In the near future, corporation rules every possible freedom. Without government, there can be no crime. And every act is measured against competing interests, hidden loyalties and the ever-upward pressure of the corporate ladder.

Any quest for transparency is as punishable as an act of murder. But one man has managed to slip the system, a future-day robin hood who tests diary milk outside of corporate control and posts the results to the world.

When the Milkman is framed for a young girl’s murder and anonymous funding comes through for a documentary filmmaker in search of true art beneath corporate propaganda, eyes begin to turn and soon the hunt is on.

Can the man who created the symbol of the Milkman, the only one who knows what really happened that bloody night, escape the corporate rat maze closing around him?

Or is it already too late?

* * *

I will not tell you what I really learned

The world of The Milkman – the Free World – is post-government. Corporations foreclosed on debt-ridden nations and started running things themselves. In this world there are no nations and thus no laws. Not that the world is in chaos; companies just have different priorities. Once you let your mind play with this for a while, you might learn things about yourself that you didn’t want to know. Right now, in the real world, people do all kinds of creepy, crazy-ass stuff. Hemmed in only by the laws of economics and physics, I imagined people going deeper into the dark. I imagined. Me. A nice guy from the suburbs who wanted to write a book about economics. Some things crawled out of the shadows and into the book. Not everything. I won’t tell you about that stuff. Maybe next time.

This book isn’t about anything

As a corollary to above, as per unanticipated plot threads, novels sprawl, even tight ones. That is why they are not short stories. This is not bad. Unlike my beloved suburbs, sprawl in a new, wholly imagined world is great if you treat it like a garden: feed it and weed it, and don’t let it get out of hand. My book about a divergent economic model for the globe is almost equally about the lengths people will go for their children. It’s about love and fairness and tenacity and I’m pretty happy my book isn’t about anything – any one thing. It is about lots.

Don’t be yourself

I am a listener, a collector of sounds and blurted thoughts. I’m not shy – I engage people in conversation – but I’m much more likely to ask questions than answer. I like to read and ponder, none of which gets a novel out the door. These traits lay a decent foundation for writing; but, to write, that is a different story. Opening up, expressing, answering those questions I ducked. It’s not me, or to be more honest, it was not the me I was comfortable being. This novel showed me that, just as a book isn’t about one thing, neither am I.

Don’t write about what you know

Ray Bradbury gets to this in his wonderful Zen in the Art of Writing. Write about what you want to know. This book exemplifies that approach. No one knows what it’s like to live in post-government society. I wondered. I’m pretty sure there is an inquisition particle – a curiosity carrying proton, or curton, if you will – that attracts other curtons. The sense of newness and discovery you feel while you write whips up those feelings in others. Unless your curtons have garlic. Not everyone likes garlic.

Write poorly

This is the one that matters: don’t let grammar, spelling, word choice, blanking on a character’s name, POV or loud noises stanch your flow. When the words come, do everything you can to keep them coming and worry about the mess later. Writing is an 18-step process. Once I figured that out – poof! – I had a novel. A crappy novel, but I fixed that. Now it’s a pretty good one. I hope you’ll check it out.

* * *

Michael Martineck: I have been writing in some form or another since I was seven years old. More recently, I have written short stories, comic book scripts, articles and trio of novels. DC Comics published some of my work in the 90s. Planetmag, Aphelion and a couple of other long-dead e-zines helped me out in the 00’s, which is also when I published children’s books The Misspellers and The Wrong Channel. Cinco de Mayo, a novel for adults, is now out from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing which is also the publisher of The Milkman. I live in Grand Island, NY. with my wife and two children.

Michael Martineck: Website | Twitter

The Milkman: A Free World Novel: Amazon

The Gonzo Big Book Bundle.

Seven writing e-books.

Name-your-price, starting at $10.

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I’m running this until the end of the month, which is in just a few days.

Nab it while the nabbing is good.

Or before the BONE MAN finds you.

I didn’t say anything about a BONE MAN. Who said BONE MAN?

It wasn’t me.

There definitely isn’t a supernatural BONE MAN that I’ve hired to hunt down people who displease me by failing to take part in my wonderful book promotions. He definitely doesn’t have a thousand fleshless fingers and centipedes for his lips.

There’s no BONE MAN.

Night night.

Sleep tight.

Don’t let the BONE MAN bite. Your face. Off the skull. Which is how you join the BONE MAN and haunt people as one of his OSSEOUS MINIONS oh there I’ve gone and said too much.

*draws curtains*

The toddler’s secret goal is to destroy your vacation.

