So, as noted in an earlier post, I just didn’t have time to put together a gift guide for 2022, but then friend and author and possible hallucination Melissa F. Olson was like HELL NO YOU AREN’T GETTING AWAY THAT EASY, WENDIG, and I was like, whoa, aggressive, Melissa, also how did you get in my pantry? And she was like HERE IS A GIFT GUIDE YOU WILL POST THIS OR I WILL TAKE OFF YOUR OTHER THUMB, and I like that thumb? So I’m posting this. Please take her seriously. Even if she’s a hallucination, she’s very dangerous!

***

Hello, friends, I’m Melissa F. Olson, urban fantasy author and longtime blah blah blah you can read my bio at the end, let’s get to the presents.

So you need a last-minute gift for the writer in your life…or, you ARE the writer in your life, and you don’t know what to put on your wish list, and you’re a little tired of receiving decent pens and a bunch of those fancy notebooks that you’ll never actually write in because they seem way too pretty to fill with the spidery dregs of the inside of your skull. Relatable!

I, a longtime devotee of Chuck’s annual Gifts For Writers List, am here to help. As your new, only slightly unhinged personal shopper, let me present some last-minute items you can still get in time for Christmas:

Bath Crayons

Ooh, it seems weird right off the bat, but hear me out: Writers famously get ideas when it’s very inconvenient to write them down: while driving, in the shower, when we’re just about to fall asleep, etc (Chuck, insert something sciency about the brain relaxing here, okay, I can’t be bothered to Google). Now, you CAN buy fancy waterproof paper and pens that go in the shower, but it’s way more fun to spend $6 on bath crayons. Use the shower walls to jot down ideas, inspirational quotes, to-do list, whatever, and when you’re ready you can erase it with your hand and a little water.

(Bonus: when I’m on deadline, I often use my crayon to make a note of the day I last washed my hair, because Deadline Melissa is sloppy as hell.)

Hand Helpers

Let’s take care of our tools, shall we? No, not the brain, there are drugs for that; I’m talking about your hands. Chuck loves to recommend fancy-pants pens…and I admit, I absolutely love the Baron Fig Squire, which I first learned about on his 2019 gift list. But if you write a lot, or if, like me, you have issues with arthritis or other hand problems, putting a grip on that sucker is a life-saver (well, it’s a hand-saver, but we’re writers who bring actual imaginary WORLDS to LIFE, so by the transitive property of–you know what, you get it).

I like having this squishy purple thingy on my Squire, but there are dozens of options available for the pen of your choice. Perhaps you can make a little sample set (a “flight of grips,” if you will) for your writer to try out. It’s a nice way to show that you care about them and their ability to grip things going forward. You can also just buy the Super Big Fat Pen, which comes on a lanyard, although it’s not the delightful rollerball experience of a refillable pen. Warning: Do not let the Big Fat Pen fall into the hands of toddlers. They will LOVE that grip and your walls will not love you.

Here’s another great way to take care of hands: Chuck has mentioned fingerless gloves AND fun book clothing before, but it took me, the next generation apprentice Sith gift list writer, to bring together this thought masterpiece: the Storiarts fingerless gloves. Unlike CHUCK’S recommendation, these gloves are made from a lightweight, jersey-type material, so they keep your hands warm from freezing cold laptop metal without overheating or getting in the way of the ole typity-type. Plus they come with actual words from any number of great works of literature, so you can glance down if you feel you’re getting a little too full of yourself. (I’ve got Dracula, but I’ve been eyeing Frankenstein so I can run around wearing one of each.) Storiarts also has, I don’t know, scarves and blankets and shit, but the gloves are the coolest product.

On-the-Go Aids

Writers are often a nomadic workforce: those of us who can’t afford swanky work sheds tend to set up shop at libraries, coffee shops, cafes, etc, like pale, lonely word-nerds questing for social recognition and/or working in the car while we wait around to pick up children. I bought this Sonic Standing Pen Case several years ago, and I love it so much, I want it buried with me when I die (just kidding–we’re going to be cremated together). It’s a pencil bag that you can unzip and flip open to stand up as a pencil cup. When you’re done working, or you need to pack up and sprint to the Starbucks bathroom, just flip and zip and throw it in your laptop bag.

Another great on-the-go helper is a decent lap desk. The one I use is a little pricy at $55, but I’ve had it for over two years and it looks fresh out of the box, despite floating around my chaos habitat being used as a fast food tray, child art creator, pillow fight shield, etc. I bring it with me on long car trips (in which I am NOT driving) and curl up with it on the couch when I don’t feel like sitting at my desk. Actually, as I’m reading this back I realize that the lap desk and I may have a Relationship, and you know what, I’m okay with that.

CHUCK SAYS I GET TO SNEAK-PLUG MY BOOKS HERE

so please try one, or all, they’re delicious and — this is true — ZERO calories what a deal.

