Those of you who preordered The Hellsblood Bride (aka Mookie Pearl, book #2) noticed first that the publication date bounced to 2035 before, a few days later, being canceled entirely. The book’s existence and release will be tbd as I undergo a contract dispute with Angry Robot. Blue Blazes now also appears to be no longer for sale, at least in electronic form. (The Miriam Black books are also off-sale, though that’s because those have gone on to Saga S&S. I’ll be talking more about those soon, and I imagine will be showing off the eye-popping new covers.)

I won’t say any more than this, at present.

But, drum roll please — I will shamelessly note that you can check out my new YA Atlanta Burns, releasing on 1/27. (Or, if you are a reviewer, you can go to nab a copy now from NetGalley.) I like to think of it as Winter’s Bone meets Veronica Mars.

Of the book, reviewer Michael Hicks said:

“Temporarily trading in the far-future cornpunk pastures of his Heartland series for the redneck noir of Pennsyltucky, Wendig fully delivers with this terrific thriller. It’s stocked to the gills with white supremacists, dogfighting rings, drugs, murder, and mayhem. It also has plenty of heart in between, and the titular heroine, Atlanta Burns, is wildly worth rooting for.”

So, there you go. Releases after that include:

The re-release of Miriam Black books 1, 2, 3

The Harvest (Heartland 3)

Zer0es

Thunderbird (Miriam Black 4)

And [REDACTED].

Regarding the Mookie Pearl books: more as I know it, when I know it.

Thanks for understanding!

(Comments closed.)

Okay, here’s the deal. I have thoughts on this whole Kickstarter kerfuffle yesterday, and my ranty-pants are securely fastened upon my kicking legs. Ah, but YA author Laura Lam — a wonderful author fresh from the fallout with Strange Chemistry — also had thoughts and asked if she could write up a guest post at the blog. I said hell yes, and told her I’d add my thoughts, too, at the bottom of the post. TAG TEAM MATCH. Here, then, is Laura, with her thoughts:

Very recently, YA author Stacey Jay launched a Kickstarter to fund her sequel to her first novel, Princess of Thorns. Hers is a familiar tale: due to low sales of the first, her publisher declined to pick up the sequel. But the sales were still high enough to investigate self-publishing. Yet self-publishing in YA can be a tricky beast. E-book sales are still a smaller slice of the pie than print sales, meaning without bookstore and library presence, it can be hard to gauge interest. She created a Kickstarter, detailing her goals: $3,500 for fees, cover, and editing, and around $7,000 to make it a financially viable option for her because it’d be enough to cover basic bills and give her 3 uninterrupted months to write the novel and get it to readers sooner.

Yet Kickstarter is more about the end product, some argue. Living expenses aren’t a product. Stacey Jay came under criticism, both for asking for an advance, essentially, and for the line saying if it didn’t fund she’d instead focus on re-publishing her backlist. Some thought it had a whiff of emotional blackmail about it. (I didn’t see it that way. She writes under three names and is supporting a family. I figured she was saying if it doesn’t fund, she’ll focus on things that will let her provide for her family).

Stacey Jay ended up taking down the Kickstarter, and writing a blog post saying she’s stepping back from writing as Stacey Jay for a while.

Hearty debate ensued on Twitter – was this right? Is it fair? Was it bullying? When crowdfunding, is it appropriate to ask for more than simply production costs? As hybrid publishing is becoming more common, it all ended up coming to a head here—unfortunately for Stacey Jay.

So, my feelings. I think this story especially hit home for me. I don’t know Stacey Jay, but man, I just want to give her a hug. My books Pantomime & Shadowplay came out, but my trilogy was cancelled, and then the imprint folded a few months later. I have considered Kickstarter, and done a lot of research on it over the last few months, but since some stuff is up in the air, I haven’t gone live. But if things had gone differently, I might have been Kickstarting Masquerade (book 3) right about now. And then, maybe, this could have been me? Who knows.

Perhaps, in a request like this where living expenses for three months were needed, something like Patreon or IndieGoGo would have been better than Kickstarter. However, this can be a hard call. I asked on Twitter a few times over the past year if Kickstarter or IndieGoGo would be better for raising production costs for a book. With IndieGoGo you can have flexible funding and keep what you raise instead of losing everything, so that was appealing. People overwhelmingly told me Kickstarter because it had a bigger reach, so I figured I’d use that if I needed to.

In terms of Patreon, that seems to be more of a website to support an artist from month to month, regardless of the specific project. This can work really well for ongoing things, like Peter and Emma Newman’s excellent podcast Tea and Jeopardy (here’s their Patreon page). But if I wanted a set amount for a set goal Kickstarter would probably still be what I’d go for.

I don’t think saying outright that some of your money going towards having the time to create the product is disingenuous. The most precious commodity for writers is to have time to write. Time to create a good product is just as important as having a good cover and strong edits, if not more so. I’d rather read an awesome book with a horrific cover than the other way around.

Other people thought the levels weren’t generous enough. $5 for an e-book seems to be fairly standard practice in a lot of Kickstarters. Yeah, $10 for just an e-book is a bit steep. But I do see Kindle books regularly for sale by publishers for that price. I’ve bought Kindle e-books at $10, and recently. Yeah, I’ve grumbled about it, but if I love the author and know I’ll love the book, eh. It’s the price of a movie ticket but a book lasts longer than 2 hours. I’ve also seen other Kickstarters that funded and then some having a $10 e-book levels, too.

Would I have run a Kickstarter the same way? No, I would have done some things differently, but hey, I’m a different person, so that’s not terribly surprising.

I would have given a more detailed breakdown of costs. I’d have a wide range of rewards with different options, with the hope that there’d be something for everyone. Benefits for librarians, teachers, or booksellers. For e-only bundles, they’re the highest profit margin because you don’t have to pay for postage. To sweeten the pot, maybe I’d add some exclusive extra short stories for KS backers only, or deleted scenes, or access to a forum to discuss things about the book. I think offering print copies is still important, but that means: physical formatting & costing print runs or seeing if you only need CreateSpace. Also: lots and lots of swag! Everyone loves swag, right?

