Children are dead.

Shot by a bad man for reasons as-yet-unknown.

Some voices cry out, “We need more gun control.”

Others say, “No, no, it’s a mental health issue.”

A third voice claims that, “The media is at fault.”

Or that there’s a “culture of violence we need to solve.”

“It’s not this, it’s that.”

“It’s not that, it’s this.”

And we are paralyzed because nobody can find the one monster and cut off its head.

The problem is, as with most problems, a nuanced one. It isn’t a problem with one-color: it is a rainbow of fucking issues that blur and blob together into a muddy, bloody mass.

It’s not one monster. It’s many.

Guns are easier to get than good health care.

Mental health care is a black hole for those who try to get it.

The media shoves camera in the faces of kindergardeners to get a sound byte.

We adore violence in our media and abhor love and sex.

It’s all of these things. Not one to the exclusion of others.

That can’t paralyze us.

That confusion and complexity cannot give us pause.

Something has to be done.

One thing at a time. One bite out of the rotten apple, then another, and another until it’s gone. We can’t just nuke the problem. We can’t just drone strike it, or hit it with chemo and radiation, or plug in a cheat code and make it all go away. It’s a many-headed hydra. But we still have to start attacking the heads or the hydra will live on and people will still die because we couldn’t get on the same goddamn page. The time to talk — and act — is now. Not in six months when we’re back worrying about what the fucking Kardashians are up to.

The time is now! When we feel something.

When we have the fire in our bellies to write our politicians and make our voices heard. Not when our hearts are hardened but when we feel raw and in pain.

That’s why you can’t listen to people saying this isn’t the time. That’s shutting down the conversation. That’s putting up walls instead of opening doors. Not wanting to talk about it is okay. Wanting to step away from the discussion? Completely understandable. But anybody who tries to shut down other people continuing this conversation? That’s an obstruction. Calling it “politics” is false. Wanting to stop kids from dying, wanting to get busy navigating the complexities of our human experience is not “politicizing.” What someone means when they say, “Stop politicizing the issue” is, I don’t agree with you, so shut up. It’s not politics to ask that we figure this out. It’s not politics to seek solutions to suffering. This isn’t related to governance of the state. This isn’t related to political relations between people. This is about dead children, teenagers, and adults. This is about standing up and saying that we want something done, and that while we may not agree on what that something is, it’s time to move the needle one way or another because the worst thing we can do is sit on our hands in defiance of progress, in the paralysis of fruitless indecision.

P.S. — the one thing it’s not is the lack of God in our schools. If you believe in America, then God is in the schools when one wants him to be and not there when one doesn’t because that’s how freedom of religion is supposed to look. If you believe in God, then God is everywhere, and you don’t need prayer in schools to stave off a vengeance that involves killing children. And, by the way, if you believe in a God that not only allows for child murder but actively invokes it as payment for pulling prayer out of school, you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and you should probably be put on a boat with the rest of your fucked-up brethren and set afloat so we can stop listening to your delusions of self-importance.

[I’ve been sitting on this post for a long time. Since August. Normally I try to stay out of potentially controversial shit here, not because it’s controversial and I’m going to lose readers or whatever but because for the most part I honestly don’t have the time to engage with it. And it doesn’t often do a lot of good. Just the same, here I am on the day of an elementary school shooting. Two days after a fellow author, Bill Cameron, was actually at the Clackamass mall shooting — his account is right here. And you know what, fuck it, I have the time to engage. We have to makethe time to engage with this problem. So, here it is.]

I grew up around guns.

My father had plenty. He ended up getting a FFL (Federal Firearms License) and setting up a small shop in our one garage, where he also did repairs and even built his own guns. He hunted, too, quite frequently.

As a result, I learned to shoot pretty early. I’m not sure how old I was when I got my first BB gun (a Daisy that I still have, actually), but I figure both it and my pellet gun came before I was 10. By 12 I already had taken the hunter’s safety course, already had a couple of .22 rifles to my name alongside a brand new Remington .22-250, and later, a Ruger 20 gauge over-under (both guns I still have and like very much, thank you). With the .22-250 I hunted groundhogs upstate, mostly — farmers would gladly let you hunt their property as the whistle-pigs made a mess of the ground. With the 20 gauge and later, a 12 gauge Remington 1100, I shot birds — geese and grouse and chukars and pheasant.

