Being an author of books requires you to be a many-headed beast.

Don’t get me wrong — it starts with one head, one neck, one breath weapon, and at that point you are a monster singularly-tasked with doing the one thing explicit in the title: you must author a motherfucking book. That’s your first job. Your first breath weapon is ink and prose. You are a beast with that one burden:

WRITE.

THE.

BOOK.

But as with all RPGs, you are eventually going to level up.

You are going to finish the first draft of that book and you are going to be forced out of your quiet and contemplative lair where you will now be out in the greater world, stomping across the fantasy map at large, and you will suddenly find that you cannot help but see that the tasks before you necessitate the sprouting of many more heads, each with tasks to complete, each with terrifying and strange breath weapons you’ve never before seen and certainly never practiced. You’ve leveled up, but so has your quest, so have your enemies, so have all the tasks at hand.

What I’m trying to say is:

Being a writer is about more than writing.

Writing a book is about more than sitting down and writing the book.

We know this. But I don’t think we’re always so good at knowing exactly what this means — as in, there’s a lot about being a writerperson of books that nobody tells you and so there’s a whole buncha shit you simply don’t plan for. And you maaaaybe should.

One of those things you’re going to have to do, and this is honestly a hard one for a lot of writers, is learning how exactly you’re going to talk about your book.

Your story is not the only story that matters. What also matters is — perhaps ironically! — the story about the story. And, even trickier is the fact you aren’t developing a single story about your story, ohhh no. You’ve got to learn to talk about your book in a myriad of ways! You’ve got to learn to speak about it in a variety of directions depending on your needs, on the interest of the audience, on requests from publisher and venue…

(Seriously, imagine you are tasked with getting up in front of an audience — five people, fifty, or five hundred — and talking about you and your book for fifteen minutes.)

So, let’s go through this and talk about the many ways you might be expected to talk about your story. This is largely in a marketing/publicity way, but I also find that honing your sensibilities around this can help you to understand your own story better — and, the earlier you start to form the narrative around your story, the better.

Sarah McLachlan’s Building A Mystery

Here’s what’s going to happen:

People are going to ask you about your book.

I know, right? What fiends.

But they’re gonna. They’re going to want you to talk about your book at a bookstore, on a podcast, on a video, to a reading club, to a library, in a blog post, in a newsletter, at a con on a panel, at some rando who wants you to describe your book, in a box, with a fox, and to the magical cat at the center of the universe (if you are a writer and have not yet been brought before Magic Star Cat, you’ll have your chance, and do not fail this test for the judgment of Star Cat is profound).

And you’re best when you orchestrate this narrative.

Begin now, don’t get caught unawares.

Why Did You Write It?

Here is where I begin.

This is one of the hardest — and biggest — questions you can and maybe should ask yourself about the book. You’re free to wait till you have a book done, but you… can also get a jump on this question by asking yourself throughout, or even before your start. I don’t mean you should ask yourself the question as a limiting factor, as a way to interrogate whether or not you should write it, only that you’re welcome to start grappling with the Big Ideas now and not necessarily later.

Why are you writing this / why did you write this?

What drove you to choose this tale over all others?

What is your give-a-fuck factor?

It’s totally fine if the answer is, “I thought it would be a good story.” But it’s useful to you if there’s something deeper than that. Some truth hidden beneath the crust of this world… a subterranean, as-yet-unseen bit of emotional and intellectual machinery that’s connecting you to this story.

This is the backbone of any narrative you could form around your book (“the story about the story”). And this goes back to the heart of what I truly believe about authors and stories — you’re best off when you’re writing something that matters to you. Something that invokes the cuckoo dreamtangle of your brain, something that squishes your heartsblood right there onto the page. That’s what you’re going to bring to the narrative on the page, and also the narrative off and around it. Meaning, when people are like, why did you write this? or its crasser, crueller cousin, where did you get your idea? you’ll have not just some clumsy answer of, WELL UMMM I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE COOL, but you’ll have your own story to tell about it.

The Story About The Story

What happened in your life that lead to the book you wrote? What happened during the time you wrote the book? Not just process-stuff, though people sometimes want to hear that, but also life stuff — birth of a kid, death of a parent, a car accident, a foreclosure, an existential turning point, a midlife crisis, a rabid parrot attack, a nest of feral vampires moved in next door, whatever. I’m not saying to mine your life for tragedy, though alternatively, that’s what fiction often is anyway, to some degree. What were your difficulties writing the book? What was easy? What was fun, what wasn’t? What do you love about it? What scares you about it? Pick it apart. Take a scalpel and slice open the entire experience, snout to tail, and see what’s in there.

