I love synchronicity. When it crackles like lightning, a shuddering bolt of electricity connecting two things in an unexpected way. Example: I have two awesome authors doing guest posts. Both of those authors sent me posts that inadvertently speak to one another about similar topics. That’s awesome, and so I’m popping both posts up today, today, today. We’ve got Stina Leicht (whose newest, Cold Iron, is out now) and S.L. Huang, with Root of Unity out (which is the third book after Zero Sum Game and Half-Life). 

Here, then, is Stina’s post. You can check out S.L.’s post here.

And also, Stina is doing a Cold Iron giveaway. Details at the bottom of this post.

* * *

What does the phrase ‘message fiction’ mean? I’ve been hearing it a lot lately. Most of the time it’s being implied that ‘message fiction’ is a new and dangerous trend. That this never happened in genre before. That isn’t true, and those throwing around the term can’t possibly be unaware of this. I’ll explain why soon, but for now I can’t help thinking what they’re truly saying is that Science Fiction and Fantasy is being taken away from its True Fans™. That these True Fans™ don’t wish to read any fiction that contains opinions or topics with which they disagree. That genre fans are delicate hot house flowers. That their constitutions are far too fragile to handle concepts they might dislike. I say, that’s their choice. They can live that way. However, they also claim that such things don’t belong in genre at all and should be edited out. There’s a word for this. It’s called censorship. Interestingly enough, they claim to be victims of censorship, and that this gives them the right to dole out the same in return. Because they are anti-censorship. This isn’t logical. Mind you, I’ve never been a big fan of ‘any means to an end’ as a strategy for anyone who claims to be a good person. That way leads, almost instantly, to becoming the thing you hate. And that’s why ultimately, this argument about message fiction boils down to just another round of “Fake Geek.”

But just for grins, let’s play along. Let’s pretend this isn’t what they mean. Let’s ask the question in earnest. What is message fiction?

As I understand it, message fiction is fiction that contains a theme. If you’ve taken an English literature class, you’re familiar with the concept. (See: http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/elementslit.html) A ’theme’ is but one of many tools of the professional writer trade. (See http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-theme-in-literature-definition-examples-quiz.html) All writers of fiction use these concepts whether they’re noticed by readers or not. Sometimes, they’re even used unconsciously by the writer. And that is why I say that if the concept of fiction with a theme is new to them, they haven’t been paying attention to our genre or literature in general. Ever.

So, does ‘Message Fiction’ have a place in Science Fiction and Fantasy?

Short version: yes.

Longer version: YES. Because Science Fiction is often defined as the fiction of ideas, and while I tend to lean more toward Science Fiction and Fantasy being the fiction of ideas and characters, I agree. I’d go so far as to say that without thoughtful, attention-grabbing concepts (and characters,) you’re left with a simple chronicle of events. That isn’t literature. It’s a diary entry. In that sense, all good fiction is message fiction. And I think we can all agree as SFF fans that our genre contains good, even great, fiction.[2]

Themes have been used in SFF since its inception. Let’s start with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which is widely regarded as one of the first, if not, the first SFF novel. One of its main themes is the question of whether or not scientific knowledge can be/should be used ethically. This is a classic in our genre. It’s everywhere. It’s even present in Jurassic Park which I can’t imagine anyone labeling as anything but entertainment. Star Trek has successfully used social commentary as has Sir Terry Pratchett with his extremely popular Discworld series.

Mind you, literary devices, like any tool, can be inexpertly or incorrectly used. It’s called propaganda. (See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propaganda) What’s the difference between fiction containing a theme and propaganda? That’s easy.

It’s the distinction between a question and a statement.

Propaganda tells you how to think. Literary themes invite you, the reader, to come up with your own answers. Propaganda leaves no doubt whatsoever. It demands that you agree. It’s very obvious. No other interpretation is permitted. It’s a closed, authoritarian approach. Literary themes, on the other hand, invite the reader to explore the matter for themselves. They’re interactive. A theme can be something you disagree with. In fact, a theme can be extremely effective if it drives home uncomfortable concepts. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a fine example. It illustrates the struggle between chaos and order, and in doing so, poses questions about the balance between individual freedom versus the establishment. How much of each is too much? It’s a difficult, uneasy read for all sorts of reasons. None of the characters are remotely admirable from what I remember. Nothing demonstrated in the novel is anything I agree with, either. Still, I felt it was a worthwhile read and an important contribution to the SFF genre because it exposed me to new ideas.