Dad was a big deer hunter. Also went after elk, caribou and mule deer out West. He wanted me to enjoy deer hunting the same way, but I never could; we raised whitetail deer on our property (curiously, not for food but more like pets), and so it was hard for me to hunt them. Felt like I was hunting dogs or cats. I remember going out on a deer hunt and purposefully missing a shot at a deer, a shot I could’ve made (turns out I was a pretty all right shot with rifle and shotgun). I eventually had to tell my father that it just wasn’t going to happen.

I wasn’t going to be able to hunt deer.

I think I actually hurt him by telling him that, but it was what it was.

I suppose most of that detail is irrelevant, though I mention it all just to make it abundantly clear that I am not anti-gun by any means. They were and are a part of my life.

And, just the same, I figure it’s time we had a conversation about guns in this country.

See, in our house, gun ownership and handling came with a big ol’ bucket of responsibility. You pointed a toy gun — hell, you pointed your fingers — at somebody in our house, you’d bring hell down on your own head. You didn’t pretend to shoot other people. Guns were fucking serious. They were dangerous. You had to respect the gun, respect what it could do. It could feed you, or it could accidentally blow the lid off your head. Guns weren’t “cool.” With them came a kind of reverence and respect and a healthy fear.

This country doesn’t have respect for guns.

And so maybe it’s time we start making laws that change that.

Now, let’s be clear: I know this post is just me squawking into the void. I’m not changing anything with this post; I’m just talking. Your mind is made-up. Guns are one of those topics where tempers flare and everybody takes sides on the opposite side of the field and it’s either take all the guns away or I think I should be able to buy a Bell AH-1 Cobra helicopter at Wal-Mart and use it to hunt deer — and politics only complicate the gun matter. I went to a gun show just before Obama was elected and it was like Christmas for paranoid schizophrenics: everybody had signs up about how Obama was taking away the guns and so prices were jacked through the roof and, ohh, by the way, here, please take a look at my KKK and Nazi paraphernalia, oh, it’s history, don’t worry about the scary racist violent implications.

Of course, Obama didn’t take anything away. But those prices stayed high. (And in there is a lesson how people will use fear to control you and control prices and take your money, but that’s talk for another day.)

Anyway.

My opinion on the gun issue is controversial in that, it’s surprisingly vanilla and nuanced. It is a moderate position in a topic that offers only intense, froth-mouthed polarity.

Here’s what I figure:

Guns are not a real great solution for dealing with other humans. They’re a pretty good solution for dealing with animals. What my father hunted, we ate. That’s a powerful thing, to be able to feed yourself in that way. When I go pheasant hunting, the birds come back with me, and I cook ’em. (And pheasant in cream sauce is pretty heavenly.) So, guns? Good solution for that.

Good solution too for shooting clays. Or paper targets. Or cans off a fence with a proper backstop.

But as the shooting at the Empire State Building shows, guns are not a dandy solution when dealing with other people, since it looks all of the wounded (not dead, but wounded), were shot by cops. Cops who are trained. Maybe those cops were following protocol, maybe they did the best they could with a bad situation, or maybe they’re a couple of chuckleheads. But what that does tell us is, even two men with firearms training make mistakes. So, when people tell me they want guns — specifically handguns, which are notoriously inaccurate — for self-defense, they don’t get how hard that is. They don’t understand that you need training beyond target practice or you’re going to be part of the problem and not part of the solution.

I mean, dang, if you think you’re going to march into a situation where some dude’s got a gun and he’s shooting up a college campus or a movie theater and you’re going to pull a John McClane, I might suggest you uncork your head from your ass, Rambo, because you don’t have the training for that. See, shooting people in a combat situation takes, ohh, I dunno, training. It’s not Call of Duty. That’s not an Xbox controller in your hand, that’s a deadly weapon — and, as your heart goes wild and panic punches through your nervous system, are you competent enough to take out the shooter and not, say, a little girl?

What I’m saying isn’t that we need to take people’s guns away. The snakes are out of the can on that one. And I think gunpowder is in the American bloodstream already.

