YAY THE EAGLES WON THE SUPERBOWL

GO BIRDS

GO IGGLES

There, I have fulfilled my contractually-obligated Philadelphia-area enthusiasm.  Above is a picture of not just a bald eagle, but a motherfucking sea eagle — this one seen in Brisbane at the koala place. Whatever the koala place is called. There’s a place with koalas, and you go there on a boat, and then it’s not just koalas. No, I’m not going to Google it, we’ll just call it… mmm, Koalatown. Or Koalaopolis.

*cue Kristen Bell saying, This is the Koala Place*

Actually, since we’re showing off birds, here are more raptor birds —

(Including, of course, some very Superb Owls.)

This is a Kestral, which is a great name and I think I’m going to change my name to it, Kestral Wendig, don’t @ me.

Here’s Steve, who is obviously high as shit on mice right now —

Steve obviously has a real problem.

All this is of course a very good segue into, HEY, DON’T FORGET, THE RAPTOR & THE WREN IS OUT, YOU WACKY KIDS. Seriously, it features an owl named Bird-of-Doom. I’ve received a number of emails and tweets now about this book, and many of them amount to people both mad at me  while simultaneously asking when the next one is out (hint: January 2019), which excites me deeply. I wrote a book with lots of twists and turns engineered to, ideally, rip your brain and your heart out of your body and maybe force them to switch places. I hope it did as I hoped it would do — no spoilers. (And holy shit, just wait to see the shit I pull in Vultures. Whoof.)

You can grab the book in print or e-book.

If you’ve read it, I very seriously would love a review — one of the ways I get to keep doing the things that I do is when you perform the one-two punch of a) buy my book and then b) review the book after reading it. Part of this is because reviews help others find books, but another part is that more reviews lend strength to the algorithms that help people find the books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. And it also opens the book up to different kinds of promotional opportunities in the future. Sad that we are in some ways locked to those numbers, but here we are, welcome to The Internet.

People sometimes ask me where the best place to buy a book is — in terms of how much I make, I guess — and I’ll answer now as I always answer, which is, I hope you buy the book from whatever location and in whatever format that gives you maximum pleasure and/or bang-for-your-buckitude. I won’t judge. (Er, long as you don’t pirate the book, then I’mma probably judge a little.) My emotional preference is, when buying print, you buy from your local independent bookstore, because many such bookstores are the true bridge between a reading community and the author — libraries, too, form the same function, and if you’re not buying the book, please request the book at your local library.

I’m adding a local date to THE SKED, by the way — I’ll be again joining the Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde show at Doylestown Bookshop on April 7th at 4pm here in Pennsylvania. Kevin’s launching the last in his Iron Druid series, Scourged — which is the ninth (!) book. So, you should go to that or you will be punished in eternal torment.

I think that’s it for me.

PEACE.

*drops mic*

*on foot*

*gets an ingrown toenail*

And we return with an old favorite.

We shall mash subgenres up and write the weird stories that result.

I will give you 20 subgenres. You will pick two from the list either using a d20 or random number generator (or use monkey knuckles or coffee grounds or whatever), then you will write a short story that mashes up those two subgenres.

Length: We’ll say 1500-2000 words.

Due by: Next Friday (2/9), noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

THE SUBGENRE LIST:

1. Revenge Thriller
2. BDSM Erotica
3. Fairy Tale / Fable / Folklore
4. Haunted House
5. Wild West
6. Body Horror
7. Near-Future Sci-Fi
8. Sword & Sorcery
9. Occult Detective
10. Musical
11. Comic Fantasy
12. Urban Fantasy
13. Superhero
14. Bodice Ripper
15. Who-done-it
16. Space Opera
17. Climate Change
18. Medical Thriller
19. Paranormal Romance
20. Artificial Intelligence Sci-Fi

No, really, look, eggshells!

It’s that time of the year where I take a lot of my macro photography indoors rather than outdoors — which usually means seeking inspiration in strange places, like staring into the pantry for a half-hour. Which I’m sure doesn’t look at all weird to my family. When they ask what I’m doing, I just mumble, “Staring at a portal into forever,” and let them wonder.