And that’s the thing. When it comes to venturing outside our comfort zone human beings tend to be well… fearful. Thus, if we’re not invited to explore, most of us don’t. There’s a danger in this. If anything proves that, it’s the phenomenon of the filter bubble. (See: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en) It’s what ultimately happens when a search engine personalizes searches. The idea was that the data returned would guide the user to more information in which the user is specifically interested. Thus, causing them to increase interaction with the product. However, there was an unforeseen negative consequence to this kind of search engine behavior. Any information that challenges the user’s world view is edited out of their experience. Why is this bad?

Because human beings learn best through trial and error. Ask any teacher. It’s very difficult to learn anything if you don’t make any mistakes. The whole process of creativity and invention happens through trial and error.

If the world is tailored to only give feedback the user approves of, the whole world looks like it agrees with them. One stops questioning and learning. Not just that, one begins to miss out on factual events in other parts of the world.[2] It’s not only damaging to creativity, science, and engineering. It’s damaging to democracy. Linda Nagata’s The Red touches on this very subject. It’s well worth thinking about.

So, does ‘message fiction’ belong in SFF? I don’t think there’s a doubt that it does. It’s why I work with themes in Cold Iron — mostly around killing, death, racism, and vengeance among others. Can you have fun at the same time? I think you can. In fact, my favorite kinds of fiction are fun fiction that teaches me something. I find it more mentally engaging. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

—————————————

[1] Is it possible to write without a theme? One can experiment. However, I don’t believe it’s wise or actually possible. First, writing is about communication at its base, and communication is about conveying meaning. If there’s no substance behind what you habitually read… if it’s empty of thought… well, studies are showing that when it comes to a healthy brain, the phrase “use it or lose it” applies.

(See: http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/Neurosciences/articles/The%20Brain…Use%20it%20or%20Lose%20It/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207091859.htm

http://www.brainhq.com/news/use-it-or-lose-it-principles-brain-plasticity)

I don’t know about you, but I worry about how my own brain is going to function thirty years down the road. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with escapism, but like anything, moderation is best. Second, how one might write without a theme? It would mean not venturing outside the defaults. Boring. But okay. Still, the message sent is that only the default matters. In addition, that stance ignores the writer’s subconscious, and the writer’s subconscious is inseparable from the writer’s imagination. Beliefs and ideas creep in, whether the writer is aware or not, and the writer will get tagged for that by critics. It’s just best do so consciously and have control rather than be caught unaware and well, don’t.

[2] See: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/the-truth-about-black-twitter/390120/

* * *

Cold Iron Giveaway! My publisher is giving away ten copies of Cold Iron. If you’re interested in participating in the drawing, please state as much in the comments and leave your email address so that I can contact you if you’re a winner. Winners will be announced on Twitter and on my blog (csleicht.com) Thanks!

Stina Leicht is a two time Campbell Award nominee for Best New Writer and a Crawford Award finalist. The first novel in her new Flintlock Epic Fantasy series, Cold Iron, debuted July 2015 with Simon and Schuster’s Saga imprint:

Fraternal twins Nels and Suvi move beyond their royal heritage and into military and magical dominion in this flintlock epic fantasy debut from a two-time Campbell Award finalist.

Prince Nels is the scholarly runt of the ancient Kainen royal family of Eledore, disregarded as flawed by the king and many others. Only Suvi, his fraternal twin sister, supports him. When Nels is ambushed by an Acrasian scouting party, he does the forbidden for a member of the ruling family: He picks up a fallen sword and defends himself.

Disowned and dismissed to the military, Nels establishes himself as a leader as Eledore begins to shatter under the attack of the Acrasians, who the Kainen had previously dismissed as barbarians. But Nels knows differently, and with the aid of Suvi, who has allied with pirates, he mounts a military offensive with sword, canon, and what little magic is left in the world.

Cold Iron: Indiebound | B&N | Amazon

so is this cannon canon or what

For a great many years, I was rather enamored with the idea of canon in the pop culture feast that I consumed. This continued well into my 20s, maybe into my 30s, and even now I still feel its needle-stitch tug inside my heart. (For those who don’t know, the idea of “canon” originates with the notion that in a given topic, study or series, there exists a genuine, bona fide list of books that are considered sacred and original. In pop culture fandom, “canon” takes this idea to mean that some stories or ideas are “true” in the context of the internal history of that particular narrative.)

