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January 8, 2018 / 3 Comments

Macro Monday Returns To Regularly-Scheduled Shenanigans

No, that’s not a macro photo.

OR IS IT

MAYBE THAT’S A CLOSE-UP OF A CAR WINDSHIELD

AND THAT BIRD IS JUST REALLY, REALLY TEENY-TINY

YOU DON’T KNOW

Ahem.

Hi!

Welcome back! Slowly, but surely, we kick the cold machinery that runs this place, pouring boiling water on it to unfreeze its gears and flywheels. I’m not sure we’ll return to a full-bore schedule just yet, as I’m in the midst of finishing a novel (and a somewhat important one, it being the very last Miriam Black novel, Vultures), so bear with me as everything slowly grumbles and grinds to life once more.

Finishing the last book in a series is traditionally very difficult, as it is here — compounded by the fact this is not merely a trilogy, but rather, six whole books (and a novella, and a short story). Just as you want to stick the landing on the final act of any book, you really really want to stick the landing on the final act of six books, because holy shit. But have trust: the books have been building to something, and after the, um, ending of The Raptor & The Wren, you’ll get some sense of where it’s headed — at least, until I knock you off balance once again.

That seems then to be a good segue into a review of The Raptor & The Wren, this one coming in from Library Journal:

[Stuff cut out because slightly spoilery.] With a dark story line and an even darker protagonist, this vivid adventure takes readers on an emotional, violent ride. VERDICT: The fifth book in the series (after Thunderbird) drives further down the road into Miriam Black’s life: the trauma, the fears, and the forgiveness. It will please fans of Joe Hill and Joe Abercrombie. —Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., South Deerfield

And, in case you missed it, Let’s Play Books is running a pre-order deal — buy the book, I’ll sign it, I’ll even personalize and predict YOUR DEMISE into the pages, and they’ll get it to you on release date with free shipping. Details here.

Or you can just come to the book launch at Let’s Play Books on 1/23.

Or or or you can come hang out with me at the Elgin Literary Festival (Chicago ‘burbs) on 1/26 – 1/27, should you so decide.

Let’s see. What else is a-brewing?

You will find that my Heartland series — think John Steinbeck’s Star Wars — is on sale for a buck per book for your Kindle, so, check out Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn, and The Harvest.

ANYWAY, here, have a tweet thread, goodbye!

January 5, 2018 / 1 Comment

Tansy Rayner Roberts: Five Things I Learned Writing Girl Reporter

From the award-winning author of Cookie Cutter Superhero and Kid Dark Against the Machine comes a brand new novella about girl reporters, superheroes, and interdimensional travel

In a world of superheroes, supervillains, and a machine that can create them all, millennial vlogger and girl reporter Friday Valentina has no shortage of material to cover. Every lottery cycle, a new superhero is created and quite literally steps into the shoes of the hero before them–displacing the previous hero. While Fry may not be super-powered herself, she understands the power of legacy: her mother is none other than the infamous reporter Tina Valentina, renowned worldwide for her legendary interviews with the True Blue Aussie Beaut Superheroes and her tendency to go to extraordinary lengths to get her story.

This time, Tina Valentina may have ventured too far. 

Alongside Australia’s greatest superheroes–including the powerful Astra, dazzling Solar, and The Dark in his full brooding glory–Friday will go to another dimension in the hopes of finding her mother, saving the day, maybe even getting the story of a lifetime out of the adventure. (And possibly a new girlfriend, too.)

I still have a lot to say about superheroes.

I talk about superheroes a lot, in my everyday life. My kids and borrowed kids have grown up in a world of superhero media and my longtime love of the genre has grown a lot over the last decade because of that.

When I wrote “Cookie Cutter Superhero” for the diverse YA anthology Kaleidoscope, I felt like that was my superhero story. It said a lot of things that were important to me, particularly about the role of women in super teams. It was short and punchy and done. Then I started to get comments about how much people wanted it to be a novel, which… okay, it’s lovely, I’m not going to whinge about that feedback. But I didn’t want to write a novel about superheroes. That’s why it was a short story.

Then the Book Smugglers slipped under my defences, with their Year of the Superhero short story theme and it turned out I had one more superhero story in me: Kid Dark Against the Machine, a love letter to teen sidekicks.

I was done. I was totally done. But then Ana and Thea asked me if I could write a novella set in the universe and… well. Okay. I still have a lot to say superheroes. But this time, I wanted to write about the women who report on superheroes, the love interests who don’t actually get to punch robots. Friday Valentina and her mother fell into my head as if Lois Lane herself had thrown a typewriter at me.

