Archives (page 87 of 467)

April 4, 2019 / 23 Comments

Oh, Hello, What’s This? Wanderers? Maybe Coming To Your TV Or Streaming Device?

So, Wanderers, that little 800-page pamphlet I have coming out in July? It has been optioned for television by QC Entertainment (story here at Deadline). QC Entertainment (in this case, Sean McKittrick, Ray Mansfield, with Ilene Staple) really grokked the material and, for fear of being too damn punny, serve as excellent shepherds of the series. (*eyebrow waggle*) Plus, they have a pretty great track record as of late, what with films like Get Out, BlacKKKlansman, and Us. This would be their first foray into TV, and I’m thrilled they chose Wanderers for that role. Thanks to them for nabbing it, and to my agent Stacia Decker at DCL as well as Josie Freedman at ICM, for helping making this happen.

(The Mary Sue did a nice piece about this, as well!)

I should also note that we announced audio narrators, too, for the book! Onboard are two narrators (ooh): Dominic Hoffman and Xe Sands. Hoffman is a veteran not just of voice acting, but also of film, TV and stage. Xe is herself an amazing narrator, and not one unfamiliar to audio listeners of my work: she narrated both Invasive and Interlude: Tanager. You can check it out at Audible.

You can pre-order Wanderers in print, e-book (Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo), and audio. And again, if you do pre-order? You can get some swaggy swag. A pin whose full meaning will be revealed to readers of the book…

And soon we should be revealing a small bookstore tour and some other events.

So.

In the meantime, let’s rewind a little bit and talk more about that TV option.

Because at the end of the day, a lot of readers don’t necessarily understand what an option means. Which isn’t readers’ fault, of course — there’s a lot of silly inside baseball shit that goes on and it’s just not prudent to learn what it all adds up to. But given that a lot of people who come here are also writers and may want to be professional writers, it’s good to talk about this stuff.

Let’s say it up front: an option does not mean that they’re going to make a book into a TV or a movie. It certainly means they want to! Or they think it’s doable. People aren’t necessarily optioning shit just to option it — though I’m sure given a lot of free shopping agreements and such, that happens sometimes where people are just forming deep benches of material in case a certain trend takes off. But generally speaking, it’s safe to assume that an option is a marker of genuine intent and faith. Just the same: it is by no means a guarantee that the thing will ever make it to a screen. I’d argue, in fact, the chances of that happening are… nnnyeah, pretty low. I don’t say this to diminish the excellent news of the Wanderers option, and I think this book has a bit of a better shot than my others just because of the passionate team in place and the energy surrounding the book. And we are in a golden age of prestige television, with new streaming services and networks popping up all the time. That creates a deeper well of opportunity. More doors! More choices.

But even still, it has to pass through a whole monster-sized machine of content-delivery.

I am wont to say that in New York Publishing, everything is a no before it’s a yes. Meaning, you’ve got before you the standard path: there are a series of hurdles to overcome, and if a publisher says yes, you’re very likely to see your book on a shelf someday in the next year or so. That’s no guarantee the book will sell well, or that the publisher will support it, or that FIRE BEES won’t DESCEND FROM THE SKY and STING YOU WITH LAVA VENOM, but at least, y’know, there it is. Your book.

Good job. High-five.

In making film and television, things are a bit topsy-turvy: everything is yes before it’s no. You get lots of love for the work upfront — and that love is genuine! But each stage is a new chance to kinda… hip-bump the project off its track. If it ever even gets on track. And along that track, the book can lose its way at the option stage, the pre-development stage, it can even lose its chance after purchase, in proper development. Maybe there was a changing of the executive guard and now nobody at the studio is an advocate for the project. Maybe talent bailed. Maybe trends shifted. Maybe Mercury is in Retrograde or some other celestial misalignment. But that’s not the point of this post — no, we’re here to talk about film/TV options.

The way an option works then is that someone — maybe a writer, though more likely a studio or producer/production company or bag of money spiders — says, “We think we can make this into a movie or TV show,” and then they offer you an amount of money to essentially park themselves over the material like a hen over a nest of eggs. This is a limited period, usually 12-18 months, and it usually affords them one chance to re-up that option for a second term, sometimes for more money. (I had one recently that asked for a third term to be included, and we had to say no, as it would’ve put the book out of contention for years at too low a cost.)

With that deal, you usually also get a parcel of deal points should the film or show get picked up: a purchase price, plus percentages and decisions about whether or not you’re a consultant or a producer in some capacity. Maybe there are escalators or limiters in there (if X, then Y.) There is in my experience and in talking to writers and agents less money upfront for television than there is for film. But, TV can have long legs, too, in terms of multiple seasons, and given that you tend to get money also per episode, that can be lucrative in the long run. Film is often more upfront and often attracts some of the big gun talent, but at the same time, film is increasingly siloed into BIG BLOCKBUSTER PROPERTIES, so. In the case of something like Wanderers, it’s very, very hard to see it as a film. It’s TV. I wrote it like a TV show, with each “part” acting almost as a season of television, so.

There are also weird fiddly bits in these contracts, too — like, they often want comics or games rights scooped up in there. Or novelization rights, which sounds weird, because, what? How could there be a novelization of the novel? Well, it’s a theoretical novelization of the film/TV version of the novel. It’ll never really happen, because the novel already exists. But it’s a contract thing to be ironed out.

(By the way, authors? In your publishing contract — that is to say, for the book — do not give away your licensing opportunities. They will ask for things like foreign or film/TV, and do not give them up. Sadly, it’s nearly impossible to wrest audio away from them now, though I long for the day we can scrap that one back. Also beware morality clauses, which are popping up!)

(Anyway, back to the option talk.)

Once the deal is signed, what happens?

Well, sometimes a lot… and sometimes, a lot of nothing.

Ideally, an ecosystem forms around the project. Talent comes together and they start generating the shape of the thing and the specifics and eventually they shop it around to see if there’s someone who will actually pay to make this thing. (And it’s worth noting here that if that happens, if there’s a purchase, the eventual buyer can theoretically re-negotiate those deal points. This is something I did not know until recently! A studio or network can say, “We can’t pay this purchase price, so what about 30% of it, instead?” and then the writer has to say, SURE, or FUCK THAT. Sure means it gets made, but you get less than you agreed to. Fuck That means, you’re back to square one, or maybe square two, at best.)

So, in a perfect world, people start coming together to figure out the shape and direction of the thing. But it can also just sorta sit there. In fact, a lot of times? It just sorta sits there.

The original Blackbirds is a good example in all directions of how weird this process can be. In that, we got optioned by Starz, and then entered into a long period of development — scripts and location scouting and people in offices doing work, but all that was still under the option. Meaning, it had not gone to purchase and was not officially in development. (I should note here I asked the publisher of that book not to emblazon upon the cover a big COMING TO TV sigil, because an option is not a promise, but they did it anyway ha ha oh). And then one day, as I understand it, the network had a chance to grab for another more expensive show called American Gods, and they went for it. Which meant they couldn’t really afford us, and they also didn’t want to have two “dark urban fantasy shows” on the air at the same time. (And no harm no foul to this: honestly, I would’ve bought American Gods too over Blackbirds, c’mon. I’ve been waiting for that show for like, 15 years.)

So, that was that.

And now a lot of people ask me about, when will Blackbirds be optioned again? And my answer to them is… a cagey one? Because, hey, what if it was already optioned for the last year-and-a-half? What if a company optioned it, and then re-optioned it for its second term? And nobody knew because the company never announced it? That’s sometimes a thing. I’m not saying it’s a thing here! But it certainly might be. Sometimes, books are optioned and the people who option it never announce that. Which is a mistake, of course, because one of the really nice things about an announcement is that it gives the publisher something to take to their sales teams in terms of pushing the book through to distribution channels. It may help with foreign rights sales, too. And it just in general adds to the energy of the book. It’s good for everyone to announce that stuff.

*stares into camera for no reason at all related to Blackbirds*

*clears throat*

So, you make the deal, your agent (or manager, or lawyer, or all of the above) take their cuts, and you get paid… like, eventually. Sometimes you get paid fast? Sometimes you get paid slooooow. Sometimes they try to hold the option for far longer than they should, because they set weirdly artificial start dates for the option (“We don’t feel like we really began the option term until we felt it in our hearts, which happened yesterday”). Sometimes they want just a shopping agreement, which is a form of free option where the writer gets no money for giving exclusive rights for someone to shop the work around, usually for a reduced period of time. Sometimes this makes sense if, say, it’s a screenwriter with limited capital taking it around — but also recognize that they may have accrued shopping agreements for dozens of projects, because if they’re free, why not? It tends to be true that in all things (publishing and film/TV) the more money someone spends, the more attention they will give it, because it is an investment to them, not a throwaway.

Hopefully that’s a little bit illustrative. None of this is particularly concrete, and there exist shitloads of variable options not included in here. But it’s a good primer, I think, on how it works. It’s a very nice thing for an author to have the option — and ideally, an option with people who really get and care about the project (as I think we’ve done with Wanderers). We were fortunate to be in a position where multiple bidders were onboard, which is exciting. And all those people were really great, and had killer plans for the book, but you can only go with one person, and QC was the best for this book, I felt. Thanks to them for being invested in it, and it’d be great to see Wanderers on screen some day. Fingers, toes and tentacles crossed.

(Just don’t forget to read the book.)

April 3, 2019 / 2 Comments

Caitlin Starling: Five Things I Learned Writing The Luminous Dead

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?

* * *

Caves are terrifying!

I can count the number of caves I have physically been in on one hand. I’m a control freak and an indoor cat; while I enjoy rock climbing, I vastly prefer it in a climate-controlled, well-monitored gym. A dark, wet, cold cavern with uneven footing is a hard no for me.

And that was before I started doing the research.

According to some accounts, cavers on long expeditions lose up to a pound and a half of body weight per day. Per day! And then there’s The Rapture. Being away from sunlight and restricting use of your battery-powered light to active climbing time has serious psychological impacts. Your circadian rhythms are fucked and in the absence of light, the brain starts creating its own visual stimulation. It’s commonly held that everybody, after a certain point, will go through The Rapture, the mother of all panic attacks, anxiety turned up to eleven.

And then there’s everything else that can go wrong (injuries, illness, death…), and how hard it is to get your body out of that cave. Break your arm so that you can’t climb out on your own? Expect to be in there for at least a few days, if not weeks, while your companions (you have those, right? Right?) climb out to get help, then come back down and rig up a way to get you to safety.

But caves are also magical. They’re beautiful, powerful, and intrinsically fascinating to many. They’re the underworld. They’re tombs. They’re passages to a far-away land. They have seasons just like the surface does, but they look, feel, taste different. They have a respiratory system and change and grow over time. And for those of us brave enough to challenge them, they represent some of the last unexplored corners of the planet.

In other words, caves are perfect for a story.

Restriction begets creativity

Caves are intrinsically well suited to stories of terror, what with the built-in isolation and physical danger. Movies like The Descent use both to push characters to extremes, heightening interpersonal dynamics, encouraging teams to break down.

But in The Luminous Dead, Gyre is physically on her own in that cave, so there were limitations on what I could do to her. I don’t have a large cast I can kill off or maim horribly. I can play the can you trust your team card with her handler, Em, but with just two characters, I can’t rely on alliances and subsequent betrayals to keep the landscape ever-changing. I have fewer of the traditional tools available to ratchet up the tension.

So I turned to other, subtler restrictions for Gyre and, therefore, myself. Visible light is potentially dangerous in the cave, which leaves Gyre using a sonar-based reconstruction. That means there are no colors. Her suit seals her off from her surroundings, so there goes smell and some forms of touch. That makes it harder to describe a real-feeling setting for the reader, but it also means I can explore the impact on Gyre of not having those senses available to her for weeks at a time.

And what happens if one of her computer-simulated senses makes different interpretations of the world around her than her brain would have on its own?

Lay out the rules like an elaborate domino design, and then watch them fall as the plot lurches into motion.

There are lots of ways to poop

Speaking of restrictions, spending a month sealed inside an armored suit in order to minimize any heat or other bodily inputs into the cave has some interesting side effects. Feeding tubes, catheters, all gross but all sensible.

But what about pooping?

In my early drafts, I handwaved the issue, but something about the handwave was deeply unsettling. She produced waste canisters. But from where? How did that work? Was there a literal chute—

Yeah, no. That would be uncomfortable.

The answer came from a family member being diagnosed with colon cancer. This led to a lot of research on my part, totally unrelated to the book, about what treatment would likely look like. And that’s where I learned about reversible colostomies. Turns out that’s a thing! Current medicine can reroute your bowel to a port on your stomach, and then reverse it once the need for it is gone– or they can leave it in place indefinitely, if necessary. They can also make internal colostomies that you manually flush at intervals, instead of the traditional bag on the outside.

That meant, first, that I could have a much more elegant solution (the food canisters that plug into Gyre’s side for access to the feeding tube could double as waste canisters), and second, it is, thanks to its specificity, far grosser and prone to specific complications during the course of the book.

I am 100% still afraid of the dark

I get a lot of people telling me that they would love to read The Luminous Dead, but are too afraid to. And I get it! I, personally, am a complete wimp when it comes to horror movies. I have an anxiety disorder, and sometimes I can’t sleep because I’m convinced there’s an ax murderer hiding in my closet. I am twenty-eight years old and still literally afraid of the dark.

But being so (ahem) in touch with my fear makes it easier for me to channel that terror onto the page in order to scare those of you who can stomach it. I know a hundred variations of panic. I know what it feels like, how it screws with decision making, and how unpredictable rhythms of fear are so much worse (read: more interesting) than constant terror.

Sorry about the lost sleep, though.

Write the book you want to write

When I started The Luminous Dead, I didn’t think it would ever sell.

When I queried The Luminous Dead, I didn’t think it would ever sell.

When we went on submission, I didn’t think it would ever sell.

The Luminous Dead was a book I wrote because I had a few ideas while otherwise in a writing slump. I wanted to prove to myself that I could write and finish an original novel, and it wasn’t until I’d typed The End on the first draft and sat there going oh no, it’s good that I considered that other people might read it. It’s a messy, twisty book, and it’s about two women who hate and love one another– something that I assumed had limited appeal and, moreover, something that I wasn’t sure I was good enough to say anything about.

But while I was shocked to learn that I was wrong about both those things, I never once thought that I shouldn’t try as hard as I could with my funky little draft. My fears didn’t mean I shouldn’t write it, or revise it, or query it. At each step, I had a moment where I realized I owed it to myself to see just how far Gyre and Em could go.

And now the book is out in the world, and while I’m terrified nobody will read it (the fear never entirely goes away, it just becomes a familiar companion), I can say confidently that I did them proud.

* * *

Bio: Caitlin Starling is a writer of horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavors. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, comes out from HarperVoyager on April 2, 2019. It tells the story of a caver on a foreign planet who finds herself trapped, with only her wits and the unreliable voice on her radio to help her back to the surface. Caitlin also dabbles in narrative design for interactive theater and games, and is always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia. Find more of her work at www.caitlinstarling.com and follow her at @see_starling on Twitter.

Caitlin Starling: Website | Twitter

The Luminous Dead: Print | Kindle | Apple Books | Nook

April 2, 2019 / 3 Comments

Brian McClellan: Five Things I Learned Writing Uncanny Collateral

Alek Fitz is a reaper, a collection agent who works for the supernatural elements of the world, tracking down debtors and solving problems for clients as diverse as the Lords of Hell, vampires, Haitian loa, and goblins. He’s even worked for the Tooth Fairy on occasion. Based out of Cleveland, Ohio, Alek is the best in the game. As a literal slave to his job, he doesn’t have a choice.

When Death comes looking for someone to track down a thief, Alek is flung into a mess of vengeful undead, supernatural bureaucracy, and a fledgling imp war. As the consequences of failure become dire, he has few leads, and the clock is ticking. Only with the help of his friend Maggie—an ancient djinn with a complex past—can he hope to recover the stolen property, save the world, and just maybe wring a favor out of the Great Constant himself.

It’s a hell of a job, but somebody’s got to do it . . .

* * *

REAL LIFE CAN BE THE BEST INSPIRATION

Uncanny Collateral is a book about a collection agent that works for the supernatural elements of this world out of an office in a little town outside of Cleveland, Ohio. My last job before becoming a full time author was working for a collection agency in a little town outside of Cleveland, Ohio. See any similarities? Nah, me neither.

The idea came to me one afternoon while I was having lunch in the parking garage outside. I was, as you can imagine, very bored and prone to daydreaming. What if the Lords of Hell used collection agents? What if vampires did? Heck, what if the bureaucracy of the world was set up in such a way so that any supernatural element that makes deals with humanity is forced to turn to a third party whenever someone doesn’t pay up? You can’t just have the Tooth Fairy stealing into homes in the dead of night with a pair of pliers, after all. You have people who do this job, and those people are somewhere between Harry Dresden and Dog the Bounty Hunter.

SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE

Some of you may know me as a guy who writes big, fat flintlock epic fantasy novels. I made my career with the Powder Mage Trilogy—the shortest of which clocks in at a whopping 165K words (550 pages) in length. So when I sat down to write this new thing in a genre that typically floats around half that length, my initial instinct was always to go long.

And I went super long. I wrote several first acts that were each 40K words. None of these drafts satisfied either me or my agent. I fiddled. I changed the tense from first person to third and then back to first. Nothing seemed to fit. I finally sat down and just started writing without any goal or structure in mind. As the first couple of chapters flowed by, that structure began to take shape organically in the back of my head and I realized that I didn’t want to write just a typical urban fantasy. This book needed to be something that hit hard and fast, able to be read in a couple of sittings. No dissembling or wandering, no multiple viewpoints. It finally clocked in at 45K words, which is either a very long novella or a very short novel, depending on who you ask. If you ask me, the length is perfect.

THE BAD GUY IS NEVER WHO YOU THINK IT IS

Working for a collection agency always made me feel a little icky. I was now the guy on the other end of the phone calling innocent folks in the middle of the day demanding that they hand over their hard-earned money. But even with that icky feeling, I never really felt like I was the bad guy. Those innocent folks I called in the middle of the day had still signed (often stupid) contracts with my clients. I had people swear at or threaten me. I was abused, disregarded, and hung up on. I was hung up on a LOT.

The thing that always stuck with me was how debtors never blamed themselves for being talked into getting a fourth credit card or a cell phone from a carrier no one has ever heard of. And they rarely blamed the company who had hired me to collect the money. Nope, they definitely blamed me for having the gall to call them up on a Tuesday afternoon asking them to fork over $150 for that ad they placed three years ago. I enjoyed this whole process so much that I came up with a character whose job it was to track down people who’d sold their souls and then had the audacity to run for it.

And then my character punches those stupid people in the face.

SELF-PUBLISHING IS MORE WORK THAN MOST PEOPLE WILL ADMIT

I’m not a stranger to self-publishing. Since my second book came out, I’ve been writing supplemental stories in the Powder Mage Universe and putting them out for cheap. They give the readers a little something extra to explore in-world, they give me a nice little side income, and my publisher stays happy knowing I’m strengthening the overall brand.

Uncanny Collateral, however, is my first self-published stand-alone. I’m not able to lean on an existing fanbase, or piggy-back releases a couple months after my latest traditionally published novel. I didn’t even have a font to copy for the cover. Even with my previous experience, starting from scratch turned out to be a whole lot of extra work and cost quite a bit of money. It has really made me appreciate the support system that I get from my publisher—and it’ll definitely help me enjoy the higher royalty I earn putting this out myself.

THE RUST BELT IS SUPER UNDER-REPRESENTED

One of my favorite things about this book is that it’s set in my hometown. I grew up in Geauga County, Ohio, but like anyone who was raised in the boonies outside a big city, I just tell everyone I’m from Cleveland. I don’t mind admitting that I have that Midwest chip on my shoulder when I see that every big story happens in a big place. LA, Chicago, New York, DC. As a storyteller, I get why the action happens in those place, I really do. But it still annoys the hell out of me. I set out to write a story about a Cleveland guy working a Cleveland job.

And the crazy thing is how many people come out of the woodwork to tell me they share that Midwest chip and how happy they are to see an Ohio story. I’ve been talking about this book for a couple months now, and I’ve gotten a not-insignificant amount of fan mail based just on the blurb. As a rust belt kid, that really does warm my soul.

* * *

Brian McClellan is an American epic fantasy author from Cleveland, Ohio. He is known for his acclaimed Powder Mage Universe and essays on the life and business of being a writer.

Brian now lives on the side of a mountain in Utah with his wife, Michele, where he writes books and nurses a crippling video game addiction.

Brian McClellan: Website | Twitter

Uncanny Collateral: Amazon | B&N | Hardcover Direct

April 1, 2019 / 10 Comments

The Wandering Wendig Is Back From His Pacific Exile

I HAVE RETURNED FROM MY MISERABLE EXILE IN THE TROPICS. Oh, woe upon woe, what a wretched existence ’twas, what with the warm air that felt like nice bathwater, or the beautiful breezes, or the coastal waters whose blue color are almost unearthly, or the amazing food, or the cocktails, or the toes pilling in beach sand. WOEBETIDE, WAS I.

(Oh, and before we continue, none of this is a fucking April Fool’s Day prank. We are living in an unprecedented era of foolishness; no need for me to pile more on top.)

Went there for a combo-pack of vacation and some research. Big Island, Hawaii, with a brief stopover in Hawaii. Took the family, too, and had some weird heath bumps along the way — I had a bloody nose that didn’t wanna heal, my wife and I both got colds, our son had hives, then he got sick (motion-sick?) on the plane ride back, and now jet-lag has taken us all down to jetlagtown. Nothing particularly serious (outside of my son having like, no appetite since returning), but a mild blotch on an otherwise lovely time. The boy is finally coming back to normal, today, which is nice. I no longer feel like a floating head attached to a draggy pile of spine and viscera, so that’s a plus.

Anyway! On the trip we saw whales. We saw waterfalls. I saw a creepy cardboard cut-out of Jesus creepily holding a creepy cardboard cut-out of a creepy child. It was beachy and tropical.

I of course have pictures, seen mostly at the bottom of this post.

And more will surely come. (A slowly-growing album can be found here on Flickr.)

Some quick news bits, though —

Wanderers received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly! (Review here.) Best takeaway sentence is maybe this one: “This career-defining epic deserves its inevitable comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand, easily rising above the many recent novels of pandemic and societal collapse.” Though the first sentence of the review is good, too: “Wendig (the Miriam Black series) pulls no punches in this blockbuster apocalyptic novel, which confronts some of the darkest and most divisive aspects of present-day America with urgency, humanity, and hope.”

It’s a very nice review, and my first starred review from PW, I believe.

A reminder that you can pre-order the book and get a cool Shepherd pin, marking you as a Shepherd of the novel before it comes out. Also, I think we’re finalizing some bookstore visits this week. I’ll also be at BookCon, San Diego ComicCon, and DFWCon in the next few months, and I’ll be doing a reading at KGB in New York with Keith DeCandido.

A new Wanderers promo e-card, too:

I think we’ll also soon be talking about audiobook narrators and I might even have a nifty piece of news this week, as early as tomorrow. (Again, no, this isn’t April Fool’s related. It’s real. I swear!)

In the meantime, hey, have some Hawaii and California photos.