As by now all of you — except that guy who has been living in a nuclear bunker from the 1950s — have figured out that I wrote a Star Wars novel. *clears throat* I have not exactly been quiet about it. And this novel is the first “canon” novel to appear and start to build the bridge between Episode VI (aka Return of the Jedi) and Episode VII (aka The Force Awakens). It builds immediately off the events in VI, while planting seeds for what will eventually become the garden of new material that sprouts in VII. Again, it is to be considered “canon” — it is real and it is true in the context of the narrative story-world (“the galaxy far, far away”).

Ah, but, post-RotJ books already existed, and they were canon-ish. Zahn’s original trilogy (which I adored as a kid and which were held as sacred texts) launched a major mission into the unknown void beyond the borders of the galaxy we knew. Lucas said, “No new trilogy,” and that opened up the doors to dozens upon dozens of new books told in that space. These books were canon more by default than anything else (they were not to my knowledge explicitly made so, and as I understand it, Lucas always considered the books secondary to the visual media around the storyworld), but the books were close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes. The Expanded Universe was as the name suggested: the galaxy became bigger, richer, wider, weirder.

Now, though, all that has gone. Those books have been re-classified as Legends.

See, Star Wars has always been more Tolkien than Marvel or DC. What I mean is this: the continuity of Star Wars has mostly remained a single, unbroken chain. Tolkien’s narrative storyworld is unified in the same way — whereas with the two major comic book houses, you get a massively fractured narrative. You get hundreds of chains, some broken, others soldered together, others still just random links floating in the void. The storyworlds of Star Wars and Middle-earth are histories beholden to isolated timelines; the storyworlds of DC and Marvel are shattered mirrors representing a variety of alternate dimensions or single-shot universes. Middle-earth has little variance in its historical thrust — no alternate histories. And, up until recently, that was somewhat true of Star Wars, too. (I say “somewhat” because how exactly do you classify the video games? The comics? The “Droids” cartoon? LUMPY AND ITCHY AND LIFE DAY?

That has now changed. Star Wars now has an entire outgrowth of its narrative universe moved to that “alternate timeline” category — the most robust branch of that tree has been suddenly wrenched sideways to make way for a graft from a new, different cultivar. It was bound to happen, of course. Once Episode VII was announced — hell, once it was even a glimmer in anybody’s eye — the historicity or “canon” qualifications of the Expanded Universe had to have felt a tectonic tremor in the Force. It would take back-breaking narrative calisthenics to maintain the Expanded Universe in a trilogy of new films. The age of the actors alone makes that tricky. And the Thrawn trilogy presents clones that do not operate well against the rigors of the prequel events. And of course once you step onto the path of the Expanded Universe, you have to play host to a wild array of story events that may not be easy to keep — Chewbacca’s death, for instance. Or the existence of zombie stormtroopers and space werewolves — er, sorry, “wyrwolves.”

So, the timeline had to snap in half.

Now, you have the galaxy far, far away.

And you have, separate from it, the Legends continuity. (This post, by the way, isn’t about the people who want to bring Legends/EU back. More power to them, and as I’ve noted, I’m sympathetic to those who feel like the storyworld they were following is no longer going to have new material. I have less sympathy for those who take that mission and make it a belligerent, negative one rather than one that is positive and constructive. Be a fountain, not a drain, folks.)

I get questions now about the canonization of things inside Aftermath — people excited or disappointed that X, Y, Z thing is now canon. (Some folks are upset because I canonized hamsters. As in, I mention something inside the book is “hamster-sized,” which now makes hamsters a real thing inside the Star Wars universe. There exists some pushback against Earth things intruding upon the SW universe, though as you’ll see, Earth references like “Falcon,” or “Hell,” or “hot chocolate” have long been a part of the galaxy.) And it’s curious, because I didn’t really think that way as I was writing the book. I mean, yes, I knew that what I was writing would have resonance and would be the first steps toward the larger bridge connecting the trilogies, but that was the 30,000-foot-view. I didn’t think about the nitty-gritty nuance of canonizing things.

(Sidenote: I also canonized “space diapers.” Hey, whatever, you mean to tell me some kooky smugglers don’t use ’em? NASA has garments that are referred to as “space diapers,” I’ll have you know. See? SEE? Boom. Space diapers. *drops mic into pile of space diapers, squish*)

And so, I’ve been thinking a whole lot recently about canon. What is it? How rigorous must it be? More importantly, why are we so beholden to it? Why do we care so much?

The answers to those last questions are many-faced.

