It’s banned books week.

This is not about that, not exactly, not really much at all, but just the same, I wanted to ask two questions. Two questions about your taste in books and how they relate to the taste of others.

1.) What book do you love that other people seem to hate?

2.) What book do you hate that other people seem to love?

I don’t just want names and authors listed — I’d love to hear your reasons.

And this isn’t meant to start a war on taste or to suggest in any way that Your Opinions Are Wrong, but rather, quite the opposite — to see how one reader’s Holy Bible is another reader’s cup of Hot Barf. It’s meant to show how our tastes in books wildly deviate, how the norm is rarely the norm, how we all get to love and not love things and that has to be okay.

So. Two questions.

Let’s hear your answers.

Last week was the second part of the continuing story challenge — this week?

It’s time to bring it to a close.

Go. Find a story that already has two parts written.

Now, complete it with a final 500 words.

Choose a story you have not yet helped to write.

Post the first and second parts together with your concluding climax at your blog or other online space, and do so by next Friday, noon EST.

Have fun with it.

So endeth your mission!

Nineteenth century London is the center of a vast British Empire, a teeming metropolis where steam-power is king and airships ply the skies, and where Queen Victoria presides over three quarters of the known world—including the east coast of America, following the failed revolution of 1775.Young Gideon Smith has seen things that no green lad of Her Majesty’s dominion should ever experience. Through a series of incredible events Gideon has become the newest Hero of the Empire. But Gideon is a man with a mission, for the dreaded Texas pirate Louis Cockayne has stolen the mechanical clockwork girl Maria, along with a most fantastical weapon—a great brass dragon that was unearthed beneath ancient Egyptian soil. Maria is the only one who can pilot the beast, so Cockayne has taken girl and dragon off to points east.Gideon and his intrepid band take to the skies and travel to the American colonies hot on Cockayne’s trail. Not only does Gideon want the machine back, he has fallen in love with Maria. Their journey will take them to the wilds of the lawless lands south of the American colonies—to free Texas, where the mad King of Steamtown rules with an iron fist (literally), where life is cheap and honor even cheaper.Does Gideon have what it takes to not only save the day but win the girl?

IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE PISSING ON

This is true in all things, especially if you decide to relieve yourself after several pints of strong, Continental lager near a live railway line. But it’s especially true of history. Gideon Smith is billed as an alternate history series, which means I look at what happened in real life and then make loads of stuff up that didn’t happen, and which change the course of what did. The second book in the series, Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon, is set largely in America – in this timeline the American Revolution never happened, Britain still controls New York and Boston and some points south and west. There’s a breakaway Japanese faction on the West Coast, and what we know as Mexico is still New Spain. I made all this stuff up and my editor at Tor, Claire Eddy, wanted to know how it all worked. So I had to take a crash course in US history, ably assisted by Claire and a pal going back a way, Grant Balfour, who told me all the stuff that happened and let me know whether what I wanted to happen really could have. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert now, but I learned a lot of things I hadn’t known before. You’re quite interesting, you Yanks. Anyone ever told you that

SOME PEOPLE LOVE STEAMPUNK. SOME PEOPLE HATE IT. I MEAN REALLY, REALLY HATE IT.

Up there I described the Gideon Smith series as alternate history. It’s set in the 1890s. It has advanced (for the era) steam-powered technology. It has airships. It has a girl who’s largely clockwork powered. So, you might say, if it walks like a steampunk duck, it quacks like a steampunk duck, then it’s pretty much a steampunk duck, right? Well, if you like. The thing is, I meet a lot of people in the SF community who really, really hate steampunk. They think it’s some cretinous cousin of “proper” SF. I’m not a great one for labels on books – I tend to divide them into “good” and “not so great”. But I understand the need for marketing and sales types to pigeonhole a book. Thing is, I try to just write good stories. I think a lot of people who are into SF who say they hate steampunk are missing out on some good stories. Mine, specifically. An addendum: I went to steampunk festival last year. At last, I thought, people who are going to get the book. I’d say 80 per cent of those in goggles and top hats who walked past my books said something along the lines of: “Yeah, I love steampunk, me. Don’t really read books, though.” Go figure.

STRAIGHT WHITE BLOKES NEED TO WORK HARDER.