I may never be done writing about superheroes.

Everyone has a little smashed avo to unpack.

I’ve been making fun of the “Millennials are killing…” memes for almost as long as they’ve existed. Australia literally invented the story about how eating decadent brunches involving avocado toast was the reason that 20-somethings weren’t starting mortgages as early as their parents did.

A big part of Girl Reporter was about showing the generational divide in media… comparing an old school broadcast journalist’s career to that of a young vlogger with all the social media at her fingertips.

But I went too far. My editors pointed out that I had written myself into a binary corner in the first draft, with too much separation between new and old media as if they are different things (spoilers: it’s all media). Worst of all, I’d had Friday falling into the same habits as the older generation, sneering at the contribution of the younger women coming up after her.

I’d done the thing I usually criticized in others, going for the easy joke based on a stereotype. So that was embarrassing.

Rewriting is a pain, but it feels good to make the universe better, even when it’s your own fictional universe. Lift as you climb became Friday’s mantra.

Sometimes you have to steal from yourself.

Readers of my fantasy novel Ink Black Magic will laugh at me when they get to the scene where our heroes are transformed into retro parodies of their own superhero costumes. I didn’t realise I’d copied myself until it was TOO LATE to take that scene out because I loved it too much.

Kill your darlings? Pfft. I will defend my darlings to the death, even against myself. Fight me.

Sex is easy…

When my editors asked me to add a sex scene to tie the story up at the end, that part was easy. I adore writing sex scenes, and I wrote this one in a single sitting, without hesitation.

I once read a ‘how to’ guide on writing sex that said a scene can either be sexy or funny, not both. I have pretty much made it my mission in life to prove that advice wrong with everything I write. You learn so much from characters when you see how they turn each other on, and you learn even more when you find out what makes them laugh.

…but Romance is hard.

Writing romantic storylines are agony for me. I admire romance so much in other people’s books, but there’s something in me that always wants to undercut the moment, to leap over the tension and tropes and pretend they don’t exist. To skip to the good part, where the relationship is established and there are inside jokes and someone’s making a cup of tea.

Writing romance embarrasses me in a way that writing sex doesn’t, and I don’t know what that means about me as a writer! I’m still working on it.

What I do love to write is unromance. The characters that hook up because it’s convenient and need an intervention to figure out they’re genuinely into each other. The ones who aren’t ready to make the leap of faith yet (and oops, too late, the story’s over). The ones who admit they want to kiss each other right away, because who can be bothered with ‘will they, won’t they?’ Given a choice between star-cross’d lovers and the friends who stand on the sideline making fun of the star-cross’d lovers, I’ll take Beatrice and Benedick every time.

The central emotional relationships in Girl Reporter are about family – Friday’s baggage about her busy mother and unknown father, her intensely platonic ‘you’re my brother now, live with it’ friendship with Griff. Her romance with one of the female superheroes sneaked into the margins of the story, playing it cool, pretending it was no big deal.

(Turned out, it’s kind of a big deal!)

(I fell in love with them anyway)

There’s another sneaky romance in Girl Reporter too, which also manages to be both sweeping and epic. Trust me. You’ll know it when you see it.

* * *

TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS is an award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, feminist essays, and humour. She lives in Tasmania, Australia, with her husband and 2 superhero daughters.

Tansy Rayner Roberts: Website

Girl Reporter: Amazon | B&N

January 5, 2018 / 3 Comments

Awards Eligibility Post, 2017

I’m told now is the time to get those awards eligibility posts out there, and I don’t usually do these, but I’ve had a few people ask, so here we are.

I have complicated feelings about awards and eligibility posts — from me, not from you — because I like to think, if I wrote something really good, really impactful, you’d remember it. It would’ve stuck with you. That said, 2017 was the year that lasted ten years, and I have full-facedly forgotten what books actually came out in 2017. I only recently realized that Kameron Hurley’s STARS ARE LEGION came out in 2017? I thought it was 2016? (Probably because I read it in 2016, I think.) As a sidenote, I recommend that book and others over at the Book Smugglers.

So, given that two of my releases — Thunderbird and Empire’s End came out very early in 2017, I guess I’ll pop by and say, hey, those books.

I wrote them.

I hope you liked them.

