It’s been three months since Drothe killed a legend, burned down a portion of the imperial capital, and found himself unexpectedly elevated into the ranks of the criminal elite. As the newest Gray Prince in the underworld, he’s not only gained friends, but also rivals—and some of them aren’t bothered by his newfound title. A prince’s blood, as the saying goes, flows just as red as a beggar’s.

So when another Gray Prince is murdered and all signs point to Drothe as the hand behind the knife, he knows it’s his blood that’s in danger of being spilled. As former allies turn their backs and dark rumors begin to circulate, Drothe is approached by a man who says he can make everything right again. All he wants in exchange is a single favor.

Now Drothe finds himself traveling to the Despotate of Djan, the empire’s long-standing enemy, to search for the friend he betrayed—and the only person who can get him out of this mess. But the grains of sand are running out fast, and even if Drothe can find his friend, he may not be able to persuade him to help in time…

* * *

1) Plans Shmans

I went into Sworn in Steel knowing I had to do things differently. I mean, I spent ten years (off and on) writing my first book. That kind of turn-around time just doesn’t work in publishing, especially not for a debut author. So I had to up my game. I had to have outlines and word counts and story arcs and the whole nine yards. I’d pantsed my way through Among Thieves (meaning I made it up as I went, no outline), but that wasn’t going to fly this time around. This time, I needed a Plan.

And by god, I stuck to that plan. In well under a year, I was 90,000 words into my projected 125,000 word novel with plenty of room to spare. I had this.

And then I stepped back and looked at the book. It was, in the words of a good friend, a hot mess. Steaming, even.

I froze. Not just for a week, not just for a month. For over a year, I froze.

That isn’t to say I didn’t write. I wrote like hell. I revised like a demon. I fixed and fiddled and tweaked, trying to fix the mess that was my first draft. At one point, the book was up to 190,000 words.

No, when I say I froze, I mean that I got stuck in the story as it was. I had tied myself to a plan, and I was going to follow that plan, dammit. Except it was the plan that ended up messing me up.

And I couldn’t see it.

2) Tunnel Vision Will Kill You

When you wait tables, there is a phenomenon known as “Being in the weeds.” Essentially, it is a situation where you have so many tables and so much to do, there is no way you can keep up with it all. Every time you clear a table, two more seem to be sat in your section. When the food comes out, it is wrong, or half the order is missing, or something needs to go back. You can never get on top of things, and it feels like you are constantly teetering on the edge of complete disaster. Offers of help go unheeded because, frankly, it seems like it would be more work and take more time to tell someone what you need than to simply go do it yourself. The only way out of the weeds is to hack your way through, alone.

You are, in short, in extended panic mode.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is where I was for much of Sworn In Steel (especially after I blew past the first deadline). And, just like when you are in the weeds, what seems to make sense from the outside doesn’t compute on the inside. You want to help me solve this plot problem? Talk me through the indecision I’m facing over this part of the book? Get me out of the house to just breathe fresh air and gain some perspective?

You know nothing, Jon Snow. I have to do this myself. It would take me too long to explain the problem to you; be too hard to tease out the difficulties that are dogging me; eat up too much time and energy to catch my breath and paint the big picture for you, because of course its all about the big picture and how it isn’t working!

Except that isn’t true. What took me a long, long, looooong time to figure out was that, while I might see only the problems and errors and mistakes in the book, they aren’t the whole work. What I needed, desperately, was a bit of perspective. But I was so far in the weeds, so busy whirling like a distracted dervish, that I couldn’t see what I needed to do: I could only see what I thought I needed to do.

It wasn’t until I broke down and had a long talk with my editor about just where I was (and wasn’t) in the book that I realized…

3) Editors want to help you, you idiot!

This may seem obvious, but when you’ve missed deadline after deadline, you start to get a bit gun-shy, ya know? You dread talking with your editor because you know the inevitable question – “So, how’s the book coming? When do you think it will be ready?” – is going to drop, and you just don’t want to answer that question any more. Because you honestly don’t know at this point (see Weeds, above).

But here’s the thing: your editor is on your side. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have bought your book in the first place; wouldn’t have persuaded the publisher that your work was worth investing in; wouldn’t have put their neck on the line give you extension after extension (after extension, after….). Plus, they want to not only get the book out, but they also want it to be good.

