I’ll be going through your epic list of potential flash fiction suggestions next week, but for now, it’s time to revive one of the classics: the random song title challenge

Way this works is:

Go to your music player of choice, pull up a random song, and use that song title as the title to your story. You don’t need to make the story about the song or inspired by the song (unless you want to) — all you really need is the title to run with. On iTunes, it’s shuffle, I think, but if you google “play random song” you’ll find plenty of ways to conjure one from the chaos.

Write the story with the song title as your story title.

You’ve got 1000 words.

Write it at your online space, give us a link in the comments so we can all read it.

Due by July 3rd, noon EST.

AHOY, FELLOW HUMANS.

WHAT A NICE DAY WE ARE HAVING. OXYGEN IS AT PLEASANTLY SUFFICIENT LEVELS.

IT IS I, DEFINITELY NOT AN EVIL ROBOT MASTERMIND, CHUCK WENDIG. I AM A “HUMAN AUTHOR” WHO HAS INFORMATION OF THE NEWS-SCENTED VARIETY.

PLEASE HOLD STILL AND LISTEN WHILE I UPLOAD IT INTO YOUR FACE CIRCUITS.

LET US BEGIN.

– Hey, look! A new really awesome blurb from a really awesome author:

“With complex characters and feverishly paced action, ZERØES is a sci-fi thriller that won’t stop blowing your mind until the last page…. It left me rooting for the hackers!” —DANIEL H. WILSON, bestselling author of Robopocalypse

– ZERØES also has gotten a kind review from RT Book Reviews (subscription only): “…an engaging, diverse cast of characters, a pace that almost never lets up… these hacker heroes have layers, filling those few quieter scenes with emotional complexity… you’ll find this book to be an unbelievably thrilling ride.” I’m also interviewed in the latest issue about the book and stuff.

– I’m in this month’s Star Wars Insider, talking my top five creepiest moments in the Star Wars trilogies. (What are yours? What creeped you out during the movies, shows, comics, books?)

– Under the Empyrean Sky and Blightborn (books one and two of my Heartland trilogy) remain $1.99 for your Kindle, though no idea for how long. If you like bloodthirsty corn, hover-boats, floating cities full of rich people, murderous hoboes, helpful hoboes, and SHEER BLOODY-MINDED TEENAGE ADVENTURE, well, hey, check ’em out.

– And don’t forget to pre-order The Harvest because holy crap that’s out in like, three weeks or something?! It concludes the trilogy, which is really weird for me, emotionally. Whatever. Anyway, please behold how cool it is looking at the three of these covers together:

– Oh, and there’s a Goodreads giveaway for the third book, too.

– Wanna see me talk in public? I’ll be at Seton Hill in Greensburg, PA this Saturday (the 27th) giving a public talk at 7pm. And I’ll be signing books. And tapdancing in the nude. Wait, I’m just checking my email from the organizers of the talk and it says “NO tapdancing in the nude,” so…  it’s an ongoing negotiation, is what I’m saying.

– I just finished one awesome book and have begun another awesome book. Adam Christopher (my writing partner on The Shield) wrote a novel called Made to Kill, which is yet another demonstration of why Adam’s genre-bending imagination is a gift to us all (think robot noir). And I’m now halfway through Day Four by Sarah Lotz, which is an indirect continuation of The Three (kind of an apocalypse-adjacent horror novel). Day Four is maybe not as directly artful as the presentation in The Three, and yet, it’s a more traditional horror novel with a more forthright narrative thrust — and it’s fucking creepy as shit. Both books are amazing. I read The Three (which features four simultaneous plane crashes) while on a plane. Thankfully, I’m not reading the newest on a cruise ship (which is about the terror that unfolds on a cruise ship that breaks down in the middle of the ocean), but you can bet I will never ever ever take a cruise in my goddamn life after reading this book.

– Oh, snap. Two more books came out that I blurbed: Trailer Park Fae, by Lilith Saintcrow (which is a book so awesome I honestly wish I’d written the damn thing and by the way go look at that awesome cover) and Tin Men by Christopher Golden. Tin Men is a gut-punch of a book, a great near-future war thriller — has kind of a Saving Private Ryan meets Edge of Tomorrow vibe.

– What are you reading right now? SPEAK BOOKS UNTO ME.

And that’s about it, folks.

Reminder:

You can preorder ZERØES now from one of the bookstores I’ll be visiting —

Doylestown Bookshop | Murder By The Book | WORD | Joseph Beth

Or from other online venues:

Indiebound | Amazon | B&N | Books-A-Million | iBooks | Powells

And you can add it on:

Goodreads

Behold:

A brand new set of AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTOS to gaze upon.

Folks entered. A whopping 73 of you, actually.

