This is how I feel:

I feel like I’m the fucked up one. I feel like I’ve gone cuckoo bananapants, because I look out into the world and I see people who think the pandemic isn’t real; I see them not wearing masks anymore; I see people who somehow think Trump is doing a good job, or that believe he’s accomplished anything at all; I see people who live in a reality where blue state cities are places Snake Plissken would have to escape from; where Democrat Pedophiles are shipping children in furniture; where scientists are traitors peddling climate change coronavirus fantasy but Jesus Christ was a white man with an AR-15 who fought to make sure corporations were people, the poor got fucked, and nobody raised his Dad-blamed taxes. I feel like I’m trapped in some Hellraiser puzzle cube, some mirror universe trap where on my side of the mirror there are still things like common decency and empathy and shared reality, and on the other side are people who think that wearing a mask in a store is the same thing as being a Black man summarily executed in front of his family for writing a bad check.

I feel like I’m sitting in a living room and in the middle of the room there’s a toilet on fire, and nobody else will claim to see the toilet, or the fire. And if I push, they tell me, “The fire toilet is antifa propaganda, just eat your fuckin’ Spaghetti-Os.”

It feels like my brain is misfiring.

And once in a while, this brute force attack on our collective psyche, it works. I think, maybe I’m the broken one? Maybe I’m the partisan asshole? Like, is it even remotely possible that Trump is no worse than any other president, that life under Obama was some kind of nightmare realm, that COVID-19 isn’t real? It’s just a moment. And then I remember the people I know who got sick or died from it, and I look at the facts, the actual (sing it with me) facts of life, and I yawp again into the void THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS even though they want me to admit that I see five.

Maybe you feel that way too.

But your brain isn’t misfiring.

I’m not okay. You’re not okay. And it’s okay we’re not okay.

Your response is that you’re not okay because things are very much not okay. It is perfectly acceptable, normal, and expected to feel fucked up in a fucked up situation. Broken politics, Zoom school, gender reveal forest fires, Patriotic Re-Education, Herman Cain tweeting about the hoax virus that he actually died from — in this endlessly scrolling set of brand new WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE* verses, it’s easy to feel like you’re the broken one. But you’re not. You’re just responding to a broken world. And not just broken in a normal way — but broken in a way that’s hard to parse, that doesn’t form clean fractures. The difference between a snapped femur and someone who stuck one hand in a blender. We’re tip-toeing across a tightrope, and on one side is a chasm of Absurdist Incompetence and on the other is a pit of Active Malevolence and we’re just trying not to fall.

I mean, I barely go anywhere, right? But last week, I went to an ice cream place to pick up a couple pints because in this Epoch of Fuckery ice cream is medicine, and in the place, everybody was masked, everybody was good. And then the next day I went to the doctor’s office to get a flu shot and two people who worked there were not masked. In a doctor’s office! A DOCTOR’S OFFICE. Aaaaa dooooooctooooor’s offffffiiiiiice. Where if anybody (!) should be cleaving to good mask protocol (!!) it should be in a god damn d o c t o r ‘ s   o f f i c e. Sometimes I’ll drive through town and I’ll see a group of people where some of them are masked and some of them aren’t and I’m like, how’s that even work? What’s the fucking point? And then you see a parade of dicknoses who I guess believe that AIR does not come out of their NOSEHOLES only their MOUTHPITS and then you get on Facebook and you see some ding-dong relative sharing a screengrab of a spectacularly fake tweet where Joe Biden said something about how he’s gonna raise your taxes and turn your kids into dogfood and change the name of the country to the United Socialist States of Berniecratimerica, and you start to scream? You just scream. You scream into a pillow, into your clenched fists, into a box, into the hollow of an old tree where the Earth takes your scream and nurtures it into a flock of hungry winged things. I’m screaming right now! Just screaming.

Just fucking screaming.

And it’s okay.

It’s okay if you’re screaming, too.

It’s okay if you’re worried and sad and mad all the time and it’s okay if brushing your teeth feels like a heroic moment and if you can’t stop doomscrolling the Apocalyptic Stock Ticker that is social media.

It’s okay if you’re not okay.

