Writing for Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft was one of the most exhilarating and daunting game writing experiences of my life. I am the first writer of Indian origin to write Indian-inspired material for Dungeons & Dragons. I felt a huge pressure to get it right. Of course, there is no way to capture a country so large, old, and diverse. My solution was to narrow my focus and create something compelling that wasn’t a one-for-one analog of India but took inspiration from a wide range of source material.

The other big challenge was creating an atmosphere of horror. Ravenloft is D&D’s iconic horror setting, and I was tasked to write two new pieces for it. Yet, I was worried about depicting India or Indians poorly. I was very aware of the terrible and racist pop culture entries about India and horror, the most obvious being Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. All too often, that’s what people think of when they think of India and horror, and I wasn’t eager to add to those terrible representations.

My solution was to avoid creating cliched non-player characters (NPCs) that served chilled monkey brains for dinner or ripped out hearts while screaming “Kali Ma”. While the three key NPCs of Kalakeri (Ramya, Reeva and Arijani) are genuinely monstrous, I decided to focus the real horror through the customs of the land that were open to interpretation for good or ill. I had originally planned to design a system that governed these customs.

Due to space limitations, Wes Schneider (the project lead for Van Richten’s Guide) and I mutually agreed to use the existing renown system from the Dungeon Master’s Guide. It shortened the piece and allowed the players to interact easily with the two main factions vying for the Sapphire Throne. I am proud of how renown turned out in the book, and here is some context behind what shaped renown—the Favor system.

Favor was inspired by many elements of Indian culture, but the primary ones were the boons depicted in Hindu mythology and the caste system.

Boons always fascinated me. They act as a sort of ruleset that even the gods must obey—once given, the universe bends to them. The great rakshasa king Ravana won boons from the god Brahma (or one of the other gods depending on the telling) for doing penance. These boons make Ravana invulnerable to all the dangers of the world including the gods themselves, leaving only humans as his weakness. This sets the Ramayana in motion as the god Vishnu reincarnates himself as the mortal Rama to defeat Ravana. I found this incredibly intriguing—that the gods could give Ravana such power, even power that would cause them enormous difficulty, because of Ravana’s observation of proper ritual and penance. Indian literature and mythology is littered with examples of kings, heroes, sages, demons and gods changing the course of history through a boon or a curse.

The caste system has been baked into Indian society for centuries. In my work in India, I’ve seen firsthand how those of marginalized and “low caste” show deference for those from more privileged castes. This has translated to an informal system where the poor and marginalized are often forced to be exceedingly obsequious to the wealthy and powerful with hopes of patronage or reward.

Now that some time has passed, I’ve had an opportunity to put together some flavor text for those of you who are interested in engaging more deeply in the cultural elements of Kalakeri:

The ancient custom of Favor has been part of Kalakeri for centuries. It describes the expected proper conduct of all individuals in society. Originally detailed in a series of ancient religious and philosophical texts that helped shape Kalakeri, it has been attributed to seminal moments in the lives of various legendary monarchs and heroes throughout the centuries. The founding of the Vasavadan Dynasty is tied to the Favor won by Vihaan from the great dragon Sarthak. At the same time, many say that the ill fate of Kalakeri is a curse from the goddess Ghoravara, because of the unfavorable deeds of the Vasavadan scions.

Favor permeates every level of society, and it governs routine interactions. Good hospitality is expected by all denizens of Kalakeri and earns modest Favor. Favor is most impactful when gained with those of higher station. In the original religious texts, it is described as a way for even the lowliest to petition the powerful. One of Kalakeri’s most important foundational stories is about a beggar who completed many great deeds to gain Favor with the maharana to save the life of her son.

The higher the station, the more formalized the process of building Favor and the more critical the stakes. A hero of Kalakeri may undertake challenging quests to accumulate great Favor with the maharani. In some cases, the individual will know what will help them gain Favor with the person in advance. Alternately, they may directly ask in an audience, “Maharani Ramya, I wish to curry Favor with you. What would you have me do?”

While Favor is powerful, it won’t make NPCs take completely irrational actions. An NPC won’t commit suicide at the whim of a Favor. But it’s possible to have a lieutenant betray Ramya because of Favor. Favor is strong enough to make individuals do things they would otherwise not do, and this applies to all, good or evil, who are raised in Kalakeri.