That gets complicated really fast though. And it gets more expensive, and that it’d take a lot more time, taking away from other potential (paying) projects.

And time is still the kicker. Writing takes time. Having the time to write takes money. You can’t get around that. Publishers pay advances. Most of the time it’s not enough to fully support you, but $7k is still a standard advance for a lot of authors (for SJ, it was a 60% paycut from the first book). Not everyone is in a position of privilege to be able to ask only for production costs and hope that, once all the work is done and it’s out in the world, it’ll make a profit eventually. From my own experience, my self-published short stories and novellas, Vestigial Tales, haven’t made me the professional minimum of 5 cents a word yet, even though they’ve been on sale for 2-6 months. That was a hell of a lot of work. Not everyone can write for free and love and warm fuzzies. But creators are still battling this notion that we deserve to be paid for the work that we do.

And, importantly, it’s so hard to reach out for help to crowd-fund a novel, especially on a series where publishers have told you they don’t think it’s worth the money. You’re vulnerable. I don’t blame her one put for putting up her hands and going “you know what? Never mind. I’m sorry this didn’t work out.”

Kickstarter is optional. If a Kickstarter is your jam, you pay the level you choose. As long as you receive the product on time as promised, the obligation has been fulfilled. If I’m paying $10 instead of $5 and that $5 difference is going to go to letting the artist whose work I admire be able to create a better book sooner, and I know that and don’t care, then what, exactly, is the problem here?

* * *

*Chuck jetpacks in, lands on the back of a sea serpent, ululates*

Isn’t getting cranky about Kickstarters a 2011-2012 thing?

Is this time travel? Maybe it’s just nostalgia for an Internet kerfuffle from our salad days. Soon VH1 will do a series of episodes — “Internet Kerfuffles of the Last Decade,” and a hilarious panel of Z-List talents will opine about this.

So, here’s the thing.

I did a Kickstarter to fund a novel. A YA novel, actually, called Bait Dog.

I did that three years ago.

At the time, Kickstarter campaigns were not yet super-savvy and. I didn’t know what the floppy fuck I was doing, so I didn’t talk much about why I was asking for what I was asking in terms of money (which was three grand). I didn’t reference what would go toward cover art and editing and all that. I also didn’t note that uhh, yeah, some of that money would land squarely in my pocket.

It would be something roughly comparable to an advance — money up front that would pay for a pre-order. A pre-order for a novel that I had not yet written. I knew the novella had sold really well, but I wasn’t sure how much of an audience was out there clamoring for the next part. So, I thought, a Kickstarter is a good way to test those waters. I’d land a Kickstarter, see who flocked to it and who didn’t, and if it funded — well, then I knew I had the audience to write that book.

As I am wont to say about crowdfunding, in the OLDEN DAYS of HUNTING BUFFALO and HAVING ONLY ONE WAY TO PUBLISH, you worked your way to the stage and then the crowd would carry you away from it on a magical fun ride over their heads. Now? Kickstarter and the other platforms for crowdfunding determine whether or not the crowd will surf your ass to the stage, not away from it. If you have the audience? They’ll get you there. If not? You’re gonna drop on your head and crack your creative skull like an egg.

But that’s how it’s supposed to work. If I don’t fund, why make the thing at all?

A lot of Kickstarter campaigns work this way. It is situation normal.

For me, my Kickstarter was funded 100% in 10 hours.

It gave life to the book, Bait Dog, and that book then went on to a more traditional publishing deal — and, in a bit of utter shamelessness, I’ll note that the book releases in e-book and paperback at the end of this month. Further, I’ll get to write a second book as part of that deal (tentative title: Frack You) and Kickstarter backers will receive a copy of that book, too (thanks to stretch goals and the goodness of my publisher, Skyscape).

Some of that money from the Kickstarter?

It probably went to groceries.

It helped fund my life, in a literal sense.

Now, here is where you object, flailing your arms around — “Buh, buh, buh, Kickstarter is to fund projects and products, not lives.” And your point is accurate, if a little pedantic. But here’s the deal: let’s say the money is there to pay for the project only. Let’s say I want to pay an editor, a graphic designer, a dog-washer, a bodyguard to keep away my adoring fans (all three of you, two of whom are actually just cardboard cut-outs with leather masks over their drooping heads). Okay, so, the campaign is successful and I pay them.

Where does that money go? Once it reaches the intended recipients, I mean.

I’m going to take a wild guess here and say it goes toward paying their bills.

Meaning, I’m helping to fund their lives, if in a small way.

So, back to me. Me, me, me. *pirouettes*

I’m part of the equation, too, and so was Stacey Jay in her own campaign. She was acting as writer and as publisher of the work. Two genuinely essential jobs in the creation of this work. One could argue that she ventured too much information in being honest about, ohhh, needing to eat and pay those pesky bills, but truth is, the Kickstarter would have paid her to write and publish the book. Paying for those things, yes, means some of that money is going to find its way into her own personal ecosystem. Because it needs to.

What, she and her family should starve while she writes the book?

And here, you object: well, I starved when I wrote mine, why shouldn’t she?

That’s not very nice. Is it? That’s like saying, “I didn’t have the Internet when I was a kid, why should all these other kids?” Next thing we know, you’re telling us how you had to walk to school uphill both ways and cross rushing rapids and there was this evil ring you had to go drop into a volcano along the way and you were being hunted by orcs and the ghosts of corrupted kings, and then you’re shaking your cane and talking about those damn kids and why don’t they get off your lawn and stop playing video games while they’re at it.

Here you might say: well, I had to work a dayjob when I wrote my book, why shouldn’t she?

Again: super not cool. Why do you insist that things be bad for others like they were for you?

Here’s a thought: celebrate that Kickstarter is now an option.

One you, and me, and you over there, could use.

The starving artist is a real-life trope that we should never, ever encourage. Listen, being a creative person is hard enough as it is. It’s a path fraught with boundless uncertainty. And one such uncertainty is: will I be able to feed myself next month, next year, for the next ten? Can I feed my family? Can I have a family? It’s scary. It’s life without a net. Kickstarter, along with other modes of self-publishing, is a valuable way — one option — to create cool stuff.