I’ve no answers how to make it okay. (Except, obviously, vote, give money to charities and politicians, raise a ruckus, eat ice cream, try not to bite your phone.) Try to secure some peace and pleasure for yourself away from this Hell Realm. I try to put down my phone. I walk and listen to birds and high-five pine trees and it feels a little better. Not okay, but closer to it.

(And I note that even going outside is a privilege right now, with many places experiencing ash and smoke or bad weather. I only mean to suggest you put down the phone and try to steal some moments of peace away from the maw of the maelstrom.)

I don’t know that we’re going to be okay. Individually or collectively. We are under not one but… at least three existential threats I can count. But we can try despite everything to care about ourselves and each other through whatever comes — and that can be our true north, a star to chart the dark.

The things you see are real.

There is a toilet on fire in the living room.

I see it too.

It’s okay that you’re not okay.

And I hope we get to find moments where we are okay, and that we can take it, and hold it, and sustain it. And that we come out of this better than we were before. But it’s okay to be afraid that’s also not what’s going to happen, too. Whatever happens, we’re in this together. We can have a shared reality, a shared empathy. We can rage and scream and we can vote and we can do what we can and what we must to endure.

These are fucked up times.

It is normal to feel fucked up in response to them.

May you steal moments of peace from the jaws of chaos.

p.s. wear your fuckin’ masks for chrissakes

(This is based off a Twitter thread I did the other day that seemed to resonate, so I’m letting it live here, too, in a more blog-flavored format.)

* I used to think that our current reality is broken because of that weasel that fucked the Hadron Collider, but now I fear that Billy Joel pissed off a wizard somewhere and now he’s locked in a tower, forced to write increasingly horrible new verses to WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE that the wizard makes real with his shitty wizard magics. We need to find and free Billy Joel from the wizard trap! Before all of reality is doomed by his songsmithy! We’re coming, Billy Joel! Just hold on! Don’t write any more! For the love of god, Montressor, don’t try to rhyme anything to “gender-reveal forest-fire!” Wait no Billy Joel what are you writing oh god you’re writing SLENDERMAN WALRUS SPIRE what the fuck does that mean oh god oh shit oh fuck

When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.

Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias—and himself.

From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias weaves the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything.

It isn’t easy being funny when everyone is grieving

My novel is about death. There’s more to it than that, of course, but death is its black heart. A pilot flies an airplane into the sea one week before his wedding day, and the story follows the fiancé as he tries to make sense of the aftermath. It’s tragic.

But this story isn’t entirely grim and gloomy. I decided early on that there would be an undercurrent of lightness—the tricky part was having this coexist with the novel’s darker themes without trivializing them. Some of the subject matter is serious, and it’s important to me to treat it with respect. Like life itself, this story has moments of joy and moments of pain, plus everything in between, and I want readers to feel the full range of these things.

My novel is not a dark comedy, but I do want readers to come up for air and laugh at times. I’m still not sure I pulled it off, but I’m encouraged by reviews that describe the humor as “hard-won” and “refreshing.” My favorite reviews are the ones from readers who found themselves laughing and crying at different points throughout the story. That’s the goal, really.

Mexico City stands on the ruins of an ancient Aztec capital

This story could only be set in Mexico. The Mexican people have such a deep reverence for death, and I’ve always admired the beautiful ways in which they honor those they’ve lost. These traditions, from both their Indigenous and colonial cultures, are prevalent throughout the novel. They lend meaning, sometimes in contradictory ways, to the protagonist’s journey as he struggles to make sense of his own tragedy.

Fragments of Aztec mythology and history make appearances, and I fell into a research rabbit hole learning about their fascinating beliefs and defeats. I discovered Tenochtitlan, the mighty island fortress that was once the Aztec capital in the middle of a valley lake. When Hernán Cortés and his Spanish conquistadors arrived with their weapons that shot thunder and foreign diseases, the Aztecs were overtaken and their city destroyed. The capital of New Spain was built on the ashes of Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City. The ruins of the pyramids can be seen today beside the crowded central square.

