I have Yeats on the mind, today, so we return to the flash fiction challenges (hi! back from traveling!) with you writing a story based on that central theme of Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, meaning this gem right here:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

You will take this core idea, this theme, this argument.

You will write it into some flash fiction.

Length: ~1000 words.

Due by: November 3rd, noon EST (Friday).

Post at your online space. Link to it in the comments.

Go write.

If you don’t know the origin of an actual scapegoat, it’s this:

In ANCIENT TIMES, they’d take a goat. Not sure how they chose it. A lottery? Did the goat choose itself? Doesn’t matter. Upon the goat they would heap their sins — a metaphorical act, as sins do not necessarily create physical baggage. The goat was now a vessel for the moral stains put forth by the individuals and by the community. They would say, “Fuck you, goat. Look at all those ugly sins, you shitty, shitty goat.” Then they’d punt the goat in the ass and force it into the desert, as an outcast. An exile. Carrying their sins away from town, buh-bye.

Later, the goat would return, a gunslinger here to bring revolvers and redemption.

I might be making that last part up.

More seriously, sometimes they wouldn’t push the goat out into the desert.

Instead, they’d just fucking kill it. Regardless of whether the goat wandered away or was bled out, the emotional result was the same:

We are cleansed of our sins.

The taint of our poor choices is gone.

We may start anew.

It’s bullshit, of course. It’s a supremely lazy way of negotiating your own errors, either as a single person or as a community of people. Instead of taking responsibility and performing actions of accountability and recompense, you just make up some fancy nonsense about goats being a receptacle for sins, and then you’re free and clear, brah.

Thing is, it’s transparent to us when I put it this way, but keep in mind, this is still sometimes the way of the world. Sometimes the sins of a community are piled onto a single sinner and then, when that sinner is dealt with, we pretend the culture that spawned him has been mystically cleansed of his rot and his ruin, and surely it will never happen again (they say as it keeps on happening again and again). It’s a performative act designed to make us feel better, not actually to fix a single fucking thing. Honestly, it’s a wonder that the Harvey Weinstein situation has not yet been performed similarly — though it’s far from played-out, presently he has not served as the lone goat emblematic of the grotesque sins mired in Hollywood, but rather, has been more a cork unpopping on a bottle of demons. It’s spraying everywhere, but at least we’re starting to see — and name — the demons, rather than assuming they all entered one lone pig that could be driven into the sea.

Enter Senator Jeff Flake, from Arizona.

Recently, as most of you well know, the good senator from Arizona — a Republican, unsurprisingly — stepped away from the comforting firelight of the Grand Old Party to announce not only that he would not seek re-election, but also that he had some strong words (if softly spoken) for the Narcissist-In-Chief. On the Senate floor, Flake delivered a speech that reads better than it listens, as he’s not precisely a gifted orator, and you can read it here.

(Note that his comments to “Mr. President” are not necessarily to Trump himself, but rather, to the president of the Senate, currently Orrin Hatch.)

Here are some snippets from the speech —

“It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret — regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by “our,” I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and accommodation of the unacceptable to end.”

And

“In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the “new normal.” That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue, with the tone set at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve.”

And

“What happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition, what happens if ambition fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability, if decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats? Of course, we wouldn’t and we would be wrong if we did.

When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because “ad finitum, ad nauseam” when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.”

And finally

“Despotism loves a vacuum and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States senators have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics because politics can make us silent when we should speak. And silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.”

It’s a good speech.

It is a clear, bold indictment of where we’re at, and ultimately, of the entire Republican Party — spoken with some honor and some craft, and more than a hefty dose of authenticity and earnestness.

And we’re all applauding him for taking a stand.

Even though I’m pretty sure he’s still sitting down.

Let’s unpack this a little, because what exactly has Jeff Flake done? He’s announced no bid for re-election, which is itself an action, though one could argue that the braver action would not be to abandon the post but rather, to attempt to hold onto it where he can continue to affect policy beyond 2018, where he can shape the party from the inside, where he can vote with conscience and principle rather than paving the way for another Roy Moore (or Donald Trump) to fill his shoes. He’s also stood up and said a lot of very fine, very pretty words and ideas.