There’s a story somewhere in there.

A story in how — and why — you wrote this book.

Find it.

The Angles

Your book is also packed, presumably, with ideas. Big ones, little ones. Topics, tropes, notions.

You may be called to speak not about the book overall, but about something particular related to it.

You may be conjured from the ether to write a fucking blog post or article about it and —

Actually, hold on, let me just stop there for a second (imagine sound effect of screeching brakes). Let’s talk briefly about the efficacy of blog posts and more particularly, blog tours, for your book. From time to time a publisher / publicist will tell you, HEY, TO SELL YOUR BOOK WE HAVE SET UP THIS JUICY BLOG TOUR. And already, your butthole should be tightening with worry, because blog tours are not juicy, nor are they difficult to set up — it’s literally something anyone can do. Sure, I guess it’s nice to have a publisher do it for you, but it’s free as a breath of air. There’s no money in it, and it’s little effort to secure one, but it looks like a lot of work on their part, when the reality is, it’s a lot of work on your part. (Because you’re writing all the blogs.)

And it’s a lot of work on your part for a dubious return on that effort. This is a case of artisanal data (aka, anecdotal), but blog tours don’t nudge the needle very much. As I’ve said many times before, you are able to, with outreach on social media and blogs, to sell tens of copies of books, when a publisher really wants/needs you to sell 1000s. That’s not to say selling 10s is bad! I’d rather sell ten copies than no copies, and if I truly believe in the book, then one copy in the hands of an excited reader might over time before ten more sales as they leave a review and tell their friends. There is a definitive ripple effect, and the more eyes that see your book, the better, which I think is where the logic behind a blog tour comes from. But at the same time, it usually requires you to churn out thousands of words to non-paying outlets where you kinda tap-step-shuffle to sell your book to people you don’t know on blogs with audiences whose numbers are unknown.

Here, someone is wisely jumping in and saying, BUT CHUCK, YOU HOST GUEST POSTS BY AUTHORS, SO WHY SHOULD WE EVER DO A GUEST POST HERE. Well, maybe you shouldn’t. I can’t promise I’m moving the needle very much for you, either. I can at the least show a bit of legacy cred in that this blog has been around since October of the YEAR 2000, and in that time I’ve built up a subscription list of 9000+ readers and a steady number of non-subscribing daily visitors. But even then, maybe ten percent of the people who read your post will click through to a buy link — and what they do after they leave here, I can’t say. My point at least is that I can prove your book is in front of eyeballs.

So, writing blogs for someone else isn’t entirely useless — but you’re better off with a targeted strategy where you get on a few of the bigger ones, and not, say, a shotgun scattering of rando-blogs. This is maybe less true for debut authors, who honestly may be best scrapping for every ounce of attention they can find? I dunno.

Anyway.

Back to the overall point.

You may be called to speak or write about your book in a more directed fashion or be put on panels regarding your book — and here, it is best to consider what angles of attack you might use to talk about your book. If I wanted to talk about my Miriam Black books, I’ve got a whole bucket of things I can talk about. I can talk about death, both the mythology of it and the real-deal-holy-shit-reality of it. I can talk about birds, or psychic powers, or that time I took a research trip to the Florida Keys for The Cormorant, whatever. I’m trying now to think about all the things I can talk about with Wanderers — I did a driving trip from California to Colorado, and that’s an angle. There is a whole lot of sciencey stuff (that’s a scientific term, by the way, “sciencey”) that provides an angle. It’s a book very much about America — both in a timeless way and in a of-this-moment-in-time fashion, so there’s that. This helps me to know what panels I might be put on, what I might say when questioned about the book, or what kinds of articles or posts I might write about it.

My son’s grade school teacher is helping them learn about storytelling and one of their techniques to tell stories is to focus not on the watermelon, but on the seeds. So, you don’t have to tell the class about your entire summer vacation, but rather, the day you went to the beach, or the sandcastle you built there, or the shark that ate your mom. This is a bit like that — the larger story about your story is the watermelon, and finding these smaller bits are the seeds nestled in the melon. Also melons are bullshit. Fuck melons. Yes, that’s right, even watermelons. You heard me. I won’t be bought off by Big Melon. I WON’T BE SILENCED

Some Sample Angles

Are there themes implicit? A theme, again, is really just the argument your book is trying to make, so suss ’em out.

Is there writing craft stuff you can talk about? You might get to give a talk or do a panel at a writing con or at a genre-con about writing the book, and so it behooves you to be able to talk about the craft components — not as a declarative THIS IS HOW I DID IT NOW YOU DO IT TOO, PUNY HOOMANS, but just in a, “Here’s how this sausage was made” way.

Are there social or moral issues in the work to discuss?

Are there interesting technologies?

Fascinating mythologies?

Curious ornithologies?

SHUT UP I LIKE BIRDS

YOUR BOOK SHOULD HAVE SOME FUCKING BIRDS IN IT

I WON’T BE SILEN

The Elevator Pitch, The Logline, The Single-Sentence Stunner

Listen I just want you to know I hate this fucking part too.

I get it. You wrote a whole book. And now you’re tasked with writing a single-serving sentence meant to describe it and entice someone. If a query letter is rendering a 500-lb. pig into a 5-lb. bucket, writing an elevator pitch is rendering that same massive oinker into a single-bite amuse-bouche appetizer. Less a bucket, more a spoon.

This is hard. This hurts.

And you gotta do it.

Sometimes, it’s easy — with the Miriam Black books, it’s no big thing to say, “It’s about a young woman who can see how you’re going to die when she touches you,” and I can add in, “which helps her solve murders before they happen,” or, “and so she’s about as emotionally stable as a garage full of cats on fire.” I don’t need to get into the weeds of the plot of any of the books, I can just rattle that shit off, and you’re either into it, or you’re not. It’s like how a pop song has to have a hook? Right? A catchy bit that gets in your head, keeps circling back around. Finding the elevator pitch is that hook. Question marks are shaped like hooks for a reason, and so the hook is — if not a question itself, a mystery that embeds itself in the mental cheek of the reader and reels them in like a fish on the line.

I’m still sussing out what to say about Wanderers — the easy lead-in is, “A lone girl begins sleepwalking across the country, and every few miles, another person joins her, and they cannot be stopped, or harmed, or swayed from their path,” but it’s also a really huge book, and that bit doesn’t say anything about the so-called shepherds who travel with them, or how America responds (often poorly) to the mystery of what the sleepwalking epidemic is, why it’s happening, or if there is a malevolent or benevolent purpose. It’s really, really hard to distill 800 pages of epic spec-fic into a juicy soundbite, but that’s my challenge, not yours. Maybe just talking about the sleepwalkers is enough — it was, after all, the first image in my head that got the ball rolling for me to write this book four, maybe five years ago.

The Cover Copy

It’s not your job to write cover copy.

And yet, write some.

Again, this sucks. It’s hard. It’s still a huge pig stuck in a small bucket. (Though at least not a spoon this time.) But write the cover copy. Three good paragraphs synopsizing the story. Read those from other books in your genre, get a feel for how they’re written, and write it. Not only does this help you get a grip on the story, but it’ll also help you when the publisher writes their summary for you to know if there’s anything to improve. A good publisher will certainly consider your input. I’ve written a few that were used outright by the publisher.

(And if you haven’t sold the book yet, the result of this can go into your query letter.)

And at the very least, it’s one more thing that helps you talk about the book.

How We Talk About Our Books Matters

We like to believe that writing a book is enough. And in many ways, it is. You don’t have to do anything beyond writing and editing the book. Once it’s out there, you can stop. That’s okay. But also, your book is releasing on a literal tide of dozens of other books in its genre, hundreds of other books in general, and all that is born upon seas of countless other distractions (social media, video games, oceans of pornography).

Plus, you’re a storyteller.

It is wholly appropriate for you to figure out the story about your story.

You have one. I’m sure of it. Our books are not born of nothing. They’re made from us, and the greatest mistake we make as authors is to believe we are not an important part of that — that we don’t have anything to say, that we’re just a cog in the creative machine, that the book is a shield we hide behind. But that’s not true. The book is a part of you. And you matter! This massive story came out of you (not literally), like a weird little book baby. It’s got your memetics wound up in there, and it came out of your experiences, your ideas, your hopes and fears. There’s something in there to talk about. Just as the book has a hook, so does how you talk about the book.

You can do it.

I believe you.

I’ll see you on a panel someday, fancy author.

NOW HOLD STILL WHILE I YELL AT YOU ABOUT BIRDS AND MELONS I WON’T BE SIL

* * *

WANDERERS: A Novel, out July 2nd, 2019.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. An astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls “a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”

A sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America. The real danger may not be the epidemic, but the fear of it. With society collapsing—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers and the shepherds who guide them depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Preorder: Print | eBook

OH BOY WHAT FUN I HAD THIS WEEKEND where I was like, “Hey, what should I do first? Should I vomit profusely, or should I defecate uncontrollably? Ha ha, I’m greedy, why not both at the same time.” Some sort of stomach bug food poisoning thing hit our house — me and my son, my wife thankfully escaping the madness, at least directly — and left us all gutted husks of ourselves sitting around, trying not to move, and mainlining every comfort food episode of We Bare Bears that television could offer.