[okay as the person who runs this website I should probably also not-so-sneakily plug MY books like okay fine Damn Fine Story is probably good for writers and also there’s Wayward so that’s fun, or you could preorder my new writing book, Gentle Writing Advice, out in June, or there’s always Dust & Grim for the kids because hey kids apparently like Christmas too — cdw]

Cool-ass Lanyards

You know what us writers like to do? We convene. We convene like NOBODY’s business, at writing conferences, conventions, expos, etc. Our man Chuck convenes fairly constantly.  And when we convene, we usually have to wear badges on a lanyard around our necks –which means it’s the one thing everyone at the con has, and everyone else sees. Instead of using the crappy free lanyard that comes with convention registration, your writer could be using a cool-ass lanyard that will help them build confidence and start conversations while they strut the convention floor. Get them something that celebrates their favorite fandom, identifies them as a book nerd, or allows them to literally rappel out of a bad panel if needed. There might not be time before Christmas, but for extra gift-giving bonus points, you could even get lanyards printed with the name of their book or website.

For example, here is a picture of Chuck and me. One of us is wearing a boring freebie lanyard, and one of us got a rad lanyard printed with a bunch of her book covers. I ask you, who’s the greater success, really?

The Organised Writer by Antony Johnston

Chuck often recommends “craft books,” aka books that can help you write better, but I want to switch it up with this great volume on setting up your writing space, time, and business, written by the author of novels, comic books, and video games. (You can tell Antony is very smart and British because he spells “organized” with an “s” and just FLAUNTS it.) This book is chock-full of practical advice like how to organize paper files, run a project calendar, clear your mind before working, and so on. If you feel like your whole writing life is a slapdash attempt to peck a few words into a laptop while dashing around your house being chased by obligation to the tune of the Benny Hill theme song, this is the book to help you work that shit out.

And remember to hydrate

Chuck always goes on about coffee (too gross) and chocolate (too obvious), but you know what writers need even more universally? More water, preferably from an absolutely bitchin’ water bottle. Writers essentially have two modes: sitting at a desk all day or running around a reading/convention all day, and in both cases we definitely won’t drink enough water. If you really want to help and support your family writer, try getting them a great water bottle they can use for hot coffee OR cold water (I recommend Tervis or Hydroflask), plus a few writer-themed vinyl stickers and a bottle of Mio (Personal favorite is orange vanilla). It’s a great way to keep us alive so we can finish that next chapter.

***

Melissa F. Olson is the author of sixteen books in the Old World universe, the PI mystery The Big Keep, and numerous short stories and novellas, including the Nightshades trilogy for Tor.com. Her journalism and academic work has been published in The International Journal of Comic Art, the compilation Images of the Modern Vampire, Litreactor.com, and Tor.com, among other places.

Melissa has been a writing teacher, English professor, and TEDx presenter, but she now divides her time between writing, editing and attending the occasional convention, where she speaks about issues related to genre, feminism, disability, and parenting. Read more about her work and life at MelissaFOlson.com.

Let’s just put it out there and up front — earlier, I was glad to play around with AI art, but that has ended. I have no intention at present of mucking around with AI art, signal-boosting it, or supporting it. I had a subscription to Midjourney, and I canceled it.

Now, to rewind a little —

I think AI art is pretty cool.

I know, I know — I just said, but I won’t support it, and that’s true.

But I think it’s neat, in a general sense. It’s like, we can make COMPUTER ROBOT GHOSTS do all kinds of cool things for us — they can tell us the weather, show us how to get to the mall, I can yell at my car to turn on the heat and it’ll totally do it, Gmail can already predict the response I’m going to make and start to prep it for me. The robot ghosts are cool. So, the ability to say, HEY ROBOT GHOST, SHOW ME WEREWOLF PIKACHU USING A NEW POKEMON MOVE CALLED “CORUSCATING ELECTRIC ANUS” ON A KAIJU VERSION OF JERRY SEINFELD and then somehow it sorta does it, well, I don’t hate that.

Now, admittedly, when I started mucking about with AI art in the long-times-ago epoch of, mmm, six months ago, what it produced was often fiddly and hilarious and straight-up fucking weird. It would still have eyeballs in places where there shouldn’t be. Some guy’s face might look like a smear of paint, and his hand would have sixteen fingers. You might squint and see Sophia from the Golden Girls mysteriously hiding in the wallpaper. It felt a bit like you watching a robot dream. Like you were privy to the growth of its creative mind.

(It’s a lie, of course. There’s no robot dreaming; that is a romantic, anthropomorphic notion.)

But it didn’t take long for the results to get… good. Real good. Freaky good. You plug in something and what returns is a foursquare array of nearly exactly what you asked for, in a variety of art styles and modes. Which, one might argue, is quite the point of this whole affair, and I suppose it is, though I’ll also note for my mileage it also kinda defeats if not the point, than rather, the delight of having a robot puke up something just super fucking weird instead of precisely what you asked for. We were training the robot well. And it was learning fast.

And now, you see the so-called AI art everywhere, and you also see those who are mad at so-called AI art everywhere. And the latter category is often artists. Not always! But often enough.

As such, I’m going to side with the artists.

(Spoiler: you should always side with the artists.)

