To coincide with the March for Science tomorrow (during which I will sadly be in the air, on a plane), Harper Voyager is having some of its authors talk about science and politics, and one of those authors is Clark Thomas Carlton, who has written his own spin on an ant novel, Prophets of the Ghost Ants. Here are some of his thoughts on ants, science, and politics for the Harper Voyager Science Fair!

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The Bible tells us, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” But let’s not be like ants this Earth Day. Or any other day.

Ants and humans are the only two animals on the planet to engage in warfare according to myrmecologist Mark W. Moffett. Other animals may fight, skirmish or even kill each other, but only antkind and humankind organize into armies of hundreds, thousands or even millions to battle for a decisive outcome. Both are hardwired to aggressively expand their territories and mark their borders with materials. And both live in settlements — ants live in nests and humans live in villages, towns and cities. According to Dr. E.O. Wilson, the Second Darwin, the adaption of settlement life led to a subsequent division of labor which is part of why humans and ants go to war — the former send mostly young men into battle and the latter send their “old ladies.”

Humans and ants make warfare for all the same reasons — to expand or defend their territories and to bring back food and other resources. Some ants, like humans, war to take slaves. The end result of wars is that the victors maximize their reproduction and, by extension, the replication of their genes. Close to 14,000 documented species of ants make up about ten percent of the terrestrial biomass which makes the ant a very successful animal. Homo sapiens, another very successful animal, have also improved their survivability by evolving into a warrior species with cooperating individuals. Our desire to use ever better weapons in our wars has always been an essential part of improving our technology. In taking us from metal tipped spears to the hydrogen bomb, we have created other wonders along the way as diverse as cotton gins, popsicles and cars.

As a result of our ability to adapt to different environments, seven billion of our successful human selves have spread to almost every part of the planet and brought our fires, our combustible engines and our coal burning power plants. The result of this expansion and its companion technologies is that we have filled our atmosphere with more than 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide which has initiated a global warming. That’s not news, of course, but some still insist that climate change is a hoax. A very simple experiment can be conducted in a home laboratory to show that ice will melt faster in a heated glass box with a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in its air. The ice will melt even faster in a box mixed with methane, a gas all of us create daily at both ends of our digestive tracks. Methane is being released in alarming amounts as the permafrost in Siberia melts.

Rising temperatures are not a real threat to Planet Earth, which will remain in some form. The threat is to the billions of humans who live here now and, even more so, to their immediate descendants. In the Anthropocene Era, we are plunging headlong into an epoch of mass displacement and famine. The end result will be unending civil and international wars. The casualties of these conflicts will dwarf the numbers lost in World Wars 1 and 2. The end of the 21st century may mean a complete redrawing of the global map —

If maps are going to be drawn at all.

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Due to the arcane nature of something called The Electoral College, the infrequent occupant of the Oval Office is a member of the subspecies homo golf cursus. The Putter-in-Chief has called the crisis of climate change a “hoax created by the Chinese.” This is the worst possible leader that we need at this time, a bad hombre who gives into his every selfish impulse including extramarital exploits. Part of his personal expansion is a business empire, which includes buildings that mark his turf, and even more flagrantly, golf courses where a sport is played that is the most territorial of all pastimes. Golfing alpha males carry sophisticated versions of the caveman’s clubs as they roam an oversized lawn that is not cultivated for food or housing but for a trivial contest played by members only. Golf courses may be repurposed by global warming yet.

A recent study by the U.S. Geologic Survey predicts that as many as one billion people living on the coasts are threatened by the rise of sea levels due to melting ice sheets and the polar ice caps. After Miami, Guangzhou and Mumbai become uninhabitable, their citizens will not sacrifice themselves for the greater good and submit to drowning. They will push into dry areas. Fleeing humans won’t be allowed on to arable farmland which will be under stress to feed a burgeoning population of humans. The dislocated could end up squatting on golf courses, among other places, where they will build shanty towns, drink from the water traps and scrounge for squirrels and slaughter the swans. The ants will join them and in a desperate measure to feed themselves, the displaced humans will make like chimps and dip twigs into anthills in order to eat them.

Scientists tell us it’s unlikely the Earth will ever become a kind of Water World — at least not for the next two billion years. But the coming disruption to life as we know it cannot help but end in struggle, disease and war. It may result in a divergence in our species with the rise of homo survivalus. They would be descended from humans with enlarged amygdalae and its associated paranoia that forced them to flee the cities for isolated locations where they have stored their guns and ammunition and a few years supply of food. Homo survivalus won’t be defending his food and territory from homo chardonnayus, the rich liberals living inside the East and West Coast Bubbles. The Bubbleites will have retreated to their second homes in the mountains of Aspen and Stowe. Homo survivalus will be aiming his gun at the masses of poor and homeless who will break down his fences in search of something to eat and a place to lay their weary heads.

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In California where I live, it has been decades since I have seen any of our native carpenter and harvester ants. The only ants we ever see anymore are invaders: Argentine ants and the red imported fire ant. How they got here is not completely known but it was not a plot they thought up — ants are terribly limited in their thinking abilities. They have no culture, no morality, and do not make choices about how and where to reproduce. Ants can’t help but to create new colonies and can’t help but to defend their nests. They can’t resist attacking other ant nests in order to destroy them, eat their larvae for lunch and then assume their territory.

Most ants not only attack other species of ants but will attack rivals of their own species whose scents differ by a few molecules. The Argentine ant is one of the exceptions. As tiny as their worker/soldiers are, they have become the most dominant player in our state, with a massive supercolony extending from Mexico to San Francisco. Their uncountable trillions of ants in millions of different colonies accept each other as kin and their millions of egg laying queens maintain a chemical truce. The Argentines have won billions of wars with an unstoppable army.

In order to make war, humans have to “otherize” the enemy. We view other groups as lesser and different due to cultural and physical differences that have developed, mostly, in geographic isolation. But we are all the same species or we couldn’t interbreed. The establishment of the United Nations was an attempt to come together as a single human tribe and end any more wars. More recently, the U.N. took an official position on global warming as an extension of this goal: “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”

Most of the developed and educated nations of the world are accepting their responsibility for a changed climate and most are working to reduce their carbon footprints. But for the first time, these progressive nations are looking at the United States as something of The Other — as a nation falling backwards, committed to a willful ignorance and using the fictions of religious scripture to justify our abuse of the planet. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners “It is my devout belief in God that gives me every bit of confidence that man is not destroying — and furthermore, cannot — destroy the climate.” The wealthiest nation in the world that once put a man on the moon has allowed an incurious, inept opportunist to become its leader. Our president is a climate change denier whose endless greed has cheated thousands out of their money in order to fly in his jumbo jet to his different golf courses.

