Random thoughts in 3… 2… 1…

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You can buy a whiskey called Writer’s Tears. I don’t know what it tastes like. But if it were in any way authentic it would taste of ink and flopsweat, of the brine of insecurity and the heady broth of ego. It would have a nose of shame and a finish of triumph. It would feel like book pages on your tongue. It would burn the doubt out of your belly.

It’s probably not that good.

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One flavor in a writer’s liquor cabinet should not be sour grapes. It’s easy to look at those more successful than us and feel that acrid twinge of jealousy that says they’re better than us, that twist of the intestines that says they don’t deserve it. Thing is, you’ll always have someone who’s earned more, by dint of deserving it or by luck or by the sheer fortune of having plunged teats-deep into unknowably trendy waters.

You’ll always have someone with another zero on their advance. With more reviews. With a better cover. With a greater command of prose. Better shelf space. Better percentage on e-books. More awards. More Twitter followers. Cooler hair. Nicer beard. (DAMN YOU AUTHORS WITH NICER BEARDS THAN ME. I WILL FIND YOU AND SHAVE YOU AND SALT THE EARTH. Ahem.)

It’s easy to get caught up in it. To splash around in the warm, green waters of envy. It’ll do you no good. Sour grapes are a kind of slow-acting poison. Look upon other writers and be inspired. Inspired by their success. Inspired to try to do better yourself. High-five them, don’t kick them in the junk drawer. More to the point: don’t kick yourself in the junk drawer with all those stupid, worthless, poisonous feelings. Celebrate, don’t denigrate.

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We’re all going to die, so what the hell. The flu’s going to kill us one day. Not this flu. The next one. Some bat is going to fuck some monkey and their little bat-monkey baby is going to kill and eat an exotic possum and in this nature red in bat-wing and monkey-tail mess some mosquitoes are going to have a fucking field day and grab the new zoonotic Super-Flu virus and carry it to the far-flung corners of the world where it will destroy 9/10ths of humanity.

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Schaden-flu-de.

I see some people getting a little cocky over their flu shots. Some folks get sick and it’s like, “OHH, IF ONLY THERE WAS A WAY TO STOP THE FLU OH WAIT THERE IS SHOULDA GOTTEN YOUR FLU SHOTS DUMMIES.” You probably shouldn’t think that way? First, because, you know, it’s not nice. “You have flu, and I am going to mock you for it,” is not particularly nice. It’s just chastising a gut-shot man for not wearing a bulletproof vest (“OHHH IF ONLY THERE WAS A WAY TO STOP BULLETS HAR HAR”).

Second because, umm, the flu vaccine doesn’t work like other vaccines, exactly. It is an imperfect creature — worth getting, but depending on which study you read they’re only 60-80% effective, and that’s only if they prevent a strain programmed into the vaccine (which does not include the Super Possum Flu that will obliterate us all). One study even suggests it’s not all that useful for kids under two or adults over 65. Article also notes:

“The perception that current [flu] vaccines are already highly effective in preventing influenza is a major barrier to pursuing game-changing alternatives.”

Plus, there’s a whole spate of flu-like sicknesses that aren’t flu.

Meaning, the vaccine does diddly-poop against them.

(Then there’s the norovirus, where you geyser your internals out the front and back for days!)

So, yeah, definitely get that shot — but don’t expect that it’s going to save you from the flu. And don’t relish in the fluey-ness of others. Because that’s what dicks do.

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Then again, maybe it’s the unkillable gonorrhea that’ll get us all.

Slather your wangly bits in kevlar, folks.

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“Slather” is a really good word.

Other good words: “Plethora.” “Hoarfrost.” “Scintillate.” “Frisson.”

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Dan Brown has a new book out.

I mean, on the one hand: whoop-dee-doo, I guess. But it’s low-hanging fruit to go after him, or Meyers, or even the 50 Shades of Grey series. Let them be. Whatever. Snooki writes a cookbook and we all lose our shit but I figure that the Snooki-money and the Dan-Brown-geld bring in enough cash to keep publishers around, publishers that can then spend a little of that money on trying out new talent. That’s perfect-world-theorizing, of course, but sometimes I like to pretend we’re in that world. It makes me feel warm and cozy and like everything’s possible.

