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The Kick-Ass Writer is now karate-chopping its way around the world in bookstores all over this great multidimensional omniverse.

I have a handful of physical copies of this book and I’d like to give them away.

I want to give a bunch of them away, in fact.

I want to give a bunch of them away all at one time.

And here’s how I’mma do it: I’m going to give them to your local writer’s group. (I don’t have any rigorous definition of “writer’s group” in mind, to be clear.)

I’ll give one book to each of the members of your writing group — up to ten, anyway. (And I’ll send them to one point person in the group, not to all of you individually. Because I’m hella lazy.)

How you get this bunch-a-books is simple:

Send me a group photo of your writing group to terribleminds at gmail dot com.

One photo per group.

The photo can be of you guys doing anything, though obviously your goal is to amuse and impress me as if I am a bloated, sleepy emperor on a throne made of dead writers clapping his clammy palms together and muttering ENTERTAIN ME TINY PENMONKEYS DANCE TO STAVE OFF MY GRAVE ENNUI. *clap clap snore drool*

You get the idea.

I’ll devalue the books with my signature if you so desire.

This contest is only open to those in the United States, because I can’t really afford to send a giant box of books overseas. (Sorry, folks. MURRICA.)

I’ll close this contest on Friday the 13th of December at noon EST. I’ll pick my favorite that day and announce the following week. If we get enough awesome entries, I may consider a second prize — but I’ll wait until the contest’s end to see if it’s warranted.

Good luck. And please spread word about the contest — and the book!

Questions can be dropped in the comments below.

Muy danke.

*jetpacks out*

I am geeked when someone I’ve been talking to on THE SOCIAL MEDIAS for a while suddenly up and has a book deal and then, holy crap, an actual book. Especially a book that maybe has origins from one of the terribleminds flash fiction challenges?! Holy crap! Such is the case here, and so I am very excited to have Jamie Wyman at terribleminds to talk about her new book, Wild Card:

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

Who am I? I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the Bee Girl. I am a college drop-out who bet it all on Blue Man Group. I am the mother-fucking Phoenix. Spinner of fire. Drummer of drums. The Pajamazon. Omnipotent despot to all things peachy. I am Jamie Wyman.

Ahem, sorry. Guess I got a little carried away. Anyway, I’m Jamie—aka Blue. I write stories. Some are scary. Some are twisted. Some are sweet or pensive. All of them have some element of humor to them. In my life I’ve been a waitress, teacher, fire spinner/eater, writer/director of a performance troupe, corporate shill, that girl who dances like a hippy at Dave Matthews Band concerts, and a stay-at-home mom. I prefer careers that mean I get to wear pajamas all day. I like chai and have an unholy crush on Tom Hiddleston.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

Trickster gods are playing poker to win Cat Sharp’s soul. Her only help in winning it back is a deliciously snarky satyr. Wackiness ensues.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

One thing you need to know about me is that I love Trickster gods. Maui, Puck, Loki, Coyote, Anansi… all of ‘em. I’ve always loved the mythology surrounding them. Their fingerprints are all over my life. Just when you think something’s going your way, they throw in a plot twist. You can either freak out about it, or laugh and move on.

Anyway, several years ago I had the idea that I wanted a typical black-velvet garage sale painting of the trickster gods of various pantheons playing a game of Hold ‘Em. Since I suck at the whole painting thing, I decided to try to make this read with my medium: words.  So in 2011 I wrote a piece called “Ante Up” (for one of your flash challenges, actually) as a sort of proof of concept. The idea had legs and so I let it simmer a bit.

Around the same time I was toying with a character named “Candice Sharp” and wanted to do an urban fantasy story with her. Mainly I wanted a character named C. Sharp so I could play with musical elements. Eventually the ideas collided and I changed Candice to Catherine because I couldn’t stand the thought of a main character being called “Candy” at any time. Yes, the name “Cat” is ubiquitous in urban fantasy right now, but other reasons for the name change made themselves clear as I outlined the series arc. I decided to throw Cat into the middle of the poker game and bam: the story was born.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

It took a special kind of insanity to cook this one up.

