The year is nearly complete.

With a brand new year ready to grow in its corpse.

Ah. Looking back, looking back. No regrets. Not much purpose. I don’t truck with regret. It offers me little. Regret is one of those vestigial emotions — it’s just a hanger-on, like a dingleberry or a hardened booger. Recognizing problems and moving forward is one thing, but clinging to the driftwood of your prior wreckage is just a worthless endeavor.

Swim forward or drown and all that.

So, 2013, then.

Been a great year, ultimately. My wife disentangled from her own professional life, leaving my writing career as the only provider of income for der Wendighaus, which is awesome in the truest sense of the word. Our toddler has grown in leaps and bounds and is now an actual human with increasing wants and needs and opinions. And also the occasional inexplicable tantrum which manifests like a tornado — by the time it’s there, it’s too late to get out of its way so all you can do is run to the basement and wait it out.

I traveled a lot. I went to Australia. I met phenomenal creative humans there — people I dare call friends as well as cohorts in this creative life. I fought an army of koalas with nothing but my fists and a pair of dirty underwear. I rode a cassowary. I did epic karaoke. You know. The usual.

I dunno. Life blurs. I’m like, “I know things happened?”

In 2013, I released the following books:

The Blue Blazes (the criminal underworld meets the mythic underworld!).

Unclean Spirits (the gods have fallen to earth and one man seeks vengeance against them!)

Beyond Dinocalypse (far-flung psychic dinosaur dystopia and the pulp heroes that battle there!)

Under the Empyrean Sky (oppressed dustbowl teens in a cornpunk future fight for love!)

The Kick-Ass Writer (1001 nuggets of boot-on-your-neck writing advice!).

I released a new Miriam Black short story, “Birds of Paradise” in the mystery and crime collection called Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble.

I also put out my first (and ideally not my last) comic: a six-page pulp-action adventure starring occult adventurer Amanda Wynne: “Shackleton’s Hooch.”

And I’m working on my first serialized story — “The Forever Endeavor,” presently in the middle of its run at Fireside Fiction Company.

I wrote a buncha stuff this year, too.

I wrote Beyond Dinocalypse, which as noted, released this year.

I wrote Heartland, Book Two: Blightborn.

I wrote The Cormorant, the third Miriam Black novel.

I wrote a thing called The Nail — a horror novel I don’t know what to do with, yet. It needs a lot of work but I’m not sure exactly which direction to take it — lot of options. It’s kind of a keystone piece for me and ties together a lot of the mythologies of my many stories (you’ll find some of that too in “The Forever Endeavor,” actually, if you pay attention).

I wrote another YA thing I can’t talk about.

I co-wrote what I hope is a killer comic pitch with friend and fellow madman Adam Christopher.

And I wrote another novel-flavored thing I can’t talk about. (But may be able to soon…)

Plus, I blogged here every week.

All told, I think I wrote about —

*does some loose calculations*

*uses fingers, toes, nipples, antennae*

390,000 words of new fiction.

And about, mmm, conservatively, 200,000 words here at the blog.

A pleasing quantity. I cannot speak for the quality, sadly. But I’m hopeful!

In 2014… whew, yeah, wow.

I’ve got a lot of work to do.

I’ve got four novels to write in the next 10 months or so. /panic

I believe I’ll have a script to write, too, but I can’t say anything about that yet.

Plus, soon will be some Big Awesome Stuff announced. Some book-flavored news. Hopefully a comic thing. Maybe some news about a film or TV deal about one of my book series…

I’ve got some books landing on shelves in the next year, too:

The Cormorant releases very, very soon (January 1st!). Worth noting I’ll be launching that book at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn on January 8th.

Summer will bring Blightborn, the second Heartland book. With that, if you pre-order, you’ll see a new Gwennie short story, “The Wind Has Teeth Tonight.” I’m actually really excited for Blightborn to release. It’s much bigger and sprawlier (*not a word) than Under the Empyrean Sky. Expands the world greatly. Ups the stakes. Was a great deal of fun to write.

Sometime soon you’ll also see the retitled and reworked YA launch of heroine Atlanta Burns in — drum roll please — a book simply titled: Atlanta Burns.

Plus, maybe a few other surprises. Giggle-snort-blush.

