So, I started talking a bit about blurbs on books over yonder hills at Twitter, and it became clear that a lot of folks, even other writers new to this whole CHAOS CIRCUS, don’t even entirely understand them. Hell, maybe I don’t even understand them. It’s possible they’re some kind of Idea Virus, some Memetic Parasite and we authors have been passing them around from book to book? Whatever. Point is, I figure since I hit my morning word count already, and I’m trying not to DOOMSCROLL, I’d talk a bit about blurbs, in a sort of FAQ style.

Note that I am not guaranteed to know what I’m talking about, and nothing I say should be considered Writ Law on any such matter. Everything I say is as unfirm as pudding. Mm. Pudding.

Let’s begin.

What the hell is a blurb?

It’s a terrible word, for one. Like BLOG, BLURB just sounds fucking weird. BLEURB. BLOOORB. BLIRRRRB. Anyway, what it actually is, besides a strange word, is — well, you know how you look at a book and it’s got some comment on the cover from another author? Like —

“THIS MADE MY NIPPLES SING LIKE HAPPY CRICKETS, A TRUE TOUR DE FORCE” — Chnurk Mandog, Topeka Times Bestselling Author of 151 Ways To Eat Ghosts

Yeah, that’s a blurb. Sometimes you get a real fancy one on the front cover. Sometimes it’s not from other authors, but from pre-reviews like from NPR or Washington Post or some such. You might see others on the back cover, and then sometimes a bunch more inside the book.

Wait, I thought a blurb was the book’s description?

Uhhh yeah that’s also true. The thing we sometimes call flap copy, cover copy, back cover copy, or just the “book description,” people also call a book blurb. Because I guess fuck you, that’s why? Shrug.

How does one get a blurb?

You ask. Or someone asks on your behalf, which is ideal. An agent, editor or authors asks the author — sometimes via their agent or editor — to take a look at the book and provide a sassy, marketing-speaky line of text about a book.

How do you prefer to get blurbs?

Well, in a perfect world, I’m not involved. Ideally, an editor says, “Here’s a list of who we think could blurb this, do you have any names to add/subtract,” and then they’re the ones who send out the message, HEY, CHNURK MANDOG HAS A NEW BOOK IT’S FULL OF WORDS THAT DEMAND YOUR MARKETING-FRIENDLY SONG OF PRAISE. And then when I’m asked, it’s also ideal when the request comes through either from an editor/my agent or some combination thereof. Again, in that perfect publishing world, the authors are largely removed from the exchange. This isn’t always the reality, and of course that’s fine, too.

How much time do you get to read and provide the blurb?

Often, not enough time, if I’m being a little complainy. Ideally, many many months. In reality, sometimes a month or two. Once in a while, even less.

Is there compensation for a blurb? Is it paid?

No. Gods, no. That’d be some hinky business. I’m sure some authors have treated their blurbers to some kind of reward, by proxy — HERE IS CANDY, you might say, because authors are basically children and children like candy. But I have never given, nor received, candy or other compensation for blurbs. *wink wink just put the bag of money under the park bench marked with the Ancient Wendig Sigil and then the following Tuesday look in the hollow birch tree for the elf that will hand you the blurb ha ha just kidding that’s not a thing wink wink*

So, you do it for someone, and then they return a blurb to you one day?

Well, no. I mean, maybe yes for some? But my view is that blurbs should never be transactional — as in, it’s not tit-for-tat, not scratcha-my-back-scratcha-you-back, it’s just a thing you do because you like books and you value a strong bookish ecosystem. We like to share Book Love and if we can do so in a rewarding official capacity, great. That said, I have no doubt some authors view it in a transactional way, which would be a shame. I think the trick to this is not viewing it as if it’s a favor. Because favors are returnable. You do it because YAY BOOKS, YAY AUTHORS. Again, ideally.

What is the value of a blurb?

I have no idea. Meaning, I don’t know how much it moves the needle on sales. They’re nice to have. I like them. Maybe there’s something to it — certainly if I see a blurb from an author I like, it at least gets me to look at a book. But I can’t say how much it affects actual sales.

I’m told that there’s an inside baseball industry function — as in, an outlet might be more likely to review the book if they see a blurb by a Chosen Author, or maybe that helps goose bookstore orders. But again, if there’s a practical, numbers-based reality to this, I don’t know what it is.

Do you actually read the books you blurb?

Well! This is one of those tricky questions, isn’t it? I do. Though I have heard not all authors do. And I’ve also heard that not all authors even write their blurbs. I’ve heard tell of agents or editors writing the blurbs for them. Now, before we all clench up our sphincters, there’s some value to this, because authors are not marketing people, which means we don’t always know how to coalesce our thoughts into succinct sales pitches. But that would still mean the author has read the book, and if they haven’t and simply sub out the task to an agent or editor… well, that’s weird. It’s also suggestive of the transactional component discussed above.

To be clear, I’ve never had my agent or any agent or editor suggest doing this. My practice is, I compose a blurb and I like to make sure that editors and authors are happy with it, and I note they are free to massage it as they see fit, provided I approve the result before it goes in or on a book.

Also to be clear, and very honest, though I do read every book, sometimes I am forced to read them very quickly, which is to say, not as well or as thoroughly as I’d like — I’m a slow reader by nature and if you don’t give me as much time to read it as I want, I do my best to pace and race through. But I read them start to finish and blurb accordingly if I liked it.

Do you blurb every book you’re sent?

Gods, no. I’m a slow reader, and this Current Era of Aerosolized Horseshit has put a serious drag on my reading time. Further, not every book is for me, nor am I for every book.

What if you hate a book?

I don’t think I’ve ever actively hated a book I’ve been sent for blurbage purposes — but I’ve certainly had some where I felt, as noted, this book just isn’t for me, and it’s not clicking. If that’s the case, you just let the asker know what’s up. You can politely decline, or say, this just isn’t for me, and I like to think that’s okay. The reality is, though, most books I’m sent I don’t blurb, and the reason I don’t blurb then isn’t because of the content, but because of the lack of time to read them.

Real-talk, blurbing feels a little like homework. “Here is a book you have to read in three weeks, and I need your micro-review by then.” There’s a bit of pressure and unpleasantness to that, at least for me. Other writers may find their mileage varies. Just the same, I should also note it’s an honor, at the same time, to be asked. It can be both things, because sometimes that’s how life works. I always try, and I don’t always get there.

Are there ever hurt feelings over that?

Maybe? Not from me, to be clear. I expect fully that any who get my book won’t blurb it, and again, for reasons beyond me. It’s because it didn’t click, or they didn’t have time, or whatever. Life’s hard. Everybody’s busy. We have DOOMSCROLLING to do, dontchaknow. Again, I think it’s why it’s best to remove any sense of “transaction” out of it and why it’s best when the author isn’t part of the exchange — that dulls any potential pain. I like to hope too that editors and agents aren’t burned by it. But, I’m sure some people are definitely Peppermint Petty about things, and I can’t control that.

How many blurb requests do you get?

Me? It ranges from one to four a week, usually.

Are there expectations carried by an author’s endorsement on a book?

A good and complicated question. For my very first book, I had one of the blurbers respond back quite politely that they adored the book (the book in question being BLACKBIRDS), but because they didn’t write books like that, they weren’t going to blurb because they were afraid it would send the wrong message to their readers. And I bristled at that, at first, but then I kinda got it. If a hard sci-fi author blurbs a thriller, there’s a risk — though what size of risk, I don’t know — that readers will see that, pick up the book, and then be salty that the book in question had no science-fiction elements. I think certain authors who write across genres may have an easier time with this, but I dunno. Again, I don’t know how serious a problem that is, but I do understand that if I blurb a book, people seeing my name may not just intuit that I think it’s a book of quality but that the book is in some way like mine. Unfair? Probably. True just the same? Shrug.

Are you proud of any particular blurbs? 

Well, I mean, listen, I’m very excited anytime any other penmonkey is like, HEY THIS RILL GUD, because… that’s just nice. They do what I do, and it’s nice to have that feedback. You hope and assume it’s real. It’s especially cool when it’s someone you regard well. If I had a blurb from authors I grew up reading, like Robin Hobb, or Joe Lansdale, or Stephen King — I’d definitely print that shit out and hang it on the fridge. For eternity, or at least until the next fridge. I am particularly happy to have a blurb from Erin Morgenstern, who is a friend and though one might assume that means the blurb is in some way transactional or “who-you-know,” she somewhat famously doesn’t prefer to blurb books by friends, so the fact that she felt Wanderers was of special enough note to earn the blurb regardless felt extra special. But all the blurbs on that book thrill me, because people took the time to read this 80-million page book and… then say nice stuff about it. It’s always an honor.

Hell, that Rin Chupeco blurb for Wanderers is *chef’s kiss* good. Like, that blurb is ART. (See above)

(I also have a couple blurbs in for Book of Accidents that, to be honest, are already pretty thrilling.)

(But those aren’t announced yet shh.)

Do you blurb self-published books?

I’m not opposed to it, though I’m rarely asked, and generally speaking I’d prefer to know you first, and have some semblance of a relationship/online friendship with the author, because self-pub can roam all over the map in terms of quality. Mostly I dunno that blurbs on self-pub books are even that much of a thing?

Do you blurb books that aren’t yet sold to a publisher?

This is a semi-recent thing to pop up — I’m asked occasionally, and no, I do not. It sets up dangerous precedent, asking authors to blurb books that haven’t even been vetted and edited, and also only further entrenches a WHO-YOU-KNOW problem. Editors and agents should stop asking this. It is a waste of time for the authors asked, and also a problematic ask for the author asking, too — it runs the risk of them burning bridges just as they’re getting built.

What makes a good blurb?

I have no idea. I try to walk that line between ooh enticing and here is a specific thing about this book and here are generic cool things people respond to. Sometimes you do that thing where you compare it to other popular touchstone stories like, “It’s like One Tree Hill and Blade Runner had a book baby!” or, “Fans of Ernest Goes to Camp will love this!” There are also lots of repeated words — Unputdownable! Tour de force! Magnifitrillifocent! Okay I maybe made that last one up. It’s fun to say, though.

I mostly wish I could just put YEAH I LIKED THIS A LOT YOU SHOULD READ IT because that’s what I’m saying every time.

Does every book get blurbs?

At a certain level, authors stop getting blurbs. You ascend to a special place where no blurbs matter, because you already sell a Gorgillion copies. I think debuts are probably the most vital place you find them.

And I think that’s it, for now.

If you’ve more blurb-related questions, poop ’em in the comments below.

Every year I like to do a writer’s resolution. Something that’s more for me than for you, but maybe also for you, should it apply. Resolutions are tricky, of course: I don’t ever want to make them a necessity, and certainly there’s something arbitrary about picking a calendar date to be like, OKAY TIME TO BE BETTER. But, at the same time, if you’re going to choose improvement and change, you have to decide to do it, and if not now, then when? So, now is fine, too, and with the gears-clicking, turning this strange machine to a new year, it feels like a time of circumstance and consequence to do something, anything, to seize on any desired changes.

So, hahaha, I thought, what resolution did I write last year? What did I think was the way forward at the start of 2020, this heinous chaos diarrhea year? WHAT FOOLISH NAIF WAS I, THEN? So, I checked and, uhhh, last year I wrote a 2020 Writer Resolution that said the following:

“You know the thing you do where you try to figure out, ‘If I had six months to live, what would I do in that time?’ Learn basejumping? Fight a bear? Fuck a robot? I dunno. There is of course the authorial version of this, which is, what book would I write? What book would I write if i didn’t know if anyone would read it, if I’d even get to finish it before The End gets me, if it would even matter at all? What weird-ass, particular-as-hell, little-or-big book lives in the deep of my heart and would emerge ululating its mad goat song upon hearing a potential death sentence? What curious narrative creature would crawl out and hiss, giddily:

‘It’s my time, now, penmonkey!’ — ?

Well, you’re dying.

Here it is: your terminal diagnosis.

You’re gonna die.

Whole world, too. Gonna die.”

So, weirdly I was both really on point, and also way off base.

On point because, hey, this year is a pretty good reminder of, WE ALL GONNA DIE.

Off base because, with that kind of knife to your back, it’s not easy to be creative. My point was meant to be generic, of course, and I think a realistic sense of our mortal scope is useful in that it reminds us we do not have an infinite panoply of days in which to accomplish our goals, and if we want to be a writer, then we must at some point write. And more to the point of that post, it’s useful to realize that in this limited temporal allotment we get, you might as well use it to write the kinds of things you want to write. Not what you think someone else wants or needs, not in someone else’s universe if possible, but your story, for you, by you, owned by you, you, you, you. Not for narcissistic solipsism, but to SEIZE THE CREATIVE CARP and to leave behind a work that came from your heart and your head.

The problem is, a real pandemic is a bonafide existential threat, not just the theoretical one we all live under constantly. (What a boner killer, amirite.) It was that, plus Trump, and electoral chaos, and general chaos all around. All that adds up and makes it difficult to write. It did for me, at least — others may have gone the other way, disappearing into their stories as an escape. But for me it was definitely the feeling of being knocked down, winded, even a little broken by it.

So, the resolution for me, and maybe for you, is this year looking toward healing and growing — a rise and return. Not some PHOENIX burn where we go from PILE OF ASH to ANGRY FIRE EAGLE, but something slower, more measured, more deliberate.

To digress for a moment, there are these two polar notions in the generic class of writing advice — the first being YOU MUST WRITE EVERY DAY, the second being GO AT YOUR OWN PLACE AND PRACTICE FORGIVENESS. Both can be true, and both can be false, and a rigorous adherence to either of these is, I think, where you find trouble. I’m increasingly aware that, and I’ve talked about this before, how writers first codify our writing advice for others, but then soon also begin to mythologize our own processes, too. Like, we grow to accept that this is our process, that this is how we write, and further, this is how we must write. For me, I’d created a folklore about how I wrote books, and it was even true some of the time: write every day, 2,000 words, ass-in-chair, have an outline, one book after the next, and so on. It wasn’t wrong. It also wasn’t right. It was just a thing I did for a bunch of books, mostly early on in my career, and it worked when it worked and failed me when it failed me. Because, of course, every book is its own different monster, and each monster must be met in its own way: one monster wants village children to eat and huts to mash, another monster wants an ear to crawl into and a brain to make a nest for its babbies. They’re different beasts. And that’s fine.

But trying to apply a single approach to each monster is tough — you can’t feed every monster the villager children you’ve collected, because one monster might be allergic to village children, and it prefers farm-raised kidbeef to eat. Wanderers reminded me that each book wants what it wants, needs what it needs, and we are a different writer when we begin every book, and a different writer when we end every book. Like the coronavirus, we mutate in every host.

To remove the monster from the metaphor–

Sometimes you need to slow down, take it easy, re-evaluate.

Similarly, you can also go too far on the self-forgiveness train, giving yourself so much room to breathe that you’re only breathing, and not writing. We are constantly in this battle between holding ourselves accountable and allowing ourselves a day off. A war waged between reason and excuse, between work and peace, between running and rest, between rebound and recuperation. And you only really get there, I think, by knowing yourself, and you really only know yourself as a writer by just doing it, by writing when a lot when you can and by seeing what happens when you do different things. We can de-mythologize our personal processes by simply fucking with them.

We tweak the formula. We juke left when we always jumped right.

Know thyself: a vital writer commandment. And you only know yourself as a writer not when succeeding, but when failing — or when your process, your own authorial folklore, fails around you. That failure state is deeply, deeply informative.

Anyway, this digression leads me to this peculiar point in time for me — and again, maybe for you. I am at that pivot point between recuperation and rebound. It has been a hard year, a broken-wing year, and I want to fly again. But I also know that’s not automagic: I can’t just climb to the roof and jump off and zip up to the fucking sky. It’s not 0 to 60. It’s neither rest, nor running. It’s the in-between, the interstitial, the liminal.

My goal is to regain momentum.

And this, for me, will be like running. Running for me was always about starting slow and small and building on that without burning out, without busting my shit, without tearing anything or, I dunno, what are marathoner problems? Don’t their nipples bleed? There’s a commandment for running and writing: IF IT’S MAKING YOUR NIPPLES BLEED, MAYBE COOL IT A LITTLE, BECAUSE HOLY SHIT, NOBODY WANTS THAT

It’s about practicing forgiveness — which means taking it slow. But it’s also about getting the work done, which means doing something, even if it’s only a little bit, every day. It’s about creating a schedule, but also about padding that schedule with sympathy, and knowing that it can’t just be day after day of GO GO GO. It’s knowing I maybe can’t run every day, but I can damn sure walk. In this sense it’s almost like physical therapy: I need to exercise my creative muscles in a way that is regenerative, even if it’s slow. When I began running, I took it slow, week after week, building ability and then slowly adding time and distance. And some weeks I lost those gains and went back to baseline — but there was at least a baseline to go back to, and subsequent weeks saw momentum, over time, building. That’s what I need now. I need to rebuild momentum, however slow that’ll be. It’s about healing and growing, but also recognizing that healing can first be about rest, but then must eventually be about getting up, and getting going once more.

So, that’s it for me.

It’s about being smart and self-protective while also knowing that art must be made, it will not make itself. I have stories to tell and you do too, I suspect. So let’s tell them, in the way that only we can, at a level just beyond comfort — pushing when we can, pushing a little, and then going back to baseline when we must. Being gentle, but forcefully so. The world deserves to hear your tales, and so the world waits for you to tell them. At your time. At your speed. Progress is progress. A game of inches, not a game of miles. We crawl, we walk, and soon, we run.

Go with love into the New Year, writer friends.

Write, make, create, spin stories. Build on what you lost. And on what you find.

So, sometimes I do the year end recaps and year-ahead look-forwards as separate posts, and sometimes I do an even SEPARATER (not a word) post about the pop culture stuff I enjoyed —

But this year, I’m running them all through the blender and am just gonna dump the resultant blog smoothie onto your screen. Because honestly, 2020 was a hot fucking fuckmess of a year, and time ran together like so much wet paint — it may still be a Monday in March? I dunno. So, why not Frankenstein a whole bunch of blog posts together? It’s only appropriate.

What The Fuck Did I Do This Year?

I want to be clear it is not a joke when I tell you that looking back on this year and trying to gauge its scope and its contents is like wrestling an oily pig in a carnival hall-of-mirrors. I can’t get a grip on it and I don’t know where I am. I honestly don’t know what happened this year and what I even accomplished? Eennnhhh?

To answer that, I had to look back over emails just to see like, the things I did. For a good portion of the year I didn’t really write anything new — I did two new drafts of The Book of Accidents, one big draft at the start of the year, and some tiny-but-plentiful tweaks midway through. And a copy-edit for that. Plus a pair of edits on Dust & Grim, and I helped curate the monster motivational Magic Skeleton book — though mostly there it was the publisher selecting what ones go in the book and then having the wonderful Natalie Metzger apply her fantastic art weirdness to it all. But all that time I didn’t really write anything new until this fall — and as such I’m 50k deep into the Wanderers sequel, Wayward. Part of that is because we didn’t have a surefire schedule for my next several books, right? Like, we knew TBOA was getting moved out of October 2020 to not get crushed by election coverage (whew), and then it was a question of whether the Wanderers sequel was next, or if it’d be another horror novel of mine, currently titled The Orchard. So, there were questions as to what I was even supposed to write next?

But obviously a large part of it too was —

Well, everything.

This year was a lot. A lot a lot. A lot a lot a lot. Pandemic and election and social media monstrousness and shenanigans around every corner. It was simply hard to get creative traction this year. And that’s unusual for me. I’m usually someone who can write his way through any bullshit, but this year I found greater solace in editing, in fine-toothing narrative to get it right, and any new material I wrote went into those, for the most part. Which is fine, of course. Progress is progress. Work is work. But it was hampered, hobbled, hamstrung. I suspect it was for you, too. That’s all right. It was a hard, bad year. A hard, bad, strange year. We were all being asked to walk around on a broken leg, and I think it’s okay if that means you can’t run. Even if people want you to. Even if you expect yourself to. You do what you can do. Forward is forward, progress is progress, however small it may be.

Not to say this is some we’re all in this together hoorah clarion call — I am an intensely privileged person, not just because of the natural privileges afforded to me but because I make a current living based on staying home. I don’t go to a job. I hide here in my WRITING SHED, peering out the windows like a paranoid maniac while furtively typing a few sentences here and there. I’m a lucky person and I’m doing okay, better than a lot of folks — certainly not my goal to play misery olympics. But at the same time, I think it’s okay for all of us, me included, to recognize that the year was a screaming fuckshow either way, and that very few people were operating at 100%.

There was good news, of course: Wanderers was nominated for both the Stoker and the Locus, which was really nice. It continued to sell well. The Magic Skeleton deal came together. My son is well. My wife is well. We’re healthy and weathered the storm of uncertainty and isolation okay. Virtual learning was hard but manageable. We adapted. Life continued. Trump lost. A vaccine was found. Life continued and continues. There’s real reason to celebrate but right now I’m mostly just tired? Christmas was nice, but mostly I just want to get through to 2021. More on that in a few.

Things That Were Good That I Enjoyed Maybe?

Once again I’m left wondering… what even happened this year? What came out? The two media forms that dominated my story-consumption habits were television and video games — both, I think, easy to get in and get out of quickly. Movies take time despite being shorter than television, because they’re best viewed in a single two-hour-chunk. And with a kid home 24/7 instead of being in school, we didn’t always have the time or mental fortitude to plop down for that temporal chunk. Books were hard, too, because, first, I found my concentration levels in the pandemic were reduced to the level of “concussed squirrel” and second, again, my kid was home. It’s really hard to sit quietly with a book. But TV and games were easier to grapple in the time allowed. Their consumption: uncomplicated.

Some of this too is hard because I try to remember, say, what movies I saw this year, and then when I look back at what movies came out in 2020, it’s like, really? Birds of Prey was out this year? Was it? Really? That happened this fucking year? Jesus.

So, who knows if I’m even remembering all this correctly.

But here are the things I enjoyed this year in their various category.

Not an exhaustive list.

Some of these may be hallucinations, I don’t even know.

MOVIES

Palm Springs was the first piece of media that I think inadvertently understood the vibe of the encroaching pandemic. It felt true in a way other stories did not simply by its proximity to everything going on. It is the film of 2020 — not necessarily the best film (though it is pretty great), but just a movie that lived in the same hell-realm we were all inhabiting.

Scare Me is a weird piece of not-quite-horror-movie perfection. A story about stories, but also a story about storytellers. Hilarious and weird and dark. Minimalist and spare. Shudder, by the way, is a great streaming service if you like spooky scary spoopy stuff.

Wolfwalkers is one of the most wonderful animated films of all time. I haven’t seen Soul yet, and will soon, but this is it for me. It’s deeply, unabashedly good, and unashamedly itself.

Class Action Park isn’t my childhood exactly, but it’s next door.

Enola Holmes — what a delight. I kind of thought it would be worse fare than it was? Honestly, Netflix can do really well with TV, but their film offerings have not always been aces-and-eights. But this felt real, and fun, and just fired on all cylinders for us here in the Wendighaus.

Bill & Ted Face The Music — what a happy movie. And a happy-making movie. It wasn’t just nostalgia fueling it, though that never hurts — it was crafted with love and care and fun, and you can feel it in every frame.

Were there other movies out this year? Certainly. Do I remember what they were? No. Did I see some of them? Probably. Anyway, onward we go.

BOOKS

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is a short, impactful, elk-fueled novel of terror and sadness. The guy writes in a way that is just easy-breezy — literary, if you care to call it that, but conversational. It’s high-minded storytelling told in a low voice, and please believe me when I assure you this is not derogatory — it’s the best way a story can be.

Survivor Song, Paul Tremblay. Supercharged rabies pandemic, thanks to Paul Tremblay? With requisite Tremblay heart-punching and kidney-stabbing. He will always hurt you. And you will always like it. Paul Tremblay is a monster.

Goldilocks, Laura Lam. I read this just before the pandemic and hahaaahahaha it landed differently as soon as the pandemic hit. Character-driven into-space thriller with roots on Earth and in our present. It’s very good, and if you liked Wanderers, I think you’ll like this, too.

Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff VanderMeer. It’s not out yet, but mark it — it’s a Fincherian puzzle to be solved, this book, and it’s as much about you as it is about the protagonists. All books change you a little but some books change you more than that, and this is one of those.

Wow, No Thank You, Samantha Irby. I needed funny this year, and this brought the funny. Samantha Irby is one of the funniest goddamn people on Planet Earth and if there is any reason to save this planet it is because she is on it. This is a collection of essays and I cried laughing.

Blacktop Wasteland, SA Cosby. Propulsive-at-times, sad-and-reminiscent in others, this is a gut-punch of a book, that puts a fine point on race and racial tensions in this hard-as-hell crime novel. I like books that don’t fuck around and this is a book that doesn’t fuck around. I’d even argue the noblest pursuit of a novelist is to write a book that refuses to fuck around, so read this to get that.

I’ll note here an interesting contrast — I watch movies for escape, but read novels that don’t necessarily aim for escape. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because books contextualize experience differently, and provide catharsis in a more impactful, nuanced way. Also I’ll note that I think horror is the genre to watch over the next two to four years. And I don’t just say that as a person with a horror novel out in 2021. But, uhh, also because of that.

TV

Ted Lasso, holy shit, Jesus Christ, Ted Lasso. Listen, I’m sure I’m being overwrought by saying it’s one of the greatest seasons of television ever, but it sure felt that way when I watched it. It’s sublime. Funny, just a little fucked-up, appropriately profane, and ultimately deeply sweet and optimistic. It was the show I needed in 2020. I honestly can’t stop actively loving it day to day. I think about it often. I adore it always. *slaps the BELIEVE sign above the door*

Cobra Kai doesn’t always know what it is, whether it’s a saccharine nostalgia-bomb or a cynical subversion of all that — sometimes it’s glib and goofy and sometimes it’s like BOOM HAVE SOME REAL CONSEQUENCES. Sometimes it’s making fun of itself, and then it’ll switch gears and be sincere as fuck. I dunno. But it works and I love it.

Also JFC, was Schitt’s Creek this year? Goddamn. Loved that one, too. It’s clear to me that I am enjoying a particular kind of show, a show that somehow balances sweet and salty very well — that takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. What I would consider the Parks and Rec model. The Good Place too and wait WTF that ended this year too? That was 2020?! What the fuck.

The Boys isn’t that. It’s zero sweetness, all salt. But it works. It reimagines superheroes as deeply fascist, fucked-up narcissistic hell-beasts masquerading as humans and it feels very apropos to 2020.

I think Perry Mason rambled a bit, and it’s pretty fucking dark, but it worked for me.

What We Do In The Shadows is one of the funniest, weirdest shows. The Jackie Daytona episode may be one of the greatest episodes of television of all time.

There were a lot of good adult-friendly kids-TV, too. The new season of Hilda. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts may be one of the best cartoons of all time, right up there with Avatar: the Last Airbender — it is, in its way, the Ted Lasso of cartoons, featuring a wildly optimistic character who chooses to befriend all their enemies, always choosing compassion over the other thing. Summer Camp Island is soothing as hell. Craig of the Creek and Apple & Onion are wildly good.

There were some shows that missed for me, too — chief among them is Mandalorian.

BEWARE: SPOILERS AND STAR WARS FAN WANK TO ENSUE

I know, I know, heresy, I get it. I loved S1, but S2 has really pushed aside the titular character in favor of, well, everyone else. Mando was relegated to a series of fetch quests. His agency was largely removed and logic was cast aside as we were instead treated to the motivations of others, like Ahsoka, or Boba Fett. Both of whom I like, and who I enjoyed seeing! But each time it felt like Mando was simply caught in the swift-moving rivers of other people’s stories. And it’s a strange choice given that his actions in S1 were literally to blow up his life to save The Child (aka Baby Gogurt) — and yet S2 is him mostly trying to get rid of the kid. For noble reasons, admittedly, but in a way that feels like he’s just acquiescing to it instead of owning his role. He starts to reclaim agency by the end of the season (and the second to last episode may have been one of the best of the whole series), but then the finale had… well, You Know Who show up. Again, I like Luke. I like him being a bad-ass. But I didn’t like that he’s a just a HAND OF GOD who shows up and saves them, then takes Baby Gargamel away with nary a protest from Surrogate Mando Dad, and nobody else bats an eye, either. They just fought through hell only to have Mando give away the kid to a dark-clad stranger who just murdered a bunch of Terminators. And the other storylines — Gideon, the Darksaber supremacy — don’t even get an epilogue or a nod to what’s to come. There’s no closure, there’s just the end of the show, and then there’s a Boba Fett show but a delayed Mandolorian season and — ennh, I dunno. I’m falling off the Star Wars bandwagon these days, for some personal reasons and also because I think it needs another hibernation period. It’s also a franchise mired in prequelization — the constant looping back to fill in blanks rather than leap forward. Marvel nearly always moves forward, but Star Wars nearly always looks backward. Mando escaped that trap by being uniquely about its own set of characters, but by doing that thing where it reminds us that STAR WARS IS BASICALLY ONE ZIP CODE (my wife called it “the town in Gilmore Girls, but in space,” which I amended to, “Starwars Hollow,” give us both awards now, pls), it once again feels somehow regressive, a galaxy stuck in the past that cares very much about one family’s bloodline and destiny.

But, bonus: Cobb Vanth!

GAMES

This is getting long, so I’ll just say these are the games that geeked me out this year: Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, Miles Morales, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Spiritfarer. I really wanted to love Valhalla but it’s a buggy brutal mess where you’re mostly just a dickhead Viking who shows up and does some pillaging — so far the “bad guys” are barely that. It invests me in the narrative, and the storytelling is good, but it feels like more of a chore than the lush (if too long) Odyssey. I also wanted to love Squadrons, but couldn’t really get into it. It felt fine! But only that. I think it was the too-short single-player that left me feeling unsatisfied? But hey, Rae Sloane and the Starhawk!

Also a weird shout-out to No Man’s Sky, a game that continues to deepen itself and improve wildly — doubly so now on the PS5, where it looks fucking amazing and its abysmal load-times are now a mere fraction of what they were.

What The Hell Happens Now?

Whew.

Oof.

I have no idea.

I mean, at least given THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD, I’ve no idea. I hope Trump is done, his goose cooked, his brownies baked, his fate signed and sealed and delivered. His legal options are long exhausted, so all he has left is chaos — but he may make more chaos yet, because I think what waits at the end of it is jail. He’s a cornered monster, and not to be trusted.

I hope the pandemic will fade this year — we have vaccines, but we also have new mutations of COVID on the rise, and hope but not confirmation that the vaccines will work against them.

For me personally, I had a whole year in 2020 with zero book releases (well, excepting the Wanderers paperback!), so this year I’ve got three — first up is You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton, with Natalie Metzger, out in April (pre-order here), and then comes The Book of Accidents in July (read an excerpt here, pre-order here), and soon I’ll reveal the cover and some sketches for Dust & Grim, which lands in October. Hope you enjoy ’em all. And if you don’t, that’s okay, too.

I’ll keep writing Wayward in the meantime.

Hope you can find some peace and creative comfort in the new year.

I’ll be back then to talk about that a little more — what we can do going forward, as writers, as the calendar burns the previous tire-fire of a year and we step out of the smoke and haze into a (hopefully) renewed 2021.

For now, I’ll see you on the other side.

Be well, frandos. Give to a local foodbank, if you can.