Our planet is being ruined by those of us who fail to hold back on our natural impulses, who want to win, win, win without regards to consequences. Unlike the ants, we can overcome our innate instincts and can moderate our behavior — we can do the right thing for our human family of seven billion and growing. Part of the right thing means limiting the number of our offspring and making better choices as consumers. We can invest in an array of solar panels, choose an electric car over a Cadillac Escalade, or buy a sailboat instead of a powerboat. We can give up meat and take public transportation. We can solve any so-called housing crises not by building more houses and destroying more forests but by having fewer children. We can maintain a habitable, peaceful and beautifully diverse planet by choosing the welfare of the global tribe over the pleasures and power lust of a few individuals.

Ants will never change their ways — they can’t be talked out of their next war of expansion or reproductive rate. Humans will never get over our natural impulses to conquer and subdue but we can choose not to express them. Instead of acting on our impulses, we can sublimate them through violent, smutty novels, movies and television, video games, chess and checkers. We can indulge our desire to battle by watching or playing sports where “tribes” or individual “warriors” represent different settlements and engage in a substitute for combat. One of those “sports” can be played by people well into old age: so if you have to, go play some fucking golf.

See you on the links.

Clark T. Carlton is a journalist, screen and television writer and an award winning playwright and novelist. He was born in the South, grew up in the East, went to school in the North, and lives with his family in the West. As a child he spent hours observing ants and their wars and pondered their similarity to human societies.

Prophets of the Ghost Ants: Amazon | Harper Voyager

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. But what happens after you step through a portal to another world, well…

For stage magician Quinn Bradley, he thought his time in Alissia was over. He’d done his job for the mysterious company CASE Global Enterprises, and now his name is finally on the marquee of one of the biggest Vegas casinos. And yet, for all the accolades, he definitely feels something is missing. He can create the most amazing illusions on Earth, but he’s also tasted true power. Real magic.

He misses it.

Luckily–or not–CASE Global is not done with him, and they want him to go back. The first time, he was tasked with finding a missing researcher. Now, though, he has another task:

Help take Richard Holt down.

It’s impossible to be in Vegas and not be a gambler. And while Quinn might not like his odds–a wyvern nearly ate him the last time he was in Alissia–if he plays his cards right, he might be able to aid his friends.

He also might learn how to use real magic himself.

1) There’s No I in Team, but Three I’s in Centipede Infestation

When I first wrote the manuscript for The Rogue Retrieval, I was a team of one. I wrote the book at my own pace, with no deadlines other than the somewhat-arbitrary ones I set for myself. I didn’t have anyone to go to for feedback, either. There’s a lot of freedom that comes with writing a book on spec. If I failed, no one would ever know. I didn’t have that luxury with book number two. Instead, I had critique partners, an agent, an editor, and maybe even a few fans.

I still had to write the book, but when I was done, I knew that members of my “team” were going to read it. That raised the mental stakes: when I finished a scene or chapter, I wondered whether or not it was good enough to live up to expectation.

The ugly centipede of self-doubt can be crippling for any writer. Fortunately, the simple fact that people were expecting that next manuscript created enough urgency to keep me going. Centipedes be damned.

2) Face Your Weaknesses

Every writer has strengths and weaknesses. Some of us write slow openings, but killer endings. Some of us are great with narration but struggle with dialogue. Over time, you learn your particular weak points and try to give them more attention. For me, plot-wise, the middle is the hardest part. That gets complicated for book #2 in a planned trilogy, because the ENTIRE BOOK is a kind of middle. How much do you give away? How much do you hold back? I asked myself these questions over and over.

The good news was that, thanks to item #1 above, I had people around to point out my weaknesses. My editor (David Pomerico) is very good at finding them, and steering me in the right direction. Also, because he’d read my outline for the whole series, he knew when I was trying to hide things that I shouldn’t.

The lesson here is that you should find people who know your weak points. Listen to them and pray they don’t sell you out to your enemies.

3) Punctuation Is Hard

As I wrote in my previous guest post for Terribleminds, copy editors can do wonders for taking you down a peg. Having learned many grammar and punctuation lessons embedded in my 1,500 copy edits for The Rogue Retrieval, I felt all but certain I’d do a much better job this time. Many of the corrections addressed minor formatting issues I could preemptively fix before the editors ever saw it. That should make for a much easier copy edit, right?

Sort of. The manuscript for The Island Deception came back with 1,200 copy edits. In some cases, I tried to fix a formatting issue but only made it worse. But most of the copy edits were punctuation-related. A lot of my commas get moved around, but the hyphen/em-dash is my absolute bane. At this point, I feel like I’ll never learn it fully. That’s why we have copy editors.

4) Lie, Cheat, and Steal

My main character is a Vegas illusionist, someone who deceives people for a living. In the first book, I enjoyed putting that skill set to work. With book two, I wanted to take it up a notch. The word deception is right there in the title. So I made my MC lie and cheat like his life depended on it, which did. What surprised me about writing that was how much I enjoyed myself doing it.

We penmonkeys are all liars to a certain extent. And we often put a little bit of ourselves into our characters. Mine is charming, persuasive, and willing to put in the work to excel at his job. He’s the guy I sometimes wish I could be. That makes writing him a hell of a lot of fun.

5) Leave It All on the Table

By the time I sent off the manuscript to my editor, I felt like it was in good shape. It had passed through the gauntlets of two critique partners; even my agent called it “pretty clean” (coming from a literary agent, this is a compliment). Imagine my surprise when I got a seven-page edit letter. My editor said look, if you give this a light polish it’ll be a good book. But if you’re willing to dig deep and put in some hard work, I think it could be great.

Those edits took two and a half weeks of round-the-clock work. By the time they were done, I had ants crawling out of my eye sockets and wanted to set fire to the world. But I’d put in the work, and the book was better for it. I figure it puts me one step closer to the character I’d like to be.

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Dan Kobolt: Website | Twitter | Facebook

The Island Deception: HarperCollins | Amazon | iTunes | Nook | Kobo | Google

Spring returns to the Plains, and with it, the Time of the Challenges, when warrior fights warrior in a contest for rank and status. For Simus of the Hawk, now is the time to raise his challenge banner, to fight for the chance to finally become Warlord. 

But his deadliest challenge does not come from other warriors, or even the sundered Council of Elders. For on the first night of the Challenges, a mysterious and deadly pillar of white light scorches the night sky—instantly changing everything for the People of the Plains.

Now a warrior-priestess, Snowfall, stands before Simus, who dares to speak of peace, of reconciliation. Her knives are sharp, her tattoos alluring, and her cool grey eyes can look through Simus and see…everything.

