Last week: horror as spam.

This week:

The country’s in EBOLA PANIC, going so far as to elect an Ebola Czar. (Did you know that vending machines kill 13 people a year? I look forward to our new Vending Machine Czar to address this grave concern.) Disease of course freaks people out. And next Friday? Halloween. The time of horror!

Which means it’s time for you to freak people out with disease.

Write 1000 words of flash fiction.

It should be horror.

It should feature disease as an axis of that horror.

That’s it. That’s the mission.

Write it at your blog or online space.

Link back here.

Due by Halloween, noon, EST.

Updates will be a little thin on the ground here until next week or so — because I’m leaving on a jetplane to go to the OTHER end of Canada (I was in Toronto around May). I’ll be in Vancouver for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, with the likes of Mary Robinette Kowal, Diana Gabaldon, Pam van Hylckama, Sarah Wendell, Donald Maass, and Cory Doctorow.

I’ll be giving a keynote, and also giving workshops on THEME and CHARACTER.

Because theme and character are awesome, that’s why.

Oh, and a panel on THE SOCIAL MEDIAS. In which I will refuse to acknowledge that any social media exists that is not Ello. I will also fire Ello Invites from a cannon.

If you’re attending, say hi! I may have stickers. STICKERS, I TELL YOU.

Because what 12-year-old doesn’t love stickers. (And, at heart, I’m basically 12.)

If you’re in the area but not attending, do note that there is a “free to the public!” author signing on Saturday night, which I will be attending.

*waves*

*takes off in ornithopter*

*wait I said jetplane*

*lands ornithopter on top of jetplane*

*gets arrested for ornithopter terrorism*

nooooo

Tai was our little taco terrier.

A taco terrier is — well, yes, a terrier that will eat tacos, but also a dog that is part chihuahua and part terrier. In this case, part toy fox terrier, or so we were told. (Sometimes they’re called chitoxies, but as that does not contain the word “taco,” it is plainly inferior.)

My wife and I bought Tai when she was a pot-bellied little pup. We bought her from a pet store at a time we were naive enough to think that most pet stores didn’t source their animals from puppy farms. We bought her from a time when my wife wasn’t even my wife — when in fact we did not even live with one another and shared her briefly between houses.

We were young and dumb. Puppies ourselves. Everybody told us not to buy her. Why would we? My wife and I hadn’t been together all that long but we knew this dog was our dog from the moment we picked her up and she climbed all over us, not demanding pink belly rubs so much as forcibly rubbing her belly wherever she could. Snortling and snorfling. So we took her home and hurried out and bought all the canine accoutrements and everyone rolled their eyes at us wondering how long any of it would last. But our doggy did last, and I eventually married my wife, and our taco terrier was a part of our family from the moment we laid eyes on her.

Tai was pugnacious, but sweet.

She owned any big dog she came in contact with. She would bite them on the lip. And this small but powerful action would allow her to rule even the largest dogs.

(She did not trust little dogs.)

She was reluctant best buddies with our last dog, Yaga. They were like a mismatched cop team. He was blissfully ignorant as she groused at him. But her disdain of the big lunkhead was a lie — they ate together and she waited for him outside so they could pee together and they were pals.

When he died, I think she was a little bit heartbroken. This, the chihuahua curse, and a part of her that overruled her terrier components: a chihuahua often only bonds with a few others. A couple-few humans, maybe one other dog, and that was it. Yaga died and Tai never seemed quite right after. She lost a step. Our son being born and our new dog, Loa, failed to lend her any energy — and while she tolerated Loa and accepted petting and cuddling from our boy, she never really connected with either of them.

Still, she was curious and funny and weird.

She snored so loud that if you were upstairs, you could feel it in the floorboards coming from downstairs. Like a dragon sleeping on its hoard of gold.

She barked in her sleep. Little yips.

(Plus, she could basically sleep anywhere.)

She liked to lay with her back against you and her belly out toward the world.

For rubbings, of course. The sweet canine currency of belly rubbings.

She was stubborn as anything. Nearly impossible to move. For a small dog, she was basically a mountain attached to a leash — you went where she went, and not the reverse.

She was totally nosy. A major busy-body, this one. Give her a window and a perch and she will watch every neighborhood argument, every cat, every squirrel, every crankhead and mailman.

For such a small dog — and for such a stumpy loaf of bread — she loved the snow and navigated it like a dolphin. A furry, bitey dolphin.