I took an impromptu trip to Mexico City when I was writing the novel, wanting to see and touch remnants of the Aztecs. These people live on through their genes and their heritage, and Mexico has been independent from Europe for nearly two centuries, but I can’t help but lament what could have been, had it not been for colonialism.

Point of view is key, but voice is a bolt cutter

The story is told through a first person point of view, primarily in the present tense. I knew it was a risky choice from the beginning. There are plenty of opinions out there against choosing such a foolhardy combination—it’s too intimate, too limiting, et cetera. I fought the decision for a while before realizing there was no other way to tell this story the way I wanted to tell it. I needed the intimacy, and I wanted to play off the limitations.

In the end, I learned that there is no right or wrong way. Some choices are safer than others, but do I aspire to be safe? Is that what I want my work to be known for? What’s most important is how it all comes together. That often involves a bit of magic, something hard to define, but one critical ingredient is voice. That’s what brings a story to life, arguably more so when it’s a first person point of view. People want to get lost in a story. Technical sins can be forgiven when the reader is captivated. I’ve loved plenty of books with generous heaps of head-hopping, telling (rather than showing), and all manner of things authors are told to avoid. I didn’t care or notice, because I was immersed, the characters felt real, and I bought it all.

Everything is subjective, of course. There are readers (not to mention editors and agents) who might judge a book more harshly based on its tense or point of view. A reader will either connect with the voice, or they won’t. But I learned to trust my instincts without overthinking them. I’d rather connect deeply with a smaller group of readers through a distinct voice than be considered safe enough by the masses.

Music is as close a friend as coffee

I become rather fixated when in the throes of writing a novel. I know the story won’t work unless I’m obsessed with it. Motivation to write isn’t usually a problem for me, but certain things help the words flow more freely. Music is one of these things.

I don’t usually listen to music while I’m writing—far too distracting!—but I curate a different soundtrack for the novels I write. These songs imprint themselves onto the DNA of the story, capturing its mood and atmosphere. I’ll listen to them before a writing session to help myself slip into the right mindset, or while I’m pondering the story’s intricate details or larger shape. There’s a symbiosis between music and literature that I find so valuable as a writer.

While I wrote my first novel, After Elias, I had two albums playing on repeat: Battle Born by The Killers, and Conscious by Broods. “Le lac” by Julien Doré and “Holy Ghost” by BØRNS are also songs that I associate closely with the story.

There’s no such thing as a British accent

One of the characters is a woman honeymooning alone on the Mexican island where the novel is set. She’s from London, and she spoke with a British accent until I realized that such an accent doesn’t exist. English-speaking North Americans, such as myself, tend to lump together all things British. There are so many different accents throughout Britain that even drawing distinctions between English, Scottish, and Welsh would be overly simplified, but at least it’s a start. Thus, my character now speaks with an English accent.

***

Eddy Boudel Tan is the author of After Elias (Fall 2020) and The Rebellious Tide (Summer 2021). His work depicts a world much like our own—the heroes are flawed, truth is distorted, and there is as much hope as there is heartbreak. He’s currently writing his third novel at home in Vancouver.

Eddy Boudel Tan: Website | Twitter | Instagram

After Elias: Indiebound | Bookshop | B&N | Amazon

Writing advice is bullshit on a good day. Though as I’m wont to note, bullshit fertilizes, and so we continue to share it and give it with the notion that maybe a scattering of it over your garden will help your story-plants grow. Maybe it won’t. And that’s okay, too. But here at the end of the world (okay, not really the end of the world I don’t think, I’m probably just being a little dramatic), it feels somehow fruitless to even talk about this stuff. Like we’re just polishing silver in a housefire, or jerking off during a hurricane. Stop jerking off. There’s a hurricane. Evacuate, for shit’s sake.

No, no, I said evacuate.

Anyway.

Still, this stuff is on my mind as I ramp up to write a new story (cough cough, the Wanderers sequel), and the other day on Twitter there’d been some discussion — started by agent Dongwon Song — about character taking precedence over plot, or leading into plot, or what have you. And I’ve said as much myself, that for me, plot is Soylent Green: it’s made of people. Characters do shit and say shit, and they do so in pursuit of solving problems, chasing desires, and escaping fears. As they do this, they create plot. It’s watching an ant colony forming — they’re making art, chewing those tunnels. Characters are doing that. But of course, lots of folks also write differently and consider plot considerations first, and then slot in characters who fit that plot, and that’s fine, too. It’s all fine. The only bad way to write is a way that stops you from writing and readers from reading it. That’s it.