And then he got up the other night and voted to dismantle the recent rule that would allow customers to not be forced into arbitration to deal with the crimes and scams of big banks and other financial institutions (cough cough Equifax, cough cough Wells Fargo).

The gist of this rule is that put power in the hands of the consumers by taking the power out of the hands of big companies.

Flake voted to gut that rule. Bye-bye, consumer protections. High-five, big corporations.

Now, the common refrain response to this is:

“Well, he is still a Republican,” said as if that explains it.

And there begins the disconnect.

The GOP indicted Hillary Clinton because she would be cozy with Wall Street. They wined-and-dined on opposing her corporate connections — and by proxy, her supposed corruption in that realm — and sided with the common man. Main Street, they might say, versus Wall Street. Hillary, that venomous bat-witch, would surely stock her cabinet with the vintage of Goldman-Sachs, would vote to protect Big Banks, would vote against Middle Class Americans and Small Businesses and also she’d probably take out a loan to pay some stockbrokers to kill puppies on the market floor, that monster.

And yet, demonstrably, they do the opposite.

They are what they claim to combat.

Flake voted against consumers.

Flake voted to confirm Mnuchin.

Flake voted 92% in line with Trump.

And when asked about impeachment or the 25th Amendment, Flake — despite claiming Trump is a danger to our democracy — bunts, saying, ennh, no, I don’t think actions like that are really necessary.

But — he made a speech! He said some things. Applause. Hooray. And you can feel just a little shift — a lot of his speech is one that attacks the tone and tenor of affairs in 2017, if not just the politics. You get the sense he thinks that Trump is not the GOP, not really, not really for really real, that the two are separate, that the despotism of our president does not represent the party to which he belongs. It is a speech of subtle reformation and redemption, attempting to disentangle the GOP from Trump. And you can almost feel it working.

Flake is a scapegoat. He will take the sins of his party and wander into exile, if we let him. But we mustn’t allow that. The GOP is not separate from Trump. Trump is the Pokemon evolution of that party — you can’t separate a tree from the ground in which it grows, even if that tree bulges with rotten orange fruit and seeds the ground with more sexism and racism and intolerance. It is not enough to simply say these things and then sashay off the fucking boat as it sinks in the harbor. There must be accountability. We must ask for responsibility. Flake says these things but owns none of them, placing himself as more a victim and a vessel rather than an actor and craftsman of the politics in which we presently swim. He talks a good game, then goes and votes against our interests anyway, and votes for Trump’s interests — even when he could’ve been the deciding vote, even when he could’ve demonstrated that his words held intent and power, not just hollow rhetoric.

Remain dubious about attempts to rehabilitate the party.

Beware any efforts to separate Trump from the GOP.

Resist the idea that one is not the other. Because they are tangled together on purpose. The denial of Merrick Garland did not come under Trump, but under Obama. The GOP has long been working itself into a froth against climate change, health care, and the welfare of the middle class. They’ve long fed on the bread-and-butter of oh shit, a black Democrat is in the highest office of the land, we better stoke some racism to get shit done.

I admire Flake’s words.

I hope he does more to back them up.

But for now, let’s not applaud him as if he’s standing up when he’s still sitting down. Right now, his words are more a balm for his own party than part of a larger effort to fix what’s really gone wrong — an error that is as much Flake’s fault as any in his party, an error that must be corrected with effort, not words, with action, not speeches. Hold him accountable.

Hold them all accountable.

No rehabilitation without reconciliation.

Don’t let the goat get away with all their sins.

Here’s Dan and Kate Malmon to talk briefly about a charity anthology you can buy right now (print, e-book) — get some stories and support the fight against Multiple Sclerosis.

* * *

Sometimes – often times – life is weird.

