Archives (page 383 of 467)

September 5, 2012 / 31 Comments

On Creepy Creepers Who Creepily Creep

Earlier, there was a tweet that I retweeted and it crawled up under some skins —

That tweet was:

‘Always concerned when guys worry if their behavior at cons is “creepy.” When I go to a con, I just don’t do creepy things.’

As it’s Twitter, you have that 140-characters-has-to-carry-an-elephant’s-weight-of-meaning-and-history-and-context-and-time-and-place-and-space-and-inebriation-level.

That said, it’s a tweet I like and a tweet I agree with, but it requires one thing:

An understanding of the word creep, creepy, or creeper.

Those are words that are admittedly shortcode for something else these days — it references that very-bad-behavior by people at cons or in fandom wherein some folks (frequently men) feel it necessary to harass others (frequently women) in a mentally or emotionally or even physically threatening way.

It does not mean: awkward, or socially weird, or whatever. This is fandom. We are all in some way slightly goofy folks and we all have our foibles and of course you’re free to worry about whether or not you’re coming across right with other people. That’s normal! Totally fine! What’s not fine: sexism! Or racism! Or stalking people! Or whipping out your genitals and touching others with them! You might be saying, “Ho, ho, ho, Chuck, you so like to reference genitals in your blog post in a hyberbolic way,” except, no, no, this actually happened at PAX. This is a thing that keeps happening. And I want fandom to be safe! And inclusive! Because when it is, it’s totally rad.

This is not arguing from a place of privilege. Privilege is a wealthy white dude asking why that homeless guy doesn’t just “surf up a job on his iPad.” This is basic human contract stuff. This is Human Interaction 101 — no, you know what? This is entrance exam stuff. This is the test you should have to take before you get let out on the playground with all the other human beings.

Now, you might argue that saying something like, “Don’t be a total rapey-faced skeev-hound” is going to fall on deaf ears. One assumes I don’t have an eager audience of almost-rapists in the wings just waiting to find out which way the wind blows. I get that, and you’re right. Just the same, I wanted us all to be on the same page when we talk about creeps, creeping, and creepers.

It’s way beyond social awkwardness. If social awkwardness were a crime, cons would fail to occur in the first place. Hell, I’m always trying to put on a good impression — which is another way of saying, “I’m worrying about making a bad one.” Who isn’t? We’re all humans. We all worry about how we come across.

So, back to the original tweet:

Stop worrying about being a horrible person and, y’know, actively work on not being a horrible person.

Yay? Yay.

September 5, 2012 / 52 Comments

The Death Of Genre: Drifting Toward A Post-Genre Future

*hands you a brick of C4*

It’s time to blow up genre. It’s time to explosively obliterate the very idea of separating our fiction into these neat little categories — these tropes and plots, these shelves and slots.

Genre of late has been a thing largely used to determine a book’s place at the point of sale — a bookstore, quite understandably, only has finite space. (Well, I’m told that the bookstore known as Herman’s Infinite Accumulation in Duluth figured out a way to rend a vent in the fabric of time and space and thus host all the books all the time, but Herman reportedly stole ducats from the Hyperborean Cat Mafia and he and his store ended up being eaten by moon sharks.) A bookstore cannot hold all the books, and so one must apply a meaningful organization to what lurks there. But the Internet has changed all that.

The Internet is, of course, theoretically infinite. Its shelves are fucking endless.

Once, an author had to ask — “Well, where the hell will my book end up?” A bookstore with clearly limited shelf-space was not so keen on buying a book that had no easy place on those limited shelves. So, genre — a thing that affects the point-of-sale retailer — was a necessary concern of the writer long before the point-of-sale. Genre therefore begins to codify the types of fiction we read: it creates pre-defined plots, character arcs, it relies on a series of shared and continued tropes. Genre at the inception of the story and at the point of shelving and sale then becomes a thing that helps to train both reader and writer.

Genre is comfort, after all. You know what you’re writing. You know what you’re reading.

Comfort in codification. But fiction often works best when there exists some measure of discomfort.

And again, there’s that nagging cloud of gnats hovering around all our heads…

The Internet.

We are readers and writers who grew up on multiple genres and multiple formats. We don’t just read deep in a single genre. Our reading tastes are a shotgun spray, not a sniper’s bullet — space opera to superheroes, horror to thriller, splatterpunk and steampunk and cyberpunk and monkeypunk, epic fantasy to urban fantasy, erotica to spec-fic to spy novels to comic books to movies to pornography to cat videos to whatever.