So yes, making that call and having that talk and sending the mis-matched, cobbled-together unfinished mess of a manuscript to my editor was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I have ever done as a writer (and may well be for a long while, I hope). But it was also the smartest thing I could have done.

When my editor and I finally got back on the phone and went over her editorial notes, it opened my eyes to a lot of thing that both worked and didn’t work in the book. Suddenly, what had seemed like a mountain of mistakes became a collection of smaller foothills, most of which I could see the path over. Oh, I needed to cut a lot and rework more, but I could see the end of the book. Turns out it wasn’t that far away.

4) It’s never as bad as you think

It’s easy to forget the parts you like about writing when things aren’t going well. But they’re still there – you just have to trust in them. Even when I was hacking away at the manuscript, I would stumble across a situation here, a bit of dialog there, an expected character around this corner, than delighted me.

I say “stumble” because, at heart, I am still a “discovery writer.” This means that I write the story not to get to the end, but to see where it goes, how it gets there, and who comes along for the ride. I forgot that for part of this book, but fortunately my brain didn’t. Sneaky bugger that it is, it kept doling out little treats here and there—so much so that when I went back to look things over, it wasn’t as horrible as I’d convinced myself. Parts of it didn’t quite suck. And some parts were even…arguably…maybe…kinda…good?

5) Readers are awesome

The thing that struck me the most through all of this, though, was how generous readers can be.

We’ve all heard the complaints online about how George R. R. Martin / Patrick Rothfuss / [Insert Author Name Here] is taking too long writing their next book. And yeah, that happens. But for everyone one of those, there are more people not complaining and patiently waiting.

I didn’t realize this last bit until I started having to post updates and explanations about why my release date was at first being moved back, and then cancelled altogether (since my publisher couldn’t leave the book in the catalog and keep moving the release around). I expected a torrent…well, okay, not a torrent, I don’t have that many readers…but at least any angry trickle of complaints from the people who were waiting for the next installment of the series. But to a post, e-mail, or response, every single reader who either asked or replied said something along the lines of, “That’s okay, take your time. I’d rather you write a good book than a fast one.”

This blew me away. In a world where we’ve gotten used to having everything NOW, where the complaints about a book’s speed of release are a Google search away, to have people saying they were cool with the delay? That they understood that Shit Happens? Well, it was damn nice, and damn reassuring, let me tell you.

That was also the best possible thing I could have learned writing this, or any, book.

* * *

Douglas Hulick is the author of the Tales of the Kin series, which currently consists of Among Thieves and Sworn in Steel. He is a full-time stay-at home father, part-time writer, and part-time swordsman (no, really). When not walking the dog or trying to determine the relative might of pens vs. swords, he can often be found haunting the aisles of books shops, usually in either the sf, crime, or history sections. He is very fond of breakfast.

Doug’s first book, Among Thieves, was a finalist for both the Gemmel Morningstar and Kitschie’s Golden Tentacle awards in the UK. It was also nominated for both the 2013  Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire and Prix Imaginales awards in France.

Douglas Hulick: Website | Twitter

Sworn In Steel: Excerpt | Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

As you may know, I’m an advisor for Storium, a digital storytelling / storyworld platform. And right now, Storium has just crested the $200,000 mark (!) which means we’ve unlocked Storium for Schools (!!) and still has about 24 hours to go. Consider checking out the Kickstarter before it ends. Wanna know more? Stephen Hood wants to tell you what he’s learned so far:

1. We are all wired for storytelling

It doesn’t matter who you are: the ability — and need — to tell stories is encoded into our base pairs. It’s part of what makes us human.

Now, that doesn’t mean we all have to be novelists, poets, or screenwriters. And that’s OK! Storytelling takes many forms, and it’s often something we do in everyday life without even realizing it. Whenever we talk to another person and tell them about our lives, we are telling a story.

It’s been fascinating to watch how people play Storium and observe the kinds of stories they tell. Sure, some of our players are writers and storytellers, professionally or otherwise. But a great many are not. Or rather, they don’t think of themselves as storytellers. And yet there they are, doing it, and having a blast!

It’s in our bones.