Among Kalakeri’s most prized literature are the tragedies of mighty heroes and nobles undone by Favor. Favor with Ramya enabled Reeva to ask her sister to meet with Arijani, which led to Ramya’s death. Equally, there are stories about heroes and villains cunning enough to obey the letter of the Favor asked, but not the spirit. Kalakeri’s epic tales of love, loss and triumph have Favor at their core.

The renown system in the VanRichten’s Guide to Ravenloft does a great job in setting up complex political machinations, one well suited for grand campaigns of dark fantasy. You can deepen that mechanic with more cultural context from the Favor system or personalize it so it revolves around individuals rather than factions.

Because of the power of the three main antagonists, a campaign set in the dread domain isn’t likely to start off with the player characters facing off against Ramya, Reeva, or Arijani—it’s going to be too hard to do so. And even if they are successful in defeating one of them, is Kalakeri really any better off?

But players might mitigate the evil of the three if only they can accumulate enough Favor with them to force them into new courses of action, or to blunt some evil they are perpetrating. Of course, to gain Favor with such ruthless antagonists, what might they ask of the players? To accumulate more and more Favor, the players will have to become intimately tied to these NPCs and drawn ever deeper into their internecine struggles.

Perhaps even more intriguing, and horrifying, is that the PCs are encouraged to play the middle with this monstrous royalty. Surviving the court of Kalakeri is like juggling knives; you don’t want to just gain Favor with one faction, because you need to ensure it does not get too powerful. Inevitably you will betray it to gain Favor with another faction. The domain is unlikely to improve, but you’re hoping it does not get worse. Both sides will hate you and love you as you play the game of winning and losing Favor, betraying, and supporting each side. You are continually torn between the powerful orbits of Ramya, Arijani and Reeva, winning and losing Favor in this nightmare land.

And if you want to take it to the next level, Favor can be applied to any NPC in Kalakeri. Flesh out the rebel NPCs, or lieutenants to the three main antagonists—all of that’s possible.

The horror of Kalakeri is both personal and social. Who will the player characters suborn themselves to? What crimes will they be complicit in? And what will they lose in the process? This domain offers so much to explore.

If you’ve enjoyed the groundwork laid by Kalakeri, but want fully developed adventures set in the domain, check out Unearthed Aventures: Kalakeri by the Panic Not! D&D community based in India. They’ve done a splendid job taking the seeds I’ve laid out and creating something special.

* ed note: we tried sourcing the artist names to these pieces but could not find them, if you are aware of who the artists are to these pieces, please drop them in the comments below, thanks!

***

Ajit George is the Director of Operations for the international non-profit the Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project, a leading non-profit in the field of education, and poverty alleviation. He is featured in the original Netflix Documentary Series, Daughters of Destiny. In the field of games, he has written for a variety of indie companies including Bully Pulpit, Thorny Games, and Monte Cook Games, and is a diversity consultant, speaker, and activist. He has most recently written for D&D’s Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.

Ajit George: Website | Twitter

Greetings and salutations, Friends of This Blog, I come to note that, to my surprise and delight, The Book of Accidents has found its way into the first round of the Goodreads Choice Awards under Horror. It is, as the saying goes, an honor to be nominated, especially among such a fine group of authors and books. Were you so inclined to vote for it, I would definitely buy you a puppy*, but I also note that there are so many excellent books on that list, you’re flush with options for quality. As you are in all the categories, it seems–

In sci-fi you have Martha Wells, Sarah Gailey, Matt Bell, Nnedi Okorafor. In fantasy, you have C.L. Clark, Alix Harrow, P. Djeli Clark, Zoraida Cordova. In mystery/thriller, S.A. Cosby, and S.A. Cosby, and did I mention S.A. Cosby? And back to horror, c’mon. Catriona Ward and Grady Hendrix and Stephen Graham Jones and Richard Chizmar and I’ve heard excellent things about Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons. It’s a buffet of goodness. Go show some love.

I will note that it’s a huge bummer the awards aren’t allowing Write-Ins this year. I always thought that was a good way to invoke reader choice in a dynamic way. So it goes.

Some other quick beats:

Hey, I got interviewed by Locus, and here’s an excerpt.

At Tor Nightfire, Emily Hughes has done an epic compilation of horror’s 2022 releases — and when I say epic, I mean epic. If you were ever thinking horror has not made a profound resurgence, just scroll down that list. Wayward (aka the sequel to Wanderers) is on there, by the way, set for August 2022, barring no shipping or printing shenanigans. And it is there amidst mighty company, and I can say with total sincerity that it is really cool to be a part of this moment when, I think, horror has come roaring back, and roaring back in a way that is — to my limited, privileged eye, at least — considerably more diverse in authorship and in narrative than before.