Out of the $10k, she was asking for $7k for three months.

Roughly, $2,300 a month, or $28,000 a year.

(Not exactly The Great Gatsby.)

You might offer: This isn’t an advance and most authors don’t get advances.

Well, it functions for the author as a kind of advance and to the reader as a kind of pre-order system and… again, some authors don’t get advances and some do. She wanted to feed her family while she wrote. Not buy a Wave Runner. Hell, if she wanted to buy a Wave Runner with that money: not my business.

*takes a note: run Kickstarter campaign to buy self a Wave Runner*

You might say: but this challenges my livelihood, and it changes the system.

Meaning, what? It changes the way books are written? And marketed? It doesn’t change what’s already happening out there — it just adds a brand new option. It’s like, the door out of the room is still there — but now you have another door. And a window. And a basement. Options. Paths. Choices. Those are choices for you too. It changes nothing except gives you more ways to write, more ways to reach an audience. How is that bad?

Well, I don’t want to be marketed to all the time by these authors with Kickstarters.

Hey, I don’t either, so if an author gets noisy about it, I unfollow them. That’s true of anybody who acts like a human product and not a human — get spammy, I boot you out the airlock.

I didn’t like the way Stacey Jay ran her campaign.

So, maybe don’t put money into it? A weird, revolutionary concept, I know, but Kickstarter and other creative endeavors is one of those ways where voting with your dollar really matters.

We should be allowed to criticize her and her campaign and this process.

You can, and you are, allowed. Just as I’m allowed to sit here and tell you why I disagree. I disagree because what you’re criticizing is her option. Moreover, an option that is not precisely new — like I say, this is kinda how Kickstarters work. It’s how mine worked three years ago. You’re yelling at a woman in a boat because you’re mad at the ocean. Meaning: if you don’t like the Kickstarter option, or self-publishing, or traditional publishing, okay. Criticize the mode and the model. But sniping at those using those models is, to my mind, a little bit of dirty pool. It’d be one thing if she used the model in a way that wasn’t expected or wasn’t standard. It’d be one thing if her campaign was somehow socially bereft — racist, sexist, or shitty in some other hurtful way.

But, to me, she wanted to write a book and she got grief for it. (I dunno that I’d call it “bullying” — I think in this Internet Age, we maybe overuse that term when real bullying exists. Both in the halls of schools and across social media. Gamergate is home to a great many bullies, actual bullies.) Do I think criticism is fair? Sure. You’re free to do it, and she’s free to respond however she responds. But we’re all free to respond to that, too, and honestly, I don’t see the problem. Not contributing money toward the Kickstarter is the cleanest, simplest way to let her do her thing while simultaneously not supporting her. Just as you likely do day in and day out with 99.9% of the media that crosses in front of you.

Again, you can find Stacey Jay’s apology and retreat from Kickstarter here.

I hope none of this stops others from exploring the wide, weird variety of writing and publishing choices available to them. Lots of options that will continue to exist only when we use them.

Let Your Characters Talk. No, I know, we like to be hyper-plot-focused like, if it doesn’t fit into the plot, then murder it in the face. But that’s assuming plot is this rigid, inflexible thing, like an obsidian dildo. It’s not. Plot is whatever happens in the story: a sequence of events. This happens. That happens. Then another thing. In the process: characters talk. Characters are everything, and it behooves you to know them. One of the ways you get to know them is: let them have conversations. About anything. Corn chips and abortion! Lip balm and gun rights! Whatever it is, give them a lot of leash. Maybe you’ll cut a lot of it. Maybe you won’t. But ideally, it’ll help you know these characters more intimately by the end. And if you know? Then we get to know, too.

Have A Point, But Don’t Ever Tell Us. Writing a novel is a game of charades — I’m trying to tell you something without ever telling you something. All my work has a point — a central argument or idea. Sometimes I know it going in, sometimes I know it on the second draft, or tenth, or once its on shelves. But I don’t want to tell you what it is. That spoils the fun and ruins the game. Dance around it. Paint the margins, but leave the core thesis of the work blank. Let the reader get there. Let them stumble into it like someone who opens the wrong door and finds themselves wandering into a secret orgy. Let them be wrong about it, too, if they need to be. Fiction isn’t about absolutes. This isn’t paint by numbers. Good storytelling embraces ambiguity and uncertainty. Good writing isn’t a lecture; it’s a debate.

Surprise Yourself, And You Surprise The Reader. This is maybe one of the best ways to get unstuck that I’ve found, in the most general sense: just when you feel like you’re hitting the wall, face mashed against the brick and you don’t know where to turn, it’s time to surprise yourself. If you’ve anticipated what’s coming, then we might, too. That’s not to say you can’t orchestrate holy-goatfucker moments long before you get to them — you can, and should. But sometimes, you paint yourself into a corner and it’s like, do something really unexpected. It’s like, BOOM, SPACE BADGERS, and jaws hit the floor so hard the tile cracks. (This also means it’s vital to be loosey-goosey with your expectations. Nothing in your story — no moment, no character, no event — is final until that book is printed and in people’s hands. Be willing to change course and redraw the map — I love outlining, but just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no outline survives contact with the actual story. Rigidity is the enemy; flexibility is your friend. You know what’s also your friend? Puppies. And whiskey. And ice cream. And a puppy carrying whiskey-flavored ice cream in a little barrel around its neck. *dreams*)

Ten Keywords. Think of ten keywords about the story you’re writing. Or five, I don’t care. They can be anything. Emotions. Plot points. Locations. Write them down. Scribble them on a Post-It note, or keep them open on your screen in a little window, or tattoo them on your head backwards so you can read them in the makeup mirror you keep just to your left. The goal? When you write, glance at them. These are the ideas and elements and motifs you want to keep roughly juggled in the work: not constantly in play, but so that some part of the story always roams and roves back to them. It’s like, LIBERTY / ALBUQUERQUE / WATER RIGHTS / VULTURES / CLASS WARFARE / VAMPIRES / THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE / BROKEN WINDOWS / DONKEY SHOWS / DERELICT SHOPPING MALLS. Peer at these from time to time. They’re meant to form the posts of an invisible fence to keep you and the story hemmed in.