March 13, 2019 / 16 Comments

Pre-Order Wanderers, Become A Shepherd For The Book

Hey? Psst. Psst. Have you pre-ordered Wanderers yet? If you have — or if you’re planning to! — you can get a cool bonus: it’s a Shepherd pin, designed to look like an Interstate sign. Signifies that you’re one of the shepherds, walking with the sleepwalker flock, ushering them to their mysterious destination.

Thanks to Del Rey and PRH for setting this up — getting the preorder bonus is easy, just go to this website at Penguin Random House, upload an image of your pre-order receipt, and that will set you up to receive your Shepherd pin. (Note, too, if you click that link you can get a fairy tiny preview of my new author photo. Oooooh. Because who doesn’t want to look at my BEARDO FACE? Gaze upon it! Learn its secrets! Submit to its writhing cilia!)

You can preorder in print, eBook, or audio. (More robust pre-order list available at above link.)

In less than four months, the sleepwalkers walk…

March 12, 2019 / 34 Comments

Mayo On Grilled Cheese (And Other Controversial Food Opinions)

Listen, Eaters-of-Grilled-Cheese, put some fucking mayo on the outside of the bread before you pop it in the pan. Yes, instead of butter. Sure, you can still put butter in the pan if you really want. Yes, you heard me right. Mayo. Yes, that mayo, the mayo you know and love, not some different mayo. The mayo you think is gross. Yes, it’ll make your grilled cheese sandwich better. No, I have not lost my mind. I mean, maybe I have, but that’s more the fault of —

*gestures broadly*

— than anything related to food.

Okay, listen. Listen. Mayo isn’t some industrial food product. If you buy Duke’s mayonnaise (and you should), it contains the following ingredients:

Soybean oil, eggs, water, distilled and cider vinegar, salt, oleoresin paprika, natural flavors, calcium disodium EDTA.

That last one sounds weird, but it’s safe. Admittedly, “natural flavors” is a little vague, and could mean anything from “oregano” to “turns out, if you milk the sphincter of a corn-fed raccoon’s butthole, it produces a sphinctorial unguent that tastes a lot like butterscotch.” Hopefully in this case it’s more the former and less the latter.

The key thing here is that mayo is egg, fat, and acid.

When you bake, ever use an egg wash? Makes that baked good all nice and toasty-roasty brown, yeah? Same idea here. It evenly browns the outside of the grilled cheese while simultaneously lubing the pan (mayo is really just food lube, after all) and also giving you a little of that acid tang.

And by the way, also put some mustard on the grilled cheese.

Inside, not out. Mayo: outside. Mustard: inside.

It’s good. Just trust me. Dijon is good, honey mustard is fine, but honestly, so is straight-up YELLA MUSTARD. And while we’re here talking about mustard, that whole thing that In-N-Out does with cooking the patties in mustard? Yeah, that’s real tasty. Do that, too.

Let’s see, what are some other controversial food opinions I have?

You’ve seen The Sandwich. (Note: should be renamed to Chnurk Mandog to avoid any kind of cultural appropriation, my bad, oops, sorry. Not my intent!)

Cheesesteaks are the fake Philly sandwich — the real sandwich is roast pork and rabe.

Fish sauce goes in damn near everything. Sometimes Asian-style. Other times, Worcestershire. And yes, Worcestershire is fish sauce. Some people seem surprised by that? It’s umami, frandos.

“Clean” food is not a thing, that’s some Goop shit, don’t fall for it.

I do not believe a paleo or keto diet is necessarily healthy. If you like it, do it up, and I’m glad you found something that works for you. I do not believe science backs up most claims about such diets, unless you have specific conditions like epilepsy. Honestly, most diet trends are weird, and your best bet is simply the classic one: decrease calories, increase how much you move your body. But, YMMV.

I think being a vegetarian or vegan is great, both for flavor and for ethical betterment of our world. I also think a lot of vegetarians I know around these parts don’t eat enough actual fruits and vegetables, which is weird to say, but there you go. Regardless, I’ve cut meat consumption, though I won’t ever be able to cut it out entirely, because I’m a monster. (Though, I had the Impossible Burger, and holy shit. And that Just scrambled egg substitute was a capable imitation of scramby-eggs.)