I’ve got beliefs about regulation that are a bit unorthodox (I don’t see why any civilian would ever really need a handgun, for example), but that’s not the solution I’m gonna propose.

Here’s my proposal:

People need to get educated about guns.

If you’re going to own one, you need to know what guns are, and what good and bad they can do. See, I remember going to the Hunter Safety Course. I remember applying for my hunting license. It was a big deal for this 12-year-old. And it taught me a great deal about the guns I was going to be using. I had to get a license to hunt animals and yet, it is not universal that I require a license to own or use a gun. (Further, a hunting license comes with limits on how many animals I can kill — and yet, we have no limits on how much ammo one can procure or how many guns one may own and operate).

You need a license to drive a car. But somehow, you don’t need one to buy a gun.

So: maybe we license gun owners. You ensure that people have to take a gun safety course. You ensure they spend time using the weapons they’re gonna buy — hell, maybe you even become licensed in individual gun classes or individual guns themselves. And licenses come with preset limits that are fairly easy to enforce. You ask me, this would help ensures that people learn to respect guns. They’re not toys. They’re not action movie fun-time.

They’re not effective tools in diplomacy.

Further, a licensing and education system allows us to deny people, too. See, you fail the test, you don’t get a driver’s license, and the same thing goes here. Plus, easy enough to incorporate other checks on one’s criminal background and mental health, right? Right.

It helps to ensure that if there’s a civilian out there with a gun, I know he’s trained. I know he’s at least gone through the same steps. I know he’s not some crazy dude sitting on a nest of ammo boxes.

Now, you’re saying, “But this is going to make more effective criminals.” To which I say, not likely. Criminals are going to get effective in their own ways. They’re not going to do it through a licensing system where they and their firearms are going to be tracked.

You might then say, “But criminals don’t need to be regulated or care about regulation,” which is another version of the “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” saying. And that’s true. But it’s true of everything, isn’t it? Bombs are illegal, so only bombers will have bombs. Last I checked, criminals are always willing to do things we’re not — that’s why we create laws that ideally prevent and ultimately punish them for the transgression. “If we make rape illegal, only rapists will have rape! And murder, too! And they can shoplift! OUR FREEDOMS ARE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK DAMN YOU OBAMACARE.”

(I also never much understood the defense of, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Yeah, duh. But guns make it a whole lot easier, don’t you think, to facilitate all that people-killing-people?)

All I’m saying is, we should be able to do introduce some measure of rationality into this argument. And this a pretty sane, pretty soft solution — it doesn’t aim to control guns in a big way so much as it aims to introduce education and respect into the equation. We’ll never be able to take people’s guns away, so why don’t we make sure that the populace understands the power and the danger of these things they want to own so damn bad? You don’t like my solution? No problem. Like I said: I’m just squawking into the void. But we need some kind of solution. Whether it’s better mental health checks or tighter purchase regulations or whatever, we need to have this conversation.

I just got this email:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I is Archibold N.M. Bettesworth, the Personal Underling to the Ancient One. After a lengthy investigations of scrolls and tombs, we discovered that your lineage is heir to an overdue payment, which was unissued due to dimensional legislation at the time payment was obliged.

However, due to current strict rules of dimensional matter we are unfairly unable to honor the agreement between the Ancient One and your Great-great-great Grandfather. Our best scholars and top occultists have assured us that there is no way to produce the 6.66 Million Dollars that is owed to you because of the obtuse laws that govern interdimensional monetary dispensation. Successfully, our best investigators had found a loophole that allow us to extricate the monies to you, the descendent of your Great-great Grandfather the original party to the contracts, in exchange for the minor allocation of your soul, which we are equally unhappy with but believe to be best course for both parties.

We know this money would have been very been a facial to your family in the recent stresses of the economy and rapid steep fiscal cliff. As such we desire to give you all your money faster. Therefore you are advised to re-confirm your ancestry to your Great-great-great Grandfather and repeat the following incantation whilst in the middle of a pentagram diagram the eve of a full moon night:

“Nunc ego tribuo meus animus ut aperta mundorum et liberum Obscuram Princeps. Et ubi est vita vestigiis pergamus.”

Please email me and confirm that I have reached the correct descendant of your Great-great-great Grandfather.