Now Simus and Snowfall must solve the mystery of the pillar of white light, and protect their people from all the destruction and chaos it brings. Snowfall fights for her place beside Simus, despite resistance from friend and foe.

The warrior-priests have abused their power for many years. Can Simus face the challenge of trusting Snowfall with his honor? And perhaps . . . with his heart?

1.  Persistence is the name of the game.

Yeah, butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard.  I have to write and write and write some more to get words on the page that I can fix.  And sometimes sitting with the laptop on my lap and staring at the wall is writing.  So are all the little scribbled notes that I stick in my purse.

Thinking about the book, the story, the characters every day.  Not letting myself get distracted by TV, movies, video games and other people’s books.  Because it is so much easier to consume rather than produce.  And creation is hard.

And while I know that – knew that from experience from all my prior books – it seems I have to be re-taught this lesson every single time I sit down to write another book.

You would think I would learn.  But noooooo.

2.  OMG, I am waaay too nice to my characters.

I take them out for long walks, and picnic lunches where everyone talks over their problems and after a bit of discussion, come to an agreement.  They tell jokes, make sheep eyes at each other, and express concerns over their issues.

Bleh.

I usually have to stop myself, take a deep breath, then set the picnic basket on fire, throw rocks at the characters,  run them up a tree, and then set fire to the tree.  Drama, excitement, suspension, those are emotions that make a book.

If the characters are going to declare their undying love for each other, it is far more interesting and satisfying if they do so while under the threat of death, dismemberment, or being ripped from each other’s arm by some other really bad thing.  But dang it, I usually only figure that out in the 2^nd draft of the book.  See paragraph 4 below.

3.  My sub-genre may require a HEA for the main characters, but secondary characters are subject to RIF without notice or hearing.

True story – when I was first published I went to a meeting of our local romance writer’s group.  Someone asked me how the latest book was going and I said.  “Good, but I don’t think I have enough red shirts.”

Dead Silence.  Blank stares. (Mind you, this was in 2005)

So I explained the concept of red shirts; ie: Not a big enough body count.

Dead Silence.  Blank stares.

Then someone broke the silence and asked ‘you are writing a romance, right?’

Yup.  But that doesn’t mean that heads aren’t gonna roll.

Understand that in romance there is a contract with the reader that at the end of the book there will be a HEA.  Happily Ever After.  And I love happy endings.  Which is why I write romance.  The hero and heroine will be in love, and in each other’s arms, and while facing challenges will do so together, forever.  Smoochy-smoochy.

Secondary characters?  Not so much.  No contracts.  No promises.  Off with their heads, and such other body parts as to make the story interesting.  See paragraph 2. above.

Now, if the secondary characters live long enough to get their own books in the series, well, okay.  They are granted immunity and their own HEA.  Still might hurt them a little bit, tho. Just to keep things interesting.

Oh, and the world behind the hero and heroine?  Turmoil, chaos, a ripping apart of the old ways and traditions.  Yup, that’ll do ‘er, as I like to say.

So.  Hero?  Safe.  Heroine?  Safe.  All the other characters?  I wouldn’t trust me, if I were you.

4.  The story is not about how my monsters breed.

Wyverns!  Big, nasty creatures with teeth and claws, a wicked stinger and a bad attitude.  I spent lots of time designing my wyverns, their mating habits, their migratory patterns, their . . . .

Except that is all back story, dang it, and since it doesn’t matter for the plot I shouldn’t spend two weeks agonizing over their mating habits.  Because doing that research, watching Youtube videos of reptiles eating their prey, that is not advancing the plot, it is not getting words on the page, it is not getting the book written.  Dang it.  See paragraph 1. above.

But I kept all my notes, because you never know when a wyvern might swoop in and bite someone’s head off.  Just sayin’.  See paragraph 2. and 3. above.

5.  I learned how much I love writing.  Even the painful, horrible revision bits.

I normally do four drafts.  The first draft, wherein the characters picnic and are nice to each other.  The second draft, based on my writer’s group comments, wherein the characters suffer more and the plot really gets knitted together.  Then the third draft, based on the editor’s comments, wherein the book becomes sparkly and worthy of publication.

This book went through three extra editorial drafts.  Thank God above for editors who push and push and push until the book is everything it can and should be.  Editors who tell you that you are wonderful even as they are pointing out all the flaws.

I will be very honest here, and I am not the first person to voice this thought.  No one wants to write a book.  Everyone wants to have written a book.  Because it’s hard and while there is joy in the creation, there are painful bits to the process.  But when the labor is done, and the book is printed out and sitting on your desk, there are no words to describe the pride, elation, joy and pure relief an author feels at that moment.

At least, until the copy-editor gets their hands on it.

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Elizabeth Vaughan: Website

Wardance: Amazon

It is about to be my birthday.

I like to think of this as both my real birthday and my birthday as a novelist, actually.

Because at this same time, five years ago, a little book called Blackbirds landed on shelves.

It did so while I was in Los Angeles, promoting that book at the LA Times Book Festival. I also took meetings on what would become the TV deal for the Miriam Black series (one that eventually and sadly went away, as most of them do), and I did a really awesome signing at the now-gone Redondo Beach Mysterious Galaxy branch.

It was the beginning of my novel-writing career — at least, the visible part, like the tip of the iceberg poking out of the frost-capped sea. And five years later, I’ve managed through chicanery and shenanigans to get 19 more novels onto bookstore shelves. I’ve had a non-fiction writing book out: The Kick-Ass Writer. I wrote me a silly little self-published indie trilogy called Star Wars: Aftermath, and each book went on to be a NYT bestseller. I wrote me some comics: Hyperion, The Force Awakens, The Shield. I’ve got more stuff on the way: the novel Exeunt, the next two Miriam Black books, some comics. I’ve been a busy motherfucker. I’m good at what I do. Not great, maybe, but I know I do the work and I do it well. And all this is built on over a decade of writing freelance games, and having a (failed) pilot at TNT, and having a short film at Sundance after attending the Sundance Screenwriters Lab the year before. It’s a lot. I’m not trying to brag — though, I am proud of what I’ve accomplished so far — and I’m also not trying to lay out my CV to let you know, HEY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME. I don’t know jack shit. In fact, I’m less confident now about the things that I know than I was five years ago. And that, I think, is a good thing. In another five years, who knows? Maybe I’ll overturn these again. I’ll add to them. I’ll change them. I’ll know nothing, Jon Snow.

What I do know is this:

It’s been a short five years, and also a long five years.

(And an amazing five years.)

Plus, like I said, my birthday once again arises from the sea, squid-like and slime-slick.