First, I think it’s that we are beholden to viewing large narrative universes the same way we view things like memory, history and religion. We see things as sacred and true — which springs from the original usage of that word “canon.” Some books are canonized. Some are apocryphal. The apocryphal ones do not govern the larger history or the religion. They are somewhat… ancillary. And in our minds, lesser as a result.

Second, as geeky nerdy type folks, we love to become dogmatic about the things we love. It’s in our nature to be protective and knowledgeable — even hyper-knowledgeable — about the things we love. It’s a way to identify with our tribe. (Of course, that dogmatic adherence can also lead to fandom toxicity. Witness the dipshit fuckwhistle tradition of calling out “fake geek girls” or cosplayers, both of whom have a perfect right to engage with their fandoms as deeply, innately or intricately as they so choose.) We like rules. We like rulebooks. We are fans of data and detail.

Third, and connected to the last point, we love the things we love and want to know them through and through. Consider it a kind of rigorous exploration.

Fourth, and also connected to the second point, loving all the rules and the data and the details gives us a deeper reach into the worldbuilding aspect of the universe. It is a touchstone to the experiential — we perhaps more vividly connect with material that is continuous and true.

Fifth, the elegance of simplicity is not to be denied. If Gandalf acts one way here, then to have him act entirely different elsewhere feels abrasive and impossible. Keeping things together in a singular thrust of narrative consequence is, frankly, easier to keep track of in the long run.

And now, here’s why all that is a little bit bullshit.

History, religion and memory are fucked. History is often ret-conned because history is written by humans and humans are notoriously unreliable narrators. Much of our history is witnessed through secondary or tertiary resources — proxies who did not witness the events about which they are writing — and that makes it utterly shitty in terms of its factual dependability. Even primary sources must be viewed through the lens of perspective. As the saying goes, history is written by the weiners — sorry, winners. We are routinely given sanitized or spun versions of history, and that starts when we’re children. In the US, we’re shown these lovely images of pilgrims sitting down to Thanksgiving with the First People of America, but nobody tells you then about smallpox blankets or the Trail of Tears or how the Pilgrims were concerned about their religious freedom but not so much your religious freedom. Most people still don’t hear about how truly advanced the civilization was of the First People, or who Columbus was an asshole or —

Well, that list goes on and on.

And religion? C’mon. The Bible alone is not really one book but actually several books — you can watch the bone-breaking contortions or hamfisted cherry-pickings necessary to glean hard-and-fast moral life lessons from the Bible. Reading the Bible as a strict interpretation of fact is a pretty good way to miss what’s awesome about the Bible. By devoting yourself to those persnickety details, you lose what it means to be a good person and instead gain what it means to slavishly restrict your moral code to that of people who lived a long, long time ago and in a worldview far, far away. Once again, as children they’re taught the nice stories (“Noah got all the animals to save them from a flood!”) and later learn the whole story (“GOD DROWNED THE WORLD oh except for this Noah guy who has a thing for animals”).

Oh, and don’t get me started on the shame of losing a lot of the apocryphal books. You miss those, you miss Jesus’ teenage years. You also miss him being like, Harry Potter and shit. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a fascinating gnostic text concerned about the spiritual soul and actually talks a bit about some lofty things (“. . . Will matter then be destroyed or not? / The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots. / For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone”).

Okay, how about memory? Also totally untrustworthy. We are all unreliable narrators.

Even science, which is by its definition devoted to the slavishness of data and detail, is wildly flexible — it has to be for it to work as designed. If science cannot evolve, our understanding of the world will fail to evolve, too.

In our narrative storyworlds — in our big spaceship galaxies and our fantasy kingdoms and our superhero cities and our SEX UNIVERSES WHERE I AM THE SEX KING — if we become too rigorous in our slavish devotion to canon, we lose the chance to tell stories. The more strict and detailed the canon becomes, the more reverence we devote to it. And the more it restricts the future of that narrative. The more it chokes off what can be told. Doors close. Windows slam shut and are boarded over. Options are lost. The more we care about what’s “true” — in a universe that has never been true and whose power lies in its fiction — we start denigrating those things that aren’t. We view alternate timelines as somehow inconsequential. We dismiss fan-fiction as just some wish fulfillment machine instead of what it often is: a way to tell cool new stories in a pre-existing pop culture framework that aren’t beholden to the canonical straitjacket.

The truth is, canon has never even been all that canonical. Even the canon of Tolkien is muddy. Which is true? The work of JRR? What about the added work of his son? What about the video games? The films? LEGO Dimensions posits a little LEGO Gandalf running around with Batman and Marty McFly. Which, by the way, is flarging awesome.