For starters, I truly love these characters. Cat is quiet compared to Marius, but the whole gang talks to me… okay, Marius won’t shut up. It’s a miracle I get anything done with him going on and on and on about how awesome he is. But they play in my head and it’s so damn fun! I like watching them interact with one another. Torturing them—especially Marius—gives me immense joy.

Ultimately, though, this book comes from my reverence of myth and demented love of trickster deities. Pairing those figures with technomancy, Las Vegas and music came very naturally for me—I used to work for an agency heavily pimping vacations to the Strip. My tribe is mostly comprised of tech and gamer geeks, and I spent more than half of my life studying/playing/writing music.

This is a cocktail that comes from my own special brew of crazy. Sure, other people in the loony bin could probably put these things together to knit a potholder or something during arts-and-crafts time, but ultimately, my special sauce is my passion for all of the above. What you get out of that mixture of love, passion, knowledge and childlike schizophrenia is my voice. Accept no substitutes.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING WILD CARD?

Trusting myself to let go and just tell the damn story. That’s my biggest stumbling block when drafting a story…just diving in and swimming around, letting it happen. My brain is often my worst enemy. Once it starts shouting at me, the avalanche begins and confidence slides down to the seabed. It didn’t help that a few months prior to writing the rough draft my confidence had taken a pretty swift kick in the pink parts with a snafu with my previous agent suddenly leaving the biz without telling a soul. GOOD TIMES! With WILD CARD, getting back on the horse, trusting the process and letting the story happen was damn hard.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING WILD CARD?

This wasn’t the first novel I wrote, but WILD CARD is my publishing debut, so the things I’ve learned about making a word file into an actual factual book are legion.

From a writing standpoint, I’ve learned a lot with this book in terms of crafting a series. This is the opening act in a 5-story arc I call “Etudes in C#”. I’ve seen other authors succeed at their long game. I’m a huge fan of Babylon 5 (which is a master class in series writing). But, this was the first time I went into a project knowing not just where I wanted this story to go, but the others that spawn from it. There are many nuances to telling a fuller story over time and not giving away major reveals that this book helped me understand. Managing to keep the pacing of this story while juggling the events yet to come… yeah, that’s been a big thing. And that knowledge will continue to shift as I get deeper into the series.

I think the most important take-away for me, though, has been confidence. In the 2+ years I’ve been working on this book, my fraud complex has greatly diminished. That fear of being found out for the talentless, ass-dragging sea creature that I really am is no longer a daily—or even monthly—thing. I’ve grown to a place where I trust that I “belong” here. That I have written something worth reading.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT WILD CARD?

I fucking love these characters. Seriously, they are so much fun to have in my head. Catherine is a smart, flawed woman who loves her bacon and takes no bullshit. And she’s an unrepentant geek. She’s someone I’d hang with. Marius is, frankly, one of my favorite characters I’ve ever worked with. He’s snarky as hell, his Charisma modifier is through the roof and he’s got one hell of a monkey on his back. He makes Cat’s life difficult and in turn I give him no end of shit. Then there’s the pantheon of gods I get to play with. And a ginger technomancer with his own secrets. Everyone in this book is so colorful and loaded with their own backstories, mythologies and foibles that they make writing them a true joy.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Take Frankie’s advice and relax. Even with another novel and more stories under my belt since I wrote WILD CARD, I still need to chill the fuck out and just be in the drafting moment. I’m an editing fiend and I *do* enjoy story creation, but I can tell a difference between the results of when I’m writing tense (always looking for what’s wrong or questioning it) vs when I’ve written loose and fearless. Gotta be more like the Dude.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

 “And all I have to do is push,” he said.

I felt the sting of something pricking my belly and looked down to see that Marius had drawn his sword. Its point puckered the fabric of my T-shirt, blade gleaming wickedly in the moonlight. Gulping down a ball of fear and sucking in my stomach, I pulled my eyes back up to meet his. His expression didn’t waver.

“Do I have your attention?” he said with a simmer.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

Well, within the C# universe, I’ve got some work to do. Book 2 is done and ready to be pitched to the publisher. Book 3 is at about the 50% mark. Books 4 & 5 are sketched. There are some shorts in that playground, too. One is finished, another is still cooking in brain juice.

