The year is 2120. The humans are dead. The mages have retreated from the world after a madman blew up civilization with weaponized magical technology. Safe within domes that protect them from the nuclear wasteland on the other side, the mages have spent the last century putting their lives back together.

Nikolai is obsessed with artifacts from twentieth-century human life: mage-crafted replica Chuck Taylors on his feet, Schwarzenegger posters on his walls, Beatlemania still alive and well in his head. But he’s also tasked with a higher calling—to maintain the Veils that protect mage-kind from the hazards of the wastes beyond. As a cadet in the Mage King’s army, Nik has finally found what he always wanted—a purpose. But when confronted by one of his former instructors gone rogue, Nik tumbles into a dark secret. The humans weren’t nuked into oblivion—they’re still alive. Not only that, outside the domes a war rages between the last enclaves of free humans and vast machine intelligences.

Outside the dome, unprepared and on the run, Nik finds Jem. Jem is a Runner for the Human Resistance. A ballerina-turned-soldier by the circumstances of war, Jem is more than just a human—her cybernetic enhancement mods make her faster, smarter, and are the only things that give her a fighting chance against the artificial beings bent on humanity’s eradication.

Now Nik faces an impossible decision: side with the mages and let humanity die out? Or stand with Jem and the humans—and risk endangering everything he knows and loves?

* * *

THE DARK AND SPOOKY SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

In 2010, I proved to the world what a responsible adult I am by dropping out of grad school and moving to Los Angeles to try and make it as a writer.

I moved with a crew into a house with a courtyard, a mysterious black cat, and a master bedroom with a tinier, secret room you could get into via a hole in the western wall.

In the tiny room was a curtain. Beyond the curtain, a tiny door.

Behind that door? You guessed it – The Dark and Spooky Secrets of The Universe.

Staring directly into the brutal truth of reality’s most devastating revelations made me anxious, so I closed the door and decided to write MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, a novel about wizards and robots, instead.

You know why? Because I also learned that . . .

IT’S TOTALLY OK NOT TO OPEN PANDORA’S BOX

Say there’s a box, painted all your favorite colors.

Say there’s a song, coming out of the box. The closer you stand to the box, the louder the song becomes.

You like the song. You really like the song. You can’t remember where you heard it, but you’ve got the strangest feeling that it’s important. Like you loved someone once, and this song played on your first date, right before you kissed. And it was a really fucking great kiss. Like magic, you know?

Somehow, you’ve forgotten. But you know, with certainty, that if you open the box, it’ll come back to you. If you open the box, you’ll remember everything.

Just as your fingers touch the latch, you realize that neither the song nor the long-lost lover could be real. This must be a trap, made specifically for you.

So you walk away.

Nikolai Strauss, the titular mage hero of MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, begins his journey by making the choice to open his very own Pandora’s Box, in the form of a magical talking revolver. And it gets him into a hell of a lot of trouble.

It’s totally OK not to open Pandora’s Box. It’s okay not to click that link, watch that video, reply to that text, check on or reconnect with that severed toxic element in your life.

There is no magic box to make you happy. No single person or solution or change that will make this big horrible wonderful clusterfuck make sense all at once.

Anyone or anything that promises as such is likely full of shit.

Because…

UNFORTUNATELY, THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH

Throughout the fuckery of my supposed adulthood, I have found that one of the primo keys to navigating the beautiful nightmare of The Millennial Experience is getting comfortable with very slowly picking away at life’s prickles, stubborn thorn by stubborn thorn. One day at a time.

Or, often enough, one moment at a time.

Next time you find yourself panicking — like, really panicking, with that claustrophobic certainty that your life is like one of those tower defense games where you’ve been trapped in a torturously drawn out fail state you can never quite claw your way out of — set a timer for 20 minutes.

By the end of that 20 minutes, so long as you haven’t actively made things worse, you will feel better. Because you CAN claw your way through this. Because it’s so much more interesting for you to do so.

Even if everything’s totally awful right now, so long as you’re smart and decent and sharpen your nose for bullshit, there’s GOTTA be good stuff down the line, sooner or later. So you might as well keep going, right?

Of course you should! Because…

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS GO FOR MORE INTERESTING

Life’s a little more fun if you think of yourself as an explorer. Everything interesting a dusty corner on a map, vague and unexplored.

If something’s interesting to you, you’ll have the patience to really do the work of properly penciling in additional detail. You’ll have the reliable drive and motivational warm fuzzies to obsess and persevere, where others might not.

I wrote MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE because I found the idea of a conflict between realistically human wizards and complex AI villains who are more like strange synthetic gods than murderous metal skeletons super fucking interesting.

I’m pretty sure a lot of you are going to like MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. I’m also completely certain that many of you will not. But I bet you’ll think it’s interesting.

One more thing:

THE UNITED STATES IS RULED BY A VICIOUS AND MEDIOCRE OLIGARCHY

and

CAPITALISM IS THE ECONOMIC MANIFESTATION OF PSYCHOPATHY

and

HOLY SHIT, EVERYONE IS SO STRESSED OUT RIGHT NOW

Since European colonists began plundering the native civilizations as somewhere between 20-100 million indigenous American people were killed by an apocalyptically devastating plague in the 1500s, our country has had a long and continuous tradition of shitty people doing shitty things to get filthy stinking rich.

For a lot of Americans right now, it feels like the walls are closing in. For the more vulnerable of our population, this experience has been more literal.

In the best of times, this country has not been a great place to be poor, disabled, or any sort of minority. It’s especially difficult to keep it together when smug, pig-faced bigots are squealing with vicious glee as a bible-thumping rapist is appointed to our highest court and children are being stolen from their refugee parents and placed in concentration camps where they’ll be deeply and profoundly traumatized.

In the world of MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, right-wing extremists like those currently rising to power across the globe in real life were suckered into a nuclear holocaust by psychopathic wizards.

It’s a lot of fun to write about the apocalypse. But it’s another thing to live it. Especially the miserable and banal sort of slow apocalypse promised by such real world Voldemorts as newly appointed President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, who promises to brutally plunder the Amazon, effectively stripping our planet of its lungs.

And let’s not forget the white supremacist infestation sliming its way to power in our own government. They’ve got a real hard-on for Armageddon.

After the extremely stressful Nov 6^th election, if you’re in the mood for an escape from adulting, consider taking a break from all this exhausting reality with my debut novel, MAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.

It’s about wizards. And robots.

* * *

Shaun Barger is a Los Angeles-based novelist who detests cold weather, idiot plotting, and fascism. He splits his days between writing, resisting the siren’s call of Hollywood’s eternally mild summer climes, and appeasing a tyrannical three-pound Chihuahua with peanut butter and apple slices. Mage Against the Machine is his first novel.

Shaun Barger: Twitter | Instagram

Mage Against the Machine: Print | eBook

Yesterday I did a thread on Twitter — replete with animated GIFs! — that I thought was valuable enough to put here, too, at Ye Olde Blogge. So, here it is — note, the animated GIFs are missing, so you’ll have to behold the original thread for maximum effect.

*clears throat*

IN THIS TIME OF RAMPANT ASSHOLERY

IN THIS ERA OF FLAGRANT DIPSHITTERY

IN THIS UNHOLY EPOCH OF UNBRIDLED, UNMITIGATED, RECALCITRANT FUCKERY

Why make anything? Why be creative? Not how – but rather, WHY?

25 reasons, starting now.

1. Because you need to escape the fuckery, and what you make is a door. A book, a piece of art, even an excellent meal – it’s a doorway out. It’s the tunnel dug out behind the Rita Hayworth poster in your prison cell.

2. Because we need to escape, too. We need what you make. GIVE US THAT SWEET SWEET PORTAL, GIVE US A LOG FLUME RIDE TO ESCAPE THIS OUTHOUSE FULL OF CENTIPEDES

3. Because creation is #resistance. Making things is additive. And in a subtractive time such as this, you must balance the void with its opposite. That is an act of defiance. And we need more defiance.

4. Because stories and art change the world. Individually, collectively, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Art is a glorious mutator. It evolves you. It evolves us. And eventually, the world.

5. Because you Making Cool Shit also makes the Worst People mad. Good. Fuck ‘em. Make stuff that makes those monsters mad.