Write Like You Think. This sounds strange, I know, but sometimes the reason writing is so hard for us is that we put all this expectation and distance between us and the words. We want to prettify and make them sound like proper prose — but in that, we’re often hewing to someone else’s idea of what constitutes pretty, proper prose. Hell with that. Connecting with the work more intimately means creating a stronger, more direct conduit between the words on the page and the words inside your head. What’s up here — *taps forehead* — is PURE SNOW. It’s raw, crackling, cuckoo energy. It’s rough, unhewn, and it is decidedly You-Flavored. Pipe that stuff right onto the page. I’m not necessarily talking about straight stream-of-consciousness, here, but I do mean for you to harness the way you think and the way you speak — how you hear language and process it and return it to the world has meaning. It’s the writer’s fingerprint. So press your fingerprint hard onto the page. And if your objection to this is that it’s not pretty, not proper and, ugh, not perfect — well, no duh. First, that’s kinda the point. Second, you have as many drafts as you need to fix it. So, stop putting up roadblocks and expectations between you and the page. BARF BRAIN MATTER RIGHT INTO THE STORY.

*blargh*

* * *

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I call it the “Mystery Box.”

Because it is a box. From which radiates — well, who the fuck knows? It’s me. Sitting in it. Every day. A mask over my head with a question mark embroidered upon it. Hammering out words, stories, characters, ideas, all the expected nonsense. Writers exude mysteries. Questions. Puzzles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in crippling-self-doubt and also, sometimes, ham.

Mmm. Ham.

Point is, now I have a place from which these mysteries emerge.

Hence: MYSTERY BOX.

(Though bonus points go to Michelle Sydney Levy, who actually thought to call it “The Myth Lab,” which I love so much it hurts. But I also know that if I get into the habit of calling it this, eventually the tiny human that is B-Dub will go to school one day and say, “My Daddy goes to work in a Myth Lab” and of course the teacher will hear meth lab — which is part of the joke ha ha ha — and then next thing you know it’s cops and FBI and they don’t find meth but they find all these bodies! Wait I didn’t say “bodies.”)

Previous to now, I had an office inside the house — which, admittedly, I adored! It was a corner office. Three windows overlooking our lovely woods. I’d see deer gamboling about. Foxes prancing. Sometimes the people I keep trapped in my cellar would break free and hobble through the trees with their broken manacles dragging behind them and I’d be like, oh ho ho look who thinks they’re going to make it to the road, oh you goofs, and I’d get out the tranquilizer rifle and gently adjust the scope and let all the breath escape my chest as I lightly squeezed the trigger and —

Well, I’m reminiscing.

Point is, I dug that office. I did. Big shelves. A nice closet. I painted the walls this perfectly wonderful nuclear apple green because it gave the room a kind of vibrant, cuckoo energy. And I am admittedly a little sad to say goodbye to that office.

But as those with children know, children are little productivity vampires. They don’t mean to be! They’re delightful in that they pinball around and are not easily contained. (We could stick our kid in a straitjacket inside of a padlocked steamer trunk buried in the cement foundation of the house and Baby Houdini would be naked on the roof in two minutes, shoving LEGO bricks down our chimney. B-Dub was in an actual bed by, what, nine months? Because no crib would contain him.) So, I was managing to get the writing done, but it was more of a, “Chipping minerals out of the walls with my teeth.” Slower-going than I wanted.

And so my wife said, let’s get you out of here.

And I thought, well, here it is, finally. She’s realized that I’m an awful person and has — wisely! — decided to divorce me. Or maybe just straight up kill my ass. That also would’ve been an acceptable answer — really, nobody would blame her.

That apparently isn’t what she meant.

So began the time when we tried to figure out just where I would go, exactly. We bandied about a few options. One was just renting an office — some dinky space somewhere. It would’ve worked, though it would’ve meant obviously driving somewhere every day and dealing with weather and traffic and ew, yucky. (<– privilege).

Option two, and we went down this path for a while, was to take the space above the garage — which right now is a kind of creepy unfinished space that I use as a “mouse killing chamber” (seriously, I just pop open the hatch and then chuck these little green bricks of rat poison up there and the result is this rodent graveyard). If it weren’t for the hantavirus that probably lives and breeds up there, it would’ve worked.

We had a contractor come out and price it for us and… it wasn’t cheap. Plus: there arrived logistical issues. Where would the entrance be? Staircase? What would we do with all the mouse bones?

My wife mentioned off-handedly to the contractor about putting an office somewhere on the property, instead, and he was like, “Yeah, we can do that!” And he got all excited about it and we started scouting spots. Back yard, front yard, in the woods, deep beneath the earth in the Dwarven Ruins of Krongg’nang where the Artificer of Doom sleeps in his Mechanical Cryptwalker? The contractor was geeked. We were geeked. The three of us started talking about it and planning it then he came back to us a week or two later with plans and a rough estimate aaaaaaand…

Holy shit, what? Sixty fucking grand?

And we all had a larf and I said, no, no, really, how much.

The contractor raised an eyebrow and was like, f… forty grand?

And another round of mighty guffaws was had.

He was clearly becoming aware that uhh, yeah, no, we’re not paying that, nor could we pay that. So he went on his way and said he would return with a new design and a lower cost.

In the interim, though, I thought, okay, let’s investigate. Let’s dig deeper. This is kind of a trendy thing now, these silly office sheds. I took to looking at Studio Shed because, oooh, pretty. I gandered at the writing spaces of other penmonkeys: Neil Gaiman’s magic gazebo, Laurie Halse Anderson’s writing cottage, Robert Jackson Bennett’s precious workspace, or this very special writing space (which comes with free shower and lotion as a bonus). And then it was Kelley Armstrong who told me her writing office secret:

Have Amish shedmakers make you a shed.

Then have the same shedmakers convert the shed into an office.