And once again, as fate would have it, I will be out in Los Angeles at the LA Times Book Fest, and I will be promoting not the first Miriam Black book, but rather, the fourth. As such, this seems like a good time to look back and offer some… shape, some context, some ragged semblance of what-I’ve-learned after five years and 20 novels.

1. Writing Advice Is Bullshit And Largely The Product Of Survivorship Bias

Writing advice is bullshit. That’s not to say it’s not useful — as I’ve said in the past, bullshit can also fertilize. But writing advice should always, always, always be read through the lens of, “This is what worked for me, maybe it’ll work for you.” Problem is, a lot of writers treat this stuff as HOLY GOSPEL, as if they’re the ARCHONS OF AN ANCIENT AUTHORIAL ORDER emerging from the fog of history to give you SEKRIT TROOTHS. This shit isn’t baking muffins. You can’t just say, “Put it in the oven at 350 and 20 minutes later, yumminess will emerge.” Writing as a career is an unholy tangle of threads, from how you publish, to your style, to your process, to when you write, to how often you write, to what precious liquor you quaff to celebrate a book release. None of us get here via the same route. As I an fond of saying: we all burn the map afterward. And none of us know what the fuck we’re actually doing, not really. I sure don’t. Even the list below is just me… spouting off. They’re lessons that apply to me, not to you. Maybe to you, it’s gold. Maybe it’s a sack of angry raccoons, I dunno. The only writing advice you can count on is: you gotta write, and you gotta finish what you’re writing. Everything else is variable. Everything else must be swirled around the mouth to determine whether it tastes like honey or it tastes like shit.

2. Learn First To Say Yes, Then To Say No

This is a hard one to learn, and one I’m still endeavoring to put into practice. Early in your career, you seek opportunity like a truffle-addicted pig. Later in your career, those opportunities will come to you — they’ll stick to your ass like burrs. Earlier, every opportunity is legitimately that: an opportunity. But later on, you start to see that not every opportunity is equal. You need to start being judicious about your time and your energy, because this thing we do is work and you only have so much of it you can give out to the world. Inevitably, people want a piece of you. Not to be mean. It’s usually (though not always) coming from a good place. Just the same, you say yes early in your career, but then you gotta start practicing that big word: NO. HELL NO. FUCK NO. Can’t do it, won’t do it, don’t wanna do it. Practice it in the mirror. Shake your fist. Scowl and sneer. Urinate aggressively. I’m urinating aggressively right now. Like a territorial bear.

3. The Muse Doesn’t Hunt You, You Hunt The Muse

Waiting for inspiration is a fool’s game. You hunt it. You summon it. Writing is an act of laying traps for the Muse. Writing does not follow inspiration. It goes the other direction. You become inspired through the act of writing, of telling stories. Just sitting down and doing the work lays bait. It’s an alluring trail Reese’s Pieces meant to draw the extraterrestrial Muse into your house.

4. Ideas Are Easy

For a long time I thought ideas were everything. I thought them precious pearls, when the reality is, they’re just driveway gravel. I got a hundred ideas whipping around my head every day, and the majority of them are sounds and noises — grunts in the dark, a gibber, a wail. I used to write them all down. I’d hoard them like a crow hiding colorful strips of ribbon in its nest. Now, I let them go. I shove them back out the door with not a moment’s interest. Then I wait. If those little bastards come back, if they sneak in through the vents like John McClane, if they creep in through the boltholes like a mouse — well, okay then. That’s an idea that wants to haunt me. That’s an idea whose grunts and gibbers might turn into a song. They’re all still driveway gravel, but maybe once in a while one of those pieces of flinty limestone has some quartz buried in there — something crystalline, with depth, with shine, something worth looking at. At the end of the day, though, no idea is worth anything but the work you give it. You still gotta polish that stone. You still gotta write it all down and make it shine.

5. Find Your Damn Process — Then Challenge It

I often tell a story about how it took me five years to write — or rather, figure out how to write — Blackbirds, and that journey involves me learning I needed to outline my books before I write them. Some folks take that lesson as me telling them: “You have to outline.” But that’s not it. I have to outline. I don’t know what the fuck you need to do; you have to figure that out. You have a process. So go find it. Maybe that means writing 2k every day, reliably. Maybe it means writing 15,000 words every other weekend. Maybe it means you write in coffee shops, or in the crawlspace under your house. Maybe it means you eat a handful of bees before you begin. I dunno. That’s on you to figure it out, and while it’s important to figure out what you write and why you write, it’s also incredibly necessary to figure out how you write. You may think how you write is the way others have told you it must be, but that doesn’t make it true. Also important: when your process isn’t working, you need to evolve it. Your process isn’t one thing forever just as you aren’t one person forever. Challenge it. Change it. See the river and go with it.

6. No One Book Is The Same As The Next

Every book for me has been different than the last. Not just in content — I mean, that’s obvious. I’m writing different books, yeah, duh. I mean, how I write each book is different every time. Some come faster, others slower. Every outline I do is different than the last — some are just tentpoles, others are cuckoopants flow-charts like the nutball wall of a conspiracy theorist, others still are hastily-scrawled manifestos on ragged bits of notebook paper. The books are chimeras. They shift and change. They’re different beasts that demand different food. And that’s okay.

7. Do Not (Over)Prioritize Money

I have made decisions in this career based purely on money, and turns out, that was not always the best way. Don’t get me wrong, I like money. I need money because oh shit we live in a capitalist society and I have this thing called a “mortgage” for this box called a “house” and I don’t want to have to live in the “woods” like a “bear.” And if there’s the choice between taking LOTS OF MONEY and NO MONEY — yeah, take the cash. But I’ve had a couple situations where… I wish I’d maybe gone a different way. Where I looked at an overall strategy instead of a dollar sign. This career has to be more than just the dollar signs.

8. Publishing Is A Long Con Demanding A Long Strategy

Have a one-year-plan, a five-year-plan, a ten-year-plan. Keep it flexible, but always be casting your eyes not just to the book you’re writing but to your career down the line. If you wanna do this thing — not just put a book on a shelf but put your writing pants on for the duration of a whole damn career! — then you can’t just be looking down at your feet. This is a long game with many moves against an invisible opponent. Where do you want to be? Who are you as a writer? This is also about what you can control versus what you can influence. You can control what you write. You always have that. For everything else, you have varying degrees of influence. You’ll never control awards. You’ll never control the audience. But you look ahead anyway, and you say, how do I get to where I want to go? If you want to be writing comics, or thrillers, or sexy Gremlins fan-fic, then plot that course. Plot multiple ways of getting there. Talk it out with agents and editors. Diversify your path. Then it’s like what Dory says in Finding Nemo: JUST KEEP KILLING YOUR FOES AND EATING THEIR FLESH AS SACRAMENT wait I’m pretty sure that’s not right. But it’s close enough, I guess. P.S. “writing pants” are metaphorical as writers do not wear pants because pants are a tool of the oppressor.