6. Because what you make is a carrier for ideas. A Trojan horse stuffed with your NOTIONS. Packed tight with arguments and hopes and fears and solutions. Even when you don’t mean it to be? It is.

7. Because what you do is bigger than what’s going on. What you make is about tomorrow, so the cuckoo bananapantsness of today must not stop you.

8. Because what you make will outlast this ungovernable fuckshittery. What you make are mountains. We will cling to their peaks. And when the Tides of Stupid recede, the mountains of what you made will remain

9. Because it’s therapy. It’s therapy first for you, and if you share it, eventually for us, too.

10. Because it feels good, even when it feels hard, and feeling good is, uhh, well, GOOD. I don’t have to explain that any more than I have to explain puppies or cookies. Or cookies shaped like puppies, or cookies for puppies, or puppies baked into – wait scratch that last part.

11. Because you need that dopamine hit, baby. Mm, yeah, gimme that precious dopamine ping, that rush, that PAROXYSM OF CREATIVE DELIGHT. Nnngh. Unnngh. Yeah. *bites lip*

12. Because you need to up your game. No matter the era, no matter the epoch, no matter how fucking goofy things get – YOU STILL GOTTA UP THAT GAME. And making things ups your game.

13. BECAUSE I SAID SO

BECAUSE-A YOU FACE

BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY

I’m sorry that was very rude

14. Because you making something helps encourage others to make stuff, too. They see you doing it, and they want in on that BAD-ASS MAKER ACTION. CREATIVE SOLIDARITY, MOTHERFUCKER.

15. Because if you don’t, you disappoint this already-disappointed screech owl. Look at that owl. Feel its judgment. You need to turn this screech owl’s frown upside-down. That’s on you. DO NOT SHIRK YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

16. Because seriously, what else are you going to do, just sit here and stare at Twitter? It’s like staring into a blender full of chipmunks. Jesus, go make something, if only to find something better to do for the next hour.

17. Because making stuff is SEXY.

…

Okay I don’t know if that’s true but I’m gonna go with it.

*strokes beard seductively*

*finds a half-eaten Kit-Kat in the beard*

*eats half-eaten Kit-Kat seductively*

18. BECAUSE ART IS A WEAPON. A far more effective one than your standard weapon, too. LISTEN SPITE IS A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR, OKAY. Spite is your fuel source. Art is your flamethrower. WHOOSH, MOTHERFUCKER.

19. Because when you make things, you learn things, and education is good.

20. Because when you make stuff, you improve yourself. And we need you in fighting shape. YOU MUST BE A WHETTED BLADE READY TO SLICE THROUGH SHENANIGANS, CHICANERY, AND GARBAGE.

21. Because it’s what Li’l Sebastian would’ve wanted.

22. Because time is a depleting resource. You have what you have, which is this moment, right now. There is no guarantee you can make things later. So make things now. And if that’s hard, there’s always

23. Because you’re going to fail sometimes, and that’s a necessary thing. Failure is an inoculation. It bolsters your creative immune system. And in this ENDLESS CYCLE OF STUPID, you really, really need a strong intellectual and creative immune response.

24. Because art is beauty. Stories, poetry, craftwork, food, it’s all beautiful and this ugly world needs a dollop of beauty. There is beauty in both the act and the result of making stuff. So kick the shitstorm out of the sky with an aggressive rainbow counterattack.

25. Because

FUCK

TRUMP.

You think that bloated sack of stinkbugs and hate has ever made a thing in his life? He is a sucking chest wound. He doesn’t make anything and wouldn’t know art if it parted that merkin atop his head. SO DO THE OPPOSITE OF THAT SUPPURATING ASSHOLE.

So, keep on making stuff, folks.

You have your marching orders.

Now buy my books or I die gesticulating in the void.

* * *

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound / Amazon / B&N

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It’s dangerous work under Prohibition—independent operators like her are despised by federal agents and mobsters alike—but Ellie’s brother was accepted to college and Ellie’s desperate to see him go. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances.

What Ellie doesn’t know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things—like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood. The cult is masquerading as a church promising salvation through temperance and a return to “the good old days,” so it’s hard for Ellie to take a stand against them, especially when her father joins, but Ellie loves Long Island, and she loves her family, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure neither is torn apart.

* * *

What We Read is Who We Are

Let me say first that this whole post is going be a little political, because my novel is a little political. Great, you’re probably thinking, as you’ll be reading this a week after the election, and are more than likely over reading, talking, or thinking about politics. But you see, I’m writing all this a little more than one week before the election—so how could this post, this novel, fail to be anything but political? After all, I came up with the idea for Creatures of Want and Ruin in the late summer before the 2016 election and started writing it in earnest a few weeks into November, after it was all over and America was trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. All I was thinking about at that time was politics—well, that and my good friends had a baby four days after that fateful night. But even that joyous event was politicized for me. As I held their amazing, sweet child in my arms for the first time, not 48 hours after she was born, I remember whispering to her “I will fix this for you, little girl.” I haven’t made good on that promise yet, but this novel is one the ways in which I am trying.

Anyway, Creatures of Want and Ruin is a book about a lot of things, including politics—but it is also about reading. My co-tagonists (I just learned that word!) are very different people but they are both avid readers. Ellie West fishes and bootlegs to support her struggling family; Delphine “Fin” Coulthead is a socialite who’s lost her way, but they both take time to curl up with a book—and because of that, they find some common ground; see their similarities instead of their differences. The enjoyment of the written word links them—and even ends up saving them, after a fashion. We’ve all had to take a harder look at what we’re reading over the last two years, where it comes from, and if it is written in the spirit of truth or with the desire to spread lies. But I take comfort in the fact that even in times like these one may still find pleasure and hope within the pages of a book, still be refreshed and changed by the simple act of reading, so I wanted to honor that.

Sometimes, You Have to Lose Your Way to Find Your Way

As I mentioned above, Creatures of Want and Ruin has dual protagonists, Ellie and Fin. Ellie the baywoman and bootlegger was pretty easy for me to write, in part because she’s a pulp reboot of my maternal grandmother and in part because while she is a complex character, Ellie a straightforward thinker who needs to grow in her understanding of the world, but starts and finishes the novel knowing who she is inside.

Not so much the socialite Fin Coulthead. I had to wrestle with Fin the entire time I was writing the book. I felt like every time I tried to write her I was staring at a puzzle with no edge pieces. I knew who she was, but not why. I’d gone too far down the path of writing a careless person in the vein of Daisy from The Great Gatsby… but Daisy was no heroine, and Fin is supposed to be. It was only after I had a solid enough draft to show to my agent did I figure it out… after she told me she hated Fin. And not the cool “Katniss sure is hard to like!” kind of hatred. Given how my agent has close to a 100% record of being right when it comes to problems with my drafts, I went back to Fin. I listened to what my agent disliked—basically, Fin’s absence of any interest in the world beyond herself—and worked backwards from that. In the end, I’m really happy with Fin, and I hope readers will be, too.

You Can’t Escape Yourself, And That’s Okay

These days, I mostly write fantasy… but I got my start in horror. Lovecraftian horror, to be precise. My first collection, A Pretty Mouth, is a series of interconnected Lovecraftian tales set in different time periods; the only story I’ve ever had anthologized as a Best Of is “The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad,” a riff on Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep,” but set in 1990 at a high school. That said, I don’t write so much cosmic horror these days, a decision that was both conscious and not. I wanted to explore different themes, different settings, different possibilities. And yet, one of the early reviews of Creatures of Will and Temper (the first, but largely unrelated book in this series), described the demons as “Lovecraftian,” which I found surprising as I hadn’t thought of them that way. I mean, the reviewer liked that, so good…

But it gave me pause just the same, and that’s when I realized I was writing a novel in which foul mushrooms sprout from the earth as masked, mysterious cultists terrorize the night, lighting fires and demanding a return to “the old ways”… even if the old ways they’re talking about are backwards, para-religious sentiments like keeping women at home and marginalized communities as marginalized as possible. Ah well! We all have our muses that we follow, consciously or otherwise.