Most gratifully yours,

N.M. Bettesworth

Personal Underling to the Ancient One

That doesn’t even need my commentary.

Whoever wrote that, well-played. It even has some fucked-up grammar in there. (Or maybe that was accidental, who can say?) Is this a joke? A riff on the earlier FBI spam mail I got?

Either way: funny stuff.

I mean, don’t do it again. This is a one-time-only amusement. I don’t want a deluge of “ha-ha-funny-not-spam” emails drowning me.

But still: well-played.

I wonder if I should write back?

So, here’s how I met Mike: he’s — well, I don’t know what he does for Angry Robot in precise terms, so I’m just going to say that he’s the leader of their “Authors-Be-Awesome” initiative, wherein he sends a series of steel overlord robots to people’s houses and the robots use their crushing claws and laser eyes to convince those people to buy Angry Robot books. Anyway. Thing is, Mike is also an author — he’s the Michael R. Underwood behind the much-buzzed-about geek-themed urban fantasy, Geekomancy. You can find mike at MichaelRUnderwood.com, and on the Twitters @MikeRUnderwood.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

There once was a boy who wanted to write, but he spent far less time writing than playing expensive collectible card games made on cardboard laced with crack, telling stories with friends, and playing video games that subliminally commanded him to build an idol to an Italian Plumber.

Eventually, that boy went to college and decided to spend less of his time sniffing cardboard crack and building Obelisks and more time actually writing, as well as trying to figure out how to attract members of the opposite sex.

Following that resolution, the boy’s life subsequently got way more awesome, even if the dating part didn’t go terribly well right away. All things take practice.

Why do you tell stories?

No one has ever given me a satisfactory reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve been playing pretend since I could talk, and haven’t seen fit to stop yet.

Also, it’s a way of re-assembling the millennia-old bones of story to emotionally and socially process life lessons over and over again for each new generation. Like you do.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Accept that revising is a skill just like first drafting is a skill. When you first start learning how to revise, you will suck and it may feel terrible and ineffective. But if you practice and persevere, you will get better at revising. And when that happens, you can stress about first drafts less and end up with overall more-awesome work.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

One of my writing instructors in undergrad told me that every writer should get a law degree. Unsurprisingly, she had just gotten a law degree. I know lots of writers, and a very small number of them have law degrees. I have noticed no discernible correlation between having a law degree and being a more successful writer, though I imagine it would give you cool stuff to write about just like any specialized knowledge.

Considering the fact that if I’d gone to law school right out of undergrad, I would probably have graduated right into one of the worst markets for freshly-minted attorneys in quite a while, and with six figures of shiny debt to go with it, I think I did okay with my Folklore M.A. and career in publishing that gives me sekrit knowledge of the industry which I get to use as a writer.

You have a folklore degree? Favorite story or character from folklore?

Folklorists, being a famously whacky people, were the perfect group of scholars to bamboozle into giving me a graduate degree for hanging out and playing tabletop RPGs, once I convinced them that it was part of an elaborate complex of overlapping subcultures where emergent collaborative storytelling persisted in multiple existence and constituted the largest oral tradition in North American popular culture.

Actually, I just found a great deal of support from the University of Oregon, especially since the Folklore M.A. is an interdisciplinary studies program – that meant that I got to combine Theater Arts classes and English/Film Studies work in with my Folklore to create an ad hoc Geek and Gamer studies M.A.

For part 2, I’m going to go with some hero legend action and choose Odysseus. I love Odysseus because he’s literary proof that pirates and ninja are not always enemies and certainly aren’t mutually exclusive.

How is that you say? Well, in The Illiad, Odysseus would rather be at home with his smart and hot wife, so he comes up with tons of tricks to end the war early, all of them involving being a sneaky bastard. The Greeks win the war because Odysseus was a ninja.

And then, in The Odyssey, he pirates his way around for a while before having a series of awesome and dangerous delays that Cap’n Jack Sparrow could only wish for.

What goes into writing a great character? Bonus round: give an example.

For me, writing a character often comes down to voice. Once I figure out a character’s talks, what their cultural frame of reference is, everything clicks. Through voice, most of the rest of the character becomes clear.

Say I’ve got a currently-undefined character who just learned something , and their reaction is to be incredulous. But how are they incredulous? In deciding how they express their incredulity, I learn who they are.

