I first discovered Molly Tanzer through her book, Vermilion, which really has one of the greatest covers I’ve ever seen. And, as it turns out, it has an equally awesome book underneath that cover. So, at this point, Molly can do no wrong, and she has my sword. And by my sword, I mean, my blog. Enjoy her talking about her newest, Creatures of Will and Temper.

* * *

No one I know of has asked this about my latest novel, Creatures of Will and Temper (yet). Rather, it’s something I asked myself when I was considering the idea of writing a retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Victorian era is such a common setting for just about every sort of media you can think of, be it books, films, games, comics… was there a burning need for yet another “carriages and parlors” novel?

The answer I arrived at was, “sure, why not,” for two reasons. One, I like carriages and parlors. I also like pumpkin spice lattes, catch me outside. Two, every once in a while I get that feeling that I’ve hit on something genuinely cool—or at the very least, something I’d think was genuinely cool if I saw it explored in someone else’s novel—and I got that feeling about this wild hare to do a Dorian Gray novel with a gender-swapped Dorian and a gender-swapped Lord Henry Wotton. And épée fencing. And demons!

I studied Victorian literature and culture in graduate school, and so I felt well prepared for the task but…no lie, it was also extremely intimidating. Wilde’s style is distinctive and masterful, and Dorian Gray is one of those literary figures whom almost everyone knows reasonably well. Even people who haven’t read the original novel know that Dorian Gray has a magic picture that becomes increasingly gross while he stays young and magnificent even as he does terrible things. If I was going to do something interesting, I’d need to nod at what everyone knows about that classic work of literature, and then go beyond it. Otherwise, why bother?

I’d also need to prove why another Victorian novel was necessary, if only to myself.

I actually considered doing a modern-day retelling of Dorian Gray, but that didn’t excite me in the same way. I also considered a second-world fantasy setting that hearkened to Victorian England, but involved like… a bee-based religion, and some other weird stuff. That was very obviously the wrong choice. Even in the planning stages the worldbuilding was taking too much of my energy away from what I wanted to be the focus of the book.

What I wanted the focus to be was something not found in the original: relationships between women. Specifically in my project that manifested as the relationship between two sisters, the vivacious 17-year-old Dorina Gray, who longs to become a lady art critic and aesthete, and her older sister Evadne, who would like to be left alone to practice her fencing and think proper thoughts. I also wanted to play with Wilde’s themes of mentorship and the consequences of decadence, and construct an extraplanar cosmology, for lack of a better way to put it.

All of that made it clear to me that Victorian London was ideal setting for this project. One can only have so many moving parts in a novel, and late 19^th century England was a setting I was already pretty familiar with. It’s also a setting other people are pretty familiar with. You say to someone “The streets of London were misty that night” and for better or for worse they can immediately picture what you’re talking about. Therefore, the work I needed to do to establish setting was blessedly minimal—I think it is what I think people younger than me call a “hack.”

That’s not to say I didn’t indulge my impulse to research. I did, and I learned things I didn’t know before—like that women at that time didn’t dine in public. A big action sequence was added to the book after I spent an enjoyable, if wet, afternoon in the famous Seven Dials area of London. But I also relied heavily on the reader’s assumed knowledge borne of reading some other book or seeing some other film, such as A Christmas Carol or Dracula.

So… that’s why Victorian London. Again. I could go on, nerding out about how that time and that place is also fascinating to me for a lot of reasons like changing social roles, and fin de siècle anxieties, and other stuff… but the truth is, I needed something easy to be the backdrop as I wrestled with the bigger thematic issues in Creatures of Will and Temper.

(Also, carriages! And parlors!)

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Creatures of Will and Temper: Indiebound | Powells | Amazon | B&N | iTunes

I joined Mastodon at the behest of Greg Pak.

You can find me here.

I have thoughts, if you care to read them. (Note: these are thoughts from a NON-TECH PERSON, who is increasingly more interested in technology that does not challenge me with literally any difficulty at all. Because I am lazy and old-ish, shut up.)

1.) It’s like Twitter. Mostly?