And I was like, “Hey! We have lots of Amish around us. Mennonites, too. Such wonderful beards!” Scads of Pennsylvania Dutch surround us — and here, in fact, I believe I have stumbled upon some kind of shedworkers mafia, because we already have one shed on our property made by a family named Stolzfus. And nearly every shed maker we contacted across the state was operated by or had an employee by the name of Stolzfus, or Stolzfoos. OMG CONSPIRACY, RIGHT. I tried to find out more, but suddenly I saw bright lights in the sky and then woke up in a cornfield somewhere with missing time. I had a big long beard, and it smelled of hay. My name is now Uncle Esau.

Anyway.

We started to solicit some quotes.

And holy crapcakes was it cheaper.

Ah, but here’s the trick: they’re shedmakers, not contractors, not interior designers, so, that means you have to take the reins and basically become a contractor. Some things need to be farmed out — and, further, they’re not really going to design the thing for you, you have to give them help. Lots and lots of help.

Now, an important caveat? I’m a dumbass. Like, I’m smart enough when it comes to MAKING WORDS, but in all other things, y’know, I have the common sense of a coat-rack. And not a very useful coat-rack, either. In fact, as I go deeper down the rabbit hole of my writing career, my common sense seems to be dulling even further. When confronted by a simple problem, I’m often likely to come up with a solution like, “Can’t dragons fix it?” And it’s like, no, no they cannot, because dragons are not real, dipshit. “Vampires?” Exasperation is imminent.

Thankfully, my wife is very smart. Without her, you’d probably find me wandering in the woods, pantsless, starving, covered in burrs and eating my own socks.

So, she took control of the project.

And she painstakingly interfaced with the shed people (god, that sounds ominous — THE SHED PEOPLE). She dealt with the electrician. Permit dude. The HVAC guy. The movers. The Murder Pit digger guy. The ancient shed-gods. All those folks.

Over the last many moons, my wife busted her ass to make the shed happen. She weathered the (several) problems that popped up. She helped me settle on a design that did not look like a four-year-old painted it with poopy hands. Delays and problems besieged — and oh yeah, right around the holidays, too, whee — but then, it happened.

They delivered the shed. And put it together.

You can see the sad, headless snowman watching in horror. Trying to inch closer to find solace from the sun. But no, snowman. You’re fucked. The shed is mine. No melting in the writing shed. No sex in the Champagne room.

Then it took like, a month or more to kick-punch the weather into cooperating so that they could run power, put in the HVAC, establish the laser perimeter, install the sharks, and so forth.

Rough specs:

160 square feet.

Sits on a gravel pad framed out with wood. (Eventually, landscaping will be essential here.)

Beadboard, whatever that is. Board made of bees or beads or something.

Laminate floor.

Split HVAC, LG.

Which means, yes, it has electricity.

The wi-fi surprisingly not only reaches from the house, but is peppy as a coke-addled squirrel.

No plumbing. I, like the bear, will shit in the woods. Or in the house, if I’m feeling particularly motivated that day. I guess I could dig a latrine or something? Whatevs.

There’s an attic. For whatever I wanna put there. Bodies. Guns. Bootleg DVDs. Oompa-Loompas. Liquor. Stacks of otherworldly pornography. Ghosts. Bootleg Oompa-Loompas.

If you’d like a tour of the shed properly…

Here is the exterior.

Then, the one side:

And then, the other side:

The shed has changed my routine in a shake-up where the pieces have yet to settle. I used to roll my ass out of bed like a log off a truck and then would zombie my way downstairs at around 6AM to make coffee in the Chemex and then I’d mummy my way back up to the office where I’d let the spirits of caffeine inhabit my body and will the tired flesh toward the act of making shit up. Plus, I could pop over to the computer at any point in the day. Noon, evening, 3AM, whatever. Now, the system sits away — and lots of little other habits (lunch, for instance) are upended.

The new routine — still evolving! — means brewing coffee in the morning and putting it in this insulated carafe and then stagger-bumbling my way across the winter-smushed yard to the office. It also means that when in the house, I can get email and social media on the phone, but only there (or iPad). Means I’m somewhat less connected, which is a feature, not a bug.

Still have things to do, of course. Landscaping outside to cover the pad. Hang various posters and whiteboards and meathooks. Draw a summoning circle in invisible ink. Put in a couch, maybe. Invite a coven of sorcerers over to bless the place. Install a whiskey dispenser.

You know.

THE YOOZH.

If you wanna know the total cost, well, I’m not going to tell you that. C’mon. (Assume it cost as much as a good used car, or as much as a less good new car. Which, cost-wise, works consider I rarely use a car and the money I might spend on a vehicle went instead toward this — a project that also adds to the value of the property, as opposed to car whose value depreciates by half the first time you pass gas in it.)

So, that’s it. That’s the shed. The mystery box. The myth lab. Already wrote my first 4000 words there on Friday, so it was a hella productive day. And the mailman drove up and stared at me for like, a good 30 seconds. As if maybe I was trapped inside, and needed help? He looked confused.

Sorry, mail guy.

*shrug*

*ties balloons to shed*

*lifts off to kingdoms beyond*

As 2015 is peering around the fringe of the dusty black curtain, waiting for its time on stage, I figured that, as I am a loud, tap-dancing asshole on the stage of writing and publishing, I could get away with mouthily shouting my wishlist for the realm of writing and publishing into the air and hoping someone will listen.

So, this is me, doing exactly that.

*tap dances and shouts*

Dear Amazon:

Yes, Amazon, you know I have to start with you, first. How can I not? You’ve dominated the 2014 news-cycle, haven’t you? Amazon is increasingly the Wonka Factory of publishing: calliope music drifting from its colorful chimneys as great burping tubes upchuck new programs and initiatives and algorithms into the river. Sometimes we stare in wonder at your multiplying glories, basking in the power you’ve given us. Other times we regard you with alien horror, and we whisper to one another, I think they make Kindles out of little dead girls. We know you do amazing things. And we’re also really worried about the things you might do.

So, here’s my 2015 wishlist for you.