And I think that’s it for now. Bye!

* the puppy isn’t real, it’s a ghost puppy, a haunted NFT named “Scooter”

It is again the time of the year for merriment and mirth and wanton capitalism, and because that this year we have things like the chaotic supply chain and shipping issues and something called “inflation,” I figure it’s best to get the annual gift guide out the door and into your eyeballs as soon as possible.

A note on this year’s gifting list — normally, I call this Gifts For Writers 20XX, but this year, though many of the gifts are still focused on hey the writers in your life might like this, I’ve instead decided to just lean into, “hey, these are things I think look cool, maybe you think they’re cool, too.” The original purpose of doing Gifts For Writers was that year after year so many of those gift lists comprised only entries like, “omg they like notebooks and pens and more notebooks and probably a candle.” Meanwhile every year, ever writer probably receives a veritable holiday colonic of notebooks and pens and candles. “GOOD HOUSEKEEPING SAID YOU NEEDED THIS GEL PEN. HERE ARE 50.” Not that we hate notebooks and pens! Far from it. I’m bathing in blank notebooks right now. I eat pens! It’s just — it’s a little overdone.

Anyway. Whatever. Let’s do this.

Ooh also if you want last year’s list — 2020.

And the years prior to that:

2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014.

Chocolates Chocolates Chocolates

You know what’s good? Chocolate. The world is bullshit but chocolate is delightful. And god only knows, one day chocolate and coffee will both be extinct thanks to rampant climate change (happy holidays!), so let’s get in on it while the gettin’ is good. Of course, I also think it’s important to try to get chocolate that is ethically-sourced, so I’ve attempted to be helpful in that regard. Writers, too, especially need chocolate — either for themselves, or as gifts to other writers.

If you want fancy, weird, wonderful chocolates — and trust me when I say truly they are some of the best morsels of delight I have ever put into my slavering maw — then you should look no further than Bon Bon Bon. They give you these little single-box peculiarities? And it’s run by a diverse crew, mostly women if I recall, sourcing ethical chocolate.

I also like Compartes (who claims here to be ethical in their slave-free sourcing) and Dandelion will get you single-sourced chocolate with unique tasting notes like you’d get with coffee. For cheaper bars I would normally recommend Tony’s Chocolonely, but they’ve been removed from the Slave Free Ethical list because of ties to big cocoa, though the company I guess also argues that they’re invoking change from within. (Details here.)

I Scream

THERE IS NO DANA, THERE IS ONLY JENIS. Sorry. I really like Jenis! Their coffee ice cream is the best coffee ice cream. Also right now they have free shipping until 11/14.

Okay, fine, I also like Van Leeuwen. Honeycomb and Earl Grey.

Wait, is this gift list just a gift list of things you should buy me?

*stares suspiciously at self*

Okay, Fine, Be Healthy Too, Whatever, Nerd

Not sure how long it’ll be open, but currently you can get *blows trumpet made of apples* HEIRLOOM APPLE GIFT BOXES from Scott Farm in Vermont. You can also buy something called a “medlar,” which is tempting. Or Northern Spy from Farm to People. What do apples have to do with writing? Nothing. They’re just good for you. And if something is good for you then it’s good for your brain and good brain means good writing. Or something. Shut up.

What I’m Saying Is, Feed Us, For Fuck’s Sake

We’re starving artists who need food! Okay, probably not. Hopefully not. But sometimes I do find that writers fall into a writing hole and then wake up and it’s like, 8PM and we haven’t eaten since breakfast. (I don’t do this anymore because I have a ten-year-old boy who will kick down my office door and slit my throat for a hamburger or piece of sushi.) You can get us meals or food via places like Fresh Direct, Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, places like that. I tried Misfits Market but found their produce wanting. You might be able to find cool local farm deliveries on Barn2Door, too.

Oh Also Coffee

Brandywine Coffee Roasters is local(ish) to me, and has unique art on every single origin roast, and their coffee is sublime. They have great relationships with roasters, too.

Oh Also Beer

I use an app called Tavour to get access to weird, less-available beers, ciders, meads and such — this link I confess is a referral link, so be advised when you use it. But their service has been a pandemic essential. Beer! Delivered! Magic!