9. You Can’t Do It Alone (And Yes, That Means Selling And Promoting)

Writing is not a solitary career. That is a myth — worse, like the starving artist myth, it is a romantic one that is valuable to everyone but the fucking writer. We are given this meritocratic lone-wolf ronin-ninja claptrap about how it’s all up to you, you wily pioneer, you’re out there on the frontier of the Weird and Wordy West, just you and your shooters against the world. And you’re routinely told how you can do it all yourself. Self-publishing schemers want you to think you should do everything from designing your own covers to editing your own books. Tricksy traditional publishers — and yep, this includes some of the Bigguns — want you to think you can sell and promote the book all by your lonesome, too. And you can, provided your entire scheme and strategy is just the words GOOD FUCKING LUCK written on a crummy index card. Sorry, you need help. You need agents and editors. You need copy-editors and designers. You need marketers and promoters. A traditional publisher may want to convince you that you can do it yourself, but you can move 10s, maybe 100s of books by yourself — and they need you to move 1000s. You need other writers, too. We’re good for each other when we try to be. This is a community. We’re all stowaways and impostors. Don’t feel alone, and don’t be alone.

10. Cover Your Ass, Keep Your Rights

Read your contracts and keep your rights. Own the work. You will make money not just from selling the book the first time, but also selling foreign rights and other licensing opportunities. You give them away to a publisher, know that you’re giving them to a non-invested, not-necessarily-capable party. Be smart. Be strategic.

11. Give The Proper Amount Of Fucks

This is a point I make again and again, and it’s one that was really important for me as a writer — I learned to care less. I figured out that I needed fewer fucks in my fuck basket. This serves a lot of purposes. First, it gives you confidence — because if you’re not so concerned with what everybody else thinks, you start to command your own work more comfortably and assertively. Second, it makes sure you’re not trying to chase a market or not trying to mimic someone else’s idea of what your book should look like. It’s yours alone and if your attitude is a little bit punk-rock, a little bit middle-finger, you find yourself more willing to write the book you need to write rather than the book you think other people want. At the end of the day, even if the book doesn’t work — you know you did what you wanted with it. And you can do it again with the next one and the one after that. Note: you still have to care. Your fuckgarden cannot be fallow. But when you learn to moderate how many fucks you’re willing to give to this, you find a measure of freedom somewhere between PROFESSIONAL CLAUSTROPHOBIA and CHAOS REIGNS.

12. The Opposite Of ‘Kill Your Darlings’ Is ‘Know Which Hill To Die On’

Early on you learn to kill your darlings. Your work has these precious, preening peacocks who strut about for their own pomp and circumstance. These darlings are like chairs you can’t sit on, food you can’t eat — they’re just there to look pretty and take up space. So, you kill them. You learn to kill them. You get good at killing them. And then, one day, you realize maybe you got too good at it. Maybe you went too far. You started to think of everything as expendable, everything as negotiable. But it isn’t. It can’t be. I learned this writing Star Wars: yes, those books are not purely mine. They belong to the galaxy, not to me. Just the same? It’s my name on those books. If they fail, they fail on my watch. If there’s something in there you don’t like, it doesn’t matter if it’s something Mickey Mouse his-own-damn-self demanded I put in there: it lands on my doorstep. That’s when I saw the other side of the brutally execute your peacocks argument: some peacocks stay. Some peacocks are yours, and you put them there because that’s where you want them. Maybe they add something specific, maybe you’re just an asshole who demands that one lone peacock warbling and showing its stuff. But you own that. You have to see when there are battles to lose, and when there are wars to win. There are always hills to die on. It can’t be all of them. You want to die on every hill, then you’re dead for no reason and the book will suffer. But some things are yours and you have to know which ones to fight for, and why. You have to know why they matter and then you have to be prepared to burn the book to ash in order to let it stay.

13. Don’t Give Plot The Keys To The Story Car: Let The Characters Drive

You and me, we make our own decisions, mostly. We have autonomy and agency and that’s what makes life interesting. It’s also what makes stories interesting. Characters are everything, and I’ll tell you, for me this revelation is what helps a book begin but even better, is what helps a book grow and push on through the middle to a satisfying end. When you design a book from the top-down, beginning with plot, you are creating a structure that you have to force everything into. But that’s not interesting. The small story is what’s interesting, not the big story. And the small story is always about character. Even the biggest pop culture touchstones are about character: Die Hard works because it’s about McClane’s marriage. A New Hope works because we understand Luke’s desire to get off-planet. Buffy works because we see a character who wants to be a normal teen girl but who can’t. You can tell when a story feels like it has a plot and it’s just cramming characters into it, like it’s a traveler who swears they can fucking hammer their big-ass suitcase into the overhead compartment. Look at it this way: if you can replace all the characters in your story with objects, you done fucked up. If the plot keeps chugging on even if the protagonist is a toaster or a literal cinderblock, that’s a good sign that external plot has taken over the organic narrative. Characters are not architecture — they’re architects. They build plot. So let them build.

14. Originality Is Fucking Overrated

We worry about being original but fuck being original. No one element is truly original. What’s original is in the arrangement, and what’s original in that arrangement is you. You, the author, are the single, singular unique aspect of the work.

15. Sometimes Writing Days Are Not Days In Which You Write

This one’s fucking hard for me. I grew up with a father who instilled in me a hard-nose, ass-to-the-grindstone attitude — wait, you’re not supposed to press your ass against grindstones, are you? Actually, pressing your nose to a grindstone sounds bad, too, because I’m pretty sure that’s how you lose your nose. Maybe that’s how my father lost his pinky finger. Hm. Whatever. Point is, I grew up with a WORK YOUR ASS OFF attitude, and that’s mostly paid off, and it’s not entirely inaccurate that the work is the work is the work. What I missed though, was that sometimes the work wasn’t always just the work. Some days, yeah, writing is digging ditches. Other days, it’s designing UNICORN BONDAGE DUNGEONS OUT OF THIN AIR, and that requires more than just sticking a shovel into loamy earth and moving soil around. Sometimes it means thinking. It means moving around. It means experiencing life. See, that’s one of the hangups I have — one of the chiefmost pieces of advice you get about being a writer is that the two essential components are READING and WRITING. Yes, those are essential. They’re just not the only ones. You gotta live. You have to experience things. You have to travel and talk to people and examine everything and live both inside your head and outside of it. And that means that sometimes this gig leaves you with days that aren’t about reading and aren’t about writing — they’re about a third thing, a nebulous and unprotected thing that feels unproductive but that is necessary just the same. (But you still have to do the damn work. You can’t live in that interstitial space forever. You have to come back from the adventure with lessons and magic beans for the village. Or at least lessons on how to properly hog-tie a unicorn for sexy times.)