I am a white, straight male from a working class Northern English background now doing a job and living a lifestyle that is probably filed under “Middle Class”. My unconscious default position – and I hate this, I really do – is to make my characters straight, white males. That’s not always how they end up, but when I come up with a new character what flashes into my mind is a white man (unless, of course, they’re obviously not white, or a man). This is not acceptable, and I know that. So I have to work a little harder at thinking about who that character is and who they should be, and what they’re going to do. Looking back at the first book, Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl, I could probably have done better at this. I’m not saying diversity in SF should be a box-ticking exercise, but I do need to question my initial ideas about characters, which I try to force myself to do. Now it’s like a new-born character is a white, straight male golem made of mud when they first pop into my head, but what they become on the written page is hopefully a little more representative.

“MY NAME IS GIDEON SMITH. YOU MIGHT KNOW ME FROM SUCH ADVENTURES AS…”

This is my first attempt at writing a series. It was quite a steep learning curve in terms of making sure the second book is a standalone novel that, conceivably, anyone who hadn’t read the first one (I’m looking at you here. And you. And you.) could pick up and enjoy without needing to know what had gone before. It was quite interesting working out how to bring readers up to speed with the first story without getting in the way of what happens in the book they’re holding. It’s also been interesting to take the characters on to further development, while still leaving room for more in book three (yes! There is a book three!). I’ve written a couple of other novels before, but at the end of them I generally left my main characters dead or gibbering wrecks. So it’s nice to give characters space to grow and thinking about their future development.

 PEOPLE DON’T NEED TO KNOW HOW A STEAM-ENGINE WORKS TO ENJOY THE BOOKS.

I read widely, and I read plenty. I read books where people drive cars and take plane journeys. I don’t particularly know too much about the workings of the internal combustion engine or what lift is required to get a 747 off the ground, and I don’t really require that in the fiction I’m reading unless it’s absolutely pertinent to the plot. Thus, in Gideon’s Victorian world, there are airships and steam-omnibuses and a mechanical girl with a human brain. You don’t really need to know how this stuff works, do you? People there take it for granted. So should you. OK, so in the first book there’s quite a bit about just how a clockwork woman can have a human brain and be half-alive, but the book is called Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl, so hopefully it was quite useful information. But I still don’t really know how a steam engine works, and don’t plan on infodumping that on my readers anytime soon.

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David Barnett is an author and journalist based in the north of England. Tor Books in the US and Snowbooks in the UK have published the first two books of his Gideon Smith series – Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (September 2013) and Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon (September 2014). A third, Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, is out in September 2015. He is married to Claire and they have two children, Charlie and Alice. He’s represented by the agent John Jarrold.

David Barnett: Website | Twitter

Gideon Smith And The Brass Dragon: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powells

Hey! It’s Beth Cato! Beth Cato, one of the tacolytes at the Holy Taco Church! Beth Cato, the high priestess of churromancy who will give you a recipe for stuffed churro nuggets. (Confession: my nickname at pro wrestling camp was “Stuffed Churro Nuggets.”) Beth Cato, author of brand spanking new novel The Clockwork Dagger, which, oh yeah, just got profiled at Entertainment Weekly. Here she is, to talk about the long unicorn ride to publication.

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When you’re a writer, it’s all about trading up to a better set of problems. You start out just wanting the time and/or brain power to write. Then you want to be published–validated–in any kind of way. And published again. If you’re a novelist going the traditional route, acquiring an agent is the first big goal. And when you get that agent, it’s like you’ve been handed the reins to a sparkly unicorn who will take you to magical realms where chocolate has no calories and all your publication dreams will come true.

My own journey started at a timid crawl. I trunked several novels and then worked for years on an urban fantasy about a healer. I did several from-scratch rewrites. I LOVED that book. After all that labor, I had two agents offer me representation. I had a sparkling unicorn at last! I was off to the land of book contracts and purring fuzzy kittens.

No one talks about the ugly truth: that even with an agent, a lot of first novels don’t sell.

I’ve had my share of rejections on the small stuff. My skin is thicker these days, but nothing hurts like novel rejections. They were ACME anvils dropped on my hopes and dreams. I don’t have Wile E. Coyote’s resilience. I was squished flat.

I had another novel (#2) in revision with my critique group, and started on another project. I sent the polished book #2 along to my agent. She informed me that it was deeply flawed and would need to be completely reworked.

Ten ton anvil, right there. All the things she said that were wrong with the book… they all made sense. But I didn’t know how to fix it, and even more, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I didn’t love this book the way I’d loved my urban fantasy.

I still desperately wanted to sell a book, though. I considered self-publishing, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to see my book in major bookstores. I wanted to hold it. Cuddle. Take long walks on the beach together.

