Listen, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, because our toddler was awake until approximately blarp o’clock last night and I can barely see through the sleep still desperately clinging to my eyeballs, but I’m pretty sure — though it may be a hallucination! — that last night Amazon wrote me, a KDP author-publisher, to get me to… I think ding-dong-ditch Hachette? Maybe prank phone call them? Pull down Hachette authors’ pants? Give them a swirly?

They have posted this at readersunited.com.

We’re at a point in this struggle where things just got really goofy.

Okay, more seriously, what Amazon is basically saying is, “We think e-book prices are crummy at $14.99 and make money at $9.99, and we’re probably not going to show you all our data like how well books sell at $10.39 or $11.99 or $12.49 or any of that, and big publishers are enemies of e-books and hey! You’re a self-published author, so you have e-books for sale, so this concerns you, so we’re gonna ask you to email the Hachette CEO and oh, also copy us on the email. P.S. Something-something WWII and out-of-context George Orwell.”

Then they set up that Readers United page.

I continue to want to believe this is a joke.

Like maybe they got hacked?

Because this feels particularly cuckoo bananapants.

No. You know what? I’m gonna upgrade this to ludicrous coyote-pants.

That’s how bewildered I am by this mail.

Okay, so.

First and most importantly, is anybody else tired of this? The Amazon-Hachette shit-show? It’s like watching two trucks crash into each other from in the middle of the collision. It’s like a game of chicken where nobody wins. (If anybody thinks I don’t have enough ‘balance’ here, I also think the NYT “900 Authors Are Standing Sadly By Their Sad Shacks Because Amazon Keeps Stealing Their Juice Boxes” article is half-a-bag-of-nonsense, too. It reads like an advertisement written for or at least paid for by Authors United, which is a group that I’m pretty sure hasn’t united for most authors and hasn’t yet fought for anything — far as I can tell — that affects me, an author. Amazon has every right to not sell their books, just as bookstores have every right to not sell my Amazon imprint books. It’s unfortunate, and I hate that authors are ever used as leverage, but it’s not a boycott, not illegal, not bullying. It’s a giant company being a giant company. And taking out big giant anti-Amazon ads? GOD PLEASE STOP. End of rant.)

The bigger issue here is, for Amazon, this looks embarrassing. It’s a cheapy tactic meant to drum up support from a group of people who don’t really have a huge dog in this fight — this is a fight with traditional publishing about traditional publishing. The only thing KDP authors know is that they’re artificially wrangled into a price box ($2.99 to $9.99) and don’t have access to a whole lot of levers and buttons and data inside Amazon. And yet, King Amazon is asking the serfs to pick up sharpened shovels and become knights for the realm. Which is weird, right? Am I wrongheaded in thinking that’s weird? I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

God, maybe the Amazon Books Team is a sentient AI.

Maybe it’s like SkyNet, but instead of destroying the world it just wants to rant about e-books.

I think I’d rather SkyNet as long as our destruction means we can stop talking about this.

I mean, emailing a CEO and then… copying them? That’s a tactic your crummy middle manager boss would use when trying to bully a supplier. “Okay, okay. You email Dave over at Office World, and you tell him we have noticed your illegal collusion on paper clips, Daaaaave, and tell him we don’t care for it one bit, no sir. You know what? You copy me on that email. Yeah, yeah, copy me. He’ll know. He’ll know what he did when he sees you copied me.”

Ugh.

So.

*blink blink blink*

I haven’t even had my coffee yet, Amazon, jeez.

Some individual point-by-point, poke-by-poke:

We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market — e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.

Okay. Great. I’m half with you. But really, let’s see all the data. And let’s also remember that there are still costs sunk into e-books. They’re not made of unicorn dreams. Further, can somebody confirm that there’s really nothing else on the table here besides e-book pricing? Nothing about POD out-of-print? Nothing about other services?

If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

This already happens with KDP. Amazon seems to continue to think KDP authors are lesser, because it’s basically ignoring their presence in the marketplace while at the same time asking them to turn plowshares to swords against Hachette.

KDP author-publishers are filling that low-cost paperback realm.

They should get a parade, not propaganda to hand out at Book Prom.