2. Play is the engine of creativity

Growing up playing tabletop games like D&D, Traveller, and Champions, I was introduced to this concept very early on. Roleplaying games are inherently collaborative storytelling experiences, and they’re one of several inspirations for Storium. But in truth, I started telling stories through games even earlier.

I have hazy memories of playing in our basement with a Lite-Brite. I don’t remember the colors and shapes that I assembled, but I do remember that they had the power to drive back the creepy ghosts peering at me from the eye-like knots of our pine-paneled walls.

As a kid I also played Wizardry on my Apple II. The provided “story” was spare. After all, the computer can only do so much with a wire-frame corridor and a hand-drawn 8-bit green slime. And yet, to me, my imaginatively-named wizard “Allanon” wasn’t just blasting those slimes with the spell tiltowait; he was getting revenge for what the slimes did to his deceased party members. Damn you, slimes. Damn you all to hell! *fireball*

Toys and games are like writing prompts. They give us a place to start. They turn the menacing Blank Page into something smaller, less intimidating. By adding creative constraints, they actually help us to create! Multiplayer games — both analog and digital — take this to the next level by allowing us to combine our imaginations in infinite ways.

We created Storium with the mission of using technology and games to unlock creativity. Based on these many childhood experiences, I always believed that it would work. But to actually see it happening is quite a thrill.

3. Games can teach

No matter your age, games have a way of disarming us. When we play, our mood changes. We automatically set aside expectations and judgment. We relax a little.

After all, it’s just a game, right?

This can be powerful in many contexts, perhaps none more so than in the classroom. For many, the best way to learn something is to experience it hands-on. And you can’t get much more hands-on than playing a game. Combine that with a task that feels more like “fun” than “work,” and you’ve got something interesting.

Going into this Kickstarter campaign we believed that Storium, as a game of collaborative writing, could be useful to educators. But the actual response from teachers and parents sort of blew our heads apart. *worriedly looks for pieces of head*

The reaction has been overwhelming, to the point where we added a major stretch goal that will enable us to create a version of Storium designed specifically for schools. I can’t wait to do it.

4. Ship it

The ideas that led to Storium have been rattling around inside my head for years. The team and I have now been working on Storium full-time for 16 months. We believe in it, we love it, and it’s deeply important to us.

But what if no one else cared?

This is a fundamental question every creator faces, and it leads to other ones that can paralyze you. Is it ready? Will they love it? Will they mock me? Or worse yet, will they just toss up their arms and say The Word That End Dreams: “meh”?

Ultimately, the only way to answer — or banish — these questions is share your work with others. In the tech world, we call it “shipping.” [from Chuck: in fan-fic “shipping” means something else, but given how Storium is mashing up cool storyworlds and genres, maybe that’s appropriate here, too…]

At some point, you just have to ship it.

It may seem easy for me to cheer “ship it” when I’m standing at the tail end of a healthy Kickstarter campaign. But you know what? This isn’t the first time we “shipped” Storium. We shipped it many times before, and believe me:  some of those early days were… well, rough. We faced our share of “meh.” But that’s what allowed us to make Storium better. Without shipping, we never would have gotten here.

5. It’s dangerous to go alone — take allies

Ever notice how Tony Stark is able to create whatever he wants, entirely on his own, without any help? He just goes into his well-stocked, perfectly-equipped, self-aware lab and conjures incredible inventions directly from the ether.

Please.

Who built all the equipment? Who maintains it? Who keeps his automated CNC routers supplied with the 100% pure ridiculanium ore they require? My theory is that, one floor below his workshop, Tony has a team of, like, a thousand.

Of course, people do create things on their own. But for all of us, there comes a time when we need help. Allies. Friends. The problem is that we often don’t realize it until it’s too late, and then suddenly we’re raising our eyes from our desks to find ourselves in the thick of it. I’ve been in that position myself. I’ve worked on things that I believed in, but I failed because at the end of the day I stood alone.

Standing alone isn’t cool. It sucks. I make it a point to avoid it, and suggest you do the same. But it takes time to gather allies, so no matter your project: start early.

I am insanely grateful for Storium’s friends and allies. From our advisors (Will Hindmarch, J.C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, and our cheery, beardified host Chuck Wendig); to the many writers, designers and storytellers who are contributing worlds to our campaign; to the thousands of people who are playtesting Storium — without them, none of this would be real. It took time and trust to assemble this force of awesomeness. But it was worth it.