16. Don’t Be A Jerk, Because You’re Not That Important

For the most part, this industry is filled with amazing people who want to be here because they want to be here. Because they love it. It’s not so fruitful or lucrative an industry that people are attracted to it for the money, so that means you get a lot of people who are here just because they fucking dig it the most, baby, and that’s rad. Still — still. You get jerks. Because all of life has jerks. Jerks permeate. Ant colonies probably have jerks. I’m sure at any given time, any ant colony has a bare minimum of 13% jerks. So, you get them here, too. Some can’t help it. Others can. For those who can: don’t be a jerk. We’re watching. And the industry has a long memory. It’s not to say it’ll end your career. Plenty of jerks have done well for themselves. But it’s not worth it.  The people here are awesome, so be awesome in return. Help more than you hurt. Try to give back. Make friends. Don’t be a fucking asshole, asshole.

17. Every Book Is A New Day

Last book didn’t sell as well as you wanted? Or it didn’t land with a publisher? Or you didn’t like it? That’s the way the pages turn. We all fail, and the only time the failure sticks is when you stop learning from it. But remember: there’s always the next book. This doesn’t need to end with one. Your career never needs to end with one. Keep going. Keep writing. I view my life as a series of books written and unwritten and that excites the hell out of me. In some cases I’m making a pile out of my failures, and sometimes I’m making a ladder out of my successes. Either way: every book is a new chance, a new day, a new path.

18. Every Book Is Just As Scary As The Last

And yeah, every book is just as scary as the last. Scary when you’re writing it, scary when you’re editing it, scary when you’re releasing it. It never gets easier. It sometimes gets harder, in that sense that Jenga is easy when you pull the first piece out, and a whole lot fucking scarier when you go to pull the 21st piece out…

19. Your Audience Is Wide…

Inclusiveness in fiction is not about political correctness but rather about ensuring that book is a big tent ready to accommodate and reflect those who may read it. Stories work when we can see ourselves in them. So let a lot of people see themselves in yours.

20. …But Also, Your Heart Matters The Most

This was another lesson that was hard for me to come to — the fact that at the end of the day, I’m accountable to me. I write for me. At least, I write that first draft for me. Once upon a time I thought I needed to write it for you: the market, the editor, the audience, the whoever. But in the story, in the book, I need to make peace with me, first. I need to take what’s going on inside my heart and my head and I need to mash them into a gelatinous, seminal, blood-pulp paste and brew ink from that hellacious emotional-intellectual slurry. And from that inkwell, I write. I write the story from my blood and my gray matter. I write the story I need to see. I tell the story I have to tell, obsessively and anxiously.

21. A Writing Career Has An RPG-Like Progression

You start out some n00b punk sling-shotting rats in a tavern cellar, and then one day you level up and you go out into the world and you think it’s easy from here. You get new skills. You get new loot like shoes that help you jump really far or a feathered hat that  calls birds to come dress you or regurgitate into your mouth or whatever. You get a new weapon: THE FANGBLOOD ELFSLAYER DRAGONSDONG BLADE. Then you go out into the new realm, into an uncharted land, and you find that your problems just have bigger teeth now. The rats are giants. The giants become dragons. The slaying must continue. As you get better, so too do your problems get better at being problems. As a writer, I find they’re all good problems to have — it’s just, it doesn’t really get easier, it just gets more complicated. You must make choices. Harder, trickier choices. What I’m saying is, it starts as a Bethesda RPG, then it becomes a goddamn Bioware one, oh shit.

22. It’s Also A Little Bit Jazz

It’s RPG, but it’s also improvisational jazz. It’s a riff here, a fill-in there, it’s syncopation and swing. Every paragraph, every page, every story, every book, even the whole damn career — it’s about rhythm, and changing rhythm, and it’s about composing the tune as you play it. You plan what you can, but the rest is experimentation. Sometimes it’s got that orgy-like component: you don’t know what’s going to happen, but you do know it’s time to take your pants off.

23. Storytelling Is The Art, Writing Is The Craft

Writing matters. It has rules. It can be artful or utilitarian, it can be languid or merciless. But it’s just the vehicle. We keep coming back to the authors we love — Atwood to Gaiman, King to Morrison — not merely because of the quality of their prose but because their stories are engaging. It’s the stories that matter. The art lives in the story. It’s the hardest and most essential part — you can write beautifully, but if the story there doesn’t sing, fuck you. The opposite is also (usually) true: the writing can be execrable, but as long as the story grips us by the nipples, we’ll buy the ticket and take the ride — and we’ll beg you for more when we’re done.

24. You Know A Whole Lot Less Than You Know, And That’s A Good Thing

Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. I’m convinced of that. We’re all just collaboratively guessing. And that’s a good thing. This isn’t math. You can’t plug numbers into X and Y and get a steady result. Every day of a writing career is exploring a new planet. All the truths you hold are likely half-truths or even cleverly-costumed lies. Embrace that. Every day I know less than I knew before, and I find that oddly and eerily liberating. It means I don’t have all the answers and neither do you. It means we’re all just drunkenly careening and caroming our way up the publishing mountain. Not just up the mountain — but we’re also navigating peaks and valleys, because the middle of a writing career involves the mitigation of cliffs. You always know one is coming: a year from now, maybe three, because at some point your contracts end and your deadlines are vapor and it’ll be time to write a story anew. And that requires reinvention big or small every time. New questions haunt us. New problems, too. We’re all navigating this weird, goofy-ass path over uncertain topography. And we’re doing it together. And did I mention we’re drunk? OMG we’re soooo fucking drunk. DRUNK ON THE CREATIVE SPIRIT. DRUNK ON STORY. DRUNK ON PROBABLY ALSO GIN IF YOU’RE ME. THAT’S ONE TRUTH THAT’S SELF-EVIDENT: DRINK MORE GIN. IT GIVES YOU WRITER SUPERPOWERS. ALSO EXPLAINS WHY I DON’T WEAR PANTS. WHERE AM I. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE. DON’T DRINK MY GIN. *punches you*

25. Some Writers Have It, Some Don’t

Some writers have what it takes and others don’t. No, I don’t know what separates one from the other. I could make some guesses and I’d be right sometimes, wrong other times. One thing I know: it isn’t talent. Talent may or may not exist as a character trait, but those with it will fail if they don’t put in the work, trampled beneath the talentless mobs who do put in the time and the effort. Writing as a career takes a certain kind of obsessiveness and stubbornness, I think: the willingness to put a tin pail on your head as you run full-speed into a wall, hoping to knock it down. Again and again. Until the wall falls or you do. Sometimes I think maybe that the thing that separates those who have it from those who don’t is simply those who decide, “Fuck it, I’m a writer,” and then they do the thing. They choose to have it, to count themselves among that number rather than those who don’t. But I have no idea. I don’t know what the hell is going on. And neither to do you. What I know is this: writers write, so go write. Finish what you start.