I think as trivia, it’s fine. Canon is cool when you view it as a puzzle to be put together. But when it becomes the point of our investment, when we become religious about its value — we lose something. We forget why stories are great in the first place. We fail to enjoy a story for being a story and instead try to view it as a series of binary data points. YES it exists. NO it doesn’t.

Does it really matter?

That’s not to say those interested in canon are wrong to like it — we like what we like for whatever reasons that please us the most. If you read or watch a thing and your interest is in piecing together the mystery of facts-within-the-fiction, then hey, you do you. But at the same time, if your love of canon gets you into fights online or limits what stories you’ll pick up in the future, it’s worth asking if you hold it in too high an esteem.

Maybe the best way forward is to view canon as a curiosity and not a set of slate tablets etched by God-lightning and brought down from the Holy Mountain. Maybe it’s time to enjoy the peculiarities intrinsic to a world where canon is flexible and uncertain, and where narrative apocrypha is allowed the precious room to stretch and breathe. Perhaps the joy in the broken mirrors of DC and Marvel is that I can have my Batman, you can have yours, and nobody has to arm-wrestle over which one is right, which one is true, which one belongs, which one does not.

* * *

ZER0ES.

An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab spring hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains and skills to work for the government for one year.

But being a white-hat doesn’t always mean you work for the good guys. The would-be cyberspies discover that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA program, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an evolution both dangerous and disturbing. And if it’s not brought down, will soon be uncontrollable.

Out now from Harper Voyager.

Doylestown Bookshop| WORD| Joseph-Beth Booksellers| Murder by the Book

Powells | Indiebound | Amazon| B&N| iBooks| Google Play| Books-a-Million

The elevator pitch.

The logline.

The query letter.

The back-of-the-book marketing copy.

One of the skills of the author, regardless of publishing format, is pitching your book in a way that is both concise and exciting to people who might be editors, agents, booksellers or readers.

So, it’s time to practice those skills here and now, in Ye Olde Comments Section.

You’ve got a WIP (work-in-progress), yeah? Then I want you to go to the comments section and give us the shortest possible pitch you can give for the book while still maintaining maximum engagement. You want to hook us with this pitch — not necessarily reel us in. Meaning, the pitch isn’t used to describe the entire novel. Just the most exciting part — the promise of the premise. A glimpse into the protagonist, the conflict, the stakes. Why do we care? Why would that pitch make us salivate? What is it really about and why will that grab us?

It’s a tricky skill.

As I say with a query letter, it’s like taking a 500 lb. pig and putting it into a 5 lb. bucket. Except with a logline, it’s more like shoving a 500 lb. pig in a fanny pack. Epic rendering necessary.

Keep your pitch between one and three sentences.

That’s the only restriction right now.

The other thing, though, is that once you post it?

Expect people to comment upon it. The goal here is to refine your pitches, not put them up for museum display. And if you post a pitch, please make a comment on someone else’s pitch, too.

Now, step up to the pitcher’s mound and let fly.

Last week, I said, “Come up with a title.”

And you did. Over 400 of them.

Now, your job is to go into the comments section of that post and find a title you like. Then, write a story (under 2,000 words, we’ll say) to fit that title. Please do not choose a title you came up with. The challenge is to pick up something new!

You have one week — due by Friday, October 2nd.

Post the story on your online space and link to it in the comments below.

Please give credit to the person who came up with your title. Credit is good.

Go. Pick. Write. Enjoy!

This Saturday, I will be tunneling into Murder By The Book in Houston, TX along with fellow deviants Richard Kadrey and Beth Cato! I’ll be there talking about and signing ZER0ES — event starts at 4:30 and you find find the other event details here at the bookseller’s website.

I’m also at NYCC in a couple weeks, and my schedule is there on the website — though that may be evolving? I don’t really know, yet, but I’ll post a final schedule here in a week or so.

Oh, also, I’m told AFTERMATH will once again be on the NYT Bestseller list, so, please excuse me while my molecules vibrate so aggressively I phase through the floor.

What else?

Zer0es Reviews

– Lightspeed talks about Zer0es a little:

“Five hackers—of different backgrounds, ages, and vastly different temperaments and motivations—are hunted down by the US government and forcibly persuaded to work on a secret project for the NSA, testing the electronic defenses of myriad corporations and nations to undisclosed purpose. But over the course of their strange work—already fraught because of the personalities at play, white and black hats clashing, trolls trolling—one question above all preoccupies them: What is Typhon? The need to find out goes from casual curiosity to imperative urgency as the stakes rise and the pace goes into overdrive in this tightly plotted, character-driven thriller.