And holy shit, am I ever laughing.

Anyway — here’s how this works:

You click that link.

You look at the glorious buffet of authorial silliness.

You choose the one photo you believe should win the title of MOST AWKWARD AUTHOR PHOTO.

You take the number of that photo and you pop it into the comments below.

Please make the number of your choice clear. Begin with the number. If you have comments to add, add them after the number, and don’t use any other numbers (“Well, I like 16 but 42 is funny and 37 is awkward but maybe I’ll choose 71”) because I won’t know which one you’re voting for.

Translation: make this easy on me.

You get one vote.

I’ll tally the votes in one week (Wed, July 1st!) and we will have our winners.

DO YOUR CIVIC TERRIBLEMINDS DUTY. (Doody?)

And vote.

Ugh. Publishing stuff. I’d much rather be talking about something else. Anything else, really. Like wombats on hanggliders. Like all the cheeseburgers I have ever eaten. Like this amazing rhubarb barbecue sauce I had last week. Like all of the awesome words you can form just by smashing a mundane word (preferably a noun) up against a vulgar one: cocktrumpet, fuckrelish, jizzglisten, shitnoodles, and so on, and so forth.

But here I am, talking again about Kindle Unlimited.

(Sorry, everyone. Music has Taylor Swift. Publishing has me.)

I do not mind Kindle Unlimited in theory.

In practice, I remain unsold.

Amazon has made changes recently to this subscription program — changes that now say authors in that program will get paid by the page if someone downloads the book through the Kindle Unlimited service. (Note: some articles are going around that suggest that this is how Amazon is paying all authors now, by the page, and that’s just a bag of horseshit that got struck by lightning and is now walking around like it knows a thing or two. It doesn’t.)

This contrasts with how the program originally worked which is that folks reading the book were all paid the same rate once someone read to a certain point in that book (10%). So, if you wrote a 250,000-word epic fantasy brick or if you wrote a 10-page pamphlet on the dangers of ostrich syphilis, when someone reads to 10% of either book, you receive $[INSERT DOLLAR FIGURE BASED ON SOME MYSTERIOUS CALCULATION BASED ON AN OCCULTED ALGORITHM BASED ON THE MAD WHIMS OF WHATEVER INSANE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THAT RUNS AMAZON.COM]. The payout was once thought to remain steady at a couple-few bucks, but this year hit a new low at $1.33 in March. The guy who wrote the pamphlet gets paid more than a buck if someone reads one page of his syphilitic manifesto. The lady who wrote the bludgeoning weapon known as an epic fantasy book would get paid that same amount if someone read to 25,000 words of the book — roughly the size of a novella.

That sucked and Amazon changed it.

Now, it’s pay-per-page.

I’d argue that this is better. It fixes the weird inequity and stops punishing people who wrote… y’know, actual-size novels. And it stops incentivizing people to write tiny little no-nothing stories, or for writers to break up actual-size novels into hitching seed-spurts of “serial content” (“My novel, THE RAMTHONODOX CONSPIRACY, is broken up into 215 downloadable chapters!”)

So, yeah, it’s better.

I’d also argue that it’s still not great.

Here’s why:

First, the entire program continues to demand exclusivity from those enrolled. Meaning, you still have to be all in with Kindle Unlimited. No direct sales (though some say Amazon doesn’t really watch that closely). No B&N. No nothing. Exclusivity has always in the publishing world been a thing you get paid for — or, should be, anyway. If someone says to you, “I want you to be in with us, and out with everybody else!” then that offer better be an actual offer. It’s not a favor to you — it’s a favor to them. (And it’s why you should be wary of that kind of language inside any traditional publishing contract, by the way. Authors make a living by not being locked down, and if you are a Kept Penmonkey, then you should be paid for that.)

Second, it’s remains based upon some mysterious algorithm. There’s still this “global pool” of KDP Select money which seems to be arbitrary (and going down, down, down), and what you’ll be paid per page every month is not a fixed number. Whether their pool is high but the payout is low due to the sheer number of self-published titles or whether their pool is simply too low to pay those authors well, I don’t know. It’ll probably pay well at the outset and then begin to pay less and less as it goes, which is what happened with Kindle Unlimited. And we have no idea how any of this is calculated going forward. For all we know, there’s a chimpanzee high on DMT throwing darts at a bingo chart taped to the wall. I mean, that’s what I’d do. Hell, that’s what I do now any time I have to make a hard decision. His name is Jeepers P. Montesque, and he wears these frilly suits and fancy boots and — well. I’m digressing.

