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*

Last week’s challenge: Fifty Characters.

So, last weekend I was at the Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference.

It was great stuff — highly recommended.

One of the days I did a workshop on theme, a topic that, for me, is quite beloved. One of the exercises was that we had a bunch of folks in the room come up with various themes — then I picked one and had people write to that theme. Follow me? So, one of the themes they picked was:

“We’re all human, even when we’re not.”

So, I’m going to grab that, and that’s now your theme.

Use it and write a 1000-word piece of flash fiction in service to that theme.

Write it at your online space.

Link back here via the comments.

Due in one week, by May 9th, at noon EST.

The lone gunman Three is gone.

Wren is the new governor of the devastated settlement of Morningside, but there is turmoil in the city. When his life is put in danger, Wren is forced to flee Morningside until he and his retinue can determine who can be trusted.

But out in the Open, they find a border outpost infested with Weir in greater numbers than anyone has ever seen. These lost, dangerous creatures are harboring a terrible secret – one that will have consequences not just for Wren and his comrades, but for the future of what remains of the world.

***

1.  If you MUST do something you love, you might occasionally forget you love it. (But you’ll remember again!)

It wasn’t really a surprise necessarily to discover just how much a deadline could affect my personal level of writing enjoyment, but boy oh boy did I ever get a reminded of it with this sequel.  I’m fortunate to have a day job that involves writing, so I thought I was really used to this whole writing-on-a-deadline thing.  What I neglected to recognize was that for me writing novels had been a special place for me alone where I could play with MY ideas on MY schedule (which of course on the first go-round meant it took me about three years to do six months of work).

With Morningside Fall, knowing I had some very fine folks counting on me to keep up my end of the bargain added a new dimension of pressure that I hadn’t really been expecting.  I let it get to me more than I should have, and there were many, many nights that trudging up to the office to work on The Book was a real struggle.  Sometimes I stared at my laptop bleary-eyed wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea.

The important thing was to keep at it, to keep pecking around the edges and making progress, until I found myself at those scenes and moments in the story that had driven me to start writing the thing in the first place.  My appreciation for certain reveals, or certain character resolutions was heightened, or maybe deepened, or maybe both by the slog through the set up.

2.  Keeping a record of daily productivity is very helpful.

Likely not a revelation to anyone else out there, but this was one of those things I figured I probably should be doing, but just never did.  I’ve never been much of one for lists and spreadsheets and data points and measuring, but a couple of months into writing Morningside Fall, I realized I was counting my productivity more by how many hours I spent in front of the computer rather than by how many words I had on the page.   Imagine my shock when I discovered that just sitting there in my office for three or four hours didn’t necessarily mean I’d made any real progress.

Word count might not be the most accurate thing to use to measure progress, since it’s perfectly possible to write several thousand words that don’t actually move your story forward at all, BUT it’s far better than having nothing at all to go by.  And having that record of daily work gave me some unexpected benefits, too … if I was feeling particularly burned out on a night, I could look back at my recent progress and make an informed decision about whether or not I could afford to give myself a break, or if I needed to buckle down and save the rest day for later.  It also helped me identify my overall velocity at different stages of the book, which is helping me now as I write the third installment of the series.  Knowing that I was crawling along in the early stages and practically flying towards the end is helping me stay more grounded in my expectations for Book Three, which is helping stave off some of that anxiety I suffered during Book Two.

3.  Being honest with yourself is hard, but necessary.

My original deadline for Morningside Fall was July (of 2013), but as I was getting into May I had to take some time to evaluate where I was in the story and how much time I was going to be able to devote to it over those coming months.  (This was another spot where having that Daily Record really came in handy.)  My pride kept reassuring me that WE CAN DO IT, insisting that I could write thousands of words every night between now and then and all of them would be perfect and require no editing whatsoever because hey I’m a professional!  I spent a couple of days wrestling with myself, not wanting to admit that I was in trouble.  But I was in trouble.  And I knew it, no matter how much I wanted to pretend I had it all under control.

