Last week’s challenge: Five Random Words.

This week’s challenge is as straightforward or as oblique as you care to make it:

I want you to write a story about Hell.

Now, this can be a literal Hell.

It can be a literal Hell from actual religion.

It can be a Hell of your own design and desire.

It can be a metaphorical or figurative Hell.

The story needn’t take place in Hell — but it needs to touch on the idea or the metaphor in some way or fashion. Feel free to get creative with the idea — don’t feel constrained by precise definitions (though you can be, if you choose to be).

I put up this challenge as a bit of a nod to the fact that my own Hell-book, The Blue Blazes, is today a Kindle Daily Deal. (And here I’m shamelessly elbowing you to see if you care to check it out.) Plus, I’m writing the sequel, now, so I too will be writing about Hell this morning!

You’ve got 1000 words. Due in a week — in by noon EST on Friday, 4/11. Post the story at your online space, then drop a link back to that story in the comments below.

Welcome to Hell.

We have such sights to show you.

Yoinks and Gadzooks!

The Blue Blazes today is a Kindle Daily Deal.

Which puts this book at a sweet $1.99 for your Kindle device or app.

“Rounded off with an emotional finale, The Blue Blazes is a serious contender for book of the year.” — Alister Davison, Starburst Magazine

“There’s something gloriously unhinged about the crazy mix of fantasy, horror and crime-fic that is The Blue Blazes.” — Stefan Raets, Tor.com.

The book details the events of a knee-breaker named Mookie Pearl who stands between the rock that is the criminal underworld and the hard place that is the very real mythical and monstrous Underworld that exists beneath the streets of Manhattan. He thinks he’s got it all figured out until his own daughter rises against him and his organization.

The book contains, in no specific order:

Gobbos, Snakefaces, Trogbodies, cankerpedes, milk spiders, the Five Occulted Pigments, a roller derby girl gang, charcuterie, pierogies, daemon families, god-worms, Half-and-Halfs, mad cartographers, guns, fists, family strife, the zombie town of Daisypusher, cleavers, Sandhogs, magic mushrooms, an old goat, a hell-driving four-wheeler, goblin temples, and more.

I do hope you’ll check it out. I’m thisclose to finishing the sequel, The Hellsblood Bride, which releases before the end of the year. And then a third book will be coming soon after…

One-ninety-nine.

Nab it before Hell swallows it up once more.

(Oh, and tell your friends! AND FOES.)

AAAAH ME AND SWORD AND LASER ALL HAD A VIDEO BABY

Ahem.

Sorry, what I mean is, the very nice humans of the Sword & Laser show had me on — and the show aired today. (You can check it out above or, if you want the audio-only version, click here.)

There I talk about, y’know, books, but also profanity. And about people who want to have a baby with me. Not just like, a video baby, but apparently a real baby, or maybe a bearded demon baby, or something. Whatever. I dunno. JUST GO WATCH IT JEEZ.

It was very exciting, so thanks to Veronica and Tom for hosting me.

As the sister of the Kjallan emperor, Celeste cannot choose where to bestow her heart….

The imperial princess has been offered in marriage to the Prince of Inya as part of an alliance needed to ensure Kjall’s military prowess. And despite having been hurt in the past by men using her to gain power, Celeste finds herself falling for the passionate fire mage.

Prince Rayn has no intention of allying his country with the militaristic Kjallans. But his political enemies at home may be the greater threat. The princess’s beauty and intelligence catch him off guard, throwing an unexpected and dangerous hurdle in the way of his plans.

As a deadly political plot threatens Rayn’s life, the attraction between Celeste and Rayn ignites into a sizzling affair. But to save her people and herself, Celeste will have to discover if Rayn’s intentions are true or risk having her love burn her yet again….

* * *

THAT GENRE DOESN’T EXIST? WRITE IT ANYWAY.

I love two genres equally, SFF and romance. So when I started writing, I naturally combined the two. I wrote character-based stories set in a complex fantasy world, with magic and swordfights and adventure, plus a romantic conflict and sex and a happily-ever-after.

The problem? No such genre as epic fantasy romance. You won’t find a shelf for it at the bookstore. And you won’t find it as an Amazon subcategory.

The series did sell, but publishers disagree about how to classify it. In the U.S., it sold to a romance imprint and is shelved in romance. In France, it sold to a fantasy imprint and is shelved in fantasy. At least one bookseller in the U.S. moved it from the romance shelf to the SFF shelf (I know because she contacted me and let me know).

Writing a hybrid book like Prince’s Fire is tough because nobody knows what to do with something that has the head of a zebra and the body of a giraffe. But it’s also rewarding, because there are a ton of readers who are looking for exactly this kind of book, and they’re delighted when they find it.

A NERDY HEROINE IS A STRONG HEROINE.

All the books in my series feature strong heroines, but I wanted the heroine of each book to be different.  One is a chess-playing assassin. Another is a world-class archer.

But when I came to Prince’s Fire, the third book in the series, I wanted to pay homage to the nerdy girl, the introverted thinker who loves math and science and engineering. But these are fantasy adventure stories. How does a mathematician or scientist or engineer save the day?

Fortunately, history offers a ton of examples. Looking at just a few military applications of math, science, and engineering, consider Greek fire, siege weaponry, the Manhattan project, and the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

Codebreaking fit my adventure story nicely. So my heroine Celeste from Prince’s Fire became a mathematician and cryptanalyst. Because brawn is nice, but brains are better.

NICE GUYS DON’T FINISH LAST.

What’s the sexiest trait a guy can possess? I think it’s a combination of two traits: intelligence and kindness. Those two traits make up the foundation of every romance hero I write.

Which puts me at odds, somewhat, with the historical roots of the genre. Older romances often featured the “alphole” (short for “alpha asshole”) hero, a domineering, autocratic, chest-pounder. But the romance novel has come a long way over the years. While alpholes can still be found, modern romances often feature a hero whose strength is paired with kindness and moral integrity.

While I worried at first that readers wouldn’t go for my kind, decent heroes, I’ve discovered to my joy that many readers are looking specifically for the type of hero I write. In fact, when I wrote a character with some alphole tendencies in a completely different series, a beta reader became upset. Why was I writing a hero like this instead of the nice heroes I used to write? The answer is that I was trying to write a redemption story. But her response gave me an idea of how strongly some readers prefer the kind and decent hero.

YOU CAN DIVERT A VOLCANIC LAVA FLOW — SOMETIMES.

One of the plot points of Prince’s Fire is that the hero, Rayn, lives near a shield volcano. He’s part of a team of fire mages whose job is divert regular lava flows from that volcano to uninhabited areas so that the city is not destroyed.

Before I could write this, I wanted to get a sense of whether it was actually possible. Sure, in a fantasy novel you can always wave your hand and say, “Of course it’s possible! Magic!” But the magic system in this series is specific and limited. While Rayn’s magic is called fire magic, it’s really more like temperature magic in that he can alter the temperature of things. He can cool or heat his own body, or the air around him, or the water around him if he’s swimming. He can cool and heat inanimate objects or people if he’s in close proximity to them.

So could he, working with a large group of other fire mages, divert or stop a lava flow by cooling and hardening the lava?

I researched this, and it turns out there have been several historical attempts at diverting lava flows. Two unsuccessful attempts took place in Hawaii, during eruptions of Mauna Loa in 1935 and 1942. What did the U.S. Army Air Corps do to control the lava flow? They bombed the lava from the air. It didn’t work, but fortunately both lava flows stopped short of the city on their own.

Another attempt was made in Iceland, and this one was successful. An eruption occurred 200 meters east of the town of Vestmannaeyjar. It threatened to destroy the harbor, so a dredging ship was brought in to pour seawater on the encroaching lava at a rate of 20,000 liters per minute. They managed to solidify enough lava to create a basalt barricade to protect the harbor. The barricade held, and the harbor was saved. So it is possible to divert a lava flow, not by bombing perhaps, but by strategically cooling the lava.

I CAN WRITE TO A DEADLINE.

I sold Prince’s Fire as the third book of a 3-book series. The first two books were already finished, but at the time the contract was signed, I had not written a word yet of Prince’s Fire. My contract gave me 9 months to write the book. I got started, and then my editor contacted me, saying that if I could write it in 6 months she could give me a more desirable publishing date. It was totally up to me, and I could keep the original date if I preferred.

I thought about it for a while, and then I did what I used to do when I worked in the software industry. I broke down the task of writing a 100k word novel into subtasks. I figured out how many words I would need to write per day, and how many editing passes I would need and how long they would take, when chapters needed to go out to my critique partners, how long it would take me to make revisions based on feedback.

And the math worked out! I knew how many hours I could work on the manuscript per day, and how many words I generally turned out per hour. I saw that the book could comfortably be written in six months. So I took the earlier publishing date. Now I write all my books in six months, using roughly the same schedule.

There are as many ways to write a novel as there are novelists, but for me an orderly, systematic schedule, like what I was accustomed to in the business world, worked nicely.

* * *

Amy Raby is literally a product of the U.S. space program, since her parents met working for NASA on the Apollo missions. After earning her Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Amy settled in the Pacific Northwest with her family, where she’s always looking for life’s next adventure, whether it’s capsizing tiny sailboats in Lake Washington, training hunting dogs, or riding horses. Amy is a 2011 Golden Heart® finalist and a 2012 Daphne du Maurier winner.

Amy Raby: Website | Twitter

Prince’s Fire: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | iBooks

A side quest novella in the bestselling Geekomancy urban fantasy series–when D&D style adventures go from the tabletop to real life, look out!

Ree Reyes, urban fantasy heroine of Geekomancy, is working her regular barista/drink-slinger shift at Grognard’s when it all goes wrong. Everything.

As with Geekomancy (pop culture magic!) and its sequel Celebromancy (celebrity magic!), Attack of the Geek is perfect for anyone who wants to visit a world “where all the books and shows and movies and games [that you] love are a source of power, not only in psychological terms, but in practical, villain-pounding ones” (Marie Brennan, award-winning author of A Natural History of Dragons).

* * *

1. ENSEMBLES ARE AMAZING, AND TRICKY AS HELL

What’s better than one main character? Two, obviously. And by that, logic ensembles are even better – since you get to balance the spotlight between five or more characters and have them enrich and illuminate one another. Part of why Marvel’s The Avengers was amazing was that it was an ensemble piece, playing with the character’s relationships (Captain America & Iron Man, Hulk & Iron Man, Black Widow & Hawkeye, etc.) and using them to deepen the meaning of the action.

The downside is that writing an ensemble piece is like being the DM for an unruly party of six players who are all already half-drunk and yet also buzzed on Mountain Dew. Each character has their own agenda, their own voice, and to do right by the ensemble, you have to find a way to get them all motivated, carry the story forward even when one half of the group would rather just stay in the bar and flirt with the barmaid and/or bartender. Ensembles require flexibility in writing character voice, and quite a lot of organization (ala “Eastwood done anything for five pages, and the last time we saw him he was holding a grenade that was about to explode. Revision time!”)

But when they work, ensemble stories are incredible – characters become crystal-clear and dynamic when reacting to one another, relationships develop, and you get the classic ‘here’s my awesome team, don’t you love them’ awesomeness which so many readers and viewers adore.

2. CHARACTER CONFLICT IS THE MOST DELICIOUS FLAVOR IN THE BASKIN ROBBINS OF STORYTELLING

Speaking of ensembles and clashing personalities…In Attack the Geek, I really connected with the dramatic win that was character conflict. If your entire party all have the exact same priorities and agenda, you’ll get a cohesive team, but it’ll be far less enjoyable a ride. But if the characters are yelling at one another over a crucial point of morality or philosophy (or whether Deep Dish or NYC-style pizza is superior), the story can be all the better. And after all, everything is better with pizza.

Putting characters in conflict ads tension to absolutely everything else about a scene. Two people walking down the street? Meh. Two people walking down the street, each trying to muster the courage to tell the other that their relationship is over? Dynamite. If you add character conflict on top of external/plot conflict, you get to cross the streams of storytelling excitement. And as we know from the late, great, Harold Ramis, crossing the streams leads to explosions. And as storytellers, explosions are great.

3.WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT NOT JUST THAT, OKAY?

