Archives (page 418 of 466)

December 8, 2011 / 77 Comments

Let The Carousel Of Pimpage Go ‘Round And ‘Round

Whew, sorry this post is late — was up in NYC yesterday joining my writing partner Lance at the WGA to give a talk about transmedia. Was a blasty-blast, but that means I didn’t manage to sling together a post for today. Don’t look at me like that. With those sad eyes. That quivering lip. That trembling .38 snubnose in your greasy paw.

Anyway, this past week, Internet Ubermeister John Scalzi said, “Hey, come here to parade your traditionally-published books, come here to parade your self-pub works, come here to tell us about your other awesome arts and crafts.” Awesome for him to open his blog that way. Here I’ve opened the circus of pimpage from time to time, and Scalzi’s posts reminded me — hey, I have not done that in a while.

So, here we go. Just in time for the (un)holy daze of the holidays.

We’ll toss it all into one big mash —

Pimp whatever you want.

Book of any published pedigree, comic, toys, ARG, blog, Tumblr devoted to your mustache, anything and anything that can be pimped should be pimped.

Further, don’t think you have to pimp your work. The true Christmas spirit is pimping the work of someone else. Call out things you love by people you respect and tell us how to procure them.

Most important — pimping needs you to answer that “why” question. Don’t just say I WROTE BOOK HERE LINK NNGGHH — what were you, raised in a blog-barn? Sell us on it, by gum and by golly.

Now go forth! And share thee well.

December 7, 2011 / 58 Comments

The Seduction Of Self-Publishing

Maybe you’re at a men’s restroom. Or an old-school phone booth. Or wandering drunk and naked around the TARDIS again. And there, on the floor, you spy it — a little slip of paper folded in half, maybe it looks like a five dollar bill, maybe it looks like your grandmother’s boozy fruitcake recipe or a folded-over Polaroid of a nude Herman Cain teabagging your pizza before it goes out to delivery.

But then you open it up, and it’s a little cartoon.

A Chick tract, of sorts.

And inside would be this little shitfire-and-brimstone cartoon about some poor goob who uploads his unedited first novel to the Internet and it’s a hideous turd-bomb of a book that garners a frothy chum-bucket of angry 1-star reviews. Crowds gather to mock him. They throw panties at his head, but not sexy panties, oh no — dirty panties, panties that look like they’ve been dragged through a muddy field by angry wolves. The author’s name becomes synonymous with bad wordsmithy and someone devotes a Tumblr toward his ludicrous prose and then eventually two seraphim angels — fiery gatekeepers at the Edenic doorway to traditional publishing! — show up to chastise him about his giving in to the seductions of self-publishing. End of tract.

(Of course, you might one day find the tract’s opposite, wherein a greedy author signs the contract of the Devil — aka the “publishing industry” — in baby’s blood, but that’s a post for another time.)

The tract is, like all such little propaganda machines, overwrought. It’s mostly nonsense — nobody’s going to vilify you for self-publishing your book, even a bad book.

I am, of course, a self-published author. I have six self-published books, all of which came out in the last year. Some are quite successful. Others, less so. None are total stinkers.

All of them increased my annual writer’s take-home by — *does some quick math* — 15-20%.

So, I’m for self-publishing. I think it’s a good idea.

…usually.

It is not universally a good idea, and while I’m happy I am at present self-publishing some of my work, I think back to when I started writing novels. I think about the six or so novels I wrote before BLACKBIRDS, and then I ask myself: do I really want those in the world? Eeesh. No, no I do not. And with easy self-pub options at my fingertips, that may very well have happened. Even the last novel I’d written before BLACKBIRDS, a book about, well, modern dogs with the souls of ancient warrior spirits — I thought it was the real deal. I sent it to agents, got a lot of “oh hell no’s,” got one “okay, show it to me, oh, now that I’ve seen it, oh hell no,” and that was that.

At the time, I thought the book had promise.

I thought that about most of my books at different points.

I’ve since gone back to read them and —

Yeah, wow.