2.) Clarification: it’s like Twitter at the surface level. It’s a bit off in that regard, in much the same way it’s different going from the United States to Australia, but it’s not that different. Ostensibly, things work the same, even if the names are different and some of the minor processes vary. “Oh, cookies here are called ‘biscuits.’ Toilets are called ‘salad bowls.’ Spiders are called ‘venomous terriers.’ Otherwise everything is the same!” In Mastodon, tweets are toots (heh), and your timelines are a little different, but otherwise, it’s kinda Twitter. There exists, however, a deeper level here, with instances serving as communities and chat rooms, but I suspect you never really need to engage with that level if you don’t want to. Arguably, it could serve as a reasonable Twitter clone without you ever leaving the circle of comfortable firelight you’ve long enjoyed.

3.) Upon joining, I was instantly talking to people with little to no effort.

4.) It reminds me of the early days of Twitter. In a good way!

5.) Instances are confusing. The prevalent metaphor seems to be, “Well, see, it’s like how if you have a GMAIL address, you can write me at my HOTMAIL address,” and here’s where I yell at you for still having a HOTMAIL address because, really? Who are you, my grandmother? But it’s really nothing like email except in that background way — it’s far, far more like old-school BBSes, which is too old for you to probably remember, but I ran one as a SysOp so it clicks for me. Or, imagine an MMO server on a major MMO that you create, moderate, administrate.

6.) Instances are essentially little fiefdoms — communities controlled by admins, but right now, if I want to join a different community, I need to create a new account, which means any followers I have accumulated elsewhere do not follow me. That can be a feature if you want your follower community to be similarly limited, but a bug if you use social media as an aggregate (which I do). I’m told that they may be working on creating universal logins or ways to port followers over, but I’m also told that they’re so strongly opposed to any kind of centralization that it won’t ever happen. No idea. Fingers crossed.

7.) The fiefdom thing is… well, okay, on the one hand, I do kinda miss the old days where you had things sliced up more finely, whether in terms of forums and LiveJournal and chatrooms or what-have-you? But as anyone who lived in those eras knows, you also open yourself up to drama. Like, it’s great to have more local, decentralized admins, but it’s also possible that those admins could subject their entire communities to drama and fickle application of rules. BBS drama was a real thing once upon a time and could easily replicate itself here. You could build a following somewhere, and a fickle admin could wipe that away in a moment. That’s fine if Mastodon remains small and not important — but as your community gets bigger, as your following means more to you (as it does now on Twitter and Facebook), it puts a lot of power over your online experience in the hands of a lot of smaller, more random admins. Some of this has reportedly already happened, with some admins up and deleting whole instances. Another point in favor of centralized logins, and treating instances like “rooms” rather than entirely separate island-nations that require entirely new visas to enter.

8.) Mastodon was sold to me as “Twitter, but without the Nazis!” Which is great! But I’m no longer so sure. They’re not there now, but I also don’t see exactly how enforcement will work better than the already-craptastic Twitter. Like, I get that individual admins can create strong enforcement against them! And that’s dandy. And I get that one instance can arguably ban another instance because they have Nazis in them. But leaving control to a bunch of little digital city-states is not promising. It leaves a lot of room for Nazis (“Nazis” being shorthand to include any number of turd-humans) to, say, mob a single instance and force the admins to do constant defense. It also leaves Nazis room to exploit their presence in one instance to get that instance banned — say, you join mastodon.sjw.wonderland, and you believe that Nazis will stay on nazi.shithead.island, but really, they’re going to 4chan their way into your SJW instance just to fucking tank it if they can. Mastodon as a small entity of social media will handle this problem well. If it gets bigger, too big, I don’t think it will. It’ll feel too much like the Wild West, which is a step backward for social media, not a step forward, in my mind.

9.) “Toots.” Like, I get it’s an elephant tooting, but, c’mon. I have a six-year-old. Toots. Toots. It’s funny, shut up, don’t @ me.