1.) Drop the exclusivity on Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited. Here’s how you keep people publishing with you: just be awesome. Do no evil and be continuously aggressive in being better than everyone else. But forcing exclusivity — and worse, doing so by making the authors (effectively) pay a cost — is really weird, and sounds like you’re hoping folks will buy in without realizing what they’re doing. It’s corrosive and erosive and, ennh.

2.) Okay, let’s say you still wanted to do exclusivity? Fine. Make it a real benefit. Simple and concrete: give better royalties to those who commit only to you. Either bump the current royalty rate or offer some other genuine benefit that is tied explicitly to money.

3.) Kindle Unlimited? That dog isn’t hunting, yet — at least, for my mileage. Sounds like readers aren’t finding what they want there. Writers are finding that their hamstrings have been cut. All of it tied to dubious algorithms that operate behind a very thick veil of smoke and mirrors. The NYT has kind of a hate-boner for you, dear Amazon, but just the same: this article is pretty good at articulating the problem with KU (and the inimitable Scalzi is good at articulating why subscription models for writers make us pee a little in fear). (Or: read this one by Mike Underwood.) If you’re going to keep Kindle Unlimited around, okay — but again, kill the exclusivity, and instead of a generic pool of random made-up money, just pay authors their proper 70% cut (though okay, maybe you increase the “read-through” rate of the book to somewhere between 25-50% in order to make the rental more quantifiably meaningful).

4.) Your pricing window is artificial. Stop forcing it. $2.99 to $9.99 is fine, but you don’t need to restrictively force that pricing window — just give the 70% on everything. The price of e-books will shake out fine because buyers and publishers will wibble-wobble until they find What E-Books Should Cost At This Moment. And besides, you muddy your own pricing waters with Kindle Unlimited. “Keep the price between $2.99 and $9.99,” you say, “unless of course you’re in Kindle Unlimited, in which case do the opposite because that’s the only way you earn well per download.”

5.) The shit volcano is bubbling. This maybe isn’t your fault or responsibility, but the numbers of e-books released on Amazon in particular is increasing at a spectacular rate (and Kindle Unlimited encourages this — because now some authors are breaking their novels apart into bite-sized serial components to take advantage of the smaller payout). I know digital books are not physical books, but it does feel like the metaphorical dam is about to break, here. At the very least, discoverability on your site is pretty fucking close to zero. (And now rumors suggest that those in Kindle Unlimited are given favor in the recommendation engine, which hones the discoverability — but in a very biased direction.)

6.) Speaking of that, your website needs an overhaul. You wanna be Facebook, but you’re looking like Myspace. I half expect blinky glitter fonts. You are the e-commerce site, so — maybe this is just me — but I’d say your shit needs an overhaul. Wanna stay the leader? Look like the leader.

7.) You have so many conflicting, bewildering publishing programs that at this point, I think you’re just disrupting yourself. Focus, Daniel-son. Focus. Sweep the leg! Crane kick! You’re the best around! And other assorted Karate Kid references!

8.) Books are not loss-leaders. That just makes my heart hurt. *one lone tear rolls down cheek*

Dear Big Publishers:

You poor bastards get a bad rap, too. Despite being populated with folks who genuinely love books and, further, being responsible for the larger bulk of meaningful book culture, you catch a helluva lot of flak. Except, sometimes? Sometimes you earn the flak. Sometimes you do things to writers — we, who are supposed to be your business partners, not your employees — that are downright exploitative. So, that means you get a wishlist, too! It’s like Oprah, except instead of handing out Cadillacs, I’m handing out cranky, petulant demands that will surely be ignored!

1.) Quit the sly wink-wink vanity publishing. That time has come and it reeks of sinister mustache-twirling authorial sweat-shops. I’m not saying there’s not a place for you in the interstitial author-publisher realm, but charging exorbitant fees for essentially nothing is Not How Publishing Should Work. You know it, and you’d never tell an actual author friend to do it, so stop doing it. Stop it! Bad Author Solutions! Bad.

2.) Okay, the 25% e-book royalty thing? Gotta change. Someone, please please please, take the move to to change this. Up it. You’ll be heroes. We’ll carry you around the city square — ticker tape and flung candy and consensual sexual favors, ahoy. You make more money on e-books while we, the author, make less. Either up the rate or make it based on list price rather then net price (“net” meaning, on the money after lots of other little fees and percentages whittle it down). If you want to counter self-publishing, and polish your own apple a little: make this one change. We will sing paeans to you. You have my sword. And my axe. And my sweet kisses.

3.) DRM, no. DRM is dum-dum. DRM is that line from Star Wars about how the tighter you close your fist, the more star systems slip through your fingers. Don’t be Darth Vader. Why would you wanna be Darth Vader? Redeem yourself and throw the Emperor that is restrictive Digital Rights Management into the… well, wherever it was that Darth threw the Emperor. The Death Star’s galactic laser toilet? I dunno. DRM, by the way, is how you increase piracy, not decrease it. If you make it easier to pirate e-books instead of buy them and use them however you want — well, what do you think people are gonna go? (Here I will casually note that one of my awesome publishers, Saga S&S, has chosen to go DRM-free going forward.)

4.) It’s time to talk about non-compete clauses. I understand why they exist. I do! You’re still beholden to physical print books and the bookstores that sell them. I understand that if your author, Damien Caine, releases one supernatural thriller with you and a different supernatural thriller with a separate publisher — and these releases happen fairly close to one another — that someone like Barnes & Noble may make the difficult call of stocking one book over another. Still, a lot of your non-competes are overly restrictive — they’re like, YOU CAN’T PUBLISH A TWEET WITHOUT CHECKING WITH US FIRST and it’s like, hey, whoa, ease off the stick, hoss. Writers these days need to make a living and that sometimes means writing diversely across genres, age ranges, publishers, and formats. You gotta allow that or we can’t fucking eat. Okay?

5.) I still feel like there’s a big opportunity for you and independent bookstores. I’m gonna float this idea again in the hopes someone listens: produce special edition copies of some books by some authors, and allow only indie bookstores to sell them. Listen, indie stores are the beating heart of book culture. I believe this. Not all of them are created equally, and some are downright shitty, but the ones that rule are so vibrant and so amazing — they are the petri dishes for book bacterial spread. Sounds gross. Isn’t gross. Is totally awesome. Partner with them. In a big, interesting way. Give them something nobody else does. Reward them for being who they are. Give them a little boost. They need the boost, goddamnit. You need them, too. This math is easy.

