Archives (page 453 of 456)

January 23, 2011 / 12 Comments

Minecraft: The Collapse

During the day, I explore. At night, I dig.

And in all hours, I build.

I build a boat so that I can cross the ocean without having to hop and splash through the waters like a drunken moose. I build a miles-long underground tunnel connecting my spawn point and my rat’s warren canyon. Upon my spawn point I build a glass house so that I may watch the sun set and the moon rise. At the top of my glass house I build an air bridge traveling to the peak of the nearest mountain.

And it is near to this peak that I find my first dungeon.

It’s already pre-carved out of the side of the hill. I descend into the deep, placing torches along the way so I can find my way back. Down there in the dark I hear the first rheumy growls: zombies.

Sure enough, there they are: a trio of the blockheaded assholes, playing a game of clumsy grab-ass. Ah. But a waterfall and stream separate us. It’s easy for me to wade into the water, hack at them with my diamond-edged sword, and cut them into little puffs of pixillated smoke.

But somehow, more of them show.

They’re coming from somewhere back there. In the dark. Spawning endlessly.

I cross the water. I quick throw torches on the wall just as a zombie tries to paw my face with his rotten box-hands. Then another, then another. I back to the wall, I cut ’em down with my blade, and then I see more of this room: mossy stone, two chests, and a burning cage in the center with a little zombie effigy doll in the center, endlessly spinning.

I kill the zombies.

I flood the room with torchlight.

I end the spawning.

I open the chests and claim my booty: gold and iron and arrows.

I am the hero, triumphant.

The Hero, Descendant (Or, “The Hero Shits His Pants Multiple Times And Falls Down Into The Deep Dark Where He Must Contend With Lava And Evil”)

I continue to dig, build, and explore.

Fact is, I want to find another dungeon. The dungeon made me feel like an intrepid hero-architect, a builder of great things but also a slayer of demons, a gatherer of treasure.

I find my second cavern opening not far from the first: just a quarter-day’s walk. I see the deep dark grotto. I gather torches. And I wade into the mouth of shadow.

This one goes deep. Much deeper than the last. Every step is a step down, a step around a corner, a step around a stream of falling water or past tunnel mouths where I hear spiders hissing or the rattle of a skeleton archer’s bones. I’m getting worried.

But I’m also getting pretty fucking geeked.

I travel for a long time — sometimes falling a few blocks without certainty of how I’ll get out (I can always build steps, I tell myself), until finally I reach the bottom.

I know it’s the bottom because, ye gods, it’s full of lava.

In the center of this canyon tumbles a massive column of lava, a lavafall coming from way, way up there. Up there in shadow. Up there where monsters roam.

It’s easy to see that this is a special place. The walls are lined with precious kit: gold and diamonds and redstone and so much iron, so much coal. I even see some lapis lazuli and some obsidian.

I hear water. I fling up torches. I step into the heavy current.

And — b-d-d-d-ing.

The sound of a bowstring drawn and loosed. A skeleton archer’s arrow pierces my heart. Then another. Then another. I die there in the water, my inventory exploded around me.

I respawn upon my glass house, I hurry to my stash of goods in the house, I snatch up a blade. I’m going back. Fuck that archer. Fuck him up his bony ass with his own damn femur.

Once again I descend into the void — this time, with only an iron blade. I follow the trail of light. I fall again into darkness. I wander aimlessly on the shores of scorching lava.

Finally, I see it: all my shit laid bare, floating there in the water like flotsam (or jetsam, whatever). This time it’s no skeleton archer but rather a creeper. But he can’t get to me on this ledge. He’s easy to dispatch. A swipey-swipe of the blade and he’s down, the dumb geek. Another jumps in: hack-slash, nighty-night.

I jump into the water.

I grab all my shit. My compass, my watch, my diamond sword.

And then a zombie appears out of nowhere and bashes my block-head in with one of his block-fists.

Fuckity-fuck.

Okay. Fine. My stuff’s still down there. I’ll just go back again. Except this time, I think, I’ll run back to my other stash and grab another sword, because I can’t go down there unarmed. This takes me a little time, but I manage. And — you know the story: again I stumble blindly into the booty hole.

Uhh. Rephrase that at your leisure.

This time, it’s different. I go down. I wander the trails. I follow the torches. I jog along lava.

No monsters this time.

And also: no stuff.

My shit is all gone. My compass, my watch, my diamond sword.

Little do I know: loose materials degrade to nothing after five minutes. Poof. Gone. It’s not here because I took too long fetching a sword. And ironically, the canyon has no more monsters for me to fight.

Frustrated, I still recognize that this is a bountiful canyon. I can easily make up what I lost just by spending some time down here, cutting away the precious metals and mystical materials.

So, I do that. I begin to mine.

I mine until my pockets are bulging with goodness. So many diamonds. So much iron. I’m filled to the tits with redstone dust and lapis lazuli. And the gold! I’m rich! I’m a king! Eeeee! Thing is, this place is even bigger than I thought. It goes on, and on, and on. I keep wandering. I keep digging.

I see a little more iron, so I cross a little stream to get it.

The stream has a current. I am pulled not two squares to my right, and I slip under a ledge because the water is deeper than anticipated.

And then I tumble into a pit of lava.

I struggle in the well, burning alive. Cooking. Hissing. Screaming.

I perish.

All my items explode out of my body. And then they hit the lava.

When they do, they go Sssss! and are gone. Burned up into the void.

I am once more a pauper. No longer the hero-architect, I am just a burned-up chump, a scarred buckethead fumbling around the dark, pawing at my junk with my impossible, fingerless hands.

And so it is that I think I must back away from Minecraft for a time. I achieved a lot in a short time, but I jumped for the brass ring…

…and fell into a hole filled with fire and death.

I retreat, beaten.

January 22, 2011 / 5 Comments

Let My Dulcet Voice Hypnotize You

Yesterday, I received a phone call.

It was Dan O’Shea (pictured above).

Dan said, “Are you ready to do this?”

And I glanced down at the pants pooling around my ankles and the bowl of tapioca pudding sitting there at my desk looking at me all lasciviously (you naughty pudding, you nasty, naughty pudding), and I was like, “Can he see me? Does he have a spyglass on me from somewhere on the woods?”

Then I remembered: Oh. Ohhhh. Right. Right! The interview.

I told him he’d have to call me back in five minutes, at which point I did my business with the pudding.

Finally, when I finally toweled off, Dan did indeed call me back and we had a fantastic chat that took, what, 45 minutes? An hour? Who can say? By the time the Rufies wore off, I was bathed in fond remembrance.

So, what the hell did we talk about? Well. We talked about Irregular Creatures. We talked about self-publishing. About blogging. About pantsers versus planners. It was a thoughtful conversation, largely devoid of heavy profanity and any mention of cake and/or whores.

Shit, that probably sounds boring.

What I mean is, we spent an hour talking about pudding-fucking. Which is not a metaphor. I mean we actually talked about fornicating with various puddings. His favorite? Figgy pudding. He’s old school. That’s just how Dan O’Shea rolls, ladies. When it comes to Ye Olde Danimal, it’s always Christmas.

Anyway, if you’d like to listen to a thoughtful conversation about the craft of writing long treatise on the merits of banging a big ol’ glob of pudding, then Dan and I got you covered.

Dan’s review of Irregular Creatures is here: REVIEW.

And the interview (*.wav format) is here: PUDDING.

Please to enjoy.

January 21, 2011 / 14 Comments

Painting With Shotguns #64

Quicky update today (because I’ve got to go snowblow our surprisingly long-ass driveway), and for that I drag the ol’ Painting With Shotguns blog-mode out of the drawer. Forgive me, I suspect it smells a little like mothballs. And, curiously, like ferret musk. Don’t ask questions. Just read.

Arrugula Screechers

Want a sales update on Irregular Creatures? Can do, my little winged kitties.

I won’t break down the day-by-day because I suspect that’s just going to get boring, but suffice to say since last Saturday, I’ve been selling between three and five per day, with the exception of yesterday, where I somehow managed to foist eight copies unto an unsuspecting populace.

That brings total sales up to: 189.

Amazon: 128

Amazon UK: 11

PDF: 48

Smashwords: 2

Looks like on Amazon the entry finally reflects (as of yesterday) the “People who bought Irregular Creatures also bought…” I’m in, of course, good company there. Chris Holm’s 8 Pounds, the Terminal Damage collection, and Allan Guthrie’s Bye Bye Baby. Need to crossover a little bit and get into the hands of people who are buying a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, though.

Received some lovely reviews this week:

… From Stephen Blackmoore.

… From Dave Turner.

… From Andrew Jack.

Got giveaways and interviews up at Bubblecow and Indie Horror.

Got a straight-up giveaway at Andrew Jack’s blog.

And cover artist Amy Houser worked on a comic with author Cat Valente: “Deathless.” It’s up right now at the Tor-dot-com site, so hurry over and check it out.

For those who have not procured the book as yet, would love to know why? No harm no foul, just curious. If you’re willing to share, of course.

Pandemic Countdown

www.hopeismissing.com

Click that link. See that gas mask? See that countdown clock?

Pandemic is coming. Are you going to be infected?

The event will cross a span of several days and will take place both in Park City and outside it — which means you crazy kids at home can both watch and interact with the experience. (I’ll tell you — maybe tomorrow or the day after — how you can get involved in a big roleplaying experiment and become a part of the story and its damaged world.)

I’d like to personally thank some people who helped do some back-up writing for the experience: Andrea Phillips, Stephen Blackmoore, Will Hindmarch, Jason Blair, Jesse Scoble, Kari Hayes, Christopher Simmons, Wood Ingham. I did some writing myself and served as story editor of the Pandemic experience, and am excited to see how it all plays out.

Articles: “Disrupting What’s Expected” at Sundance site; “Weiler Brings A Pandemic To Park City” at the Wall Street Journal; “Sundance Is Ground Zero For Pandemic 1.0” at Wired.

Remember:

Avoid the sick.

Don’t sleep.

And beware strange objects.

More as it develops. Follow the #pandemic11 hashtag on Twitter.

Udder Work

Well, Double Dead continues apace. The novel, which could be subtitled, “A Vampire In Zombieland,” is hella fun to write. Part of me thinks this is the key to writing — find projects that are fun as hell to write because the fun projects write themselves. Not to say you shouldn’t get deep and personal and moody and whatever — serious is good. But man, I forgot how much fun it is to write crazy awesome shit.

Speaking of vampires, just did a Vampire: The Requiem SAS for White Wolf and the ever-excellent and always-charming Eddy Webb. And one assumes that sometime in the next 15 years, Danse Macabre will actually hit shelves, so look for that when you’re old and gray.

I have two other gaming projects… lurking in the wings, but neither have entirely manifested yet. I only see gauzy shapes and trembling clouds, but I think they’re going to materialize soon. Er, I hope they are.

But that also tells me to tell you:

Hey! I’m open for freelance work. It’s the new year. And soon enough I’m going to have another mouth to feed what with the birth of our genderless centaur baby human boy come spring.

Know of any work?

I would be ever-gracious if you nudged it my way, or nudged me in that direction.

Just in case you forgot:

No, Seriously, I’m Not Fucking Around, You Don’t Want To Be A Writer.

But, I am a writer, and this penmonkey needs a task.

Link Sausage And Blog Bacon

#cakeandwhores!

“Confessions of a Recovering Dilettante” at Dan O’Shea’s blog.

Best webcomic ever? Romantically Apocalyptic.

The Adventures of Huck Finn — Modified For Modern Sensibilities!

January 20, 2011 / 130 Comments

No, Seriously, I’m Not Fucking Around, You Really Don’t Want To Be A Writer

You don’t want to be a writer.

No, no, I know. You think it’s all kittens and rainbows. It’s one big wordgasm, an ejaculation of unbridled creativity. It’s nougat-filled. It’s pillows, marshmallows, parades. It’s a unicorn in a jaunty hat.

Oh, how sweet the illusion. My job, though, is to put my foot through your dreams with a high karate kick.

Consider this your reality check. You’ll note that I do this periodically: I’m here, standing at the edge of the broken bridge in the pouring rain, waving you off — it’s too late for me. My car’s already gone over the edge. I’ve already bought the magic beans. I’ve already bought into the fairy’s lie. I tried to pet the unicorn in its jaunty hat and it ran me through with its corkscrew horn, and now I am impaled.

See my hands? They’re shaking. They won’t stop. I’m like Tom Hanks in Shaving Ryan’s Privates.

I am too far gone.

You, on the other hand, may yet be saved. I see a lot of you out there. An army of writers. Glistening eyes. Lips dewy with the froth of hope. You’re all so fresh. So innocent. Unmolested by the truth.

And so it is time for my annual “Holy Crap The New Year Is Here And Now You Should Reevaluate Your Shit And Realize You’d Be Much Happier As An Accountant Or Botanist Or Some Fucking Thing” post.

More reasons you do not — awooga, awooga, caution, cuidado, verboten — want to be a writer:

It’s The Goddamned Publipocalypse And Now We’re All Doomed

The meteors are coming. Tides of fire are washing up on beaches. Writers are running scared. The publishing industry has heard the seven trumpets and it wails and gibbers.

It’s bad out there.

You know how many books you have to sell to get on the New York Times Bestseller List? Four. You sell four print copies of a book, whoo, dang, you’re like the next Stephen King. Heck, some authors are selling negative numbers. “How many books did you sell this week?” “Negative seven.” “I don’t understand.” “My books are like gremlins. You spill water on them and they multiply. And then pirates steal them and give them away for free. Hey, do you have a gun, because I’d like to eat it.”

Borders pissed the bed. Editors are out of work. Fewer authors are being signed and for less money up front. Jesus, you have a better shot of getting eaten by a bear and a shark at the same time.

And e-books. Pshhh. Don’t even get me started on e-books. Did you know that they eat real books? They eat them right up. That’s what the “e” stands for. “Eat Books.” I’m not messing with you, I have seen it happen. Plus, every time an e-book is born, a literary agent gets a tapeworm. True fact.

I’m cold and frightened. The rest of us writers, we’re going to build a bunker and hole up in it. Maybe form some kind of self-publishing cult and wait out the Pubpocalypse in our vault. We’ll all break down into weird little genre-specific tribes. Horror slashers, elf-fuckers, steampunk iron men, and space whores. But it’ll be the poets who will win. The poets with their brevity and their stanzas. And their bloody claws.

Eventually Editors And Agents Are All Going To Snap (And It’ll Be Our Fault)

It’s easier now than ever to submit to an agent or an editor. Used to be you had to jump through some hoops, maybe print some shit out, pay some cash to ship your big ol’ book out into the world. Now any diaper-rash with a copy of Wordperfect, an e-mail address and a dream can send his 10-book fantasy epic to a thousand agents with the push of a button.

Click! “Here, please consume this sewage as if it were a meal!”

This is your competition. Sure, you might be a real gem, a right jolly ol’ corker of a writer with skills and art and craft and a sexy smug author photo. But these wild-eyed crazy-heads are your competition.

Don’t think so? Peep this scenario:

Your manuscript arrives in the inbox of an agent with 450 unread messages just from that morning. At least 445 of those unread mails comprise a festering heap of word-dung, and that agent has to get through these and write some kind of “No, I don’t want to rep your book about a chosen one Messiah space pilot hermaphrodite ring-bearer wombat-trainer blacksmith” rejection letter. And she has to do it again and again. And again. And again. Times 400. Let’s be honest, by Piece Of Crap #225, that agent has basically lost her mind. Her brain is a treacly, yogurt-like substance that smells faintly of coffee and disappointment.

So, when she gets to your manuscript (#451), it’s late in the day. Sure, she might read it and be cowed by your brilliance — “Holy crap, it’s not crap!” — but realistically, she can’t even see straight. She hates everything. She wants to punch the life out of baby animals. Her madness and anger have been honed. It is a machete one could use to strike down God and prune his limbs.

That agent’s on a hair trigger.

Once she gets to yours, she reads that first sentence and doesn’t like that one comma and blammo, she’s firing off a rejection letter. And before too long she’ll be out on the ledge firing off a high-powered rifle.

You don’t want that kind of guilt on your head, do you?

Evidently, Society Still Requires “Money” To Procure Goods And Services

Few writers make enough money to earn a so-called “living wage.”

What is a living wage, you ask? It’s an annual wage that allows you to not perish. It allows you to not freeze to death, or not live in a dumpster where your extremities are eaten by opossum, or not die of starvation under an underpass. I mean, let’s be clear: most writers earn less than your average hobo. A hobo, he might earn ten bucks an hour. Sure, it goes toward booze or toward his raging Magic: The Gathering habit, but still, it’s more than you get paid to be a wordmonkey.

Okay, yeah, I earn a living wage, but you know how hard I have to work? I have to write like, 10,000 words per day. Backwards. While I provide sexual favors to industry insiders with my left hand (the sinister hand is the only hand appropriate for the tasks I give it to perform, be assured).

Since society still demands that we pay it money — and not, say, wampum or words or sexy dances — then trust me, it is not worth it being a writer. A writer, you’re basically just a homeless troglodyte.

Your Soul Remains Uncrushed, Your Mind Is Intact, And Your Orifices Unviolated

First comes the ceaseless parade of rejection. (Probably because you’re just not that good, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting, right?) You’re punched in the pink parts over and over again. It’d be comical if it were happening to anybody else, but it’s not. It’s happening to you.

Then, should you have the good fortune of getting published, you are now going to be dragged through a house of possible horrors. Seriously, you should hear the horror stories.

“My contract requires me to tithe a cup of blood every Tuesday morning. A man in a dark hat and a wine-colored cardigan shows up at my door, gives me a plastic cup, and then I have to blood-let into the cup. I don’t know what this has to do with my book, but I think it has something to do with my soul.”

“I found a stipulation in my contract that, should they be able to prove that I used a Barnes & Noble restroom, they could force me to pay back my advance. Also, they stole my shoes.”

“I did not get to approve my own cover art, and for some reason the cover of my paranormal thriller features an orangutan peeing into his own mouth. At least he’s wearing a monocle.”

“I must’ve mis-read. Here I thought they owed me 17% royalty on every e-book sold. Actually, I owe them a 17% royalty on every e-book sold. Mea culpa. Time to pay the piper. Literally. They sent a piper to my house and his pan-pipes play a discordant tune that drives cats mad.”

“Someone spent my marketing budget on cake and whores.”

After all that’s said and done, you have to go through it again with your second book. Which probably nobody will publish. Because they hate you.

Because The Fucking Snooki Book, That’s Why

At first I was like, “Eh, so what, Snooki got a book. Blah blah blah. We’ve seen trash celebrity books for years. Publisher’s gotta eat. Who cares? It’s not the end of the world.”

No, no, it’s definitely the end of the world.

Snooki shouldn’t even be allowed outside and amongst the public without a handler. She’s like a shapeshifting gonorrhea monster. That girl has more brain in her hair than she does in her actual head. And yet I know talented writers who are struggling, but Snooki — some kind of orange monkey-goblin — gets paid enough money to buy a house full of solid gold tanning beds. And, her book is apparently tanking. And, the Today Show chose to put her on instead of a literary icon like Jane Yolen.

That’s what it is to be a writer these days.

Snooki, who is by all reports the equivalent to a drunken, self-aware slime mold, is way, way higher up on the food chain than Jane Yolen. And Jane Yolen is way, way higher up on the food chain than you. Think about that. Think about just how screwed that makes you. It’s like a crazy house. It’s like an asylum where they let that guy who paints leprechaun porn in his own waste run the joint. And there are you and Jane Yolen, holed up in Room 313, the only sane ones in the whole zip code while an army of Snooki Zombies (their book deals flailing in their rotten, epileptic grip) tries to kill you. Or have sex with you.

*shudder*

You don’t want to be a writer.

Turn back now. Save yourself.

While you still can.

January 19, 2011 / 58 Comments

What Makes For A Good Story?

Next month, I’m thinking I might use this space to take the 40,000 feet view and leave the “writing” discussion behind for February — writing, after all, is really just a delivery system for storytelling. The pen scratching and the fingers tippity-tapping across the keyboard are merely a conveyance. We’re making the unreal real. Writing is a means to that end. The thing that’s bigger than writing is storytelling. (And the thing that’s bigger than storytelling is creating, but for me that enters “too vague” territory. I do not consider myself a “creator.” Unless maybe you mean in the godly sense, because on the page, I’m making mountains, I’m killing millions, I’m turning this chick into a swan and that dude into a spider. I am the Zeus of my own reclusive little story-worlds. It’s all thunderbolts and incest, baby.)

The reason storytelling is interesting is because it transcends medium. A good story is a good story no matter how you tell you it — whether you tell it in moving images, across comic panels, across emails or blog posts or tweets or even across the pages of an old-school novel, story is story. Writing isn’t writing in these cases: the actual writing of each mode is a whole different animal. The mechanism is separate.

But the goal is the same: to tell a good story.

And, to reiterate, a good story is a good story, no matter how it is told.

In fact, I hereby demand someone make me a t-shirt:

“I Give Good Story.”

Mmm. Sexy. Yeah. Nnnngh. Give me that story. Tell it to me, you little story slut.

Whoa, sorry, went a weird place there for a wee moment.

Anyway, my point is, if you understand story (and the telling of stories), then the only thing standing in your way is the method of conveyance. As writers and storytellers are increasingly called upon to shapeshift and don the skin-cloak of other media, it seems like it would behoove us to really get to the center of it. Break apart the breastbone and get right to the beating heart. This is especially true of those who are transmedia designers: I think the raw power of transmedia, where good storytelling nimbly leaps from rooftop to rooftop, isn’t put on display as often as I’d prefer. A lot of that gets lost and buried underneath the many-headed media approach, or it gets shouldered out by the “cool factor,” or watered down because it’s a lot of work and not all the moving parts are so clearly understood.

So for me, to get to the truth of that, we need to take a long hard look at story. Or Story, if you prefer to make things more important by capitalizing them. Huzzah, Capitalization.

Now, to you, I ask the question posited in the post title.

It’s a vague question.

Totally open-ended.

And I want it that way.

Throw open you brain doors and see what answer lurks in response to the question:

“What Makes For A Good Story?”

Brainstorm. Discuss. Talk to each other.

January 18, 2011 / 19 Comments

Hey, Writerface: Don’t Be A Dick (But Still Have Opinions)

I have occasionally seen sentiment that suggests writers should be little church mice.

They should become little peeping cheeping baby birds who shouldn’t ruffle any feathers with talk of politics or religion or publishing or any of that for fear of losing a publishing deal or scaring off an agent or what-have-you. It becomes a game of tiptoe here, tiptoe there.

Don’t shake the bushes. Don’t stand up on the boat.

I call shenanigans on that.

Because that makes you boring. A boring writer is not a writer with a big audience.

Further, I think it makes you bored, as well. And a bored writer is… well, I dunno. Probably an alcoholic. Or a World of Warcraft addict.

Here, then, is a line in the sand. I have drawn it with my big toe.

Over here, this is where adults talk about adult subjects like (wait for it… waaaaait for it)… adults.

Over there, that’s where adults devolve into foul-breathed trolls and Internet douche-swabs.

Live on this side of the line, and you’re okay.

Cross over that side, and that’s where you turn into a raging dick-brain.

We are living in an increasingly connected world thanks to this sticky spider’s web called The Internet. I pluck my dewy thread over here, and you can feel it over there. That is — mostly — a good thing.

We are further living in a world where the audience is becoming as interested in the creator as they are the creator’s creations. This has always been true to a small extent: once you start reading an entire author’s catalog or going through a director’s stable of films, you start to grow curious about the man or woman behind the curtain. But now it’s becoming that new authors are working from their so-called buzzwordy bullshit “platforms,” and the audience is starting out interested in the author as much as the author’s works.

This is in a sense a little ridiculous: we want to be judged by our novels and films and placemats and vanity license plates, not by our online personas. And yet, we are. Reality is reality. No ignoring that.

This leads to that very simple Internet truism: don’t be a dick.

But, the fear of violating that law has lead some people to become fearful of being who they are, and fearful of having interesting or unusual opinions. I think it’s caused some degree of turtling in terms of worrying that what we say will somehow violate our chances of getting published or that it will decimate (in the truest sense of the word) our audience with one ill-made statement or sentiment.

And I think to some degree you have to get shut of that. You should be mindful of the shit you say, obviously. You, like every other adult out there, should have a pair of bouncers at your brain door ready to escort any unruly thoughts before they stumble drunkenly toward your mouth or fingers.

But don’t be afraid to have opinions.

Just offer them with respect and tact. And an interjection of humor and self-deprecation just to confirm that you’re not being some super-serious self-righteous blowhard.

And, when (not if) you inevitably cross the line in the sand from “The adults are talking” to “The dickwipes are howling and keening their gibbering dickery,” then back up, throw up your hands, and offer a fast mea culpa — just like you would do off-line.

Don’t hide from your own personality. Be who you are. Be the most awesome and interesting version of who you are. You are more than the sum total of your likes and dislikes of books and whiskey. You have controversial thoughts, hey, share them — provided you share them with tact, respect, and some ground given to the other side.

Do you have to be careful? Sure, of course. I’ve seen creators (be they writers, game designers, journalists, whoever) spout off and show the world their blow-hardy cranky-pants, and it turns me off. Most of the time I come back from the brink because I know I’ve done the same thing. Others, though, keep on keepin’ on, and they won’t stop beating their audience over the head with their opinions.

See, that’s the trick. It’s not the opinions that bothered me. It was the delivery of that opinion.

Remember: respect, tact, humor, self-deprecation.

And here, at terribleminds: a fuckbucket full of sweet, sweet profanity.

Have opinions.

Just don’t be a dick about it.