* * *

Storium Kickstarter: Click Here

Over there? That’s your gravestone.

It’s there, on the hill. Or in the valley. Maybe under a cherry blossom tree or by a babbling creek. Or maybe you’re a sack of kitty-litter-looking ashes on a mantle somewhere. It doesn’t much matter because, drum roll please, you’re dead.

Or, rather, you’re going to be dead. One day.

No, I’m not threatening you. I don’t have to. Life paired with time have together earned that pleasure. Unless you’re some kind of vampire, you were born with a ticking clock whose watchface was turned inward so that none can see it.

You are totally going to die.

I’m not Miriam Black. I don’t know when. Might be 50 years from now. Or ten. Or ten weeks, days, minutes. I certainly don’t know how. Cancer might juice your bowels. A hunk of frozen shit might fall off a 747 turbine and crush you in your recliner. Bear attack. Meth overdose. Choke on a hot wing. Stroke. Heart attack. Robot uprising. No fucking clue. And I don’t want to know the specifics. I don’t need to know the specifics because we are all given over to the universality of a limited mortality. The one aspect of our lives that is utterly and irrevocably shared is death.

That’s grim shit, I know.

I’ve spent a goodly portion of my life worrying about death. Or, more to the point, about how it’ll get me. I picture death less as a comical specter and more as the black dog of myth, always hounding my steps, ducking out of sight as I look for it, but always regaining my scent and waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Sometimes this manifested as a kind of hypochondria, a condition no doubt exacerbated by a Reader’s Digest Medical Guidebook I found in my house when I was around 10 years old, a book whose graphic flowcharts aimed to help you discern the truth of your symptoms — though of course they usually ended up convincing me I had some kind of rare tropical doom parasite. (For a while I seriously thought I had worms in my face. For no reason other than my teeth had left marks on the inside of my cheeks and became convinced that these divots were WORM TUNNELS. So, y’know, thanks Reader’s Digest.)

If it wasn’t hypochondria plaguing me, it was sheer existential terror. The realization that one day everything I know and everything that I am would one day hit an invisible wall and drop off into a deep, black sea trench, never to be reclaimed. And maybe never remembered — after all, all those who care about me would one day be dead, too.

I know. WHEE, right?

There comes a point when all this either was going to keep pinning me to the ground like a heavy boot or it was going to be the thing that I could push past or even use as a springboard to fling my dopey ass forward. One day it occurred to me that this revelation about death could be viewed as something representative of freedom. A grim, unruly freedom, one with a somewhat grisly underpinning, but freedom just the same. Because we all share this thing. We all share the reality of an impending death. We are all dying. Right now. All part of a cycle of birth, life, decay, death, all part of the washing machine tumble of chaos and order, structure and entropy, light and dark.

None of us — not a single one — are promised tomorrow.

We share that because we share the possibility of death.

But we share something else, too.

We share This Fucking Moment Right Fucking Here.

This one. The one with the masking tape across it and the permanent marker signifying:

NOW.

We all get now.

We all get the moment in which we exist.

A lot of you are writers. (Or “aspiring” writers, a term I hate so bad it causes a sudden chafing of my testicular region as if some surly ghost were rubbing a spectral bootbrush against my nads even as I sit here and type.)  And whenever I talk to writers and we get down to the nitty gritty of what they’re doing or hope to one day accomplish, they’re often mired in a sense of fear. Paralyzed sometimes by the what if’s and the big blinky question marks that look as much like a swooping scythe as they do a piece of punctuation. And a lot of writers are forward-thinking or future-leaning, expecting that the day will come that everything will work itself out and life’s magic highway will present them with an endless series of green lights…

…and they’ll finally get to do what they want to do.

My father lived his life in preparation for his retirement. Set everything up so that he could retire a bit early, move out West, and live his remaining years with the pleasurable, simple life for which he had waited. Of course, he died a few years into that retirement — so, while he had the privilege of living some of his dream, it sure wasn’t much when seen in the shadow of an entire life prepared for it. Too little time in the sun, too long in the anticipation of it.

Writers, artists, anybody: you are not promised that time.

You are promised right now.