Attack the Geek is set largely at a game store-slash-bar. I spent about eight years of my life hanging out at a game store, so I knew that world pretty well. By adding the bar element, plus the ‘magical hangout where people buy geeky props to do magic,’ I found a mix of ‘write what you know’ and ‘write what you don’t know,’ with Grognard’s Grog and Games as a place that was both familiar and strange, and would be similarly familiar and strange to readers, most of whom I imagine have spent substantial amounts of time in bars and/or game stores.

Where Grognard’s had been a notable side-location in Geekomancy and Celebromancy, it is to Attack the Geek what the Serenity is to the series Firefly. Since the story happened 75% in or just outside Grognard’s , the sense of place, was of utmost importance, moreso than in any other story I’d written so far. The setting itself had to step up and help tell the story, something I’m looking forward to doing even more of in the future.

4. VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE. ALSO, FIGHT SCENES.

When you’re constraining location, other aspects of a story need to vary more, so that the reader doesn’t get bored. Since I was telling a very action and fight-driven story, I needed to make sure to find ways to vary things up to keep the action fresh.

Here’s how I did it – I changed weapons, I switched up who was fighting and who was standing by, I injured the characters, I ramped up or slowed down the action, and I changed the bad guys, forcing the heroes to have to fight differently for each challenge. I switched between fights that were about gaining ground and fights that were about holding ground. Fights that included rescues and people watching each other’s back with fights where my lead had to break off from the pack and achieve an objective.

Fight scenes are a type of storytelling, and like anything else, they need variety, and most importantly, they need stakes. By shifting the immediate stakes each fight, with all of them pointing towards larger stakes, I worked to keep the story moving and the reader happy.

5. TAKE THE THING THAT WAS COOL, BLOW IT UP, THEN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER

What if geekdom was its own magic system? That was the idea that kicked off this whole crazy series, and what lead to the magic system of geekomancy. But while in Celebromancy I introduced a separate magic system, for Attack the Geek, I wanted to go back to basics while also showing that there were as many ways to be a geek (And therefore a geekomancer) as there are in our world.

While Ree focuses on genre emulation, re-watching her favorite shows and movies to temporarily gain associated powers (watch The Matrix, do Wire-Fu. Watch Sherlock, get super-investigation skills), other members of the magical community do geekomancy their own way. The mild-mannered Uncle Joe uses collectible cards to achieve one-shot effects like a classic D&D Wizard, while weapon-seller Patricia Talon connects with geekdom by using famous weapons and armor to embody her favorite characters.

Attack the Geek let me step back and provide several more interpretations of that central question which had inspired the whole series, and lead to me deepening and widening the Wild World of geekomancy.

Michael R. Underwood Website | Twitter

Attack the Geek: Amazon | B&N | Kobo

A little while back, I wrote a post on piracy, and I like to think I’m pretty even-keeled about the subject. Piracy is not awesome, nor is it legal, but I get it and frankly, I won’t burn your house down about it. I don’t really like yelling at the tides in the notion that it will change anything — further, I’ve seen some value come from book piracy in that people who downloaded books that way became fans of the books (mine and others). And when that happens, when someone becomes a fan, they buy the books.

Anyway, while that post is a bit old, a new comment popped up the other day:

Dear Author,

Here is an honest opinion hiding behind anonymity. It is simple:

1) I cannot afford buying all the books I wish to read; as simple as that.

2) It is digital data and if I read it without paying, you don’t lose anything since I was not going to buy it anyway. It does not cost you anything at all (other than a highly speculative opportunity cost which is blown out of proportion significantly). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
I am not even sure if the term even applies here properly due to point 1.
Bottomline: All this lost revenue thing is mostly bullshit and you know it!

3) You need to make a living which is a very important point (those who really add value to the book: editors, illustrators, etc. need it, too.)

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation is a well-known concept. Learn the basics!

5) So, to maximize your revenue:
a) please put a donation button to your website.
b) those who can afford make a donation to writers who honestly make a plea to their readers reminding that they need to buy bread, too. (I was going to paypal you some amount if I it were there because I liked your first two books a lot)
c) you share a portion of it with editors, illustrators as you see fit.
d) Stephan King may not benefit from this solution but he does not need it anyway. For him point 6 below would work better.

6) The current publishing business has way passed its expiry date despite point 3. As alternatives to point 5, one can try the good old “poor artist” model, try to make money from performances (reading to your fans), appearances, ads, whatever. Then, all this pirating/free-give-away-to-some-segment-of-the-market becomes free advertisement for you and helps your bottom line. You recoup opportunity costs elegantly with no effort.

*** Angry for hearing unsolicited advise from a pirate? Now, take a breath and re-read points 1 and 2. I am just trying to think of a good solution here that will work in 21st century.

7) Alternatively, you keep complaining and nothing constructive happens. We all live “in a capitalist society and all” and got constantly screwed by big companies, publishers, etc every day. Don’t expect people to give up free reading/pirating just because fucking businesses (big or small) are responsible to their shareholders and have to maximize their quarterly profits. Fuck that! Do you know how much they charge for even an ebook where I live?

8) I get screwed to some extent in my job, too, though in other creative ways. It is a fact of life “in a capitalist society and all”. You are a good author and obviously a clever guy. Stop whining! BTW, your stop pirating day is the stupidest idea I have heard. What are you, a fucking shill of mafiaa companies?

*** Again: All this lost revenue thing is mostly bullshit and you know it! I cannot afford the price you asked anyway…As simple as that…How my not reading will benefit you or me is beyond me so I will continue reading. BTW, go to point 4 again for solutions.

9) If you say: “fuck you, I don’t need unpaid readers like you” as an answer to all this, then fine. If it is going to make happier, I would respect it and delete all your pirated books from my library. Funny that you will not even know it (Point 2).

With regards,
An unofficial reader.

I’ll tackle a response to this as quickly as I can:

1) If you cannot afford my books, then the grossly capitalist thing of me to say would be THEN YOU DON’T GET TO HAVE IT, but realistically, I understand that books are a luxury and it is a privilege that I can afford them. So instead I’ll say: libraries are really great. The commenter lives in Australia, according to his IP, but having just been to Australia, I can confirm that they do have libraries there. Just the same: being in another territory where books are expensive or unavailable? Well, you know: hey, go ahead, nab my books however you see fit. I’ll look the other way and hope one day you can purchase the books you pilfered.

2) Lost revenue isn’t bullshit. It’s an actual thing. If everyone took to just taking digital material without paying for it, I’d be dead broke and, honestly, not writing at all. The reason I am not dead broke is because a lot of people are happy to involve themselves in a transaction where they put money into the machine and the machine spits out one or several of my books. Plus: my books are not just the product of my time, effort and resources. They are frequently the product of time, effort, and resources spent on behalf of a publisher. They don’t get sales numbers based on books of mine that people download but do not pay for. That doesn’t convince them to publish me again. So it’s not just lost revenue now, but lost revenue down the line.

3) I do need to make a living. True point!

4) Sure, okay.

5) I will not put a donation button on my site. More on that in a minute.

6) Making money from performances is called being a “performer.” Which I am decidedly not. I am an introvert who plays at being an extrovert, and that’s why I fucking write books, not gambol about on stage like Marcel Marceau. If we reach a point where we cannot pay writers for being writers, then we will reach a point where we will have few, if any, writers. I also don’t want to make money from ads because that really is crass capitalism and again, I’d much rather we engage in a very pure exchange — I put my words into the world, and if that’s of value to you, you help me put food in my child’s mouth. Not via a donation button, but via the transaction where you buy my books. I’m not angry at hearing unsolicited advice, honestly. But that good 21st century solution you’re looking for is here: buy my books. Ta-da!

7) Sometimes people get screwed by the government, but that’s not an awesome reason to stop paying your taxes. If a grocery store sells me expired milk or charges too much for kale or some shit, it’s not a good reason for me to shoplift. Now, all that being said, if you want to pilfer my books because that’s the only way they’re available to you in a cost-effective manner, then go for it. You do what you gotta do.

8) Sure, I’m a shill for my publishers. Because I happen to like my publishers. They’re not perfect entities, but… you know, yeah, they’ve done right by me and I’m absolutely going to shill for them. They’re my partners in this endeavor. That’s key here: they’re partners. Which means they need to get paid, too.

9) Unpaid readers are only useful to me if they somehow get me paid. That’s the hard, ugly reality here. If you read my work and love it: that does genuinely please me because I’m a bit of a Narcissist, but at the same time, unless I can somehow monetize that love and concentrate really hard until it becomes a sack of Bitcoins or some shit, I can’t use it to feed my family or satisfy the bank who apparently wants a mortgage payment every month (who knew?). Your reading me doesn’t benefit me unless it benefits me. Which means: you pay me. Or you convince others to do what you didn’t do, which is… pay me? Or you convince a library or bookstore to carry my work, doing some kind of advocacy for my books.

Now, let’s switch gears a little and talk about donations.

This website costs a pretty penny to host. Between $60-70 / month. The cost being so high is a function of traffic being high (thanks, everybody!) — but it does end up being around $800 a year for hosting fees. I’ve long noodled on the idea of putting up a Paypal DONATE button — and recently I’ve seen Patreon pop up as a good way for creatives to get paid to continually provide creative work to the world. And there I thought, well, that could work to fund the website in a “pay-for-post subscription manner.” Particularly since readers of this blog are not automagically readers of my books (yoinks, if every reader here bought just one of my books I’d probably be a bestselling author overnight).

But, ultimately, I won’t be doing that.

Here’s why:

If you want to help pay for this site, or put food in my kid’s mouth, or continue to support my flailing word-herdery in some fashion? You can. Right now.

You can buy my books.

You can buy books that are published via the mainstream system.

You can buy my author-published books.

You can buy my urban fantasy, or horror, or YA sci-fi, or YA crime, or my writing books, or, or, or — you have a lot of options, actually, since at present I have 18 different releases out there in the world.

You can buy books via Amazon, or B&N, or at your local indie bookstore.

You can buy some of my books directly via me.

You can also buy Merch related to this site and my work.

Want a dark fantasy about a psychotic psychic who can see how you’re going to die just by touching you? Start with Blackbirds. Want to see what happens when I mash up the Criminal Underworld with the Mythic and Monster-Filled Underworld? Blue Blazes awaits. In Under the Empyrean Sky, you’ll find a agricultural apocalypse where bloodthirsty corn has taken over the world thanks to a bunch of rich jerks who float in the sky, and in Bait Dog you’ll find a teen girl detective/vigilante story — think a mash-up of Winter’s Bone and Veronica Mars. Or hell, maybe you want to check out my writing books, in which case I’d say to either start small (250 Things You Should Know About Writing) or go for the whole enchilada (The Kick-Ass Writer). You got options, is what I’m saying.

And if you’ve already bought my books? Leave a review, maybe. Or tell others.

You give me donations, or tip me via Patreon, I’m not giving you what I really want to give you, which are the books that I’ve written. Further, it means my editors and cover artists and all the people who worked hard to help usher many of my books into the world gain nothing from it — you bypass them and put money into my pocket. That’s unfortunate.

None of this is meant to slag on those writers who do ask for donations or who use Patreon —  I can see good value for Patreon. And I had in mind a campaign that monetizes this blog and offers some cool little rewards as a result (Google Hangouts, one-page writer critiques, etc.). But right now, I want to monetize this blog one way and one way only: where you decide that you’re going to check out some of my books, and that money either directly reaches me (via my author-published work) or winds its way toward me (via my, erm, publisher-published books). That’s it. If you want to support me, and support this site, that’s how I hope you’ll do it.

And, to the pilfering magpie above who wrote that comment: keep on reading my books however you want to read them. I don’t have any great grr-argh energy over piracy — I used to download tons of music for free (and during that time I also spent more money on music than I perhaps ever have). But if you were serious about donating, then donate that money by buying my books. You can do that on Amazon Australia (where my books are between $1 and $10 in e-book), or you can do it here, buying my books directly via Payhip (which results in Paypal). If you can’t donate, then I ask that you at least spread the word about my books. Again: reviews. Or tell others about my work. SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF WENDIG AND KILL IN MY NAME I mean wait don’t kill in my name I didn’t say that.