Play A Game, Tell A Story

I love the offerings from Leder Games — particularly Oath, but everything I’ve played so far is pretty delightful, both as products and as games and as ways to tell stories with those games. They’re not RPGs, not really, but some of their games have persistent narrative advancement, which is fascinating and cool. So too with Above and Below. If your kids are littler, they might dig Super Silly Stories from Parker Games. Or Sci-Fi Magnetic Poetry!

Oh Wait What Is This, A Shameless Plug, Wow Who Knew That Was Coming

I write books and if people don’t buy those books I die in the abyss, never to write again. So, you can certainly buy my books, and that would be nice. If you need a book about how one tells a story: Damn Fine Story. If you need monstrous motivation with wonderful art from Natalie Metzger: You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton. If you like spooky: The Book of Accidents. If your kids like spoopy: Dust & Grim. And as always, you can check with my local store, Doylestown Bookshop, if you wanted signed/personalized versions of any of my books. If you want to find an independent bookstore near you, Indiebound has you covered.

Comfort In An Era Of Discomfort

These days I am trying to seize on small, comfortable joys, and as a writer there are ways I have upped my comfort level that I will share with you now. Chief among them? I invested in some freakishly nice socks. I wanted nicer, cushier socks for running, and someone recommended Thorlos, and now I am recommending them to you, as well. I don’t just use them for running. I wear them for walking. For standing. For sitting. They are like HUGS for your FEET from a SOCK ANGEL. Seriously, there’s something very nice about giving yourself comfortable footwear. That’s a decidedly old person thing to say, I do recognize, and I also recognize that these socks are not cheap socks. I’m sure there are more expensive socks! But these are pricer than whatever Fruit of the Loom shit you’ve been tucking your piglets into every day.

I also need to up my underwear game (this is not a thing you ever wanted me to say, but here I am, saying it). I’ve heard good things about the boxers from Patagonia, but again, not cheap.

Also, The Boxers from Patagonia will be my lit fic debut in 2028. Watch for it.

If you want nerdier, bookish garments: Out of Print is cool.

Anyway. Consider too offering as a gift some manner of ergonomic goodness. Ergnomic desk chairs are an option, though good ones are not cheap. But there are good laptop risers and trackpads and keyboards that are ergonomic, too, and won’t cost as much as a new fancy-ass chair. There’s also standing desks if you hate someone.

Or you could just get them this thing. It’s a cocoon of some kind. It embraces you. It protects you from the world. It may also be a toilet, I don’t know? I cannot define its mysteries. I only know that when you emerge from it, you will be a beautiful butterfly. Or a weird moth.

Honestly, weird moth is better.

More Foods I Like

Wait, are we back to food again? Jesus, I might have a problem. That problem being, delicious food. Anyway. If you haven’t found the sheer joy of chili crisp, Fly By Jing’s version is sublime, but there’s always classic Lao Gan Ma. My current favorite snack is Indomie Migoreng noodles. (Terrible holiday present? Whatever, stick it in a stocking.) You know what else is great? Bachan’s Japanese BBQ Sauce. Or Nong’s Khao Man Gai sauce? Hnngh. What does any of this have to do with anything? I dunno. I might be hungry? I think I’m hungry. Oooh ooh Soom Tahini is good too. And Philly-area-based! Do you care about what hot sauces I like? Too bad, you’re getting some recommendations:

Shaquanda’s Mx Green Sass. Iris Lune, Eclipse. Hot N’ Saucy, Garlic Pepperoncini. Any of the Los Calientes. Atlanta Hot Sauce’s Small Axe Peppers sauce. (Though the classic three table sauces at our house would be Secret Aardvark, Cholula’s green sauce, and Crystal.)

Eat good food!

Kitchen Gear

Now we’ve officially left “things for writers” and have firmly entered into “things Chuck Wendig likes,” but fuck it, here we go. I like kitchen gear, and here is some of my favorite kitchen gear that gets a lot of love and use in the house:

My Vitamix blender is something I use damn near once a day.

My Le Creuset gear is not in any way overrated and I use it constantly.

(Look for both on sale.)

I love this Lamson hamburger turner, and this fish turner.

I have an Ooni pizza oven I deeply adore. It gets to 900 degrees and cooks pizza in a blink.

If you want a kitchen knife that is not expensive but is versatile and bad-ass?

Victorinox Fibrox Pro chef’s knife.

LEGO Goodness

This LEGO Ideas Typewriter is cool as hell.