I’ve said this before and I like to give a lot of these go forth and do it, please excuse my Doc Marten firmly ensconced in your spongy squat-grotto talks, and this one probably isn’t all that different from things you may have heard me say before. But it’s a thing I sometimes like to remind myself, and since this blog is primarily me-yelling-at-me, it’s a thing I’m going to remind you about, too.

You’re going to die, writer-types.

But you have now, right now, so use it.

And you may think that this advice for the aspiring-types only, for those novitiates on the Sacred Penmonkey Order, but it’s not. It’s for you story-seasoned word-brined motherfuckers, too. Because writers with careers short and long, we sometimes get a little lost in the weeds. Lost in things outside of us. Trends and markets, industries and Amazon rankings. We find ourselves jealous of other writers or fearful of the uncomfortable arranged marriage between the forces of art and commerce. Sometimes we forget that we have things we want to do, stories we want to tell, and we lose that in that the briar-tangle of uncertainty and anxiety and existential unease. Because just as we can as humans worry about the very nature of our existence, we can worry about our existence as writers, too. We worry about how long we’ll be allowed to do what we do. We wonder when someone will figure out that we’re stowaways on this ship, imposters at this party, strangers in our own chosen lives.

None of that really matters. I mean, it matters in little ways — in intellectual, commercial ways. But it doesn’t always help you to tell the tales you want to tell. It doesn’t always force that quantum entanglement between your ass molecules and the chair protons so that you can create some motherfucking art quarks, does it?

You can’t control a lot of the things you’re worried about.

You can maybe adjust them, or nudge them.

But you can’t control publishing. Or the audience. Or bookstores.

You can’t control whether a fridge-sized shit-glacier will drop off a plane and kill you.

What you can control is the height of your chair. You can control a little of your comfort as you sit at the desk — or stand, if you prefer. You can control which word processor you use, or which notebook you prefer. You can control what words you put down, in what order, and what story grows up from those words. You can control the work. That’s yours. Everything else is open to your occasional influence, but the one thing you can control is that you are writing this book.

And you have that control right now.

In this moment.

Not tomorrow.

Not in ten years.

Because you don’t know what happens then.

You do know that one day, it’ll all be over. And I can’t speak to what comes after — Heaven, Hell, Hades, Happy Hunting Grounds, Toledo — but that’s not the point. You don’t live for the end. You live for the moment. You live for this thing you want to do.

So, do it.

Right now.

You’re temporary.

Use that to create something permanent — or, at least, closer to permanent than you.

Let death motivate you. Let your inevitable demise impel you forward.

Go. Create something. Be the best version of yourself. Now. Here. This very second.

While you’re still alive.

So, heyyyyy.

I’ve been sitting on this for — *checks watch* — maybe a little while now, but…

Ahem.

Blackbirds is in development at Starz as a television show.

Brought to life by amazing creative humans David Knoller and John Shiban.

News at Deadline here.

News at Hollywood Reporter here.

No guarantee you’ll see it happen, of course, but I can tell you that what they’ve put together so far is an amazing — and appropriately faithful — adaptation of the book. They grok Miriam. Further, Starz is a helluva network. They’re a crafty, confident, and capable company.

All kinds of stuff I can’t really talk about yet, but fingers crossed this happens.

*stares at you until you cross all your fingers*

TOES, TOO, C’MON.

*stares more*

Anyway.

If you haven’t checked out Blackbirds yet, well, hey, now’s a good time:

Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

What I’m trying to say is, my new family doctor has huge hands.

Huge.

Oh, wait, my notes are out of order.

Let’s rewind a little.

So, my father died from prostate cancer.

*checks notes*

I’m pretty sure this post is supposed to be at least a little bit funny, but that’s not a promising start, is it? Still, persevere we must. So: my father had prostate cancer, and my uncle had it, too. Father, dead. Uncle alive. Difference is, of course, that one got checked out, the other didn’t, and I don’t think it’d be a huge spoiler warning to tell you which was which, but I’m happy to leave that puzzle up to you. My father did not have insurance because, drum roll please, he had preexisting conditions (high blood pressure), which upon retirement from his job of many eons meant he would’ve exhausted his savings just to pay for insurance. So, he skipped it for a few years in the hope that he’d reach Medicare without any grave conditions.

Grave being something of a pun, there, I guess.

Jeez, I swear this gets funny.