It’s not the toddler’s fault. It’s just how this little creature rolls. Toddlers, after all, are made up of Chaos Particles — little sub-atomic building parts that grow more excited and agitated when they see the chance to destroy serenity and undo order. The toddler is an entity whose very presence invokes entropy, and in the toddler’s presence, all things drift toward total breakdown. Consider what happens if you place a toddler in a perfectly clean room. In 4.63 seconds, that room will look like Godzilla the King of Monsters had a sexy-time orgy with seven other kaiju. The coffee table will be upside down. The TV will be on some pay-per-view boxing match. A bunch of cats that aren’t your will be running around. The ceiling fan? On fire.

Again: it is not the toddler’s fault. It’s just what they’re made of. Over time, as the toddler ages, the Chaos Particles fuse to become the same building blocks that comprise us all: electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, high fructose corn syrup, Red no. 40, Lincoln Logs, whatever. (Exception is when they enter their teenage years, at which point all molecules break down into Sullen, Surly Quarks and Quantum Asshole Strings.)

So, if you’re going to travel with a toddler — like, say, going on vacation — you need to be prepared. You need to steel yourself against what’s coming. Shore up your defenses. Build armor. Train your army. Ride out in front of them on a horse with your face painted blue and give an impassioned speech about BUT THE TODDLER SHALL NEVER TAKE… OUR FREEDOM.

(Ha ha ha they totally take your freedom. They’re freedom-eaters, you fool!)

I just traveled to Myrtle Beach with my wife and toddler, and so having done something once, I am now prepared to tell you how to do it like the blustering, stammering blowhard that I am.

And so, I give you: 25 tips on traveling with your toddler.

1. Accept Now That Your Relaxing Adult-Style Vacation Is Fucking Dead

Ha ha ha, you poor, poor parent. You actually thought you were gonna get in that spa visit. Maybe get your drank on. Do some jet-skiing, some sun-tanning, some late-night sexy-time. Mmm, yeah, no. Your adult vacation has been washed out to sea like a broken condom. It has been abraded by coral and eaten by an eel. Your vacation now is wet wipes and snack bags, stuffed animals and Matchbox cars, zoo visits and playgrounds and potty-time in awkward bathrooms. You will glimpse your once-upon-a-time adult-style vacation sometimes, a fleeting shadow like watching the Loch Ness Monster pass underneath your boat. Once in a while you may even catch this mythical creature and get an hour here and there to yourself. But the vacation you once had is not the vacation that exists for you now. Because toddler.

2. Begin Your Propaganda Bombing Early

You can’t just spring a vacation on your toddler like it’s a surprise. “TA-DA, GET ON A PLANE NOW, TINY HUMAN, HERE, JUST CRAWL INTO THIS WINGED METAL TUBE WHICH WILL BE FLUNG ACROSS THE HEAVENS AT HIGH SPEEDS.” You gotta get in their heads early. You are the Propaganda Minister for your own vacation. You need to start selling it early. Get them excited. Tell them about all the things you’re going to do (and do not lie about this, for toddlers remember your tricksy promises). You have to sell them on the plane, the beach, the mountains, the car ride, whatever’s on the agenda. Love-bomb them with the coming vacation. This is valuable because it also might signal trouble spots — if you start telling the tiny dictator about the plane ride and she starts freaking out about it, well, that’s a sign you have some more propagandizing to do.

3. Forget The Schedule, Aim For Grab-Bag Of Options

We like to think of our schedules as rigid as rebar, as inflexible as the Incredible Hulk, but truth is, our schedules are snowflakes under fragile glass. And in the hands of a toddler — who, let’s remember, are AGENTS OF CHAOS INSERTED INTO THIS WORLD BY CACKLE-MAD DEITIES — your schedule is a crumpled-up paper airplane that won’t fly five inches. Schedules are reliant on movement, timing, precision. Toddlers are the antithesis to those things, and so your best bet is to scrap any regimented schedules and instead hew to a random floating grab-bag of options — think of your vacation like the menu at a Chipotle. Every day is a potential buffet of treats, and you can build your schedule as you go rather than at the start of the day. You know why drunk drivers sometimes walk away from horrific accidents? Because they’re too drunk to realize what’s happening, and so they turn all ragdoll as the car folds up around them. The lucky dipshits survive because they’re inadvertently flexible. So: be flexible. Don’t let your vacation plans snap like an old man’s legbone. The winds of the toddler tornado are fierce, and you must bend to them.