I do want to talk about a practical example of this, though, as it’s fresh on my mind (despite the END OF THE WORLDSYNESS going on all around us right now).

Anybody watch the show Sex Education on Netflix?

Good show. Walks that line between sweet and sharp, between funny and sad, between drama and melodrama. The first season I liked a lot more than the second, though; the second season is more uneven, wobbling around unsteadily between character arcs and motivations, and there’s a keen example of this at the end of the second season.

This will necessitate spoilers.

Small spoilers. Mild. I’ll give no details but… spoilers are spoilers.

So avoid if you gotta.

ANYWAY.

Here goes.

Last scene in the season finale involves a character leaving their phone behind, and on this phone is a voicemail we want them to hear, and then another character intervenes — they open the phone, listen to the voicemail, and erase it.

Simple enough.

Problem:

The character who left behind the phone is a teenager. Teenagers are maybe forgetful, but they’re also critically married to their phones (as are we proper adults), and this teenager in particular is sharp, savvy, and naturally suspicious of like, literally everyone. And in the first season we saw a character lose their phone and see the result of that. So, leaving a phone behind callously is strange. The character isn’t just stepping outside for a cigarette — they’re “walking into town.” At night. It’s a good distance. And they don’t take their phone.

Additional problems ensue when you realize you can’t just open someone’s phone, you have to know their passcode, but that’s somewhat more adjacent to the point I’m trying to make, which is:

The episode is very concerned about its PLOT and not very concerned about its CHARACTERS. It so badly wants us to feel this kind of (melo)dramatic tension that it does one of its own characters dirty — it sells out what we know of them, betraying who they are, for the purposes of a cheap, operatic thrill. Some won’t be rankled by this, though I was, and my wife was like WTF, too — it’s not that this choice was wrong, but I felt it. And I hate whenever I’m watching or reading something and one of the characters is suddenly acting very unlike themselves, and it feels like the storyteller is shaving off their square corners so they’ll fit into the circle hole socket that the plot requires. Which for me, isn’t ideal storytelling. It’s letting the frame be more than just a guide, but rather, an exoskeleton bolted to the narrative. It’s doubly annoying when this character blip could’ve been easily solved — often, you only need a few shifts to such a scene to still get your desired plot outcome while not simultaneously betraying the character.

So, to me, that’s the lesson — let my characters drive the story. And if there’s something I feel is really vital, plot-wise, then those plot bits must still be shaped like the character, and not force the characters to be shaped like the plot. Or something.

Who knows. Again, does any of this even matter? Is this just deck chairs on the Titanic? Maybe. My kid started fourth grade today (virtually) and it’s like, they want to teach him normal Fourth Grade things and a wild-eyed part of me wants to jump in, NO YOU NEED TO TEACH HIM HOW TO SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE, WHO GIVES A SHINY FUCK ABOUT VERB TENSES WHEN HE NEEDS TO KNOW HOW TO SPEAR A MUTATED FIRE BOAR COMING OVER THE RIDGE FROM THE RUINS OF OLD SCRANTONIA. It’s hard to know what we need to know going forward, and what will matter. But I know stories still matter, and how we tell them matters, and letting our characters be themselves is a good way to demonstrate how to maybe also be ourselves off the page, too. As writers and as people. And as mutated fireboar hunters in the Year 2030.

OKAY BYE.

Take the red pill and you stay in Wendigland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. (I loathe that a bunch of zero-brained nitwits have taken “red pill.”) ANYWAY. Hey, hi, I’m back — finally got a new computer, summer is ending, and so begins the season of renewed work. I just did edits on two books (Dust & Grim, Magic Skeleton) and have edits on a third book (Book of Accidents), all of which are coming out in… 2021? I think? Assuming the world doesn’t end. And we have an election coming up? Aaaagh.