(Though sometimes she looked more like a baby seal than a dolphin, truth be told.)

At our new house, she liked to climb up on the mound in our backyard and bark at distant, unseen neighbors. Or chime in at the goings-on of rustling deer. (Nosy even with woodland creatures.)

She was a diligent explorer.

She could make tons of funny faces.

I like to think she was a happy dog, cantankerous and cranky as she could be.

Thing is, she was also sick a lot of her life. Not dramatically so, but she was prone to allergies — early on she was basically tearing herself apart, stripping off her fur and biting herself raw, and when the vet called after many tests to read us the list of allergens, it was a five minute voicemail. I didn’t know that many kinds of grasses even existed. So, we put her on a wonder drug called Atopica, but the not-so-wonderous part of that drug was that it reduced her immune response which left her prone to opportunistic infections (usually in her ears).

Still, it allowed us to sometimes dress her in a hilarious clown collar:

Recently, though, she’d begun to suffer the effects of what seemed to be IBD/Colitis — a severe thickening of the small intestine made it very hard for her to absorb food or even get hydrated, and so she started drinking a lot and having accidents. The vet confirmed the diagnosis but suggested there could be more at play — there, that specter of cancer (and speak the refrain with me: fuck cancer) and all the while, she was wasting away and we were losing control of the situation. We tried everything. Our house became a pet biocontainment unit. We tried food, meds, ran tests, spent lots of money (her health problems throughout her life probably caused us to spend the rough equivalent of a cheaper new car — worth it, which is why we spent it).

We were at our wit’s end.

It was only recently that I’d found folks online that had luck with Atopica controlling their pets’ IBD, and so I dug out our old meds (thankfully not expired) and tried those.

We had her scheduled to be put down last week.

But literally at the last minute, she finally started to show improvement.

And we had about four or five days of steady, meaningful improvement.

The last couple days, though, she started to go back downhill again. Her face began to twitch — we suspected a calcium deficiency but the vet said it was suggestive of seizures that themselves suggested brain involvement of what may be cancer. (IBD can be caused by cancer or can be the cause of it.) The Atopica had worked, but only temporarily, it seemed. We were losing her.

We didn’t know why.

But there comes a point when it seems cruel to let them continue. A mercy humans aren’t really allowed, but one that we can reserve for our beloved animals — the ability to take them away from the pain before it overwhelms them. It’s hard to know when to do this, and even now I’m bawling my eyes out thinking, but we could’ve tried one more thing. But so it goes. She was reduced in body. She didn’t enjoy the things she once enjoyed. She didn’t eat much food. She drank so much water you’d think she was addicted to it (and yet, paradoxically, was so dehydrated we had to give her fluids through a bag-and-needle). Couldn’t get up the steps easily, as her muscle tone was wasting away. It’s true that we still saw the spark of the old dog in there a few times a day — the way her ears perked up, the way she went sniffing for food while I was cooking, the faint crankypants growl in the back of her throat at invaders real or imagined.

I’m thankful for the days of improvement we did get. She showed more of that spark. She got to play with my sister’s dog a little. Got to eat more food. Get more love. I’m glad we had her around for a few more days. A few more genuinely good days.

Still.

Those days are gone. As they are for all of us, eventually. (And here, not an urging toward the edge of the pit of grief but rather toward the realization that we all head toward the doggy dirtnap one day, and so we should make the best of the time we — and our loved ones — are given.)

Tai, I think, was letting us know.

It was time.

So, we had a new appointment.

The vet came today.

And we had to say goodbye to our little taco terrier here at home.

(Our son said goodbye to our dog, and then went off to stay with his Mom-Mom while the vet came. It was very hard to explain to a three-year-old what was happening, and for a half-hour he was basically shutting down, not acknowledging that she wasn’t going to be here anymore, and was not acting as nice as we’d like — though at that point I found it really important to realize that as much as we dream of his perfect reaction to this whole thing, I’M barely keeping shit together so it’s not very princely of me to expect the toddler to be strong and compassionate.

But just before he left, we told him outright what was happening — no mincing words. I said, “Do you know how my Daddy is dead?” and he said he did. And I said that’s what’s happening to Tai. And then he asked us to turn around so he could say goodbye to her, and he told her he loved her. Honesty, at least with our kid, seems best — even when it’s hard to hear.)