Point is, he died, and with him and my uncle both having had that particular brand of cancer, I am considered in the high-risk category for the disease. As such, I have to get checked every few years, which means, y’know, not to put too fine a point on it —

Finger in butt.

That’s just how that goes. Assfinger. *uncorking sound* That, plus a blood test, is how a doctor figures out if you have cancer all up in there. I’ll get this out of the way so you don’t think I’m misleading you: I do not have prostate cancer, to my or my doctor’s knowledge.

I do, however, want to tell you about this test.

Because my new family doctor — like, I just saw him for the first time last week — has enormous hands. I didn’t think to look before all this, erm, occurred. My previous doctor in the same office was a woman and did not happen to have huge hands. In retrospect, actually, her hands seem like delicate flowers — like little dandelion stems, thin and wonderfully flexible. But new doc? Hands that could pop a volleyball. Tree-trunk fingers with lug-nut knuckles.

Here’s how the test goes:

Get up. Drop trou. Drop boxers. Unlock the chastity padlock that guards the treacherous expanse between the Balls-to-Butt Bridge, thus revealing the entrance to the Mines of Rectalia.

Then, hunch forward. On elbows.

At this point, the doctor hunkers down back there and starts… you know, having a look. He figured that, whilst back there, he’d check everything out, given that folks rarely get a very pronounced or described look at their own buttholes. When you think about it, that particular little magical asterisk is completely far and away from our own eyes — it’s the Perth, Australia to the New York City of our eyeballs. It’s way the fuck down under. And compressed, too, by scads of flesh. So, Doc thought he’d check the whole landscape out back there, make sure nothing had gone direly wrong.

“Your anus looks great!” he said, and I add that exclamation point because this new doctor has a way to make everything sound like a triumph, like my excellent anus was a victory for mankind.

Hey, a little lipstick goes a long way, Doc.

He also said that my anal muscles have “good snap,” which I assume means they are like the rubber bands you find around bundles of asparagus rather than, say, a piece of gum that has been chewed so long it has lost all of its cohesion. Good snap. It made me think of the sound you get when you bite into a really good hot dog? The pop of the casing? Not an ideal image during this particular intrusion, but the mind is a funny place.

At this point the doctor, bored with the appetizers, decided to go right for the main course, and thrust one of his magnificent rebar fingers deep into my nether-passage. I guess he didn’t warn me because then maybe I’d tense up? My sphincter has good snap, after all, and I’d hate to break one of his glorious examples of manly fingerdom. Anyway. He felt around like… hm. Well, let’s say you have a milkshake, and you slurp down all of its deliciousness and then, right at the end, note that the sides of the cup remain slick with milkshake leavings, so you run your finger around the inside of the entire cup, sure not to miss a drop. It was like that. All around the inside, like he was looking for a secret candelabra or hidden bookend that would reveal a previously-concealed passage. Then he said, “Your prostate is super-smooth!”

Lando Calrissian smooth, Doc. It picks up all the ladies.

I then asked him, “While you’re back there, how’s my heart doing?”

And he gave my heart muscles a little massage and said, “Fine, fine, great. Your heart has good snap. But I did find these–” And then he pulled out a set of keys to a 1998 Saturn four-door.

Okay, that last part didn’t happen.

But he did note the super-smoothness of my prostate, and then his iron girder finger fled my most forbidden canal and left me feeling surprisingly hollowed out, as if I was standing suddenly in a room that had no furniture. (Echo, echo, echo.)

Good news was, no prostate cancer. Plus: great, snappy anus.

Which, if my wife ever wises up and leaves me, will be my eHarmony headline.

Anyway, all of this leads me to:

This is really uncomfortable stuff, getting probed like that. Elbows forward, my Ent-like doctor sticking his branches up my no-no-hole. And there’s a part of you that thinks: nope, yeah, no, this is so not worth it, this is weird, I feel weird, I’m pretty sure this is weird.

It’s not weird.

It’s normal.

And, in fact, necessary.

Because what’s worse than getting reamed out down there is, oh, I dunno, goddamn fucking cancer. Cancer — even if it doesn’t kill you! — is a sonofabitch that cares little for your comfort, and though I have not yet had it, I am very well assured (ass-ured?) it is a thousand million blamjillian times worse than the tests you gotta suffer through to detect it.