Regardless, it is also the season where I “travel” — meaning, I’m doing a bunch of “events” where I am “present” and where I use vigorous “quotation marks” to remind us all that “none” of this is actually very “normal.” Just the same, these events should be cool, despite their virtuality — and hey, do you remember that movie? Virtuality? I recall it being sorta fun, but I also recall it having a fucking killer soundtrack, where I first learned to love Lords of Acid.

That is apropos of nothing.

tl;dr, I’mma be some places online you can find me, and here’s where:

Weds, 9/16, 7pm: A chat with Christopher Paolini over Crowdcast via Doylestown Bookshop, in support of TO SLEEP IN A SEA OF STARS

Sat, 9/26, 7pm: A chat with Col. Terry Verts via Book Passage, in support of HOW TO ASTRONAUT

Fri, 10/16, 8pm: A chat with Cory Doctorow via Fountain Bookstore, in support of ATTACK SURFACE.

Tues, 10/20, 7pm: Keynote for attendees of the Pennsylvania Library Association conference.

Weds, 10/28, 1pm: Inside Writing talk show, episode “Writing the Weird”

Fri, 11/6, 5:15pm: Opening keynote to Writer’s Digest Conference Online

And that’s me. More details as I have them, and of course in this completely nonsensical nightmare era, everything is TBD and forever in-flux. It may still be March? Who knows!

So, Deadline got to break some very cool news.

That news is a many-headed hydra of awesomeness, and consists of three beats: first, QC has partnered with Lionsgate Television for the project; second, Glen Mazzara (The Shield! The Walking Dead! Dark Tower TV show that should’ve been picked up but wasn’t!) is on as showrunner; and third, the book is getting a sequel in 2022!

Obviously, I’m geeked as hell about this — Glen is amazing, honestly, and gets the book and has dug down to its marrow for what the show could look like. Lionsgate is the perfect choice, too, and are committed to the show in a big way, along with QC. And the sequel…

Well, listen, I always said this is a story I’d continue if it felt right, and if sales bore that out. Meaning, okay, yes, I wrote the book to be a contained story, start-to-finish, but it was one that could conceivably have a robust “second chapter” if I found the right angle, the right reason, the right throughline. Sales, as it turned out, were good — the book was a national bestseller, and has outsold everything else I’ve written with the exception of the first couple Star Wars books. Then — literally on the plane ride out to begin my book tour for it last July! — the entire story for the sequel came to me wholesale, and that was when I knew there was something there, and more tale to tell.

(Sidenote, the sequel is tentatively titled Wayward.)

On the TV side of things, the most vital of caveats applies: it doesn’t mean it’s coming to your TV anytime soon. The work now is to shop it around to to find the right network/streaming partner for it to see if they’ll bring Glen and Lionsgate’s vision of the book to light. I’m hopeful, because hot damn, what a team. I knew we were in good hands with QC and this only sweetens the sauce. But it’s by no means a guarantee. Things happen! And the exact future of TV and film production remains unsettled. But hope is on the wind, like a white fungus that will colonize your face and brain!

Uh. Ahem.

Anyway. Them’s the news! News I’ve been sitting on, in part, for almost a year, now.

More news to come, and will share when I can.

Meanwhile, I guess I should write that sequel now, huh?

Don’t forget, you can nab Wanderers if you haven’t read it yet:

Bookshop.org, Indiebound, Amazon, and more.

Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails—and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with magically enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae.

But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents. As his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse.

But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective—while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice’s death will take him through Scotland’s magical underworld, and he’ll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he’s to survive.

Glasgow is a remarkable city

Edinburgh and the Highlands get a lot of attention when folks think of visiting Scotland—and for good reason—but Glasgow has layers, like ogres and onions and parfaits. It’s the third-largest city in the UK behind London and Birmingham, but far more affordable. It has universities, plural; a 37-acre Necropolis full of spooky Victorian-era gravesites and mausoleums for all the goth vibes you need; multiple football teams to cheer (and fight) for; an eldritch organ in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum; master distillers of whisky and gin that are the envy of the world; and it used to be that all the New World’s tobacco was shipped to Glasgow first and from there to the rest of the European continent. That was a whole lot of money and cancer. It was quite the industrial hub in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the shipbuilding industry was huge for a long time, but when it collapsed a few decades ago, the city population basically halved from 1.2 million to 600k—part of what makes housing more reasonable there. Now there’s a lot of finance and tech stuff happening in Glasgow, and the city has this wonderful richness of varied architecture and community owing to its long history coexisting alongside modern buildings. Basically it’s a fantastic city in which to set an urban fantasy, because pretty much anything can happen there.