Like I’m wrapped in the warm skin of a bat-monkey hybrid.

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Indie writers will point that out a lot. “Traditional publishers release garbage too.” Like that’s a reason to excuse it in your own world. “John took a shit in the water fountain, so why can’t I?” Besides, even a Snooki book or the eventual publishing arm created by some monster-blob lab-created monster born of the DNA of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (GAGABIEBER BIEBERGAGA IA! IA! FTHAGN!) still puts out books that are at least crafted with the bare minimum of quality in mind. I mean, it’s still a pile of shit, but it’s shit lacquered with gold leaf, by golly.

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Are we still mad about them using that word, “indie?”

Language changes. Each word is not a single bullet.

Multiple meanings are okay. Words only mean what we need them to anyway.

Besides, a self-publisher is still a publisher, independent of all the others.

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I like Lena Dunham. But a lot of you sure seem to hate her.

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Teaching B-Dub certain words is an act of diminishing returns.

Me: “Say ‘ladder.'”

B-Dub: “Adder!”

Me: “Say ‘lllll-adder.'”

B-Dub: “Arble!”

Me: “Lad-der.”

B-Dub: “ADOBOBBODOOBO.”

Me: “LAD-DER.”

B-Dub: “SLARTIBARTFAST.”

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I think our 20-month old is better at the iPad than I am.

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Last night I made roasted strawberry slash creme fraiche ice cream.

I’ve only had a taste (ice cream is a weekend treat), but my face exploded with joy.

I cannot recommend the Jeni’s ice cream cookbook enough.

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I think I miss Mitt Romney.

Like, I don’t want him to be president, but he was such a hilariously tone-deaf goon.

He needs a reality TV show. I’d totally watch that show. Especially if it put him in awkward situations his LEGO hair-brain couldn’t handle. Like teaching an inner-city school or… having to have empathy somewhere for someone. He’d short-circuit! Cue the laugh track.

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I don’t get the Big Bang Theory.

This is not to say you should not enjoy it.

I don’t really buy that it’s “blackface” for nerds, exactly — it does seem to celebrate laughing at them more than with them but to me the issue is, I just don’t know that I find it funny? (Further, I’m not a fan of laugh tracks. It’s a thing with me, not with you.)

Ever see the videos where they cut the laugh track from shows?

Here’s one for BBT.

I’ve seen some debate that suggests Community is better than BBT, blah blah blah, and while I don’t know that it’s better, I certainly prefer (read: adore) Community. But I think the difference is that maybe, just maybe — and this is only if these designations matter to you or carry any weight at all — BBT is more for “nerds” and Community is more for “geeks.” I haven’t really sussed that one out yet, but maybe there’s something there?

Maybe it’s just that I don’t think I’m smart enough to be a nerd.

But I’m comfortable being geeky?

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I didn’t get Seinfeld, either.

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I’m really enjoying The Mindy Project.

And Happy Endings is the funniest show you’re not watching.

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Mister Doyce Testerman takes aim at steampunk and all the other -punk subgenre categorizations. I’m not sold. I’m sure some things labeled “steampunk” are not as anti-establishment as we’d like, but for the most part — provided we’re not just talking steampunk as a fashion accessory — I see threads of anti-authority middle-finger punk attitude in there. Then again, maybe I’m just protecting myself since I continue to refer to my upcoming YA series as “cornpunk” (which came out of a joke, honestly but there it is).

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It’s no secret that I am a fan of the artist Poe, who disappeared due to all kinds of awful record label bullshittery a while back. (Poe’s brother, by the way, is Mark Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, and her album, Haunted, has ties to that novel.) Lo and behold, I had no idea she popped up on the grid back in the fall with a tiny little new song:

 

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I also like this video. And the song, obviously.

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And this is my jam.

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I should shut up now.

Have a nice day, everybody.