I’ll talk about why in a moment, though I will note here there is, of course, a nuanced discussion to be had here. I don’t think people using AI art are like, Cyber Hitlers or anything. I used it quite well looking for inspiration for my Evil Apples book (which has a title and I’ll soon tell you what it is, I promise), and it… actually worked, and given how many iterations it took to get that inspiration, I could not have easily paid an artist for that essentially throwaway act. I’ve seen some trans friends say that they like how some of the AI profile art makes them look and feel, and that’s pretty wonderful. I have artist friends who use it and like it and find it valuable — it is a tool to them, not a curse. Technology also tends to expedite tasks while also leaving human workers behind in ways that are sometimes good and sometimes bad and most often somewhere in the middle — the ability to have language translated for us is pretty useful in a broadly human sense, even as it puts actual translators out of work. And finally, I think we as people seize on beautiful things and weird things and odd memes, and AI art allows us to do all of that, allowing us to play and explore and just be inspired in weird ways. And connect with each other as we do so.

But, but, but.

But.

BUT.

I’m still saying, let’s cool it on the AI art.

And here’s why.

1. First, just watch Charlotte’s video here. It covers a lot of things I’d say, except smarter and cooler because she is smarter and cooler than I am.

2. It is demoralizing for young artists. Trust me when I tell you, it’s hard to muster the interest in making new art when you can poke a computer to do it for you with a sentence or three. Yes, there remains value in art for art’s sake, but I think if you were a young artist viewing a future in Making Art, this is definitely going to give you pause. Again, I know this because I’ve seen this exact feeling emerge. Now, once more, I know there is nuance to all of this — I’m sure professional photographers winced when every jabroni got a digital camera and could take 40,000 photos in a weekend. I’ve no doubt that musicians of a certain age felt like I DON’T LIKE THAT THESE YOUNG KIDS TODAY CAN JUST TAP BUTTONS AND MAKE SOME BEEP-BOOP MUSIC ON THEIR SYNTHESCISSORS. But I also note that AI art isn’t that. Digital photography is still photography. Electronic music is still music. AI art… well, this leads me to the next point.

3. No, this doesn’t make you an artist and I’m seeing way too many defenders of AI art take this line. Some stay back at the line of, “I’m now an art director, art-directing a robot,” which, ennnh. Okay? But some march full on ahead and are saying, hey, I’m an artist now too. Which… nnnghhhh, are you? I admit, this gives me a pit in my stomach because I don’t like telling people what art is or is not and what makes an artist. That kind of gatekeeping curdles my milk more than a little. Still, as someone who has used Midjourney and other AI art makers, I sure don’t think of myself as an artist. If anything, I was just a writer jamming ideas into a techbro’s art engine. I didn’t feel like an artist. I sure wouldn’t call myself an artist having used Midjourney. I guess if I was using it to generate images that I then sketched or manipulated, that counts — but to do that, I’d still have to feed the beast, and therein lies part of the problem.

4. Feeding the beast means feeding an engine that feeds techbros and not artists. That’s the heart of the problem, really. Artists are like dinosaurs getting mulched into oil to fuel this thing. And you can see it when the AI art reproduces material with artifacts of signatures and watermarks. It’s clearly harvesting pre-existing art. It’s not dreaming up new art. It’s using their art, human art, and nobody is getting compensated, nobody is getting their due for being the literal seed-bed for this entire thing. The only people compensated are tech people. The people who make the engine. They’re the ones glad to press the oil out of the artists to run the machine.

5. No, this isn’t the same thing as “being inspired by artists.” That’s one of the lines of argument that doesn’t well with me. “It’s not copying artists, it’s being inspired by them, same as a person would be.” Except it’s not that, and you know it’s not that. We’ve fallen for the same anthropomorphic bullshit I spewed above about this being some PRECIOUS ROBOT DREAMING, and AWWW SEE THE ART-BOT IS INSPIRED BY YOU, but that’s not what it is. It’s not sentient. It’s not alive. It’s not a person making artistic decisions. It’s software operating on algorithmic decisions driven by, again, engines of tech, not creatures of art. “But it’s just like Andy Warhol!” No it’s jolly well fucking not. And you know that. You know Andy Warhol was a person who, like him or not, made decisions about what images he used, how he would subvert them, how that would put the work in front of other humans. He was a human making human art from corporate material in order to affect other humans.

6. And of course some people are choosing this as a battleground to litigate the problems with our current copyright system. Look, we’re all out here making choices and sometimes those choices are choices that benefit our urges and interests rather than helping out the greater good, right? From water bottles to Spotify to this or that, we are morally compromised daily because it is difficult to get a clean 100% record on Best Human Practices. But there’s a special kind of person who then justifies their choices with a lot of bluster about how REALLY they’re actually doing the RIGHT THING — “I voted for Jill Stein because something-something third-parties.” And you’re seeing it now with this AI art thing. “Well, copyright in America is poisonous and we have to Defeat Capitalism and really artists should be paid a Universal Basic Income,” and yeah, okay, good point, except that’s not a thing right now and this certainly won’t make it a thing. Yes, copyright has its problems, but that doesn’t mean you should hand it over to a tech company to do with as they see fit. Yes, capitalism is fraught and fucked up but paying an AI art subscription isn’t you throwing a Molotov cocktail through a bank window. Artists are already people on the fringes and they deserve to be paid for their efforts. They deserve to eat. To pay rent. To buy cool things. Hell, I’d much rather an artist get rich than Tech Bro #483, okay?