There are thousands of recipes for ink and lots of them are flammable

Accidental fires and property damage were so common in the old days that inkmakers had to do their thing outside city walls on a calm day in case shit went bad. The main culprit behind the ruckus was boiling linseed oil, which smells really terrible, produces toxic vapors, and can explode at any time. Without heating the oil sufficiently beforehand, the ink would dry too slowly, absorb oxygen, and polymerize like rubber. The industrial process now is much safer, but doing it the old-fashioned way is flirting with spontaneously combustible doom.

I learned a lot about the history of inkmaking from Ink by Ted Bishop, which I highly recommend as a good start, and it has an extensive bibliography for further reading. The widespread use of bugs (like cochineal) and squishy ocean creatures for pigments was especially surprising to me. (If you’ve ever eaten food that’s red or worn lipstick, you’ve probably been consuming or smearing uponst thy lips the colorful guts of bugs who like prickly pear cacti.) A tiny fraction of the research I did wound up being used in the book; it was a gigantic lovely rabbit hole that operates as deep background for everything Al does, and some of it that I didn’t use for the first book will likely find a place later in the series.

Public transport is pretty rad

I’ve lived in places without a decent public transport system most all my life, so whenever I’m in a city that has it, I’m easily impressed. Glasgow has a small subway that circles around the city core, but also has a rail and bus system that allows people to get around pretty well without a car—which is what we did as tourists. Most impressively, regular routes get you out of the city to charming wee villages that typically offer an old stone church, a pub, lots of sheep, and a claim that either William Wallace or Rob Roy MacGregor had been there once, which is probably true since it’s not a gigantic country and those dudes got around. The relative ease of getting around both rural and urban areas without owning a vehicle showed me that my protagonist didn’t need a car. Taxis and hitchhiking would pick up the slack whenever public transport and a stretch of the legs couldn’t handle the journey.

Haggis is freaking delicious

For reals. And I love neeps and tatties too. It gets portrayed as this stuff you only eat on a dare, and yeah, I admit I winced the first time I tried it because it had been built up in my head as A Gross Thing You Will Only Try Once, but damn, I liked it. A lot. Had it as often as I could while I was there, because it is not widely available outside of Scotland.

Now, as a counterpoint: I am not a fan of black pudding, because I tried that too and it did unkind things to my palate. Super happy for everyone who likes it, though! You can have mine. I’ll trade you for your haggis. Dang, I really need to find some where I’m at now. I miss it.

The accents are pure brilliant

Most Americans’ familiarity with the Scottish accent comes from Shrek and other entertainment, but spend some time in Scotland and you’ll recognize that there are a wide range of accents throughout the country. The Glaswegian (or Weegie) accent is its own thing, but fifty miles away in Edinburgh you get a completely different sound. Since the Weegie accent and dialect is distinct from other areas of Scotland, I needed an expert reader from Glasgow to take a look at the manuscript ahead of time and make corrections. One word that had to go that people often associate with Scotland: Laddie. I was told that word might get used in the country here and there, but was not really a thing that Weegies say. Also, calling someone a jammy bastard has absolutely nothing to do with jam or even pajamas.

I didn’t try to reproduce everything you hear—that would be a gargantuan task—but I did settle on a few words and phrases to consistently render the way a Weegie might say them to provide the flavor of the language while (hopefully) keeping it easy to read. Of course, you can listen to the audiobook narrated by Luke Daniels and appreciate the accents that way.

***

Kevin Hearne hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the author of A Plague of Giants and the New York Times bestselling The Iron Druid Chronicles series.

Kevin Hearne: Website | Instagram | Twitter

Ink & Sigil: Bookshop.org | Indiebound | Amazon | More