4. Your Goal Is To Just Get To The Next Thing

Break your vacation up into digestible toddler-sized chunks. The toddler is a small person and so your vacation must seem small to meet their perspective. Forget grand, sweeping journeys — think Duplo blocks. Don’t overdo it. The goal, then, is to get your tot to the next thing. Not tomorrow. Not the end of the trip. Just the very next thing. Don’t worry too much about “later,” just think about “soon.” Think about what’s next, and do what needs to be done to get them there. Food? Nap? Promise of the premise? More propaganda? As noted earlier: don’t lie. Toddlers will believe whatever tiny fibs or epic deceptions you give them, and they will seek every opportunity to hang you for your insolence. They will remember. And they will ruin you for it.

5. Bribery Is Shameless, And Also, You Should Totally Do It

I am not a fan of appeasement because something-something Hitler. Appeasement parenting is a good way to raise a little monster, because you will train them to push and push and push and expect more and more and more because that’s how appeasement works. “I don’t want my little tiny person to be upset!” you say as your child flails and flounces and shrieks like a cat in a wood chipper, and so you give them what they want and they learn a vital lesson: Ah, yes, the way to orchestrate the completion of my desires is to throw the kind of shit-fit that would make a coked-up baboon go quiet with fear. Now, all that being said — you also have to recognize that vacations are precious, rare things. Sometimes they require delicate care and while that does not mean appeasing your tot, it does mean getting ahead of problem areas with good-old-fashioned bribery. On a plane? Give them some new toys. At a new restaurant? Time to open up some crayons. Long car-ride? No time like the present to let them unveil the new proton cannon you had mounted to the mini-van. The timing here is vital: you don’t bribe them in the middle of tantrums. You bribe them to get ahead of the discomfort caused by ALL THESE NEW THINGS.

6. Actually, Lots Of Your Parenting Rules Can Go On Vacation For A Little While

Vacations are a good time to let loose, right? Go on, have that third margarita. Eat the goddamn cheesecake. Gobble a fistful of benzos and karate-fight a hammerhead shark. The same thing goes for your normal parenting rules. You won’t feed the kid chocolate? It’s vacation time. Give the kid some chocolate. He wants to stay up late? It’s vacation time! Kid wants a bow-and-arrow and the keys to the rental car? IT’S VACATION TIME. Okay, maybe don’t let him do that last part.

7. (But When You Get Home, Lock It Down)

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, including that time you let your toddler dress like an adult and go win big at the craps table. Though the long trenchcoat and oversized mustache was definitely super-adorbz, it’s time to quit that shit when you get home. Whatever rule-breaches happened on vacation are game over goodbye upon arriving back in reality.

8. Routine Maintenance

Despite rule breaches, there exists some value to keeping to routine, if not all of the rules. While a more flexible routine is likely necessary, it’s still good to have some semblance of what the tiny human experiences at home. Bring some carryover of the routine, be it bath-time, book-time, bed-time, snack-time, wibbly-wobbly-time, Adventure Time, Hammer Time, whatever. Here it pays to know your toddler (which is why I make mine fill out a weekly 10-page Get To Know You survey) to know how much to keep and how much to jettison out the airlock.

9. Though, Also Consider This An Opportune Time To Change Routine

Sometimes, little things creep into your daily toddlerian routine that you don’t like. It happens. We like to think that as parents we have Ultimate Control, but sometimes, bugs get into the programming. Somewhere along the way, our tot watches the iPad while on his last potty break for the night, and after that, extracting him from that iPad is like trying to pull a chestburster xenomorph off an astronaut’s face. But traveling is disruptive; you can use it to disrupt those bits of your routine that you won’t want to continue, maybe saying goodbye to them for good.

10. Time The Trip Around The Tot’s Pre-Existing Toddlerian Schedule

The actual vacation itself may modify or utterly obliterate all sense of routine and scheduling, but during the actual travel time, it may help to time things out along the lines of the toddler’s usual existence. It sounds like I’m trumpeting the obvious here, but try to be near food when your kid would normally eat. Nap-time can be a good time to travel because SWEET, SWEET NAPS. Make sure you’re near a bar when the toddler’s Martini Hour approacheth. Etc, so on. Our plane trip out was during the tot’s bed-time, but was too exciting for him to do anything but remain wide awake — which pushed us into over-tired territory. We flew back close to bed-time on the way home, which means he slept like a hibernating bridge-troll. Neither was awesome because that means he was basically up till 1:00 in the morning like one of those drunks who just won’t go down for the count. “I love you guys. I like you so so much. ANUBBER WHISKEY FOR ME AND MISTER BEAR.” *flings a shoe* *cry-eats Cheezits* *fills diaper*

11. Bread And Circuses, Teddy Grahams And Tablet Apps

Bring entertainment. The diminutive dictator, the itty-bitty imperator, the Lilliputian lord/lordess, demands to be entertained. Bread and circuses! Once again, this is not necessarily the best policy for raising a child day-to-day, but it’s a damn solid one to carve your way through traveling with a toddler-type. Bring games. Crayons. Play-Doh. Snacks. Train squirrels to be gladiators. Entertainment is power. Besides: it’s a vacation. You want to be entertained. So do they. (Seriously: an iPad or other tablet is awesome for all this. It’s a toy-box, book-shop and video-service all in one. In a small device I had a ton of educational apps, several hours of Peppa Pig videos, and a Hot Wheels catalog. Oh, and forget those ‘kid-specific’ tablets. Those are expensive junk. A real tablet will cost as much or less, with cheaper, even free, apps.)

12. Have A Hand Free (Like, Always)

You need a hand free. At any moment. You might need to hold the tot’s hand. Or steer them away from broken glass on the parking lot. Or hold their doll while they pick their nose and wipe it on a parking meter. Or straight punch a grizzly bear. Whatever. This seems obvious until you actually travel somewhere and realize your hands are nearly always full, particularly when you’re making your way through the Dante’s Inferno that is the airport. You’re carrying a diaper bag and a sand pail and a container of Animal Crackers and a canister of bear mace and next thing you know you’re looking up and your toddler is stealing someone’s Jeep 100 yards away. Have a hand free.

13. Prepare Your Packing List Like, Seven Months In Advance

Okay, maybe not that long, but seriously, packing for a trip with a toddler isn’t the same as packing for your normal adult vacation. Packing like an adult means carelessly packing the night before — “Oh, toothbrush and underwear, done!” Packing for a toddler is like building a Rube Goldberg doomsday machine. It is best done with care — meaning, not the night before you’re about to leave. Give the toddler some input, but oh holy shit do not let them pack their own bag. You will end up with a Hello Kitty backpack full of driveway gravel, doll heads, and mini-Snicker bars. And they’ll probably also put something in there that triggers security at the airport, like, hey, this seems like a good time to throw a butterfly knife in there. The toddler will have some kind of logic for it because toddlers always have logic (“That’s how Dolly eats her peas.” “What?”). Consult the toddler, but never let them have control of the packing. Also, how’d your kid get a butterfly knife? Was it cheap? Can he get me one? I lost mine at the airport.

14. Oh, Shit, The Fucking Car Seat

I have no good advice for how to deal with a car seat. None. We chose to rent one there at our vacation destination, and goddamn was that a nightmare. But we also watched other parents struggling with car seats and that looked to be an equivalent trip through the nightmare factory. You could check the car seat, but those things are apparently precision-balanced by monks in Nepal, and baggage handlers throw stuff around like they’re Donkey Kong flinging barrels at a tiny Italian plumber. You could carry-on the car seat, but that’ll cost you — and now you’re lugging the thing onto a plane, and car-seats are woefully cumbersome, like carrying one of the really-awkward Tetris blocks. (Wow, two old-school video game references in one. YOU’RE WELCOME.) We did find the RideSafer, which is a safety-compliant vest. Easy to pack.

15. Do Not Leave That One Precious Toy At Home

Our tot has a rotating group of precious toys, so this one was tricky — but if your toddler has like, a favorite bunny or blankie or ninja weapon, do not forget it. If that thing is 600 miles away from you and the tiny person, oh, jeez, I pray for you. Because these little imps remember all this stuff. They’re like a dog with a bone. They’ll never let you live it down and every three-point-four minutes of the vacation the tot will be screaming DO YOU HAVE CURIOUS GEORGE DO YOU HAVE HIM DO YOU DO YOU DO YOU HUH WHY NOT AAAAAAAAAH GRAVE ENNUI PLAGUES ME I AM ALONE IN THIS FRACTURED UNIVERSE FOR I AM WITHOUT A MONKEY WHO IS ALSO AN APE BUT NO ONE CALLS HIM AN APE AND DOOM DOOM DOOOOOOM TO YOU ALL.

16. Hunger And Fatigue Will Conspire To Crush Your Puny Vacation

As I said in an earlier post about toddlers, without food and sleep, your toddlers become hill cannibals. This is doubly true during trips because everything is already wonky — lots of NEW SHINY SCARY OH GOD WHAT’S THAT HEY THAT LOOKS FUN — and so any dip into hunger and fatigue is magnified. At that point they’re pretty much werewolves. Rampaging, howling werewolves with flamethrowers. Lots of stuff gets missed during travel: be sure to address food, drink, sleep. Oh, and potty-time. Being on an airplane is not the ideal time to deal with pee-sodden sneakers or a poo-shellacked seat-belt.

17. Consider Crisis Points And Contingency Plans

Things will go sideways, pear-shaped, wibbly-wobbly, fucky-wucky. As an adult traveling alone or in pairs, so what? Missed connection. Late flight. Closed highway. Hotel reservation gone south. Shit happens. You might panic at the time, but really, you’re fine. You’re adults. Try that with a toddler in tow. You miss a connection or are delayed in any way, now you’ve got a heap of new problems: a collision of boredom, impatience, hunger, fatigue, general toddler malaise and bewilderment. What’s your next move? Plan ahead.

18. Do Things They Wanna Do, Not Just Things You Want Them To Wanna Do

I’ll admit, sometimes I’m the father who wants my son to like things he doesn’t necessarily like. He loves trucks and I don’t give four good goddamns about trucks (unless they’re carrying ice cream), so maybe I try to gently elbow him into liking other things (so far, he’s not keen on whiskey tasting). Getting your kids to check out new stuff is good! That has real value because tots need exposure to new things. He was dubious about going to the aquarium and the shark tank in particular but he loved the sharks. Just the same, I recognize he has his own little ecosystem of wants and interests and I’d be a right rollicking jerk-faced jerk-pants to ignore them. Plus, it’s vital to give your toddler some vacation time too — it’s their trip, same as it is yours.

19. Check Them With Your Luggage

Toddlers are tricky travelers, so your best bet is to check them with your luggage. As long as they don’t weigh more than 50 pounds, you can — *receives note* — oh. Ohhhh. Oh. You, uhhh, you can’t do that? You sure? I mean, WHAT NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT HOW DARE YOU. *clears throat* *quietly removes toddler from suitcase*

20. You Seriously Cannot Have Enough Baby Wipes

I don’t know what it is with toddlers but somehow they’re always sticky. It’s like they keep a jar of strawberry jam in their pocket and sometimes they dip into it with a couple of fingers. Wherever you go, wet wipes will be welcome. Pee. Boogers. A grilled cheese sandwich they found in a parking lot. Frankly, just fill a whole fucking backpack with baby wipes.

21. Build In Extra Time (In Fact, Bring Along A Goddamn Time Machine)

Toddlers take an extra 27 minutes to do everything. Anything from getting out the door to blowing their nose to picking a stuffed animal for the car ride. Whatever the normal time you would take, add 27 minutes to it. Build this into any and all vacation scheduling. Particularly when you have important things to do like, say, get on a plane, or be in an illegal Toyko drift race.

22. Consider Shipping Stuff To And From Your Destination

Stuff is heavy. Toddler stuff is extra heavy. It’s possible that every toddler is in fact a distributor of personal black holes. Anyway, given that airlines these days ding you for every bag you bring — “What’s that in your pocket, a wallet? That’ll be a $35 Wallet Transportation Fee” — you should consider the notion of shipping a bag to and from your destination. It’s probably cheaper than whatever the airline will cost you, because their cost almost surely involves tithing a finger, a nose, maybe a coupla toes.

23. Know Your Child

This sounds stupid, but really, really, seriously think about your kid. Think about what they like. What they fear. What they want. Then compare it to your vacation. Hold the mental transparency of your child against the blueprint for the vacation. Do they line up? “Foodie vacation in Spain” is not a toddler-friendly vacation. “Seven weeks in a McDonald’s ball-pit” is very possibly a more toddler-adjacent trip, but mostly it’s just trying to realize you have a family now, not a pairing of booze-guzzling world-traveling grown-ups. Go to the beach. Look at a fucking zebra somewhere.

24. Sympathy Instead Of Stubbornness, Empathy Instead Of Anger

Think about it. Your toddler has done like, 3% of the things you’ve done in your life. She’s probably never been on a trip and if she has, her goldfish-like brain has already cast it back into the sea with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam. This is weird, wonderful, scary stuff. Frustrating and confusing and fun. Our toddler frequently wore the face of “hey, what the shit is going on here” constantly. Sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a scowl. So, you have to be sympathetic. Go to them with empathy. Try to grok what it’s like. Give them a little extra space to be frustrated and have fun on a trip. It’ll soothe everybody’s surly beast.

25. Learn To Love The Chaos

It’s gonna be total cuckoopants. So: enjoy it. Embrace the weirdness of it all. Just as they say, WHEN IN ROME, VISIT THE TAUROBOLIUM AND SPEAR THE BULL AND BATHE IN ITS BLOOD (paraphrase), they also say, WHEN IN TODDLERLAND, BE LIKE THE TODDLER. Okay, nobody says that. Point is: give into it a little. Go with the flow. Just for this trip. The toddler will thank you, because as we’ve already discussed, the toddler is basically pure chaos.