The rest is negotiable.

* * *

Here’s a deal: I’ll give you 50% off my MEGA ULTRA BIG-ASS BOOK BUNDLE — which gives you eight writing books and two novels for a mere $10 if you use the code BIRTHDAYBOY at checkout. So, go check it out, will you? (Coupon expires 4/30.) Or, if you’d rather something in print, check out The Kick-Ass Writer. OR DON’T, I’M NOT YOUR BOSS. Not yet, anyway. But one day they’ll hire me. And then you’ll see. You’ll see.

This will be a disappointing post for some, and an apology, too.

I get a lot of requests for blurbs.

They roll in, at least one a week. And I am genuinely honored each time that anyone would ever consider having my dumb name devaluing their book from the inside or on its exterior. Bonus: I like helping writers, from eager novitiate to well-practiced word-herder. And I’ve been there. I’ve been the guy with a book in his hand, just asking another author, DO YOU LIKE-LIKE ME Y/N COOL LET’S GO TO THE PROM TOGETHER I mean ha ha will you blurb my book?

Blurbs are currency — I don’t mean currency in the way that cigarettes and toilet wine are in prison, we don’t trade them. I mean they’re currency for readers. Some readers admittedly probably don’t give a lick of spit who said what about what book, but for others, they see a blurb on a cover and think: “Well, if MY FAVORITE AUTHOR likes this book, then I too might like this book.” Of course, therein leads to a slightly new problem, whereupon an author of one type of book blurbs a book in a genre that author doesn’t write, and people then make assumptions based on the blurbed book (or the blurbing author). “Ah, a horror novelist blurbed this fantasy book, so it must be a horror-fantasy novel,” and then that’s not true, and a reader feels cheated.

Anyway, that’s really not the point.

Point is, I get a lot of these requests.

And I’m going to have to start turning them down.

It’s due to a confluence of reasons. First, I am not a zippy reader. Worse, I do not have a great deal of time for reading — I can carve out a little time in the BATTLESHED, and I snatch time at night before bed, but all in all, life with mounting deadlines and a five-year-old I want to spend time with means my reading time is precious. When I’m trying to read roughly a book a week for blurbing purposes, that’s literally all I’m reading (except for research books, when necessary). And it’s not that I’m reading bad books. Hardly! I’m reading great stuff. New stuff. Stuff I wouldn’t have necessarily gone out to buy on my own. And even still, I was having to turn stuff down just by dint of having too many other books to read-for-blurbs. Worse, though, is that I have a now-teetering TBR (to-be-read) pile that includes a whole lot of books I’d very much like to read for pleasure, but can’t get to because I’m trying to read books for blurbing. Which means I’m reading the books-for-blurbing fast, too fast, and they’re becoming more a point of contention and disappointment because I feel obligated to read those rather than read things I want to read. It ends up making them a chore, rather than a noble delight.

So.

Over the last couple weeks, I set aside books-for-blurbing and started to dig into that pile. I read a couple McCammon books that had been sitting on the back-burner. I started the new Kevin Hearne ARC (Plague of Giants) and the second Broken Earth book by Nora Jemisin. And suddenly, I’m in love with reading again. I feel lighter, more buoyant. I don’t feel like reading is an obligation or a stressor, but rather, a pleasure.

And I really needed that.

So, for the short term, my BLURB DOOR is closed. You can always ask, of course, but generally, the answer shall be no, sorry — and most blurb requests should be sent through my agent, Stacia Decker, anyway. Further, it means if you’re waiting for a blurb from me — *winces* — nnnyeah, you probably won’t get one at this point. The desire is high but the reality is, you probably don’t want me feeling that your book is a chore — even if it’s a beautiful, staggering, sublime read, I’ll still feel right now like it’s homework I’m turning in late.

I AM SORRY

*throws self on the altar*

*reads a couple books while up there*

Alex Segura is a good dude, but don’t tell him I said that, or he’ll get all OOH CHUCK LIKES ME about it, then he’ll want to have brunch and start a book club and ain’t nobody got time for that. He’s not only one of the architects behind the many comic properties at Archie, but he’s also a damn fine novelist. He wanted to talk a little bit about what it is that keeps you going as a writer.

* * *

Breaking news: writing is hard. It’s loaded with insecurity, rejection and silence. There are less painful, more lucrative careers that probably require less work. But, at the end of the day, those of us that stick it out and choose to peck at our keyboards daily do it because we love it. Because we’re passionate about the stories we want to tell.

But before I get too close to the Bummertown city limits, let me also say that writing creates some amazing moments. Moments where you think back and say, ‘Damn, I will never forget that.’ Like the first time you get to hold a printed copy of your book, or the first time you signed a copy for a fan or when you found out a teacher that inspired you as a kid is actually a fan of your work. That kind of stuff is rare, and spread out. But it matters. And it feels pretty good.

I had one such moment on a day where things were, well, not great. It was sometime in October, 2013. I’d just gotten news that, while not surprising, derailed my professional life. My current job was moving from New York City – where I lived – to the west coast, where I didn’t live. I could follow my job to California, sure. But I didn’t think that was possible. It just wasn’t in the cards for me and my family then. That meant I would either be jobless or I had to try and find a job. Not ideal, especially because I dug my job. And jobs give you money which allows you to live.

On the bright side, my first novel – Silent City – had just come out. Like, that same day. It introduced the world to Pete Fernandez, a washed-up journalist with a drinking problem who finds himself embroiled in the search for a former coworker, which pulls him into a complex Miami criminal conspiracy. But, because the book had been published by a very, very, very small publisher, copies weren’t available to purchase online yet (this was the first printing of the book – it was later reprinted/repackaged by Polis Books, my current publisher, to coincide with the release of my second book, Down the Darkest Street…). There was an unexpected lag on Amazon and while I was hopeful it’d get fixed, it added another rain cloud to the day. Sure, #firstworldproblems, but still. My book was “out” but no one had copies yet. That’s some kind of top-level writer torture right there.