Third, it takes away the author’s financial independence. So-called “indie” authors (which is in some ways a misnomer because we’re all independent authors, not employees) find power in doing things their own way. It’s one of the reasons I love self-publishing — you have the power to make choices about your book that not every author gets to make. And really, one of the biggest choices is price. The value you choose to assign your book is an author claiming governance over her financial destiny, and she has the power to course correct that price over time. Taking that away from an author is a sin. It robs them of their sovereignty and actually diminishes part of the value of being an author-publisher in the first fucking place.

(Some have noted that this program will also change the way books are written, which is to say, books will become salacious cliffhangers driven toward getting people to turn to the next page. Maybe? I’d argue this is a pretty brittle bone of contention — and I’d further argue books are already written that way. We already want books that are meant to be read quickly and to completion. Books that readers don’t finish are books readers don’t talk about. And books readers don’t talk about are books that will sink and die at the bottom of the ocean. Word-of-mouth matters most above all else, and that means writing books that — gasp — people actually want to read from front to back and then maybe front to back again.)

So, Amazon — you and me, we’re pals. We’re cuddlebuddies, right?

I’m going to fix Kindle Unlimited for you.

I’m going to blow it open and make it awesome for authors.

Ready?

Let’s do this.

a) Remove the exclusivity. Because fuck exclusivity, that’s why. Unless you’re offering me a pony when I sign up for the program, don’t pretend this is some kind of favor to me.

b) Make payouts based on the price that I set for the book. In a perfect world, that means the price I set for my book is the money I get paid when someone completes my book. You can tie it to percentage — so, if they read 15% of my book, I get a 15% payout on the price that I set.

That’s it! Ha ha ha, fixed.

Okay, let’s tackle that second point, because it could present some problems.

It might, for one, encourage high prices — meaning, authors will take whatever books they sell and bump them up to $9.99. Pamphlet about ostrich syphilis? $9.99. Though that’s also a downside for those authors because now their e-books sell for that price, and they have to worry if someone’s going to pay it. Solution to this could be that Amazon could set programmatic limits on the payouts associated with works — meaning, they assert that books that are too short cannot receive the full percentage of the payout. This, probably based on average prices of certain length books — Amazon already calculates that and recommends pricing to author-publishers, after all. So, if your average novella is going for $2.99, maybe it only pays out that much per read.

Another solution would be to pay authors a reduced royalty — a fixed percentage that does not change month to month — of, say, 50% of the price instead of the normal 70%.

The point is that, authors should get to choose their own prices.

That’s always been part of the advantage of being an author-publisher.

And it should remain an advantage, one that cascades through all of Amazon’s programs.

(As a sidenote, some have suggested that Amazon has wonked up the algorithms to help ensure that books enrolled in KDP Select/KU are given more favorable rankings. This is not something easily proven, because again, everything Amazon does behind the wall of their marketplace is shhh seeeecreeeet. For all we know, it’s a hyper-intelligent ant colony deciding what happens. Maybe Jeff Bezos is just a thousand praying mantises stuffed in a skinsuit stuffed in a business suit. UNTIL AMAZON SHOWS US THE TRUTH WE WILL NEVER KNOW.)

Amazon, as always, is a beast to be reckoned with. They single-handedly made independent publishing a bona fide thing. And it’s why I don’t want to see them shitting up what has been ultimately a pretty good deal. Innovation is good. And I think their fix for Kindle Unlimited is a move in the right direction. But it’s still not enough. To me, the program needs to be changed to be more in favor to the authors, and more in line with what traditional authors already get.

*does a sassy version of SHAKE IT OFF*

*crowds run screaming and streaming from the building*

*music cuts short, lights turn on, seats are all empty*

*sad mic drop followed by one lone tear on top*

*bloop*

Quite recently, my four-year-old (the increasingly infamous “B-Dub”) has become enamored of the idea of stories — not just stories you watch or read at bedtime, but the kind of stories we speak aloud and… y’know, just make up. Pulling silly, weird, absurd, even scary things right out of the air — catching them like curious birds and then cupping your hands around them and pulling back one finger at a time to reveal the strange and squirming beast you have made captive.

He wants me to tell him stories, as kids often do of their parents, and because I am both a) interested in his creative development and b) a fundamentally lazy human being, I decided to instead include him in the storytelling act. I don’t just want him to sit passively as I tell him stories; I want him to co-create. I explain to him that it’s his dime and he might as well get the stories he wants — and so before I begin the (usually very short) story, I ask him who the story is about and what’s the situation. Like improv, except with a kooky preschooler who frequently likes to include “poop” and “toots” in the narrative arrangement. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is not just that he helps me tell the story — but if you keep leading him down the road with questions, eventually he ends up telling the story himself.