In 2014, Crimespree Magazine held an online flash fiction contest. The theme? Somewhere in the story, “Dan Malmon” had to die. Funny, sad, serious, or scary, Malmon had to meet his maker. Flash forward to 2016, when Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine is talking to Eric Campbell of Down and Out Books (UGH, namedrop much?) and Jon says, “I think the stories should be collected.” Eric says, “Yeah, cool. Let’s do it.”

Kate and I say, “WhaHUH?”

The whole concept was always equal parts flattering and equal parts oogie to us. But, bind the stories up into a for-real book? That for-real people could buy? With for-real money? Call it old fashioned Midwestern values, but we weren’t down with that.

But, how about if we could sell it for charity? I’ll always put myself out on a limb for a laugh, er, good cause. Down and Out was down for it (Oh, come on). We have always been deeply invested in the fight against Multiple Sclerosis. Kate has had her own Bike MS team, Saint Kate’s Cycling Saints, which has been raising money for the MS Society for years now. We figured we could use KILLIING MALMON as another way to keep the spotlight on this horrible disease, and keep throwing cash at a good cause. But the collection needed more words than the initial online contest provided. So, we turned on the Bat Signal. Or Facebook Messenger. You get the idea.

Anyway, we put out the call. Friends, old and new, sent us story after bloodthirsty story. 360 pages of gleeful gunshots, disgusting decapitations, and pitiful poisonings. Eric Beetner created the eye-catching cover. Now the rest is up to you, the reader. KILLIING MALMON is a great experiment: How would 30 different crime writers, both amateur and professional, off the same, poor schlub? While everyone is getting their bloodthirsty kicks, the MS Society is getting 100% of the proceeds.

Now everyone can feel good about getting their bloodthirsty kicks.

KILLING MALMON is available now from all the usual suspects (click here).

First up, Turok #3 is out today. TAKE A TRIP TO THE STORMLANDS, Y’ALL. Meet some new friends. Ride some dinosaurs. I’m new to the comics thing, relatively, but this has been a blast to write. And Alvaro’s art continues to kick me in the teeth in the best way possible.

Second, the big-ass mega-ultra holy-shit whamma-jamma book bundle is still 50% off until November 1st — all to help you get ramped up for Nanowrimo. It’s 8 writing books and two novels, and using code NANOCTOBER gets you it for ten bucks instead of twenty.

Third, if you have read and enjoyed Damn Fine Story, please leave a review somewhere. If you didn’t like it, please paint your negative review onto the side of a goat, then feed the goat to a crocodile. If you liked the book, please tell a friend! If you did not like it, please tell an enemy that you did like it, in the hopes that your deception will cause them to read the book and be disappointed — victory for you. If you still need to check out the book: print, e-book.

Fourth, why is Zer0es $3.99? I dunno! But go grab it.

And that’s it. Naughty, naughty self-promotion is done.

*showers off the scum and villainy and capitalism*

Gonna try to keep this short and tight, like a hobbit sock.

[Edit: I fear I have failed to keep it short and tight, like a hobbit sock.]

As you well know, I WROTE A STAR WAR, and in fact, I wrote THREE STARS WAR, plus a STARS WAR SHORT STORY and a WAR STAR BOOK OF COMICS and it’s been pretty great except for the fact that sometimes I get some, ahem, interesting reviews, tweets, and emails.

Last week, a wonderful hashtag spun around the Twitters — #SWRepMatters — which is to say, Star Wars Representation Matters. Go read the tweets that line up behind it.

Someone responded to one of my tweets and said the following:

My response was:

1. everything is forced in a story because they’re not magic

2. stories are not a natural state and so nothing occurs naturally within them, nor can they “call for” anything

3. inclusivity is part of good storytelling

4. not being inclusive is also a political choice

This person deleted his tweet and went on to clarify that he in fact totally supported a pairing like, say, Finn/Poe, but he wanted it to have a purpose in the story and not simply be included for political purposes. Abstractly, what he’s saying is, he’s not a bigot, not a homophobe, he just cares about storytelling. Which is fine, in theory, and I’m not suggesting this person is worthy of excoriation. I’m sure he means well. But I think it’s really worth shining a big, bright-ass light on this, because I think there’s a soft, unacknowledged prejudice at work.