I come from family who, honestly, is a little wussy about these kinda tests, be they prostate exams, colonoscopies, any manner of testicular juggling. (Wussy and, in some cases, prejudiced. As if a prostate exam would “turn them gay.” First: nothing wrong with being gay. Second: gay and “anal invasion” are non synonymous. Third: gay is not activated via some clandestine switch next to your prostate. “Sorry, Bob, flipped the wrong switch. Broke it, too. You may wanna call your wife.”) I’ve met some women (older ones, usually) who seem somehow prudish about all the vital lady tests, too — they hurt, they’re uncomfortable, they’re weird. Boob mashing and vahooha scraping. And I get that. I dig what you’re burying.

But, really, get it done.

Get this stuff checked out when you need to get stuff checked out. I experienced a little physical discomfort, but I knew the doctor wasn’t back there like, licking his lips and masturbating with his free hand. This isn’t titillating to him. He’s an expert biological plumber, not a sex addict.

(And maybe it’s time to get shut of the notion of TMI anyway. If it really is information, then for the sake of hot fuck you can’t really have enough of it. Too much information? No such thing! I reserve the right to retract this statement after one of you emails me some graphic macro image of the cairn of skin tags adorning your third nipple.)

To reiterate:

Testing.

Get it done.

Get it done.

GET IT CHECKED OUT, FOR CHRISSAKES.

Just, y’know, look at your doctor’s hands first. I’m just saying.

Will Self would have us all believe that the novel is dead.

An interesting assertion, given that in the United States alone we see around 300,000 books published by the so-called traditional system each year — and, reportedly, around 50,000 of those are novels. That fails to include the 300,000 or more books that are author-published each year, a high percentage of which are surely also novels.

Those numbers are, frankly, low estimates.

It is thereby safe to assume that at the barest ittiest-bittiest tiniest-winiest minimum, over 100,000 novels enter our Literary Atmosphere every year. One. Hundred. Thousand.

(We do not see 100,000 films, television shows, or video games released every year, do we?)

Some of the biggest bestsellers of all time have been in the last 20 years.

The digital revolution has only multiplied the ways that people can read books.

But, of course, the novel is dead.

Total corpse. Nail the coffin shut, everyone. The stink must be contained.

Blah blah blah, buggy whips, typewriters, computers that fill entire rooms.

As if the novel is a piece of technology rather than a literary form.

The modern novel has been around for roughly 200 years, but novel-length fiction (ostensibly: a novel) has been around for thousands of years. And it won’t go away. Maybe ever. Because the novel is more than just a container. It’s a programming language. A narrative code to transmit stories, and within those stories lie various truths, ideas, lies about humanity. (And vampires. Lots of vampires. And I see nothing wrong with that because vampires are cool, shut up.)

The novel is not dead.

The novel is eternal.

Its parameters will change. Its market will shift.

Everyone will declare it dead again and again. It’s an old schtick, actually, easily a century-old already, and all the more tiresome for it. Tiresome like when Grandpa angrily squeezes his colostomy bag and cranks on about how JEOPARDY JUST ISN’T THE SAME ANYMORE or WHY AREN’T MOVIES NICE ANYMORE MOVIES USED TO BE NICE.

It’s like everyone forgets all over again.

Of course, what Will Self is really saying, literally and literarily, is that the literary novel, the SERIOUS NOVEL WRITTEN WITH GRAVE SERIOUSNESS THAT MAKES US ALL SERIOUS IN OUR SERIOUS CONTEMPLATION OF ITS SERIOUS BUSINESS is dead, and even that remains a dubious assertion, but just the same, all that means is a particular style of novel isn’t selling as well as you’d like. Just because someone will not publish or buy a half-ass literary novel does not mean that the entire novel form has eaten the twin barrels of an uncultured shotgun.

Of course, Will Self isn’t even saying that. Because he’s still writing and still publishing and he’s able to do that because the novel isn’t growing flowers out of its dead body.

The novel isn’t dead.

The novel will change.

The novel will grow

Our notions about the novel will change and grow.

Other forms will gain prominence and then shrink back.

And the novel keeps on keeping on.

Going forward, anyone who wants to pronounce it dead — find a new schtick, yeah? Let us instead pronounce that pronouncing novels dead is dead. Or, at least, really very unoriginal.

*poop noise*