Anyway, I am freshly returned from the Elgin Literary Fest — ELF! — and thanks to the organizers for having me and the nice folks who came out to see me. I like small conferences like that sometimes; they let you connect with people on a more personal level because you aren’t shuttled from one thing to the next.

Though traveling to the fest created a few minor travel woes, coming back was neat in a couple ways, particularly as it relates to this writing career that sustains me: first, while in the Chicago airport (ORD), I found some of my Miriam Black books at Barbara’s Bookstore near gate E5, and for the first time, I signed them! I’ve been hesitant in the past because I’m still vaguely certain that me putting my name in books actually destroys what little value they already possess — but this time I went up and asked, “Hi, I’m that weird beardo who wrote those books, do you want me to ink all over them,” and the nice man behind the counter knew who I was and was happy to have me sign them. (Maybe he burned them afterward, I dunno.)

And then — then! — on the flight, I sat next to a young guy, early-20s. We didn’t talk during the flight outside of the cursory HEY HI HELLOs and SORRY I ACCIDENTALLY ELBOWED YOU BECAUSE THESE SEATS ARE DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE TWO MALNOURISHED TODDLERS.

But then, as we were landing, he turned to me and said, “Can I ask you something?”

Sure.

And he said, “Is this you?”

Then he tilts a magazine toward me.

And there is a two-page ad for Del Rey’s STAR WARS books, featuring AFTERMATH and BLOODLINE, and there is my big ol’ dopey face staring back at me. So, of course, I said, “No,” and he said, “Are you sure?” and then I said, “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME, COPPER,” and I threw my pretzels in his eyes and ran for the exit, except the door hadn’t been opened to the gate yet so I had to sulk back to the seat.

Okay, no, I said, “Yes,” and then laughed because it was weird.

And then we talked for a little while — he had my books but his brother took them first, he was a huge Claudia Gray fan, he loved the new canon stuff and TLJ (whew), and it was nice. Also a pretty strange moment where someone not only recognizes me, but has a magazine with an advertisement in it. He had just bought the magazine, by the looks of it, in the airport — it was specifically some kind of Star Wars magazine, so I guess that was probably pretty weird for him, too. “I think this guy on the page is also the guy sitting next to me.”

Cool.

What else is going on?

Well, The Raptor & The Wren came out last week — and I’m getting the exact reports I hoped to get, which consists of various shocked and flummoxed and soul-crushed mouth-noises. This book is definitely one of those “twist of the knife” books, so I’m glad my stabby bits landed appropriately. (Seriously, storytellers are monsters and you should never trust us for one hot second.) Launched the book at Let’s Play Books, and that was a hoot. Get it? A hoot? Because there’s an owl on the cover? DON’T YOU JUDGE ME.

If you want a signed copy, Let’s Play Books can get you one.

Otherwise, grab in print or e-book as you see fit.

And here I will make the earnest plea that if you have read my books…

Reviews seriously matter. Please go to your favorite REVIEW RECEPTACLE and deposit your review there, if you’re willing and able. Those reviews lead others to the books, and they also contribute (sadly) to algorithms that make the books show up more strongly in search results. Thank you in advance. Mahalo for your kokua.

I think that’s it.

Now I go, and I begin editing the mega-book that is WANDERERS.

Wish me luck.

*puts on chainmail bra and asbestos pants*

So, yesterday, I went to the airport to catch a flight. I was there appropriately early (I think at this point they ask you to be there 72 hours before your flight), and I waited around and fucked about on my phone. Then I went to the bathroom because boarding was going to begin soon.

When I came out, the departure time increased by 20 minutes.

No big deal. Tiny delay. Doable.

Then the time changed in front of my eyes and it became two hours.

The gate did not announce it (it’s United, after all, which means I should probably just be happy they gave me a seat in the plane and not on the wing), and I went to the counter to see if it was real or just some kinda funky glitch.

The woman behind the counter made a face. Not a good face.

Do they know what’s wrong, I asked her?

Another face. No, she told me, but whispered: I think it’s mechanical.