Outside of that, I’ve got a few short projects that I’m shuffling around. Also working on my first comic—a collaboration with artist Emma Lysyk (www.emacartoon.com). Other stories begging me to write them include a Steampunk Wizard of Oz book, a piece centered on a hospice chaplain, and another that takes place at Porn Star Fantasy Camp. I’m a busy girl.

Jamie Wyman: Website / Twitter

Wild Card (out 11/25): Amazon / B&N

You: I feel like I’m staring down the barrel of a gun.

Me: Oh, sorry about that. *puts gun away* It’s just a pellet gun, jeez.

You: No, I mean metaphorically. With this book.

Me: I don’t follow.

You: Well, it’s Day 20. I’ve got about 15,000 more words to go. I’m rounding the bend on this thing. I think I’m almost done. Maybe. Sorta. Kinda.

Me: Still not getting the problem.

You: I HAVE TO END THIS THING. Sooner! Rather than later! Gah!

Me: Ohhh. You don’t know how to end it.

You: Yeah, yes, exactly. Like, in video games, landing a plane is already a whole lot harder than the “taking off and flying around” part. I have to bring this thing in for a landing without everything going all SPLODEY FIREBALL. Can I just keep it up in the air? Maybe I’ll keep flying this thing for another 50,000 words. Or 100. Or forever and ever this book will never end. I can write a 10-book epic fantasy cycle that has no actual narrative breaks, right? That’s doable?

Me: Robert Jordan did it. Well. Maybe not. I guess he kinda died in the middle.

You: Too soon, man. Too soon.

Me: It wasn’t a joke, it was — oh, never mind. Listen, bringing this story in for a landing won’t kill you. Or kill your book because, duh, you can always come back and rewrite things. Just the same, you’ve gotta keep some shit in mind.

You: All right. School me, Dumbledore. I am your Jedi.

Me: What? Never mind. You’re about to enter what is narratively considered to be the third or final act of your work. Now, any act structure is ultimately artificial — whether it’s three or five or a hundred-and-fifty-four acts, we like to think of our story architecture as being rigid and perfectly defined, but it isn’t. We’re not building the narrative out of oaken beams and whale bones. We’re building them out of thoughts and ghosts, out of ideas and arguments, out of the hopes and dreams and fears of characters that never existed. It’s a teetering tower made of marshmallows and monsters. So, trust me when I say: the act structure is very wifty, wonky, and wibbly-wobbly. Just the same, there’s gems to mine in those dark spaces.

You: I don’t know what any of that means.

Me: It means, the third act is you rounding the narrative bend. It’s a time of high stakes and terrible transformation. Here, the story pivots hard and the characters have to navigate the shift.

You: I feel like you’re just saying things. Just babbling writey-toity buzzwords at me.

Me: It sounds like that, but let’s talk some examples. Like, in the movie —

You: Oh, Christ on a crumbcake you’re going to talk about Die Hard again.

Me: … was not.

You: Really?

Me: Really.

You: What were you gonna talk about then?

Me: Uhh. Mmm. Whhhhhuhhh. Mac and Me.

You: The fuckin’… McDonalds-sponsored junk-foody E.T. rip-off. With the wheelchair scene. With the alien with the butt-crack head and the blowjob mouth.

Me: Yep. Yes. *coughs into hand* … Yes. Yeah.

You: Okay, let’s hear it.

Me: So, in the third act of the film, the alien — who, ahh, wants to save his alien wife — has been battling German terrorists all along, but now, now, the conflict dial is turned up to 11 as McC… as Mac the Alien loses the detonators, discovers the plan for the hostages, has to battle the FBI in addition to Gruber’s men, and worst of all, his own children are the signal that shows Hans Gruber that Holly Gennaro is actually Mrs. John… er, Mrs. Mac the Alien.

You: You just — that’s the plot of Die Hard.

Me: Nuh-uh. Nope. Not — okay, you know, I see how you’d think they were similar, but no, two, ennnnh, two totally different movies.

You: Have you ever even seen Mac and Me?

Me: …

You: Seriously.

Me: Well.

You: Fess up.

Me: Jesus, has anybody seen that movie? No! I haven’t! We’re talking about goddamn fucking Die Hard now because it’s an easy example and also an awesome one and SHUT UP YOUR FACE.

You: Fine, go ahead with your Die Hard horse-hockey.