I’ll be traveling a lot, too. I’ll put up a more official schedule in the next week or two but I’ll be at Pike’s Peak Writing Conference, Phoenix Comic-Con, the Tucson Book Fest, and more.

So, there it is. That’s all she wrote.

How was your 2013?

How’s 2014 looking?

I wanted chili.

Like, I wanted it in the way an addict wants smack. In the way that when you’re drunk and it’s 3 in the morning and you get this nearly-psychopathic urge to eat a particular combination of foods: I WANT POTATO SKINS AND FUDGSICLES OR I’M GOING TO FUCKING START HITTING THINGS WITH A HAMMER.

I wanted chili.

And I wanted meat in that goddamn chili. Meat. I mean, sure, and vegetables, too, but my carnivorous forebears — which were actually bears, by the way, for the Wendigo bloodline contains several grizzlies — had risen to the surface of my desire like growling ghosts and they demanded flesh.

But all I had was pot roast as a meat source.

Which is no great problem. All you gotta do is cut up the pot roast into cubes and throw those into the chili and ta-da, hey, chili with meat, yay, game over, goodbye, SHUT IT DOWN, everybody. *starts flipping levels and switches*

But I did not do that.

This roast, it was a four-pounder. Good-size. About that of a human head.

And no, it wasn’t actually a human head. I know I got those mixed up last time. JEEZ HAVE A LITTLE FAITH a guy boils one decapitated head and serves it at a church luncheon and everybody gets their genitals in a tizzy. Can’t anybody just relax anymore?

Whatever.

What I decided to do was, cook the pot roast In The Usual Fashion, and then use the delicious savory broth that results not to make gravy, as I usually would, but rather, to make one helluva pot of chili. And dang, youse y’all yinz, it was pretty chilitastic. Or, as Guy Fieri would say, “It was a hot tasty enema right from the general practitioner operating out of Flavortown Hospital!” Or something. I think to get a proper Guy Fieri impression going I need to dye my body hair the color of lemonade and name my son “Donkey Sauce” and buy a sexy convertible so that I can finally become the manifest totem spirit of Mid-Life Crisis.

Anyway.

So, here’s what I did:

First up: turn your FIRECUBE (“oven”) to 275F.

I cut up two sweet onions into fair chunkin’s. I set my heavy-bottomed stock pot on medium-high with a little ejaculation of olive oil to coat the bottom. And I started cooking some onions. Just until they got a little color to them, maybe got a bit soft. Throw in a little chopped garlic, too — but do this late so the garlic doesn’t start to burn because when you burn garlic, Jesus and Athena and Amaterasu and all the other gods and goddesses weep. They weep. You heretic.

While the onion-garlic thing was happening I was like, “LET’S SALT SOME MEAT,” which is also the first of my failed catchphrases back in improv comedy school. When I say “salt the meat,” I don’t mean, “apply a light wintry dusting of salt.” I mean, “salt the unmerciful fuck out of it.” I mean, “salt it like you’d salt the earth of your enemies after you razed their crops and burned them out of house and home.” Don’t skimp on the skalt. Er, salt.

I also sprinkled some powdered garlic onto the meat, too.

Then: the giant lump of flesh goes into the purgatory pot where it will have its sins not burned out of it but contained by the sweet browning on all sides that must occur. The story goes that we brown meat to contain its flavor, but that’s not really true. We brown meat to contain the angry ghost of the animal we killed. Which increases its deliciousness.

(The vegetarian version of this dish is just you starting longingly at an empty plate. I’m sorry, veggie-heads, I love you and respect you but it’s possible to make one helluva veggie-only chili, this way ain’t one of them.)

Brown the meat on all sides. Laugh as it sizzles. Taunt the angry beast-wraith within.

Take the meat out once the beast-wraith has been contained.

Now, it’s time to bring liquids into the equation.

This demands beer, first and foremost.

You don’t want to use something super-bitter because that bitterness will linger like that last guest at a party who doesn’t understand you just want to go to bed and masturbate to drunken incompletion. But you also don’t want to use something without much flavor. I see people sometimes advocating cooking with undrinkable beer like Budweiser and I was like, “If I don’t want to drink it, I don’t want it hanging out with my food, either.” And Budweiser isn’t really beer, anyway, it’s llama urine. And not even good llama urine — it’s all watered-down.