By now, a small line of people had gathered behind me. (One guy said last four United flights he was on had mechanical trouble, and were delayed or canceled. Another guy told his friend, “WHAT IF WE TRY TO GET ON THE DETROIT FLIGHT, THEN WE RENT A CAR IN DETROIT AND DRIVE TO CHICAGO.”)

Then she said that they were authorized (and told) to rebook passengers where possible — problem is, it was a small airport, so I had to rebook for today, a day later. All told, not a giant woe for me, because the airport isn’t far from my house, and the event at my destination (the Elgin Lit Fest) doesn’t actually require me until tomorrow anyway — so, ideally, all good.

But it did prompt people to share various travel woes, of being stuck in places for hours or days, of dealing with Planes, Trains & Automobiles levels of frustration. So, I thought, that would make a good cornerstone for some flash fiction.

So, do that.

Write a piece of story which revolves around travel woes of some kind.

How you interpret that is up to you. Get inventive. Any genre is fine.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: February 2nd, Friday, noon EST

Write at your blog.

Drop a link to the story in the comments below.

Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and he wanted to pop in to talk about those New Year’s Resolutions you might have — especially the ones that might be waning at this point in the new year.

* * *

One day a year or so ago, I was going through some old papers, and I discovered a notecard with my 2003 New Year’s resolutions on it. The depressing thing was that I hadn’t carried out any of the resolutions in the last 15 years: I hadn’t developed a regular meditation practice, I didn’t exercise regularly, and I’d not only failed to lose 5 pounds, I’d gained 5 pounds.

I’m not alone in living a life of good intentions and unfilled resolutions. Approximately 80% of those who join a gym in January with the aim of getting fit stop going by February. My guess is that a similar stat might apply to those who resolve to develop a year-round writing habit.

I have a theory: I think most people give up on their resolutions because they focus too much on the uncomfortableness of the what they aspire to do—whether it’s sweating on a stationary bike or over their laptop—instead of focusing on the why they want to do it. Think about it. Why should you wake up and write when you could immerse yourself in endless entertainments literally available at your fingertips? Why not just binge watch shows on Netflix and eat handfuls of gummie bears?

A few years ago, I met a famous novelist at a conference. He’d sold millions of books. It seemed like he published a new book every time the wind changed direction. As we talked about NaNoWriMo, though, he asked me, “How many novels does the world need, anyway? Why should so many people write?”

I sometimes twitch with churlishness when I hear questions like this. Somewhere within the question, I hear a gate crashing down on people’s creativity. I see a sign, “Don’t presume to call yourself a writer.” I feel a judgment: Why write a novel unless it’s going to get published and made into a product to be purchased and consumed? Why write a novel if you’re not going to make money from it?

The question disregards the spirit that has guided every writer since the beginning of time: the need to create just for the sake of creating. The need to shape the world, see through others’ eyes, tame reality, find oneself, lose oneself—to touch what is magical, astonishing, and wondrous; to exult the possible, to make the strange obvious and the obvious strange. And much more. This need is what we need to remember every day in order to show up at our writing gym and write the story that is demanding to be told.

Such questions dog every writer, though, and they too often smother their creative impulse and prevent them from showing up. In fact, each year I talk to hundreds of people who have perfected a peculiar and disturbing art: the art of telling themselves why they can’t jump in and write the novel of their dreams.

“I’ve never taken any classes. I don’t have an MFA.”

“I’m not a real writer. Other people are real writers.”

Or, worst of all, they say, “I’m not a creative type.”

I call this the “other syndrome” — as in “other people do this, but not me.”

We’ve all been there, right? We open up the pages of a magazine, and we read a profile of a magnificently cloaked and coiffed artistic being—a twirling scarf, moody eyes, locks of hair falling over a pensive brow (an artistic version of that super fit creature with the rippling abs at the gym who makes us feel inadequate). We read the witticisms and wisdom the celebrated artistic being dispenses while drinking a bottle of wine with a reporter one afternoon in a hamlet in Italy. The artistic being tells of creative challenges and victories achieved. There’s a joke about a movie deal that fell through, and then the one that won an Oscar. There’s talk about a recently published book, the one that called to them and gave them artistic fulfillment like no other book ever had.