America Is Hungrier Than We Knew For Hatred and Lies

In taking a “break” from writing this essay I clicked over to Facebook and saw that Florida’s agriculture secretary, Donny Purdue, described the Florida gubernatorial race as “so cotton-pickin’ important” at a GOP rally. As noted above, by the time you’re reading this we shall have seen the power of such rhetoric—whether it has rallied more to the Trumpist cause, or driven people away from it. Regardless, the last two years have been an alarming wake-up call for many as to the divided state of American ideas on race, class, gender, sexuality… even the need for a government at all.

When I began Creatures of Want and Ruin Trump was the GOP nominee; all the statisticians predicted a win for Hillary Clinton. And yet, Trump’s rhetoric, his presence, had begun to cause ripples in the ponds of my friends’ lives. We didn’t know then that those ripples would become a tsunami—we just knew that the summer of 2016 was a period in which many of us became vastly more uneasy around our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends, whether we were at family gatherings like barbecues and pool parties, or on Facebook.

I’m one of the lucky ones; I don’t have to watch my tongue or risk a goodwill apocalypse around my family, but many of my friends have not been so fortunate. Perhaps it seems odd to talk about all this in a “Five Things I Learned Writing…” essay, but this hunger I saw on the news, heard about in my friends’ stories, saw on social media—it informed a crucial family dynamic as I was outlining Creatures of Want and Ruin. I wanted to write a story with a protagonist struggling with tensions similar to what so many of my friends were dealing with, because seeing them standing up to those closest to them when the stakes were so high was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to write something to them, and for them, because of that.

America Is Starving For Love and Truth and Justice

While it’s true that I wrote Creatures of Want and Ruin while in a dark place, it is still a novel of strength and of hope. Yes, during this essay I’ve foregrounded a lot of the pain I’ve felt post-2016, for my friends and my country, but now I’ll talk about why I had the novel end in a decidedly non-Lovecraftian way, with the promise of the possibility of positive change.

Why? I’ll tell you: Because I attended the Women’s March last year and this year, where had the honor of walking beside thousands upon thousands of dissenters in Denver—and five million worldwide. Because my small rural city held a Charlottesville vigil, a Pride march that was better attended than the one held by a certain notoriously liberal city to our southwest, and our own Families Belong Together rally. Because I’ve seen friends standing tall by creating art, running for public office (and winning!), volunteering until they’re dog tired, reaching out in amazing ways to friends and strangers, and really just resisting in any and every way they can.  They take their kids to rallies, host dance parties against Trump, moderate debates between local candidates.  They aren’t backing down, so why would my characters, when faced with similar (if admittedly more supernatural) turmoil in their communities? I couldn’t dishonor the love and passion and determination I’ve seen over the last two years with a dour tale of defeat. Instead, I wanted to praise it with a pot-boiler about bootlegging liquor, kissing who you want, and fighting tyranny. It’s a novel about the power of freedom—the real kind, “freedom to,” not “freedom from,” as the all too prophetic Margaret Atwood would put it in The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a book meant to be as inspirational as it is cautionary, but it is up to you to decide if I succeeded.

* * *

MOLLY TANZER is the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award–nominated author of Vermilion (an NPR and io9 Best Book of 2015), A Pretty Mouth, the historical crime novel The Pleasure Merchant, and other works. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Molly Tanzer: Website | Twitter

Creatures of Want and Ruin: Print | eBook

I get way too excited when I find a new bird.

Which is not to say I’m literally discovering new species of birds, by the way — though if I did, do not think I wouldn’t call it the GRUFFLED WENDIGO or maybe the EAST PENNSYLTUCKY BEARDBIRD. Whatever. No, I mean, when I find a bird that is explicitly new to me. In this case: a cedar waxwing.

I found a shitload of them nomming on the many, many berries in the understory of our forest.

I snapped some pics — those can be found at the bottom of the post. And no, they’re not macro photos, but by now we’ve surely learned I care little for your HUMAN RULES.

Not much news this week —

The Daily Beast did a thing about the lack of safety around comic freelancers, and, for Obvious Reasons, I get namechecked. So go and check that out, if you choose.

Also, The Columbian recommends Damn Fine Story as a good NaNoWriMo book.

And I think that’s it.

HERE HAVE SOME BIRBS