And sometimes, pure chaos can be a whole lotta fun.

[Edit: I should thank Fran Wilde, Paul Acampora and others for supplying me with the “give toddler toys on the plane” tip. That worked like a charm.]

Last week’s challenge: “Stock Photo What-The-Palooza.”

(Once more, sorry this challenge is up late — vacation last week with poor Internet access had me unable to post the damn thing properly. But here it is! Don’t throw things!)

This week’s challenge is:

Write a story in 100 words. (Technical term: “drabble.”)

I don’t care what genre.

I want it to be a complete story. Beginning, middle, and end.

Not just a vignette — not just a snapshot of a scene.

And I want you to write with the explicit goal of making us feel something.

Joy, pain, fear, sorrow. Something. Some emotion.

In 100 words only.

You can write it at your blog, link back here — or, because the stories are short enough, feel free to write them write into the comment section below. (But do check your length. Again, stories of no more than 100 words.)

Crack the whip, word-herders.

[Edit: turning comments off. I figure nothing good is gonna come after 450 comments.]

A young man felt spurned by women and shot people because of it. He drove up and fired a weapon out of a BMW and committed murder, leaving behind a video and a manifesto about his rage against women. He felt rejected by them. He was reportedly a follower of MRA (Men’s Rights Activism), which is a group of men who are upset because they feel they have an unequal set of rights in a few key areas, which is a lot like a rich guy who is mad at a homeless guy because the homeless guy is standing in his favorite patch of sunlight. (The term “men’s rights” is roughly analogous to the phrase “white power,” and equally creepy.) Yes, we can talk about gun rights and mental health issues because neither are properly addressed in this country. But we also need to talk about the entitlement of men and the objectification of women.

Most of the men who read this blog are, I hope and assume, not entitled piss-bags who think that they are owed affection by women, as if that’s the role of women in this life, to be willing and charitable receptacles for our urges. To be punching bags and accessories. To reiterate and sound the horn just the same: women don’t owe you anything. Whether you’re an alpha male or a wanna-be alpha, some faux bro-dude bad-ass or some repressed alley-dwelling CHUD, it matters little. I don’t care who you are; your maleness does not entitle you to anything.

You may have been told otherwise.

Culture wants us to think that. That being a guy comes with a rider like we’re Van Halen demanding a fucking bowl full of green M&Ms or some shit, but I’m here to tell you, that isn’t true. It’s a myth. You’re entitled to nothing, and yet, ironically, you’re born with this pesky thing called privilege. And sure, someone out there is already mad I’ve invoked that word, that being a dude is hard on its own and privilege is an illusion and blah blah blah something about divorced men and prostate cancer, but just remember that the men go on dates thinking they won’t get laid, and women go on dates thinking they might get raped, punched, maybe killed. Remember that as a man you can say all kinds of shit and add “lol” at the end of it and nobody gives a shit, but as a woman anything you say might be interpreted as antagonistic and end up with rape threats or death threats. Remember that any seemingly safe space — train station, bookstore, social media, city park — is an opportunity for a man to catch a train or read a book, but is also an opportunity for a woman to be the subject of threat or sexual violence.

Remember that men get paid more, get to do more, get to be more.

I understand that as a man your initial response to women talking about misogyny, sexism, rape culture and sexual violence is to wave your hands in the air like a drowning man and cry, “Not all men! Not all men!” as if to signal yourself as someone who is not an entitled, presumptive fuck-whistle, but please believe me that interjecting yourself in that way confirms that you are. Because forcing yourself into safe spaces and unwelcome conversations makes you exactly that.

Instead of telling women that it’s not all men, show them.

Show them by listening and supporting.

Show them by cleaning the dogshit out of your ears and listening to their stories — and recognize that while no, it’s not “all men,” it’s still “way too many men.” Consider actually reading the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter not to look for places to interject and defend your fellow men, but as a place to gain insight and understanding into the experiences women have. That hashtag should serve as confirmation that women very often experience the spectrum of sexism and rape culture from an all-too-early age. Recognize that just because “not all men” are gun-toting, women-hating assholes fails to diminish the fact that sexism and rape culture remain firmly entrenched and institutional within our culture.

Because if your response to the shooting is to defend men (or worse, condemn women) instead of speaking out against this type of violence and attitude, then you best check yourself.

This isn’t the time to talk about nice guys. Or friend zoning. Or men’s rights. Or rejection.

This isn’t the time to ride up as standard-bearers for the realm of menfolk.

You have privilege, so use it. You’re not a white knight, but if other men try to objectify women or talk down to them — step up or walk away. If you have a son, teach him about consent and drive home the point that the 100% of the fault in a rape case is on the rapist, not the victim. Help other men — you, your children, your friends — reach a place of empathy.

This isn’t about you. Don’t derail. Don’t pull that mansplaining bullshit.

Shut your mouth and don’t speak over them.

Open your ears and listen.

Open your eyes and see.

Thus endeth the lesson, gents.

I Kill the Mockingbird is a middle grade novel about Lucy Jordan and her two best friends, Elena Vallejo and Michael Buskirk. The three – all book lovers – have just finished eighth grade. As they face the summer before high school, they contemplate the tricky changes happening all around them including Lucy’s mom’s recent victory over cancer, the death of a beloved English teacher, and Michael and Lucy’s budding romance. They’ve also got more pragmatic concerns like the assigned reading list distributed on the last day of school, which includes To Kill a Mockingbird.

“What if we could make everybody read To Kill a Mockingbird this summer?” Lucy asks her friends.

In Lucy’s opinion, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the greatest book of all time. Michael thinks the classic is about “a little white tomboy who worships her father in a town filled with whacky racist Christians and lynch-mob farmers.” Meanwhile, Elena is sure that Charlotte’s Web is truly the best novel ever written. Just the same, the three friends agree to work together on a scheme to honor their dead English teacher by making as many people as possible want to read the Harper Lee novel.

Soon – thanks to a bit of “literary terrorism” plus Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and a life-sized Santa Claus doll dressed up as an ax murderer – the conspiracy to promote reading, dubbed I KILL THE MOCKINGBIRD, is not only successful, it’s out of control. Wil Wheaton, Neil Gaiman and Chuck Wendig are tweeting about it. Books are disappearing from stores and libraries around the country. The cops might be on the friends’ trail, and a Mockingbirdpalooza is about to break out in the park downtown.

I Kill the Mockingbird is a comedy about friends, first kisses, so-called great literature, social media, patron saints, and the weird, wonderful and unexpected ways that books change our lives.

***

1. Laughter is to story-stuff as Geiger counter is to uranium.

With I Kill the Mockingbird I wanted to write a comedy. I was constantly on the look-out for the funny. But every time I found a laugh, I could also scratch the surface and see loss, pain, fear, general existential horror, and cruel insanity. Good times. Good times.

Mostly, I veered away from the dark stuff. Still, all that risk, chaos, danger, and darkness… those are engines which drive stories. Harry needs Voldemort. Hitchcock needs Mcguffins, Kirk needs tribbles. Robert Downey Jr. needs himself. Mars needs Women… Okay, one of these things is not like the other, but in writing I Kill the Mockingbird, I learned that comedy can be a story-stuff Geiger counter for me. If it makes me laugh, then my story’s engines are almost always nearby.

2. Boil away the banter.

I love dialogue. Or should I say:

“I love dialogue.”

It’s fun and active, and it’s my favorite way to bring characters and scenes to life. One of the most enjoyable parts of writing dialogue is the back-and-forth rhythm of it. It’s like tennis or ping pong or badminton. A long volley – aka “banter” – can be satisfying and amusing too. But volleying doesn’t tell a story. There has to be a point.

In my earlier novels, I tended toward scenes with two or three speakers because, frankly, it’s easier to manage. In I Kill the Mockingbird, a typical scene generally features three or more characters. For me, increasing the number of characters in a scene exponentially increased the dialogue challenges. Lines started bouncing around like Mr. Moose’s ping pong balls. I struggled to keep all the words moving forward in focus and on pace. I found myself writing a lot of banter, which feels like dialogue, but it’s not. Dialogue moves a story – not just a conversation – forward. Banter is weaving and bobbing and puns and knock-knock jokes. It can be funny, witty, clever and well-written. And it’s not enough.

During revisions, I figured out a simple strategy for boiling away most (but not all) banter: I tried to make sure that each line of dialogue could only be spoken in a given situation by a specific character. If a line could be placed into the mouth of an alternate character and still work… then something had to change or go. The strategy eliminated a lot of word volley. It also forced me to create characters with more depth and often led me to more interesting places, relationships, and ideas.

I’m still a sucker for good banter. My editor tries to control me. Mostly she succeeds. Still, I do love me some knock-knock jokes.