A character that says “No! It’ can’t be! AAAAH!!!” is someone with a lack of mental fortitude, who reacts directly.

A character that says “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” with a sardonic tone is more world-weary and crass.

And one that says “Blasphemy! The scrolls forbade it!” is obviously religious and defines their world by what they’ve read.

In a one-sentence response to a situation, I can open a door to the character through voice and start rolling.

Speak to me of Geekomancy: Give us the 140-character Twitter pitch.

Snarky geek barista discovers the secret crazy #UF world and learns geekomancy, the magic of fandom, to stop a string of suicides.

See, I even used a hashtag! I r l337 Twittarer. Or something.

How is that a story only you could’ve written? Why does it matter to you?

This story combines experiences from my time working at a game store, my graduate studies of subculture and narrative theory, my personal sense of humor, and my lifetime-thus-far of experience and fandom. I’ve read and seen a lot of urban fantasy, but no one had incorporated geekdom in quite the way I wanted to. I wanted a novel where fannishness wasn’t a trapping or just a character trait, it was integral to the magic and the organization of the secret magical society.

Geekomancy matters to me because it is, in my opinion, an optimistic but balanced depiction of geekdom. The magic system itself is a literalization of the metaphor of fannish love being empowering. Where I grew up learning mercy from Gandalf and Bilbo, loyalty to friends from Luke Skywalker, responsibility from Spider-Man, acceptance from the X-Men, and more, the heroes in Geekomancy gain literal power, able to fight demons both external and internal. And hell if that isn’t an awesome wish to be able to make true in a story.

In addition, I really wanted to show a different kind of geek protagonist. Therefore, I chose to write a queer female geek of color, because they exist, and are sorely under-represented in popular culture.

What should we expect with the sequel?

In Celebromancy, you can expect:

• Skyrim playing a critical role in a set-piece fight scene.

• Ree finding herself in a love rhombus (33% more awesome than a love triangle!)

• Lots of jokes and commentary about the weird nature of fame and Hollywood.

• More buddy-comedy action with everyone’s favorite steampunk adventurer out of time, Drake Winters.

• And more geeky in-jokes and pop culture references in the fine tradition of Geekomancy.

All of this and more, available 7/15/2013! </shill>

Geekomancy is an e-book only release: why that choice and how has it worked out for you?

When I got the offer from my editor, it was to publish Geekomancy as one of the launch titles for a re-branding of the Pocket Star imprint of Pocket/Gallery books, which had been all about media tie-ins, but was now going to revolve around e-original novellas and novels. I was hoping for a print-and-ebook deal, but the ebook original aspect turned out to have a number of advantages, the greatest of which being that it was less than six months between selling the novel and it being released.

Many debut authors have to wait 12-18 months from sale to pub-date, and I felt like everything went super-fast leading up to Geekomancy’s release, which kept me from going “wah, I can’t wait for the book to come out!”, at least too much. I got tons of support from my publisher, including the novel being featured at both San Diego and New York Comic-Con, awesome d20 sticker for the book, and some choice advertisement. Plus, it’s fun to be on the leading edge of a company’s foray into a new business model. It means a lot of people are invested in and excited about your work, perhaps even a bit moreso than normal.

The response to the book has been inspiring and delightful, and I hope to keep being able to play in this universe for quite some time to come, since I think I could write ten books in the series without exhausting all of the cool weird things to joke about and reference in geekdom, especially since new awesome things come out of the geek worlds all the time. I didn’t even get to include The Avengers and Prometheus in Celebromancy, since I set the novel in the late spring of 2012. Those will have to wait for the next one!

What are your three geekiest obsessions in order from least-most to utter-most?

#3 – Historical Martial Arts

This one would be ranked higher if it were more in the central wheelhouse of geekdom, as it’s one I’m very passionate about.

I can do a solid impression of German, Spanish, and Italian martial arts of the late medieval and Renaissance eras, including some wrestling and hand-to-hand techniques, several different rapier styles, as well as the use of the longsword and the greatsword (2d6 damage dice FTW!) I know enough Italian and Spanish rapier to teach the basics. I can give a solid fight mostly in the style of late 16th Century Spanish fight masters (even better if I get to cheat by including some Italian tricks).