No.

Nooooo.

Nuh-uh, no way, nichts, yeesh.

But — but! — if I had the option to self-publish those books at the time, you know what? I might’ve done it. The best case scenario would’ve been that they left zero impression and earned me nothing, leaving not so much a black mark on my writerly record so much as just whispering across the earth and disappearing like a serpentine twist of dust or snow. The worst case scenario would’ve been that they sold well and that I would’ve succumbed to the echo chamber of the cheerleading rah-rah-rah go-you community where I get an A+ for effort even if my prose deserves a phlegm-gob of spit hawked into my open mouth. That would be the worst because you know why? I’d never have upped my game. My writing would’ve lain fallow like a barren field, never cultivated to quality. I would’ve been rewarded for being crappy, and such rewards are like a kid smoking cigarettes: it stunts your growth.

I would’ve given into the culture of resentment and revenge surrounding many self-published authors — the ones who have to keep asserting their reasons for doing DIY, the ones who have to turn every blog post into propaganda, the ones who have to make sure to get in their jabs at the Mean Ol’ Sour-Faced Publishing Monopoly with its big stompy boot on the neck of the poor blubbery writer.

The option to self-publish is a compelling one. Seductive, in many ways. On the one hand — holy crap! New option! Totally awesome! On the other hand: is it the best option?

Time, then, for a little litmus test to see if you should self-publish.

If you’re self-publishing because you’re pissed off about traditional publishing: don’t.

That’s the wrong reason. Self-publishing is very much about taking risks and owning your work all the way down to the marrow. It should not be about a big ink-stained middle finger to the publishing industry at large. If you get your knickers in a pee-soaked twist anytime you say the word “gatekeeper,” calm down, take a pill, and back away from the Kindle marketplace.

If you’re self-publishing because you’re tired of rejection: don’t.

Rejection is not a great bellwether of quality. That’s not to say those who rejected you are correct: they may very well not be. (And, admittedly, some rejections are good rejections — “This is a good book but I can’t sell it” is a sign your book could survive and even excel in the self-pub marketplace.) Point is, don’t use rejection as a reason. Resentment and revenge are not smart motives.

If you’re self-publishing because you think it’s easy: don’t.

It isn’t easy. It is, in many ways, harder than trad-pub. DIY is not an automated process. You don’t drop your novel on the conveyor belt and let the publisher handle it. Because, er, you are the publisher. Self-promotion and getting your book “out there” is an epic challenge all its own. Besides, if you were looking for easy, then writing maybe isn’t the career for you.

If you’re self-publishing because this is your first novel and you think you’re ready: don’t.

Or, at least, take a long and serious look and get some very real, very honest feedback from others. Like I said, I had six novels under my belt and I’m thankful that not a single one of them has escaped its lead-lined box and harmed the world with its radioactive prose. Be smart enough to know when you’re not ready.

If you’re self-publishing because you want it fast and you want it now: don’t.

Fast things are rarely good things: your work is not the equivalent of a goddamn Chicken McNugget. Treat it better than that. Give it — and by proxy, your future readers — the time and effort they deserve.

If you’re self-publishing because you don’t want to be a piglet sucking at the corporate teat: don’t.

Whether we’re talking Amazon, B&N or Paypal, you’re still going to be giving capitalist hand-jobs to super-big companies, companies that are more than capable of pulling the rug out from under your DIY enterprise. (For the record, a publishing monopoly is a myth: no such monopoly exists.)

If you’re self-publishing because you’re so desperate to be published: don’t.

Listen, desperation is par for the course when you’re a writer — the miasma of flop-sweat surrounds me every day. But you need to transform that desperation from wanting to be published to writing a helluva story. The latter step should come before the former, but self-publishing only further helps to shortcut that.

If you’re self-publishing because you think you’re going to earn a fast and fat pay-day: don’t.

I know of many tremendous novels that went self-pub and don’t earn out — and many never will. Further, they won’t come close to nabbing what a good advance would’ve netted them, much less a meager one. And many self-publishing books take a while to start generating real revenue (and often only do so when you have multiple books in the marketplace).

You have a whole host of reasons to self-publish: the control, the freedom, the relatively direct access to readers, the ability to take risks that you could not normally take with larger publishers. And, further, you have a host of reasons to not rush out and submit work to a publisher, too — though, again, that’s a post for another time. The key is, publish smart. Gather data. Make your work the best it can be — concentrate first on storytelling, second on how you’ll reach readers. Because you don’t want to reach readers if all you’re going to offer them is a hastily-scribbled slap-to-the-face.

Be wary of the seduction.

Don’t let self-publishing stunt your growth.

Follow your gut.

And be smart.

December 6, 2011 / 25 Comments

25 Financial Fuck-Ups Writers Make

Some writers have all the business sense of an oar-whacked snapping turtle — we become so focused on words and pages and the imaginary voodoo of made-up storyworlds that we forget that there’s a whole other side to it, a side where if we’re not careful we’ll end up writing our next bestseller out of the back of a rust-bucket conversion van tucked beneath some god-fucked overpass. It’s easy in the chase for story and the race for readers to accidentally sell our own best interests up the river.

Screw that, cats and kittens.

It’s time to trepan some business sense, meager as it may be, into your brainpans.

Please stare into the whirring drill-bit.

Welcome to the month of no mercy.

1. Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Deadlines are invisible and intangible but no less real than a brick wall — if you’re not paying attention you’ll crash into one lickety-split. How is this a financial fuck-up? Well, beyond the fact that dicking up a deadline is just bad business, it’s also problematic because some contracts stipulate lost revenue if you overshoot your timeline. “Hi, I’m turning in my work a year late.” “Thanks! Here’s your payment.” “This is a jar of buttons.” “Dirty buttons. You’d have a jar of clean buttons if you turned in the work weeks ago.”

2. No Contract Can Contain The Power Of My Art!

The contract is the thing that says, “I give you work, you give me money.” It is the paper-thin bulwark separating the lawful writer from the broke and broken anarchist — yes, a contract pins down a writer but it also pins down the entity to whom that writer is contracted. Without a contract, you’ve no recourse if things go south. Get a contract. Always get a contract. Just ask Ryan Macklin.

3. Hire A Sherpa To Guide You Up The Contractual Mountain

Seriously, I open up most new contracts and I zone out. My eyes cross, I pee a little, and I start dreaming of swaying meadow-grasses and frolicking ponies. Contracts are full of language the average human being cannot parse, cobbled together of Lovecraftian legalese that would drive most men mad. But you need to understand it. I’ve seen some squirrely contracts and heard tell of worse — contracts that if you sign them you’ll catch a whiff of brimstone before you realize your advance for that 15-novel fantasy series is a burlap sack of venomous cottonmouth snakes. Get an agent. Or hire a lawyer. Figure out what you’re signing.

4. Signing That Vicious Throat-Kick Of A Contract

Some writers are so eager to be read they’ll sign a bad contract even after they know how bad it is. “Check out these royalties! For every book I sell, I get one stick of that powdery shit-ass bubble gum you used to get in packs of baseball cards! If I sell 10,000 books, then for every book I sell they send a donkey to my house to cave in my chest with his crap-caked hooves! OH MY GOD I’M A WRITER SQUEE.” Stop bending over the nightstand, spreading your cheeks and asking someone to brandish a bramble-wound broomstick and jam it deep up your boot-hole. Don’t sign your work over to the Devil just for a taste of publication.

5. Repeat After Me: “People Die From Exposure”

If you don’t care about getting paid for your writing, ignore this. (And, in fact, ignore this whole list.) But if you do care about having a go at this writing thing as a proper career, do not write for exposure. Exposure cannot be measured, and you might as well write for any number of invisible things: the dreams of sleeping kittens, perhaps, or mystical unicorn turds. You should always be getting something measurable for your writing. Ideally, that “something” is money, but other rewards — tangible rewards! — do exist.

6. Cheap As Chips Of Lead Paint

“Cheap” isn’t a good thing. “Cheap” is toys made in China that exude radon. “Cheap” is a hot dog whose primary component is rat testicles. “Cheap” is a baggy of black tar heroin that’s been cut with pulverized possum bones and drain cleaner. Don’t value you work as “cheap.” You price yourself too low, you do harm to your future contracts and the contracts of other writers. You don’t have to paint yourself as a Lexus, but for fuck’s sake, you’re not a 1991 Geo Tracker with 100,000 miles and a dead hooker in the boot, either.

7. Didn’t I Just Say You Weren’t A Lexus?

Pricing yourself too high from the outset damages your credibility, too. It’s one thing if you’ve a proven track record and you’ve earned your pay rate, but if you slide an obscene number across the table, that person’s going to politely decline, quietly laugh at you, and never call you again. As Gandalf once said to a young William Shatner: “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

8. Writer: Beware

Scams wait like landmines and pit traps everywhere the writer turns, many seeking to exploit a writer’s desperate desire to be published. The Internet is a treasure trove of warning signs and signal flares, but you have to know where to look. (One place to start: Writer Beware.) If something smells like week-old cod in a dead man’s jockstrap, backpedal and turn to Google or social media. A little suspicion is a lot healthy.

9. Vanity Is A Sin, After All

Vanity publishing is not a scam — but it’s also not in a writer’s financial best interests. First, on a practical level, it’s largely outmoded and tends to be needlessly expensive. The Internet has democritized distribution and has opened many new channels for a writer to get material out there if that’s the way the writer wants to go. Second, it reeks of desperation and violates a core tenet of a professional writing career…

10. Failing To Remember “Money In, Not Money Out”

The writer does not pay but, rather, gets paid. Now, I recognize that self-publishing has changed this old nugget of wisdom a bit — you might, say, pay for an editor or a cover designer. Beyond that, however, the flow of money is always to the writer and never away from the writer. You don’t pay to get published. You don’t let someone else capitalize on your hard work and walk away with a paycheck while you still lick dust from ramen noodle flavor packets in a storm drain.

11. Not Following The Trail Of Financial Breadcrumbs

You need to track income and expenses as robustly as your creative writer’s brain can manage. I know, I know, every time you open up a spreadsheet it’s like someone is shooting holes in your brain with a pellet rifle — OW NUMBERS NOT WORDS WRITER NEED ICE CREAM. I’m just saying, you’re going to be a lot happier knowing where your money is coming in and going out.

12. Floating Lazily Along The Timestream

Track your time. Track your time. Let me say it again, in all caps: TRACK YOUR TIME. Knowing your time — and how much you earn for that time spent — helps a professional writer gain a clearer picture of his abilities as a writer and how those abilities can pay off in terms of hourly, monthly, and annual performance. After all, time is money. And money helps you buy liquor and e-books.

13. Spending Too Much On Liquor And E-Books

Hey, I get it. E-books are so light! So airy! So cheap! And liquor is so — well. It’s liquor. Let’s just go with so necessary and leave it at that? Prudent expenditure of penmonkey funds is essential!

14. Failing To Take Advantage Of Tax Deductions

As a paid writer, you can deduct a wealth of useful things — pens, software, computers. I deducted a goddamn coffee maker because, hey, it’s an office expense. Money you spend in pursuit of your career is not only something to track, but something that should be seen through the “potential tax deduction” lens. For the record, that also means you may want to hire an accountant or tax prep person.

15. You Do Know You Have To Pay Taxes Quarterly, Right?

You do. You really do. Otherwise, you’ll get nut-kicked and teat-slapped by penalties. True story.

16. Ditching The Day Job Before It’s Time

There comes a point when many pro writers think that it’s time to transition from “part-time penmonkey” to “full-time inkslinger,” but do not be hasty. Have savings built up. Rock a budget. Get a cushion going. Stock up the liquor cabinet. Know when the air is clear and it’s safe to step out of your rocketship into this brand new atmosphere. If you do start the ball rolling where you plan to ditch the day-job, consider segueing into a part time job first. Offers an adjustment period.

17. Staying In The Day Job Well Past Its Due

Staying too long at your day job can be just as toxic. Writers are surfers and must know how to take advantage of the right wave — miss it, and the wave passes you by and cascades toward shore. Working a dead-end day-job takes crucial time away from the writing life. You know it’s time because you reach the conclusion, “If I didn’t have this 40-hour-a-week job hanging like a colostomy bag around my hip, I could be earning out with my wordsmithy. And I’d also not have poop in a bag, which is pretty gross.”

18. Self-Publishing When You Should’ve Gone Traditional

Self-publishing is not a magical panacea, nor is it a treasure chest of gold doubloons automagically dumped over your head. Self-publishing strategically and intelligently can provide a significant portion of your writerly gold hoard, yes. To DIY smartly, you need to understand more than just how to upload your book to the Lords of Kindle and have those robots distribute it to the Kindlemaschine masses. Self-publish poorly or choose that path when a better path is available and you give up opportunity. And by “opportunity” I mean, “hard cash, motherfucker.” Kapow, kaching, coo-coo-ka-choo. I dunno. Shut up.

19. Going Traditional When You Should’ve Self-Published

A pro-writer’s life is a tightrope walk and on that side are lions and on that side are bears and you tippy-toe your way between them best as you can. So here the opposite is true of that last thing I just said: choosing to traditionally publish when you’ve got a great possibility for a successful self-published book may indeed be throwing your time and energy into a dank, dark hole — like, say, a golem’s vagina. Yes, all golems have vaginas. And yes, my next self-published book will be either a Dan Brown homage or an epic fantasy novel, but either way, that sonofabitch will be titled, THE GOLEM’S VAGINA. Get on board or get out of the way, because that train is leaving the station. What were we talking about? Ah. Right. Some books suit the self-publishing realm — they fit like a hand in a soft glove. Which books? That’s a post for another time.

20. Negotiation Tactics Of A Sleepy Koala

Sometimes, you have to negotiate. Royalties, advances, rock star riders (“I need seven Junior Mints in a porcelain dish and those Junior Mints must first be suckled gently by Nicholas Sparks and — and — if the chocolate is in any way melted, I get to Taser the aforementioned Mister Sparks in his smiling, choco-smeared mouth”), whatever. And there you are, clinging to your tree, snoozing against the hard bark. If you don’t want to negotiate, once again: find an agent. This is what they do and what they’re good at.

21. Repeat After Me: “Budget. Surplus. Budget. Surplus.”

Unless you’re part of a pre-existing corporate ecosystem, writers are not paid in a steady, measured financial stream. You don’t get a check every week. Your money comes erratically, like random unexpected orgasms separated by long and listless lulls of joyless wondering. That means two things: first, you need to budget. You can’t get your money and blow it all on donkey porn and video games. You’re going to need food at some point. Second, you need to build up a surplus. Line your coffers with pillowy money just in case you need to take a fall. Life is not kind. You’ll be following along your budget with blissful ignorance, and then a jet engine will fall out of the sky onto your car. UH OH SPAGHETTIOS.

22. Do You Really Need That Helper Monkey?

You don’t need a whole lot as a writer. You need a computer (yes, as a professional writer, you do; you can wing it with a notebook and a pen all you like but there will come a time when someone will be like, “Oh, e-mail that to me, motherfucker,” and the best you can do is wad up the paper and throw it at them), you need some kind of word processing software, you need Internet access, whatever. But some writers spend into a big and needless toolbox — expensive computer, huge monitor, a costly software suite, an 8-ball of coke, a robot built around Hemingway’s brain, fingerless typing gloves lined with dodo feathers, and so forth. I’m not saying you can’t buy these things at some point; but you damn sure don’t start out your writing career by tossing yourself into a financial oubliette. Fuck debt.

23. Your Body Needn’t Be A Temple, But Don’t Treat It Like The Bathroom Floor At A New Jersey Arby’s, Am I Right?

Keep healthy, and even better, get health insurance. No, no, I know, health insurance is expensive. And many healthcare providers will work so hard to wriggle out of covering certain things you’d think they have collapsible bones and slime-slick skin that sloughs off any time you grab for them. Do your research. Budget for the cost. What’s expensive now pales in comparison to what you’ll pay without it. “Oh, I have a cold? And to procure this one bottle of Amoxycillin I have to bring you the still-screaming head of the Medusa?”

24. Letting Financial Stress Get A Choke Hold On Your Wordsmithy

Stress — and I don’t mean that good clean motivational stress, I mean the “I can smell my hair burning” stress — does not do a writer well. Sometimes, so-called “writer’s block” is just stress getting to a writer. And one of the greatest sources of stress for the average everyday penmonkey is financial stress. From this, you must insulate yourself. Sometimes protecting yourself means being smart and not fucking up — sometimes it’s just a Zen thing and it means shutting the noise out and forming a plan and realizing that as long as it’s not going to kill you then you just need to breathe and move past it. If stress stops you from writing and you need writing to get past the stress — well. You see how that’s a sticky wicket, don’t you? What the fuck is a sticky wicket, anyway? I picture some kind of giant insect exuding something that looks like strawberry jam from all its exoskeletonic joints. It hugs you and it just won’t let go. Then it injects an ovipositor into your colon and plants its larvae and a healthy dose of toxoplasmosis!

25. Writing And Publishing With Zero Strategy

You need a strategy. Not just a budget, but a full-bore plan for your penmonkey future. You know that bullshit question they ask at interviews, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” It’s not bullshit. You should have an idea, a real idea, of what you’re planning on doing year-after-year. It’ll help you do more than tread water, which is what many professional writers end up doing (or worse, they end up sinking down, their screams lost in a flurry of bubbles). Perhaps the best present a writer can get himself is a strategy for her career going forward. Well, that and a pony. Because ponies make everybody happy.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

December 5, 2011 / 47 Comments

Your Hangovers, Described

Right now, I have the barest little sparrow of a hangover fluttering its wings against the inside of my forehead, against the backs of my eyes. Went out last night, had a trio of drinks at Bolete in Bethlehem — a bourbon cocktail called “The Remedy,” a “Not-Your-Grandmother’s Greyhound,” and two fingers of Laphroaig 10-year. I never really had much of a buzz, which made this hangover — manifesting itself around 2AM last night — all the more disappointing and undeserved. (Though the drinking remained delicious. Bolete creates impeccable cocktails, and anybody in the area would be a wool-headed window-licker not go to partake of their alcoholic and culinary delights.)

This hangover will be easy to defeat. Water and Advil — with some early morning bacon — form a powerful hammer to beat back even the snarkiest of hangovers, and this one just can’t compete.

But, I remember the worst hangover I’ve ever had.

Friend showed up at college with a bottle of Yukon Jack. We drank less of the bottle than you’d think, but got bombed just the same. Ended up laying outside the dorm babbling at people.

Come morning, the hangover I suffered was as such where I felt like a room full of balloons with a floor made of nails — I dared not move for fear of expiring right then and there. Every ounce of my body hurt. My brain felt like a caged rat gnawing through rusty hinges in order to escape. I knew if I did anything but sit on my bed and stare at the wall I would cry out, vomit, pee myself, and possibly explode inside my skin.

Seriously. I felt like hammered dogshit.

To this day if I catch a whiff of Yukon Jack, it all comes charging back, a freight train of bodily memory.

Thing is, I know even that hangover just isn’t that impressive.

I know you can do better.

So, reader-types, share:

Give us a story.

Tell me about your worst hangover.

December 2, 2011 / 55 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “An Affliction Of Alliteration”

First and foremost, I still have to award my favorite 100-word story from the last challenge (“Frog Powder Seagull Tower Scissors“).

I’ve chosen three, actually, because I had too many good ones from which to choose!

My favorites:

yojimbojapan

Paul Tevis

Albert Berg

I loved all three because they took me places I did not expect to go, and did so with great brevity, weirdness, and feeling. Kudos, you three. Contact me at terribleminds at gmail dot com. I’ll get you your e-books!

Now, onto today’s challenge —

And, let’s put this upfront, you’re playing for a signed copy of DOUBLE DEAD in paperback, by yours truly. I will pay for shipping if you’re in the United States. If not, you’ll either have to pay for shipping or be happy instead with an e-book version gifted from Amazon. Diggit? Diggit.

Here’s what I want:

I don’t want stories about vampires. That’d be too easy.

I instead want to play off the title — Double Dead — and have some fun with alliteration.

Alliteration is, of course, the repetition of a singular sound at the beginning of two or more connected words: “Tiny Trees,” or “Ten Tin Typewriters” or “Fez-Fuckers From Fort Frances.”

I want you to come up with a title that uses alliteration. Two or more words.

Then write a story — no more than 1,000 words — to go along with that title.

Seriously, now: no stories about vampires. None. Bzzt. Don’t do it. Otherwise: any genre is a-okay.

Write your stories online somewhere — your own blog, perhaps, or Tumblr, or G+ — and link back here so we can all see it. Feel free to link back to here from that post, too.

You have one week.

December 10th.

Noon EST.

Get writing. One of you gets the tales of Coburn the vampire.

EDIT:

I had to go with: Because Baby, Everything’s Exercise.

http://veryeasychoices.com/2011/12/06/because-baby-everythings-exercise/

Chris Stonebender went apeshit with language and, given the challenge being one *about* language, well, I went with it.

It’s a twisted tale of — well, I don’t even know what to call it.

Chris –

contact me at terribleminds at gmail and we’ll get you set up with a copy of DOUBLE DEAD.

December 1, 2011 / 11 Comments

The Chosen Cartography Of Blackbloom

(Need to catch up with Blackbloom? Follow all the Blackbloom posts here.)

I asked you to describe for me one aspect of Blackbloom’s geography.

And boy howdy, you answered.

I chose ten.

I could’ve chosen them all, honestly — and maybe should’ve, but I felt inclined to narrow down instead of painting with too wide a brush? Another fascinating experiment, a glimpse into the weirdness of worldbuilding.

Two things are becoming abundantly clear:

First, we’re eventually going to need to track all this stuff. A Wiki, maybe. I have zero experience with that and, further, zero time to deal with it, so that’s maybe wishful thinking.

Second, we may eventually need a map. Same problem: I am no cartographer, and my time is zilch-o.

My fear — and it’s a good fear, in a way — is that eventually this thing will get too big and cumbersome to even continue building, but for now, we’ll just keep on trekking forward.

(Which reminds me, this week’s worldbuilding challenge — “Tell Us Three Things About Blackbloom” — is looking light. Go over there and fix that, will you?)

Anyway —

The Geographical Selections

The Ghost Marshes stretch for 500 miles in the south of the foggy island of Iertu. It is a fertile land of hidden swamps, where every step can mean an eternity trapped in sludge. The lucky ones are absorbed, turned into peat; the unlucky ones find their bodies everlastingly preserved while their souls wander the black-green morass. The tribes of Iertu avoid the marshes if possible, using ancient roadways visible only to those whose eyes are blessed by Tallyr if necessary. Rumors say the rare Blackbloom grows at the center of the marshes, guarded by the spirits of the Bog-sleepers. — Daniel Perez

The End Of The World – the name given to the southern hemisphere saltpan 75 miles long. Frequent but light rains maintain a surface of water around 8 inches deep; high salinity means there isn’t much more than insect life. Old roads once bisected the lakebed, now flooded; between the roads that disappear into the lake’s mirrored surface and the salt winds, the pan’s given name is understandable. Folklore suggests that the lake was formed by Torrda’s tears as she wept for daughter, Diome, and her fate; given that very little that we know of grows here, this is suspect. — Liam K

The Exomorphic Archipelago (more commonly called the Kinnis Maw) is a series of 60 or so geographic formations stretching off the western coast of Blackbloom. The formations are composed of brittle rock that stretch hundreds–even thousands–of feet in the air but are only a dozen or more feet wide. The brittleness of the rock makes them essentially unclimbable. Moreover, periodically a tower will snap and fall back into the ocean. Scholars hypothesize that they are the result of a burst of volcanic activity many ages ago. Common folk have more … colorful … explanations. — Justin Jacobson

Ringing the equator of Blackbloom are towering volcanoes called the Inferno Tors. Rivers of lava paint their slopes, exuding noxious gases and blistering heat. Creatures of fire live here, known by different names as they age: newborn Sparks; young Flames; adult Blazes; and enormous ancient Infernos, for whom the crags are named. In the dark season, frost falls constantly from the air and unseen entities roam the world, feeding on hope and thoughts. The fire creatures, which dispel these dangers, entice hunters known as Firechasers to travel to the Tors in hopes of snaring a valuable Spark or Flame. — Angela Perry

At the top of the world, if it still exists, you’ll find Pure. The air is clean and grass still grows knee-tall. They say this is where the sky is sewn to the earth, where the rivers pour down from the great mountain, and where you’ll find the caves that descend into the underworld. — Josin

The Chasmlands comprise a 1,000 mile stretch of land punctuated by hundreds of deep sinkholes. Some of these pits are only a dozen feet in diameter; the largest is almost half a mile across. All are thousands of feet deep; the larger holes contain their own unique microclimates – and ecosystems – that change as one goes deeper. The Chasmlands extend through a range of geographies and climes. The sinkholes are joined at the bottom by the deep, slow river that runs beneath them all. Many cities sit along the edge of these pits, and more than one has disappeared into them. — Kraig

The Delves of A’kaar are vast caverns that riddle the world of Blackbloom. No human has ever come close to accurately mapping these immense passages. Even were it not for the insane, twisted monstrocities that dwell there, there is a single facet which keeps peoples of all cultures from the Delves. Those who travel within, return… changed. There is something within the caverns which slowly and subtly, twists, depraves and pollutes the minds and bodies of all who have traveled within. Most believe that the inhabitants of the caverns were once humans, who simply journeyed too deeply. — JM Guillen

Glanworn Isle, once the abode of Osren, God of the golden breath: this small island, (362 miles in length, 60 miles across at its widest point) lies midway between Tears and the Feral forest. A citadel island, crumbling barricades rise and fall along the slopes and cliffs of its 1,766 miles of coastline. Magnificent groves of orange and blue Pocker trees touch the heavens on its mountainous north coast. Glanworn loses its island status—and much of its soil—twice yearly during the great Bidal Tides. An endangered herd of silk furred tri-horned flacs survive on its eastern shores. — EC Sheedy

During the three months of Dark, the Shining Hills become either a pilgrimage site or a tourist attraction. Comprising quartz-shot granite and covered in a phosphorescent lichen that may be distantly related to Maritae’s algae, the Hills are dank and forbidding in the Wet season, and dusty and drab in the Dry. But in the Dark, the quartz collects and magnifies the lichen-glow, green or pink or purple or blue, until the Hills shine with a shifting kaleidoscope of color and light. The lichen is poisonous to touch. The pilgrims know this. The tourists don’t. — ChiaLynn

Few features on Blackbloom baffle thaumatologists and technoscientists alike more than the Wandering Bayou, a large patch of creeks, marshy lowlands, riparian forests and mangroves that seem to permanently evade the dry season. The Bayou moves around the globe in no predictable manner, disappearing from one place and gradually reappearing at another locale, where it stays for the duration of the wet/dark season. There’s no record that the Bayou has ever settled itself down either on Blackbloom Ridge or the sentient cities. Its flora and fauna are well known, and the screeching water-puppy is sought for as a weapon component. — MC Zanini