It was decidedly not awesome.

It also explains why I was not in Seattle at ALA Midwinter this week, and apologies for that — I have nothing but great love for libraries and librarians, Ye Mighty Public Service Bibliomancers, and I was legit bummed not to get to hang with some proper librarians to pitch Wanderers. But also be glad I wasn’t there to spread whatever it was I had! THAT’S HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.

I’m back now, err, at least operating at around 60%, so here we are, with the Monday news.

Black birds, circling. That’s right, the sixth and final Miriam Black book, Vultures, has landed. With it have come some very nice reviews!

Barnes & Noble SFF blog calls it “one last, wild ride” and says of the book:

“Miriam’s final ride is as blisteringly paced as anything Wendig has written, managing to expand our understanding of Miriam and her unwanted abilities even as it yanks the narrative over the finish line, dragging sparks.”

And Tor.com calls it a “perfect end” to Miriam’s story, saying:

“It’s sprawling, wandering, violent, endearing, cruel, determined, romantic, and terrifying. It is all of Miriam’s contradictions and conflicts and controversies all bundled up into 400 pages of frantic action, knife-sharp plotting, and killer dialogue. I’m sad to see this series end, but what a way to go out. It’s going to be a long time before I stop thinking about Miriam Black. A long fucking time.”

You can of course nab the book now in print, eBook [Amazon | Kobo | B&N | iBooks], or audio. And you can sashay your booty over to a place like Amazon or Goodreads to leave a review, if so inclined. For those folks waiting for a series to be complete before beginning? The series is complete, and the order of novels is as follows:

1. Blackbirds

2. Mockingbird

3. The Cormorant

4. Thunderbird

5. The Raptor & The Wren

6. Vultures.

There exist two novellas, as well — Interlude: Swallow takes place between book 3 and 4 and shows up in the Three Slices collection, and Interlude: The Tanager takes place between 5 and 6. Speaking of Interlude: Tanager…

“Sweet Bee Vomit!” is the exclamation all the cool kids are using. The second Miriam novella isn’t actually a Miriam novella, but rather, is about the character Wren from the series — in particular, it’s about her going up against some psychic-powered slasher-killers in the Midwest, and it takes place between TR&TW and Vultures. Subterranean Press has a limited print edition, and I’m told it’s close to sold out — so check it out, willya?

Who run Blurbertown? I noted that I am sitting on a very fortunate pile of kind words regarding Wanderers, and though we haven’t formally begun to share most of those, I’ll note that one sentence from Rin Chupeco stood out, and I’m really quite in love with this. Of the book, she said: “If you ever wanted to know what America’s soul might look like, here’s is its biography.” And I thought, oh no, and I also thought, oh yes, and I’m really excited by that. My favorite of her work is The Girl From The Well, so get on that if you haven’t read it.

Chuck Wendig, Apple Reviewer. Apparently my review of grocery store apples has made some newsy rounds, so… y… yay? Yay. Maybe I’ll need to find something else to review. Like more apples. Different apples. Or bees. I could fancy myself a professional bee reviewer. You don’t know.

The Ragnarok of Ragnatalk. It’s true. It’s over! It’s finally, finally done. Anthony and I did it — we completed the circuit and finished our prestige-format 10-minute-increment review of the movie Thor: Ragnarok which effectively ends our podcast. Except, will we truly be gone? Or will there be… something else to rise in its ashes? You must listen to learn.

And sweet bee vomit, I think that’s it.

Here, have a picture of a well-read apple.

 

It is a difficult thing ending a six-book series. And the difficulty of that comes from oh-so-many directions: there arrives the emotional difficulty of closing a chapter on a beloved character and story, and then there’s the difficulty of trying to tie together all the relevant threads in a satisfying way for the readers of that series, and all that’s not to mention the unquiet fear that it simply won’t make a splash, that nobody will care, that it will land with a gentle thud and be fast forgotten. Ending one book is hard. Ending six? It’s juggling chainsaws, man.

But there is also a lot of joy in it.