We took her outside to the front lawn. On her bed. The day was bright. The air was warm. The sun poked through the clouds and the sky was blue. Leaves of many colors fell around us. Tai stretched out and relaxed in a way we hadn’t seen her relax in a very long time. We petted her and talked to her. Told her we loved her. She went to sleep. And then she went beyond it.

Goodbye to our little Tai.

I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you.

We miss you.

1. Do Nothing

Bad reviews happen.

They happen the way snow and rain happens. The way high tide rolls in, or the way mosquitos and herpes and gout and a thousand NCIS iterations exist (my favorite is NCIS: Schenectady, starring Alan Thicke and Johnny-Five from Short Circuit.) That’s not to say a bad review is equivalent in its moral and creative compass as a venereal disease — but that’s not your call to make. For your mileage, bad reviews are a fact of life, and not one that should crawl up under your skin like a botfly worm. (If you don’t know what that is, oh, shit, do not Google it.)

Listen, your favorite author? Your favorite book?

Go look.

That book, that author, will have bad reviews.

At least one of them will look like it was written by a Neanderthal with a head injury.

Did Stephen King slap on astronaut diapers and hunt down his cultural critics? No. Well, I mean, I don’t think so? If he did, he did it quietly, I guess.

So: just relax.

One bad review is them, not you.

(Admittedly, a ton of bad reviews is probably you, not them, but that’s a different conversation.)

Do nothing! Relax. Go write. Write better today than you did yesterday, and write better tomorrow than you did today. Spite them by forever upping your game.

See? So easy.

Are we done?

2. Hey, No, Seriously, Do Nothing

Wait, why are we still here?

What the hell did I just say?

Do. Nothing.

Put down the pen. Why do you have a pen? Were you going to begin an angry letter-writing campaign? A letter of great venom and wit? Who are you, Oscar Wilde?

Okay, I get it, some reviewers — they write reviews that get all up in your marrow. Some blogger slagged your work and it sounds like — okay, it sounds to you like they didn’t “get it.” Or they’re making accusations that you feel are specious at best. They’re getting details wrong. Maybe they’ve suggested that you or your work is racist or sexist or some other kind of -ist. They’re turning people off of your work, you scream and froth and flail about.

That’s their right.

And yes, of course, it’s your right to respond.

But, let’s play this out a little bit.

What exactly do you think is going to happen when you respond? Hm? Do you think they’re going to be enlightened to your ‘corrections?’ That you’re going to engage in a dialogue so productive that not only will the two of you be best friends, but said reviewer will recant his wretched review and apologize publicly and next thing you know: BOOM INSTANT BESTSELLER?

Sure, that might happen.

I also might develop a rare medical condition where I shit buckets of gold Krugerrands.

Here’s what’s probably going to happen.

a) You’re going to draw attention to a review you already don’t want people to see.

b) You’re going to piss off the reviewer, who wrote the review fair and square, and where before they might’ve been willing to chalk up your one book as a single instance, now they’re left to wonder if this is part of a pattern with you, you intrusive jerk.

c) If the reviewer isn’t really fair and square and is instead someone who has the scent of the troll about him, well, you just shoveled food into that troll’s mouth. You fed the beast and now the beast wants more. You probably just became a target.

d) The reviewer’s audience, if one exists, is now like: THAT AUTHOR IS TOTAL JERKPANTS.

You gotta understand: that reviewer is allowed to hold whatever opinion that reviewer wants. It doesn’t make her right. It doesn’t make her wrong. It doesn’t give her authority, and it also doesn’t rob her of it. And here you’re saying, buh-buh-but if she has the right to slag my book then I have the right to slag her slagging of my book.

And yes, yes you jolly well fucking do have that right.

And yet, it would not be wise to execute that right. Can and should are not equal.

There exists a vital cultural exchange between creator and critic. The critic’s job is to exist outside the material — it is the critic’s job to break the work apart and see what the pieces say. It is a kind of divination: guts out of pigeons. It is a kind of anti-repair: breaking a machine apart to see how it works. It is not the creator’s job to be part of that exchange. This exchange radiates outward, one way, from creator to critic and to the audience beyond. Sometimes the audience cares little for the critical response. Sometimes it does. But the radar ping does not sweep back the other way.

Criticism is a conversation.

It’s just not one between the critic and the author.

It is a conversation between the critic and the author’s work.

Your work remains silent. It’s on trial, for better or for worse.

Nobody said the judge or jury has to be fair or right.

Just as nobody said your work has to actually be good.