And yes, we’re back to “gifts for writers” now. Sorry about the whiplash.

Throat Ooze

So, I do a lot of Zoom calls and such for WRITER WORK, and that can be chats with other writers, but it’s also podcasts and book events and school events. And even when not doing Zoom, I do stuff in person, and one of the things I am in constant need of is soothing my dry, brittle, dead-leaf esophagus with some kind of calming balms of throat unguents. Ricola drops are pretty helpful for this, but honey is also good — just a spoonful. Dark chocolate works. Or anything with pectin, honestly. Even an apple. (“It’s always apples with you, isn’t it?”) Asheville Bee Charmer has great honey, if you so require it. And the Mac Nut honey from Big Island Bees is one of my favorites, too.

Screen Time

Finally, this thing — the Hoverbar Duo. Great for doing video calls or Zoom on a phone or iPad. Also if you use a tablet as a computer, this can be how you turn that screen into a monitor. My son loves this too, uses it to draw on with Procreate. Twelve South’s gear tends to be incredibly well-made, by the way. Really love their stuff.

THAT IS ALL.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, WORD NERDS AND WEIRDOS.

Peace and chili crisp unto thee.

Vakov Fukasawa used to be a Reaper: an elite soldier fighting for Harmony, against a brutal invading empire. Harmony made him elite by injecting him, and thousands of other Reapers, with the DNA of an extinct alien race, altering his body chemistry to make him addicted to adrenaline and aggression, making him stronger, faster, and more aggressive and more powerful. And it worked. At a cost. Because alongside their supersoldiers, Harmony created an illicit drug market that left millions hopelessly addicted to stormtech.

Disgusted and disillusioned, Vakov walked away when the war was over.

Only, Harmony never took their eye of him. He may want nothing to do with them, but when his former Reaper colleagues start being taken out, Vakov is horrified to discover his estranged brother is the prime murder suspect, and has to investigate. Even though the closer he comes to the truth, the more addicted to stormtech he becomes.

WRITE WHAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT

Sure, you can write what you know. That’s easy. It’s also methodical. Clinical. I wrote that way up until STORMBLOOD, where I decided that I was going to cram the pages with as much cool and wacky and absurd stuff as I could.

I decided to write what I was passionate about.

A character-driven, first-person space opera? Pierce Brown did it, so can I. Seedy alien drug dealers and smugglers? Sure. An entire asteroid, filled with hundreds of cities stacked on top of cities like the floors of a building, each with their own style, class and visual aesthetic? Go for it. A protagonist who wears a full suit of armour pretty much everywhere he goes?  Sounds great. Space cults? Why the hell not? AIs that create avatars that look like animals they’re fond of? Who says I can’t?

In the past, I sometimes felt inclined to gravitate towards the common genre tropes. The done things. The things successful people were writing about. With STORMBLOOD, I decided to screw the rules. I was going to write exactly what I wanted to write. I wanted to write a voice-driven, first-person protagonist who literally gets high on the alien DNA pumping through his body. I wanted to make it intense, delightfully weird, in your face, and a little bit gross. I wanted this book to ooze passion and craziness. I wanted this book to be me.

And it worked.

WRITE FROM THE HEART, NOT THE BRAIN

I was a plot-driven guy. For a while, at least. When I started creating the character of Vakov Fukasawa, I was more interested in his story. Rather than letting the plot dictate the course of events, I let his emotional state drive the narrative. How trauma has turned him into someone filled with rage.  How his childhood, and his relationship with his brother, his Reaper colleagues, has shaped his personality. Why loyalty and family and brotherhood mean so much to him. And how much it truly hurts to see the damage being done to them.

I wrote about these themes because they matter to me. I gave Vakov Fukasawa these values, these emotional soft points, but they’re my values. When I wrote about the pain, the loss, the heart-break, and the determination to do better, to do right by the people you love, I wanted them to come from a place of truth, from the heart. Not just from him, but from me. I wanted to believe what I was writing. When I went for the gut and for the throat, I wanted it to mean something.

I learned that, at the end of the day, I want my writing to touch the heart of anyone who reads it.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO GO THERE

I’ve always liked fiction that was confronting, unexpected. That got you sitting up straight, lighting shooting through your veins, and a knot tightening in your stomach.

But doing that means taking a risk, and I don’t think I was brave enough to take it. Looking back, some of my fiction was a little passive. Inoffensive. But as STORMBLOOD started to take shape, I wondered how far I could go. If I was prepared to take risks with my characters and world-building. If I could really weird it up.

