So, NaNoWriMo — the organization behind the official implementation of the challenge of National Novel Writing Month — has come out firmly on the side of generative AI. Further, they’ve gone and suggested that condemning generative AI is classist, ableist, and privileged.

I’ll keep this as short and sweet as I can —

The privileged viewpoint is the viewpoint in favor of generative AI. The intrusion of generative artificial intelligence into art and writing suits one group and one group only: the fucking tech companies that invented this pernicious, insidious shit. They very much want you to relinquish your power in creating art and telling stories to them and their software, none of which are essential or even useful in the process of telling stories or making art but that they really, really want you to believe are essential. It’s a lie, a scam, a con. Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry. It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story. And in stealing the material, by making that theft and regurgitation easy and effortless — so easy and so effortless that the essential human component of creation is extracted entirely from the process! — it limits the quality and value of art, watering it all down and turning it all to a soylent slurry. A valueless soylent slurry, which means, conveniently, that companies can pay little to nothing for art and content going forward because they can either just hit a button to have it shit out its gross recombination of stolen material, or, realizing that the stolen material is garbage, they can just say, “Well, we’ll pay you less, because otherwise we’ll just hit this stupid button for free.” The privilege here is on the tech companies and on NaNoWriMo. Art is for humans. Story is for humans. They are its makers, they are its witnesses.

You can be sure if you give NaNoWriMo any of your material, they are going to be feeding it to the artbarf robots to become just more shitty artbarf.

Let them push buttons and have robots tell stories to feed to other robots.

We humans can all stay far the fuck away from it. We can gather around the campfire and tell our stories to each other. True no matter who we are. Though the industry is often unfair (and classist, and ableist, and privileged) the act of telling stories is universal, and has existed as long as we have. (I’m sure Homer would have something to say about all this.)

(Er, the ancient Greek, not the cartoon doofus.)

Anyway.

If you want some good news, it’s that NaNoWriMo and generative AI have one very important thing in common:

You don’t need either of them to tell a good story.

I suspect that the book I presently get the most reader mail about (er, in a good way!) is The Book of Accidents. It’s a book that just really landed with people I think in a certain way, especially in how the book regards and reflects things like cycles of abuse and cascading trauma and all that — but also that it’s a book where at the core it’s a book about a family that loves each other and not a family that destroys itself with its secrets. (Not that there’s anything wrong with books featuring the opposite. But I just think some people connect with these characters in a variety of ways.)

(At least, that’s my hope.)

(It also sells pretty well, even still!)

(I don’t know why! Maybe it’s the evil spell I cast on the book. Or the Doritos powder I laced the pages with. Who can say?)

ANYWAY, that book is on sale today, digitally, for $1.99.

You can nab it at:

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Apple Books and whatever other electric bookmonger you use to procure your various fancy fictions.

Please to enjoy.

WHALE HELLO THERE. Time for another update in the wacky world of “where the sweet hot hell is Wendig going to be in the coming months?”

If you wanna come find me at a sanctioned event and not, say, in the woods with a giant butterfly net and a stun gun, here’s where and when:

Saturday September 7th, 1PM-3PM, B&N Doylestown Grand Opening, Meet and Greet and signing — details here.

Saturday September 14th, 1PM – 2:15PM, Sci-Fi Savvy Panel at the Readers and Writers Festival at the Pike County Public Library, Milford, PA — details here.

Tuesday, Sept 24th, conversation with M.L. Rio at the launch of her excellent novella, Graveyard Shift, B&N Philadelphia, details and tickets here.

Sept 26-29, I’ll be at the Colorado Gold Writers Conference, giving a little story doctor session and a keynote. It’ll be a hoot. Hope to see you there.

Oct 1st, I’ll be with Delilah S. Dawson to help launch Kevin Hearne’s newest, Candle & Crow, and we’ll be at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL. Event starts at 7pm, see you there. Details! (Note, we’ll be pregaming at Giordano’s Pizza there, and you can find details at Kevin’s newsletter.)

Oct 2nd: Kevin, Delilah and myself will be at Boswell Books in Milwaukee, starting at 6pm. Gotcher details right here.

Oct 3rd: The three of us again at Mystery To Me Books in Madison, Wisconsin, starting at 6pm. Deeeeeetaaaaaails. Will meet readers at Pizza Brutta at 4pm too if y’all wanna hang — details at Kevin’s place.

Oct 4th: Our final trio appearance, this time at Minneapolis at the Barnes & Noble, technically in Roseville, MN! 6pm. The deets!

(I might also need to hang around Minneapolis for a day or two. You know, for THE APPLES. If anyone has STRONG APPLE-BASED LOCATIONS around the Minneapolis area, lemme know, yeah?)

Oct 9th – 13th, Harrisburg Book Festival, details and schedule soon! Website here, and I think I’m gonna be on a panel with CJ Leede and Richard Chizmar, which sounds fucking amazing, if you ask me.

April 5th, 2025, which no okay is not in the fall shut up, the Scarelastic Book Fair 3 in McCordsville, Indiana! Pretty excited for this.

There may also be some more things added — I think I’m maybe launching MONSTER MOVIE! at the most excellent The End / Let’s Play Books bookstore in Allentown, PA on Monday, Sept 23rd, though don’t quote me on that, yet. And might be something too at Main Point Books on the 25th, but again, no details set in stone, so just keep your grapes peeled.

OK YOU’RE THE BEST

BYE

Listen, I’m going to try not to lose my shit here and shriek at you in a joyful tone that only bats can detect, but it’s gonna be tough because — *gesticulates wildly, pointing at the cover to this book with a manic look on my face* — we have a cover to The Staircase in the Woods and it’s fucking great.

To illuminate a little bit, I’ve been in general very lucky with my book covers, but even then there’s often a a bit of back-and-forth with covers. The publisher sends you one or several options and you ask questions and they offer answers and it’s like, “Should this be here, is this a better font, does this need to be adjusted, does this cover say what we want it to say, why is my name spelled SHARK WEDDING,” and so forth. But this time it was just like, “Here’s a cover,” and I made that bat-shriek joy-sound, and now here we are.

The cover is designed by The Boland Design Co. And they killed it.

(Their website and instagram.)

What’s the book about? Well, here you go:

A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods in this mesmerizing horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what.

Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere.

One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . . .

---

So, that’s the book. I’m pretty excited for this one — it is, for me at least, much shorter than my other books, and as for the story, well, we’re keeping this one a little close to the vest. Just for funsies.

If you’re the kind of COOL PERSON who pre-orders books, you can certainly do that — and if you pre-order from my local, Doylestown Bookshop, all pre-orders will come with a special unique inscription juuuuust for you. But you’ll just have to wait till you get the book, because telling you what it would be could be a bit spoilery for the book, too. So, just know, pre-ordering from them gets you something special. And probably a sticker. I love stickers.

Pre-order now from Doylestown Bookshop. They’ll mail it to you!

You can also pre-order from many of the expected places: Bookshop.org, B&N, Amazon, and so forth. Indie bookstores, of course, rule, and buying from them buys a book for an angel or something. I dunno. Shut up. You can also find a list of retailers at Penguin Random House’s site here.

Hope you check it out.

Hope you like it.

Hope you talk about it.

Hope you make joyful hell-shrieks only bats can hear.

Hope you choose the staircase. Walk up it, and see where it goes, won’t you?

Oh! Holy crap, Black River Orchard is up for best horror at the Dragon Awards and that’s just lovely. Book of Accidents won the award a couple years ago (swoon), and thanks to everyone for helping get this new one some attention and love, too. And especially with the company that it’s in, yow. (The Reformatory is easily for me one of the best of the year, for sure, so lemme just say up front it’ll be an honor to lose to that one, for real.)

Anyway, here’s the ballot, and the whole thing has a wonderful buncha authors across all the categories — including talented pals like Delilah Dawson, Richard Kadrey, Cassandra Khaw, John Scalzi, and more.

Also, while we’re here, don’t forget about this:

Just click the image or this link for the deal.

OKAY LOVE YOU BYE

Here now, a little guest post from my friend, Anastacia Visneski, fresh from the start of her Kickstarter, which she’ll talk about below. It features quokkas, which from my vantage point is about all you really need to know.

On Friday (Aug 2) we launched the Kickstarter for Oh Noes! (a picture book for execs) a book I had been bending Chuck’s ear about for years.

This book all came from when I was doing an interview with TechCrunch on crisis communications in a digital world. He asked me if I could recommend any basic entry level crisis books. Weirdly I didn’t know of any really good ones, that weren’t text books or spin doctor BS.

“I could break it down to a children’s book” I quipped, and then I realized I COULD.

I spent most of my career handling temper tantrums, cleaning up messes, writing things out in crayon, and wondering if everyone had their snacks and naps today. Fun fact… I wasn’t a preschool teacher! I was in the Coast Guard and then corporate tech.

As a book you can read with ALL the children in your life (looking at you C suite), it follows Phil of NillaCone Valley as his company’s most popular flavor SparkleSmash starts turning people into quokka. Yeah, those fuzzy little smiling critters…

…but there is more to their little grins than posing for selfies.

We kept the goal pretty modest at $25000, but oh do we have some fun stretch goals. From 3D printed costumed quokkas, to pins and plushies.

Oh, did I mentioned we will help you send a copy of the book anonymously to someone? You know, in case someone really needs it.

Ohnoes.link/book