I am out of practice with this kind of book. My heart could hardly take it. Halfway through, I was so tense and the threat level was already so high that I couldn’t fathom how there could still be two hundred pages to go. It also broke my narrative expectation: Three full acts take place within that first half, and it’s amazing to realize that there can be more, and fascinating to take stock of how conditioned I am by films in this respect. Here’s how you assemble the team; here’s how they learn to work together; here’s how they obtain their objective. But there’s a lot more going on here.”

– Crimespree’s review (where they grok that the book is kinda THE HACKER A-TEAM):

“It’s been my experience that when you start to read a book written by Chuck Wendig, you’re going to get a fast-paced, in your face story. ZER0ES is no exception to this. Here he quickly lays out why the hackers are being sought out by the government. Then he lets everything about Typhon slowly unravel and you can’t help but continue turning the pages to learn more about the AI code and what is really going on with it. The suspense about Typhon makes the book an excellent government conspiracy theory thriller.”

– A nice review of Zer0es at The Reader In The Tower —

“If you’re baffled and sometimes bored with long descriptive paragraphs or pages of explanatory backstory, never fear. Wendig is the writer for you. You’ll find yourself whipped along by the pace of his writing, without feeling like he’s skipping anything important… As someone who struggles with pacing in action sequences, I am deeply and profoundly jealous.”

– And one from SQ Mag…

“Zer0es is a worth addition to the ‘To Read’ pile of any fan of cyberpunk, any conspiracy nut, or anyone who wants to be immersed in a great action/suspense/horror plot without all that tedious business of messing around with the TV. Be warned though: the language and violence might be a bit much for some, although any fan of Wendig’s work will not be surprised by any of it. You may even find yourself contemplating going off the grid once you’re done reading.”

– Bev Vincent has some thoughts on Zer0es:

“It’s a thrilling seat-of-the-pants ride that alternates between some sophisticated hacking and brutal hand-to-hand combat. The enemy has tentacles that quite literally reach into a dizzying array of people, and the Zeroes are forced to seek assistance from other covert organizations to pull off their mission. Fans of the recent TV series Mr. Robot will find similar themes at play.”

– You can grab Zer0es where books are sold: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N — you can also add it on Goodreads, and if you liked the book, I’d sure appreciate a review.

Aftermathy Stuff

– Me and Alexandra Bracken show up for Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy and talk about Star Wars and fandom (both the awesome side and the, erm, less awesome side). Check it out.

– Donna from HitFix interviewed me at DragonCon and the result is: Imperial Sexuality, Murder Droids and Fan Rage. So, go and make with the clicky clicky.

– Moviepilot offers a lovely review:

“Although, towering above all else in this is Wendig’s incredible written voice carrying the entire novel. This was my first experience of the author in his natural habitat (not including his writing books and the Terrible Minds blog) and I can safely say that he has not let me down. Managing to balance a decent plot, fantastic characters and have space to piss off the galaxy’s loudest bigots while staying true to the essence of Star Wars is quite an achievement and I wholeheartedly recommend Aftermath to any Star Wars or just pure Sci Fi fan.”

The Shield

You know what comes out next month? Dark Circle’s THE SHIELD, written by Adam Christopher and myself, and drawn by Drew Johnson. We’ve done some interviews recently which you can find at HitFix, Comics Beat and Comicsosity, with more to come. And at the HitFix link you’ll find a number of inked and colored pages, such as this beauty right here:

I know Lucas from my time in the Transmedia Trenches — he’s a smart dude with big ideas and plans to get them done. So, when he wants to sit and talk about story and the form of story, hey, I’m listening. And, I hope, you’ll listen, too.

* * *

(or, How To Spend Five Years On One Crazy Project Because You Care, Damnit)

A few years ago, I wrote a story called Azrael’s Stop. It’s a fantasy story about a teenager named Ceph who’s had to deal with a lot of death in his life—his whole family, a childhood friend, his best friend from school… And it’s kind of fucked him up. He thinks that everyone he loves is going to die, and so he won’t let himself get close to anyone.

Then a mysterious man brings him to a bar called Azrael’s Stop—said to be the watering hole of the Angel of Death Himself—and sets him up as the bartender. People start coming to the bar, people who are either ready to pass on from this world and just need someone to share their story with, or people who, like Ceph, have experienced death and need help dealing with it.

Why did the mysterious man bring him here? How is Ceph supposed to continue to live his life? How can he let himself have friends, or fall in love? Why is there a crow living in the bar, why does she keep shitting on the floor, and why does she only caw when someone dies in Azrael’s Stop?

The story takes place a day at a time over the course of a year, and is about depression and alcoholism and friendship and love and music and of course death—but more than that, it’s about how we live, and how the stories we share help us live better.

***

Azrael’s Stop was first conceived at the start of 2011 — a date which still reads to me like yesterday but was, in fact, a while ago.

I was just out of school and starting to figure out what I wanted my career to look like—starting out as mostly a freelance writer working towards his own original projects, novels, and more. I was not yet even considering that my company Silverstring Media would end up primarily making videogames.

I had dreams of working on big projects, games and transmedia franchises of my own creation, but I decided I needed to start something new first, something small, something that could help find me an audience. I liked the idea of serial fiction, which I could roll out over time and slowly build an audience as the project itself grew—but I also didn’t want something that would take up all of my time.

I wanted something small. And easy. That wouldn’t take much time at all.

And this is the point where present-me would slap past-me. Because what I ended up with is much more than my original concept imagined—and took a lot more time.

So rather than try to write full stories every week or even every month, which I figured I wouldn’t be able to have time for or keep up with, I landed on the idea of “Twitter fiction.” I would post one single tweet every day, and over time it would all come together to form the full story.

However, I didn’t want to simply have each tweet be a sentence, with all the tweets needing to be strung together to form the story; Twitter is too ephemeral for that to work, and the story would be too disjointed for potential readers. Rather, each tweet would in itself be a micro-story, a complete thought or scene contained in 140 characters, each one taking place a day later, chronologically, from the previous one.

Thus, each day would be a snapshot into the lives of the characters and the setting they inhabit—it would be about a small core of characters and a single setting, so that over time the audience would get to know those characters and that tavern, without needing a lot of extraneous explanation, and without needing the audience to necessarily see every single tweet.

The story would be very thematic, about establishing a particular tone and themes, characters that grow only slowly over time. I developed the concept of the bar where death visits, the mythology that would grow around it, and the characters that would inhabit it.

Then, I started writing content, one tweet at a time. It was a challenge to keep everything in 140 characters, sometimes, but it was good practice to keep writing succinct (and finding ways to squeeze more in, like leaving out occasional spaces…). Once I had a small buffer of content, I launched by project—exclusively on Twitter, at @azraelsstop—with my first tweet:

They said people came to the Stop to die.
They said Death himself was a patron.
But Ceph didn’t trade in rumour. He just served drinks.

By the end of the first month of content—content I was certainly proud of, but by no means had achieved much of an audience yet—I was ready to introduce the second part of my story concept: I wanted each month of tweets to be augmented by some other kind of content. Wanting this to be an experiment in “transmedia”—which I was particularly into at the time—I didn’t want to limit what kind of content that could be. I envisioned short stories, music, games, photo essays, comics, audio plays, and whatever else I could think of.

That first month, I posted a fairy tale—Biggles and the Departed—which as purely text-based fiction was something I could produce myself. I hoped to attract others to work with me on future installments, as I didn’t have audio or art skills or anything.

Music I knew I could do, since my best friend and now multi-project-co-creator Devin Vibert is a composer, so the end of the second month featured the song Elegy of the Twilight Prince, as performed by one of the characters of the story. Over the course of the project, I did manage a fairly wide variety of content: an interactive fiction game, a kind of photo essay, an audio play (with what little talent I could find at the time)…

But it was only a couple months before two problems caught up with me: Azrael’s Stop was, despite my original intent, still requiring too much of my time; and I wasn’t seeing the kind of results from it that I had hoped for. And so I decided to put the project on hiatus and reevaluate my strategy.

I ended up doing this twice over the course of the project. That first hiatus, I realized that being only on Twitter was restricting my potential audience; while I liked the easily-shareable potential and content size limit, and knew that even people without a Twitter account could follow along, for my friends without Twitter it still seemed overwhelming or unintuitive to follow. So I brought Azrael’s Stop to Facebook as well—and took the time to make sure I had more content to post before relaunching.

By the time I took the second hiatus, I transformed the project into what it is now. I needed a central hub for the project online, rather than just the multiple disconnected social media accounts, so I created azraelsstop.com. I scrapped the idea of having so many different media between months—those pieces of content were becoming more vital to the story, but having them all be different was both alienating to the audience and impossible to keep up with as a creator (especially without a larger team). I added a prologue to help bring readers into the world, and finished writing all the content so I wouldn’t run out again before the end, then compiled it all into an ebook—hoping I could interest readers in purchasing the full book immediately rather than waiting for it to roll out one day at a time. And Devin composed music not just for the three songs the character sings over the course of the story, but for every major chapter, comprising the one transmedia extension that ended up in the final product, and the one I thought was most important and useful.

All in all, Azrael’s Stop didn’t come to its final conclusion until December 2013—a full year later than intended. It found its biggest audience on Wattpad, where being featured led to it receiving about 3,200 reads all the way through (with 325,000 of just the prologue), but otherwise had remained modest in audience. Azrael’s Stop was an experiment in storytelling, and while much of it never worked out the way I originally envisioned, or got as big as I had hoped, I am very proud of the book and album that resulted from it.

***

In the tavern, stories are shared as a form of rebirth. The stories of both the main characters and the often-nameless patrons that visit allow the characters to learn and grow, to move on from the pain of death or move on from the pain of life.

While creating the project, I always envisioned a way for my audience to join the patrons of the Stop, to provide their own stories. Early on, I had some friends and family share their own Tweet-sized stories with me.

When a dream of her long-dead father was gifted, it was bittersweet: wonderful to hear his voice, but then she missed him all over again.
~ Freda Johnson (hi mom!)

But ultimately I wanted something bigger, and so I developed the idea that became Tales of the Stop, an anthology of short stories that took place in Azrael’s Stop alongside my main story. I reached out to my audience on social media, to friends, and even to sites that list public writing opportunities.

It was an interesting proposition, because I wasn’t simply asking for stories around a particular theme, but stories that existed in my world, with the characters I had created. I was inviting people into my original space, to take my creation further, but in doing so was asking a lot.

But I was thrilled with the response. I received a good number of submissions, some from friends (such as previous-Terrible-Minds-guest-poster Andrea Phillips) and some from strangers who had simply liked Azrael’s Stop. Not every submission was fantastic, but I ended up with ten new stories (including a one-act play and a piece of Interactive Fiction) that I loved.

It was a lot of work to corral those stories together, to edit them, to work out the legal details and compile everything into an ebook. It took a lot longer than I had anticipated, especially with life and other projects getting in the way. But I am extremely proud of each story that ended up making it into this anthology, from friend and stranger alike: from the examination of motherhood in Changed and Changing to the examination of suicide in Pieces; from accepting the past in Facing Secrets to accepting the future in The Hammer and the Nail; from exploring the stranger places in the world I made in Long Journey’s End to exploring other worlds entirely in Death and His Deer; from the powerful friendship exhibited in The Ones We Leave Behind to the liminal journey in The Ghost of a Memory to the exploration of our place in our stories in This, At Least, Is My Story.

And of course a new short story of my own, where I could finally look at what happens long after Ceph leaves the Stop.

***

And so this month Silverstring Media released a brand new Second Edition of Azrael’s Stop, and today we release Tales of the Stop, a journey back to Azrael’s Stop, back to the time that Ceph spent there as barkeep, back to the stories we tell to each other about life and how to live.

It’s been a long journey and a tumultuous one, but I’m glad to have made it—and glad to be able to tell my own story of creating this project, that I can learn and grow and perhaps you can learn something too. Despite the troubles I had, from the faulty initial designs to the effort to reach out to new authors to the legal arrangements required and everything that goes into indie publishing, I never gave up on this little project. And however it may fare, I am extremely proud of it.

***

Lucas J.W. Johnson is a writer, game designer, producer, and entrepreneur. He founded the new media company Silverstring Media in 2011, where he’s written for award-winning games like Extrasolar and Crypt of the Necrodancer, and produced original projects like Glitchhikers, which was a finalist for Best Indie Game of 2014 at the Canadian Videogame Awards. He’s had several short stories published in anthologies and magazines, including “Subtle Poison” in Speaking Out!, and Remaker, Remaker and A Clockwork Heart, both for Fireside Magazine. He first created Azrael’s Stop in 2011, and much of his work can be found at silverstringmedia.com. He lives with his boyfriend in Vancouver, BC.

Azrael’s Stop and Tales of the Stop, along with the Azrael’s Stop Official Soundtrack, are all available now for digital download.

Azrael’s Stop: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

Tales of the Stop: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

Azrael’s Stop Official Soundtrack: iTunes | CDBaby | Amazon

Or get all three in all available formats and for a bundled discount price at the Silverstring Media store or itch.io.