Our heads are full of this crazy shit.

The Internet brings all that together. In one place. And it fosters the power of remix culture — we like to take all the things we’ve absorbed and glom them together to see the pop culture Voltron we create. We’re the ones pouring maple syrup on bacon (to quote Adam Christopher a little), bringing together the sweet and the savory. We like to read and write the intellectual equivalent of fusion cuisine.

But genre is law. And the law doesn’t really make room for that, does it?

You mash-up two or three disparate genres in a single book, where the fuck does your book go? How do you tell an agent what to do with it? How does the agent tell a publisher, and how does a publisher tell a bookstore? (And here the secret is that bookstores are actually the ones doing the dictating, meaning that the power still lies with a dwindling supply chain and distribution system.)

If you’re an author mashing up genres outside a single book — you write one fantasy novel then move to something more toward “literary horror” — the story goes that you run the risk of alienating fans. That they’ll find your book on the shelf and read both and they wanted one thing from you and didn’t get the same thing every time and so they’ll come to your house and cry, “I WILL AUTOGRAPH YOUR DOOM” before plunging a fountain pen in your neck and signing their name on your corpse.

But the bookstore shelves? Not so populous anymore. And even when they do exist, the Internet is always in the background, able to support that theoretical infinite which then backs up the physical shelf-space.

Plus? Readers are growing savvier. And writers want to play in other playgrounds.

That’s a theme I noticed, by the way, at Worldcon — not just in our New Pulp panel, but in discussions with writers throughout. Genre can be a comfortable starting point — but it can be a bit of a prison, too. We want off our leash. We want to write what we want to write, and we trust that the readers will be with us (and whether that’s a naive trust or an earned and confirmed one, I don’t know).

So, I propose, it’s time to make genre go boom.

We assassinate the current codification of genre.

We liberate the writer and the reader.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION.

Or something.

The question now becomes: just what the fuck does this all mean?

More Granularity

Instead of obliterating genre in its entirety, consider the notion of committing to it in a deeper, crazier way — see, right now, genre is not particularly granular. We have a handful of very big boxes (fantasy, sci-fi, literary, whatever), and inside those boxes one set of smaller boxes (epic fantasy, urban fantasy, etc.), but then no more boxes within those. And once you’re in a big box, you very rarely get to have a project that can be slotted into another — “science fantasy” is a thing we talk about, but it’s not really a shelf designation. So, get rid of the boxes. Eradicate large categories.

Instead, dice up the elements of our fiction even more finely — mince those motherfuckers. Think of fiction as having aspects or elements (and those of you who game in the RPG sense will see the value of this) — a piece of fiction might have a “time travel” aspect, a “tragedy” aspect, a “detective” aspect. One novel might be “serial killer / robot / erotic love triangle.” Another might be, “dinosaur / noir / bioethics.”

What this ideally allows for is a greater breadth of what we find “interesting.” At a place like Amazon, filter and discoverability is utter fuckporridge — and this is bad for writers and readers. Think instead of a Pandora-like app that searches your e-book library and uses these very axes and aspects to help you discover new authors and stories. I want that! And I think we need it, too.

Less Granularity

An obvious thing was pointed out to me at Worldcon but I hadn’t really realized it before — Young Adult / Teens is frequently uncategorized. And, likely without coincidence, YA tends to be some of the bravest, weirdest fiction out there right now. You go to the shelf inside the bookstore and it’s just a big mash-up of books and genres. (Okay, B&N actually separates them out a bit — Teens to Teens Paranormal Romance to Teens Fantasy / Adventure.) But often, YA is just YA. An age range without genre limitations.

These teens are going to be the same eventual non-teens (aka “adults,” if such a distinction even matters anymore) — and if they’re not pinned down by genre conventions and they grow up with fewer expectation for genre, isn’t it time to start configuring our shelves for them and not for everyone else?

Author-As-Genre

The “New Pulp” panel at Worldcon was fascinating because it was essentially the three of us (Stephen Blackmoore, Adam Christopher, and some bearded bespectacled shitbird) trying to figure out what the shit we were talking about and why we were even there. At first that seemed terrifying but as we orbited the topic and closed in on an answer it became clear how powerful it was to not have a certain answer to this uncertain question. Through the panel one of the distinctions we seemed to come to was that we, as authors with great heads full of stories from all corners, wanted to write what the fuck we wanted to write.