So I did. Given that the protagonist has an alien organism sniffing inside his body, there’s no lack of mentions about sweat prickling his back, his body hairs going stiff, or the alien DNA slithering down his ribs. What it’s like to really get high on an adrenaline rush, to feel an alien organism cranking your senses up to eleven in all its maddening and sticky glory (as well as the very messy after-effects). I threw my protagonist into terrifying, dread-filled situations, either where truly horrible things are done to him, or he’s forced to do horrible things to survive. Wasn’t sure if I had the skill to do justice to those scenes. If I wanted to damage my character in this way. If writing a protagonist who did and said these things would make him unlikeable. But I learned it’s necessary to push myself, to step out of my comfort zone and see if I could cook up a smorgasbord of insanity that really got the reader wondering what the hell they just read.

I won’t lie; I had a lot of stuff cooking up bizarre things to include that went the extra mile. Gothic Victorian space stations. Spaceships designed like cathedrals. Insane AIs used in interrogation that look like monsters. Suits of armour that like being worn. Drug dealers who have fused their DNA into the walls, turning entire rooms to an extension of their own body. Aliens who sell their own keratin and spinal fluid.

Go big or go home.

THE DARKER THE STORY, THE MORE IMPORTANT HOPE IS

STORMBLOOD is about war, trauma, domestic violence, drug abuse, human exploitation, and suffering on a galaxy-wide scale. Characters are not treated kindly. As the themes started to take shape, I knew if I screwed this up, this could be a relentlessly bleak ride. But soon, I saw the way to balance the scales. By developing relationships between the characters.

There’s some dark moments, to be sure. Characters get put right through the ringer and back. But I learned never to slip into nihilism or wallowing. The characters always had to be there to support each other, to have each other’s back no matter what. There had to be moments of peace and quiet. Where characters get to talk about their passions or relate a happy memory. Even when a very real threat was hanging in the air, Vakov and his best friend Grim had to have banter, little moments of comradeship and empathy (like having a drinking game and getting smashed in an alien bar. I’d fill a whole book of those, if I could). And when things got really dark, I learned to have moments where the characters reminded themselves who they were fighting for. Why their friends and family mattered so much to them, and why they’d let that hope, that love, give them courage to do the impossible. That darkness makes the light of hope that much stronger, and having characters be apart of that hope gave my narrative a human subtext.

VOICE IS EVERYTHING

I’m a sucker for loving descriptions of tech. I write space opera, so obviously world-building is on the table. And we already know how important character is to me. I went to great lengths with my previous projects to make every paragraph sing off the page.

But it wasn’t until I was editing STORMBLOOD that it hit home what I’d been doing wrong. None of that mattered unless it was infused with a strong voice. And by voice, I mean the protagonist’s voice. I want every word of these books to be filtered, coloured, and tainted by my protagonist’s mind. Sure, that’s a great description of a spaceship, but what does this spaceship mean to him? What’s the emotion, the history? It’s about how he sees things, the way he’d describe them with his dark and morbid sense of humour. More than that: I realised the prose, the sentence structure, needed to reflect his personality, as if he was speaking aloud. That meant going back and downgrading some of the language, making the narration more conversational, more terse and in your face. I chopped out any flowery phrases or pretty adjectives, made the language more visceral and gutsy.

That meant undoing many, many hours of work. That meant having a turn of phrase that’s rough around the edges. But I learned that, more than anything else, it was worth it. The book feels more organic, more raw than anything else I’ve written, because every sentence is drenched to the bone with the character’s voice. Hell, it even smells like him.

So if you don’t like it, blame him, not me.

***

Jeremy Szal was born in 1995 in the outback of Australia and raised by wild dingos. He is the author of many short stories and the space opera novel, STORMBLOOD, which was published by Gollancz in 2020 as the first of a trilogy. 

Jeremy Szal: Website | Twitter

Stormblood: Amazon | Authors Website

Have you ever wanted to write a novel? How about twenty-two of them? Do you like being told no hundreds of times for a living? Great, me too!

What a rubbish sales pitch that would be.

I used to talk about writing a lot. For a while, I literally blogged every day. A lot of that was about writing. About writing books, trying to find an agent for those books, writing about other people’s advice about writing books, and eventually about signing contracts for books I wrote. And then everything went to hell, and I slipped back into the bushes like that Homer Simpson GIF.