I suspect there exists a zero percent chance anyone would nominate Empire’s End or the now-completed Aftermath trilogy for any Major Awards, because I don’t think that tie-ins tend to earn them. I am very proud of those books, though, and tried to own them and own the voice even while sharing this epic universe with all the Stars and all the Wars. And I do enjoy the fantasy of them earning a nomination, if only for the underwear-chafing that ensues amongst a certain bigoted cabal of very loud toilet-humans.

Bonus: I wrote a Jar-Jar chapter, and I think it is very good. Which I know, doesn’t sound like reality, but it is reality. It happened. Here we are.

Also, there’s Damn Fine Story, though I’ve no idea what award that would even go for, or if a book that talks about how the Emperor’s name is really a Star Wars version of “Steve” really deserves an award anyway.

So, there you have it.

Happy award season, word-nerds.

*stomps button with foot*

*trap door opens*

*quietly oozes into the open floor portal*

January 5, 2018 / 89 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Danger of Undeserved Power

AND WE ARE BACK.

*waves*

The holidays are over, and the time to commence with great wordsmithy is upon us. And by “great,” I mean, ennnh, you know, a thousand words or so. Let’s jump in with a theme, or, rather, the hint of a theme — the overall topic is the danger of undeserved power. What that means to you or says to you is yours alone.

Get writing.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, January 12th, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Drop a link to it in the comments below.

January 4, 2018 / 6 Comments

Let Me Predict Your Death: Pre-Order The Raptor & The Wren

Psst.

You.

Yeah, you.

If you want to pre-order a signed copy of the fifth Miriam Black book, The Raptor & The Wren, then Let’s Play Books has you covered. They’ll ship it to you for free, and I’ll sign it, and for extra fun, if the book is personalized I will predict in it your demise.

*opens up trenchcoat*

*inside are various implements of murder: a machete, a blow-gun, a garden weasel, a Venus flytrap, a cokehead squirrel, a portable black hole that spins and spins and from which emanates dread whispers of your true name and social security number*

See, some may already know that when I sign the Miriam Black books in person, I sign them with a prediction (usually batshit absurd) of your death. (Translation: “nibbled to death by grackles,” not “I dunno, bowel cancer?”) I will do this to these books. You gimme a book to sign, I will sign it with a prediction of your gloriously bizarre end. Just as Miriam would, and could. (Note: This also applies to any of the Miriam Black books you buy, which are also part of the deal.)

Details here at the Let’s Play Books website.

Order by Tuesday, the 16th, to get the book by launch day.

Also, be aware that I’ll be at Let’s Play Books to launch the book on the 23rd, if you’re in (or can get to) the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. Details here at the bookstore’s Facebook page.

Publisher’s Weekly recently said of The Raptor & The Wren — “Wendig is in top form for his fifth horror-thriller… [he] expertly splashes Miriam’s considerable emotional pain across the page, never sparing her the price of her gut-wrenching circumstances, and closes with a shocking twist that is a true game-changer.”

The description of the book:

Miriam Black, in lockstep with death, continues on her quest to control her own fate in The Raptor and the Wren, the brand-new fifth book in the Miriam Black series.

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.

It’s out January 23rd.

Vultures, the sixth and final Miriam Black book, releases January 2019.

Pre-order your signed, doom-inscribed copy at Let’s Play Books.

December 28, 2017 / 10 Comments

Writer Resolution, 2018: Write With Intentionality

Last year, the resolution for 2017 could easily be the same as 2018 — I told you to WRITE DESPITE, meaning, no matter how deep the world is buried beneath an endlessly burning pile of horseshit, carve out some time and some space and create something anyway. Because writing is a form of resistance. That one still works, should you so require it.

This year, the writing resolution is for me less political and more personal:

Write with intentionality.

What it means, is this: you can write a story by simply wanting to tell it, and then telling it. You can let the story be, if you will, a river into which you have been tossed. And this can feel right and proper, because a story feels like a winding, animated thing. It pulls you along, and ideally, pulls the reader along, too. A lot of storytelling comprises, as Bob Ross calls them, “happy accidents.” Meaning, moments and pieces that seem serendipitous, that seem born of some strange narrative alchemy that is not precisely in your control — you just slapped together a couple of elements and it made, I dunno, a new element, or a lightning strike, or a rainy day, or a magic wish-granting bear. (What, you don’t have a magic wish-granting bear? WRITE HARDER.)

Happy accidents are good. Storytelling should be that way, sometimes.

But it isn’t always that way, either.