There was still my new project (#3). I’d finished the rough draft. Like my urban fantasy, it featured a healer as the heroine, but this book used an Edwardian steampunk backdrop. The title: THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER. It felt like a good book, but hey, who was I to judge?

After all, my urban fantasy didn’t sell. It wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. My book #2 sucked. This book-writing thing, maybe I should just stop.

Maybe getting an agent was a total fluke.

Maybe I should stick with short stories, where if I wrote something unsellable, I least I wasn’t wasting a year of my life.

Why even do short stories? I revived my dream of being a writer so I could write NOVELS. That was the goal since I was four-years-old, playing God over my Breyer horses. If I couldn’t succeed with a novel, what was the point?

If I didn’t write, what was I going to do?

In case you couldn’t tell, it’s very depressing to be squished flat by a ten-ton anvil.

Here’s something else that a lot of writers don’t talk about in the open: agents do a heck of a lot more than contracts and submissions. Some wield a wicked red pen. Some are experts at long distance slaps across a writer’s face while screaming, “Pull yourself together, man/woman!” Some are willing to take a client’s screwed up novel–one they really see promise in–and spend six months going back and forth on edits.

I stuck with it. I slogged through draft after draft, determined to give book #3 everything I had. When THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER went out on submission to editors, all those doubts and fears squished me flat again.

If it didn’t sell, then what?

After a few weeks of dread and despair, I pulled out a trusty psychological coping mechanism. No, not alcohol (this time). DENIAL. For months I pretended my book was not on submission, effectively plugging my ears and going, ‘La la la’ as I wrote stories and distracted myself from the oncoming confirmation of my failure.

Then something really weird happened.

A publisher offered on my book.

Then another one.

And another.

The book that was my litmus test for whether I was worthy of this whole novel-writing jig is out as of September 16th. The publisher is Harper Voyager. My cover is pretty and shiny and awesome. It has my name in massive letters across the front. Sometimes I carry it around and pet it, because I can. Because it’s real. I have a two-book deal, so the next novel in the duology will be real, too.

Here’s the thing. I still have my sparkly unicorn, but I don’t get to camp in the happy land of publishing. I continue to trade up to different problems. Every book I write has the potential to suck in extraordinary new ways. I’ll need to go through the agony of the submissions process all over again for a new series. I’m painting that red bulls-eye on my head. If I look up, I’ll probably see anvils suspended from large cranes.

But you know what? If I’m squished flat, you’ll find me there with THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER clutched in my steely fist. No matter what happens from here on out, I stuck with it and published a book. I have proof.

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Beth Cato is the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER, a steampunk fantasy novel from Harper Voyager. Her short fiction is in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Daily Science Fiction. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cat.

Beth Cato: Website | Twitter

The Clockwork Dagger: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

I’m running a contest.

I want you to take an author photo of yourself. You know — an author photo, the photo that is meant to go in the back of the book? Or the one that exists on the author’s website, Twitter, and other marketing materials?

Author photos can be classy, great, compelling, curious, funny.

But some of them can be a little bit awkward.

(The hand under the chin, for instance: a classic awkward author look.)

So! I thought, HA HA HA let’s do that.

I’ll run a contest whereupon you take a truly awkward author photo, and then we all applaud and have a good time and further, I give out some prizes. Because, mmmm, sweet sweet prizes.

The best, most awkward(ly hilarious) photo, will be decided by all of you with a vote.

And the winner there will get:

One terribleminds t-shirt (either Certified Penmonkey or Art Harder).

And one terribleminds mug (either Certified Penmonkey or Art Harder).

(Merch visible here.)

Then, I’ll pick two other random winners to get a brand new set of terribleminds Post-It notes, which at the top say: #amwritingmotherfuckers (no image yet — still tinkering with the font and design — but I’m sure it’ll be cool and even if it’s not WHATEVER IT’S FREE).

Send your awkward author photos to me at: terribleminds at gmail dot com.

Make sure the subject says: [Awkward Author Photo Submission]

You have one week for the contest — due Wednesday, September 24th, noon EST. You can take them with whatever camera you so choose — and the photos can be awkward, weird, horrible, twisted. (Please don’t send me anything super-gross.) You can’t use someone else’s photo; gotta be your own. Have fun with it.

All your shots will go into one Flickr album and I’ll link to it here next week.

I will open this to international folks, but: international winners pay their own shipping.

One entry per person. Multiple entries disqualifies you.

Snap your shots.

Send ’em in.

Any questions? Shoot ’em in the comments.