And so it emerged that “author-as-own-genre” seemed a very lovely thing, indeed. After all, Stephen King writes “horror” only to those who don’t know any better. He writes a bit of everything, all told — fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, literary. He is himself a great big mash-up of influences and possibilities and you don’t go to a Stephen King novel looking so much for horror as you do looking for, well, a Stephen King novel. King’s novels contain all the trappings of King himself — his voice, his auteur aspects, his storytelling hooks.

To me, that’s a win for the author first and foremost — to be able to write not to genre conventions but rather to your own personal conventions is a very good thing. It becomes “double-plus-good” for the readers because we, the writers, are writing work that speaks to and engages us as creators, ideally meaning we’re writing more to our own strengths and thus producing more kick-ass stories.

Okay, Fine, Fine, Genre Isn’t All Bad

Listen, I’m not saying genre distinctions don’t have value. They do. You like X, so you go to X shelf. Sometimes that comfort is a good thing. We want readers to be comfortable.

But we also don’t want endless regurgitative human centipede storytelling. Genre and its rigorous classification is why we have epic fantasy that reads the same every time, or why we have urban fantasy stories and book covers that are so reiterative it starts to feel like a joke. We are not served well in storytelling by saying This is X and That is Y if all that does is give us the samey-samey time and again. Some of the greatest authors — whether we’re talking Gaiman or King or Mister R. R. Martin — exist because they carve open their own portals into different genres.

So, I’m not seriously suggesting that we obliterate genre as a “thing” — first, it’d never work, and second, yes, they have value. But I am encouraging a widening of that definition and a greater look at how a more diverse and deviant genre classification can allow us to deliver a more meaningful class of filter and discoverability for authors and the readers who read ’em. That’s a win for everybody.

Thoughts? Discuss.

Or I’ll Taser you in the mouth.

September 4, 2012 / 28 Comments

A Face Full Of WorldCon 2012: The Recap

Worldcon happened. It’s funny — you go to a con like that and it’s as if time and space gets shoved unmercifully into a bubble, and the rest of the world is held at bay or perhaps lost entirely for a while. And then you come back and land and there’s this illusive (and elusive) vibe where everything that happened starts to appear gauzy and uncertain, and it seems like you’re trying to remember a dream —

So, this post is an attempt to grab the snippets of Worldcon before they flee my brain.

It will have minimal order. It will contain dubious sense and continuity.

Let us begin.

WORLDCON WAS AWESOME. THE END. YAY!

…hrm.

Okay, that’s probably not enough? That feels a bit… feeble.

Let’s try that again.

Worldcon was like real-life Twitter. You know all these people online and suddenly there they are, no longer contained to 140 characters, no longer defined by tiny squares with pop-cult icons. (For the record, I now support a real-life version of Twitter, where if you witness someone being a dick, you can just loudly proclaim, “I’M UNFOLLOWING YOU” before turning heel-to-toe and running away. Or putting a bag over their head.) It’s always weird taking Internet Entities and forcing them to manifest as Reality Humans because, well, sometimes that transition is difficult and disappointing. You like someone online and, ennnnhhh, maybe not so much with the face-to-face.

I am so pleased that this was not the case in Chicago. If anything, the opposite was true. The real-life manifestations were even more awesomer than their tweetworthy counterparts.

I met so many great people (and I’ll get to that). All of them an inspiration because they’re out there fighting the good fight and slinging words as only they know how. I return renewed, reinvigorated. I was drunk on great people and wonderful books. And, y’know, a shitload of gin-and-tonics.

In snippets and snapshots:

• Airplanes are fucking gross these days. Someone needs to throw a couple bleach grenades into each airplane. It’s like — “Is that mold on the vent? Is that a dried booger on the back of the seat, or just some kind of scab?” And you think, Ha ha ha, that Chuck, he’s being all hyperbowlie again, but I’m not. I saw mold. I saw booger-scab. I’m not particularly germophobic but it’s hard not to come off a plane feeling like you were just rolling around in a dish of someone’s fingernail clippings and hoagie sweat. Most city buses are cleaner than the planes I saw this weekend. So are most hobo corpses.