It assumes that there exists a default in storytelling — and that default is one way, and not the other. The default is straight relationships, or cisgendered characters, or able-bodied white dudes, or whatever. One of the criticisms Aftermath received was this very special kind of softball phobia, right? “I don’t mind LGBT characters, but these were forced into the narrative for a political agenda,” assuming that the characters are somehow not characters at all, but rather protest signs or billboards advertising THE WONDERS OF GAYNESS or THE FABULOSITY OF THE NON-BINARY SPACE PIRATE LIFE. The complaint then becomes that these characters are political levers, identified as such because their natures (be it LGBT characters like Sinjir Rath Velus and Eleodie Maracavanya, or a character of color like Admiral Rae Sloane, or women characters like Norra Wexley and Jas Emari) do not somehow factor into the plot. Like, Sinjir’s homosexuality is not a plot point. He doesn’t shoot gayness out of his eyes to blow up the Third Death Star, oh no, he’s only there as a commercial for GAY PEOPLE EXISTING.

And the defense these critics make is that, “Well, Anakin and Padme’s relationship is plot-entangled, because their heterosexual coupling yields children of destiny.” So too with Han and Leia. (Erm, less so with Luke and Leia, unless we are to believe Rey is the child of incest, and boy, wouldn’t that be a twist?) Basically, Anakin and Padme do blow up the Death Star with their heterosexual coupling by proxy, because their two children literally work together to do just that very thing.

Problem is, that’s a shitty defense for a lot of reasons, first because it assumes characters are on the page only to serve plot, rather than to be on the page creating plot with their wants, their needs, their problems, their fears. Characters are who they are, and are not all driven by some kind of mythic quest — it’s okay that they want love, or respect, or are the products of their history and circumstance. It’s also a shitty defense because it assumes that the existence of a relationship is not itself plot — even if two characters have an untroubled relationship and exist together, they’re still making choices based on that relationship. Sinjir and Conder have a relationship in Aftermath, and it literally affects Sinjir’s character arc. It changes who he is. Each character has gravity and affects the other accordingly. Which in turn means they make decisions based on this, and those decisions do not follow the plot — they become the plot. So, the characters actually do affect the plot with their relationship.

But so fucking what if they didn’t?

So what if they’re just… together? And it affects nothing? So what if they’re simply visible examples of LGBT characters in a relationship? Who gives a shit? (Answer: a lot of turd-people, admittedly.) So what if The Doctor is now a woman, or James Bond ends up being played by a black actor? Someone says, “WUH, PFFT, WELL, THAT’S JUST SERVING A POLITICAL AGENDA, THEN.” Except, I got bad news for you: not including LGBT characters is similarly a political choice. Same as it is to not include disabled characters, or characters of color, or women, or, or, or. You just don’t see it as a political choice because it’s the politics in which you already swim. Like a fish, you have no context for the water all around you because it is your automatic default. If you view the presence of these characters as being political in the story, then you likely view them in reality — in your really real life! — as similarly political.

As I said above, stories aren’t alive. Yes, we tell tales ideally in an organic way so that all the widgets and flywheels in the mechanics are hidden from view, and yes, sometimes it feels like the stories somehow “flow” from us, as if we are simply summoning Cosmic Creative Energy, but the truth is, none of this is natural. Believing anything to be natural about stories allows us to create uncomfortable crutches for the stories we tell. Storytellers are engines of creation, not conduits for it. We force them into being. We conjure pyroclasm and lightning to tell tales. We make deliberate choices in our narrative — and, if you don’t make those deliberate choices, then you’re likely relying on lazy tropes or outmoded prejudices to tell those stories. A lack of inclusion in narrative is one such choice — based on lazy tropes and outmoded prejudices, it’s a choice that refuses to acknowledge actual people and actual reality.

None of that is an excuse, by the way, to make the opposite choice lazily — it’s entirely worth seeing the line where inclusion stumbles into a host of other problems (white savior stories, appropriating narratives that are not yours to tell, injecting such inclusion with other shitty tropes), but that’s a reason to do it and try to get it right rather than simply not to do it at all. Because it bears repeating: not being inclusive in the work is a political choice. Stories are not real. We tell them. We make them up. We will them into being with our fucking minds. 

It’s up to us to make them right and to tell them to the widest audience we can reach. Further, it’s also up to us to help support inclusivity outside the stories and among storytellers — inclusion shouldn’t just be on the page or the screen, but also behind the camera, behind the executive desk, behind the editorial and authorial pen. We have a lot of work to do, and choosing not to do it is no longer acceptable.

* * *

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

AND WE’RE BACK.

Here’s a quicky trip report.

(I’ll likely miss things, so forgive me. It was a joyous blur.)

Last Sunday, I landed in San Francisco.

Apparently, so did Aaron Mahnke, creator of a little podcast-now-book-now-motherfucking-TV-show called Lore, and as we landed at roughly the same time and had hotels within (not-literal) pissing distance of one another, we got together for coffee and later, for dinner. Our forbidden romance knows no bounds.

Then, Monday, I hopped-skipped-and-jumped to a little upstart unknown company called Lucasfilm, where they told me I would be writing and directing Episode 9, and I was very excited, but then I accidentally — in my excitement! — tripped and fell into a glass case of vintage thermal detonators, which all exploded and sent Pablo Hidalgo rocketing, cartoon-like, into the bay. He could be seen in the distance, shaking his smoldering fist, so I lost the job.

The disappointment on The Carpathian’s face is as plain as my own.

But! They did let me do the Emmy-nominated STAR WARS SHOW as a second-place prize, and you can check me out on that show, just palling around with my pal, Anthony Carboni.

(Or you can just watch it here)

Tuesday, I went to the SF MOMA, and had a lovely time there, and at some point I will crystallize my thoughts on modern art and pop culture and some other random brain-squozenings, then I met up with super-pals Kevin Hearne and Fran Wilde. Kevin, of course, has emerged with a brand spanking new epic fantasy series: the Seven Kennings, which begins with Plague of Giants. It is a blast. It has eleven point-of-view characters. It is a fresh take on epic fantasy. You want it. Fran was here to celebrate her now-completed planet-killing battlestation — wait, no, her now-completed trilogy of bad-ass Bone Universe books, which are dense with worldbuilding potency and sung with lyrical love, and again, are books you must read. (And I see Updraft is, right now, $2.99 for your e-book machine.) It is a wonder that I am friends with so many talented writers. Why they hang with me, I can never know.

Together, we traipsed merrily toward Borderlands Books —

— where we did a slam bang event and they sold their books and I sold my newly-released book about storytelling, Damn Fine Story, and then we went out for tacos, as is necessary to please the word gods. We got to hang briefly with some awesome folks like Richard Kadrey and Charlie Jane Anders and all was well in the world.

I also stayed in a hotel where you could buy “sex dust,” which to my surprise is not cocaine and MDMA mixed together.

Event complete, we zipped off to Portland in the morning.

Kevin and I had face-explodingly good ramen at Boxer Ramen:

And then had ice cream at Salt & Straw:

And you might say, hey, Chuck, what’s the ice cream? And I’d say, well, the bottom scoop is strawberry balsamic, and it was — you know, imagine my face making the most pleasurable face (ew, not that way) you can imagine, and that’s how good it was. Then I’d say, but the top scoop was even better. What was the top scoop? Well, it was Dracula’s Blood Pudding flavor, which is clearly a funny name for a normal flavor, right? HA HA HA NO, it’s motherfucking blood pudding flavored, people. We tasted it and the counter dude was like, “This has actual pig’s blood in it,” and I was like, okay, I’ll vamp it up.

It was maybe the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

It was warm and chocolatey without being chocolate, exactly? It had a Mexican hot chocolate vibe to it, it was richer than expected, it was creamy, it was not bloody or mineral-ish, it was just deeply, intensely satisfying. Also I am now a vampire.

Here, have some Essence of Ghost —

Then Kevin and I trekked to the downtown Portland Powell’s, where I completed a precious ritual of the SFF writer: I signed the pillar.

SEE THERE I AM SIGNING THE PILLAR.

Garbed in the PDX attire of “flannel.”

Here is Kevin, next to Plague of Giants:

We signed their stock, which was considerable. (I also like that they shelve some of my books in horror. I know that horror is anathema in the publishing world right now — a vile curse turning to ash upon the tongue — but really, I tend to write books that skew to horror. Especially the Miriam Black books.)

So, I’d also like to apologize to Powells, because I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. I’m from the East Coast, and people would proselytize that store to me, and I’d be like, well, I like bookstores, so that sounds great. And they’d clearly see the lack of passion in my eyes and say, NO, MAN, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, and then I would just assume that, because they were from Portland, they were really high on like, sex dust or something, and would blow them off. Great, yeah yeah, sure, fine, it’s a bookstore, cool.

My turn to say —

NO, MAN, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.

It is a fully-operational book battlestation. (Second Death Star reference in a post? Shut up, it’s on-brand.) It is a temple to books. The downtown one is epic in size and stuffed to the rafters with endless books, including an awesome rare books room. I have not viscerally enjoyed a bookstore as much as I did visiting two different Powells that day.

Speaking of the second Powells —

Off to Beaverton to rejoin with Wild Fran Wilde, where we did an awesome event and answered lots of questions and sold lots of books and met scads of rad people.

(Annie Bellet! Fonda Lee! Dongwon Song!)

Clearly, we are living our best author life:

Then in the morning, Fran wisely eschewed eating GIANT DUTCH BABY PANCAKES, unlike Kevin and I, pictured here in our pre-carb pre-coma state —

And then it was off to Seattle. We drove. Fran kept the conversation smart and literary, whereas Kevin and I talked about secret buttholes? We’re sorry, Fran. Then, a brief rendezvous with Cherie Priest and her Famous Doggos, followed by Thai food with Holy Shit It’s Kace K.C. Alexander, Y’all and why haven’t you read Necrotech yet?

Finally, onto the signing at the University Bookstore in Seattle, except they actually did the event in a church? Thankfully it was a very nice church and not the kind where, y’know, all three of us authors burst into flames upon entering the building.

Scads of cool-ass writer mofos were there: Laura Anne Gilman, Adam Rakunas, Jason Hough, Phil Brucato and Sandra Swan, E. Lily Yu, Cherie Priest, Harry Connolly, Dennis Bakriges, Luke Matthews, Amanda Cherry — and surely more that my jet-laggy brain is missing.

Bonus excellence: Kevin and I met one of the narrators of our books, Xe Sands, who helped narrate Plague of Giants and who narrated Invasive:

You can see we were having no fun at all:

And clearly none of us were the least bit drunk there. Not me, nor Kevin, Amanda, K.C., Adam, nor that guy in the background. I was definitely not drunk on an $8 (!) pint-glass sized gin-and-tonic (!!) featuring a really lovely gin called The Botanist (?!). Point of trivia, the only reason Kevin in this image is not joining our orgy of delight is because he’s buying us all shawarma, because he is just that kind of best person.

Then it was time to say goodbye to people — Kevin was off to MORE TOUR, Fran was off to DIFFERENT MORE TOUR, and I remained in Seattle for a day, where I met with a kick-ass artist named Steven Belledin, who does work for Magic: the Gathering amongst other things (seriously goddamnit go look at his art right bloody now)– oh, and he’s also my second-cousin? — and then I wandered the city, taking in the sights, eating piroshky and BBQ pork buns and then passing out because I had a 6AM flight back home.

Seattle did not leave me disappointed, of course:

I love all three cities immensely and miss them already.

Not as much, though, as I miss my traveling companions — if you ever get the chance to hang with Kevin and Fran, do so immediately. And if you can’t hang with them in person, by gods, go buy their books. And thanks too to Del Rey for helping arrange this tour.

And that’s it, that’s me, I’m out.

More soon.

*ejects*

P.S. don’t forget about Damn Fine Story, out now in print and e-book — if you’ve read it, please tell folks, leave a review?