In this, the last chapter of the Miriam Black saga, I can say at least that I am satisfied with the story I told and the way I concluded it. The ending to this book has (roughly) been in the cards since book two, and I’ve tried very hard to bring all the elements from the books together in one. I think Vultures is one of the best books in the series, and probably has my favorite Adam Doyle cover of the lot, too. And, real-talk, I’m also a little happy just to be done. In part because this very dark, very cantankerous character has lived in my head for *checks calendar* about 11 years now, and also because dealing with the publisher and editor of the series as of the last few years has been… let us generously say, “less than ideal.” (Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you the less-than-generous version.)

I feel like I should have some grand speech, some *makes broad gesture* sweeping conclusion to how I feel, but I don’t. Not right now, at least. For now I’ll simply say that Vultures is the end of a long journey for me, one that began literally at the start of my writing career and, thankfully, did not also dovetail with the end of it. I expect too it’s the end of a long journey for the fans and readers, too, so I hope you’ve enjoyed the profane, death-brined tales of Miriam Black, and I hope that this last book meets your expectations and is provides for you not only a satisfying conclusion, but an exciting and unexpected one, to boot.

You can check it out now:

Print | eBook

I know, it’s Sunday, but I’m traveling tomorrow and can’t guarantee that I’ll write this post tomorrow, so to hell with it, you get it today.

SOME VERY QUICK NEWSBITS:

– The Internet is sometimes good. So on Friday I did an excited and yelly Twitter thread about how the human body is amazing, and from that Aaron Reynolds (of Effin’ Birds fame) said HEY I’LL TURN THAT INTO A T-SHIRT and now there’s a Meat Friends t-shirt you can buy that gives its profits (roughly seven bucks, I think) to the Girls Write Now charity.

– MTFBW, I guess. So when I was ungently nudged from working on Star Wars Marvel books like Shadow of Vader, I had spoken at the time of a “second book” that I was taken off of — and some people incorrectly assumed this was a novel. It wasn’t — it was the recently-announced TIE Fighter comic book series, which is tying into Alexander Freed’s Alphabet Trilogy novels put out by Del Rey. The series is now picked up by the most excellent Jody Houser, who is awesome and I have full confidence will do 100x the job I would’ve done on it.

– Skull bees, incoming. Hey, good news: Death & Honey, the trio of novellas put out by Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson and myself, got a nice review in Publisher’s Weekly: In this blood-soaked collection of fantasy novellas tied to larger series, three otherwise unconnected tales are linked by the thematic inclusion of murder and bees. Kevin Hearne’s “The Buzz Kill” returns to the Iron Druid Chronicles after the events of 2018’s Scourged. As narrated by the faithful sausage-loving wolfhound Oberon, druid Atticus O’ Sullivan investigates the mysterious death of a man deep in the wilds of Tasmania. In the weird west story “Grist of Bees” by Lila Bowen, retired monster-hunter Rhett Walker (last seen in 2018’s Treason of Hawks) is tempted back into service to rescue a kidnapped girl from a malevolent oracle on a mountain, a quest that leads the reluctant hero to face elements of his checkered past. Meanwhile, Chuck Wendig checks in on the world of Miriam Black in “Interlude: Tanager,” which features Wren, a psychic teenager unable to escape her life as a hunter of serial killers. While all three stories rely heavily upon previous knowledge of their respective series, they’re still accessible for newcomers. Established fans and completionists will undoubtedly enjoy seeing what these characters are up to now.

– They say Episode 2 was a myth, a legend, a ghost. Yep, that’s right, it’s another episode of the podcast Thor: Ragnatalk, where Anthony and I, still having only five minutes left of the movie to discuss, totally don’t discuss it and instead return to the forbidden territory of MISSING EPISODE TWO. *flash of lightning* *drum of thunder*

– Where’s Wendig? This week I’m traveling to NYC for Mon-Tues — no public events, doing some secret behind-the-scenes publishery things. And then at the end of the week I’m off to Seattle, where I will be hanging on Saturday at ALA Midwinter to talk about Wanderers!

– Speaking of that bison-bludgeoner… though it’s a good bit of time before Wanderers actually reaches shelves (July 2nd!) it has begun racking up a heart-swelling, swoon-worthy list of blurbs from a handful of really amazing authors: Harlan Coben, Peng Shepherd, James Rollins, John Scalzi, Charles Soule, Peter Clines, Delilah S. Dawson, Kat Howard, Fran Wilde, Christopher Golden, Erin Morgenstern, Richard Kadrey, and more. I am a very lucky boy.

– Vultures is out Tuesday. Watch this space.

– Now here is a photo of some bread and an apple hey congrats now you’re hungry.