And, as we sit in our house that is so very far from Italy, and we look across the kitchen, over the dishes on the counter, to the cheap bottle of wine from Safeway, and the phone rings with a call from a telemarketer, just as a bill slides off the stack of bills, we tell ourselves, “Other people are writers. Other people get the good fortune to have been born with a twirling scarf around their neck. Other people get to traipse through Italy to find a fantastic novel calling them. Other people get to be who they want to be—whether it’s through family connections, blessed luck, or natural talent. But that’s not me. That’s other people.”

And you know what, we’re right. The life of an artist is for others — because we just said so, and in saying so, we make it true.

But here’s the rub. Even after negating our creative potential, we’re bound to wake up the next day to a tickle of an idea dancing in a far corner of our mind, a memory that is trying to push a door open, a strange other world that is calling us. We wash those dishes, we pay that stack of bills, we drink that cheap bottle of wine, but we know there’s something else—we know there’s something more.

And there is something more. There’s the creative life. You don’t need a certificate for it, you don’t need to apply to do it, you don’t even need to ask permission to do it. You just have to claim it—and claim it every day by showing up to do it.

It’s not easy, of course. There will be naysayers, those people who think it’s silly or trivial to be a “creative type”, those who think it’s audacious and pretentious for you to write a novel, those who think you can’t do it because you lack the qualifications and the training. Unfortunately, because humans are social beings by design, we tend to measure our worth according to the opinions of others. Opinions that come from who knows where, but most likely others’ own insecurities, their need for you not to fulfill yourself—because if you fulfill yourself, you might make them feel small.

The arts don’t belong to a chosen few, though. Quite the opposite: every one of us is chosen to be a creator by virtue of being human. If you’re not convinced of this, just step into any preschool and observe the unbridled creative energy of kids as they immerse themselves in fingerpainting, telling wild stories, banging on drums, and dancing just to dance. They’re creative types because they breathe.

So, when I’m asked what happens to all of those novels—as if they only matter if something happens to them beyond the wonderfulness of their creation—I always see a world of writers with an unquenchable thirst for storytelling. Nearly 500,000 people, including 150,000 kids and teens, participate in National Novel Writing Month each year. They write because humans are wired to make meaning of the world through stories. They write because stories are the vehicles that we navigate the world with.

You’re a writer because you write. There’s no other definition. Your task as a human being is to find that maker within, to decide that you’re not “other,” you’re a creator. That impetus is what makes life meaningful. After food, shelter, and love, I believe it’s what we need most in life.

So, please, if one of your resolutions is to develop a writing habit this year — to be a writer! — think about your why. Your why will help you wake up early or stay up late to put words on the page. It will help you slay naysayers and elbow aside negativity coming from your Inner Editor. It will push you forward to “the end,” and then onward to your next story. Those mythical “other people” aren’t writers. You are. It all starts with that simple belief.

Grant Faulkner is executive director of National Novel Writing Month and co-founder of 100 Word Story. He recently published Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, where portions of this essay originally appeared.

I live in a building with hundreds of other families, maybe thousands. We live here, eat here, sleep here. Our kids learn here. The adults work here. And once, maybe a few times a week, people enter into our building and they take our people away from us. They rob them in the dark. They steal them from us forever. Many times they take our children, sometimes they take the adults.

This building has no doors.

We tell the keepers of this building, the Doormakers, “We have no doors. That’s why they can get in and take our people. We don’t have doors at the front of the building. Our homes inside the building have no doors. Our rooms inside our homes have no doors. They can just walk in. They can just take us whenever they want.”

And the Doormakers tell us, “I’m so sorry.” They clasp their hands together, and they wring them together like they’re squeezing water from a sponge. The look shared on their faces is one of pain. “You are in our thoughts,” they say, sympathetically. “You are in our prayers. It’s the Shadow People,” they say. “From out there. From beyond the Building.”

“So you’ll make us doors?” we ask. “You’ll put them on for us?”

“Doors won’t help,” the Doormakers say, regrettably. “The Shadow People will just open them and walk right in anyway.”