10.) Still, though, it’s worth mentioning that I had more fun on Mastodon yesterday than I had on Twitter yesterday. If you can curate a more boutique experience there for friends and community, I’m all for it. And they’re forward-facing with content warning tags and such, and it felt light and fun, if a little bewildering at first. (And, honestly, still a little bewildering. It feels like it’s catering more to people who grok tech well, not your average, easily bewildered user. I used to be a tech-grokker, but am no longer all that savvy in that regard.) I’m hopeful for it, and I do feel like we need an alternative to Twitter given that Twitter seems way, way behind the curve when it comes to creating a moderated, maintained environment — they’ve got rats in the walls, and seem comfortable giving the rats blue checkmarks and letting them run the joint.

More as I know it, assuming I don’t at some point just mentally check out of it (remember Ello? yeah me neither) and go back to Twitter because fuck it.

Last year around this time, we were revving up our trip to Maui, so I thought I’d pop a macro shot from our trip into this post — behold, an anole, chill enough to let me get in macro-snappin’ range. The anole is wise. Listen to the anole’s wizardly wisdom. Or whatever.

A quick hose-down of what’s up:

Invasive gets a shout-out at Sword & Laser, one of the greatest SFF podcasts of all time, so give a click and go listen. Don’t make me make you.

If you’d like to hear Ahmed Best — the voice of Jar-Jar Binks — talk about his thoughts on Jar-Jar’s portrayal in Empire’s End, look no further. Bonus: he does a reading from the book!

Also, a bunch of us Star Wars author types give some thoughts in this SyFy article about how it is to write for the Star Wars universe.

(Related: I’m also told Battlefront 2 may have some Aftermath-adjacent content?)

Lessee, what else?

The collected edition of my first proper comic book work, writing alongside Adam Christopher and with art from Drew Johnson, is finally coming out — The Shield: Daughter of the Revolution awaits. It had an, erm, erratic release schedule, so maybe you didn’t read these? Go read!

Turok, Issue 4 comes out next week, too — “Captured by cultists and recruited by rebels! The mystery of Turok’s past is illuminated as he, Nettle and Marak escape into the darkness of the tunnels beneath the Storm Lands – and their rebel guide attempts to convince Turok to kill a living god – the leader of the Varanid Empire, Imperator Vex!” GO READ IT. The penultimate chapter before everything goes holy-shit-shaped.

The third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant, is $1.99 for your ELECTRONIC BOOK DEVICE, and I don’t know why, and I don’t know for how long, but it is, so go grab it if you haven’t.

The fifth Miriam book, The Raptor & The Wren, is up for pre-order now (out January 23rd!), and also I believe ready on Netgalley for ARC review? I apologize in advance for the contents of that book, ahem. (Print, e-book.)

Thanks everyone who has so far checked out Damn Fine Story (print, e-book). I’m hoping for some of you it’s providing interesting narrative fodder to help you through the CHAOS BLENDER that is NaNoWriMo.

AAAAAAAND here is the classic, old-school authorial reminder that if you liked that book, or any of my books, please go to your nearest Review Receptacle (Goodreads, Amazon, social media) and leave a review, if you so please. Unless of course you did not like the book, in which case, please staple your negative review to the nearest goat, and then force the goat into the wastelands where it may die or be consumed by hill cannibals. Please and thank you.

If I’m scarce here this week, it’s because I’m 233,000 words into a novel and need to finish this Epic Monstrosity this week if at all possible (I literally crested 1000 pages in the Word document, which, while not equivalent to 1000 pages of printed novel, is still a Whole Lotta Motherfucking Pages). So, it is now that I put on my headlamp and go into the word-mines to dig my way clear of this rich vein of narrative ore.

BE WELL, WORD NERDS.

*disappears into the dark with a canary*

*gets hungry*

*eats the canary*

*is probably a cat*

So, I love the predictive text meme, where you tell a short little story or poem or sentence based on the predictive text your phone or mobile device gives you —

Like, last week, one was to type in “I was born” and then let predictive text fill in your autobiography, and mine came up with:

“I was born a perfectionist and a monster

I had no idea what I was doing”

And I thought, goddamn, that’s fucking good.