Me: Yay! Anyway. The third act of Die Hard is an amazing example of escalation. It’s complications piled upon complications. Everything gets a whole lot more urgent as the danger needle spikes and McClane’s chances at overcoming his problem fall off a cliff. Or, more appropriately, over the edge of a skyscraper.  Things go from bad to holy goatfucker shitbomb we’re all fucked. He’s about to lose his life. About to lose his hostages. About to lose his wife. The bad guy is gonna win! In McClane’s John Wayne-flavored universe, that’s a no-can-do, motherfucker. But it’s not just in that movie. A lot of movies have this sense of high-octane complication. In the third act of of Star Wars, Obi-Wan dies and the Death Star follows Luke home to the rebel base like an angry dog. At the end of Empire, we lead into the betrayal at Bespin, the carbonation (erm) of Han Solo, the fact that Luke abandons his crucial training to go run off and confront Vader where we get the most epic hard pivot: Darth Vader telling Luke that, yep, he’s actually Papa Skywalker. Really, just look at any ending you’ve liked — whether it’s from a book, a movie, a game — and try to figure out why it felt satisfying to you.

You: Okay, but how do I actually engineer that?

Me: Newsflash — you’ve been engineering this all along.

You: Wuzzat now?

Me: I mean, you’ve been introducing elements all along. Conflicts. Problems. Failed solutions. Enemies. These are your pieces. You’re playing a chess game against your protagonist and she’s the king alone on the board and these are all the pieces that remain for you to use against her.

You: She’s a king? You’re confusing me. Why do you sometimes use the female pronoun?

Me: Because I don’t assume all characters — or writers, or editors, or whatever — should be men.

You: Okay. Carry on.

Me: Look at it this way: you know the idea of Chekhov’s Gun? You introduce a gun in the first act it better fire by the third act? That’s just a metaphor. That’s a metaphor for everything you introduce in the first two acts. Every aspect of the narrative is a gun on the table — and the third act is when you fire them all. Preferably at the protagonist.

You: So, what you’re saying is that, everything that goes into the third act has been in the story all along. Meaning — this is not the time to introduce new stuff?

Me: Correct. Not a great time to introduce new (unrelated) conflicts, new characters, new mysteries. The first two acts is you letting snakes out of a bag. The final act is you killing them. You set up dominoes: now it’s time to knock them down.

You: How do I make it satisfying, though? Like, how do I craft an awesome ending that everyone will love and they’ll give me pony rides through the town square and throw Kit-Kats in my mouth from great distances?

Me: You don’t. Blah blah blah, can’t please everybody.

You: Yeah, yeah. I mean — how do I make it work for the people who have been enjoying the book thus far –? I don’t want to let those folks down.

Me: This is real threading-the-needle stuff, trust me. Ending are tricky widgets. The last act of your work needs to a) feel like an ending nobody expected while also b) feeling like the only ending that could’ve ever happened. You’ve got to both surprise them and also give over to expectations. You’re Danny Torrance at the end of The Shining, leaving footprints that you will walk back over, fooling your isolation-mad daddy into frozen death there in the heart of the hedge maze. It’s like, at the end of Se7en we’re all surprised to find Paltrow’s head in the box, and yet — it all adds up, doesn’t it? It culminates the grand plan of John Doe. Even at the end of Die Hard —

You: oh christ

Me: — you get all these great surprising moments. The gun stuck to his back with fucking Christmas tape and blood. The helicopter exploding. The broken window. Hans falling. McClane punching out the bad guy from Ghostbusters. It’s not just plot stuff. This is all primo John McClane, baby. All this stuff confirms who we think he is and yet, at the same time, takes it over the top to show us even more.

You: This sounds hard.

Me: It is. Endings are hard. But a good ending should have momentum. You’re solving mysteries. You’re answering riddles. You’re forcing the good guy to deal with the bad guys. You’re forging romance or breaking hearts. You’re taking the theme you’ve had in play all along — meaning, the argument you’re making or the big question you’re asking — and you’re either confirming it or denying it. Most important of all, you’re bringing the journeys of all the characters to a close. In a way that’s compelling and curious and exciting and heartbreaking and triumphant for the reader as much as it is for the characters. Let the characters lead, even at the end of things.

You: I can do this.

Me: Even if you can’t, that’s why Jesus invented “editing.”

You: Cool. Smell you later, Dumbledore.

Me: Hasta la vista, Mac and Me.

*both fall off the cliff in wheelchairs as an alien looks on, confused*

You: I made a terrible error.

Me: You tried to punch that coyote again.

You: No.

Me: You huffed wood varnish and got lost in the mall.

You: No. Well, yes, but that’s not the mistake I’m talking about.

Me: You ate all the bacon again.

You: That’s not a mistake. That’s me fulfilling my manifest destiny.

Me: It’s a mistake because when you eat all the bacon, I turn into Bacon Hulk and I rip your puny form to Kleenex ribbons out of sheer, baconless rage.

You: I see your point. I didn’t eat all the bacon, it’s still downstairs, chillax.

Me: Nobody says “chillax” anymore. The new word is “coolquilize.”

You: JESUS GOD WHATEVER can I tell you my mistake now or what?

Me: Bleah, sure, go for it.

You: I’ve been reading other people’s work as I write.

Me: Reading is fundamental. Writers who don’t read are like screenwriters that don’t watch movies, like architects who don’t strop up sexually against elegant skyscrapers, like professional killers who do not admire the work of other professional killers from the telescoping lens of a distant hijacked drone. Writers have to read. It is an essential spice to this broth we’re brewing. Writers who don’t read are missing their souls.

You: Fine, yes, yeah, I just mean — some people have been posting their NaNoWriMo projects. Like, snippets or whole sections and, hoooo heeee unnnnh — *rocks back and forth while massaging temples* — I have discovered through this that I am not good enough.

Me: Oh, god, more of this again. Okay. Huddle up. Writing a story is in some ways an act of obstacle management and you’ve gotta manage all the obstacles accordingly — jump all the fences, hop all the ditches, elbow all your enemies right in their spongy tracheas. One of the biggest obstacles is self-doubt. Doubt is the vampire you invite into your house. Doubt is bedbugs and hobos — it fucking lingers, man, like the scent of cigarette smoke in your curtains, or the odor of cat piss in your carpets.

You: So, what do I do about doubt? It sounds like a demon. AN ACTUAL DEMON THAT REQUIRES SOME KIND OF EXORCISM IS THERE A BOOK A HOLY BOOK PLEASE HELP.

Me: The book you’re writing is the holy book.

You: Wuzza?

Me: Self-doubt isn’t going to just turn to smoke or vapor. Doubt has its teeth in you. And doubt has long fangs. But you have ways of tricking it — or at least neutering it with a pair of scissors. You finish the book, that’s like finishing the exorcism. THE POWER OF WRITING COMPELS YOU. Get to the end of the book and some of that doubt will go away.

You: And during the writing of the book? I still have to get to the end, you know.

Me: You have other ways of diminishing doubt.

You: HELP ME WENDIG BEARD KENOBI YOU’RE MY ONLY —

Me: Just shut up. Okay, first, recognize that everyone gets this feeling. Everyone has doubts. Every writer you read has at one point or another felt like a stowaway on board their own careers — they’re the dirt-cheeked urchin on board the Titanic, hiding below while the deservedly rich dance above. I believe this is true of Neil Gaiman, of Margaret Atwood, of authors who write sci-fi and literary and children’s picture books and erotica and, and, and. Anybody who commits words to paper, professionally or no, feels at times like an alien in their own world.

You: But those people are all really good. Like, they have talent. Same as these other NaNo participants whose work I read — it’s like, these folks have genuine actual OH EM GEE talent.

Me: Talent is at least half-a-bag-of-horseshit.

You: Whoa, no. Talent is a real thing.

Me: No, talent is an idea somebody made up. It’s a noun, and nouns always feel real — like chair or whale — but really, it’s a noun masquerading as an adjective: talented. Talent is not a thing you can measure. I can’t dip a hot wire into a petri dish of blood and expose your monstrous talent. It has no margins. It has no parameters. We see someone who takes to something really well and we call that “talent.” The same way we think half the writers who break out are overnight successes but, in truth, that’s been a decade-long “overnight.”

You: No, I’m not buying this. I’ve known writers who are genuinely talented.

Me: I’m not saying there’s not something to the idea of talent. What I’m saying is, the word is so poorly defined, and its effects so toxic, we might as well get shut of the whole word.

You: Toxic? Like, the Britney Spears song?

Me: That’s a great song.

You: It is. Great covers of that song, too. Yael Naim’s? Or this Mark Ronson ODB version?

*both listen to various covers of ‘Toxic’ for three hours*

Me: That was fun.

You: That was. What were we talking about?

Me: I actually don’t — oh! OH. Talent as a toxic notion. I can explain that. Being told you’re talented is like being fucking cursed, man. I’ve known way too many writers who were plainly more talented than I was, and yet, every last one of them are nowhere in their respective writing careers. Hell, they don’t have careers. Talent seems like a key to a door but it isn’t any such thing, and this is one of the things I really like about NaNoWriMo — all those people who think they can hang tough with a novel because someone somewhere told them they were talented, well, now they’re getting a hard Shotokan straight punch of truth delivered right to the solar plexus: discipline and devotion and skill are a trio that overwhelms any presumed talent any day of the week. You can be as talented as you want, but you still need to sit down, learn your craft and then demonstrate it. Over and over again. If — if! — talent is a real thing, the best that it gets you is that it cuts down the time it takes for you to get to a qualified end result.

You: Fine, then. I don’t know that I have the discipline, devotion, or skill to continue.

Me: Skill comes over time, as does the instinct on how to implement it.

You: Fine okay whatever, then I don’t have the discipline and/or devotion. Still full of doubt here.

Me: More tips to cure doubt, then. Okay: I told you to care less, didn’t I?

You: Uhhh. Maybe? I fade in and out.

Me: Go for a run. Take a nap. A hot shower. Drink some tea. Gobble a hallucinogen of your choice and fight your demons inside the Thunderdome of your own tripping mind. Escape the gravity of your work for an hour, a day, clear your head of all the cobwebs in order to see yourself straight.

You: Sleep, jog, Earl Grey, peyote, okay. Got it.

Me: Talk to other writers, too. Commiserate. Cheerlead. Cry over whiskey.

You: Talk to other writers… okay, got it.

Me: Great! Then you’re good to go.

You: Sweet.

Me: Awesome.

You: Excellent.

Me: Indeed.

You: Yeah, I’mma still quit.

Me: Wait, what?

You: I know. I know! I know.

Me: You got this far and you’re gonna quit? You’re around or over 30,000 words now.

You: I know, I just — I can’t hang with NaNoWriMo. I’m failing at this book.

Me: Failing is fine. Quitting is crap.

You: They’re the same thing.

Me: CLOSE YOUR HERETIC MAW, because no they ain’t. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you learn from failure. Failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue. Failure is illuminating! School teaches us that failure is badwrongbad, but life is a constant stream of failures. Personal failures, relationship failures, business failures, creative failures. And in each one we learn something on how to move on, improve, how to flip it and switch it so that next time we get closer. We need failure! Failure is getting to the end and discovering what you did needs work. Failure is how we course correct. Quitting? Quitting is just you rolling over and showing your pink belly. It’s soft. It’s lazy. You illuminate almost nothing with quitting — it’s you taking your flashlight and throwing it against the wall.

You: You’re saying I should grow a pair of balls and get it done.

Me: Balls are actually notoriously weak, far as parts of the body go. I mean, I could catch a wiffle ball in the crotch and double over in misery. The testicles are very sensitive and about as strong as a couple of raw quail eggs rolling around in a set of fishnet stockings. You wanna be hardcore, dang, grow a vagina. Those things are built Ford tough, man. The vagina is like the Incredible Hulk of the human form. It does all the heavy lifting. You ever see a woman give birth to a child? You see that, you’re like, “That thing could lift a burning car if it had to.” If anything, the entire scope of masculine history has been an epic attempt at trying to convince the world that the vagina is tissue paper and our balls are titanium. It’s a huge and ugly ruse.

You: This is a weird conversation all of the sudden.

Me: Oh, please, it’s been weird since we mentioned “coyote punching.”

You: Fair enough. So: I learn nothing from quitting. Okay.

Me: You can learn one thing from quitting: the thing you learn — or that you express, at least — is that you don’t want to do this anymore. And if that’s really genuinely true, hey, okay, no harm, no foul. If you’re this far into the book and you’re like, “You know what? Nope nope nope, writing a novel is for somebody else and I realize now that it is absoflogginglutely not for me,” that’s a meaningful revelation. That’s when quitting has value, when it carries you away from a thing that’s just pissing all over your potential satisfaction with life. But if you think there’s any shot at all, any chance you really want to do this and see this through, then fuck it. Hunker down. Grit your teeth. Carve words into the flesh of the page. And finish your shit.

You: I think I’m going to finish. Even if it’s a failure. Even if I lose NaNoWriMo.

Me: Yes. And remember: NaNoWriMo is some made-up shit, too. It’s not a state law. You don’t actually have to finish 50,000 words by the end of November. This isn’t a game, not really. It’s a book. It’s your book. And it’s your job to finish this draft, whether that means finishing it on November 19th, or the 30th, or December 15th, or March 8th. The only way you “lose” is by giving up. And then it’s your job to take that draft and keep working on it. But we’ll talk about next steps later. Next week, probably.

You: Okay. I’m in for the long haul. Besides: IT’S GETTING LATE. TO GIVE YOU UP. I TOOK A SIP. FROM MY DEVIL’S CUP. See what I did there?

Me: Toxic. Nice.

You: *dances awkwardly*

*vibrates so hard my hands can cut concrete*

HEY HOLY CRAP I WROTE A COMIC BOOK

And now it’s available for you to purchase.

It’s called “Shackletoon’s Hooch,” and it’s based on my short, “I Don’t Drink Anymore.” Art by the incredible Gavin Mitchell. Six pages of Amanda Wynne, bad-ass otherworldly archaeologist trying (and failing) to return to the normal life she left behind. It’s in VS. Issue 9, and also features a story by fellow compatriot Adam Christopher.

The page above is a sample page from the comic!

Thanks to Mike Garley and James Moran for having me on board.

My first comics-writing experience.

But hopefully not my last!

Other Beefy-Flavored News Nuggets

New review of the third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant:

“The plot is strong and weird and fits Miriam like a black leather glove with the fingers cut off. It turns and twists and dives–I sat up all night reading this damn book on my cell phone, for Pete’s sake. It’s well put together, nuanced, and in the end, satisfying–with no easy outs.”

“The writing is a scary, wild, obscene crash of sound and yet there are elements and overtones of Shakespeare and  Rimbaud and Dante hidden deep inside. Miriam Black is a solid taut block of arrogance, anger, and screaming rage–except that when you look back at what she’s actually done, you see a very different person. Someone who wants others to be happy, hates the death that washes around her, and never, ever stops fighting.”

It’s really one of my favorite reviews — not just because it says a metric fuckton of really nice things, but it says them in an interesting way and really seems to get the book. Thanks to Terry Irving for the great review.

Tenacious Reader also offers a lovely Cormorant review right over here:

“I highly recommend this one, I think it may have taken seat as my favorite of Chuck Wendig’s books and put the fourth Miriam Black on my must read list (please tell me there will be a fourth!). So, yeah, go read it. Miriam once again kicks ass.”

The Cormorant has a page on Goodreads, now.

It’s also available for pre-order: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound.

What else?

The Kick-Ass Writer is now out, for those looking for my writing chatter in physical form.

The NaNoWriMo writing bundle is still on sale (six books, ten bucks) until end of the month.

I turned in Blightborn, the second Heartland book, and it’s a doozy.

Should be getting edits back for Bait Dog soon enough, and I’ll start on Frack You, the second Atlanta Burns novel, soon after that.

I’ve other news I can’t yet share, but I did get an interesting script in my inbox a week ago…

*mad cackle*

It’s that time, again.

You want to promote something story-based? A book? A comic? A movie? A game? Here’s where you do it. Drop into the comments below, and give a (preferably short) head’s up to the Awesome Work you did. Hey, include links, too, so we can check out whatever it is you want us to see.

But —

But.

Here’s the caveat.

You must also promote one other thing that is not by you.

That’s your ticket through the door.

Promote someone else.

Promote yourself in return.

Fail that, and I’ll delete your comment. Or worse, kick it into the SPAM OUBLIETTE.

Easy-peasy George-and-Weezy.