• I roomed with Stephen Blackmoore (@sblackmoore). He thinks I didn’t notice, but every night, he brought out the clown greasepaint, stood at the mirror in the dark, clowned himself up, did a silent little dance there in the shifting shadows of the hotel room, watching his jolly-shaped shadow gambol about. Then he’d weep for ten minutes. Afterwards he’d wet a towel and scrub off the makeup and go back to bed. So, just be advised. He’s a great friend, a great writer, and a horrifying incubus.

• Finally got to meet Adam Christopher (@ghostfinder), he of Empire State and Seven Wonders, and dang, I was a bit worried. He comes across nice and polite online, which is sometimes code for “dangerous psychotic in person.” But my worries were unfounded: Adam is genuinely nice, genuinely polite, and a very smart dude. (If I had any co-pilots this weekend, Adam and Stephen were they.) Oh, and now that I’m reading Seven Wonders, I can once again confirm: he’s also a writer you should be reading. I think I’m digging it even more than Empire State, even. Short review of the book here at The Guardian. He also looks snappy in a suit!

• Did a panel with both of the aforementioned gentlemen on the subject of “New Pulp,” and that panel discussed first just what the fuck New Pulp is (and I’ll talk a bit more about my evolving thoughts next week), but also about what writers can do and can become in this weird wibbly-wobbly publishey-rublishey time. In fact, it was a theme evoked in talking to lots of authors that weekend — what a writer wants to write versus expectations from agent, editor, audience. How does a writer find his place? How does he become a self-satisfied creature while still, y’know, not-starving?

• Worldcon did not necessarily feel like a tech-savvy con. Hard to be, since my cell signal (and the signal of many others) dropped off into a Marianas Trench half the time (completing the feel of the bubble) — but a lot of cons go out of their way to announce the hashtag and to encourage tweeting or other social media during panels. Here, not so much. For a sci-fi con, it in fact had a faintly Luddite feel. Not a bad thing, but a thing worth noting just the same.

• I should not be allowed to bowl. I at one point threw the ball like, five, six feet into the air. Though I was not the worst bowler by any means, so — I’ll take that as a win, one supposes.

• Emma Newman (@emapocalyptic) will one day rule the world. The most polite and sinister mastermind ever to have stepped onto the authorial stage. You watch. You’ll see.

• Another theme at the con: editors are fucking rockstars, man. In more ways than one.

• The new new snidbits of profanity birthed at the con — and you’re going to want to write these down, or else the Mighty Mur Lafferty (@mightymur) will fucking cut you, son — are: COCKTACO and FUCKPORRIDGE. Like I said, write it down. I’ll wait. No, I’m not going anywhere. Scribble, scribble. Oh, and for the record, meeting Mur only confirmed why she is on my list of Favorite People Ever.

• HOLY SHIT, MATT FORBECK. @mforbeck! King of Kickstarters! Writer of Dracula-meets-Titanic! Master of the blue-collar writer attitude! Pleasure meeting this dude. He gets it.

• Did a book signing at the Book Cellar on Friday night. Me, Adam Christopher, Gwenda Bond (@gwenda), Kim Curran (@kimecurran). Was told it was one of their top ten events — and they do a couple-few events a week. Plus, they have beer there. Listen, bookstores? Here’s how you survive in these uncertain times — SELL WINE AND BEER. No, not just little chocolate flibbles and coffee draughts, but goddamn alcohol. I will buy books at your store. In part because I’ll be drunk. Anyway, the signing went really, really well.

• There, at the signing, I caught up with an old, old friend from high school, Jim — and man, you think a decade-plus of time would make such a reunion cautious and uneven. Nope. It was like that time had never passed, which is a great thing. Met him for lunch the next day. Was great. Proud to know him. Can’t let another ten years pass in the same way.

• HOLY SHIT, TOBIAS BUCKELL. (@tobiasbuckell) One of the good guys in social media appeared like, in a puff of ninja smoke. Was good to meet him.

• After the first book signing, went out to a German Bierhaus for the Team Decker dinner, where we watched a broken-armed mulleted-old Austrian whoop and croak out disco-updated German tunes. It was sublime. Joelle Charbonneau (@jcharbonneau) ate what looked like a leg of dinosaur meat. Dan O’Shea (@dboshea) made Luftwaffe jokes. Cassandra Rose Clarke (@mitochondrial) looked concerned that we were her agent mates (a wise fear). Agent Stacia (@staciadecker) looked pleased with herself. I snapped a picture of Adam with the old Austrian at the end of the night — I’ll leave it to him to share the photo, which pretty much encapsulates everything about that evening.

• I feel like Laura Anne Gilman (@lagilman) will one day murder me. As is perhaps her right. Still, she rolls hard with a flask of bourbon. Gilman knows the score.

• I played a game of drunken Apples to Apples with Mur Lafferty, Ursula Vernon, Warren Schultz (@WarrenSchultz), and HOLY SHIT, PAUL CORNELL (@Paul_Cornell). Paul was hilarious. He did not give me his norovirus. I am thankful to him for both of these things. High-five to him for his Squeecast Hugo.

• Give her even a micron of a chance and Ursula Vernon (@UrsulaV) will speak in great detail on the subject of hyena clitorises and the dangers of giraffe sex. Oh, wait, hold on, I’m sorry, I mean, HUGO-AWARD-WINNING-BAD-ASS, URSULA VERNON. There. Fixed my error.

• I did a reading from Mockingbird, and to my great surprise, the room was packed. And people knew things about my books! Atlanta Burns! Dinocalypse! Yay! Then I had an hour-and-a-half signing which, for the record, is way too long a signing session unless you’re a rock star and I am most decidedly not a rock star. After a half-hour (which was nice and steady), it’s all tumbleweeds and chirping crickets out there.

• Myke Cole (@mykecole) is an intense guy. Intensely loyal, intensely funny, intensely smart. Also, I’m pretty sure he could kill me. Like, with two, maybe three fingers. Regardless of his murderous intensity, I know you’ve already read Control Point, right?

• Brian McClellan (@BrianTMcClellan) and I will one day form Beardtron AND THEN YOU’LL ALL BE SORRY. It may be the only way to battle Myke Cole.

• Lots of folks came up to me to tell me how much they dug my books and this site, which makes my cold dead toad of a heart twitch and flutter. (Seriously, it’s really nice.)

• HOLY SHIT, SALADIN AHMED (@saladinahmed). Some writers you know you’re just gonna follow forever because they’re worth that kind of commitment, and Saladin’s one of those. And he’s nice, too! And likes beer! And isn’t actually a rakshasa at all! Repeat after me: Throne of the Crescent Moon.

• Some people look at cons like these as straight-up business opportunities. I think that misses something — I think the connections forged between people are more meaningful than just having meetings. I’m not saying business is bad, but it’s like, to me cons like these form the foundations of relationships from which business can come later. For now: LET US DRINK GIN AND SPEAK OF LIFE.

• HOLY SHIT, JOHN SCALZI! (@scalzi, but you already knew that). I barely had contact with him — just a quick “Hello! Goodbye!” — enough to suggest that I may have merely dreamed of the encounter. But sometimes, in the light of the morning, I do smell the smell of the Wild Scalzi. And I can hear the distant clamor of the Mallet of Loving Correction. In other news, his stint at the Hugos confirms for me that he should host all the award shows. So, somebody make that happen.

• You will want to go out today and find Shift by Kim Curran and Blackwood by Gwenda Bond. (Both from the new Angry Robot YA imprint, Strange Chemistry.) I will be picking up both today, not just because both of them are delightful people but because what they read from their books suggests that they are both excellent writers, as well. Tell them Mushroom Bill sent you. (/inside joke)

• Seanan McGuire (@seananmcguire) called me a “dickweasel,” which one supposes is far better than “weaseldick.” It was deserved. And it was an honor to have her sling profanity at my face. It was like having my very own Hugo Award! And congrats to her for her very own (and very real) Hugo.

• Lee Harris (@LeeAHarris) is a drunken roustabout. Fear him.

• Madeline Ashby (@madelineashby) is so polite and so nice! And I cannot stop hearing nice things about vN, so I’m going to have to make reading that a priority.

• Deep-dish Chicago pizza (AKA “Italian grease cake”) is good. But I’m sorry — and I know writers aren’t supposed to take controversial positions — but New York pizza defeats Deep Dish in Pizza Thunderdome.

• HOLY SHIT, NEIL GAIMAN! (Do I really need to tell you his Twitter handle? Did you know one out of five humans already follows @neilhimself?) Neil has a kind of mythic quality — he shows up, the building starts to vibrate. You hear reports coming in — “I sighted him! I’m sure it was him!” and then you go to where he was seen and there’s nothing but the smell of smoldering politeness in the air and next thing you know you have people making plaster casts of what may or may not have been a Neil Gaiman bootprint. He’s like a very polite, very well-read and mostly shorn Sasquatch. (Though, quite seriously, congrats to him for his Hugo win and also to Adam for getting a pic with him!)

• I know there’s people and things I’m missing, but Sweet Molly McCrackins this post has gone on far too long already. It was good to meet many others: Laura Lam, Amanda Rutter, Fran Wilde, Mike Underwood, Kat Richardson, Kameron Hurley, Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, Ramez Naam, Maurice Broaddus, Patrick Hester, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Wes Chu, Jennifer Brozek, Anne Lyle, Monica Valentinelli, and certainly an unholy host of people I’m missing or forgetting because my brain is like a mouse-eaten tablecloth. Congrats too to all the Hugo winners!

September 3, 2012 / 21 Comments

Whither Thou Woozit Whatsit, Book Promo?

I’m in Chicago. Er, probably.

Unless my plane crashed, in which case, I’m dead.

Haunting one of you.

YOU KNOW WHICH ONE.

Meantime, I figure I’ll ask this question, generate some talky-talky:

Book promotion.

What works for you? As a reader? As a writer?

What totally fails as a book promo tactic?

First person to say, “Buying 100+ positive reviews” gets a pony.

And that pony will kick you in the jaw!

August 31, 2012 / 45 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Open Swim

I’m at Worldcon/Chicon, where the name on the lips of all the writers is “science fiction/fantasy.”

So, that’s what you’ll write.

But that’s your only parameter this week.

The leash is off, the collar is loose.

1000 words. Up to.

Due by Friday the 7th, 12noon EST.

Post at your online space.

Link back here.

Go write, moon dwellers and dragon tamers.

August 30, 2012 / 4 Comments

John Anealio: The Terribleminds Interview

Continuing the tradition here of posting interviews with storytellers of all stripes and polka dots, we’ve got Geek Bard John Anealio, also of the Functional Nerds podcast. He’s a funny dude, a smart man, and a kick-ass musician — fan of Jonathan Coulton? Do check out Mister Anealio’s work at johnanealio.com where you can download some free awesome music. Find him on the Twitters: @JohnAnealio. Oh, uhhh, also? JOHN TOTALLY DID A TERRIBLEMINDS SONG. You’ll find it in the interview, below.

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.

I’ve been a music performer for 20 years now. I’ve played every type of venue that you can imagine: bars, coffee shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, churches, VFW halls, hookah bars, book stores, libraries and more. The most memorable gig that I ever played was with a cover band at a strip club. Now, that sounds awesome, but it was actually horrible. First off, the name of the band was “Hoosier Daddy”. Second, we weren’t performing for the dancers, we were performing instead of the dancers. The owner of this club thought it was a great idea to give the dancers a night off and hire our crappy college cover band to perform as a substitute. We proceeded to play the pop hits of the day (we did a mean version of “Breakfast At Tiffanies”) to a never-ending stream of horny dudes who walked in the door and were wildly disappointed to discover that the regular entertainment was replaced by a quartet of flannel clad douche bags playing Goo Goo Dolls songs. By the end of our set, all four of us were hammered… and shirtless.

The capper to this story is that the gig was on the Saturday night before Easter and it was Daylight Savings Time Weekend. Oh, and I had to play guitar for a children’s choir mass the next day. Being sleep deprived, hungover and covered in glitter is no way to accompany children singing “We Gather Together”.

Why do you tell stories?

Lessons are learned through stories. A good storyteller not only entertains, but educates. I’ve been a teacher for almost as long as I’ve been a musician and students learn best through stories, even inane ones.
When performing, I like to tell little stories that help to give my songs context. A song can have a much greater impact if you prime the audience with a relevant story first.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Write with all five senses. A lot of songs, even great ones, are “feeling” songs. You know: “I love you baby”, “I need you”, “I want you”, “I can’t live without you”. This is fine, but there are a ga-zillion songs like this. I think one of the most powerful songwriting techniques is to describe the situation to the listener with all five senses. Even if it’s a straight up love song, describe what’s going on. Where are you? What do you see? What does she look like? What is she wearing? What do you hear? Cars in the street? Boardwalk creaking? A song on the radio? What do you smell? Salt water? Gasoline? What do you taste? What are you touching?

I think you can really take a listener on a journey if you do this. Ironically, I think the listener can feel so much more if you describe in sensory detail what’s going on, rather than just saying: “I feel like my heart is breaking”.