For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

We already talked about this. Go read Scalzi.

Also, let me echo: I wanna see data across all the price points.

I want to make an informed decision, not one based on cherry-picked data.

Then, I will price my own books accordingly, and not care one whit how Hachette prices theirs.

Again: this is an email to KDP authors. So how does this help them?

Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store.

Fine! So stop selling them, already. Just shut up about it and pull the trigger. Be mercenary.

Don’t ask me to be your mercenary. It covers me in an oily uncomfortable film.

(Though that may just be my body’s natural morning unguent.)

Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle.

Translation: we have made three separate offers that entrenched Hachette authors right in the uncomfortable middle. Here’s an offer: “If you pay me fifty dollars, I will give this puppy a popsicle. If you don’t pay me the fifty dollars, I will punch this puppy and eat the popsicle noisily in front of it.” The offers were basically — dear publishers, cut your own hamstrings and your authors will be happy. But you can’t, so they won’t, so now they’ll hate you MOO HOO HA HA.” *strokes hairless cat in a sinister fashion*

If Amazon wants to make friendy-friends with Hachette authors: return their books to sale.

WHAT WONDERFUL SORCERY THAT WOULD BE.

Their final points, from the letter, below:

We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.

OKAY, ROBOCOP. How many seconds do we have to comply?

Lowering e-book prices will help — not hurt — the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.

Great. Probably? Let Hachette price itself out of existence, then. Let the market find the proper e-book price. This is all pretty new, you’ll remember — maybe it’s not $9.99. Maybe it’s $10.99. Or $7.99, like the old paperbacks. We’ll figure it out. The e-book snakes are way, way, way out of the can. They ain’t going back in. Relax. (And again: can we confirm that this is 100% about prices? And that there’s nothing else going on here?)

Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.

Says Amazon as it loads KDP authors into the catapult and flings them against the walls of NYC publishing. Casually wiping their greasy stains off the battlements, hoping nobody will notice.

Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.

Authors aren’t united on anything. Why would they be? We work from home. Alone. We can maaaaaybe agree that pants are a tool of the oppressors and that we subsist on various liquids (tea, coffee, whiskey, the tears of our readers). Why do we have to be united? Can’t we all just be ronin ninja without clan? (“Will there be meetings?” “No meetings.“) I’m not your army, okay? What’s with the agitprop? I’m not your proselyte. I’m not your soldier.

Listen.

I like cheaper e-books.

I think Amazon has done awesome things.

I think publishers have done awesome things.

I think Amazon and publishers have done shitty, exploitative, or sometimes just silly things.

I do not think that self-published authors have a dog in this fight (outside the fact that maybe they should start asking when they as a force get to start petitioning Amazon for changes).

I think if you want cheaper e-books you should vote with your dollar.

I don’t think that emailing the CEO of a huge publisher involved in a dispute with a titanic retailer/distributor is a good way to do anything but scream noise and gibberish into the world — sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I don’t really appreciate the email KDP just sent me. I think it’s tacky. If they keep trying to involve me in this — and if they can’t be quiet about it — I’m going to take my KDP books off of Amazon and sell them through other avenues. I don’t want to do that because I make okay money there. And I got a kid to feed. But we’re swiftly approaching bridge too far territory. I honestly don’t know which dog or which pony is leading this wagon train — if all the blog posts lauding Amazon were urged by Amazon in the first place, or if Amazon has seen those and has figured out it can capitalize on that adoration, but really, it’s growing tiresome. It looks cheap and weak.

Amazon: you’re not weak.

You’re the world’s biggest retailer.

And hey! You deserve it. You owned that space.

So maybe start acting like it.

Leave your business to your business.

Stop spilling it into the laps of readers, customers, and now, KDP authors.

Meanwhile, the phrase that keeps going through my head is:

Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy.

“Not my circus. Not my monkeys.”

Last week’s challenge: Random Title Challenge.

So, in case you haven’t seen it, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a new cover.

It’s a beautiful cover. See?

But to me it’s the beautiful cover to an entirely different book.

So: I want you to write it.

Er, okay, you don’t have to write a whole book.