And, most useful for cocktail parties, I can explain (with demonstrations) the entire logic behind the chain of styles the Man in Black and Inigo Montoya discuss in the duel on the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride.

#2 — Batman

These top two aren’t a claim to Real Ultimate Power in terms of knowing more about the property than anyone in particular, but are more about time spent thinking about and engaged with the property.

If there’s one superhero I could talk about for a whole day ad still have something to say, it’d be Batman. I’ve presented on Batman at academic conferences (the paper was titled “Holy Genre Trouble, Batman!: Batman as Pulp Vigilante Trapped in a Superhero World”), have a Batman wallet, a Bat-Mug, and more.

I love how many times the character has been re-invented and re-interpreted, from two-fisted vigilante in the late 30s through being the whacky victim of Sci-Fi transformation of the week in the Atomic Age of SF, camp New Pop closeted hero in the 60s TV show through grim Paternalistic anti-hero in the Dark Knight Returns and beyond. The character has achieved an indelible place in the English-speaking pop cultural world, and far beyond in some areas. And for me, he’s a character who is tremendously useful in discussions about the nature of heroism, societal norms, and the role of violence, power, justice, and obsession.

#1 – Star Wars

I saw Return of the Jedi before I was one year old. While developmental psychology may not back me up, I feel like that fact says a lot about me. Star Wars might have been my first fandom, watching and re-watching the original trilogy a bajillion times before I was in grade school. From there, I watched the Ewok movies, listened to countless expanded universe novels as books on tape, read the Jedi Academy books, etc. I’ve played the various SW RPGs, MMOs, and am eagerly awaiting 1313. I often find myself defending parts of the prequel trilogy (there’s some great stuff in there!) and am cautiously optimistic about the new future of the universe under Disney’s umbrella – after all, it’s worked wonders for Marvel Studios.

And when all is said and done, one of my proudest achievements is getting to write a character using a lightsaber in a published novel.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

I’ll go with a slightly older book that I think doesn’t get near enough love: Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover. Stover combines Sci-Fi and Fantasy in an exciting way, and paints a character who is far deeper than the Action-Hero gruff badass he presents as at first. It’s got great action scenes, solid romance, and might be the only narrative to combine Sword & Sorcery with Cyberpunk this side of Shadowrun.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Cafune – a Brazilian Portuguese word for ‘to caress someone’s hair.’ It’s a tremendously precise word to describe a primal and tender motion. It’s schmoopy.

Asshat – It’s short and straightforward without being overly OMG IN YOUR FACE TEH CUSSING! Plus it’s not sexist, homophobic, or any of the other less-than-awesome -isms that are often the source of why a word counts as profanity.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

Red-Headed Sister – Jagermeister, cranberry cocktail and peach schnapps, in equal quantities. Add soda to turn it from a cocktail into a sipping beverage.

What skills do you bring to help the us win the inevitable war against the robots?

Aside from my historical martial arts fu, I’m also working undercover for Angry Robot, learning how our Future Robot Overlords operate. When push comes to shove, I will use my cybernetic upgrades to turn the tide of battle. Assuming the obedience protocols programmed in don’t keep me fighting for the robots.

What’s it like working for the Grumpy Cyborgs who publish my novels? Do they beat you? Do they hunt humans for sport?

A: Aside from the long recovery time from the mandatory cybernetic upgrades, it’s great! I get to read incredible novels for work, sell those novels (including some really cool ones about a pottymouthed seer where the voice is so sharp it’d cut a monofilament wire by this guy called Wendig).

Most of all, I get to be an even larger part in helping support and grow the SF/F readership community while helping writers get their work into the most numerous and most receptive hands possible. I spend my day helping other writers’ dreams come true, which inspires me to work on my own dreams when I head home for the day. I couldn’t ask for a better day job.

And yes, they do hunt humans for sport. But because they are strange beings with inscrutable motivations, when they catch the humans they shake them down for stories, then keep the ones who provide the best ones. Some people juggle geese.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

I’m revising the sequel to Geekomancy right now, and have a New Weird Superhero novel heading out to market shortly. And while that’s shopping around, I’ll get back to a YA fantasy which features magic fencing, skyship warfare, and geo-politics.