6.) When I buy a physical copy of your book, I also want the digital copy. Just… full stop. No more ninnymandering, no more wafflepantsing, no more flimsyjibbing. Yes, sure, okay, I did indeed just make those words up, but you know what I’m saying. Stop delaying this. I know it’s easier said than done. I know I’m just the loud asshole tap-dancing over here in denial of the complicated realities of your business. And I don’t care. Just do it. Get it done. Make it so. Do it. Do it. Doooo. Eeeeet. *bites belt* *gnashes teeth* *drinks whiskey* *punches dolphin*

Dear Writers:

And finally, to you, my dear penmonkeys. You bring good things to the world, but so many of you (me sometimes included) have the business sense of a shit-covered brick.

1.) Exclusivity is to someone else’s benefit, not yours. Meaning: they should be paying you for the privilege. That’s true of Amazon and their programs, and that’s true of big publishers and their non-compete clauses. Big companies are not your pals and you need to approach all these deals accordingly. So many authors are so emotionally invested and excited just to be published that they forget they’re also supposed to be paid.

2.) Hybrid publishing is rad. Do it. Do it now. Don’t wait. Both traditional publishing and self-publishing each come with a set of disadvantages unique to each that are often off-set by the advantages unique to each. Example: traditional pays slow, but self-publishing pays regularly, so money earned as an author-publisher fill the valleys between the larger paychecks handed out from traditional. Another example: it can be hard to generate attention with self-publishing, but in traditional some attention is automatically generated — and it can draw people to your self-published work, too. The two sides feed each other. Like sexy dates on Valentine’s day spooning chocolate mousse into each other’s mouths. Yeah. Like that. Lick the spoon. Do it. Nnnngh. Now put on the pony costumes and join Satan’s orgy room and WHOA THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY.

3.) To reiterate: get paid. Try to walk that line between I want to be read and I want to be paid. I don’t mean to suggest that every word you write should be a quarter flipped into your wishing well — I just mean, the overall goal is to make it somehow sustainable. Writing means being a writer, full stop. Professional writing means getting paid for it. You know how great it is to pay bills with Writer Money? It’s basically the best thing ever. Even better than Satan’s pony-show orgy hour.

4.) Give your work the time that it needs. I know the trend is more faster better now, but seriously: your work takes the time that it takes, and the best work is rarely work that floods the market. At the same time, I do recognize that writing a lot helps you get paid. Again: find the line, but above all else, make sure the books don’t suffer from over-acceleration. Don’t rush. Rushing rarely results in anything good. It’s how you choke, or trip, or ruin your butthole with furious pushing.

5.) Be wary of subscription services. They ain’t all bad, and the idea is sound and maybe good for readers — but we all need to join hands and stand against the evil of the Infinity Stone. … uhh, I mean, against the market force of ‘reducing the value of books to such a state that it’s just a bubbling pot of soup that requires only a cheap ladle for scooping.’

6.) Signal boost others as much as — frankly, more than — you boost yourself. This thing we do is a thing we do alone, at first. But then we have the opportunity to be something larger than ourselves. To join with others and to become a kind of community. YOU CAN BE VOLTRON. Well, okay, maybe not Voltron. But something like Voltron. WRITETRON. COFFEETRON. BOOKOTRON. I dunno. Shut up. No, you shut up. *smacks the keyboard off your desk*

7.) Like I said yesterday: be big and be small.

8.) Be optimistic! After all — evidence shows the book universe is expanding, not contracting. I’ll still posit that this is the best time to be a writer. So many options — so, let’s keep them all in play by exercising as many of the damn things as possible, yeah?

So. With all my flim-flammery out of the way…

What’s your wishlist for 2015?

Resolutions born of the new year are always a curious breed. They’re often criticized as change-filled (but empty) promises born more of the tradition of the date rather than as something you should do daily as part of the normal growth-and-learning cycle of we hairless orangutans prancing about on this little blue green bouncy ball winging its way through space.

New Year Resolutions are perhaps like cards at Christmas: bought, filled with the rote script, placed on a mantle for a few weeks, then inevitably tossed in the bin with the other holiday trash.

It’s true, to a point. But, just the same: one year to the next, one date to another, is a mark in time. Artificial, but hey, all of human society is artificial and it’s no less significant for its invention by us. The year is a bone suddenly broken — snap. And in that sharp shock of transition, if what we get is an urge to change? So fucking be it. The ideal state would be that we change when we need to, not when the calendar suggests it, but let’s also remember that the holidays and the transition from one year to another are vital times to reflect. We build up to the orgiastic rush to Christmas, and then are left with a startling, almost shocking void — all that’s left is cleaning up the wrapping paper and throwing the Christmas Hobo on the bonfire. Ha ha ha, I didn’t say Christmas Hobo, you said Christmas Hobo. I said tree. Christmas tree.

So it is that we reach a time of the year that is indeed very good for reflection. In that reflection, it is reasonable to look back at the year behind us — littering the carpet like so much wrapping paper — and peer ahead to the year ahead. We mark time because it gives us perspective. And we make resolutions because sometimes that perspective yields the desire to be different.

Evolution does not always come on a schedule, but no reason we can’t give it a stun gun in the ass-cheek to get it moving. And so, here I am, once again considering for me — and, if you care to embrace and adopt it, for you — what changes, what evolution, what crystallization of This Thing That We Do, may come with the year 2015.

Writers and other creative folk:

This year, I want you to be big.

And, perhaps puzzlingly, I also want you to be small.

Wait, What The Fizzy Fuck Are You Talking About?

By big and small, I do not mean your physical girth or footprint — I’m not asking you to tromp about like an ogre, or fold yourself up into a paint can. What I mean is that I want you to embrace the curious polarities that often result in being a creative person. We are this very strange combination of preening Narcissist and trembling, knock-kneed fawn. Inflated senses of self, puffed up like a blimp and filled with a sucking void of lost self-esteem. I don’t want you to grab a hold of those parts, though — I don’t find much value in being a bellowing blowhard whose self-importance is so rock-hard (meaning: fragile like spun glass) that every negative review sends him into a paroxysm of pants-shitting rage. The goal here isn’t to become a monster, but rather, to find the power in those two warring aspects — to find function and truth and momentum in what it is to be both big and small.

Being Big

You have to want it, and you have to mean it.

Writing a book and putting it out in the world is an act of ego — not egomania, but the willingness and decision to create a story out of nothing and push it forward into the world is a bold, brash, unflinching act. You say: this story matters, and it matters that I wrote it. It is a demonstration of your belief in the story and the belief you possess in yourself as a writer, storyteller, and a creator. It takes a rather epic set of genitals to write something that’s 300 pages long and then say to someone: “You’re going to sit down and you’re going to read this and you are going to love it the way I love it. You are going to take hours, even days out of your life to read the little ants dancing across the page, ants that make words, words that make this one big story full of people I just — I mean, seriously, get this, I just fucking made them up. They’re not even real. None of this is real! Can you believe it? It’s phantasm and ectoplasm and fairy-spun pegasus shit. It’s all from my own weird-ass brain. I cracked this massive egg, and now I want you to eat what spilled out.”

It’s you as a wide-eyed housecat, shoving forward a half-eaten mouse carcass, its fur sticky with your spit and blood, and you say with intense stare and low mrowl: I MADE DIS. YOU HAVE IT.

How amazing! How presumptive! How… totally fucking psychotic!

That’s you being big.

You get even bigger by writing the stories you want to write. By defying convention and eschewing advice and putting to paper the tale you want to tell. Own it! We worry so much about writing original stories that we forget about the one ingredient that will make all our stories as unique as a snowflake melting into the grooves of a fingerprint: you. You, your voice, your ideas, your experiences: those are the reagents of rare and powerful alchemy — as extraordinary as phoenix feathers! powdered unicorn horn! lightsaber crystals! — that go into your writing.

Be big enough to accept that. Be big enough that your books are your own. Do not flinch. Tell fear to fuck off. Don’t run from your own voice. Be your books. Have ideas. Anybody who runs a blacklight over your books should be able to see the blood and spittle and mysterious fluid spatter you sprayed over the whole thing like a randy skunk.

Be big enough so that the books are yours. So that the books are you, in a way.

Being Small

But you must also be small.

You write this thing, this massive chunk of yourself, and then you offer it up on a silver plate — and here, you have a choice. You can say, this is my work, it is indefensible and perfect, and it is all that matters. Or you can acknowledge that you’re part of something greater. A square in a mighty quilt, a star in a celestial sky, a glint in the Christmas Hobo’s eye. (No, you said Christmas Hobo. I said… uh, something else. *smoke bomb*)

What I mean is:

Be gracious. Be humble.

This Thing That We Do is a right, in a way — but it’s also a privilege. A privilege to be a part of something greater. You’re not stepping on a new planet, here: other people have blazed the trail, tamped down the vegetation, hunted the monsters that would’ve disemboweled you in a heartbeat. Others have colonized your genre. They’re there on the shelves. You can be big enough to have your own voice and to write that voice while at the same time acknowledging that you are not alone: others have been here, are still here, and will keep on coming. Other writers who need your help. Other books that need your championing. Other voices not your own.

Be gracious to other writers. And editors, agents and other publishing professionals. Be appreciative of your readers. Be kind to booksellers and librarians and reviewers (both of whom will help you reach those readers that I just told you to appreciate). Yes, it’s a thing often said that all writers really need is an audience, and perhaps that’s true in the purest of sense — but that’s also incredibly short-sighted, like saying the only thing a Widget-Maker needs is someone to Buy The Widget. It forgets about the truck drivers, the shelf-stockers, the Widget-polishers — it neglects to remember the ecosystem. Writing and publishing is a powerful and weird ecosystem: full of wonderful people who honestly give a shit about books and stories. How amazing is that? They’re here because they love it. Because they accept the bigness of the act of tale-telling, because they respect the need for stories in their lives. Be good to them.

And be humble. You ripped a massive pound of flesh out of your own body with the certainty that it matters — but you can’t go around beating people about the head and neck with it. You’re not the only one doing this. You are indeed the special snowflake: one that forms a blizzard of so many other special snowflakes. The takeaway: you are not alone.

So don’t be alone.

Be small. Be the tiny, glittering, mad fractal snowflake.

Be beautiful on your own, but be part of the blizzard, too.

Eat Me, Drink Me

Be big enough to create a first draft, and small enough to tear that draft to pieces, to write a second draft, then a fourth, then an eleven-hundred-and-fifty-sixth if that’s what it jolly well takes.

(Translation: be big enough to be a writer, but small enough to be an editor. The writer and the first draft is the block of marble and the shape coming out of it. The editor and the resultant drafts are the chisel that chips it away. Big, to small.)

Be big enough to be proud of your work, but small enough to appreciate every reader who picks it up and every bookseller, librarian, blogger or anybody who shares your work with the world.

Be big and ask to be paid for your work, but be small and donate your time and energy and kindness to others — what we are paid, we can help pay back.

Accept that your words are important and that your story matters, but not to the extent that it drowns out the voices of others.

Acknowledge your successes while never letting them be the end-all, be-all.

Be small enough that you are willing and able to fail without letting failure destroy you.

Be big enough that that you stand tall for the things you believe in. But be small, too, so that you can be fast and flexible for when the time comes that you need to change.

Be the writer you want to be, full of power and might and confidence, but one who also is gracious and nice and part of something larger. Earlier I mentioned the stars in the sky, and perhaps there is no greater metaphor, here: each star is impossibly large, a massive shape of fire and gas and light. And yet, when seen at a distance: tiny lights across the night, like sequins cast on the floor, like holes pricked in a dark blanket with a prodding pin. Big stars, but small stars, too.

Be then like the star: both big and small at the same time.

Have a great 2015, folks.

P.S.: Art hard, motherfuckers.