.

*stares*

*blinks*

*eyelids are pages*

(Oh, and here is where I am crass and selfish and I remind you that if you want books signed by me and procured from a great indie store, you can order them from Let’s Play Books in Emmaus, PA, at this link. They will ship ’em right to you.)

So now I turn it over to you, Bookish Readers.

What are your favorite indie bookstores?

[below: Powell’s]

Fried Chicken to me is one of those fundamentally American foods. So much so that apparently I feel the need to capitalize it, like some kind of weirdo. It is as fundamental, perhaps, as barbecue — and yes, I know that neither this nor barbecue originate in these here YOO-NIGHTED STATES, but they feel keenly ours, as if they’re lodged deep in the aorta of the diseased American heart!

And now that I’ve gotten you hungry by talking about diseased hearts and clogged aortas…

I love fried chicken, but I tend not to deep fry things here at the house. Mostly because it’s a lot of mess and wasted oil and I’m vaguely paranoid about setting the house on fire, so instead I tend to pan-fry things. And one of the things I pan-fry is chicken.

Chicken thighs.

Mmm. Thighs.

*plays sex jazz*

Listen, real-talk: chicken breast has its time and its place and that time is never and that place is thrown out into the woods for the Possum King. I mean, the breast from a good, free-range, local chicken can be amazing, but otherwise, white-ass chicken breast is the Justin Bieber of meatstuff. It’s carnivore tofu, taking on the flavor of whatever sauce or soup you stick with it. But the thighs: yeah. Good, dark meat, some fat for flavor.

A few weeks ago, I went to one of our LOCAL EATING ESTABLISHMENTS and saw they had changed their menu, having added chicken and waffles. And I ordered it, because I’ve been going to this high school for seven-and-a-half years, I’m no dummy.

And what I got was a travesty.

A plate of culinary fuckery.

A verifiable restaurateur war crime.

The waffle was limp and flavorless, like an old floppy clown shoe.  The chicken — the chicken! — was a fried fucking piece of chicken fucking breast, dry as a roof shingle and half as palatable. And all of it was coated in not-real maple syrup, but rather, the high-fructose corn kind.

It was dinner sadness. It was shameful vittles.

(“Shameful Vittles: For The Cat That Deserves Scorn.”)

And I decided that one day I would rectify this.

AND THAT DAY IS TODAY.

*checks calendar*

AND THAT DAY WAS YESTERDAY.

Here’s what I did, and here’s what you can do.

First, make waffle batter.

My go-to waffle recipe for breakfasts is this.

But for this I wanted a simpler, and just slightly more savory recipe.

So I went with this.

Mix the batter, let it sit.

Now, you need chicken thighs.

*plays sex jazz again*

I went with eight boneless chicken thighs — bone-in is good (“bone-in” ha ha ha more sex jazz, garçon!), but for some reason, none of our grocery stores ever seem to want to carry them. Boneless works great, and arguably better here because you don’t have to fiddle with the bone (“fiddle with the bone” my my my, keep the sex jazz a-comin, plate captain) when you’re cutting through the chicken and the waffle together. And of course it’s chicken and chicken is basically a wad of salmonella, so you want to make sure to handle the chicken while wearing a hazmat suit. Just don’t wash it because washing chicken is legit how you spread the salmonella.

In a shallow, chicken-dippable bowl: mix one egg and a half-cup of milk.

In a bag, mix up:

A cup of Panko breadcrumbs, a 1/2 cup of flour, a TBSP of cornstarch, a little salt, a little pepper, some garlic powder, some paprika. Just shake it. Shake it like you’re shaking a baby.

*receives note*

My lawyers tell me babies are not for shaking.

Shake it like a — I dunno, what the fuck do you shake? A spraypaint can? A soda before you hand it to a prankable pal? Otters? Do you shake otters? I shake otters. They giggle when you shake them. Like the Pilsbury Dough Boy. It’s amazing. Always shake an otter.

*waits for lawyer note*

*receives no note*

Good. Moving on.

I’ll note here briefly that the Panko crumbs can be replaced with another CRUNCHY BREAD PRODUCT of your choosing — saltines? Great. Ritz crackers? Delicious. Cornflakes? Scrumptastic! Babies? Oh no, you’re not fooling me this time, we don’t eat babies, my lawyer reminds me. And babies aren’t bread products, even though they are often soft and doughy like white bread. Delicious white bread. Delicious baby bread.