(This is one of the things that GamerGate gets so woefully wrong: trying to rob reviewers of their ability to be subjective, political, and social is trying to rob the critical conversation of its teeth. Criticism needs its teeth — not to be cruel, not to be mean, but sometimes just to bite deeper into the work than the average audience member would.)

Are there bully reviewers? Troll-types who get off on puncturing your work and popping that balloon? Sure, yes, absolutely. And if it ever becomes harassment, it’s a good idea to address it with the social media administrators or — if it gets that bad — with the authorities. But for the most part, you can smother that fire with a lack of attention. Flames need oxygen to grow, so give them none of yours lest you want to burn up in the bonfire of your own ill-advised response.

3. Goddamnit, I Just Told You — Hey, Where Are You Going?

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Where are you going?

What are you planning on doing?

Slagging right back? Writing a response blog? Or visiting the comments section of the reviewer to be like BUT WAIT A MINUTE I HAVE AN OPINION ON MY OWN WORK TOO because of course every author has such a crucial opinion of his own work — and here hopefully my eyeroll is so tectonic you can feel the ground tremble beneath your feet. Or maybe you were planning on retweeting a bad review and letting your audience sharpen their knives on the reviewer? You’re not gonna pull a Kathleen Hale and go stalk your critic, are you?

Don’t do any of those things! Reviewers have a voice. They deserve the voice in the same way you deserve to have yours in writing your book, or tweeting about it, or blogging things and stuff and other snidbits. No, not every reviewer will use that voice responsibly — just as not every author uses her voice responsibly, just like not every Facebook update is the shining bastion of cultural significance the updater maybe hoped it was, just as every word out of every mouth is not utter perfection. You can’t police this stuff. I’m sorry if you’re in the crossfire.

Best case scenario: read it, consider it, learn from it. Even if what you learned was, “I don’t agree and here’s why,” that’s okay. Worse case scenario: ignore the unholy fuck out of it. If you know that you can’t stomach bad reviews? Turn away. Don’t go into the light, Carol-Anne.

(Super-important to realize that you as the author have power. Responding negatively to criticism is an act of punching down. You have a big voice and you’re using it to shout someone into silence. This is doubly more concerning when you are a male author with a large audience responding to a female reviewer. You may not see the act as misogynistic, but it can create that effect right quick. Your audience is not weaponized — do not point them like a gun at those who don’t like your work. Okay, you can probably weaponize them against like, airlines, because airlines are crappy. If you wanna release the hounds on like, U.S. Airways, more power to you.)

4. Fine, Slake Your Rage In Proper Rage-Slaking Ways

This review is like a seed stuck in your teeth, isn’t it?

Fine. Fine.

Invoke your rage.

Quietly.

Properly.

Go punch a punching bag. Write in your bedside Twilight Sparkle diary. Go fire off an email to an author or artist friend and be all like AHHH DID YOU SEE THIS REVIEW (and if that author is truly a friend that author will say, yeah, yeah, that sucks, the reviewer sucks, but hey don’t get cuckoo bananapants, maybe go have a drink, go for a run, eat a cupcake, something, anything, calm thyself because this shit happens all the time).

Totally okay to feel pissed. Totally okay to feel like, grr, they don’t understand me!

And that’s where it ends, okay?

And maybe, just maybe, you need to ask:

Why didn’t they understand?

Maybe it’s something they’re bringing to the table. Critics have baggage.

Maybe it’s something you brought to the table. Authors have baggage, too.

Or maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s random.

Maybe it’s Mercury in Retrograde, whatever the fuck that means.

Ease off the stick, hoss. Take the saddle off the horse.

Go have a cookie and a nap.

5. Oh, For The Sake Of Sweet Saint Fuck, You’re Gonna Respond, Aren’t You?

No no no no noooooo —

You’re doing it anyway, aren’t you?

You’re going to respond.

*deep breath*

Okay. Fine. Let me talk you through this.

You can respond to a negative review.

You can! I’ve done it. I’ve seen others do it.

It’s dumb! It’s dumb. It’s dopey-dingbat-dipshit bad.

This is ‘camel through the eye of a needle,’ but you’re going to do it anyway, so here’s how:

First, you’re going to remember that they have the right to this opinion and that if anything you say contains even a fucking whisper of trying to rob them of that, then you already fucked up.