7. There is an adjacency (is that a word? too late) to NFT/crypto culture that I find… off-putting. There’s an NFT publishing company which, I’ll be honest, seems super fucking scammy to me, and most of their Very Special Super Rare Non-Fungible Book Cover Tokens are… just random AI art. Ennh. Ugh. Yuck.

8. Finally, the biggest reason of all: because more artists are asking us to leave AI art behind. I dunno. I’m not an artist. So Imma listen to them when I can.

So, anyway, them’s my thoughts. I suspect (or at least, hope) this AI art thing burns out. I think we should share actual human art. No, I don’t think you’re Il Monstre for using AI art. I think artists should be compensated. It’s the holidays, buy their prints, commission them to do something cool, whatever. We humans are why the human experience matters. Side with WONDERFUL MEATBAG ARTISTS, not TECH BRO MAGPIES. Okay? Okay.

(And yes, I recognize they’re coming for writers, too. Our off-ramp is a few miles down the road yet, but the car is speeding up, not slowing down.)

And speaking of writers —

Hey, Wayward is out if you want a cool GIFTY BOOK THING for folks. (And curiously, it’s a book that has a lot of thoughts about artificial intelligence!)

Cut off date for ordering signed, personalized books of mine from Doylestown Bookshop is, I believe, end of day 12/12, so hop to it if that’s what you want.

And if you liked it, please talk about it, yell about it, shake people and demand they buy it, that sort of thing. Word-of-mouth is the most vital resource we have, and in this era of fracturing social media, it counts double, even triple.

I’m currently dialed back on Twitter (and locked down too), so I may not see stuff over there quickly, and if you’d care to share this there, that’s a-okay by me. (Twitter: another one of those questionable things these days. I’ve more thinking to do about that place, but for now, I’m busy with book edits and will take the break until after the holidays.)

Also, finally, for those looking to see me at the Bethlehem/Easton B&N this weekend — we’re going to reschedule it. Lot of illness going around (including in our own house), so feels like it’s best to maybe kick that can to after the holidays. Look for a rescheduling of that event into Jan or Feb!

I get emails. Realistically, I’ve been getting a certain kind of email since around, ohh, March of 2020, which often wants to dance around the question — or ask it directly — of whether or not I *booming voice* PREDICTED THE FUTURE. After all, in Wanderers, out in 2019, I wrote about a global pandemic that comes from bats that releases in a contentious election year during the rise of Christofascist white nationalism aaaand, well, yeah. Obviously, this isn’t the goal. I’m not setting out to predict the future, despite, um, also predicting Elon Musk was gonna be a bad guy (see: Invasive, 2017). Rather, I’m trying to talk about the present, hoping to contextualize what’s going on around me and, even more myopically, in my own crazy head. Like, I got anxieties, and I’m gonna put them on each page like a smashed butterfly.

Wayward is, of course, not a book I really intend to be itself a predictive engine either, despite one of its characters being a predictive intelligence called Black Swan. Still, I get a lot of questions over email — or at the book events I’ve done recently — and I thought, hey, why not talk about some of this stuff. Questions not just about the prediction stuff but about the book in general.

So, let’s do this.

Chuck, what the fuck did you unleash this time??

I have no idea. I will say that this book contains very little Actual Fucking Pandemic. It is not fresh pandemic. It is old, now-finished pandemic. It’s the world thereafter. (Five years after, actually.)

In fact, this book is way more about the plague of artificial intelligence rather than the plague of, um, plague. The virus isn’t a virus. It’s what can be wrought by artificial intelligence when it’s allowed to go unchecked, for better or for worse. Thankfully, I don’t think this will really be a big thing in the news —

*checks news*

Uhhh

*quickly closes news*

*checks social media*

Uhhhhhhh

*shuts down computer, throws it into the yard, lets the rain kill it*

Goddamnit, Wendig. What sentient machine hell did you set upon us?

Nothing, obviously — even in Wanderers, it was clear they were training Black Swan on making content (the book contains recipes and poems and such), which is not a notion I made up, obviously, and in fact, the expert in talking about such things is easily Janelle Shane, whose book You Look Like A Thing And I Love You is a wonderfully weird examination of this. So, I know right now it’s a bit of a boilover in terms of OH MY GOD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS MAKING SORTA GOOD CONTENT NOW OH GOD OH SHIT, and I think that fear is (somewhat) warranted and I think it’s very important to have these conversations but I am definitely not having that conversation right now.

(I note though I’ve stopped using the AI Art generators for a whole host of reasons. That I’ll talk about soon enough.)

Definitely don’t go read this story about Loab, the creepy woman haunting the art made by artificial intelligence, though. I warned you. Don’t click it.

(You clicked it, didn’t you.)

Can’t you just write a book about puppies and save us all the hassle?

That has been the joke, quite often, and it’s why I put a dog in Wayward. A golden retriever. Gumball, the Very Good Boy.

Oh god, you kill the dog don’t you.

At present, there is no entry for Wayward at the vital online resource, Does The Dog Die, but certainly someone here could feel free to add one.

But, since you probably wanna know now —

Here’s the answer in ROT13 cipher.