With all that, I left my midtown office into a pouring rainstorm, sans umbrella. As I stood outside the building, water pelting my flimsy raincoat I debated what to do. Go home and sulk? Or, as planned, hit up a reading discussion by crime writer (and TV writer for shows like The Wire and Treme, to name a few) George Pelecanos at the always-great Center for Fiction a few blocks away? I chose the latter. I’m not a good sulker.

Let me backtrack for a hot second: There would be no Silent City or Pete Fernandez without the work of George Pelecanos. Full stop. I’ve always loved mystery and crime fiction, from Sherlock Holmes to gangster tales to crime classics by Chandler, Hammett and so on. But there’s a handful of books that made me think about giving it a try myself. Those are special books for a writer, as you can probably guess. The list isn’t long: Laura Lippman’s Baltimore Blues, Dennis Lehane’s Darkness, Take My Hand, Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo, James Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere and, the book that kicked the door down for the entire batch: George Pelecanos’s A Firing Offense.

Nick Stefanos, the protagonist of Pelecanos’s first three books, is a fuck up. He works as the ad guy at Nutty Nathan’s, an appliance store in Washington, DC. He smokes too much pot, drinks a lot and goes to plenty of shows. He’s directionless and young. He likes loud, melodic and defiant music. He makes mistakes. I could relate to the guy. The books were sloppy, energetic and fearless. Reading the novels, you not only get a sense for Nick as a character, but for DC as a place, and you realize pretty fast that these books could only happen in this spot. I wondered if I could do the same for Miami. Eventually, my own PI, washed-up journalist Pete Fernandez was born. The early Pelecanos novels showed me what I wanted to do with my own work.

So, yeah, Pelecanos is an important writer to me. We all have one or two. The authors that made us decide we wanted to take a stab at this writing thing ourselves. The authors who wrote books that got us so jazzed about the work, so inspired, we decided to try it ourselves.

It seemed like the perfect antidote to what I was feeling – insecurity, fear, stress and confusion.

I’d seen Pelecanos speak a few times but never gotten the courage up to chat with him, beyond stammering a few things as he signed my book. At the Center for Fiction, he read from his new novel and took some questions from the audience. As his presentation was ending and the tables were set up for his signing, I slinked toward the exit. It was time to go. As great as the event was, maybe I did want to go home and sulk. Or at least think about The Future and What’s Next. But, as I cut through the signing area, I was intercepted by my friend, writer Jonathan Santlofer, who runs the Center for Fiction. He congratulated me on my book (though, he did note his copy hadn’t arrived – cringe!) and asked if I wanted to come upstairs to sit with George and a few of the Center’s students for a low-key conversation. I said sure. My brain screamed “HELL YES.” What happened next was more than I’d expected, as I and a handful of students got to listen to George hold court about writing, his career and his latest book, starring a new series character named Spero Lucas. It was a small group, no more than twelve, and the setting was intimate and quiet. It was like we were kicking back after a nice meal with friends. George (can i call him that?) was affable, relaxed and humble. This was a guy who’d worked hard, every day, until he got his break – then he worked harder. The guy sitting before us had written nineteen novels, worked on TV shows and films, but still put in the hours every day like he was a hungry newcomer. Inspirational was an understatement.

I asked a question – about music in fiction – and likened his early work to the great post-punk albums I loved in my own college years, like the Replacements. I said his early books had the same verve and energy you’d find on records like Let It Be or Hootenanry. He smiled knowingly. I felt like we had a connection. Like I’d tapped into a secret, pirate radio station. I was speaking his language. His eyes lit up for a moment. He was flattered, it seemed, and he talked a little bit about the boldness of youth and how much fun he’d had writing those books. In that brief moment, he seemed glad I got it. I got what his books were going for. Or maybe I was just reading too much into a polite exchange. I’ll stick to the former. Soon, the questions fizzled out and it was time to go.

As the students packed their stuff and wandered off, some taking a minute to shake George’s hand in thanks, I hung back and waited. When it seemed like I had an opening, I sheepishly went up to him and let him know that his words – just then and years before, on the printed page – had meant a lot to me, and that his work motivated to write my own. He seemed genuinely touched, in the way people are when something intense cuts into a fairly routine situation. He thanked me and seemed to think that was it, and started to turn away. Before he could, I pulled out a copy of Silent City. My only copy of the book. Like I said, my publisher was a pretty small outfit and there’d been some shipping delays. I didn’t have author or review copies yet. I just had this one, tattered book I’d been clinging to like a talisman: proof of concept. Concrete evidence that I’d gone from theoretical writer to real writer. So this one copy — that was it. It was the only proof I had that I’d written a novel. But that didn’t matter to me in the moment. This was an opportunity. A sign. A moment that had to be seized.

As writers, we don’t get a lot of moments like these. Moments where things line up and we get to look back and appreciate what we’ve done, and turn around and look at the future with some optimism. A lot of the day-to-day is loaded with stress, rejection, please-love-me posturing and loneliness. It is not a profession I would suggest to someone who doesn’t take criticism well, that’s for sure. But that’s what makes the good times so meaningful. The times when you realize why you do this, why you sit alone for hours pecking away at your keyboard in the dark, telling a story first for yourself, then for everyone else. We do this stuff because we have to, and I’d probably write books for myself alone if that was the extent of my audience. But it’s nice, hell, it’s essential, to sometimes feel like you’re pushing that boulder up the hill for a reason.

I don’t remember exactly what I blurted out. It probably ran parallel with what I’ve written here, except shorter, less eloquent and littered with plenty of ums and uhs. But the gist was there: your writing inspired mine, and here’s the proof.

I handed him the copy and, without even thinking to sign it, said he could have it. That I wanted him to have it. What happened next is seared into my memory, and I hope I never forget it. I watched him hold the book and nod approvingly—hell, maybe politely, but it was positive nonetheless. The book, despite being novel-length, was slim, the pages packed tight in terms of design. The design gave the entire novel a cramped, impacted feeling. You could maybe fit the book in your coat pocket if you jammed it in. He held it up to the light and smiled. “Short and sweet. Pulpy. Just the way I like it.” We shook hands. I didn’t tell him it was my only copy. I felt like that might sully the moment. Might make it seem more forced when it really wasn’t.

I thanked Jonathan and walked out into that cold, rainy New York City evening. I didn’t have a copy of the book I’d just published anymore, even though a few months before it felt like something I’d cling to forever. I also had no idea where my career was going, which would normally send me into a spiral of panic and stress. But I’ll tell you what: it felt like I was walking on air.

***

Alex Segura is a crime novelist and comic book writer. He is the author of the Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series, which includes Silent City, Down the Darkest Street and the newly-released Dangerous Ends, published by Polis Books. You can find him on Twitter at @alex_segura or at his website.

Alex Segura: Website | Twitter

Dangerous Ends: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N