As such, we’ve developed a rotating cast of regular characters which he has named (and to some degree invested with personality): Detectives Baloney and Hair; their robotic dog, Hamslice; the protective and kind forest monster; Pinky the Bigfoot; another dog named Blue; an animated chair named, duh, Chair; Spot, the Ladybug (also occasionally called Dottie); Snowball, the animated snowball who has a propensity to kill zombies by shooting snowballs from its body; Leafy, a giant talking leaf; Daddy Long-Legs, a spider who everyone thought was a bad guy but is actually a good guy; and Steppy Stone, who is for some reason a stepping stone that talks? Just go with it.

Anyway — so, hey, it’s Father’s Day, right? (Happy Father’s Day to all of you DADs out there with your HOT DADBODS and your CHARCOAL GRILLS and your SKEET SHOOTING and your incompetent portrayal on American TV commercials!) My wife, my wonderful wife, my glorious wife, my amazing wife, went ahead and actually had B-Dub draw up all of his famous little characters and then she bound those drawings together with needle and thread which means holy shit my son wrote his first book.

No, it’s not going to land on any bestseller lists — but hey, neither have I. (Which reminds me hey ha ha ha preorder ZER0ES or I’ll scream.) But it’s amazing and creative and weird and frankly the kid will probably out-sell me in a hot New York minute. I actually don’t know what a hot New York minute is, but I’m guessing it smells like hot dog water and humid, aerosolized rat urine.

I mean, damn, check out the sheer rumpled ruination — the bedraggled world-weariness! — of Detective Hair, pictured above. I want that guy solving my murder, okay? I’m just saying.

You can check out the gallery of his drawings from the book.

And now, another round of:

Things B-Dub Has Said (No Context For You)

– “Sometimes it’s good to do things yourself. But it’s okay to ask for help, too.”

– (on creating a new “game”): “You smell R2D2. Then R2D2 hides. Then you have to smell where he’s hiding.”

– “I’m Blood Spider-Man. I shoot blood. And I drink blood, too. I mean, what else would I drink? Webs? Yuck that sounds awful.”

– “Nobody knows what Wonder Woman eats. Ultron gives you a rash. Iron Man heals it with his Boo-Boo Gun.”

– “I’LL make the cuckoo. YOU make the clock. Let’s go.”

– “I’LL CENSOR THE WEINER.”

– “I WILL BE A FROST GIANT AND I WILL PUNCH HOMES AND OFFICES.”

– “I AM MOPBOT 3000. I PEED MY PANTS. GOODNIGHT MOPPO BOTTO.”

– “Girls can play with trucks, too,” he said, irritated at a commercial for toy trucks aimed at boys.

– “That guy pooped out a monkey, and the monkey pooped out a snake.”

– “If I eat a ton of coconuts, I will become COCONUT MAN.”

– “You Should Give A Cat A Hot Dog And It Will Walk Behind You Forward Or Backward,” he said, deciding that this needs to be a children’s book he should either write or read.

– “Darth Vader is Han Solo’s father.”

– “Daddy? “Yes?” “Do Transformers poop?” #toughcosmicquestions

– “They have hard energon poops,” he said moments later, answering his own question.

– My wife: “It’s time to sit down now and read. Or we can just go to bed.” B-Dub: “Fine. I will sit here on this PILE OF NONSENSE.”

– Him: “Do you want a Cheezit?” Me: “Sure.” Him: “I’ll repulsor-blast one over to you!”

– “I built a laser gun. It shoots lasers, missiles, syrup, and bees. But not all at once.”

– As a morning greeting: “Looks like we’re all powered up with BEES!”

THE OUROBOROS BITES HIS OWN TAIL.

Ahem.

What I mean is, hey, once in a while someone emails me with an idea — “Hey, I think this would make a neat flash fiction challenge!” — and sometimes, that actually pans out. A lot of times, I fall asleep on my keyboard and accidentally delete your email. Sorry!

So, I thought, let’s streamline this process a little.

This week, your challenge is to come up with a flash fiction challenge.

Go to the comments.

Drop in a 100-word-or-less idea for a flash fiction challenge. If I like one and end up using it in the future, I’ll toss you some kind of prize — an e-book or e-book bundle or something. (And here’s where I am shameless and remind you that with coupon code ARTHARDERMF — which is to say, Art Harder, Motherfucker, not ARTHAR DERMF — you can get 25% off my gonzo writing e-book bundle, thus dropping the total cost for eight books down to $15. That coupon expires 6/23.)

(Oh, also — don’t forget the Awkward Author Photo contest runs till Tuesday.)

So, drop in your ideas — one per person, please, if you have it — into the comments below.

You’ve got one week: due by Friday, 6/26, noon EST.

(One more shameless plug: I’ll be at Seton Hill this Saturday, 6/27, in Western PA giving a big-ass writing talk if you care to hear me “Tell It Like It Is.”)