Thzonyy gur Irel Tbbq Obl qbrf abg va snpg qvr, naq ur fheivirf gur obbx vagnpg. Ohg, yvxr nyy punenpgref va guvf obbx, Thzonyy qrsvavgryl tbrf guebhtu fbzr fuvg. Fbzr erny rzbgvbany fuvg. Ohg ur’f svar ng gur raq.

Plug that in at ROT13.com and you’re good to go.

I note the book is actually very animal-heavy. Which, I think, makes a sort of sense: as humanity has waned, the wild rises back up. Plus, I’m fundamentally lazy and greedy as a writer and I love to use things that interest me and delight me, so putting in foxes and wolves and other such critters is fun for me. It’s why the book contains so much rock-and-roll too. References and such. Hell, Dolly Parton is a character in the book. Sorta.

You leave Dolly Parton alone, you monster!

That’s not a question, but I’ll answer it anyway. She’s not a huge character in the book and it’s more that there are stories about Dolly Parton in the book told by another character. It’s that she has survived the end of the world and is still out there, Doing Good Things, and also, she’s Fighting Apocalypse Nazis in her own very Dolly Parton way, and I had a lot of fun writing that.

Though I also note there’s a whole bit in there about her and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which was also news recently, so. Um. Yeah. Oops?

Don’t lie. Is this book just really depressing? It’s about the end of the world after a global pandemic, for shit’s sake. Is it just an 800-page journey through the streets of Bummertown?

It sounds like it would be. Apocalyptic novels can be, of course. You read Cormac’s THE ROAD and ha ha, wow, that still lives on in some dark untouchable place inside of my soul. It’s like a tumor they can’t excise. Wonderful book, but that one hurts.

I talk about this in the acknowledgments of the book, but I had a really hard time… coming to the page on this initially. I was set to write it right as the pandemic started and when I went to access this story, all that met me on the screen was a howling void. This wasn’t writer’s block in the traditional way — it wasn’t just noodling over a story problem or a lack of confidence. It was like reaching for the milk in the fridge and finding someone already drank all of it. You remember how during the pandemic sometimes something would simply be not available? Toilet paper, for instance? It was like that. I went to the Story Store and the shelves were fucking empty, oh well, go home.

I don’t know that this was depression or anxiety, precisely, either? It was a kind of creative nothingness. Later I would realize that it was like breaking a bone. We were all broken and busted, and some people were able to soldier on and use that time creatively, and some of us were not. My creative leg was broken and I needed rest, and when that rest was over, I couldn’t sprint, but had to hobble about until everything fully healed.

When it did, and I set to writing this book, I realized that my experiences with the pandemic needed to be a part of it — a lens through which to see this story. And the most vital resource was, for me, hope. Not necessarily hope in systems or hope in some larger cosmic sense but rather, hope in communities, hope in friends, hope in spaces both small and strange. And it was about joy, too. Finding it. Seizing it. Cultivating it willfully when it would not be found. Joy was like those sourdough starters we were all growing in jars — trying to find simple ways to summon joy and let it grow effervescent in whatever quantity we could manage. Then trying to let that joy feed us without killing it in turn.

(Spoiler: I ended up murdering my sourdough starter on purpose. I grew to resent it. This has nothing to do with joy, and is not a metaphor.)

So, writing Wayward was very much about having characters finding hope and joy in troubled times, and seeking new beginnings after what felt like an ending. And it’s also about… you know, the guilt that can come of that, too, of finding and experiencing joy amid tumult. But hope is a real throughline for the book. I didn’t set out to write a dire, nihilistic story. I don’t have that in me right now.

That’s not to say it’s not a book with some tough stuff going down. It is a science-fiction novel with horror as its heart, and I embrace that. I don’t think you get to have the hope and the joy without the horror in a book like this. I only want you to know that the battle is ongoing. Hope has a chance. In this book and maybe, too, outside this book, too.

Anyway. I’ll let Alex Brown’s review at Tor.com speak to some of this —

“Wayward was written, in fits and starts, during the pandemic, and it’s impossible not to see how the real world bled into the fictional one. Could Wendig have written it without the pandemic? Sure, of course. It would’ve been a great science fiction thriller with lots to say about the human condition. But this version of the story feels tangible and truthful. It doesn’t feel so much predictive like Wanderers did but more like a reckoning or a reconciliation. Like catharsis. Like understanding. It’s not just a story of what could be but of what was and is and is still to come.”

They understand the book better than maybe I even do, or did, and it’s (like their review of Wanderers) one of my favorite reviews of my books ever written. I feel very lucky to have received a review like that. And I feel very lucky that you might have picked up the book or are considering picking it up.

And here of course I note that if you’re able to share this, I’d be happy for it — I’m off Twitter through the new year, at least, and not really sure where my social media home will be besides this very blog going forward, what with Post being a bit boring, and Hive being a bit erm unstable.

If you’re looking to nab a copy of the book, you should check with your local indie bookstore, of course. I also can sign and personalize copies that can be sent to you — just buy from Doylestown Bookshop and let ’em know in the notes of the order. (Or call it in.) Bookshop.org is also a good place to nab. Your local library is also a wonderful place where the books live.

Thanks for reading.

Black Swan says, wake up.