I wrote my editor (the excellent Lee Harris of Angry Robot Books fame) a quick email to inform him I hadn’t made the progress that I’d wanted to by that point, and asking if maybe there was any wiggle room on the deadline.  It didn’t take him long to respond, but I of course spent most of that interval imagining the response was going to be somewhere between “No, it’s a hard deadline, get back to work, you hack!” and “No, it’s a hard deadline and we should have known you were a talentless hack, we’ll never work with you again and you still have to give us the book anyway!  On schedule!  Hack!”

Of course Lee’s actual response was something along the lines of “Hey, no problem, how about an extra month?  And thanks for letting us know so early!”

It wasn’t fun to admit I wasn’t hitting my targets, but it was a whole lot better to admit it eight weeks out instead of the weekend before.

4.  Sometimes your characters know themselves better than you do.

I’ve had that thing happen before where characters on the page seemed to take on a life of their own, or started making decisions I wasn’t expecting, but never to the degree that it happened while I was writing Morningside Fall.  At one point, I’d reached an important turning point in the story that I’d known was coming for a long time, and it involved a couple of characters sneaking off without anyone else knowing.  And lo and behold when I got to that moment, literally when the characters were at the door, there was another character sitting there.  My fingers typed it and my brain stopped and said “Wait, no, what?  No.  That’s not how it goes!”  But no matter how much I wanted it to go the way I had planned, once I’d seen it on the page, it just didn’t make sense any other way.  That opened a whole new branch of the story, but in the end, it was much more consistent with what had come before, and added some unexpected depth.

More startling was the character that inserted himself into the book without telling me who he was or why he wanted to be in it.  I wrote several of his chapters before I learned who he really was and what he was about.  And when I realized it I actually said “WHAT?” out loud, which was marginally embarrassing.  It’s pretty rare for me to be able to surprise myself like that.  And maybe a little unsettling.

5.  Being and Doing are different things.

I am Jay Posey.  Sometimes I write books.

If you’ve read the previous points, it probably comes as no surprise that writing Morningside Fall was really tough for me.  There were a variety of contributing factors but one thing I discovered through the process was that I’d let myself put my identity into something that couldn’t sustain it.  I’d bought into the idea that my value as a person was directly tied to my ability to produce.  Since I was A Writer, I was supposed to be Writing, and on the days when I just didn’t have it in me, I let it affect me at a much deeper level than it should have.

I’d developed an unhealthy connection between my output and my self-worth, and at times I got into a death spiral where a bad writing day brought on extra anxiety and fear, which made it harder to write the next day …

Writing is hard work, sure.  A novel is a long work that takes patience, discipline, and sometimes a little grit.  But writing a book should never cause an existential crisis.  Knowing that I need to guard that boundary between who I am and what I do was the most significant of these five things I learned writing Morningside Fall.

***

Jay Posey is a professional typist with a face for radio and a voice for print. He’s the author of the novels THREE and MORNINGSIDE FALL, published by Angry Robot Books, and is a senior narrative designer at Ubisoft/Red Storm Entertainment, where he has spent many years contributing as a writer and game designer to Tom Clancy’s award-winning Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six franchises.  He blogs occasionally at jayposey.com and spends more time than he should hanging around Twitter as @HiJayPosey.

Jay Posey: Blog | Twitter

Morningside Fall: Amazon | B&N | Robot Trading Co

When murdered sinners fail to show up in Hell, it’s up to Salim Ghadafar, an atheist warrior forced to solve problems for the goddess of death, to track down the missing souls. In order to do so, Salim will need to descend into the anarchic city of Kaer Maga, following a trail that ranges from Hell’s iron cities to the gates of Heaven itself. Along the way, he’ll be aided by a host of otherworldly creatures, a streetwise teenager, and two warriors of the mysterious Iridian Fold. But when the missing souls are the scum of the earth, and the victims devils themselves, can anyone really be trusted?