I’ve tried to write this post about five times and have scrapped about two thousand words of it. I am leading with that, because it feels relevant.

I even hyperbolically labeled the document “attempt a billion” because I feel like I have been staring at it since the Cretaceous Period.

I’ve hit some strange milestones this year in my writing career, and while I had a lot to say about it, I didn’t know how to say it. So instead, I’m going to give it a go in five chunks. Five things I’ve learned, five wheels you shouldn’t have to reinvent, five lessons, five shouts into the windy void.

This Isn’t Over

Maybe it’s weird to start out by saying something isn’t over, but I feel like it’s worth hammering into place with very large nails.

There was a not-insignificant amount of time where I believed my publishing career was dead before it had even begun. For those of you who don’t know me, my debut was put up for sale in a box set with three other authors’ books, released as a solo just in time to get orphaned, and removed from sale within six months of publication. Without going too in-depth into the other exciting points of that sob story (three orphaned books and an untenable contract and Agent Hunt the Third within three months of each other), when your debut barely sells three hundred copies, let’s just say acquisitions teams are not so keen on taking a risk on your next one.

From that point on, I spent a couple years self-publishing to a decent amount of success with my Ayala Storme series. But I had always wanted to sell traditionally, and it increasingly looked like it wasn’t going to happen.

My books started failing—and I do mean failing. The Storme sales dried up, partly because I took a sharp turn genre-wise, none of my novels was selling in the traditional world, and I was floundering.

But I held onto one thing. I told myself that everything I was doing was fertiliser. That I was sowing seeds in the earth below my feet, and that if I kept tending them, maybe they would grow.

I wrote new categories and subgenres. I started freelancing as an editor. I read craft books and style guides and kept writing new things. I tried short stories for the first time. I started a Patreon. I learned Gaelic to fluency. I started singing again. A brand new publisher decided to acquire my backlist and my shelved epic fantasy, and I decided to go for it.

It wasn’t over then, and it isn’t over now.

Seeds Take A While to Sprout

In 2018, one of my musical heroes disappeared and was found later, having died by suicide. I wanted to write something to honour Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison, to process his death and the connections I’d had to his music and his mental illnesses—his words resonated with many people who shared his depression. But nothing I wrote seemed right.

Then, after a week-long Gaelic immersion course at Ceòlas in South Uist, something clicked. I came home and wrote “Seonag and the Sea-wolves” in pretty much one sitting and fired it off to Jen Gunnels at Tor who also reads for Tor.com. She bought the story within a month, with me writing as M. Evan MacGriogair. It ended up making the Hugo longlist and has been reprinted now twice, with a third contracted.

In 2017, I’d written a YA. It came close to selling many times, but it didn’t. Like many of my novels, it seemed promising when it went on sub only to fizzle out after a year or so, I suspect because according to BookScan, I’m a big, juicy trombone womp on the loss side of “profit and loss.” This was the twelfth or thirteenth novel-length work I’d written. We were about to shelve it when my former agent got in contact, as she was acquiring YA after a spell of only doing younger categories.

In 2019, I sold that YA as Maya MacGregor. It comes out next year from Astra Books for Young Readers, and it’s called THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER. My acquiring editor told me over a plate of chimichangas that when she’d brought the book to the team, they’d asked her how the hell I hadn’t been snapped up yet. I may have cried into my margarita.

And as a final example, way back in 2016 (remember when we thought that year was the Worst? Bless), I had the absolutely, lolsob-worthy timing of releasing a book about a city slipping into the pit of fascism the very week the US elected Trump. It wasn’t a coincidence that I wrote that book—my degree is in history, and a big part of that was spent studying the reemerging extremist cells in Europe and the US. But despite its painful topicality, the book sank. Hard.

A few weeks ago, that book—which I am writing this post to promote—earned me my first ever starred review for its new hardcover edition. Five years after it “failed.”

Publishing is a Luck Game

I think we can all recognise that publishing is far from a meritocracy. It doesn’t diminish the power or impact of wonderful work to say that getting a book on a shelf is a concoction of timing, the nebulous markets, what an editor just bought, whether an editor is vibing with something in particular, and a million other factors.

You can write an amazing book and not sell it. You can write a book people hate and sell millions of copies. (Not here for bashing Twilight—like it or not, Meyer did something very right.) You can yeet a book onto Amazon and do absolutely nothing and have it somehow sell a thousand copies in its first few weeks and then go on to sell almost twenty thousand more. You can pour your soul into a book and have it sink like a lead-covered stone dropped over the Mariana Trench.