“You Know, I Wanna Write A Book Someday.”

They say this to you with this wistful gleam in their eye, as if writing is just a hobby, like it’s just some distant silliness that they’ll get to when they manage to win the lottery. A worse (the worst, even) version of this is: I have a book in me.

Your response: “I don’t come down to your job and tell you, ‘I wanna be a janitor someday.’ You have a book in you? Well, you better do what I did, which is take a long hard squat in front of a computer or a notebook and force that story out, because that’s the only way this thing gets written. I don’t just have one book in me. I have hundreds. I have thousands. I am large, I contain multitudes. Whole libraries where every book has my name on its spine, motherfucker. Don’t write a book someday, write a book today. That’s what I did.”

Then, drop the mic. Right on their foot.

“Gosh, I Wish I Had Time To Write.”

Here, the person offers a little elbow-elbow poke-poke-poke suggestion that writing is this little side table, this luxury of the wealthy or perennially lazy. The translation is: “Oh, sorry, I have a lot more important things to do, but when I get some free time, I’m sure I’ll write a book or maybe take up decoupage. Could be I can catch up on some of my favorite shows, too, while I’m doing nothing else at all in any way important.”

Your response: “You do have the time to write. You have 24 hours in your day and I have 24 hours in my day. Oh, what’s that? You have a job and kids and important things to do? Yeah, because nobody else has those — that’s just you, holding up the American economy and the nuclear family single-handedly. Hey! Guess what? Everybody has shit to do. Kids, dogs, jobs, second jobs, flower beds to weed, checks to write, groceries, Facebook, porn, cooking, cleaning, sleeping, fucking. We’re all living life one minute at a time. It’s not that you don’t have time to write. It’s that you do not consider it important enough to give it time. But I do. I carve little bits of meat and skin off the day’s flesh and I use every part of the animal. I use the time I take to write. Fifteen minutes here. A half-hour there. A lunch break. That’s how shit gets written.”

Then, whack ’em in the forehead with a calculator watch. Bop.

“Hey! You Can Write My Idea.”

Because your ideas are dumb and this person’s ideas are great! They’re the architect. You’re the builder. You can be the diligent wordmonkey, and they can be the idea factory — and together, you can form a New York Times bestselling super-team!

Your response: “Hey, can I also chew your food for you? Maybe you’ll let me defecate your poop, too. I love to work other people’s jobs. You’re the boss. I’m basically just a transcriptionist — a stenographer for your brilliance. Or, or, maybe I have a whole head full of my own ideas, and if you want someone to write yours, then here’s a weird fucker of an idea: move those wriggling little sausage links you call ‘fingers’ and put your unmitigated genius on paper your-own-damn-self.”

Then, press a pen into their hand and trap said pen into said hand with an entire roll of duct tape.

“You Should Write My Life Story.”

Sometimes this comes from a noble place, sometimes it comes from a gravely Narcissistic one. But the point is, these people feel they have lived a life not just worth living, but worth everybody else reading about. Of course, it’s almost never true. It’s never, “I shot Hitler on the deck of the sinking Titanic.” It’s not, “Here’s how I saved an orphanage from a pack of sentient cyborg dingos during a four-week trip across the Australian Outback.” Sometimes it’s “I worked hard and accomplished things and raised a family on minimum wage.” And trust me — that’s great. Amazing, and you should be proud and everyone should be proud of you. But unless you also saved your family from a Terminator, it’s probably not the stuff of a stellar biography. Worse is when it’s just some upper-middle-class shit who thinks they have something vital to share regarding shopping habits or diversified investments or Beverly Hills real estate.

Your response: “Oooh, bad news. I would. I would! But the Authorial Council won’t let me write your life story until your life has effectively ended. For your story to live, you must die.”

Then, kill them. As they gurgle their last breath, whisper at them, “I don’t make the rules.”

“I Don’t Read.”

Never, ever, ever tell a writer this. Just don’t do it. Don’t tell an architect you don’t enter buildings. Don’t tell an arborist, “I totally hate trees. And nature in general. When I see trees, I cut them down just so I don’t have to look at their dumb tree faces and their stupid asshole branches anymore.” I mean, really, you don’t read? It’s just — whhh — what is wrong with you?

Your response: “You should start, because reading is fucking fundamental.”

Then, hand them your favorite book. Taser them until they read it all the way through.

“You Must Be Rich.”

Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Hahaha. … aaaahh hahaha.