3. Tools don’t matter.

I want a Macbook Air and a moleskin notebook and a hand-turned oaken pen with a nib pounded out of mithral by elves under the Misty Mountain. I want two gigantic high resolution monitors and an ergonomically correct chair plus a standing desk over a top-of-the line treadmill. I want an 8-foot by 10-foot sustainable cork bulletin board to hang on my wall where push pins made from shark’s teeth will hold color-coded index cards covered with hand-scrawled notes and ideas. I want a billiard table. I don’t play billiards, but Mark Twain had a billiard table in his writing study/billiard room so therefore I should have one too. I want a writing study/billiard room.

I’m not kidding. I really want that stuff. And at least once a month, I shop for it all. I convince myself that if I only had the right tools, the correct set-up, plus various high-end accouterments THEN I would be a better writer, a better husband, a better father, and a better human being.

I know it’s stupid.

I want it anyway.

While writing I Kill the Mockingbird, we sent our first-born to college. The second-born, a teenager, is not cheap. She’s worth a thousand times what she costs, but she’s not cheap. Meanwhile, our cars needed major repairs. A dog required major medical. Our house is a house so there’s always something. In the meantime, my laptop died, and the home pc tottered on its last legs. New computers plus moleskin, pool table, corkboard, shark’s teeth, and mithral nibs were just not in the budget. So I resurrected an old netbook, taught myself to install Linux, and learned how to love the free and awesome LibreOffice. My daughter helped me to construct fabulous bulletin boards out of super-cheap foam panels and spare fabric (I told you she was worth it.) My pens are often “found” (thank you, day job.) I buy notebooks at the dollar store.

As it worked out, writing I Kill the Mockingbird did not require the best tools. Half the time, my tools aren’t even very good. Usually, pen plus paper plus access to my manuscript (I often carry a paper copy around) is all I really need. Other times, LibreOffice and the netbook are enough.

All that said, I do hope to purchase a new laptop this year. And if anybody has some spare mithral and an elf lying around, feel free to send them my way.

4. My editor knows more about making books than I do.

My editor knows more about making books than I do. I was already aware of this, but I’m learning it again thanks to several recent and very kind reviews of I Kill the Mockingbird. In more than one, reviewers point to scenes which they think work especially well. In every case, those scenes work largely because my editor, Nancy Mercado, helped me to focus on where I was trying to go. In one case, a reviewer pointed toward a scene that is NOT in the book and gave thanks that I didn’t go there.  Well… I did go there. But then, thanks to Nancy’s guidance, I reconsidered it.

Here’s the thing: This is my third novel. I’ve made them all with Nancy. My first novel, Defining Dulcie, was one of Nancy’s first acquisitions around 2005. We learned how to make that book together. Since then, I’ve completed three books. Nancy has finished dozens. I’ve written three relatively short, contemporary novels for middle school readers. In the same time, she’s worked on comedies, dramas, sci-fi, fantasy, graphic novels, picture books, series, poetry, nonfiction, dystopians, short story collections, and more. Of course she knows more than I do!

Make no mistake: In every case, the final word on what goes into my books is mine. But I am an idiot if I don’t seriously consider all of my editor’s questions, suggestions and advice. I try not to be an idiot.

5. I’m not as smart as I think that people think I am.

As I mentioned above, I Kill the Mockingbird is my third novel. After I wrote my first book, people were surprised and delighted at my accomplishment. Honestly, so was I. I received and enjoyed the kind of warm affirmation that children get when they pee in a bowl the first few times. It was all good.

The second novel – with positive reviews and modest sales – raised some eyebrows and smiles. It was sort of like a second parachute jump. I didn’t die the first time so people weren’t shocked that I didn’t die the second. But still, it was okay to assume that gravity and silk were handling most of the work. All I had to do was step out of the plane, right?

This time, it feels like people might believe that I know what I’m doing. I can definitely describe many writing steps and processes more clearly now. I know more words. I recognize dead ends more quickly, and I know – both in theory and in fact – that writing a novel is not an impossible task. Still, to say that I know what I’m doing… that might be more false than true. There’s definitely more to this whole thing than jumping and yelling GERONIMO! But there’s still a lot of Geronimo going on here. Of course that’s why this whole business of making up stories is so much fun.

* * *

Paul Acampora writes short stories and novels for young readers. Kids, parents and critics praise his work for its laugh-out-loud humor, smart dialogue, and heartfelt characters. His books include Defining Dulcie, Rachel Spinelli Punched Me in the Face, and his newest novel, I Kill the Mockingbird, a comedy caper/conspiracy theory/literary love story about friends who sabotage their summer reading list. Paul enjoys classroom visits and writing workshops for K-12 students. He is a dad, a husband, a former kindergarten teacher, a college administrator, and the model for the Marshall in the 50^th Anniversary Edition of Stratego.

Paul Acampora: Website | Twitter

I Kill The Mockingbird: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound