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February 8, 2012 / 29 Comments

Two Girls And One Search Term Bingo

It’s been a while since the last Search Term Bingo. I blame the slowly-growing evil found in the dread hearts of the LORDS OF GOOGLE. Since encrypting search terms for those logged into any Google service, I get like, minimal deliciousness in terms of freaky weird-ass search terms. They still come in — but now I have to wait longer to collect a good spread of ’em. So, here goes — another troubling round of those search terms people used to find this website. Behold the lunacy. And enjoy.

fucking with hadge cuck

Hey, whoa, no. You don’t fuck with Hadge Cuck. You go stomping on his hill barrow and that big ass motherfucker will come out and beat your shitcan to death with his club, a club he made from ox bones and dragon cocks. Hadge Cuck bested Gilgamesh in a game of mighty kickball. Hadge Cuck breathes the breath of a thousand cigar-smoking ravens. What’s the old rhyme? “Hadge Cuck come, Hadge Cuck crush, Hadge Cuck punch your bones to mush!” Repeat after me: DO NOT FUCK WITH HADGE CUCK.

what is the no 1 things all writers need

A helper monkey. A little capuchin monkey that sits in a wastebasket near your desk and whenever you need something, you just ring that little ding-a-ling bell. “Monkey! Get me a cappucino! Monkey! Get me whiskey for my cappucino! Monkey! Deliver unto me my naughty magazines!”

don’t worry my dad has a beard

Well, thank god for that. I was worried there for a minute. I was all like, “Oh my god, the economy is really wobbly and houses are being foreclosed upon and our freedoms are being stripped away from us a little bit every day and Israel might attack Iran and someone’s inventing a weaponized bird-flu right now and for some reason that new TV show with Rob Schneider is really popular and that means the Mayans were right,” but then you come along and remind me that your dad has a beard. We’re all good here. Whew.

my beard makes me fat

No, that wreath of Krispy Kreme donuts you inhaled made you fat. Your beard just makes you awesome.

enema beard

Officially my new pirate name. “Yarrr, olde Cap’n Enemabeard hid his treasure of Tampax Pearl reward points somewhere here on this dirty New Jersey beach, yarrrr! Get to searchin’ ye scurvy helper monkeys!”

i’m on google at best buy lolololol

First up, you’re an idiot. Second up, you’re an idiot. Third up, who gives a shit? Fourth up, multiple LOL’s strung together is fucking stupid. What does it mean? “I’m laughing out loud out loud out loud out loud?” For the record, I think we’re all done with “LOL.” It’s over. You’re not really laughing out loud. You’re laughing on the Internet and, frankly, probably not even smiling. This goes double to all you yahoos who choose to insert “LOL” after every sentence whether or not it’s worthy of humor. “I installed a new ceiling fan today lol. I need to express my chihuahua’s anal glands lol. My mom has face cancer lol.” Stop it. Just stop it. Someone pry the “L” and “O” keys from your keyboard. Dingbat.

wendig slept with my religion

I did no such thing. Unless you mean that fling with Zoroastrianism? Yeah, we hooked up. We did some handsy stuff, some mouth stuff, but I wouldn’t call it “sleeping with.” Dang, are you Zoroastrian? Sorry.

where does chuck wendig live?

Well, that’s not a terrifying search term at all. Here, I’ll answer this for you: I live on the moon. Me and Newt Gingrich. He’s on the dark side. Me on the light. Every thousand years we battle. Now stop looking.

chuck wemdog

First time I’ve heard that one. I’ve seen Chuck Wending Winding Wedding — I’ve even seen Wangdang. Seriously. But never “Wemdog.” If you see my at a convention or something, run toward me with a high-five at the ready and then stick out your tongue and go, “WASSUUUUP WEMDOOOOOG!” And then as you get within the proper distance I will kick you in the kneecap and push you into a potted plant using your own momentum. Because I’m actually a ninja. Please don’t tell anybody. This blog isn’t public, right?

frisky dimplebuns

Hey! This was my nickname back at Kilimanjaro base camp. Those wacky sherpas. Chasing each other around and playing a funny game of grab-ass, shoving snow down everybody’s pants! Ha ha ha! What fun.

5 words you should use in every story

Here goes. Ready?

“Breeches.”

“Titmouse.”

“Byzantine.”

“Chapstick.”

And, “Rosewater.”

how to congratulate a published author

A gift basket. This gift basket should feature:

a) seven tiny bottles of whiskey

b) seven other tiny bottles of whiskey

c) chocolate of some ilk

d) an index card that reads: YOU’RE #1 IN THE AMAZON RANKING OF MY HEART

e) a bookmark shaped like a chihuahua

f) a fancy pen

g) a six-pack of five-hour-energy drink

h) an orange

i) an index card that reads: GET BACK TO WORK YOU FUCKING MONKEY

dolly parton baboons

She does have huge “baboons,” yes. I will now refer to a lady’s chesty bounty as “blouse baboons.” Men, you are not exempt. Your dangle-rods will now be called, “pants-dwelling proboscis monkeys.”

Please update all records.

i want to put meth in my butthole

I guess that’s one way to do it. Is the normal meth high not strong enough for you that you need to go shoving it up your no-no tunnel? You’re pretty hardcore. “Hey, man, you got any crystal?” “I SHOVED IT ALL UP MY POOPER HA HA HA HA HA” *vacuums the entire state of Ohio, then dies*

elk semen macaroni and cheese

Oh, hey, thanks, now I’m going to be scraping vomit out of my keyboard for a month. (Is that corn? Why is there always corn?) Maybe this is coming up on a future episode of Fear Factor. I read an interview with the woman who drank donkey semen on that episode that mysteriously fled the NBC schedule, and it was about as obvious an interview as you could get. “Uhh, it was really gross and I kept throwing up and it tasted kind of grassy and semeny and it was hot and flies kept landing on it between sips.” Yeah, uhhh, you just drank donkey semen. On television. For an episode that might not even air. And now you’re telling us all about it. What did you think it was going to taste like? A caramel macchiato?

This should be our Darwin test. We should administer this test to everybody. “I will give you one hundred dollars if you drink this cup of hot, fly-specked donkey semen.”

Anybody who reaches for the glass receives a crisp hundred-dollar-bill and then is dropped through a trap-door into a pit filled with starving grizzly bears who have been trained to use machetes.

“lord of the rings” “he ejaculated”

I kind of wish those were reversed. “He ejaculated Lord of the Rings.”

“Nnnggh, nnngh, nnnnnnnggggh.”

*squee*

“Hey, look, Boromir!”

I made this for you, Internet:

shotguns + robotics

Two great tastes that taste great together. Also, this is what the Mayans were talking about. At the end of their prophecies, all the pictographs end in a picture of a robot holding a shotgun.

aliens and carbohydrates

Two great tastes that — eh, maybe not so much. If you wanna lose weight, you need to cut out carbohydrates, but eat more aliens. Oh, these Alpha Centaurians? Delicious! They’re filled with pudding!

we both know you’re not in outer fucking space

I like to imagine that this is the voicemail left on a husband’s phone by his betrayed wife. “We both know you’re not in outer fucking space, Dave. That’s right. I found out you’re not a secret astronaut with the Newt Gingrich Take Back The Moon program. Guess what? Your mother told me. You’re just a plumber from Secaucus. I know you’re not in space — you’re over that slut Debbie’s house again, aren’t you? She smells like a mall perfume counter, Dave. I’m just… I’m just disgusted by you. You know what? You can go to the moon, you sonofabitch.” Click. Divorce. Done. MARRIAGE LOST.

evolution is obsolete piss like a monkey

Is this the tactic that the Creationists are taking now? I don’t think that makes much sense at all.

ask a shotgun

Do not ask for advice from a shotgun. He has the same answer to every question.

“What stocks should I buy?” BOOM.

“What qualities make for a good mate?” BANG!

“I just found out my husband Dave isn’t really an astronaut. What do I do?” KACHOOM.

what do fish have to do with anything?

Nothing, probably. Fuck ’em. Just get rid of those assholes. Stinking up all our oceans with their fish poop.

piranha eats its own feces poops

See? Fish poop. Though I guess the piranha should be rewarded for eating his own mess. Maybe if we humans were so brave as the piranha we wouldn’t have to ruin the planet with our corrosive toilet industry. Did you know that for every toilet that we make, seven bald eagles explode? I read that.

good beginnings with dairy goats

MY FAVORITE PBS PROGRAM EVER.

i can see purple pulsating purple

I will take whatever toxic gourd juice you’re drinking, please. Two cups.

One for me, one for my imaginary pal, Mister Tinklepants.

rabbit stew gives me diarrhea

Where did you find this rabbit stew, exactly? “I was out walking around and I was just kicking up pieces of cardboard and knocking around a few old soup cans and next thing I know this hobo comes out of the sewer grate and hands me a bubbly frothy pot of rabbit stew! It was delicious, but gave me the trots something fierce.” You shouldn’t be wolfing down rabbit stew of dubious age and origin, dummy.

crotch crutch

Dang, if you need a crutch for your crotch, color me impressed. You must have a tremendous wang. Like, the size of a rifle case. And I can see how you’d break a dick that size. You probably get — no pun intended — cocky with a schwanz like that. You’re out there breaking boards to impress the ladies, or using it as a bat during slow-pitch softball. Eventually you’re going to bust that sucker in half and, sure enough, need a crutch. Good for you, huge-dicked dude. Way to swing for the fences.

does your ass feels offended

No, but my silky nipples do.

story boobs battle challenge crush milk

This is actually what they called “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” in Malaysia.

save a hundred lives and you’re a nurse

I thought it was harder — or maybe easier? — than that.

old photo of a pterodactyl

Taken by what? A caveman Polaroid?

ugh whiskey always ruins my night

Then you’re doing it wrong.

people with fruit for heads in a circle

I guess I need another cup of that toxic gourd juice, because I’m not seeing that, yet.

things you do not say aloud

Pick any part of this blog post and that’s a good place to start.

February 7, 2012 / 144 Comments

25 Reasons That Writers Are Bug-Fuck Nuts

It seems like a good time for a spiritual successor to my earlier “Beware of Writer” posts — this time, jacked into the popular “25 Things” format here that all you cats and kittens seem to like. Plus, it’s sometimes good to speak to the non-writers out there, let ’em know why we get that spooky glint in our eyes once in a while. You wanna know why we’re a little wacky? I gotcher 25 reasons right here.

1. We Destroy Our Imaginary Friends

Authors invent people. Out of thin air. They reach into the moist and dewy folds of the invisible thought vagina and from that squishy space birth people who have never existed, and who will never exist. We give ourselves — and by proxy, the audience — reasons to care about these people. They become our imaginary friends. Then we take our imaginary friends and fuck them over ten ways till Tuesday. “This is Dave. We all like Dave. Good hair. Nice teeth. We can all relate to Dave. Uh-oh! Dave’s wife just left him. Stole the kids. And now he’s being hunted by a serial killer from the moon! HA HA HA HA SUCK A DICK DAVE.”

2. We Specialize In Creative Ways To Die

We’re basically murderers who just don’t have the balls to actually go out and kill some motherfuckers. It’s not just stories about aliens chomping on people’s guts or thugs stabbing other thugs — books and films and comic books are showcases for every form of misery and doom one could imagine. Once in a while you’ll be walking along and suddenly a thought will strike you: “I wonder if I could work it into a story where some dude gets his guts vacuumed out his boothole by an out-of-control Roomba. I bet I could. Time to murder some non-existent humans. To the writermobile!”

3. Behold The Bad News Boner

It’s not just murder. It’s all kinds of bad news. Bus crash! Small town swallowed by avalanche! Exploding nuns! Deadly form of herpes escapes lab on the back of a carnivorous shark-llama hybrid! Oh noes! Bad news! Yay! I want to rub it all over my body like a cream or unguent! I want to wear its stink and huff the stench of cataclysm and catstrophe to get me jacked up for my next story! Exclamation points! Can’t stop!

4. “I Was Once Born With A Tail!”

We are trained to be gifted liars. Anybody who writes fiction — or works for Fox News — is tasked with the job of convincing others that Things That Are Absolutely Not True are, in fact, Totally Fucking True. Our entire job is predicated on being good at spinning a complicated web of deception. Truth? Bo-ring. Lies? High-five! Lies make Story Jesus giggle as if you’re tickling his tummy. I imagine all writers have those moments where they’re sitting around their office, pantsless, an empty whiskey bottle spinning idly at their feet — they rub their eyes and mutter, “I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake anymore.” Then the writer hops on his rocket unicorn and goes to buy a cat-burger from the fish-faced Atlantean fellow down on Bumbershoot Street. See? The lies just fall out of me. Like chewing gum from a dead man’s mouth.

5. Quiet Loners

Whenever they find some whackaloon with a collection of severed heads in his freezer, they always trot out the neighbors and you get that classic line: “He was always so quiet.” And the assumption becomes, oh, that seemingly nice-and-quiet chap next door needed his quiet time because he was too busy with his hobby of decapitating dudes. On the other hand: hey, maybe him being quiet and alone all the time made him crazy. Maybe you spend too long cooped up with yourself the carpet starts moving and the wallpaper shifts and the room starts to whisper, You know what would be awesome? A sweet-ass collection of severed heads. Get on that. This is probably a good time to remind you that writers happen to spend a lot of time alone and cooped up with themselves. Just, uhh, putting that out there. What, this old thing? Just a hacksaw.

6. The Grotto Of Insanity

Our office spaces soon begin to reflect our quiet and lonely — and inevitably crazy — lifestyle. Teetering towers of books that threaten to crush us. Pens laying everywhere (and if you’re me, half of them are chewed on, the toxic ink and plastics long settled into my body). Over there, a plate of what may have once been a burrito but now looks like a brain made of fungus. Next to it, a small handgun. Next to that, a dead pigeon. Underneath the desk, a noisy pile of Red Bull cans, liquor bottles, and ammunition casings. Behind us, a cabinet full of freeze-dried severed heads. Our offices inevitably turn into wombs, that is, if wombs were responsible for birthing the raw stuff of crazy into the world.

7. The Nexus Of Madness Is Atop Our Wibbly-Wobbly Necks

If you think our offices are the domicile of the insane, you should see the inside of our heads. It’s the asylum from 12 Monkeys all up in these motherfuckers. And we live here all the goddamn time. No escape!

8. Creativity Is Seen As A Commodity Of The Lazy And Insane

You tell most people what you do and you get this look — it’s a look that perfectly contains a tempest of information, a tangle of thoughts (and none of them good). You get a mixture of, Oh, he’s one of those, or, Look, another hipster-slacker-socialist-asshole stealing all our precious unemployment, or, He doesn’t look like he’s starving so he must have a trust fund keeping him alive, or, Ugh, that’s not a real job. Swamp logger, that’s a real job. Writer’s just something you say when you like to smoke drugs all day. It’s really quite disheartening. You get those looks often enough it starts to crack your egg a little bit, dontcha know?

9. The Love-Me Hate-Me Two-Step

Here, then, is the critical dichotomy of our process: we have to love an idea so much we’re willing to spend the great deal of time shoveling it into the world, and then we have to switch gears and learn to hate the thing we just created in order to improve it. We puff up our ego, then lance it with a hot pin. It’s like giving birth to a child who you love with all your heart until you throw him out into the icy woods with a note pinned to his chest reading: this is how you learn to survive, you little turd. Writers are the tragedy and comedy masks whirling about, trading places again and again. And it’s all a bit barmy, innit?

10. Caffeine Poisoning

Writers drink so much caffeine that eventually the synapses start to break down like wires chewed by starving squirrels. And then those starving squirrels make a ratty nest of old leaves and smelly yarn inside our heads. We end up as gutted automatons piloted by a tribe of twitchy squirrels. Metaphorically.

11. Alcohol Poisoning

Coffee, then liquor, then coffee, then liquor. Okay, yes, I know, not every writer is a pickled booze-sponge, but some drink enough for all, I suspect. All that booze affects the liver and just as the liver is kind of the bouncer for the human body, detoxing all that bad voodoo, Plato felt that another function of the liver was to keep in check a human’s darkest emotions. Meaning, the liver’s purpose was to bottle up all the crazy. And what do writers do? OBLITERATE THE LIVER WITH DRINK. Be free, little crazies! Be free!

12. “I Got A Bad Case Of The Penmonkeys, Man”

We’re addicts for our wordsmithy. Over time, it just happens. One day you’ve been writing so long that when a day comes you don’t put words to paper it feels like that space between your heart and your guts is filled with a cluster of bitey eels that want out, and the only way to give them egress is to start writing again. We’re word-junkies, man. Ink-slingers. Fiction fiends. The only cure is another taste of that sweet story.

13. Control Freaks With Nothing To Control

Inside our stories, we’re gods among mortals — our hands are on all the buttons and switches. Outside our stories, we control a big bag of Dick Butkus. We don’t control publisher advances, book placement, trends, reviews, or that weird little deranged robot that computes the Amazon recommendation algorithms.

14. Crazy Money!

Yeah, by “crazy money” I don’t mean “money in such quantity it’s totally awesome,” but rather, “money that arrives in wildly inconsistent sums and on a madman’s schedule.” You hit this point where, okay, you have to learn to survive from January to March on this royalty check of $7.53, and then in March you’re supposed to get like, ten grand or something, but then that ten grand doesn’t show up until June, and when you get it you forget you need to buy groceries and instead buy like, a Wave Runner instead. Yeah. See? Nutty.

15. Books Books I Love Books Books Books Mmm Books

The one thing that e-readers have robbed from us is the ability to throw all the books we own into a room and roll around on them, naked. I mean, okay, sure, I can do that with an e-reader, but eventually someone’s going to pick it up and be like, “Is this a testicle-print on my Kindle?” What I’m saying is, some people hoard clothing, cats, fast food containers, ninja weapons, exotic primates — but writers hoard books. And eventually all those books — each a storehouse of utter unreality — bleeds into our brains via creative osmosis. Either that or they fall on us, crushing our weak little writer bodies beneath.

16. We Are Distracted For A Reason

It’s not new to suggest that writers are easily distracted: we’ve all gotten lost in an endless labyrinth of cat videos (and at the center of that labyrinth is a cat dressed like a minotaur, and he’s all like I CAN HAZ COW HED OH NOES THESEUS and — dang, LOLcats jokes just don’t cut it anymore, do they?). But here’s why we’re easily distracted: because our brains know it’s bad for us to stare at a screen full of tiny words all day. Our brain is telling us to look at something — anything — other than those tiny little ant-like words. It is unnatural to stare at words in this way. It nibbles holes in our gray matter.

17. The Internet Is Full Of Ragehate, And We Dive In, Headfirst

Once upon a time, authors would get reviews that were insightful, incisive critiques — “The author’s masterful use of language is sadly handicapped by a plot whose events fail to properly resolve.” Now we have to put up with internet vitriol like you’d find on the likes of a YouTube video where a guy gets hit in the nuts with a tricycle: “THIS BOOK IS FUKKIN STUPID IT BLOWS GIRAFFES THE AWTHOR IS A TARDCART.” And then they probably call you a racial or sexual epithet. It’s like asking for insightful criticism during a Call of Duty match on Xbox Live. It does little good for one’s sanity.

18. The English Language Makes As Much Sense As Snivel Bliff Fleekum Hork

Okay, this one is a little biased toward those writing in the English tongue, but seriously, trying to know all the rules in and around the composition of the English language will give you a goddamn nosebleed. Looking at all the rules — and then memorizing all the bizarre-o exceptions — makes you want to go back to the days of communicating with clicks and burps. Related: Brian Regan knows the real “I-before-E” rule.

19. At Some Point We Tried Really Hard To Understand The Publishing Industry

Predicting trends, imagining advances, contemplating the agency model, trying to figure out why anybody would publish any book by Billy Ray Cyrus ever — all this does is plunge your mind into the roiling black soup of unmitigated chaos. You can tell the moment any author’s sanity snapped, because it goes like this: “My book’s been out on submission for seven years, and now they’re publishing a book of scat marks written by that greasy orangutan, Snooki?” Listen hard enough, you hear a *plink* — that’s the sound of the little pubic hair holding the last vestiges of that author’s sanity together.

20. That Might Be Scurvy

No, that’s not the latest spin-off band by They Might Be Giants — it’s because we don’t have enough money for food and health insurance and because we didn’t eat a couple oranges now we’re losing our teeth and fingernails and turning into some raving froth-mouthed version of the Brundlefly.

21. Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me? Me!

It is in our makeup to be desperate for attention. We write our books, our films, our articles, and we’re not writing them so that we can just read them back to ourselves and have a jolly good laugh. We want you to read them, too. And you. And you! And you over there, hiding behind the shrubs. The more attention we get, the more successful we become — or, at least, feel. The ironic part is, many aren’t comfortable with that attention and yet seek it like junkies. Which, you guessed it, makes us a wee smidgen bit crazy.

22. Amazon Rankings

Click. Clickity-click. Refresh refresh. “Did my ranking go up? Or down? Or up? Or down? It stayed the same. What does that mean? Did I sell enough to stay afloat? Are the rankings broken? How often do they update? Is my book doing better than that other book? Is that good? Or bad? My finger is getting a blister. MY ENTIRE SELF-WORTH IS PINNED TO THIS GODDAMN NUMBER. *sob*” Click. Click. Refresh refresh.

23. The Idea Plague

Ask a writer: “Where do you get your ideas from?” And the writer will reply: “How do you make yours stop?” Then he’ll bat at his hair as if it’s on fire. I can’t walk ten feet without thinking of a new novel or script idea. It’s an idea that will almost certainly never yield fruit — which means I’m essentially committing an act of literary Onanism. So much idea-seed spilled on the floor. Infertile and inert. And smells like Clorox.

24. We Hang Out With Other Writers

Crazy people hanging out with other crazy people just creates a crazy people feedback loop where the crazy recirculates again and again like a bad stink in an old car. Crazy begets crazy begets crazy.

25. It’s Cool-Cool To Be Cray-Cray

Most writers aren’t actually crazy — but we certainly feel that way sometimes and furthermore, a helluva lot of our authorial forebears were definitely a bit, ahhh, unstable (Hemingway! Hunter S. Thompson! Emily Dickinson! Sylvia Plath!). As such, we’re cast into a realm where it’s okay, even expected, that our creative pursuits mark us on the charts between “a little bit eccentric” and “crazier than a shithouse chimp.”

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February 6, 2012 / 75 Comments

Tunes For The Penmonkey

I don’t tend to listen to much music while writing. Editing, sometimes — or, maybe during prep. But during writing, I like things quiet. Chill. Shhhhh.

But! But, I’ve been playing with music a little bit — not so much during the writing but before it to get pumped up and “in the mood” and then at punctuated points during the actual process.

Which makes me want to ask you people:

Do you listen to music when you write?

What do you listen to?

A deeper, more granular question would be:

Given that different music is valuable to different writing moods or to writing different scenes, what do you like to write when working on certain types of scenes? Say, when you’re writing action? Or drama? Or sex? Or ACTION DRAMA SEX? (That will be the name of my memoir, by the way. Look for it in the year 2034. Provided we all survive the Hyperborean Sharkpocalypse of 2032.)

So.

You.

Music.

Writing.

What’s the score?

Pun not intended until now.

February 3, 2012 / 39 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: One Small Story In Seven Acts

The “write in the present tense” challenge is just wrapping up. Won’t you check it out?

Earlier this week I was all like, “Blah blah blah, here’s 25 things about story structure.”

And in there I offered one particular structure for a story —

A seven-act spread.

There I wrote:

Behold, a rough seven-act structure: Intro (duh) –> Problem or Attack (duh) –> Initial Struggle (character first tussles with source of conflict) –> Complications (conflict worsens, deepens, changes) –> Failed Attempts (oops, that didn’t work) –> Major Crisis (holy goatfucker shitbomb, everything’s gone pear-shaped) –> Climax and Resolution (duh).

…and now I want to see those seven acts put into play.

In a 1000-word example of flash fiction.

From you.

Yes, that’s right. I want you to take your 1000 words and orchestrate a full seven-act arc from intro all the way to the climax and resolution, not missing a step in the middle.

You have, as always, one week. February 10th by noon EST.

Post your story at your blog or online somewhere, then drop a link to the comments so we can find it.

One story.

Seven acts.

Get writing.

February 2, 2012 / 13 Comments

Myke Cole: The Terribleminds Interview

All I gotta say is, Myke Cole? Bonafide bad-ass. Furthermore, an all-around nice guy. He’s also a guy with a book out this week — the military-meets-magic CONTROL POINT (AKA “Black Hawk Down” meets the “X-Men”). I managed to get a moment of Myke’s time in between, I dunno, punching tanks and playing Frisbee Golf with landmines, and here he sits down and submits to the terribleminds interview. Read it, and then visit his site — MykeCole-dot-com — and follow him on Twitter (@MykeCole).

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.

During my first tour in Baghdad, I was sitting in my hooch at around 0200. I couldn’t sleep, so I was playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on my laptop. It was over 100 degrees, so I was sitting in my underwear.

Whoosh. Bang. Whoosh. Bang. Incoming rounds. From the sound and the shivering impact, I guessed they were 107s.

And I panic. Instead of doing what you should do (hit the deck), I grab my go-bag and my pistol and go flying out of the hooch, racing for the bunker, making myself a giant upright target for any low-flying shrapnel.

A round comes in danger-close, just on the other side of a cinder-block wall. It doesn’t detonate, but the bang is loud and the shaking so dramatic that I can swear that it did (if it had, I surely would have died).

The attack is over. I’m lying in the dirt, completely coated in dust. My ears are ringing and there’s a cloud of sulphur/cordite hanging over me. I’m only wearing underwear. I have no idea where my go-bag and weapon are. I think I may have pissed myself.

I’m one of the lucky guys who has a cellphone. When it rings, I find my go-bag.

It’s my mom. She’s calling to let me know how frightened she is that I’m in Iraq.

Why do you tell stories?

To communicate. To get a reaction. To know that other people are hearing what I have to say and that it is impacting them. I am no Emily Dickenson and I absolutely cannot understand people who operate like that.

I also do it to pay back. Stories saved me, reared me, created me. They are the reason I live. I know there are people out there who are the same way. They need them as much as I do. If I can add to the body of work that makes lives wonderful, then I have truly done something worthwhile.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Cowboy up. Novels don’t write themselves. Don’t wait for your muse. Don’t wait until you “have the time.” Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Don’t worry about whether or not you’re wasting your time, or if you suck. Shut the hell up, and get to work.

What’s great about being a writer, and conversely, what sucks about it?

I’m going to Confusion (a convention in Detroit) this coming weekend. At that con, I will be sitting down with many of my favorite authors: Peter V. Brett, Patrick Rothfuss, Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch.

We will be playing a game of 1st edition D&D, with a classic Gygax-written module, probably KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS.

The fact that I get to do crap like that is, frankly, transcendent.

The worst thing is poverty. Even with a major book deal, full-time writing is uncertain at best. If it weren’t for the health insurance and slight income stream I get from serving in the reserve, I would be homeless. I frequently tell people that I love everything about my life except for how poor I am. But I also firmly believe that money is the easy-part and you can figure that out eventually.

I suspect a lot of authors are or were gamers — tabletop in particular. What did gaming teach you about writing and storytelling? Positive or negative lessons.

I was *just* talking about this last night. I really feel that DM’ing D&D campaigns taught me incredibly important lessons about storytelling. I played with Peter V. Brett in college and watched him craft incredible campaigns that were as engaging as any novel, and then I tried to match them. You have to be willing to do a TON of worldbuilding that your “readers” will never see. I would pour hours into drafting incredibly detailed NPCs, only to have my players just come out and kill them without so much as saying hello. You also have to willing to change course on a dime. Your players can just decide that they don’t want to open that door when the campaign DEMANDS that they OPEN THAT F*&KING DOOR! That agility is critical to being a good novelist.

That author game sounds fucking phenomenal. Let’s extend that. If you could play D&D with, say, five different authors (living or dead), who would they be?

Oh wow:

– Gary Gygax (yes, he’s an author, by god).

– George R. R. Martin.

– Richard K. Morgan

– Naomi Novik

– Ernest Cline

And the module? Tomb of Horrors. Because I’m fantasizing, there’ll be this mind-ray that makes us all forget the module, so that none of us know where any of the traps are and how to get around them.

I get to be the Human Paladin. With at least a +3 Holy Avenger. That’s very important. Dude. Seriously. I’m not f$#king around here.

Gaming is big in the military, or so I hear. What other games have you played?

Gaming is HUGE in the military, as is all other SFF-genre loving activities (most importantly, reading). I love any tabletop word game (Scrabble and Boggle) and also the classic board/card games (San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Settlers of Cataan. Though, I should admit that I’m new to some of them). Talisman (with all its expansions) is OUTSTANDING.

I will play Magic if someone brings their decks, but I don’t own any of my own.

Then, there’s wargaming. I am a big fan of historical ancients/medieval games (I prefer 15mm) and my favorite rule set for that is DBA. I don’t really do napoleonic, but I will if I have a good mentor.

And, of course, there’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. There are no words for how unspeakably cool that universe is.

But the most important thing in gaming is the players. I really don’t care what I’m playing, so long as I’m at a table with a bunch of really cool people who are fun to hang out with.

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

My favorite word, hands down, is “Contact.” There are SO many awesome meanings and implications, both science-fictional, military, and every day.

My favorite curse is “Balls.” I know, it’s not technically a curse, but I like the fact that it can be used in both positive and negative ways.

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

Hard cider (best I’ve ever hard is Hornsby’s). I love going to the UK because they take it seriously there. In America, if I have a drink with my sailors and order a hard cider, inevitably one of my chiefs will ask, “Why don’t you just order a Flirtini, sir?”

Okay, so, tell us about CONTROL POINT — what is it, and why did you write it?

CONTROL POINT is a book that asks the basic question “What if the modern, counterinsurgency-focused military had magic? What would a fire-team look like if you had 2 riflemen, a support-weapon and a sorcerer?” Now that’s the fun squee part “how does an Apache helicopter gunship match up against a Roc?” But it also raises bigger issues about the nature of big bureaucracies and how they handle sudden and dramatic social change. A lot of these questions were asked by the X-Men comic book series. I expand on those in SHADOW OPS.

I wrote the book because I was walking around the Pentagon in 1998, wondering how these regulation obsessed bureaucrats would handle magic. What if the monsters from D&D were real? How would the law deal with that? Those questions HOUNDED me. CONTROL POINT was my way of getting them to shut up.

How is CONTROL POINT a book only you could’ve written?

I’m probably flattering myself here, but I feel like I have a somewhat unique blend of loving-to-write, nerd-roots and military experience. I have been to war and responded to major domestic disasters. I am raised on comic books, D&D and mass-market/spinner-wire-rack fantasy novels. I have been writing all my life. I am sure there are lots of folks with two of those attributes. But all three? Well, maybe so. Maybe CONTROL POINT *isn’t* a book that only I could’ve written. But I’m the guy who wrote it. Here’s hoping folks are happy with that.

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

Book: Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series, which is (so far) The Warded Man and The Desert Spear. He is, hands-down, one of the best writers I’ve ever read. I frequently use those books to woo non-fantasy readers who I am trying to get into genre, and it has never failed me.

Comic Book: Ed Brubaker’s Captain America Omnibus. It’s as thick as a phonebook, and you’ll wish it were twice as long.

Film: Les Pactes des Loupes (The Brotherhood of the Wolf). Watch the extended edition, in French, with sub-titles.

Game: Sword and Sworcery for the iPad. Beautiful, haunting and the Jim Guthrie soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.

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

I’ve been to Iraq 3 times. I was a responder to both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Irene. Crisis is what I do. I’m a good shot and was a competitive swordsman in my halcyon days, both in kendo and the SCA. If there’s a guy you want on your six when the chips are down and the undead come calling, I’m him.

You’ve committed crimes against humanity. They caught you. You get one last meal.

A NYC deli style BLT, but only because they’re held together with those little plastic swords you see in cocktails. I’d use that to carve up the place and escape.

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

I’ve just turned in FORTRESS FRONTIER, the sequel to CONTROL POINT. I have recently been commission to write a novella in a media tie-in universe, and hopefully that will lead to novels. I am turning and burning on my efforts to get the comic book and video game industries interested in my work. A Hollywood agency has picked up CONTROL POINT and is trying to get film/TV folks interested in it. The long and short is this: I want to be able to write full-time, in genre, without having to do anything else besides serve in the reserve (which I love), for the rest of my days. A failure scenario sees me having to go back to a full-time day job.

Okay, so, tell us about CONTROL POINT — what is it, and why did you write it?

* CONTROL POINT is a book that asks the basic question “What if the modern, counterinsurgency-focused military had magic? What would a fire-team look like if you had 2 riflemen, a support-weapon and a sorcerer?” Now that’s the fun squee part “how does an Apache helicopter gunship match up against a Roc?” But it also raises bigger issues about the nature of big bureaucracies and how they handle sudden and dramatic social change. A lot of these questions were asked by the X-Men comic book series. I expand on those in SHADOW OPS.

I wrote the book because I was walking around the Pentagon in 1998, wondering how these regulation obsessed bureaucrats would handle magic. What if the monsters from D&D were real? How would the law deal with that? Those questions HOUNDED me. CONTROL POINT was my way of getting them to shut up.

How is CONTROL POINT a book only you could’ve written?

* I’m probably flattering myself here, but I feel like I have a somewhat unique blend of loving-to-write, nerd-roots and military experience. I have been to war and responded to major domestic disasters. I am raised on comic books, D&D and mass-market/spinner-wire-rack fantasy novels. I have been writing all my life. I am sure there are lots of folks with two of those attributes. But all three? Well, maybe so. Maybe CONTROL POINT *isn’t* a book that only I could’ve written. But I’m the guy who wrote it. Here’s hoping folks are happy with that.

Ah, you’re a gamer. I suspect a lot of authors are or were gamers — tabletop in particular. What did gaming teach you about writing and storytelling? Positive or negative lessons.

* I was *just* talking about this last night. I really feel that DM’ing D&D campaigns taught me incredibly important lessons about storytelling. I played with Peter V. Brett in college and watched him craft incredible campaigns that were as engaging as any novel, and then I tried to match them. You have to be willing to do a TON of worldbuilding that your “readers” will never see. I would pour hours into drafting incredibly detailed NPCs, only to have my players just come out and kill them without so much as saying hello. You also have to willing to change course on a dime. Your players can just decide that they don’t want to open that door when the campaign DEMANDS that they OPEN THAT F*&KING DOOR! That agility is critical to being a good novelist.

That game with the other authors sounds fucking phenomenal. So let’s extend that out — if you could play D&D with, say, five different authors (living or dead), who would they be?

* Oh wow:

– Gary Gygax (yes, he’s an author, by god).

– George R. R. Martin.

– Richard K. Morgan

– Naomi Novik

– Ernest Cline

And the module? Tomb of Horrors. Because I’m fantasizing, there’ll be this mind-ray that makes us all forget the module, so that none of us know where any of the traps are and how to get around them.

I get to be the Human Paladin. With at least a +3 Holy Avenger. That’s very important. Dude. Seriously. I’m not f$#king around here.

Gaming is big in the military, or so I hear. What other games do you or have you played?

* Gaming is HUGE in the military, as is all other SFF-genre loving activities (most importantly, reading). I love any tabletop word game (Scrabble and Boggle) and also the classic board/card games (San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Settlers of Cataan. Though, I should admit that I’m new to some of them). Talisman (with all its expansions) is OUTSTANDING.

I will play Magic if someone brings their decks, but I don’t own any of my own.

Then, there’s wargaming. I am a big fan of historical ancients/medieval games (I prefer 15mm) and my favorite rule set for that is DBA. I don’t really do napoleonic, but I will if I have a good mentor.

And, of course, there’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. There are no words for how unspeakably cool that universe is.

But the most important thing in gaming is the players. I really don’t care what I’m playing, so long as I’m at a table with a bunch of really cool people who are fun to hang out with.

February 1, 2012 / 38 Comments

The Experiment Ends (And Other News)

As noted on Monday, I was trying a little experiment: I flung my Atlanta Burns novella, SHOTGUN GRAVY, up onto Amazon’s exclusive Kindle “KDP Select” program which purports to offer authors two key benefits: first, the ability to take part in Kindle lending which further grants authors access to a large “pot” of money monthly; second, the advantage (or, some might say, “advantage”) of putting your work up online for free.

As of late, a number of folks have noticed a phenomenon. You put your work up for free, and then when it once more re-enters paid gravity, suddenly the book becomes a Purchasing Magnet whereupon droves and flocks and herds and gaggles of Amazon readers come out of the woodwork to buy the recently-free book. A lot of authors have been attempting to jump this promotion’s bones (evidenced by the sudden flurry of “My work is free suddenly!” broadcasts).

Well, I figured, let’s try it.

SHOTGUN GRAVY‘s a novella that did well in its first month but kind of tapered off — it gets a sale or three a day, which is fine and adds to the whole pile, but it’s not exactly a rocketship to the money moon. Further, if I’m going to justify putting out the sequel, BAIT DOG, I figured I damn well better get the book into people’s hands. Free or not.

I originally put the book up for five days. You only get one five-day-period during your 90-day reign of exclusivity, however — so, I figured, I’d better chop it down to two.

Here’s how it went.

Putting the book up for free amassed a sudden burst of books distributed (I dare not use the word “sold” since, well, you don’t pay for a free book with anything but a stab of your finger on a mouse button). Right out of the gate, had about 100 people nab the book. Which was curious — where the hell did they come from? Are they real people? I don’t even know.

Over the course of the next 24 hours, I amassed over 5000 copies distributed free to readers. A nice enough number. Happy to have the book on a heap of Kindles, though one supposes that a good percentage of those will never read the book — perhaps I’m being cynical, but I know that the less I pay for a book, the lower it falls in my To-Be-Read pile. By yesterday morning, the book had reached #44 in the Top 100 Free and so I thought, now’s a good time to cut short the five days to two days. I went to end it thinking that I’d still get two full days of the promo — but within 30 minutes of asking the promo to end, it ended, lickity-split.

Which is fine, but I didn’t expect it to work that fast. Amazon can be notorious for veeeeeery sloooowly updating things — even a simple price change can take up to 48 hours to populate.

So, then. Results?

I did not initially see any boost in sales. Hour or two went by and the e-book didn’t move one whit. But then, ping — a sale. Okay, fine. Then another, and another. Steadily — and slowly, mind — the e-book sold about 60 copies. (This is as of 7:00PM last night.) It’s since not moved again in about an hour. The book crested to Amazon ranking #1,793. Further, it garnered another six reviews during that period (all four- and five-star).

(I’d politely ask that if you procured my book — or any book! — for free, leave a review upon reading it?)

Now, many have reported that a bigger sales boost occurs two to three days after the free promo ends. Not sure if that’ll happen here, but I’m damn sure gonna keep my eyes peeled.

Assessment of results?

Good, I guess. I’m happy to have the novella in the hands of 5000 more theoretical readers. I would have preferred they pay the buck for it, but if that means I’ve got more folks willing to chip in for BAIT DOG or other work of mine, that’s great.

This leads to the question, did I experience a sales boost of my other e-books?

I did not.

Quite the contrary, actually.

Soon as I triggered the free promo, my e-book sales over that two-day period were cleanly halved in twain. That’s kinda weird. I mean, I have no evidence that it has anything to do with the free promo — why would it? Surely it’s coincidence. Only thing I can think of is that there seems to exist some strange internal Amazon promotional algorithm that us Human Beings cannot access lest it overload our mental circuitry. Something about how books achieve rankings and show up under other books and appear on the main page and so on and so forth. If this is true, one could theorize that triggering the SG free promo… I dunno, rearranged the promotional eggs in the digital egg basket Amazon built for me.

Which makes little sense, but there it is.

We’ll see if sales rebound. Gods, I hope so — January has been a really stupendous month in terms of getting the e-books out there. Which leads me to…

Brand New E-Book Promo

Buy any of the following books on writing during the month of February:

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

And I’ll comp you a copy of:

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

If you procure via PDF, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll get 250 Things automatically.

If you procure via other methods (Amazon, B&N), send me proof of purchase to:

terribleminds at gmail.

Other Stuff

Let’s see, let’s see…

Just finished the first official (third unofficial) draft of MOCKINGBIRD. Off to the Robot!

Will today also finish the first draft of DINOCALYPSE NOW.

The Washington Post calls me a “death blogger” and “macabre mastermind” in a piece about my collaborative storytelling and art Tumblr project, This Is How You Die. Reminder, of course, that the How You Die blog is always taking submissions — text, photo, song, art of any variety, all about how you might die. (More information here.)

I also get a shout-out at Huffington Post courtesy of Amy Edelman and Melissa Foster in a piece called, “The Big Reasons Indie Authors Aren’t Taken Seriously.”

BLACKBIRDS gets its first official review (from Fantasy Nibbles, tee hee) — and it’s glowing! (“…a truly unforgettable heroine driving the action. The writing is razor sharp throughout, and I’m genuinely concerned that I might be a little bit messed up for enjoying this one so much.”)

Oh, and then the book gets another glowing review from New York Journal of Books! Woo. (“Author, screenwriter, and writing advice guru Chuck Wendig creates a compelling tale with an even more compelling protagonist in Miriam Black: a tough, street wise survivor who finally escapes her troubled childhood only to find that she can’t escape herself. Despite her fairly macabre lifestyle, Miriam has a strength and sarcastic wit that makes her very likeable and strangely sympathetic.”)

And My Bookish Ways throws DOUBLE DEAD into the review machine and gives it a 5 outta 5, baby. (“Double Dead is a terrifying, violent, American road trip through zombie hell.”)

Finally, TALES FROM THE FAR WEST — a rad-ass Wild West Wuxia mash-up short story collection based on Gareth Skarka’s Far West storyworld drops in e-book format (and soon, print). I’m in here surrounded by some of my favorite people — Will Hindmarch, Eddy Webb, Ari Marmell, Matt Forbeck, Jason Blair. My story — “Riding the Thunderbird” — is about a girl, an outlaw, and a herd of storming thunderbirds.