We should be eating more bugs. Bugs are good, actually. To eat. Also for the world.

Pineapple pizza is fine. Relax.

And no, you probably can’t eat a pineapple the way that viral video wants you to.

Chicago deep dish pizza is delicious, also not pizza, but really just the baby of that time an inflatable mattress fucked a pan of lasagna. Still: delicious.

Kale is fine, but really needs the kale boiled out of it. Great in soup.

Don’t order steak at a restaurant. Nine times out of ten, you can do that at home.

You shouldn’t put butter on your pancakes / waffles / French toasts — and hold on, before you start yelling — because putting cold butter on the hot breakfast confection (which to be clear is really just cake) will cool it down unnecessarily. Also, you use too much syrup. I have a single fix for both of these, which is this: melt the butter you would normally use on your breakfast cake in a glass measuring cup, then add in some syrup. Real maple, if you have it. Warm that up, too, then whisk it together and serve over the breakfast cake. The fat carries flavor, which means it extends the sugar taste of the syrup like an extra warranty from Flavortown oh god I’m Guy Fieriing this I’m sorry. But still, the point stands: use a little more butter, melt it into the syrup, and you get butter flavor liquified on everything, and you can use less of the sugar stuff.

What else, what else.

Spam is good. Shut up, it is. Fried is best. And Spam musubi? Hnngh.

Your detestation of American Cheese is maybe misplaced. Yes, some of it is plasticky and creepy, but not all of it. Also it’s often the best thing to melt on a burger. I know, it’s “cheese product” and not cheese but you probably believe a buncha bullshit about this, like it’s got pieces of tire in it or antifreeze or something. Seriously, here is a very good unpacking of what American cheese actually is, and the things it is good for. And if you want an amazing melty American cheese, Cooper Cheese is your new favorite, trust me. Just don’t throw it at your cats or babies.

Your detestation of mayo might be misplaced, too. It’s fine not to like it, but to be repulsed by it — okay, sure, I blame the 1950s where American households wanted “fancy food” to go with newfound ideas of suburban wealth but didn’t know how to make it, so they just tried to fancify a bunch of stuff: “It’s Jell-O with bananas, hot dogs, and a sweetened mayo topping, all served out of crystal goblets.” But honestly, it’s good. It’s versatile. As I said, it makes for most excellent food lube. Also sometimes people make yucky faces when they see cake recipes that call for mayo, but seriously, it totally works, and helps make a very moist cake. (“Moist” is a word that has also gotten a bad wrap. DEFENDERS OF MOISTNESS, COME TOGeaaaaoh okay I see it, that is a little icky. But mayo in cake is not icky. Mayo on cake is probably nasty, though. So moist.)

Here then is maybe my most controversial food statement: a lot of the things you really hate are classist. And I’ve fallen into this trap, too, trust me, I’m no pure spirit. I’ve fallen prey to the organic hipster non-GMO thing too where it’s like, NO NO I AM AUTHENTIC AND ONLY EAT REAL [insert food product here]. Yes, some things on your grocery shelves contain a wealth of weird ingredients, half of which are corn. But many are also the products of really genius food science, and also are the things that, I dunno, low- or middle-class people can afford to eat. Sure, okay, fast food ain’t great, but consider the great many food deserts (not “desserts”) that exist across the country. Like what you like, absolutely. Dislike what you dislike, yes. Just try to recognize when your biases against “low-class” things also transfer over to people, and be aware how it looks to others when you shit on what are honestly common ingredients and foods. I’m sure I’ve said things in this very post that are privileged or classist, so again, I’m guilty as you are.

So endeth the lecture.

And so endeth my controversial food post.

I’ve probably offended *looks out over the crowd* all of you. And that’s okay! Food is personal. Food is home. And at the end of the day, we should like what we like and don’t like what we don’t like. Huzzah and hooray. Buy my books or I die. Moistly.