WACKY WILD WENDIGWORLD: A new amusement park! Corkscrew through an apple on the WINDING WORM! Soar through the sky on the BIRDWATCHER EXPRESS! Test your stamina and lose your soul and RIDE THE BEARD.

I dunno. Shut up.

Let’s see. What’s going on?

This Sunday! December 4th! 3pm! I’m at Nowhere Coffee in Allentown, PA, talking to WFMZ’s Bo Koltnow about mah books (and Wayward specifically) on behalf of Let’s Play Books. Buy books. Bring books. I’ll sign books. I’ll eat books. Wait not that last one. Details here.

On Saturday December 10th, I’ll also be at B&N in Easton which is actually Bethlehem, or is it B&N Bethlehem but it’s actually Easton? I dunno. It’s in the Lehigh Valley! It’s this store right here. That’s at 1pm. Again: Wayward! Books! You! Me! Signing! Talking! Perhaps an erratic Tik-Tok dance! Wait is there a hyphen in Tik-Tok! TikTok? Fuck, I dunno. This is why Jesus invented copy editors. Which I don’t have for this blog. Shit.

Also, in addition to being a newly-minted New York Times Bestseller holy crap, Dust & Grim is on this year’s Lone Star Reading List put forth by the Texas Library Association, alongside such wonderful authors as Lora Senf, Dhonielle Clayton, Alex London, and others. Big honor, so thank you, TLA!

Finally, I remind folks that if they’re looking for signed and personalized copies of Wayward (or any of my books) and you’re not coming to the events above, Doylestown Bookshop can facilitate and have the book sent to you wherever you may be. The cut off for this is, as I’m told, December 12th!

I’m also really glad that readers seem to be digging the book. Thanks for the love over social media about it and please don’t hesitate to TELL ME MORE because your comments give me life. Also leave a review. Also buy me candy. I mean, since we’re asking for things.

Oh! Finally, this’ll I think be the first year I’m not doing a gift guide here at terribleminds? I was intending to do it this week, but I got horsekicked by a rough bout of stomach nastiness (the kind where you have to ask, “am I going to shit myself while vomiting?”) and uhhh it wasn’t super great? Plus, I’m under an ever-tightening deadline on edits for MY EVIL APPLE HORROR NOVEL (which now I think has an official title that I’ll share soon). Certainly previous gift guides are pretty solid still, honestly, and here’s the one from 2021.

ANYWAY OKAY BYE HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND, stay safe out there, seems like there’s a hundred different ways to get sick right now, including, y’know, that old chestnut, COVID-19. Try not to die! Love you! Bye!

The walking ghost phase is, for those not in the know, when one suffers a heroic dose of radiation and appears to return to full health before eventually expiring badly. It is a time of false hope before certain death.

It feels like Twitter is in that phase, right now. That might be dramatic, but Musk buying it — and in just a matter of weeks tanking it, firing everyone, trolling everyone, and allowing some of the worst people to return — does not inspire confidence. Nor should it. It’s easy to see the hemorrhaging. You feel it, honestly. This great bleeding, blanching feeling — the color going out.

I don’t wish for this. Twitter has been routinely good and bad, a place of great joy and comfort and community while also serving up a maelstrom of harassment and bad faith and mis/disinformation. It was big and messy and chaotic, but I guess it was our big and messy and chaotic. I know there’s still this feeling that it still can be, or even still is, ours — that there is value in staying and fighting, in supporting who remains, in maintaining community, and I believe that can be true. But I also am now feeling like it’s a little like insisting you can fight J.K. Rowling by promoting Harry Potter — like somehow you can take ownership of this thing from the inside when really, you’re just enriching the worst people and only helping to boost them by remaining within their ranks.

It is different than that, to be clear. The metaphor fails in a number of ways. Certainly there has been some truth that staying and resisting Musk and his influence has been… well, I don’t know how useful it’s been, but it’s been fun to watch, and certainly he’s not making any friends except for the absolute worst fucking people. It can’t be great for his public profile to be mocked relentlessly by awesome people. The joke is of course, Musk bought Twitter, but he’s the one who got owned. As a result, I think there are an increasing number of people who before might’ve thought, “Hey, maybe a Tesla might be nice,” but are now going to reconsider that decision, at the very least wondering, “Will he put Donald Trump and Kanye West into my Tesla’s OS — at least, before the car autopilots me into a wall and catches fire?”

At the same time, Musk doesn’t seem to care, and as what I suspect is a total narcissist, seems to enjoy the negative attention. (Trust me when I say, the only real way to deal with a narcissist is “flat gray rock.” They thrive on even the worst attention. Attention is attention is attention.)

There’s certainly some suspicion too that his very goal is to detonate Twitter, and I can see that from the perspective of someone who really really wants to kick the teeth out of democracy’s mouth — but it’s also hard not to wonder if he’s just, as noted, a narcissist, and an incompetent one at that. One who has been convinced by his own money that he is in fact an Iron Man genius instead of what he really is: a third-tier Batman villain shitlord eager to let every psycho jabroni out of Arkham to keep the circus going. I can’t imagine this is doing his image any good. It’s hard to uphold the notion that he’s really this Good Guy trying to Save The World and interested in Free Speech when… you just look at all the stuff he says and does over there. And after a while, it gets both ugly being trapped with that, and also, as Lincoln Michel noted, pretty boring.