“I have a solution to that,” you tell them. “Locks. We lock the doors.”

“But then all doorways will be impassable,” the Doormakers say. “You’re talking about closing off all the doorways, forever. We can’t do that.”

“No, what we can do is give everyone keys. Keys to those who should be able to use the doors. We’ll all have keys to the building. And those who live in their homes will have keys to their homes. And those who live in the rooms of our homes can have keys to those rooms.”

“Keys are very costly,” the Doormakers say.

“So are our lives,” we answer.

“You’re trying to restrict all freedom of movement,” the Doormakers say.

“What? No, no, no, we’re just trying to stay safe.”

Here, the Doormakers pull out The Document. We all signed the Document in order to live here, and the Doormaker points to a part of The Document that has long been underlined, underlined so many times the pen has nearly worn through the paper. (No other of the Document’s precepts have been underlined in such a way, and the Doormakers don’t seem to remember what the rest of The Document even says.) “Look here,” the Doormakers say.

They point to the precept which reads:

The well-regulated hallways will represent the right of the Building’s people to have unrestricted freedom-of-movement.

“See?” the Doormakers say. “We cannot restrict movement.”

“But that’s not precisely what the precept says,” you explain. “It suggests that first, this is about the hallways, not our homes or the front of the building, but it also notes that the hallways are well-regulated. The hallways have no doors, no cameras, no regulation at all. Anyone can walk down them and enter our houses, our bedrooms, our most private places. That’s how they’re taking us.” Whoever they are, we think but do not say.

“That is the cost of freedom,” they say.

“But this isn’t freedom, this is the opposite of freedom.”

Being taken is not freedom, we point out.

“Why do you hate freedom?” the Doormakers say. They tut-tut us, and hurry back to the stairway, to head to their penthouses which we have never seen. We feel uncertain of what to do. We don’t want to restrict all freedom, do we? This seems like common sense, but now we’re left wondering — are the Doormakers right?

At night, more of our children are taken from us.

We announce it over the intercoms, to the whole building. Every day or three, a tally of those who were taken from us. We’ve grown resistant to it. The most we do is listen to hear if the names are names we know; if not, maybe we don’t listen so hard. In part because it’s too sad to think about for too long. In part because it’s just becoming noise. The background sound of the tragedies of the universe, unstoppable and implacable, we tell ourselves. Like old age. Like entropy.

But sometimes we get mad again.

We get mad when we know the names, when we know who were taken.

We try to talk to the Doormakers about it, telling them, “At least do something. Put some boxes in front of the door. Or half-doors. Even an alarm so we can hear when people are coming through. Or cameras, to see who is taking us.”

They say they know who is taking us. The Shadow People. And they mumble at us about how sad they are for us, and how we are in their hearts, and then they hurry back to their penthouses.

One of us looks up the history of The Building, and they find documents from The Architects who built it — the Architects didn’t intend for the Building to have no doors, it turns out. They wanted doors. It’s why they created the Doormakers to govern the building. They didn’t want people from inside or outside the building to be able to enter our homes! They wanted the hallways to be clear, yes, but that’s it — just the hallways. Our homes are our homes. We send a missive up to the Doormakers — they’ve stopped meeting with us — to tell them what we found. We receive a message over the intercom as a result thanking us for our due diligence, our time, our thoughtfulness, and that’s all they say.

“Does that mean they’ll do something?” we ask one another.

“Maybe,” we tell one another. “Maybe they’ll make us doors.”

But weeks go by. We lose dozens again. Some point out, “Really, as a percentage, it’s not that we’re losing that many. Do we really need doors?” But they say it with a kind of listlessness, like they’ve given up, given in. Someone else says, “Acceptable losses, really, for our freedom,” but no one seems to believe that. We want our doors.

So we decide to make them ourselves.

Our floor, and the people of other floors, take it into their own hands to put together doors. We’ve never made doors before, and it’s not our purview, but we manage to cobble together crude gates and hatches with rough hinges and uneven knobs. Someone on our floor is even good with metal, so he makes for us locks and keys for our homes. And that night we hear knobs rattling. Our doors shudder against their frames. But none come in. And that night, none go missing.