*shakes self out of baby-eating reverie*

Anyway. Get you a FRYIN’ PAN, you know, for FRYIN’, and then you wanna fill that sucker up an inch or so with oil. I like peanut oil. High smoke point, like Cheech and Chong. Don’t use olive oil. Definitely don’t use motor oil.

Sidenote: I like cast-iron for this. Because cast-iron is great. I’ve really only come to terms with using cast-iron over the last year or so — before now I was kinda intimidated by its use? “What? I can’t use soap to clean it? What ninja shenanigans are these?” I’d exclaim. But then I got over it and put on my Big Boy Pants and now I’m a cast-iron convert. JOIN MY CHURCH HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD WORD.

Right. So.

Put the FRYIN’ PAN on medium heat, bring up to like, 350, adjust temperature so it hangs there. Now it’s time to BATHE THE CHICKEN IN PAIN.

And here you’re like, Chuck don’t be mean to the chicken, and I must say, have you ever met a chicken? Chickens are motherfuckers. They’ll peck a human baby to death. And they’re dumb as paint. Any animal that can be absolved of its own head and still run the fuck around for an hour or two is either a cockroach or a chicken. And both are delicious.

Ha ha what I mean only one of them is delicious.

*stares*

Are we hungry yet? Good.

Frying the chicken is easy. You dip the chicken in the egg mix. Then you get it in the bag and shake it the fuck around — if you don’t wanna do the bag thing, you can also just mix the breadcrumbs in a second bowl and use that, I don’t care, I won’t judge you. I mean, I’ll judge you, but not for that reason. Then, once dipped twice, it goes into the PAIN JACUZZI. Two or three in the pan depending on how they fit — fry them three minutes on each side or until brown but not burny-brown. Then you’re going to set them aside in a baking dish.

Did I mention the oven needs to be at 350, too?

Get your oven to 350. You should’ve read my mind. You monster.

You’re going to do this again and again, and when you’ve got all your chicken in the dish, you wanna bake it for 20 minutes at 350.

And while it’s baking, you’ve got more work to do.

First, waffles. You know your waffle iron intimately; I do not. Mine takes about two minutes per waffle. Yours may take longer. I have spent long hours seducing my waffle iron to learn its secrets — you, too, must sensually inveigle the iron to discover its ways.

You also want to mix the salt-and-vinegar maple syrup.

And yes, that’s what I said.

Regular maple syrup would of course be fine, but fine is for sandpaper grit and Young Cannibals, not dinner-time deliciousness, and we are aiming for the sublime, goddamnit.

Here is what you do:

Melt 3 TBsp butter in your nuclear radiation cube (aka, “micro-wave”).

Then mix in a half-cup of maple syrup.

Again, the good stuff, like from an actual tree.

Then: a TBsp of soy sauce.

Now, for the vinegar —

I tried it two ways.

First batch, I used salt-and-vinegar powder. It’s this stuff here. It’s great. You can make your own s&v popcorn and it’s also awesome dusted on pork chops. I put in like, I think two teaspoons of the stuff. Mix it good so it doesn’t all glormp at the bottom.

Second batch, I just used sherry vinegar. I like sherry vinegar — it’s dark and mysterious. Very noir. But also a team player. Or something. Shut up.

I don’t know which I liked better? The sherry one is more distinctly vinegary — the powder one has more of that salt-and-vinegar-junk-food vibe.

You do as you like.

I mix that up and then give it another 20-30 seconds in the radiation cube.

Season further to taste.

If you like HOT STUFF, mix in a bit of hot sauce — Frank’s would be nice, or Cholula, or whatever. And also feel free to experiment with vinegars, too. Paul Krueger, penmonkey extraordinaire, suggested apple cider vinegar. I also wonder what it’d be like with a little squeeze of lemon?

And then…

Well, I mean, construct your deliciousness.

Waffle.

Then chicken on top.

Then the salt-and-vinegar maple syrup.

That syrup has just the right balance of sweet-to-sour-to-salty. I also popped a couple homemade quick pickles on top because I am just that kind of hipster asshole who thinks pickles should go on 49% of foods.

Whatever. Now shove all of this in the BONE CRUSHER that the FACE GODS gave your HUNGRY FACE and eat, eat, eat.

Also buy my books.

Thank you.