And yes, I recognize the irony here: I’m linking to Twitter in a post about how Twitter is shellacking the bed with shit. Twitter is bad, yet many of us hang on, because at the moment, it remains provably the bulwark of social media. But it’s also one under siege by its owner and under revolt by its users. Maybe it’ll fall to rubble and be rebuilt. Or maybe the Chief Shitlord in charge will simply bolster the walls and build his own social media apocalypse bunker, and the rest of us will find boltholes out before the Musknauts hunt us in the vents.

As for what I’ll do?

I used Twitter a lot on my book tour for Wayward this last week, but once again I’m deleting it from my phone. I don’t need that agitation readily accessible. I will retain my account and likely transition it more to broadcast only, using it to signal boost and such, but I expect to fade away, like Marty McFly in that family photo.

(Though no, I won’t delete my account.)

As to where I am at now?

Well, I’m here, obviously.

I’ve noodled on newsletter or substack, but no firm plans there.

Instagram is reliable.

I’m at Mastodon here. I like it but it’s also still really hard to explain and in part because I’m still not sure I understand it? And individual instances seem pretty hinky and subject to fickle laws? Each instance its own weird island?

I just got onto Post.news, too, @chuckwendig there. I have little impression of it except I like the typography, and it seems like a Very Serious Place.

Then there’s the opposite — Hive.social, which so far, is the “stickiest” (honey pun?) of the sites, meaning, it’s the one I use and keep going back to because it feels pretty good, pretty natural, pretty nice. It blew up over the last day or two, I think doubling their userbase, so there are bugs — and further, it’s still in the early days, and so it only has an app, no desktop, and works better on iOS than on Android, and so forth. So it’s still rough seas, but like I said, it’s snappy, peppy, has a lot of good fun conversation already there and has been nice to see writer pals and comic folk and so forth quickly find a niche. It’s a little like if Twitter and Instagram had a baby, with Myspace as the weird uncle.

(Note, they are not the Trump-affiliated Hive, that is a different company.)

(Oh I’m also chuckwendig there.)

There has also been some agita about this, that Power Users such as myself [lol] are Pied-Pipering other people off of Twitter to this new, untrustworthy island run by untrustworthy people. So please let me assure you, I am not standing on virtue for Hive.social. Assume it could be wildly unstable. Pretend it’ll go away in a week or Milkshake Duck itself into oblivion. I dunno. What I know is that I like it right now and it’s fairly happy over there and it seems like it has its heart in the right place in terms of community and harassment and moderation, but again, it’s new, run by people I can’t vouch for, and for all I know it’s operated by a sentient Russian botnet. No idea.

I do think panic over this is a little ironic if it’s coming from people still on Twitter, because Twitter is verifiably owned by a fucking lunatic, now, hemorrhaging staff and operating with almost no actual content moderation, with a steep rise in fresh harassment — so it’s not like Twitter is somehow stable and safe. Some have said not to trust my “information” with a new social media site like Hive, but I dunno what information one thinks I’m giving them. I didn’t send them a vial of my genetic material or something. If it sucks, I’ll ditch.

Certainly there is also some feeling too of betrayal, that leaving is abandoning, that choosing to not use the site as vigorously or remain at all is tantamount to watching others drown, and I understand this. At the same time, I don’t think anyone should remain on that place if it’s not fun or interesting or if it’s serving them up a largely negative experience. I think there’s a dangerous path thinking we must somehow be obligated to a space that could become harmful. I think that stops being community and starts being a cult.

Right now, it’s just nice to feel nice somewhere that isn’t Twitter.

ANYWAY.

I may write up a more proper tour report, but I am pleased to say that the book tour was really nice, I met some very cool readers, and if you were one of them, I thank you. I also signed a lot of books for folks who couldn’t make it (often due to sickness, since there are a passel of respiratory bugs parading around out there, which I was afraid to bring home but as it turns out it was already here waiting for me since my kid is sick, oh shit).

I hope people enjoy Wayward and I’d love it if you told folks about the book and shared reviews and also bought seven more copies for yourself and then seven more copies for those copies so they can each have a family, and soon you will have a pyramid of books, and from this pyramid you can command armies. Or something. Whatever. What I mean is, leave a review if you’re able?

The holidays approacheth so if you want me to sign and personalize Wayward –or any of my books! — then you should go through Doylestown Bookshop.

Also remember I’m doing Let’s Play Books (12/4) and B&N Bethlehem (12/10) still, so you can grab books from there and come see me.

Okay! See you… *checks notes* somewhere on the internet? I’m sure there will be another dozen new social media sites next week. I will be chuckwendig on Circlezero, Frandspottr, Apple-Eater, Gl0rm, Pfft, and Substation 69. Bye.

Tomorrow, 11/15, Wayward, the sequel to 2019’s Wanderers, is released. (Though some stores are already carrying it, and if you saw me at Doylestown Bookshop on Saturday, you may already have a copy!)

The book, as described by its cover copy:

Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country to a destination only they knew. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them.