That’s “opening line of a memorable novel” good.

So, let’s play with predictive text here today.

Start with the words, “Once upon a time,” and then let predictive text take over the story. Keep tapping the predicted words (you should get three choices, I think, at least you do on an iPhone) until you’re satisfied with the story. Note: we’re not really looking for complete stories here, just a sentence that could serve as an interesting opening line or weird little narrative. We’re doing this in part because a good number of you are, I’m guessing, neck-deep in NaNoWriMo, so this should serve as a fast and easy steam-release of storytelling fun.

You can drop your predictive tales right into the comments below.

[My example: “Once upon a time I had a great idea, and when it got to the end, the first person who wrote it out for me died.” Commas added by me, not the predictive text.]

[EDIT: Interestingly, you can also change the predictive story by adding bits to Once upon a time — such as, “Once upon a time there was,” or “Once upon a time I was” etc.etc.]

I knew a guy named Gil who faced an incredibly difficult decision: his wife and his teenage daughter were both in the hospital at the same time with failing kidneys, the wife from cancer, the daughter from the trauma of a car accident. Grim coincidence, indeed. Both required a kidney transplant, both put on the list requiring donor organs. But Gil, of course, was a perfect match for his daughter, and as it so happened, also for his wife. Trick is, Gil only had two kidneys — he wasn’t like, loaded down with extra fucking kidneys, so he could only give one away. He could give a kidney to his wife, or he could give the organ to his daughter. The one whom he refused would be consigned to wait, ideally getting a kidney from a donor, but that person could also potentially die in the interim.

This was complicated by, well, complications. His wife was older, in her 40s, so was it wiser to give the kidney to his daughter, who had so much more life to live? But the daughter also had other trauma from the accident, and a kidney would not entirely ‘fix’ her — whereas the wife’s cancer had not yet metastasized, and so his kidney would go a greater distance, so to speak, if transplanted into her. Then one wonders, what are the emotional responses? If both survive, will one resent him? Could both? If one died, what would the response be from the survivor?

Needless to say, it’s a lot to weigh.

It is a very hard choice.

Which did he choose?

Neither, because Gil isn’t fucking real. I just made him up. I don’t think anyone is even really named Gil. That’s just folklore, like Bigfoot. We’ve all told the campfire tales about CREEPY GIL THE KIDNEY DONOR, haven’t we? THE KIDNEY IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE CAR, oh no!

But really, who gives a shit? The point remains the same:

Hard choices are interesting to us. And they are interesting to us in the context of fiction, particularly. Which means they are incredibly useful to you, as an author. Hard Choices provide an excellent, versatile tool in your narrative toolbox.

(Also, I’ve gone and tattooed HARD CHOICES across the knuckles of both of my hands. Whenever I lead a writing workshop, I jump through a paper sheet of bad prose dressed in a wrestling onesie, and then I punch the air with both fists — *punch* “HARD” *punch* “CHOICES” *kicks the air* “LET’S WRITE SOME MOTHERFUCKING STORIES,” I yell. It’s really successful and you can hire me to motivate you.)

Consider, if you will —

A hard choice provides:

a) conflict, because it puts the character in conflict with herself and with whatever consequences will come

b) mystery, because we the reader do not know what the character will choose, and what calculus will lead to that choice in particular

c) drama, because it will generate scenes of discord between characters, not all of whom will be happy with the choice or the decision

d) lingering questions, because the reader will be left wondering what exactly she would have done in exactly the same situation

e) fun for you, because not only do you get to grapple with the choice on behalf of the characters, you also get to imagine how implementing this choice will make the readership squirm as if their butt is infested with pinworms