In writing comics, I’ve learned the power of really taking the time to — for lack of a better term — practice your aim. Writing a novel often feels like spraying the pages down with machine gun bullets, just chewing prose until you rat-a-tat a story into the fucking wall. But comics, man, you have a narrative economy to deal with. You have so much of a page, and only so many ways to frame out what happens. It’s fucking hard. It’s like writing a kid’s picture book. You ever try writing one of those? Haha, you think they’re gonna be easy, because it’s like, 100 words. But turns out, making 100,000 words work is easier than making 100 work. Because in a hundred-thousand-words, you can spackle over a lot of dents. In a hundred, every tiny ding, every off-angle, every bit of dirt on the lens — it is keenly seen, diminishing the potency of the tale told.

Film, too, works this way: you only have two hours-ish, and you have to make each moment on the screen, with image and dialogue and music, a goddamn triumph. (Might I recommend EVERY FRAME A PAINTING? It is now retired, but the archive exists, and go right now to check out “Edgar Wright, How To Do Visual Comedy.”)

This year I wrote a monster-sized book. I’ve gone on about it (sorry!) because holy shit, I have never done this before. Before this year, the longest book I’d ever written was Zer0es, which was 125,000 words (and is on sale, along with Invasive, for $3.99 right now, prod, prod). The average Miriam Black novel is around 70-80,000 words. This book, Wanderers, ended up at 260,000 words, more than twice my longest book.

I have no idea what the final word count will be. I await edits from the (truly spectacular) editor, who I trust will help me shape this thing into the massive epic horror-ish siege weapon I need it to become. But in writing this thing, I tried to take it slow, even as I wrote it fast. I tried to pause with scenes and chapters and ask myself along the way: why is this here? Not only that, but what do I want this scene, this chapter, to do? Specifically, what do I want it to do to the reader? I want them to feel a certain way, so how do I engineer that feeling with story and character? Often, first drafts involve me rolling myself into a ball-shape and then pitching myself down the side of a mountain, screaming as I tumble unstoppably forward… but this time I tried to be more deliberate, more aware, of what I was doing, and how, and why. I tried to feel every step of the thing. That doesn’t mean I was successful, mind you. But it does mean that I tried to develop a keener, more highly-tuned sense of what the story was as I was writing it.

I tried to treat every page like a frame in a comic book.

What’s happening?

What’s the economy?

What’s the point? What am I saying? What should you be feeling?

And I would engineer it ahead, too — I would think, okay, this is a downbeat, I need an upbeat soon. This is some dark shit, how do I intersperse with humor for contrast? This next bit, I want to hurt the reader, I want to hurt ’em so damn bad, so how do I reach through the page, grab the reader by the heart, rip out the heart, then force them to re-eat their own heart again?

It was difficult.

Again, no idea if I was successful.

It’s like playing chess instead of checkers. It’s not chopping onions; it’s filleting a fish.

It helped me understand the story better, that intentionality. Usually it’s a thing I tend to in subsequent drafts, but now I try (key word: try) to get my hands around its throat on the first draft. I want a firm grip from the first page. Hell, the first line.

That’s not to say there are not, contained within, a number of happy accidents — there are, and ideally, always will be. (In Vultures right now I wrote a random Uber-driver character who I liked so much he has become a primary supporting character with agency to push and pull on the plot. He was an extra, but now he’s got a supporting role.) And it’s not to say it made a cleaner first draft; arguably, I think it made it messier, because if things didn’t quite fit for my vision of how a chapter or scene needed to go, I’d just scrap them, leaving the floor littered with plot scraps and swatches of ill-fitting narrative. But it helped me get a larger sense of the thing. And it helped me focus up what I’m trying to do, not just in the macro, but in the micro, too.

So, for me, and maybe for you, there’s power in writing with intentionality.

Decide how you want the reader to feel, and write that way.

Decide what you’re trying to say, and why, and then fucking say it.

Know the purpose, aim your voice, write with vigor and deliberation.

Take command. Be confident. Be willful.

And play, too, to find out how to make it work. Compose and recompose a scene. Go one way with it, then rewrite it another way. Learn to see how intentional changes make for a butterfly effect in the work. Learn the weave and the weft of it. Don’t just go down the river. Put objects in the water, see how fast they move. See if they block the flow or speed it up or break the river in twain.

Write with intentionality.

Try it out.

Let me know how it goes, how it feels, how it works.

And I’ll see you in 2018.

* * *

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

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