Their secret destination: Ouray, a small town in Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was only the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world—and the birth of a new one.

The survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling through grief to lead the town; Marcy, the former police officer who wants only to look after the people she loves; and Shana, the teenage girl who became the first shepherd—and an unlikely hero whose courage will be needed again.

Because the people of Ouray are not the only survivors, and the world they are building is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing under the leadership of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And in the very heart of Ouray, the most powerful survivor of all is plotting its own vision for the new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse.

Against these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the rest have only one hope: one another. Because the only way to survive the end of the world is together.

Let’s get your procurement options out of the way right now:

Indiebound | Bookshop | B&N | Amazon | Apple | Google | BAM | Powells | Kobo

There’s audio, too, narrated by the glorious Xe Sands and Dominic Hoffman:

Libro.fm or Audible are your options there.

If you want a signed, personalized copy, Malaprops has an order form, but note that the order cut off time is tomorrow (11/15) at 5pm EST.

After that, I can still sign and personalize through Doylestown Bookshop.

And, I will be on tour starting tomorrow (hence why this is posting today) — and you can definitely come see me at those stores.

Note, too, that two of these events — Malaprops and The Fountain — are hybrid events, meaning they are also broadcast virtually.

(The Fountain in-person event is at Sam Miller’s restaurant, btw, not at the bookstore. FYI!)

I think most of the events require registration, and some require masking, so check with the bookstore for sure.

There are of course many ways to support the book — you can absolutely get it from your local library, because libraries are awesome. And if they don’t have it, you can always request it. It’d also be great if you shouted about the book to the rooftops. Hell, beyond the rooftops. To the sky. To the moon. To that stupid car Elon Musk launched into space for some reason? To the furthest-flung black hole and whatever Bizarro Civilization lurks on the other side of it! It genuinely helps when you tell other human beings about the things you are excited about, so if you are so inclined to tell people this book exists, I would be grateful.

To talk a little about the book…

Why write a sequel?

As I noted when Wanderers launched, I intended for that book to be a standalone. I wanted to do a big chonky epic, and then walk away from it like it was an exploding building. That said, I said then that if people actually read the book and I had an idea for a sequel — then that would be the important chemical reaction that would get me to write a follow-up. And the first book ended up being, to be honest, more of a success than I thought it would be. It continues to do really well, and I’m really proud of that and really happy people liked the book and that the readers are showing up for it and sharing the love. It means a lot and that’s why Wayward gets to exist at all.

I’m fundamentally aware though that writing a sequel to a well-regarded book is a bit of a risk, right? Because if I write something worse, I arguably make the first one worse by proxy. It’d be like hitching a shit wagon to a Maserati — it’s only going to slow the fast car down and, y’know, probably get shit all over it.

It was a calculated risk and ultimately, selfish: I really wanted to go back to this world. I had the idea for the sequel while on tour for the first book, and these characters are characters I love very, very much. They are a cast of people I wanted deeply to revisit, to continue their stories, and see where they land.

I admittedly read one review recently of Wayward that suggested, in what I feel was a negative connotation, that it was really only for fans of the first book. Which… I mean, yeah? Obviously? I’m not going to write a sequel for people who didn’t like the first book. Isn’t that the intrinsic nature of writing a follow-up? It just seemed like such an odd comment to make. So, yes, I wrote it for the people who read the first one and who, gasp, liked it a lot. It’s not that I would be mad if this somehow broadened total readership, but the goal is to serve the people who came to the story the first time.

But, again, the real goal is to serve myself. Which sounds selfish and awful (and it is), I only mean, at the end of the day, I had more story to tell, and sometimes, that’s the thing that drives us. Also I am a monster.

Do I need to read the first book?

I would say yes, that’s the ideal. I’ve seen some folks who read only this one, and they seemed to like it and understand it — and Wayward does some work at reminding you what happened in the first one. But… yeah, it’s a follow-up. Read the first one first. I don’t know that you need to re-read it, unless you’re really hankering to, but a first read on the first book is the way to go.

Is this a big book?

It is a chonky book. It’s almost exactly the same size as the first one, weirdly. It’s around 800 pages, 280,000 words.

What did you predict now, you bastard?

Ummm. Well. I dunno. You’ll just have to read it and see? Sorry? (Real answer is of course I predict nothing on purpose. And at least in this one the pandemic from the first book appears to be over? Sorta? Maybe kinda? Ennh?)

Is there going to be a third book?

Well, same rules as the first time: if enough people check this one out and like it, and I have a story figured out — well, then away we go. (I do have a story in mind, though I wouldn’t yet call it “figured out.”) It’d definitely be a departure from these two, though, which definitely form a more complete package, narratively speaking, at least.

Does this book contain a possum?

It does! It contains at least one possum. Also, a couple of wolves. Maybe a fox. Some other animals. Definitely a golden retriever named Gumball who is, I must note with great vehemence, a very good boy.

Anything else we should know?

Just that I really appreciate you checking it out. And if you didn’t check it out, that’s fine, too, I have just taken a mental snapshot of your face and have telepathically uploaded it to the Black Swan servers so that it will forever remember who you are and what you’ve done! I’m sure it’s fine!

Also, check me out on the Dead Headspace podcast!