Your response: *laugh so hard you barf*

Alternate response: “Yes, I am wealthy as fuck. Which is why I look like a feral hobo that just wandered in from the woods. It takes a lot of money to look this bewildered and disheveled. I don’t wear pants because pants cost too little. No pants are worthy enough when it comes to containing the valuable gemstones that I have pube-dazzled into and onto my genital region. Seriously, do you want to see my crotch emeralds? You heard me. Author money is awesome.”

Then, steal their wallet.

“Has Your Book Been Made Into A Movie Yet?”

For some reason, some portion of the population will always associate creative legitimacy with CAN I WATCH THIS ON MY TELEVISION AT SOME POINT? If it’s not on a screen with Tom Cruise acting in it, it basically doesn’t ping their radar. The suggestion here being that books are basically just food pellets that go into the giant trundling hamster that controls all of Hollywood. “FEED TEDDY HOLLYWOOD MORE BOOKS. THE BEAST HAS REJECTED THIS TOME AND THUS IT IS NOT WORTHY. THRUST IT INTO THE SEPTIC TANK WHERE IT BELONGS FOR IT CONTAINS NO ENTERTAINMENT TO NOURISH AMERICAN MINDS.”

Your response: “Yes, it has. Have you heard of a little movie called: The Avengers?”

Then, hit them in the crotchbasket with Thor’s Mjolnir. Film it on your iPhone.

“Will You Read My Novel?”

This is an honest outreach by an author who desperately needs someone to read his novel. It’s not meant to be malicious. Writers are addle-headed, desperate creatures and we want to find community and understanding and acceptance and some sense of if this thing we spent a lot of time writing is worth the ink cartridge we used to print it. (Hint: probably not. Ink cartridges cost more than most novel advances, I think.) Just the same: yeah, no, sorry, not today.

Your response: “I apologize, I do, but no, I will not read your fucking novel. I understand why you want me to, and I appreciate you coming to me with it. But reading your novel also means critiquing your novel and that would take time away from my own work. I’m a writer, not an editor, and specifically not your editor and frankly, who’s to say that anything I’d offer you would be worth a good goddamn anyway? Plus there are legal issues if I read your novel and it ends up being somehow close to something I wrote or want to write in the future and — it’s just a Bitey Ewok of a situation. But you should be really proud of yourself for writing a novel, and you should definitely go hire an editor or join a smart and compassionate critique group or find an online beta reader. I, sadly, am not your huckleberry.”

Then, shake their hand. Give ’em a hug if they’re willing. Because writing a novel — more to the point, finishing a novel — is hard business and they fought the Word War and deserve big-ups.

“Do You Know Stephen King?”

*sigh*

Your response: “Yep! We’re in a couple cooking classes together. Man, that guy makes one helluva goulash. Or should I say, ghoulash, ha ha ha, like, ghoul? G-H-O-U-L? Because he’s a horror writer, get it? Aaaaaanyway. Actually, we do this thing monthly called Orgy Thursdays, where every third Thursday it’s me, Kingy, Gaiman, Danielle Steele, the ghosts of Virginia Woolf and Harold Pinter, and we get together and — you know, it’s not always like, an actual orgy or whatever, sometimes we just go out and hunt humans for sport? But sometimes it’s an orgy. It’s cool. We all know each other. And we can communicate telepathically because we’ve all consumed one another’s blood. Chancellor Atwood of the Authorial Council decrees it must be so.”

Then, bludgeon them with a copy of King’s Insomnia.

“We’re Out Of Coffee.”

Coffee. Or booze. Or tea. Or whatever your writerly drink of choice is. 

Your response: *gnash teeth, wail, begin setting small fires, birth a clot of live screaming squirrels, fire lasers from eyes, hover above the city until you release a telekinetic wave of destruction the likes of which no one has never ever seen before*

Then, kneel down in the wreckage and open your mouth until someone pours coffee into it.

Bonus: “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

That tired old question. I get it, because people look at you and think it’s impossible for one brain to contain such weird ideas — ideas interesting and strange enough to commit to paper. Still — understand if you’re gonna ask this that we’ve been asked it approximately 457 times before.

Your response: “The question isn’t, where do you get your ideas.” Then, grab them by the collar, get real close until they can smell your old coffee breath and hiss at them: “The real question is, how do we make them stop?”

Then, punch yourself in the face screaming, “MAKE THEM STOP OH GOD THESE IDEAS WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE I AM JUST AN ANTENNA FOR THE MUSE’S GROTESQUE FREQUENCY.”

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The Gonzo Writing E-Book Bundle:

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