But let’s say: 1000 words or so of fiction using that cover as inspiration.

(Feel free to ignore the title. Focus just on the photo!)

Write it at your blog blog or online space.

Link back here.

Due by Friday, August 15th, noon EST.

Kara has achieved something that no Majat has ever managed – freedom from the Guild!

But the Black Diamond assassin Mai has been called back to face his punishment for sparing her life. Determined to join his fight or share his punishment, Kara finds herself falling for Mai.

But is their relationship – and the force that makes their union all-powerful – a tool to defeat the overpowering forces of the Kaddim armies, or a distraction sure to cause the downfall of the Majat?

* * *

Worldbuilding for a fantasy world is even more involving than research for a historical novel.

It is commonly known that a well-done historical novel requires a lot of research. Getting down the major dates and facts is only a small part of it. Historical authenticity comes with details: clothing, geography, customs, beliefs–not to mention all those obscure historical facts you would never find in commonplace sources. Only a fraction of these facts ever finds its way onto the pages of a finished novel, but the information must be there, forming the foundation of the story.

When I approached the task of creating a world for my Majat Code series—an epic adventure fantasy set in a fictional empire–it had seemed at first that I would be spared the necessity to do any research at all. After all, the world is all in my head, which makes me the foremost expert on every aspect of it. Right?

I quickly realized how wrong I was. To give life to a story, the world it is set in it has to be real–possibly even more so than for a historical novel where readers often can relate to sparingly mentioned facts. And, creating a world with this kind of realistic feeling takes a lot more than researching a world that already exists. As an author, I needed to achieve a state where I knew so much about every aspect of my world that I could literally write books about it. All the back history, geography, customs, clothing, languages, religion, politics had to become alive in my head, as if it actually existed. Except that this time there were no places to look it up. Every time I found myself missing a fact or a reference point, I had to sit down and develop it, often basing it on historical analogies that required even more research.

In the end, I found the process of worldbuilding a lot more tedious, and involving, than any kind of research I ever had to do for historical fiction. It was also lots of fun, watching my created world take shape and substance, from the detailed maps I drew, to all the history, culture and lore. It seems a pity that most of these things have to remain in the background, forming the foundation for my world that no one ever sees. But as I now know it is also a necessity that could make all the difference in the story.

One point of view is not enough.

I often see discussions among readers and authors on whether it is better to write in one point of view, or several. Opinions differ. Many prefer to stick to only one character throughout the whole story, and this strategy has certainly yielded many successful books. Others enjoy epic stories with multiple point-of-view characters. In that camp, my ultimate example is “The Game of Thrones”, which can easily serve as an encyclopedia of character development.

In my writing, I have originally opted for a single point of view, which seemed to be well suited for my action/adventure genre. But only a few chapters into my first book I realized that I won’t be able to keep it up. There were aspects to the story I needed to develop which were more natural for another character to describe. Often the same scene needed to be described from more than one perspective, based on people’s positions in the room, as well as their experience, skills, and perceptions. Finally, there were parallel story lines which could only be shown by people involved. In the end, the interplay between points of view, male and female, young and old, became one of my favorite aspects of writing “The Majat Code”.

No story is ever a stand-alone.

I used to disapprove of the idea of sequels. To me, each story had to be a stand-alone that resolved all the possible conflicts and plot lines and left nothing unsaid. I have since realized that, like life, a good story is impossible to resolve completely. Even if all the conflicts come to an end and everyone achieves (or fails) everything they set out to do, something always had to be left behind. Those stand-alone books out there just choose to leave these things in the foreground rather than following through. In the end, it all comes down to these kinds of choices.

After creating a world for my Majat Code series, I also realized more. It would take me more than one book to leave that world behind, to move on and create something new. I fell in love with some of my characters, and even though their stories got resolved in book 1, I could see many more things that needed a follow up in books 2 and 3, and possibly others.

By now, having written three books in the Majat Code series, I am aware that it is impossible to wrap up all the story lines without leaving a gap that could be explored in another story. In fact, I believe that the best sequels stem from the issues that were unintentionally left unanswered in the previous book(s) in the series. In my case, I found that it works best if I write with a full intention to complete each story, and then pick up a thread and unravel it into the next book. This way, the sequels flow more naturally and each book is more satisfying than if I tried to deliberately leave things open.

In the “Majat Code” series, book I, “Blades of the Old Empire” ended on a note where one of the main characters had a status change, and while everything else in this book had been resolved, this status change left behind an uncertainty not covered by the rules of their world. This uncertainty feeds the conflict in “The Guild of Assassins”, which is, again, a full stand-alone, but for which I had to start working on a sequel almost as soon as I finished the book.

Trust your characters.

Along with the worldbuilding, another very important task is character development. To me, it starts even before I sit down to write. I imagine a person, his/her major character traits, appearance down to the details of clothing. I also imagine their opposites, and those they would most likely be friends with. Once these characters come alive in my head, I create a scene and give them all tasks to do. And then, if it all works well, all I have to do is sit back and write down what happens.

When done well, this could be a very rewarding process, which, to me, parallels writing to watching a movie where I can also direct the setting and the action. This synergy with my characters can expand my abilities so much. If I don’t know what to do in a certain situation, one of my characters is bound to know, and all I need to do is allow this character to take over. If I want to explore my character’s limits, all I need to do is throw this person into a conflict and see what he or she can do. I used this a lot in “The Guild of Assassins”, where three characters with a lot of unresolved feelings for each other must unite to fight a common enemy. Writing this book I had a sense that the words already existed somewhere, and all I had to do was write them down. It was an amazing feeling, one that I miss every moment I spend not writing.

Follow your heart.

Like most authors, I spent many of my early years dreaming of finding a publisher while working my head off trying to perfect my writing. Like many, I tended to think of this process in terms of “what will the editors/readers like?” and “how can I write something popular?” Fortunately for me, I quickly realized that these thoughts were completely counterproductive. The only things I can write well are those that come from my heart, those I love, those I can pour my soul into. The question of who and why would like it becomes irrelevant, and certainly I could not do anything at all to make my writing deliberately likeable other than by doing my best. So, I learned to live by this rule: follow your heart when writing, and never worry about others. Well, not during the writing process, anyway.

I am a firm believer that one can succeed only if one does something exceptionally well. For an author, this has to start with writing something that opens your soul, not something deliberately commercial or appealing. One small example concerns the genres. I was writing epic fantasy when the majority of sales were in the urban fantasy genre. I felt crazy doing that, but I simply could not stop. Urban is just not by genre, even if every now and then I feel tempted to try.

I had to put this rule to the test again and again, most recently when writing “The Guild of Assassins”. One of the unexpected turns of the plot involved a controversial move, and I knew the readers were bound to be divided about it. I even considered changing the story. But then I realized that for me, as an author, it was the only possible one, so I went with it–and it worked just the way I wanted it to. I consider this book the best one I have written so far. I followed my heart. In the end, it made it all seem worth it.

* * *

Anna Kashina grew up in Russia and moved to the United States in 1994 after receiving her Ph.D. in cell biology from the Russian Academy of Sciences. She works as a biomedical researcher and combines career in science with her passion for writing. Anna’s interests in ballroom dancing, world mythologies and folklore feed her high-level interest in martial arts of the Majat warriors.

Anna Kashina: Website | Twitter

Guild of Assassins: Amazon | B&N

Appaloosa Elim is a man who knows his place. On a good day, he’s content with it.

Today is not a good day.

Today, his so-called “partner” – that lily-white lordling Sil Halfwick – has ridden off west for the border, hell-bent on making a name for himself in native territory. And Elim, whose place is written in the bastard browns and whites of his cow-spotted face, doesn’t dare show up home again without him.

The border town called Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but Elim’s heard the stories about what wakes at sunset: gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight.

If he ever wants to go home again, he’d better find his missing partner fast. But if he’s caught out after dark, Elim risks succumbing to the old and sinister truth in his own flesh – and discovering just how far he’ll go to survive the night.

***

1. Don’t Leave Home With Horse Nuts.

No, really, y’all. Snip-snip before the road trip. This was something I never even considered. Sixes starts with two guys herding a dozen-odd yearling horses down to sell at the fair. Simple enough, right? And obviously you’re going to get more money for your horses if they’re intact, right? And they’re barely more than a year old, so surely –

“Nope,” my all-knowing equestrian beta-mistress said. “You leave them like that, they’re going to start getting horny and feisty and getting in fights and mounting their sisters, and pretty soon that whole pen is going to be nastier than aLannister game of spin-the-bottle.”

Okay, she didn’t say it exactly like that, but you get the point – and so did I. As I picked up my red pen, two dozen thoroughbred testicles cried out in terror, and were silenced.

2. Nothing Says Fashionable Femininity Like Wearing a Dead Mouse.

Well, it’s like this. I’ve been describing this book as “cowboys and fishmen fantasy” – and the thing is that the fishmen (who are actually more like frog men, but shhh) are actually sort of like changelings: with a little surgical alteration and some good makeup, they can disguise themselves as human beings. Still, they aren’t mammals, so they don’t have body hair – which makes trying to pass for an earthling slightly more complicated. Wearing a wig is easy enough, but then what do you do for eyebrows?

Why, you get yourself a fresh mouse pelt and cut yourself a pair, that’s what! As I learned, this was not only common in 17th and 18th century Europe, but practically de rigeur, as the lead-based cosmetics that fine ladies wore had the unfortunate side effect of making their hair fall out. And you don’t even want to know how they replaced their teeth.

3. Cowboy Lingo Is the Nickel-Plated Dickens…

Seriously, you guys. I’ve had so much fun wallowing in antique frontier vocabulary – which as near as I can tell is the bastard love-child of Charles Dickens, Dr. Seuss, and a meth-addled Latin student. The dialect says so much, not only about what kinds of objects and activities 19th-century working-class folks needed words for, but also about the humor and creativity that went into the terms. Here are a few of my favorites (ones that actually made it into the book!)

absquatulate – to flee, leave in a hurry

calf slobbers – meringue (the kind you’d used to top a pie)

knocked acock – stunned, blindsided

necktie sociable – a hanging

sucking hind tit – being last, getting the least

(You can find these and about a million more over at Legends of America, by the way.)

4. …But Native Slang Will Blow Your Mind.

Exhibits A through E, from Countryboy79’s Archive of Navajo Slang:

Burger King – ‘Áh Bikiin – “just enough food to get strength from”

Dr. Mario – Azee‘ handéhé – “falling medicine”

Girlfriend – Bich’áayaa íí’áhí – “the one that sticks up from under his armpit”

Microwave – Bee na’niildóhó – “you warm things up with it”

To watch a movie – bináá na’alkid – “it is showing in front of him/her”

Do you feel that? Those little pop-rock explosions in your brain? I’m not a professional mentologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s the sound of internalized pop-culture bullshit withering like the Wicked Witch of the East’s ruby-slipperedcankles.

Like, these days I think most of us realize that the Apache Chief / Tonto / Tigerlily stuff is a load of eagle-feathered horse-apples. But then you see a little list like this – and you think about how Dr. Mario is pretty frigging great – and you start noticing how a lot of these nouns are actually being translated into descriptive actions – and then you click over to Wikipedia and start reading about how yeah, the Navajo language is basically the supreme linguistic god-emperor of verbs – and you realize that your whole life has been a hideous lie.

Or maybe that’s just me.

tl;dr: if you really want to get to know somebody, start with their words.

5. You’re a Writer. If You’re Not Crying, You’re Not Trying.

I don’t mean that literally, of course. I realize that not everyone manifests anxiety and distress as episodes of acute facial incontinence. Maybe you Hulk out, or binge-eat gas station hamdogs, or sing down the eldritch fury that ends the earth.

Personally, what I like to do is get real excited about something like #4 above, and think about how to work those elements into my fictional indigenous cultures – then worry about becoming the Great White Culturally-Appropriating Satan – then worry about NOT doing that, and remaining Part of the Ignorant Anglocentric Whitewashing Problem – then collapse in a pile of wet kleenex and artisanal despair. It’s a hell of a system, let me tell you.

My point is this: after literally years of intermittent stomach-churning horror, I’m starting to realize that that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s not fun to live in mortal terror of screwing up. It’s even less fun to actually screw up. (I expect it’s absolutely ZERO fun for the people we hurt when we do screw up.) But my God, that fear is SUCH a great motivator. When you’re afraid of doing it wrong – whatever “it” is! – you take extra time and trouble to get it right. So the goal is not to stop being scared. The goal is to USE your scared to get shit done.

So basically… if you’re ever like “man, I’m really nervous about writing X” and your friend comes back with, “ahhh, don’t worry; you got this” – you punch them. You punch them right in their big friendly face. You go find a new friend, one who says, “ooh, yeah, you don’t wanna mess that up. Want help making a game plan?”

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Then be awesome.

***

Arianne “Tex” Thompson is a home-grown Texas success story. A relentless fantasy enthusiast dual-wielding a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in literature, Tex has since channeled her interests into an epic fantasy Western series, set to kick off in July 2014 with the release of ONE NIGHT IN SIXES.  An active member of SFWA, Codex, and the DFW Writers Workshop, and currently serving as editor for the DFW Writers Conference, Tex has made it her mission to help other writers achieve their goals: with relentless enthusiasm and the fastest red pen this side of the Pecos River, she is out to change the world – one misplaced modifier at a time.

Tex Thompson: Website | Twitter

One Night in Sixes: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powell’s

Stephen Blackmore is a friend and a bona fide bad-ass who writes killer urban fantasy about LA necromancer, Eric Carter. Here’s Stephen talking about… well, you’ll see.

* * *

Sometimes I get to write about the things I’m not writing about.

Themes and metaphors, subtext and meaning. I can talk about one big theme, how you can’t go home again, say, and then scatter smaller ones throughout. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes not so much. And I can couch it all in a fast-paced adventure, a violent detective story, a monster hunt.

My books DEAD THINGS and BROKEN SOULS are about a modern day necromancer named Eric Carter who can see the ghosts left behind by traumatic deaths. Gunshots, stabbings, stranglings, car crashes. Haunts trapped where they died, Wanderers flitting from place to place, unanchored and lost. Echoes repeat their deaths over and over again like a busted record player. He can’t not see them. To make things more confusing for him, he doesn’t just see ghosts of people. He sees the psychic landscape of the world that was left behind. The torn down buildings of a bygone era in all their glory, the grand hotels, the street corners that made history. The skyline of Los Angeles looks very different to him than it does to most people.

For him the Dead can be goddamn scary. They can’t touch him from his lofty perch on the living side. In his ivory tower he’s safe and secure. But if he crosses to their side, goes into their world, it’s a whole new set of rules. They’ll tear him apart given a chance. Fucking things might as well be sharks.

But they’re not. They’re still people, people with needs most couldn’t possibly understand. Tormented, confused, desperate. He forgets that sometimes. He’s alive and they’re not. Other times he doesn’t care. He’ll use them to his advantage. They’re everywhere, after all. Hidden in the spaces in between. And though they themselves go unseen and unnoticed they see a lot themselves.

Let’s be clear here, he is NOT a nice man. He’s arrogant, angry. Sometimes he’s really fucking stupid. His moral compass is as broken as the ghosts who wander past him and his blind spots cause more problems for the people around him than they do for himself.

But for all his fear of the Dead for reminding him of how fleeting life is, and how tenuous our grip on this reality might be, sometimes he’s the only voice they have, even if the best he can do is to scream their names into a howling wind.

To him the Dead are a cautionary tale. It’s luck of the draw if someone winds up a ghost, but if they do they can expect to spend a good long while draining away into the ether until they end up wherever they’re supposed to go. It’s not a good existence. He’s got a unique ringside view of what happens when things really go to shit. And he doesn’t know how to help them.

Years ago I met a friend for coffee at a place in West Hollywood. When I got there she had five, maybe six teenage girls with her. Youngest looked to be about twelve, the oldest couldn’t have been more than sixteen. They were crashing at my friend’s place for the next few days before heading up to San Francisco. She had only just met them that week.

The girls were from Texas and had hopped a bus two weeks before. They weren’t all related, but they were very clearly a family. The oldest watched the world around her like a Mountain Lion protecting her cubs, scanning for threats and making it clear with nothing more than her body language that if the world fucked with her or her friends she’d fuck the world right back. My money was on her.

We hung out for about an hour and from that I got that they were getting away from things they didn’t want to talk about. Violence was involved. A couple of the older ones were clearly in a relationship with each other. Before we parted I gave them some money, wished them well. Heard from my friend a few days later that they had moved on. I have no idea where they ended up or what became of them.

I didn’t get the sense that anything else I could have said or done would have been helpful or even welcome. Though they were exhausted, scared, lonely and largely invisible, they had a plan that I wasn’t privy to. I don’t know what they had gone through, what their world was like, I wasn’t even a tourist to them, but I got the distinct impression that whatever they were going through at that moment was world’s better than what they had left.

And so when I write about Wanderers, Haunts and Echoes, I think of those runaways. I think of a wheelchair bound vet who can’t get his PTSD meds. I think of broken families who can’t get Section 8 housing. The hidden homeless, the people we don’t want to look at, the ones we don’t know how to help. I see Carter’s disjointed skyline of Los Angeles disappearing into a haze of gentrification. Of Downtown squatters being pushed out of buildings so developers can convert them into $5000.00 a month lofts. Carter’s uncertainty is my own. His ghosts are my ghosts, peeking out through the cracks in the pavement, swept over by the tidal forces of change, powerless to do anything about it.

Sometimes I get to write about the things I’m not writing about.

Stephen Blackmoore: Website | Twitter

Broken Souls: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Apparently there’s this Internet Scavenger Hunt thingy run by Misha Collins — the handsomely smirksome gent from Supernatural. I’ve seen it in years past and always thought it had something to do with a convention, but that’s totally wrong, as I have learned this year.

I have learned this year because one of the items on the scavenger hunt list is to get a sci-fi writer to write a 140-word or less short story featuring various elements (Misha Collins, Queen of England, an Elopus, whatever the fuck that is).

I’ve been asked about a dozen times for a story.

I have said yes to one person.

I will say no to everyone else.

(You have to give the story directly to the people asking, as I understand it — can’t just post it publicly and have it work for the scavenger hunt. Or so I’m told — I honestly have no idea what’s happening, which is par for the course for me. Ignorance is not only bliss, but frankly, it’s just plain easier. YAY FOR IGNORAMUSES LIKE ME WOOOOO.)

There has been some kerfuffles and fracas over this, though.

Because writers are being asked to work for free.

Further, some folks have been more than a little abusive about the asking.

(Link here.)

To those asking, I say:

Be polite, please. Writers are not obligated to interrupt their work to provide you with a free story, regardless of how short. It’s like asking a comedian to tell you a joke — it’s very difficult to always be “on.” So, greet us with kindness and you will likely be met with kindness in return.

To those authors being asked, I say:

Be polite, please. Also: fucking relax a little. I know, maybe you’re a bit overwhelmed by the attention — but, really, is this the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? First, it’s for charity. Second, there’s basically a bunch of horrible things happening all around the world right now, and you have the privilege of being a published sci-fi author, which is actually kind of rad. Third, nobody’s devaluing the price of literature by asking for this free story from you — this isn’t like, some publisher snootily saying, YEAH WE’RE GONNA PUBLISH THIS AND PAY YOU NOTHING, STUPID WRITER, HA HA HA. This ain’t cause to raise Harlan Ellison from the dead (okay, he’s not dead, but he’s always been quite spectral) to yell at you about ‘paying the writer.’ I’ll admit a moment of sympathy for someone like Neil Gaiman who is probably so inundated with this request he’s almost certainly actually on fire, but then it’s also vital to remember that he’s Neil Motherfucking Gaiman, married to Amanda Fucking Palmer, and he writes from a magical gazebo in the woods and is handsome with or without a beard and so he’s probably going to be just fine. My suggestion, then? Take the requests as an honor rather than an irritation.

I mean, unless someone’s an asshole about it, then hell with ’em.

Everyone be polite.

Nobody be a bully or a jerk.

Go forth and be rad. As always:

Be the best version of yourself that you can be. In this, and in all things.