1. SEQUELS ARE HARD

Writing my first novel, Death’s Heretic, was deceptively easy. As a full-time book editor, I’d seen inside the sausage factory enough to finally remove the paralyzing awe that had always surrounded novelists for me, and learned how an outline can hold the terror of the blank page at bay. And so, brimming with the hubris that comes from seeing professional authors in the literary underoos, I threw a bunch of my favorite ideas from the Pathfinder campaign setting together, then shook the jar to see what would happen.

To my delight, people liked it, and the kid inside me who’d waited twenty years for this moment rejoiced. I had written a book! It didn’t suck! Surely I knew what I was doing now, and the next one would be even easier, right?

Except that now I had an expectation for myself. What if my next book sucked? Would I fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump? It had been years since I began writing Death’s Heretic—did I even remember how to start a novel? And was my formerly mysterious protagonist even interesting if you had already read the first book and knew his backstory?

In the end, despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I reminded myself that a book is neither good nor bad unless it’s done, and that the only solution was to write now and worry about the quality later. Thankfully, as often happens in such situations, when I went back and read it afterward, I was astonished at how much I enjoyed it.

Time and distance can make even your own books seem larger than life, but don’t let that psych you out. Books are like your children: No matter how polished they may seem now, don’t forget that they used to wet the bed regularly. And while other people may judge them against each other, your job is to love each of them for their own merits.

2. BLENDER YOUR GENDER

If you’ve been paying attention to the speculative fiction community, you’ve probably noticed that gender (and race, and sexuality, and…) is a hot-button issue. A common theme is that of representation: for instance, women make up more than half the population, so it only makes sense that they’d make up half the characters in your story, right? Thus, if you’re looking at your story and all the characters are male, you should strongly consider shaking things up.

“But why should art be subject to political correctness?” you might ask. Leaving aside for the moment all the myriad reasons why it’s good to care about people’s feelings, as well as the fact that you just put on a salami vest and walked into the lion cage of the Internet, I’m going to totally nullify that question by saying that even if you don’t care about the political or social justice angles, gender balance makes your art better.

After Death’s Heretic came out, I had a friend tell me that while she liked the book, she’d noticed that there were basically no women in it. I was flabbergasted—one of the two protagonists was female! But she pointed out that there were very few women in supporting roles—walk-ons with a few lines or wandering past in the background—and that the resulting all-male world really disrupted her suspension of disbelief. She couldn’t imagine herself in the world, because she wasn’t represented.

With The Redemption Engine, I went in with gender balance in mind—and promptly hit a snag. My main character was male, his two sidekicks were male (because I really wanted to write a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser dup as a married gay couple), and their scrappy local guide had already been established as male in other books. In short: total sausage-fest. So I made a list of other characters the book needed—the villains, the competing investigator, the recruited warriors—and tried to add women until it felt more balanced. I also tried to pay attention to the background, to make sure that there was representation among the walk-on characters as well.

Do you always need to have gender balance? No, of course not. I recently sold a military SF story where the soldiers were all gay men fighting alongside their lovers, and in that instance, it made sense for everyone to be male. But character demographics matter, and if your default is to make everyone male (or white, or straight, or…) you’re unnecessarily alienating part of your potential audience.

3. CUT YOUR TAGS

Dialogue tags are often one of the easiest places to cut words, as character actions or beats can convey the information just as well. Compare these two passages:

“Look at that!” James said, and pointed. “Chuck’s being eaten by squirrels!”

vs.

“Look at that!” James pointed. “Chuck’s being eaten by squirrels!”

See how the action renders the dialogue tag unnecessary? Sometimes rhythm alone is enough:

“Did you write me that blog post?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Wendig, sir!”

I notice this especially with audiobooks, where the voice acting really highlights unnecessary dialogue tags, so when writing my new book, I did my best to take out all but the most load-bearing tags.

4. ARCS AREN’T JUST FOR NOAH

In my first book, I had the luxury of writing an odd-couple romance, which gave me an easy, classic arc for my two protagonists: at the beginning, they can barely tolerate each other, but by the end, they’ve grown to love and respect each other. It’s something we see constantly, from Pride and Prejudice to Sherlock, and most of us can tell that story on autopilot. (And before you try to correct me about Sherlock, I’d argue that every buddy cop show is a romance, regardless of who they kiss.)

In The Redemption Engine, however, I didn’t have a love interest. Salim, my main character, is flying solo the whole time, and while he makes a lot of friends, I had trouble figuring out what he was feeling. About halfway through the manuscript, frustrated by his cardboard acting, I sat down and decided that I needed to give him a character arc. And not just him—his whole damn team.

In the end (spoilers!), Salim’s arc ended up being relatively subtle: He goes from serving the death goddess against his will to realizing that, while he may resent his servitude, he actually agrees with her cause. He’s finally able to admit that, at some level, he likes his job. Once I understood that, it made it far easier for me to get inside his head and make him a sympathetic character.

5. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE

This isn’t some axiom about creating danger and tension in your manuscript. This isn’t really even about writing at all, but it is the most important thing I learned while writing this book.

Someday, you are going to die.

So am I. And whether I write one book or a hundred, someday I’m going to close my eyes for the last time, and that will be that.

And I find that incredibly comforting.

See, I pay a lot of attention to other writers. You probably do, too. I see their announcements on Twitter, and I think, “Wow, they just put out another book?” And then my Productivity Demon pipes up and starts musing about how much more successful and satisfied I would be if I just spent more time writing. Knuckled down. Kept my nose to the grindstone. After all, don’t all those writing advice articles say that a real writer sacrifices for their art? That if you can stand to not write, even for a few days, then you’re not a real writer?

And that, my friends, is bullshit. Worse, it’s dangerous bullshit. Because when you’re an achievement junkie, as so many writers are—why else would we trudge through all the rejection and unpaid hours?—there’s no such thing as enough. Start following that rabbit hole, and pretty soon you’re feeling guilty for all the time you’re not writing. The rest of your life becomes an impediment. An obstacle.

And that’s no way to live. Fuck sacrifice. Write because you like writing, because the hard work brings a correspondingly deep satisfaction, and if you find that it’s interfering disproportionately with the rest of your life, stop. Go kiss your spouse. Play the guitar. Lie in a sunbeam with a dog and watch the wind in the trees. Because this is all we get, people. This right here. And whether you’re Stephen King or a newbie with a single sale, if you aren’t enjoying your life, no amount of publication is going to fix that.

Realizing that allowed me to finally relax and quit feeling like I’m constantly falling behind all my incredibly talented colleagues, and instead spend time on all the different people and activities that bring me joy. And you know what? I’m still writing. I may not be quite as fast as I used to be, but I enjoy it a hell of a lot more. And isn’t that why we all got into this in the first place?

Someday, you will die. Use your time wisely.

* * *

James L. Sutter is the Managing Editor of Paizo Publishing, as well as a co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. He’s the author of the novels Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine, the former of which was ranked #3 on Barnes & Noble’s Best Fantasy Releases of 2011 and was a finalist for both an Origins Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. In addition to numerous game books, James has written short stories for such publications as Escape Pod, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Geek Love, and the #1 Amazon bestseller Machine of Death. His anthology Before They Were Giants pairs the first published short stories of speculative fiction luminaries with new interviews and advice from the authors themselves.

James L. Sutter: Website | Twitter

The Redemption Engine: Amazon | B&N

The second book in the flintlock epic fantasy Powder Mage Trilogy, following Promise of Blood. 