In the morning, the Doormakers appear.

They have hammers. They strike the knobs off our doors. They pry the hinges off the wall. “No restricting freedom of movement,” they say firmly, hammers in hand. Then they head back upstairs in an incredulous huff.

We look at our handiwork, smashed. We wonder what will come.

That night, more of us are taken again. Nineteen children.

The night after that, a respite, and same with the two nights hence, but then it begins again in earnest, three children, then four women, then some of those who work in the offices of the Building — they are taken, pulled from their desks and hiding places through the open doorways, and then they’re gone from us forever. Maybe to join the shadows, we don’t even know.

The intercom announces the lost and the taken.

Sometimes we’re not even sure if it’s announcing everyone or not.

Then more on our floor have been taken. We know them. We know their names. When they come on over the intercom, we weep.

“We have to do something. We have to make the Doormakers listen.”

So, we decide to go against protocol. Together we march to the stairs and up, up, up we go, to the penthouse. To the Doormakers. But there, we find the most curious thing:

A door.

They have a door.

And it’s locked.

“This must be a mistake,” one of us says. “That’s not possible.”

“Hypocrisy,” another says.

“Maybe they need the door to protect themselves.”

“From who? The Shadow People?”

But we fear the real answer: it’s to protect them from us. (Some of us wonder aloud: who are the Shadow People? Are they even real? Are they even a threat?) So we work very hard to take down the door. We use our bare hands. We use tools from our kitchens. We chip away at the mortar and brick, we pull away hinges with our now-bloodied fingers.

The door falls.

The penthouse is revealed. A beautiful world. Gold and silver. Polished wood. And doors everywhere. Doors to every room. Some locked, some not. We hear voices behind one, and this time we offer no finesse — we simply slam ourselves up against it again and again, the bulk of us forming a battering ram, until the door falls and we tumble into a room.

In this room is a table, big and grand.

One one side of this very long table are the Doormakers. On the other are figures in suits. They look like us. We’ve seen some of them here before — they live here. In the Building, on the upper floors. A briefcase sits between them on the table, a golden glow coming from within it. The Doormakers quickly snap the case shut, but when they do, a piece of paper — a contract — slips off the table, stirred by the breeze of the closing lid. The paper lands at our feet. It contains a list of names. We know some of those names. Names of those who have been taken.

Before we know what’s happening, bodyguards of the Doormakers are wrestling us back out of this room, then out of the penthouse. They quickly put up another door — thicker, made of metal, with hinges thick as our arms. All the while we wail and yell and kick and thrash. They’re the ones taking us, we cry. They’ve made a deal with those who take us. There aren’t any shadowy people. It’s them. They’re taking us. They’re paying the Doormakers to not build us any doors, to keep the hallways open. The guards drag us down, down, down, past the floors on which we live, all the way to the basement.

There, too, we find doors.

We’re thrown into rooms. The doors slam shut behind us. We’re left in the dark. The guards hiss at us, tell us we’re the Shadow People, now, and we can have doors if we want to. These doors. Doors we can’t open. Doors that are locked tight, sealing us shut behind them. We realize too late that the freedom they talk about isn’t our freedom, but theirs.

We pound on the doors, screaming to be let out.

These are the doors the Doormakers made.

And we will help to make them.

* * *

THE RAPTOR & THE WREN: Miriam Black, Book Five

Miriam Black, in lockstep with death, continues on her quest to control her own fate!

Having been desperate to rid herself of her psychic powers, Miriam now finds herself armed with the solution — a seemingly impossible one. But Miriam’s past is catching up to her, just as she’s trying to leave it behind. A copy-cat killer has caught the public’s attention. An old nemesis is back from the dead. And Louis, the ex she still loves, will commit an unforgivable act if she doesn’t change the future. 

Miriam knows that only a great sacrifice is enough to counter fate. Can she save Louis, stop the killer, and survive? 

Hunted and haunted, Miriam is coming to a crossroads, and nothing is going to stand in her way, not even the Trespasser.

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N