Saladin Ahmed wrote a cool thing at NPR called:

“At Home In Fantasy’s Nerd-Built Worlds.”

It’s an article about the virtues of worldbuilding in terms of fantasy fiction.

In it, he says:

“Like a detailed model railroad the size of a football field, or a small city of fully furnished dollhouses, the well-built fantasy world astonishes us with the vastness of its intricacies. And from this wood, paint, cloth, metal, and hours and hours of painstaking nerds’ work, a kind of magic is made.”

(Which is a damn fine quote, indeed.)

I’m always a little… reticent to fall too deep into the world-building rabbit-hole, because oh, what a deep and wonderful hole it is. In both my upcoming YA cornpunk series and in my next Angry Robot novel, The Blue Blazes, by golly, there was worldbuilding to be done. But I also found that the worldbuilding was easy to become tangential and distracting — there comes a point when figuring out the details of the world crosses over from “enhances the richness of the narrative” to “tangles the narrative up in its own shoelaces and makes it fall down and chip a tooth and then everybody laughs at it as it skulks home, weeping into its bloodied hands.”

Ahmed points this out — giving some examples of worldbuilding that works (and why) and also noting those examples that perhaps fall towards parody (Robert Jordan, f’rex).

Really heavy worldbuilding distracts me, I think — once I hit that point in a fantasy novel that we have to describe the pubic grooming habits of halflings or the lyrical history of the lizard people’s addiction to chocolate eclairs I start to tune out. But, when done well, it gives you a deeper sense of place and roots you to the story in a way that the plot itself cannot. (This is true in much the same way that details about a character can bring you closer to that character — at least, until they don’t, until they expel you from them like an exorcism purging a ghost.)

I’m fond of saying that I prefer worldbuilding that serves the story rather than story that serves the worldbuilding. (Though the opposite is true in terms of games: a rich world presents myriad stories for me as the player to experience — the deeper the world, the bigger the sandbox.)

It also occurs to me just now that the worldbuilding in the very non-fantasy novel of Ulysses (James Joyce) is actually quite robust. It’s almost like a fantasy novel without the fantasy bits? In that sense that Joyce creates the heroic journey (made mundane) through a capably-realized real world city, and along the way packs in enough allusions and details to perhaps drown a bull elephant. (It’s a hard-to-read novel, though I do quite love it.)

I was never the kid with the fantasy map on his wall, but over time I’ve come to appreciate the power of really good worldbuilding.

Which is all a roundabout way of this week’s question:

What for you is an example of good worldbuilding? Or bad? In genre work or not.

And the obligatory: why?

If you recall, last month, a book publicity agency — the Albee Agency — posted testimonials on its website falsely attributed to some authors like me, Maureen Johnson, and Myke Cole, using our names without permission. (My post on the subject is here, but also have a look at the Writer Beware entry on them by the most excellent Victoria Strauss.)

Once busted and folks started tweeting to them, the testimonials remained the same but they changed the names associated with those them.

Things have been quiet since then, except recently I caught wind of:

@shamtown not only that, the articles calling Albee agency a scam were faked and paid for a competitor.

— Noah Murphy (@Murphyverse) January 11, 2013

I want this to be very clear: saying the Albee Agency falsely attributed my name and the names of other authors to testimonials they never gave was never an act of espionage launched by some other agency. It was a reporting of details. Nobody paid me. The blog post is not a fake.

I asked the person above (@Murphyverse) about where he heard that.

Was it from the Albee Agency? Is that what they told him?

@murphyverse @nvbinder Where then did you get the idea that I was paid by some competing agency?

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) January 12, 2013

They might have suggests, at least, that there is a chance the Albee Agency was lying to him about what went down regarding those testimonials, telling clients that those posts were faked and paid for by a competitor (@Murphyverse claimed it was “Smith Publicity” doing the dirty deed), when in fact no such thing was or is true.

Murphyverse followed up with (this time without an @-to me, perhaps mistakenly):

They told me the competing agency harressed you int…. You know what, they may not be a scam but I can’t trust them

— Noah Murphy (@Murphyverse) January 12, 2013

(I assume that’s to read, “harassed you into it.”)

Here, the key is, “they told me.”

Meaning, the Albee Agency told him that.

Meaning, they lied to him about that.

Looking through his Twitter stream seems to indicate other problems with the Albee Agency (issues of payment to them without result, issues of non-communication, etc).

The Albee Agency also now has a “word press blog” (“There is not wrong or right way to write a blog.. it is totally personal to you and your interests.”). But maybe there’s also this one? albeeagencyblog.wordpress.com? (Where they misspell their own name as Alby Agency?)

Once again, this is a reminder to be wary of any company out there in Internet-Land who provides dubious services and throw up a whole shitload of red flags. They particularly like to prey on self-published or “indie” authors. So, again, as Victoria Strauss says: writer beware.

The end of the year came and I’m happy as hell that Blackbirds made it onto a bunch of best of lists, but I’m just as happy that the cover made it onto so many lists, too — the Joey Hi-fi cover, in my mind, deserves all the kudos it can get. It’s a cover that far outshines the novel I wrote and I am eager to be its champion.

So, forgive the intrusion, but we’ve one more battle left to fight.

The Qwillery Battle debut author cover challenge ends at the end of the day (11:59pm). It’s been a two-week battle, a fierce and snarling challenge between Blackbirds and another ass-kicking Angry Robot book, Chris Holm’s Dead Harvest.

Dead Harvest is, of course, a cover deserving of its laurels — it’s a stellar emblem of how a great cover designer can do something that conjures old elements (in this case, those of pulp novels) and executes in a fresh way. (That cover is designed by studio Amazing15.)

Further, Chris Holm is a writer of immense talent. You should be reading him.

Just the same, I once more cannot let the challenge go by without giving it my all.

I mean, ye gods, look at that Blackbirds cover. Look at it. I SAID LOOK AT IT.

Take at least two hours to just stare at it. I’m happy to duct tape your face to the monitor.

You know, if it helps.

It’s a beautiful cover! A staggering piece of starkly-painted art! My jaw drops every time I see it.

Anyway.

Right now, Blackbirds is down, folks. The tick-tock of the clock reminds us that the battle will soon be over. Go! Hurry! Vote! Vote for your favorite cover which may or may not be Blackbirds but if it is Blackbirds then we shall cross a meadow in slow-motion with giddy looks on our faces and when when we get close to one another we will leap into the air toward one another and freeze-frame high-five as the credits roll over us.

Or something.

What I’m saying is, I appreciate your patience in me yammering on about stuff like this.

And I’d appreciate your vote.

Click here to go to the challenge.

*freeze-frame high-five*

*credits roll*

Last week’s challenge: “Spin The Wheel.” (So many entries!)

The past challenge was rather successful, so — I think we’re going to do it again.

I love these “games of aspects.” Eeeee!

Ahem. Anyway. So! Another set of random parameters for you to choose from, whether by rolling a d10 or using a random number generator like this one right here.

As usual, you’ve got 1000 words. Post it at your online space. Link back here.

You have one week. Due by Friday the 18th, noon EST.

Randomly choose one (or if you don’t want random and hate fun, pick one) from each:

Subgenre

1. Weird West
2. Comic Fantasy
3. Wuxia
4. Bad Girls In Prison
5. Zombie Apocalypse
6. Alien Abduction
7. Lovecraftian
8. Teenage Noir
9. Steampunk
10. Locked Room Mystery

Conflict

1. Betrayal by a loved one!
2. Need to hide a body!
3. Someone’s been poisoned!
4. The character is being hunted!
5. Enemy at the gates!
6. Heist gone wrong!
7. Man versus nature!
8. Man versus technology!
9. Revenge!
10. Family torn apart!

Must Feature:

1. Demonic possession
2. A forbidden book
3. A mysterious stranger
4. A bottle of rare whiskey
5. A vengeful god
6. Someone gone or going mad
7. A suitcase full of money
8. Carnival folk
9. A secret message
10. A hidden tunnel