Second, you’re going to be super-polite. You’re going to be the best version of yourself where the goal is for this exchange to end with: “Maybe we don’t agree, but we had a good discussion.” Because sometimes, sometimes good discussions can be had — particularly if it involves you giving up some of your egotistical territory to listen and engage.

Third, listening and engaging does not mean some kind of… podium-thumping author-splaining. “LISTEN HERE, LITTLE REVIEWER,” and then a bunch of shitty bluster comes windily from forth your ass. No! No. No. If you’ve stepped into this conversation viewing it as some kind of correction, you’ve just blown off your own foot before you took your second step.

Fourth, understand that if you’re responding to the review directly, it might be seen as you entering the personal airspace of that reviewer. Like I said, the critical conversation doesn’t explicitly contain you, and an author entering that space changes the dynamic. It modifies the conversation. And not frequently in a good way. Understand that you’re not necessarily welcome. Maybe you are! Some bloggers are different. Some reviewers want that exchange. But others don’t. Be cautious. Be respectful.

Fifth, be willing to back away slowly and politely disengage.

Meaning, be willing to see that engaging at all was probably a mistake.

Bad reviews happen.

One-stars? We all get ’em.

Once in a while I think an author can call those out to his audience. I certainly do, in part because sometimes a negative review helps sell the book to the right audience while helping divert it from the wrong one. (Negative reviews are not universally bad, you see.) But always be cautious that folks shouldn’t respond, shouldn’t mob, shouldn’t bully. Always be respectful of the cultural conversation and the role of the critic. When in doubt? Shut your trap and go have wine. Because wine is awesome, and responding to negative reviews isn’t awesome, so which would you rather do? Have wine and be awesome? Or get caught up in some online fracas and not be awesome?

*uncorks a bottle*

Let’s drink to all our bad reviews

*clink*

* * *

The Gonzo Writing E-Book Bundle:

Seven books. Twenty bucks.

Last week I asked you about the scariest books you’ve ever read.

This week? It’s time to talk about movies.

So, hit the comments, and let us all know: what are the scariest movies you’ve ever seen? (They don’t have to be horror, explicitly — though certainly we want some of those in there.) Why did it freak you out? Was it just one scene? The whole film? Something deeper and darker?

A film that scared me early on was The Shining, less because of it’s overt fright factor. More because of it’s slow, freaky creep. I had never seen a film like it. And even now, not many horror films are willing to just be slow and strange for their (long) duration. (If I watch it now, I sometimes think it’s a bit funny — “Oh, ha ha, look at that hilarious Blowjob Koala Man! Look, Shelley Duvall runs like an embarrassed sandpiper. Oh, Jack Nicholson, you murderous ghost-talking scamp.) If you want a film that disturbs me these days — look no further than Requiem for a Dream, whose final act is so harrowing even thinking about it gives me the shivering shits.

Let’s hear it from you.

Scary, freaky, disturbing movies.

GO.

I’ll just let Publisher’s Weekly tell the tale:

For Simon & Schuster’s new SF imprint, Saga Press, Joe Monti took world English rights, in a six-book deal, to Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series. The books follow the titular heroine, who is cursed with the ability to see the death of every person she touches. Through the deal, Saga will release the three backlist titles in the series—Blackbirds, Mockingbird, and The Cormorant (all originally released by Angry Robot)—first as e-books, then as trade paperbacks. The deal also covers three new titles. The books are currently in development as a TV series with the cable channel Starz. Wendig was represented by Stacia Decker at the Donald Maass agency.

So, yeah, holy crap.

Miriam Black is back.

The first three books, re-released.

And three new books, too.

*flails rapturously*

Needless to say, I’m fucking geeked. Miriam Black is my jam. I adore writing her and while I always intended to continue her story (I know how it ends, after all), I did not know precisely how, when, or where. And now that path is clear.

Angry Robot has been a great publisher for this series and this character but recent situations have left them with an inability to reprint books, and further, they weren’t able to continue the series — so, thankfully we found an eager friend and capable partner in Joe Monti and S&S’s SAGA Press (which, if you missed the news, will be DRM-free).

Watch this space for dates when the backlist re-releases as e-book and then trade paper (I believe it’ll be Q1 2015 or so — I just saw mockups of the early covers and am pretty geeked about ’em, though the Joey Hi-Fi covers will forever live in the dead cankerous grotto I call a ‘heart’). Watch this space too for details on when the next in the series — Thunderbird — will reach shelves and devices. Thanks to Stacia, Joe, and all of you cuckoo kittens for being readers and fans.