Tamas’ invasion of Kez ends in disaster when a Kez counter-offensive leaves him cut off behind enemy lines with only a fraction of his army, no supplies, and no hope of reinforcements. Drastically outnumbered and pursued by the enemy’s best, he must lead his men on a reckless march through northern Kez to safety, and back over the mountains so that he can defend his country from an angry god.

In Adro, Inspector Adamat only wants to rescue his wife. To do so he must track down and confront the evil Lord Vetas. He has questions for Vetas concerning his enigmatic master, but the answers might lead to more questions.

Tamas’ generals bicker among themselves, the brigades lose ground every day beneath the Kez onslaught, and Kresimir wants the head of the man who shot him in the eye. With Tamas and his powder cabal presumed dead, Taniel Two-shot finds himself as the last line of defense against Kresimir’s advancing army.

1) WRITING IS A JOB

You know that scene at the end of Disney’s Aladdin, where our titular hero convinces Jafar to wish to be a genie? Becoming a published author is kind of like that; you get everything that goes with it. The Crimson Campaign is my second book, but the first one I wrote under contract, which means I now had deadlines and editors and fans and holy crap people expect things of me now. It changes your whole way of looking at the whole “writing” thing.

2) TITLES ARE HARD

I think a huge part of writing a book is self-exploration. You find out your strengths and weaknesses, and you do your best to improve upon the latter and write to the former. One of the many things I discovered is that I am terrible at titles. You can go any number of routes: evocative, obvious, action-packed, or more. I tried a little bit of everything, slinging titles at my editor until my arm hurt, and we finally settled upon The Crimson Campaign. Which I do love, by the way.

This is one area that I’ll admit some professional jealousy, over Steven Erikson’s titles. Toll the Hounds. Dust of Dreams. Memories of Ice. So cool.

3) THE WRITING DOESN’T ALWAYS GO AS PLANNED

I had a hell of a time trying to start The Crimson Campaign. It began with me writing a huge chunk of a novel based on the outline I had originally handed my editor, (an outline, I’ll add, that I was very happy with) and I hated every minute of it. I tried again and still didn’t get anywhere. The writing was making me ill because of how forced it felt. My agent finally told me that it was more important to write a good book than it was to follow that outline. So I threw it out and started fresh and was able to write the book fast enough to meet my (extended) deadline. I hate to think of what would have happened if I had stuck to that original plot. I would probably still be angrily revising it to this day.

4) MINOR CHARACTER HAVE LIVES TOO, AND READERS DIG IMMERSION

While writing The Crimson Campaign, I spent a lot of time thinking about minor characters. Some of these show up for just a few pages or a chapter, or maybe they don’t even show up at all and are only alluded to throughout the narrative. Usually these characters are important in some way, whether they helped shape the world in a previous era or whether they are simply an obstacle for the hero.

I found myself thinking about how much I liked these characters and how vital they really are to a good work of fiction. If your main characters are the meat and potatoes, these side characters are your spices and really give the world its flavor. But why are they were here, now, in my world? Where did their stories start?

Using that thought experiment with a side character from Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign, I wrote a short story called “The Girl of Hrusch Avenue” about a young girl on the cusp of her power. To my surprise the response was overwhelmingly positive. I found out that readers wondered the same thing I did and that they love to see the world fleshed out in positive ways like this. I’ve done the same thing with “Hope’s End,” about a doomed infantry charge, and Forsworn, a novella about living with forbidden sorcery. As people keep gobbling up the stories, I’ve discovered that compelling immersion is never a bad thing.

5) FLINTLOCK GRENADE LAUNCHERS ARE A THING

See?

* * *

Brian McClellan is an epic fantasy author. He studied writing under Brandon Sanderson and was an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. His first novel, Promise of Blood, was praised by critics and readers alike, is on the short list for the Gemmell Morningstar Award, and was a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Debut Goodreads Author.

Brian is an avid player of video games and reader of epic novels and history. His hobbies include making homemade jam from local berries and tending to his hive of honeybees. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, two dogs, and cat.

Brian McClellan: Website | Twitter

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