So: maybe Guinness. I used a pilsner. One that didn’t have a strong bite but had a great beer flavor just the same. Hoppy without tasting grumpy.

About two cups of that goes into the pot. Use the beer to scrape up any meaty bits from the bottom of the pan. Some call this “deglazing,” but I call it “scrumptifying.” I don’t call it that, I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry. Sometimes I just say things. I might be drunk right now. YOU DON’T JUDGE ME.

Then, you want another two cups of liquid. Some manner of broth or stock or animal juices. Believe it or not, I didn’t have any beef or chicken stock on hand so I used vegetable stock (gasp!) and it really worked well. Like I said: two cups.

Return the meat gently to the pot. This isn’t the time to try to be a basketball star because if by some fortune you make the shot you will probably scald yourself and your pets with napalm broth. Sounds funny now, but it’s not funny.

Here’s where I add all the magical chili seasonings.

I don’t measure. Just assume I mean “use a whole lot of these spices.” (You will have an opportunity to add more later to adjust taste, by the way.)

I use:

Dark chili powder.

Cumin.

More garlic powder.

Now, the whole pot can go into the oven.

One hour per pound of meat.

Go do something while this happens. Do some karate. Train a zoo lemur to become a world-class pickpocket. Hang-glide into your neighbor’s yard, take a dump on the hood on their minivan, and bolt. You’ve got three or four hours to kill, so fill the temporal space wisely.

When the timer goes ding, return to your firecube and — USING YOUR BARE HANDS BECAUSE YOU ARE IMPERVIOUS TO HARM — lift the pot out of the oven.

What’s that? You’re not impervious to harm?

Pssh. You humans.

Whatever. Use potholders, you weak-fleshed stripling.

Rescue the meat from within the cauldron of bubbling red hell-broth. Place it on a cutting board or upon the back of your nearest captive adversary.

Put the pot of crimson deliciousness back on the stove and bring to a simmer.

The meat? You carve it how you like. It should be pull apart, so I mostly just peeled hunks away and coarsely chopped it before returning it to the blood-red slurry.

Once the meat is back in the broth, you also want to add:

Three cans of the beans of your choice.

I usually go with some kinda red kidney bean, black bean, and pinto bean.

Then I cut up a couple bell peppers — I don’t care what colors you choose, but green adds a nice color, and maybe an orange, or a yellow, or one of those hypercolor ones you find growing in the gardens of those mutant hill people out by Three Mile Island.

Then: couple squirts of ketchup, couple squirts of yellow mustard, several splashes of Worcestershire sauce. Then, after that, about 2-3 TBsp of apple cider vinegar.

Finally, one large-size can of crushed or diced tomatoes.

Season more to your taste. Salt, cumin, chili powder, whatever.

Once again bring to a simmer.

Cook for a half-hour, or until the pepper is soft, but not mushy.

Now, here’s the thing:

You’ll notice I haven’t made this spicy.

That’s because we have a toddler who doesn’t like spicy food. So, I add spice to my chili in the bowl, much as you might with a bowl of Pho. That being said, if your culinary behaviors are not imprisoned by the needs and wants of a tiny toddler person, feel free to zing it up in the pot. As you add the bell pepper, toss in some jalapenos and some red chili flake to taste.

Also: I add two more things to the bowl.

First: cheese.

Second: lime juice.

Cheese? Well, a nice sharp cheddar will do. Sharp enough to be used as a prison shiv.

The lime juice? That brightens this chili up. Gives it light and acid. (Not the kind of acid where it sizzles through the hull of your spaceship like the blood of a Xenomorph, so no worries there.)

Final comment: this chili tastes better after it’s had time to sit in the fridge overnight.

I don’t know why that is. I’m just going to assume dark magic is at work.

SO THERE YOU GO.

That’s the pot roast chili.

The meat is fall apart mmm.

The chili is savory and rich.

You will thank me.

Hopefully with cash. Cold, hard cash.

We have an Xbox One.

I’ll back up a little bit.

The Console War of 2013 remains brutal. So many corpses. So much blood. Trenches filled with executives from Microsoft and Sony, each given a clumsy grave header of a sparking, malfunctioning console of the last generation. DEATH REIGNS.

In this war, I had been leaning toward the PS4. Part of this was economic: the PS4 was cheaper. Part of it was a lot of the early fear-hype around the Kinect (IT CAN SEE YOUR BONES, IT’S MEASURING YOUR TINY PENIS, IT KNOWS YOUR THOUGHTS EVEN AS YOU FORM THEM IN YOUR STUPID HUMAN BRAIN). But then a few things happened:

First, our current Xbox 360 started to act wonky. The wireless drops out and we have to constantly reattach it. The disc drive won’t always load games. One time I booted it up and it just sat there for a while like an old man getting out of bed wondering if his day was even worth beginning.

Second, my goddamn Xbox Live auto-renewed for a year.

Third, I read the actual reviews — PS4 sounded pretty rad, but the Xbox One (the “X-Bone”) had an edge on the entertainment side of things. And as I’ve noted, my actual desire to play games is way bigger than my ability to play games. Our living room has basically been colonized by the Tiny Human named Citizen Toddler B-Dub. The TV exists to deliver unto him vital children’s programming. If I play games it’s on Sunday afternoons after I’ve finished writing These Blogs for You Fine People. And thus: entertainment and amusement for Tiny Human is vital.

So, the Xbox seemed a stronger choice, despite the cost.

Then, I was in Target the other day, picking up some Snow Supplies (like a new bone-saw to cut through the limbs of frozen neighbors) and I went to look at the Xbox demo model and as I was standing there a Target employee walked up, unlocked the case, and put a new Xbox One into it.

This was last Sunday. Target was fucking packed.

So I was like, “Is that what I think it is?”

He said, yeah, they had four earlier but they all went really quickly. They found this one in the back and nobody had put it out, so, drum roll please…

He then asked that most critical of questions: “Do you want it?”

I said, yeah, fuck yeah, slap that bad boy on me. I figured, even if we didn’t really want it, I could sell it. Or use it to scan the skeletons of the mailman, the oil guy, the trash people. Whatever.

I brought it home.

We’ve had it a week.

And it just occurred to me yesterday that it is our new child.

A new toddler, actually.

Because we have to sternly command it.

And the Xbox listens maybe about half the time.

See, the Xbox has a stronger version of Kinect. You can use Kinect’s voice capabilities to move through and operate the Xbox without ever touching a controller. You can turn it on this way. You can move through Netflix or to games or to Xbox Fitness this way. You can power it down this way.

When it works, it feels like The Future.

You can be like, picking up toys off the floor while talking to the device. “Xbox, on. Xbox, go to Netflix. Xbox, select one. Xbox, kill my enemies and strip their memories for processing. Xbox, make me a Old-Fashioned, and have one too, you fancy scamp. Xbox? Chillax.”

When it doesn’t work, it feels like you’re yelling at a disobedient two-year-old.

“Xbox, on. Xbox, turn on. XBOX, ON. JESUS CHRIST XBOX TURN ON. Oh! Oh. Good. Xbox, go to Netflix. Xbox, Netflix. Xbox, Netflix. XBOX. GO. TO. NETFLIX. GOD… FUCKING… JESUS… SHIT. No! Not Skype! Xbox, why aren’t you listening to me? Pay attention! Xbox, pick up your mess. Xbox, don’t you touch that toilet. Xbox, get away from the dog’s butthole. Xbox, did you foul your diaper again? Xbox, off. XBOX OFF. XBOX TURN OFF GOD PLEASE STOP LOOKING AT ME.”

Meanwhile, our actual toddler is staring at us with a side-eye like, “You two have been into the Mommy Water and Daddy Juice again, yeah? Because you’re totally yelling at the TV.”

Anyway, here’s a quick and proper run down of some further thoughts on the device:

The Good

• As I said, when Kinect works, it’s like a dream.

• Xbox Fitness! It’s free! It’s got solid workouts!

• Peggle 2 is actually really bad-ass.

• Blu-Ray player! Even though it’s Sony tech, it’s there, and woo. I know this is something that Sony had in the PS3, duh, but I kinda expected the X-Bone to cleave to digital media only. Most of my life is now digital media, but it’s nice to have a Blu-Ray for some films and shows, you know?

• The controller looks small but feels utterly aces.

• It’s quiet, and it boots up lickety-quick

• You can apparently run your cable through the device, though I’ve not tried this yet.

• The Xbox UI is simple and forthright; everything is right in front of you.

• Haven’t used it but — hey! Skype! That’s neat.

• The Kinect can scan your body for cancer, and it found a nodule of something questionable under my armpit, so I just hunkered down close to the device and the Kinect lasered it off.

• Okay that last part isn’t true.

The Bad

• The UI is hyper-functional… and also super-ugly. It’s Soviet-era ugly. Nobody seems to care much for the Window 8 aesthetic, and yet — ta-da, here it is. A Roomba has better style. This gets worse in certain apps — but more on that in a moment.

• The launch titles are pretty meh. I did get Need for Speed: Rivals on a quick Amazon sale because Toddler B-Dub loves cars. And it’s a strong game — looks good, shiny as all get-out. But overall the game slate for this next generation — for both Xbox and Sony — is dull as library paste.

• Xbox Fitness has great workouts and they’re free. But I did a kickboxing cardio one the other day and while I heard the app is pretty precise, I found it less so than, say, Yourself Fitness on the 360. In fact, it was so imprecise that during the exercise I was flopping around like a boat-struck porpoise, totally missing all the cues to punch, kick, punch, kick, and yet the game was like BRILLIANT WORK, HAVE 30,000 POINTS, NAILED IT, YEAH, KEEP DOING THAT. And then I was like, “Kinect is recording my gallumphing and sending this to Microsoft employees who are probably laughing at me right now in the lunchroom.” Again — I got a good workout. And again — free with the device. But still, it’s just a video workout with a small portion dedicated to Kinect.

• Oh, also, the Fitness app claimed to be measuring my heartrate, but… that didn’t seem to be happening at all? Maybe I missed it? Maybe it’s measuring it and just doesn’t want to tell me.

• The device is heavy, though this complaint isn’t that meaningful. The 360 was heavy, too, and it’s not like I need to carry the Xbox around on my back like I’m Luke and it’s Yoda. It’s not a Frisbee; I don’t need it to fly.

• Reportedly, some games run in lower resolution on the Xbox. This isn’t necessarily a permanent problem as I the Xbox is capable of 1080p.

The Ugly

• When you insert a game, it installs it. And by “installs it,” I mean, “carves out a portion of your life similar to the Hell you find waiting at the DMV.” The Xbox is fucking fast everywhere else, but I stuck Need For Speed in and it’s like, “Oh, hey, gonna install now,” and then proceeded to sit there at zero percent for like, three minutes, and then slowly it crawled to 100% after about seven more minutes. Again, the toddler metaphor, because I feel like I’m trying to get a child to do something like go to bed or eat its vegetables and all it wants to do is sit on the floor quietly humming to itself. Why the hell does it take so long to install a game? Is this the PC era of 1992?

• Remember that functional-but-ugly UI design? Clearly Microsoft said to all app-makers, “You have to fall in line with our aesthetic.” Because all the apps look this way. They all have that shit-nasty Windows 8 treatment. Sometimes that works. Usually? It doesn’t. Example: we use the unmerciful crap out of Netflix. And Netflix recently introduced a redesign to their app for the 360 that was useful and beautiful. It had an ooh-la-la factor. They have scrapped that in favor of Microsoft’s forced horrible constructivist nightmare, and now the app is hard to navigate and use once more. All the beauty is gone. And the function is hampered, too. Xbox: your shit is ugly. This is supposed to be fun! Windows is not fun. I feel like I’m playing a game called “spreadsheet.”

The Result

No real conclusions, yet. Had it a week. My feeling is, the device will get better and cooler and some of my complaints will fall by the wayside. But right now: it’s just not there. It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a mostly-but-not-all-the-way-baked device. It needs more time in the oven. Not sure how that compares to the PS4, honestly, or if one is “better” than the other (I suspect both are equivalent machines in the overall sense). The promise of the Xbox One is exciting, however, and I’m hoping with software updates we’ll see this promise continue to be realized in bigger, cooler ways. I know the 360 I have now looks way different and way more functional than the 360 I procured Way Back When.

First round is right here.

Second round is right here.

Third round: boom, right here.

And we’re back.

This experiment has been kinda totally awesome so far.

This is the second to last part. Only one more round to go after this…

The rules are simple:

Look through the 600-word entries from last week (round three, linked above).

Pick one.

Add another 200 words to the story.

(Easiest way forward is to copy the chosen 600 words to your own blog, then add the next 200. Don’t forget to link to your unfinished 800-word story in the comments. Someone may want to continue the tale next week, for part four.)

You do not need to have participated in the earlier rounds to participate in this one.

Try to continue a story in which you have not yet participated.

Do not finish the story. This is a five-part fiction experiment: we’ll end the year with several 1000-word stories, each built out of 200-word chunks by you guys. This is a collaborative game. It is Whisper Down the Lane. It is Telephone. It should be very interesting by the end. One hopes.

You’ve got one week.

Due by Friday, December 20th, noon EST.

Join the narrative chain, won’t you?

I know, December was supposed to be a “no writing talk” month, but it’s my blog and I’ll use it how I want to, goddamnit. *kicks dirt on your shoes*

Ahem.

So.

Digital BookWorld did a recent survey about how much self-published authors make and then Hugh Howey responded and —

Well, Porter Anderson does a nice wrap-up here.

I tend to be somewhere in the middle on all this stuff — hovering in between Howey’s admittedly infectious optimism and any writing-income survey’s overall grimness. I do think this is the best time to be writing and publishing. We have a bounty of options available to us. Opportunity is a fruit hanging fat and juicy on the vine if you’re willing to grab for it.

So I thought I’d take a couple minutes to offer a few thoughts.

a) Writing income surveys are nearly always flawed. For a number of reasons, really. I rarely see them take into account those who are doing it part-time versus full-time. Freelance versus IP ownership. Across different mediums. Across different genres. And, of course, effectively across traditional-, self-, and hybrid-publishing. (And any time I see such a survey I think, “Shit, nobody asked me.” And then I go back to work, making money with words HA HA HA.)

b) Howey’s right-on with the error on how one calculates income from traditional works (which had to be vetted through various stages) and income from self-published works (which are not whittled down by that vetting process and so represents a far larger bulk of work, roughly equivalent to the slush-piles that fail to dwindle due to the varying kept gates of the system). It’s not that we’re comparing apples to oranges: we’re comparing a bushel of apples here to a truckload of apples there. How delicious is the entire lot of apples on all the apple trees versus those that have been hand-picked and taken away from the rest?

c) While I totally share Howey’s excitement over the sheer joy and power of creating stories out of nothing, I think his posts (part one and part two), while very exciting and very interesting, maybe conflate writing and publishing, which has for a long time been one of my overall theoretical problems with not the act of but the culture of self-publishing. (It’s why I prefer the term “author-publisher” because it clearly separates out those two roles, yet keeps them joined by that magical hyphen. A hyphen is like a bridge made out of PURE PUNCTUATION.) Howey says:

How much do knitters like my sister make a year? How much does someone like my wife, who likes to strum a guitar, make in a year? What about my friends who play video games hours upon hours a day? What does your typical gardener make? Or someone who blogs regularly? Or all those people with YouTube channels who are always looking for more subscribers? What about serious home chefs? How much do they make?

Because this is how I look at it: Hundreds of thousands of voracious readers with a dream of writing a novel sat down and did just that. They wrote out of love and passion, just like a kid goes out and dribbles a basketball for hours every day or kicks a soccer ball against a garage wall. Of these hobbyist writers, thousands now make a full-time living from their work. Thousands more pay a huge chunk of their bills from their hobby. These are part time artists who have thousands of fans and hear from readers all over the world. Some of them go on to get offers from agents and publishers and score major deals. All because they are doing something they love.

Even better, this hobby costs nothing. Many of the other hobbies I listed above might cost you thousands of dollars. Everyone has access to a pen and paper. Most people already own a computer for other reasons. It just takes time and imagination. Some of us didn’t set out to become wealthy from doing this . . . it just happened. There are tens of thousands of authors out there now making $20 or $100 a month doing what they would happily do for nothing. In fact, if you told me I had to pay a monthly “writing fee” for the privilege of making stuff up and pounding it into my keyboard, I would do it.

…and abstractly, I’m on board with writers who just want to write. We are free to tell whatever stories we find compelling. Thing is, we’ve always been free to do so. Publishing those stories in a different matter. Publishing is an act of business. It is — to me, at least — a professional endeavor. Writing is craft, storytelling is art, and publishing is business. More to the point, that means publishing isn’t a hobby. If you’re looking for money for your work — which is what publishing and charging money for your work suggests — then you’ve changed the game. You just made it serious. Self-publishing is often viewed as the domain of amateurs frequently because folks treat it like that’s what it is. But I don’t want to sell my shit at a flea market. Do you? Publishing isn’t Craigslist where I’m trying to sell you a jizzed-on couch. I want to sell my work at proper professional venues. I want to take this seriously and, in a perfect world, I want you to take publishing seriously, too. If we’re going to assume that author-publishing is viable and professional, then we damn well better treat it that way.

d) As a result of all this, I worry the “just click publish!” meme takes the reader out of the equation. It puts a great deal of excitement and energy on the part of the writer, which is great. But it fails to take into account the readers who are ostensibly going to pay for this work. A lot of this might be semantics, but I don’t want to subject my readers to my hobby if they have to pay to play. Blogging is one thing. Home cooking is another. I’m not charging anybody for that and so — you don’t like the price of free, hey, get out of my kitchen. (And why are you in my kitchen anyway? *wings a can of Spaghetti-Os at your head*) But once I’m putting something out to YOU, the masses, that should be sacred. We’ve left Hobbytown and entered into Holy Shit I Need To Respect My Audienceopolis. It should be the best version of that story I can muster.

e) Final worry is — and this is possibly just a knee-jerk twinge-in-the-gut feeling, but here it comes just the same — I worry a little about suggesting that a little money for writing is a good thing, like, “Oh, hey, that’s nice, you can buy dinner now and again with that book you wrote.” Or worse, the fact that we should be willing to pay to be allowed to do what we’re doing. That way leads to vanity publishing. That way leads to another ding in the armor of how authors get paid fairly for their work — because, even outside this one nonsense arena of traditional-versus-self, we still need to value writing across film, television, games, comics, and any other storytelling or journalistic medium. Writing is supposed to be worth something. Stories are supposed to have value. Not just to the ones that write them but to the audience beyond. Suggesting that it’s a privilege to write and get a few ducats here and there suggests writing and storytelling deserves to be a hobby instead of an art. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to do it to make money.

(Someone in the comments of Howey’s blog said that self-publishing was a lottery ticket, and I can’t get on board with that. Your book isn’t a Willy Wonka golden ticket. It’s not an audition on American Idol. It’s so much more, and so much different, and should be treated as precious — not a cheap piece of paper that will most likely end up in the trash.)

Not much more to add here except the takeaway that I’m finding is:

Acting as author-publisher to your own work is entirely valid and helps to confirm for me why, like Howey says, this is one of the best times to be a writer.

But it won’t be one of the best times to be a writer if we don’t continue to treat the publishing of our stories with seriousness. Not because of the writer, but because of the reader. The reader deserves our very best. As Ron Swanson says: “Never half-ass two things. Whole ass one thing.” (Or, if you’d rather a gem from Mike Ermantraut: “No more half-measures, Walter.”)

Writing a story is for you. But the moment you publish it: it’s for everyone else.

Be professional. Be awesome. Don’t fuck around.

This is a real thing, and if you do want to make money at it — which, by the way, is for absolute real and I know a whole lotta authors who are doing very well for themselves financially — then you need to treat it that way, and not like a hobby. Mindset matters.

If we’re going to ask for efficiency and professionalism in our publishing surveys, then it behooves us to ask for the same across all of publishing, no matter what form that act of publishing takes.

Last year I did up 25 Gifts for Writers, and may have accidentally suggested you kidnap Neil Gaiman. WELL NO MORE OF THAT, says this very specific legal writ. This year I’m back with another ten suggestions for the penmonkeys in your life.

Freedom

What if I told you that there existed a piece of software that slammed a giant glacial wall between A WRITER and the INTERNET so that said writer could write? BOOM INTERNET BLOCKING SOFTWARE. Which sounds strange, I know, because it’s like a cookie jar that bites you every time you reach for it, but dang, it does the trick. Sure, the first few days the writer will be greasily pawing at her monitor trying to get at that sweet sweet Facebook game she’s been mindlessly playing instead of writing, but after a week she’ll settle into the warm productive bliss of hot, fresh word count. Get this for a writer and help them eliminate distractions. (Bonus points: actually give the writer in your life time to write!)

Tonx Coffee Subscription

A writer needs coffee. Tonx has amazing coffee. They will send it to you automatically. Yay.

Evernote Subscription

Give somebody the ability to take notes and gasp keep them anywhere with the magic that is Evernote. As writers, we all basically have brains that look like 10-year-old underwear, all ratty and ragged, so give us this. Help us out. (If not that, then an iTunes or Android gift card to get us other writing or note-taking apps. Or maybe just porn. Who doesn’t need more porn?)

Wonderbook

A book that explodes and dissects story in the most visually-explosive of ways. The writer in your life may not need this book, but they’ll damn sure savor it. Wonderbook, baby.

A Houseplant

Houseplants give oxygen. They make excellent silent companions. And in a pinch they can be eaten for various hallucinogenic benefits. Ta-da! Health! Nature! Hallucinations!

A Corkboard

Plus pins, markers, string, whatever. A corkboard on the wall — or a whiteboard or a chalkboard — make a damn good receptacle for a writer’s thoughts in a very physical, present way. You know how detectives or CIA agents or conspiracy nuts sometimes have that crazy wall with all the photos and all the strings connecting them? Writers are like that, too. Forget that thing I said about Evernote: an outline or mind-map right on your wall is magic stuff. The writer will appreciate this. Check Etsy for home-spun versions.

Noise-Canceling Headphones

Life is distracting as all fuck. Kids screaming inside. Lawnmowers roaring outside. The wails of those you’ve trapped down in your basement. And so: ta-da, noise-canceling headphones. Also don’t be upset that when the writer in your life ignores you for a while — it’s nothing personal, it’s just, THE STORIES WILL SPOOK IF YOU SCARE THEM WITH LOUD TALKY TALKY.

External Storage Device (or Dropbox)

Redundant backups are powerful voodoo for a writer, so get them a USB key, an external hard drive, or a paid Dropbox account. I also use a robot monkey, an NSA drone, and the photographic memory of a 125-year-old Buddhist monk to store my writing, but I understand if you don’t want to take it that far. … Poser.

Solar-Powered Bluetooth Keyboard

I fucking love my solar-powered keyboard. Note I didn’t say “I love fucking my solar-power keyboard,” because I figure that would hurt. Never tried it, though. And my  mother always said I should try everything once? Hm. Anyway. I’ve got the Logitech one for Mac, though larger ones are available. I take it with me wherever I go — er, I mean, when I travel, it’s not like I’m bringing it to the fucking gas station and shit. But it’s great. No batteries required. Very responsive. Will bludgeon an interloper in a pinch. The word-herder in your life may diggit.

Writer Dice

Daniel Solis created these great physical dice — d6 “Writer Dice” — that work to help a writer continue pushing your story forward. You’ll find varieties other than these, too, like Rory’s Story Cubes. Related, but different: also awesome to get a writer word-bases games like Balderdash or Scrabble, or even awesomer, get them hooked on tabletop roleplaying games.

Shameless Plug #1: The Kick-Ass Writer

My book, The Kick-Ass Writer, will punt a writer’s netherquarters into the wordosphere with 1001 hard jabs of writing, storytelling and publishing advice. It exists in physical format, which means the aforementioned writer-type can get naked with it and rub it all over themsleves to absorb its dubious wisdom via fleshy osmosis. Details here.

Shameless Plug #2: Terribleminds Merch

Mugs and shirts terribleminds-style, baby. Certified Penmonkey! Art Harder, Motherfucker! And now I’ve added a new mug: the Art Harder Safe-For-Work version, where FUCKER gets a bunch of fancy asterisks. Whee! Asterisks! Asterisks look like cat buttholes!