There is relatively little in our control, and before I get a pitchfork to the gut, “little” is not nothing. It’s just possible to do everything “right” and not have a breakthrough book. But that also means that sometimes, just sometimes, lightning strikes.

Publishing is a Long Con

As I went through Point Two on this list, you probably can already guess the gist of this one, because they’re closely related.

It’s one thing to look back in hindsight and say wow, all those things I did five years ago ended up doing stuff! But it’s even more powerful to look around right now and say that what you’re doing today could bear fruit in five years.

One of the things I’ve been mulling over in the past couple years is the difference between recognition and intentionality. I can recognise good writing when I see it but not be aware of the techniques and specific devices used and how I can also utilise them in my own writing. The same is true for general effort—it’s easy to get into autopilot mode and forget that we have agency and that our agency can alter future outcomes.

t(w + c) = l

No, I’m not saying that luck is the product of Terribleminds and Chuck Wendig, but it would be handy if it did. (And just in case, Chuck, may I have your blessing?) [edit — YOU MAY — cw]

At the end of all this, the most important lesson I’ve learned has to do with those letters standing for different variables where t=time spent, w=work, c=craft, and l=luck.

Am I mathematician? No.

Is this any more scientific than saying luck is the product of Chuck Wendig and Terribleminds? Also no.

But it is something that helps me feel a little bit more in control when so many things are outside my control.

I cannot control geopolitics and global pandemics. I cannot control whether the editor who’s had my novel on their desk for nine months will happen to pick it up on a day they ate some bad charcuterie and can’t focus because they need to run to the loo every ten minutes. I can’t control markets, reviewers, who else publishes the day my book comes out, or even (very frequently on the trad side of publishing) my covers and titles.

But I can control other things. I control the effort I put into my craft. I’ve now written twenty-two novels, and by the time you read this, it might be twenty-three. LOOK TO THE SUN was my tenth.

I can control whether I keep going or take a break, whether I give up altogether or come running back to the game. I am responsible for whatever ends up on my pages.

And if there’s anything you learn after seeing a few rounds of the “ten year overnight success” in this business, it really is that luck is very frequently the product of work and craft over time. It’s not as simple as that, of course, but you have a much better chance of getting struck by lightning if you are in the plains of Kansas in tornado season than on a sunny day in a redwood forest. Don’t go get struck by lightning, but do work smart and sow your seeds in fertile ground.

Not all of us luck into the easier (note I didn’t say easy) route of writing one book, getting one agent, getting one book deal, and then getting successive book deals forever from there that allow us to live comfortably on our writing income until we retire. Most of us don’t, overwhelmingly. I certainly didn’t. Maybe I never will.

If you’re like me—the me of five years ago or the me of now—wondering if it’s worth it, I can’t answer that for you. I frequently avoid talking about my publishing experience because no one really wants to hear “on top of the gruelling process of writing one (1) book and finding one (1) agent, you might have to do it multiple times and might end up writing a fifteen books before getting one advance,” but I can tell you that it isn’t over until you decide it is.

(My stubbornness comes in handy sometimes.)

I can’t say what’s going to happen next. LOOK TO THE SUN’s grand re-opening might coincide with any number of catastrophes. Murder hornet-sharknado, who knows? What I can say is that none of us at all have that kind of predictive power, and whatever happens could be terrible! But it could also be something wonderful.

I’m a writer because I have a very active imagination. If you’re also a writer, it’s likely because you do too. I know how easy it is to imagine the worst possible outcomes or to imagine that the troubles of the past will also be the troubles of our future. So my challenge to myself and also to you is to apply that imagination to exploring new futures. New ideas, new good things, new solutions to old problems. Good things can still happen, even in the godforsaken hellscape of 2021.

I believe that for me, and I believe that for you too.

We’ve got this.

***

Emmie Mears is the author of over fifteen novels for adults and young adults, also writing as M. Evan MacGriogair, Maya MacGregor, and Sylvie Greenhart. Their English short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Uncanny Magazine, and their Gaelic poetry and short fiction is in the Poet’s Republic and in Steall magazine. As a Gaelic singer, they have won awards as both a solo singer and as part of the Alba choir and the Glasgow Gaelic Musical Association. They live in Glasgow, Scotland with their two cats and dreams gu leòr.

Emmie Mears: Website | Twitter

Look to the Sun: BHC Press