Of course, there are tricks to using hard choices in fiction, and you might find it useful to hold onto a few key guide-ropes in the process —

a) hard choices cannot exist on every page or you dull their impact, it’s not like Gil can have a LIFE OR DEATH, WIFE OR DAUGHTER, HOLY SHIT WHO GETS THE KIDNEY moment every chapter, sometimes the fiction is about building the narrative infrastructure that gets you to the hard choice

b) the choice has to be sensible in the context of the story, and the story should feel like it’s leading up to it, not that it’s dropped out of nowhere like a fucking anvil onto the reader’s head (clong)

c) it should also be tonally appropriate — if you’re writing a light-hearted comedy then suddenly switch gears to some tragic gut-ripping Sophie’s Choice, the reader will have narrative whiplash

d) the hard choice should actually be complicated — it’s all-too-easy to bunt that wiffle ball and offer the character a false hard choice, and trust me, the reader will smell your weakness like poop on a shoe; if the choice is, GIL CAN EITHER SAVE THIS BASKET OF BABIES OR HE CAN INSTEAD EAT A BURRITO, one assumes that unless Gil is a raging burrito-hound, he’ll make the right choice and skip dinner to rescue the baby-basket

e) a hard choice speaks to the character, and isn’t just external plot

f) a hard choice always, always has consequences — emotionally, yes, but also consequences that resonate outward from the world or from other characters

g) further, those consequences — the stakes (as in, what can be won, lost or incurred) — must be known at least in part before the character makes the choice

So, there you go.

Whether you’re doing NaNiWriMo or just writing a book because, goddamnit, you can, feel free to use HARD CHOICES to juice your narrative and give it some teeth-gritting oomph.

*punches the air*

HARD

*punches the air again*

CHOICES

*high-kick*

*falls down*

*breaks coccyx*

Let’s write some motherfucking stories?

P.S. that photo at the top of the post is not Gil the Kidney Guy, but rather, author Matt Wallace, whose fists are not named HARD and CHOICES but rather, LIPBALM and LOZENGE for reasons that remain utterly unknown to mankind; regardless, please be aware he is a very good writer, and he has the newest Sin du Jour book out today, Gluttony Bay, which for me is an instafuckingbuy and it should be for you, too, damnit.

* * *

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

When Jim Hines says, “Can I write something for your blog?” you do not merely say yes, you give him the keys to the establishment and let him run the joint for as long as he likes. Behold, the result of that — as always, he’s funny and wise. Also go read Terminal Alliance.

* * *

To be fair, I’m pretty sure I was crazy before I started writing.*

Looking back, I see swaths of my life where Depression was in full force. As a teenager in junior high school. In my middle years of undergrad. Spending a year in Elko, Nevada… with the nearest real bookstore a two-hour drive away, in another damn state. Seriously, what the hell, Elko?

It wasn’t until about five years ago that I made it official. Drove to the doctor’s office, marched inside, and got my Certification of Depression, complete with a prescription for Zoloft and a referral to a counselor.

Writing didn’t break my brain. But it certainly hasn’t helped.

Take those early years of constant rejection. I’ve got more than five hundred rejection letters saved in a box in the basement. Other authors will tell you rejection isn’t personal, that it’s part of the learning process and we all go through it… I’ve said those same things myself. But when you’re in the pit of despair, it feels personal. That shit can wear you down, no matter how polite the form letters might be. And then you get one from an editor saying, “I liked your previous submission, but this one was so bad I can’t believe it’s by the same author.”

(I eventually sold that story to a better market. But damn…)

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck said depression can perpetuate itself through a trio of negative biases about the self, the world, and the future. His theory maps beautifully to the crap we go through as we’re struggling to break in.

The Self: I suck.

The World: It’s impossible to succeed unless you’re famous or have connections.

The Future: I’m never going to get anywhere.

Man, I’m getting depressed (small d, not Depressed) just writing this. Does that qualify as “Show, don’t tell?”

Time to change things up by talking about how I’m now a well-medicated and successful author with a brand-new book out about Space Janitors! I still get rejection letters, but they’re rare. And I’ve got 13 books in print, along with 50+ published short stories to balance things out. In a logical, rational universe, this should go a long way toward counteracting the depression.

Well, screw you, universe! I’m neither logical nor rational. I’m a mentally ill author!

Some will argue that’s redundant.

It’s true, though. Depression is an asshole. A lying brain-weasel scurrying around in your thoughts and shitting on everything. And… writing is hard. Even when you’re supposedly succeeding. The brain-weasels know how to twist things around in your head. They did a number on me with Terminal Alliance.

This was my first attempt at novel-length science fiction. I wanted humor and action and triumph and aliens that weren’t just humans with a few prostheses glued to their noses. So I started the first draft…

Brain Weasels: This is crap! And we know crap—we’re assholes!

Me: It’s a first draft. It’s supposed to be crap.

BW: Then you’re doing a superb job!

I ended up missing my deadline by a few months as I rewrote and rewrote again, trying to make this thing as good as I could.

BW: You missed your deadline. Ha! Loser.

Me: Lots of authors miss deadlines. It’s only a few extra months. I’d rather be late with a good book than on time with a mediocre one.

BW: You think this book is gonna be good? That’s cute.

And so on and so forth. Every messed-up scene, every stumbling block, every day of not meeting my goal…

Brain weasels, man. I hate those guys. But I’ve gotten better at hearing their conniving whispers as they scheme against me, rubbing their tiny clawed fingers together and twirling their whiskers.

I’ve talked to other writers about this stuff. I know how much the brain weasels love us. If, like me, you’re already dealing with the delightful neurochemical imbalance of Depression, your brain is especially fertile ground for the little bastards. But even for you so-called “healthy” authors, writing offers a vast field of insecurities and rejection for the weasels to burrow in.

I’ve learned a few things about dealing with them.

Toughing it out: not the best approach. Imagine these are literal weasels chewing on your face. You can either acknowledge the problem and try to do something about it, or you can grit your teeth and say, “I’m strong enough to get through this. Chew away, you pernicious predators, you!”

All that does is get you a chewed-up face. Potentially great for Halloween. Not so great for the other 364 days of the year.

Talk to someone. Ask for help. That could mean talking to a doctor, or it could mean Skyping an author friend to vent.

Savor the good stuff. You finished a first draft? It’s ice cream time. Sure, the first draft might be crap, but who gives a shit? You finished the damn thing, and that deserves a reward! A fan emails to tell you how much your story about a superhero with a talking tumor meant to them? That email goes into the SAVED FOR USE AGAINST BRAIN WEASELS folder to be brought out and used to pummel the brain weasels with extreme and graphic cartoon violence.

Balance is important. My therapist talked a lot about balance in my life. She asked how often I got to just visit with friends and hang out and socialize. I laughed. It was a hysteria-tinged laugh, with too many teeth showing. I probably looked like a bald, bearded Joker. “I don’t have time for balance!”

I still suck at this one, but I’ve gotten better. And damn if it doesn’t help. Sure, time away from the computer is time I’m not writing…but time spent enjoying myself helps me recharge, which means I’m more productive when I sit down again to write.

Who could have possibly predicted such a thing? My therapist is a freaking GENIUS!

Remember: brain weasels lie. Mine told me Terminal Alliance was a flop, and I should have stuck with goblins and flaming spiders. Library Journal, on the other hand, gave the book a starred review. Suck on that, weasels!

::Stops to re-read the post so far::

Huh. This was originally pitched as a promotional-type piece for Terminal Alliance. I’ve now written 1000+ words about depression and brain weasel maintenance. Interesting promotional tactic, Hines.

So in conclusion, I’ve got a book about space janitors and sex-crazed aliens that are basically giant tardigrades and translator mix-ups and evil butterfly people and the end of the world, and what happens when the rest of the crew gets taken out and the janitorial team has to fly the ship and fight the battles and save the galaxy.

Ann Leckie said it was really fun, and we all like and trust Ann, right? You can read an excerpt through my website.

Thanks for reading. Take care of yourselves. And yeah, if you get the chance, check out the new book. I think you’ll enjoy it. Despite what my brain weasels say.

—

* I recognize that some people dislike “crazy” as an ableist slur, and it’s not a word I’d use to describe anyone else. But I use it for my own mental illness as a way to laugh, and to take away a little of that illness’ power over me.

* * *

Jim C. Hines: Website | Twitter

Terminal Alliance: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N