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

I was in a band with a drummer who was the primary songwriter. While discussing songwriting one day, he told me that: “real songwriters don’t use rhyming dictionaries”. Besides being an incredibly arrogant statement, that is truly horrible advice. Rhyming dictionaries not only help you construct better rhymes, they help you write better stories. They may reveal a word that can send the story of your song into a completely different direction that can make your tune much deeper and more memorable.

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

Flaws. Vulnerability. Ironically, a character’s weakness will reveal their strength. How someone deals with adversity and how they overcome their weaknesses ultimately proves how strong they are.
So many strong characters, but I’m going to go with Arlen from Peter V. Brett’s THE WARDED MAN. Such a relatable character that develops into an utter badass.

What’s the secret to storytelling in songs?

Sequence. If you take a song and put the second verse first and the first verse second, and it doesn’t really make a difference, then there’s no story. Each verse, each line should develop the characters and story. The first verse should introduce the situation and character(s). The subsequent verses should move the action forward. The bridge or break should present new information or look at the situation from a different point of view. Otherwise, it’s better to not have a bridge at all.

Favorite songs that tell stories. Pick three. Go.

1. “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” by Richard Thompson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0kJdrfzjAg
2. “Red Barchetta” by Rush http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVGhqvl_8A
3. “Another Auld Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar9Ip7pSqEg

What’s a musical artist we should all be listening to but aren’t?

There are so many amazing singer/songwriters out there that most people have never heard of. I can’t pick just one. Here are three:

1. Kelly Joe Phelps
2. Peter Mulvey
3. Jeffrey Foucault

In my opinion, these are the three best singer/songwriter/guitarists performing folk music these days. They all had a profound impact on my own writing, guitar playing and performing. If you like literate story songs, soulful singing and stunning acoustic guitar work, then you can’t go wrong with any of these guys. Pop their names into YouTube and prepare to kill a few hours.

What geek topic or pop culture property deserves a song that doesn’t yet have one?

All of them. Let me clarify. Back in the day, TV shows used to have theme songs that would really lay out the story behind the show. Nowadays, songs are put into movies to evoke a feeling. Lyrically, they usually have very little to do with the source material. “Live to Rise” by Soundgarden was the theme song to The Avengers movie. It has nothing to do with The Avengers! Hey Marvel, why not hire Jonathan Coulton, Kirby Krackle or me to write a song that is actually about The Avengers? I work cheap.

What’s an average day like in life of John Anealio, Geek Bard?

Wake up at 5:30am. Get to the day job (elementary school music teacher) at 6:30am. Do my creative work from 6:30am to 8:30am before my students and co-workers arrive. During this two hour period, I’ll work on recording and editing whatever my latest song is. Fortunately, we live in a world where you can make a pretty professional recording with a good mic, audio interface and laptop. I teach my morning classes from 8:30am to 11:30am. I continue working on my song during my lunch hour. I get home at around 4pm and take care of my son until about 6:30. After dinner, I do about an hour at the gym. I usually try to put another hour of work on the song in before I go to bed.

If you had to write a song about terribleminds, what would the chorus be?

I actually wrote a tune and recorded it. Here’s the link: Terrible Mind Song If you are so inclined, you can click the share/embed button to get the code to embed the player widget within the blog post.

If you look inside his terrible mind
You’re bound to be offended
So don’t look inside the terrible mind
Of the man they call Chuck Wendig

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

CONTROL POINT by Myke Cole. Blackhawk Down meets the X-Men. If you dig military sci-fi, D&D and the afformentioned X-Men then you will love this book.

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

Appoggiatura: which is a type of musical grace note. I just like the way it sounds.
Cock-wad: I find myself yelling this when I get angry these days. Sometimes I shorten it to wad, which seems even more vulgar for some reason.

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

I’m a beer and wine kind of guy. If I want to catch a buzz quicker, than I’d say red wine. If I had to pick a favorite based on taste, I’d go with a nice beer like a Blue Moon or a Sam Adams.

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

The ability to bore the robots to death with my endless, narcissistic blathering. I’m also an excellent swing dancer.

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

Good question. I want to continue churning out good songs and releasing singles, albums and E.P.s. I have lots of awesome spec-fic author friends. It makes me want to do more collaborative work. Perhaps a concept album tied to a novel, like what Rush just did with Kevin J. Anderson for CLOCKWORK ANGELS. Maybe some sort of trans-media thing. I don’t know. I’m excited to have the opportunity to work on any of it.

Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds