The stories of Bryan Young

CONduit and Denver Comic-Con

2013-05-20T20:00:00.001-06:00

Well, I'm back from three weeks in Paris. I got plenty of writing done and am completely creatively rejuvenated. And, like a fool, instead of parlaying that rejuvenation into more writing, I'm doing conventions for the next two weekends.

I'll try to keep up on the writing, sure, but I'd have a hard time passing up seeing those of you who care.

CONduit is a Science Fiction convention held each year in Salt Lake City. Here's their website. They're one of the oldest cons in Utah devoted to Science Fiction (possibly the oldest?) and I'll be doing four appearances.

Saturday 11:00 am - Reading (I'll be reading a selection from Operation: Montauk and possibly a tease from my next book.)
Saturday 2:00 pm - Signing (I'll be signing and selling books)
Saturday 3:00 Geek Journalism (Bryan Young, Krystal Star & Danielle Uber Alles (Hello Sweetie))
Sunday 10:00 Star Trek, Star Wars, and J.J. Abrams (Julie Henderson, Bryan Young, Stephanie Roberts, Carl Stark)

It takes places at the Downtown Radisson in Salt Lake City and starts on Friday, May 24 and ends Sunday, May 26.

For those of you in my hometown, I hope to see you there.

For those of you in Denver or heading to the Denver Comic-con, I hope to see you the week after. You can check out my page on their site here. Last year was their first year and I have to admit that it might have been one of the best conventions I've ever been to. This year they've got guys like Dee Bradley Baker, Stan Lee and Jim Steranko and geek girl icons like Felicia Day. The sixth Doctor will even be there.

And so will I.

I'd love to sign a book for you.

It takes place May 31st to June 2nd at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver.

I hope to see you guys at either of these events. Or both.

Off to Paris

2013-04-25T12:09:00.001-06:00

For as long as I've been a writer I've desired to see Europe. There's an old idea that women have a biological clock for having children, I think that's true of writer's and visiting Europe.

From the moment I read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, Paris is something I knew I needed to see for myself and tomorrow I'm leaving on a plane to experience it for three weeks. I'll be largely disconnected to that time. I'm using the next three weeks to write a book and collect material for another, as well as drink in every sight I can imagine.

Paris is interesting to me as a filmmaker, too. I'm wondering what's caught the eye of so many of my favorite filmmakers and why they chose to set films in Paris.

I have no illusions about what Paris is. I know it's not going to be the Paris I read about at Hemingway's pen. I won't run into F. Scott Fitzgerald like Woody Allen would have me believe. It's not the old, charming city that Moulin Rouge told me it might be. No, I imagine it's like any other bustling, modern city, but with a little more character. Approaching it in that spirit, I'm hoping I can find enough there to inspire me and show me something different.

It's important, I think, as a writer, to seek out new experiences and this adventure is certainly going to be new.

When I return, I'll be putting the finishing touches on my forthcoming book, The Serpent's Head, which will be available in time for Origins.

I've got so much more going on, too, that I'm very excited to share with you. Erin Kubinek has been hard at work illustrating our presidential assassination book and it's looking fantastic. I've finished another manuscript and hope to finish yet another in Paris. Over the next couple of months I have more than a few pieces coming out in magazines and short stories in anthologies.

For all of those who read this space, this writing trip to Paris is a direct result of your support in my writing, and I thank you all for it. You've rewarded me with the enthusiasm about my work to keep me going and purchased enough books to send me. I won't forget that.

2013 is going to be the best year yet for me, and if you happen to like what I do, I think you're in for a treat, too.

(To keep up with me while I'm in Paris, I might be on Twitter and Instagram. Look me up: @swankmotron)

An Award

2013-04-04T20:35:00.002-06:00

I was informed last week that I was to be the recipient of the Mayor’s Artists Award in the Literary Arts category, presented annually by the Mayor of Salt Lake City and the Utah Arts Festival.

Here's the pertinent portions of the press release:

Salt Lake City, UT: Since 1992 the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office has recognized individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the artistic landscape of the community. The Utah Arts Festival and the Salt Lake City Mayor’s office are honored to present the Mayor’s Artists Awards during the Festival on Friday, June 21st on the Festival Stage at 8:15 pm.

This year’s five recipients are Karen Horne – Visual Arts; Mary Ann Lee – Performing Arts; Bryan Young – Literary Arts; Frank McEntire – Service to the Arts by an Individual; and RadioWest – Service to the Arts by an Organization. (Biographies below)
Bryan Young – Literary Arts

Bryan Young works across many different mediums. As an author, he’s written the bestselling comedy “Lost at the Con,” the critically acclaimed pulp sci-fi adventure “Operation: Montauk,” and dozens of short stories in various anthologies. As a film producer, his last two films (“This Divided State” and “Killer at Large”) were released by The Disinformation Company and were called “filmmaking gold” by The New York Times. He’s also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He’s a contributor for the Huffington Post and StarWars.Com, has a regular column in the Salt Lake City Weekly, and is the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! The Chicago Tribune also named him one of the “Hottest Geek Guys of 2013.”

Andy Wilson wrote about this and other honors I've won over at Big Shiny Robot! Sean Means at the Salt Lake Tribune wrote it up also.

I hope to see at least some of you at the awards ceremony at the Arts Festival. I'm told I'll be given the award and a check.

I'll have more announcements about this and other bits of news surrounding this particular announcement soon.

Writer's Rules Revisited #15

2013-03-17T22:12:00.000-06:00

It's time again for a new installment of writer's rules. It's been a while, but I've been very busy. And I think this is pretty much the last bit of procrastination before I have to finish my next novel. I've got ideas for short stories and a new book waiting to come out, but I need to finish this last one before I can move on.

But all of that is just a distraction from why you're here.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, Part 13 here, and Part 14 here.

48) Story isn't alchemy and inspiration. It's a craft, like engineering or mechanics. There are parts to everything and nothing extra. Learn your trade with this in mind.

For some reason, people equate the ability to write with the ability to read. But that's like equating the ability to write music with the ability to listen to music. It's like equating the ability to watch a commercial on television with the ability to produce that commercial. It's simply not a reasonable expectation. With all of discipline and craft that goes into film production or music creation, writing is no different.

Sure, there is lots of reading to do, but that's no substitute for actual study. You can't substitute reading for study, and you can't beat learning the nuts and bolts of storytelling. Sure, there's an element of alchemy and inspiration involved, but you're going to need to know what tools to use and how to use them properly. You need to know your way around a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a metaphor, and a simile. You're going to need to know how to adjust your language to eliminate a passive voice and pace your work so people keep reading. You need to learn why a sentence works and keeps a reader excited and hooked. Kurt Vonnegut likened every the creation of prose to building a mouse-trap and he gained that experience through experience and study.

In Conversations With Kurt Vonnegut, he told an interviewer:

"One reason I'm grateful for my magazine experience is that I was forced to make up actual stories, to invent them like mouse traps, and I regard inventions such as Frankenstein or Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde as simply marvelous inventions; they're great gadgets and they make such clear comments on life."

Every story is a specific invention with proper working parts that snap together to trap the reader into something, whether it's a point your story is trying to make, an emotion you want to convey, or an experience you want to have come across. It's not just throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. I love this analogy because it truly gets to the heart of what storytelling is: building a machine with a specific purpose.

Even if that purpose is simply entertainment, it's a specific set of tools and building materials you'll be able to use. Knowing the rules of a specific genre will largely tell you what sort of building materials and layout you're dealing with. It's architecture. Your outline is the blueprint you craft your house from. Or the chunk of marble from which you cut your sculpture.

Study every different method you can. Study every writer and their view on craft. Study the how and why of a story as much as the story itself. Reading a book passively for nothing but enjoyment won't teach you as much as dissecting every line in your favorite piece to discover why it's there and why it works the way it does. If you can find a line that doesn't have a purpose, there's two possibilities. One: you have more to learn; or two: you've learned so much that you've found what could be a mistake or an extra line in one of your favorite works of art.

49) Learn to do everything you can in the world of writing on your own. If you don't believe in your work enough to bleed for it in every way possible, why should someone else?

This point is extremely important to my mind. There are many writers who naively think they can just concern themselves with the business of writing a story and nothing else. I think those days are long over. Even if you don't want to publish your own manuscript, knowing how the business works, from first draft to eventually making its way into the hands of a reader in a different part of the world, will allow you to make better decisions in both schools of book publishing, independent and traditional.

It would be a dream for me to just crank out a manuscript, hand it to someone else, or some massive corporate machine to turn into something fit for the consumption of the world and just collect a nice paycheck. But things don't work like that. You need to be knowledgable at every level of production so you can ensure that you're not getting cheated out of royalties, lied to about sales figured, messed around with in contracts, or any other bit of standard shenanigans in any business where making money relies on the work of an artist.

For that reason, I'd suggest every writer at least once go through the system producing and publishing their own book. Hire an editor and a cover artist. Work with them to produce something marketable. Hire a publicist and craft a marketing message for your work. Go out and book your own interviews and even place your book on store shelves all on your own. It's not impossible. I've done it with my first book. And doing that gave me a greater understanding and appreciation of what goes into manufacturing a book into a final piece. I learned much about the business and wouldn't trade that knowledge for the world. I made mistakes, I learned from them. I did many things right and I learned from that, too.

But because I've gone through that trouble myself, I feel like I'm in a position to make better decisions when deciding where to place my next piece of work.

And there's something attractive in controlling every aspect of production on a piece of art you created. It's comforting to know that if the traditional publishing houses all went out of business tomorrow, you'd still know how to get a book to market and continue to earn a living as a writer. Self-reliance really does feel good.

Aside from that, it's impressive and worthy of respect to know you've cared enough for your art to get it out there all on your own. Blood, sweat, and tears for even what might objectively be a mediocre project is still incredibly impressive.

Bleed for your art and learn how to make it top to bottom. That's never bad advice.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, and Part 14 here. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

A General Update

2013-03-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

I have been incredibly busy over the last month and many things have happened. To that end, I wanted to give you all an update and let you know I'm still alive and still writing.

To start with, I've been doing a lot of revising. I finished a revision of The Serpent's Head, top to bottom, and it's now with readers and an editor as we speak. This is my second overhaul of the book and I'm really excited to bring it to you guys.

I'm also working with an artist about a cover, and I'm very excited about what's been planned there, too.

With The Serpent's Head, we're still on track for a Late May/Early June release.

Then, there's this:

Yeah. Somehow, beyond all reason, I was put on a list of The Hottest Geek Guys of 2013 by The RedEye, which is in The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times.

So... yeah. That happened.

I also took a road trip to San Francisco with my son, which was a great time. We took a tour of ILM, ate in the Lucasfilm Cafeteria, attended the season finale screening of The Clone Wars, and spent a whole day at Rancho Obi-Wan. You can hear all about those exploits on the Full of Sith podcast, or read about them over at Big Shiny Robot!

I got to reveal some exclusive scoops at Huffington Post as well, one about Tim Curry joining The Clone Wars, and another about MAD Magazine's takeover of Batman #19.

I think those might be the biggest things (aside from work) that have been occupying my time lately and prevented me from giving you guys an update. There will be a couple of announcements about more cons I'm going to. And if there are any you would like to see me at, be sure to let them (and me) know.

Is Amazon Getting into the Author Marketing Business?

2013-02-19T12:46:00.001-07:00

I just received an email and a survey from Amazon's KDP program asking me a number of questions.

Every single question was geared toward determining what I have done to market my books. From writing on this blog to hiring the lovely Consetta Parker, they wanted to know everything.

What was the hardest thing about marketing? What was the most expensive? What was the easiest? What was I doing currently?

Then, they started asking questions about how much money I was spending on such efforts.

The email stated thusly:

As part of Kindle Direct Publishing’s ongoing effort to provide you with better services and support, we would like your feedback. Please help us by taking this short online survey which asks about your opinions and experiences with book marketing and more.

I think it's a prudent move for Amazon to get into book marketing, but they don't need to do a whole lot for it. All they'd need to do is hire a few readers to elevate the good stuff on the site and review it. That would be marketing enough. If I had to pay a small premium to get Amazon to read my book and decide whether or not it should get a review and better algorithm results, I'd be happy to do it. My books are well-reviewed enough and sell well enough that I wouldn't imagine I'd have a problem qualifying for something like that.

I'm not sure what I'd pay, but if Amazon is getting into that business, I'd certainly consider it.

But are they diving in to just take more money from the stereotypical bad self-publisher who can't figure out why their book isn't selling?

I've heard that Amazon's model isn't to sell 1,000,000 copies of a bestseller, but to sell 1 copy of a million poor sellers. To them, it's all the same. If they could do the same thing with marketing services to the same people, that would make lots of financial sense.

A survey from authors who utilize their desktop publishing is clearly an exploratory step. We'll see what comes next.

Writer's Rules Revisited #14

2013-02-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

I've been catching up ever since I got back from SheVaCon, where I had a great time talking about writing. It made me realize very much that no matter how many answers I had to offer others for their writing, I would never be 100% sure of those answers in my own writing. I don't think any of us can be. We're all searching for that extra help or bit of guidance that will put our stories over the top, but we're too close to them and so we have to rely equally on our knowledge of the craft and the opinions of those we trust.

But that's neither here nor there, I suppose.

Also, for those interested, there's a new interview with me about Operation: Montauk at Indie Author Land.

And for you Star Wars fans, be sure to check me out on the Full of Sith podcast which seems to be taking on a life of its own that I can't explain.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, Part 12 here, and Part 13 here.

44) Know your mythology. Know your classic story structure. Know your Robert McKee, know your Joseph Campbell.

This one seems easy, but a lot of people seem to forget it. And while these specific examples might not ring true for you and your writing, you need to find mentors somewhere, whether its in the printed word or in person.

Knowing your mythology and your fairy tales is important. Although as writers it might feel like we're constantly reinventing the wheel, we're really not when it comes to many of the ways stories are put together. In classic mythology and fairy tales, things are tackled in a different direction than we're used to and you'll never know when an established story tool or trope is lurking for you to discover that will help you unlock the problem you're having with your current story. I'm amazed at how often I can get stuck on a story and go back and revisit tales that seem completely unrelated. Though I might not find my specific answer, reading one story will get my mind thinking and spin off another great idea, then another, and soon enough my story problem is solved.

This is where Joseph Campbell comes in. Know his work inside and out. His book The Hero of a Thousand Faces ought to be required reading in writing classes. It dissects what similar traits heroes of different archetypes all share through mythology and modern stories. Studying Campbell, in my opinion, will help you dissect and hone your craft in a way that is invaluable. If the book seems to dense for you, fall back on his PBS special with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth. That PBS special taught me as much about writing and myself as much as any creative writing course or seminar I ever took.

Aside from knowing myths and legends, knowing the art of story structure is equally important. When we build a story, we're building something of a house. And though the architecture can vary, there are hallmarks to all styles of architecture you need. We need the foundation of character, walls built of action and dialogue, and a roof of rising action and a climax. Knowing the ins and outs of story structures that can work and have worked through recorded time can help you get through points in your story where you're stuck as well. Even though you might want to drag things in a different direction, going back and relying on your craft might keep you on a path that will give you a better and more disciplined story. Read lots of books and find the spines of their story, dissect them. Watch lots of movies and do the same thing. Examining what has worked for others and applying that to your work will help you immeasurably.

That brings me to Robert McKee and his incredible book Story. Read this book. Download the audio book and listen to it in the car. Consume it. McKee is one of the most talented teachers I've ever come across. Granted, his approach is geared primarily to the art of film, but many of those principles of storytelling apply to all mediums. I'll often re-read this book as I'm in the midst of plotting a new story or screenplay, asking myself questions about it as I read McKee's analysis of stories and films through time. It's an invaluable resource and happens to fit with my views and philosophies on writing. It might not be for you, but it's worth checking out for a different perspective one way or the other.

There are a few more books I'll recommend that every writer read.

Plotting: A Novelist's Workout Guide by Aaron Allston - Aaron is a friend and I was graced with an early copy of this book and found it immensely helpful. In the same way McKee's book got me thinking about my story, Aaron approaches it from a slightly different but equally valid and important approach. This is a must read.

Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman - Goldman is responsible for some of my favorite books and movies, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man to The Princess Bride and All the President's Men. His view on writing, Hollywood, and screenplays is fresh and an entire course in writing in a neat little book. Also check out the sequel to this book.

There are plenty of other books that have inspired me as a writer, but if I were picking the top four, these are the ones I'd force on you.

45) Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back, said, "A director is always guessing." So is a writer.

I can't emphasize enough how often we don't know the answers. We just don't have them all. We're guessing. And once we realize that we don't have the answers, we open ourselves up to find the answers.

It's why we're all constantly studying. It's why we're all constantly learning.

But it also goes back to what I've said in previous rules. We look for every excuse to not start writing. Hell, me writing this series has been a massive dodge to make me feel like I'm still writing when I should be working on my novel. But one reason we don't keep writing is because we feel out of control, we feel like we're guessing, we don't feel like we know all the answers about our story. Guess what: we don't.

The part of my writing I guess and second guess the most are my beginnings. The first lines of a story are some of the most important and I get too focused on getting them right the first time. But until the story is written in full and we chisel down the marble stone of that rough draft into something presentable, we have absolutely no idea what that proper starting point might be. Sure, maybe we got it right the first time. But maybe we didn't. Intellectualizing the knowledge that the words you put down first might not be the right ones but that you can come back to them later when you do know what the right words are is incredibly helpful.

You're just guessing. We're all just guessing.

Don't let that get in your way.

46) Read your dialogue out loud to yourself to make sure it's natural. That's what Tennessee Williams did and look at how that turned out.

This rule was originally written down in my notebook when I was focusing on screenwriting. I, like many other writers, I think, are fascinated by the processes by which other writers produce their work and one day I happened upon Tennessee Williams's method of dialogue. For those who don't know, Tennessee Williams wrote some of the best plays-turned-movies you've ever seen. From A Streetcar Named Desire to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the man had an ear for dialogue and character that is hard to match.

I read that he would speak all of his dialogue to himself, tweaking it with every pass until it sounded right. And it really blew my mind at that point. Sometimes, approaching your words in a different direction or a different means of communication helps you see things you simply couldn't before.

I've since applied this to my novels as well. I'll read through whole chapters out loud, looking to fix dialogue and errors. Errors that never seem apparent on the written page always hit like a record scratch when you're reading out loud. And it forces you to evaluate every single word, which is important if you've seen a particular chapter in your book a thousand times and tend to gloss over it because you "just know that part is still right."

Do everything you can to change up how you're doing things or hear things in a different voice and think about them in a different way.

It will pay dividends in the finished product.

47) If it helps, write parts for dead actors you admire, then rewrite them in your revision for living actors. It gives you two different perspectives on the character and adds an extra, easy layer of depth.

This is a trick that I used a lot when I was starting out as a writer and still use it occasionally, but not as much. I used it primarily on screenwriting, but have done it now and again in my prose. I tend to lean on Peter Lorre far too much.

We all have our favorite actors and performances and it's very easy to visualize them doing a wide array of things. We can hear them clearly and know what they would and wouldn't say. If you have side characters that you're running into problems with, this could add that extra oomph into your descriptions of them and their dialogue that will get you through your draft.

But afterwards, you don't exactly want them to be easily recognized as the actor you fashioned them after, so in revisions, tweak and revise with a different actor in mind. How would Phillip Seymour Hoffman interpret a part written for Peter Lorre? How would Harrison Ford reinterpret a part written for Cary Grant?

It causes fascinating juxtapositions and gets your mind moving in a way that lets you get through your drafts on autopilot. Through a third or fourth revision, those problem characters should have taken on a life of their own that you won't need that Hollywood crutch, but it's a powerful tool to place in your writer's toolbox. That's the most important thing about writing is having as many tools at your disposal for as many problems as you can think of so you don't lose your momentum on a piece. It's relying on structure, craft, storytelling, character, and every trick you can think of to get that first draft produced. Until that's done, you've got nothing. With cheats like this, you're much more likely to get to that point.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, and Part 13. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

ShevaCon - Panel Schedule

2013-02-07T15:03:00.003-07:00

I'm heading out tonight for SheVaCon, which starts tomorrow in Roanoke, Virginia. I'm excited to meet people, sell and sign some books, and hang out with two of my favorite pals, Janine Spendlove and Aaron Allston.

I wanted to leave my schedule with you in case you could make it. This is a great convention with lots of great seminars to be had.

Feb 8

E-publishing how does it work - Bryan Young, Anne B Walsh, Elaine Corvidae
1:00pm-1:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Intro to graphic novel writing - Bryan Young, Elaine Corvidae
3:00pm-3:50pm Bent Mountain Room

Feb 9

How to Kill your Character - Robert West, Betty Cross, Leona Wisoker, Janine Spendlove, Gail Martin, Bryan Young, Aaron Allston, Heather E Hutsell
12:00pm-12:50pm Washington Lecture Hall

Beating Writer’s Block - Paul Dellinger, Leona Wisoker, Janine Spendlove, Betty Cross, Bryan Young, Mark Rainey, Jim Bernheimer, Heather E Hutsell
2:00pm-2:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Evolution of Weapons in Sci-Fi - Janine Spendlove, Bryan Young
3:00pm-3:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Sci-fi in Romance/Romance in Sci-fi - Janine Spendlove, Gail Martin, Bryan Young, Aaron Allston 7:00pm-7:50pm Harrison/Tyler Room

Feb 10

Writer’s Q & A with Janine Spendlove, Bryan Young, and Aaron Allston
11:00pm-12:50pm Washington Lecture Room

That last one might end up being my favorite. A general writing Q & A with myself, Janine, and Aaron? That's going to be gold, I tell you.

I hope to see many of you there. I'll have copies of all of my books on hand.

Of Trademarks and Space Marines

2013-02-07T13:20:00.002-07:00

What do you think of when you hear the term "Space Marine"? For many, it conjures images of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. For others, it's the tough hombres of the Colonial Marines in the Alien franchise. For a certain sort of gaming nerd the image conjures one of a tabletop miniature in a war game published by Games Workshop.

It's a term that's been part of science fiction for decades, but one greedy corporation is now making a grab to associate it with their use and their use alone, and siccing lawyers on anyone else who wants to use it.

The site I edit, Big Shiny Robot, brought this to my attention and it should be terrifying for writers of all stripes, but particularly indies.

Games Workshop, the company behind the Warhammer 40k game, has started asserting that ANY use of the term Space Marine infringes on their trademark and intellectual property. Recently, they went after the author MCA Hogarth and forcibly removed a self-published title on Amazon from the author.

Then it gets worse.

In their last email to me, Games Workshop stated that they believe that their recent entrée into the e-book market gives them the common law trademark for the term “space marine” in all formats. If they choose to proceed on that belief, science fiction will lose a term that’s been a part of its canon since its inception. Space marines were around long before Games Workshop. But if GW has their way, in the future, no one will be able to use the term “space marine” without it referring to the space marines of the Warhammer 40K universe.

Games Workshop is asserting that ANY use of the term is theirs. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. This is over the line.

Now, here is her cover for the book they have an issue with, Spots the Space Marine:

Does that look like anyone, in a hundred years, would confuse this with the battling tabletop marines of the Warhammer 40K universe?

No.

Never.

This is not something that we can let stand. Those of us who work in the creative industries know how difficult it can be to fight against these corporations with deep pockets and expensive lawyers, and here were are scraping together scratch for a cup of coffee. Ms. Hogarth needs help with this and can't possibly afford a lawyer to fight these guys.

What can we do?

Well, I have a proposal and it goes way beyond just writing letters, either to Games Workshop or our congressperson. It goes beyond screaming about this from the highest hilltops that we have on the Internet. An age ago, when I was in high school debate, there was a technique we'd use to spread the opposing team thin, so they couldn't possibly answer every argument, inevitably drop some, and would then lose the debate.

Let's spread Games Workshop.

Gather every artist and writer we know and let's all write or draw our own personal interpretations of what Space Marines would be. The world could always use more iterations of military space fiction, it could always use more creative interpretations of what a Space Marine could be. We'll all put our short stories for sale, make art prints and sell those. Anything you can think of.

If suddenly there are hundreds of new Space Marine stories for sale, it certainly would dilute their claim to ownership of the phrase, it would put many more ideas of what Space Marines could be into the aether, and it would force them to police more vigilantly the term. It's going to cost them more money than it's worth trying to track all of the instances down and the more of us that get shut down by their greed machine, the more negative publicity it creates for them.

Or, they could simply drop it. I understand protecting their intellectual property, but this novel, and any story that happens to use the incredibly generic term "Space Marine" simply isn't their IP.

Who's with me?

Writer's Rules Revisited #13

2013-02-05T07:37:00.003-07:00

It's been a while since we've done one of these. Aside from being busy with revisions and work and new writing, things have been hectic.

I've got a couple of other posts to point you to in case you're interested. The first is a small talk about writing I had with comics legend Walt Simonson. His take on fairy and folk tales really opened my eyes about some things and reinforced others. The other thing you might be interested in checking out is my series on Gamemastering on Big Shiny Robot! Gamemastering and storytelling are sister endeavors and there are some things I've elaborated on there that would definitely spark some creative juices for writing, though I understand if it's not for everyone.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, Part 11 here, and Part 12 here.

The first on this list is specifically for screenwriting, but the other two in this installment are applicable to writers of every medium.

So, without further ado, we begin.

* 41) Try to avoid, where possible, the thoughts and feelings of characters in the scene setups and action. It won't play visually.

There are two very good reasons for this rule. The first is that saying that a character feels a certain way in a scene setup isn't going to help the director and cinematographer figure out where to put the camera, and that's what scene directions are for. And actors are going to bring their own unique take on the character, so your preconceived notions of what they might be are going to be thrown out the window.

One of my favorite quotes from George Lucas involves this very subject. The character of See-Threepio was supposed to be a very oily used car salesman in all the original drafts of the screenplay. "Eventually, you actually take a real person and stick them into that character, and that real person brings with him or her an enormous package of reality. I mean, Threepio is just a hunk of plastic and without Tony Daniels in there, it isn't anything at all."

You have to remember that screenplays are collaborative. If you spell out every detail in your script about what is going to happen and why and how people are feeling and every look on their face, no one is going to want to make your movie. You need to write the screenplay cleanly enough that people are interested, but can see their own vision inside of it. And actors are very ego centric. They will bring whatever they feel like to the character and inhabit them so completely that I've seen some resent every bit of scene direction that gives away their emotion or emotional actions in the script.

The other very good reason is that in screenplays, more than almost any other medium, you have people scanning your text. If you have all kinds of unfilmable sentences and emotions in your scene setups, it's going to be filed in the trash pretty quickly because they are going to know that you have no idea how an actual screenplay is supposed to work.

Your story needs to be so clear with the physical actions of the character and the dialogue and the tone of the text that the emotion the characters are feeling is unmistakable.

Then you'll know that you've done your job.

42) Don't guess trends. Write what you want to read or see.

Trends move along so quickly that trying to guess at them is going to be a waste of your time. Set a trend. If you have a specific taste enough for something to write it and want to have longevity as a writer, you'll either set the trend or have the book you wanted to write available when the trend comes back in vogue.

This is especially true in the age of digital publishing and perpetual availability of everything. If you've written a werewolf love story and no one is touching them right now because they're all focused on zombie stories, it's not a big deal. For one, there will be a small market right off the bat for that werewolf love story, and if, somehow, they catch on, you're ready for it.

But think about how long it takes to write a book and edit it and move it through all the normal channels and publish it. By the time you see a trend capturing the zeitgeist of the popular culture, it would take you until the time the trend was over to be able to capitalize on it meaningfully in a way that wouldn't embarrass you too much.

So don't write what you think others want to read, per se. Write what you have a passion for. Write the book you want to read. There will be enough people like-minded enough to be interested. Trends move in cycles and if the idea and the execution is good enough, then when the cycle comes back around and your book is already out, it'll be a matter of slapping a new cover on it and you're in a very good way.

The same is true with screenplays. Trends take even longer to come around and movies take even longer to get made than books. Don't try to anticipate those things, just focus on crafting a good screenplay.

I can't emphasize this one enough.

I've seen some exceptions to this that work, but they are the exception. I've seen a couple of people capitalize very well on short-story satires of very hot and topical issues or trends, but they're short and being published digitally without support. But even then, I wouldn't recommend it. Your energy is probably better focused working on your beloved opus.

And if your focus happens to follow a major trend, understand that the trend will be passe by the time you finish. If it hasn't played out completely, more power to you. Hope for the best, but expect the worst.

43) Paranoia about theft is wasted energy.

This one breaks my heart.

I see too many people concerned that someone is out to steal their baby. There are some very easy steps you can take to prevent problems like this from happening. Registering with the WGA or the copyright office are the most effective, but possession is really the biggest factor here. (And no, mailing yourself a copy doesn't work.)

If you have a clear cut case of plagiarism, it's something you can deal with very easily. But if you're worried about someone stealing your idea, I'm convinced you have no confidence as a writer. Who cares if someone steals your story idea? First off, you're a writer. Your ideas are a dime a dozen. I literally have a bookshelf full of notebooks crammed with ideas I'll never get to. Stealing one idea from me isn't going to kill me. Secondly, even if someone did steal your idea, do you really think they'll do it as well as you? Really? Even if they do take your idea, it'll go in a completely different direction and end up completely indiscernible from your product.

I can understand being protective of something very high concept that hasn't been introduced into the aether as far as you're aware, that's a little different. But, overall, the only thing you're doing by worrying about this stuff is feeding your lack of confidence as a writer and spending anxiety on something that doesn't matter.

I'm not sure about you guys, but if I'm too filled with anxiety, my writing organs don't work as well and I get stuck more often.

So the best advice I can give is to not worry about it. Repeat after me: No one wants to steal your screenplay or your book or your story idea.

And if they do? You can sleep easy knowing that they could never execute it as well as you.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, and Part 12. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

Walt Simonson on Writing

2013-01-29T06:43:00.002-07:00

Those who know me know how much I love Marvel's Thor character. Those who know me well know how much I utterly adore Walt Simonson's run with that character. It's one of the most formative reading experiences I've ever had in comics and I really loved everything about it since I was young.

You can imagine my excitement when I was given an opportunity to speak to Mr. Simonson last year for The Huffington Post and for Big Shiny Robot!

We talked about quite a lot of things, but the interview was mainly about the re-release of his adaptation of the film Alien. Our conversation ran long though, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk to him about Thor (and his time on Marvel's Star Wars book.) Through that conversation, we talked a bit about writing his run on Thor and I felt like some of the things he said would be useful to you guys. It was certainly useful to me.

The first question I asked about was the ability to turn Thor into a frog and get away with it. In one of my favorite arcs of my run, Loki transforms Thor into a frog, where he becomes embroiled in high drama and epic conflict between the frogs and rats of Central Park. Eventually, he comes back to Mjolnir, which doesn't restore his human form, but instead bestows the power of Thor on his frog shape.

It's such a fun, well told story, but something that many people might scoff at.

I asked him how hard it was to get it past the editors. "It wasn’t," Simonson told me. "Honestly, that story is kind of a parody of heroic fiction in general of my own stories in some way, but it’s told completely straight, and one of the lessons I got from Stan and Jack in their comics, not only in Thor, but Fantastic Four and the other work they did, was that really in those books, in that time and place, you could do almost anything so long as you kept a straight face."

I think that's brilliant advice. I wonder if it still holds true with audiences as jaded as today's, but I find that if something is done honestly and openly, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and embrace it.

Mr. Simonson continued, "My feeling is you tell the story you want to tell, keep faith with the reader all the way through, and pretty much go anywhere you want if you can do that well. So in the Thor frog story, and in fairy tales everywhere. There’s a lot of folk and fairy tale stuff in the Malekith tales which are based, in part, on Celtic fairy stuff, so I could use any of the fairy tale stuff as grist for my mill. You go back to the Brothers Grimm, people often get changed into frogs, princes and stuff, so it was a standard trope, so I decided a frog was the way to go. About the time I did this, I was living about a block from Central Park, we were a little south of the reservoir where the action takes place, but I knew the park pretty well, and they were always putting in rat poison to kill the rats, and they were always putting up signs saying ‘rat poison, don’t let dogs eat anything’ that kind of stuff, so the background, how fantastical the story itself was, was quite real, and I think that was what gave the story a little gravity. Once again, it was set against stuff that had basis in reality, as goofy as the idea was. And of course, I went for the urban myth, which wasn’t Norse, or God knows where else, like the crocodiles in the New York sewers. Tall tales and legends of any sort, I love them, animal fables, going back to Aesop, so it seemed to work pretty well. It fit perfectly in the plot, as it was evolving at that point, with Loki, and I still am really pleased how that story worked out, especially that last issue where Thor is really the large frog, but the business with switching hammers how they all worked out, I was really pleased how that was able to turn out as a series of plot threads that all came together in the end."

I think more than anything, what he's saying, at least to me, is that you really have to know and be familiar with the stories that came before you. Study folk and fairy tales. Study your myth. Read lots of books and become inspired by them. In the interview, he talked about the entire idea of Thor turning into a frog was initially sparked by a desire to homage Carl Barks and actually turn Thor into a duck (Barks is famous for the Disney Duck comics, Uncle Scrooge, etc.) It's not only okay to take inspiration from these other places, it's vital. But it's also important to ground that inspiration in reality. Readers have to feel what we're trying to convey, and that sense of reality is the way to do it.

Another great bit of wisdom he conveyed to me was about story arcs. In fact, this whole conversation is what sparked me to start work on some serial fiction (which is something I'm sure you'll be hearing about soon.)

His run on Thor seems like one massive story, but the way he tells it, he looked at it as much smaller story arcs with a few recurring images he knew he wanted to pay off somehow. "Another lesson I got from Stan and Jack is that I tried to break this longer Thor story down into smaller, more digestible story lines, where the Beta Ray Bill story, which was four issues long, was the longest story arc in the entire book, as far as one single story goes. I mean, Surtur ran over a number of issues, and didn’t show up, as far as making a physical appearance, as far as where you really got to see him, and even then it was these one page things, that was more than a year to get to there. But I ran short stories, the Last Viking was a story I really liked, that was three issues, and there were other stories that were only two. So, I tried to break it down, I tried to make it so each issue had its own dynamic and felt like a complete package of something, and I tried to make each little story arc its own story that was eventually furthering the Surtur stuff until he bubbled to the surface and became the focus of the next batch of stories."

It's great advice and his work on the book was gripping the whole way through. The amazing thing about Walt Simonson is his ability to match character, words, story, and visuals together, marry them into something bigger than the sum of their parts, and create something great. He truly is one of the best writer/artists in comics and has been for longer than I've been alive. It was my great honor to speak to him, and I hope this tidbit of our conversation has inspired anyone reading this as much as having the conversation with him inspired me.

7 of 7

2013-01-28T20:45:00.001-07:00

Once again, my friend and author R.T. Kaelin has got me on another one of these chain things and this one proved too interesting to ignore. It's called 7 of 7 and it's very simple. You go to line 7 of page 7 or page 77 of your current work in progress and reveal the 7 lines that follow.

I have three unpublished books and I thought it might be fun to do this with all three of them. I figured I'd tell you a bit about each of them.

The first is 'The Serpents Head." This book is coming out in June and is an sci-fi western if with a Sergio Leone sensibility. It's about a gunslinger on the frontier of space who comes across a village massacred by a posse of creatures called Glicks. The only survivors, three young children, are taken in by the stranger, who is convinced to help them try to rescue another young girl who had been kidnapped by the murderers.

So, here's 7 lines starting with 7 lines on page 7.

A few, particularly those on the outskirts, seemed constructed of old fashioned wood. It seemed out of place because wood was so rare this far out. There were no trees here, at least not any mature enough to produce wood. Anything made of wood would have had to have been imported by starship, making it prohibitively expensive.

The stranger jumped down off his steed, grateful for the chance to stretch his legs and walk the rest of the way in. Leading his mount by the reins, he wandered closer to the building, close enough to see the wood grain was simulated on a metallic material.

Harumphing, he kept walking.

I'm in the process of revising that book, so anything could happen with this passage, up to and including total deletion. I suppose that's true of any of these excerpts.

Next up is 7 lines from the first book I ever wrote that has gone through two drastic revisions and I swear, one day, it'll get published. It's tentatively called "The Low Road to Zion," and it's about a pair of teenage boys living in Utah County in the late 90s. They sieze an opportunity to play hooky for a week and drive the midwest, learning a lot about themselves and the world in the process.

This comes from page 77:

“Is he following us? Is he there?”

He peeked through the side-view mirrors and cranked his neck, praying they weren’t being followed.

“No. He’s not chasing us. Would you relax?”

“Jesus Christ, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“That guy would have torn me apart, is why. He was a fucking gorilla. Did you see the size of him?”

Again. This book is still in revision mode and everything is subject to change, but this comes from a scene I really liked and I hope one day you'll be able to read it.

The last comes from the book I'm at the absolute end of writing. I work in a totally linear fashion and have the last chapter or two to write. At this point, it's tentatively titled "Every Night and All" or "The Aeronaut." I haven't quite decided which. The easiest way to describe it is that it's a Steampunk take on A Farewell to Arms as written by Bryan Young by way of Graham Greene.

I'll warn you, this one has had zero revision. This is straight from my brain to rough draft, but since I'm in the middle of writing it now, it's the one I like the most, so I decided to include it.

“You must have been exhausted.”

The voice to my right was thick with accent. It was the same thin-mustached fellow who’d led me to the steam shop. He sat on a bunk of his own, sipping from a tin cup of steaming coffee. He clutched the cup and a cigarette in the same hand. The tarred smoke mixed with the steam of the beverage, filling the room with a white fog.

“I hadn’t... slept. We went over the wire the day before last, were called back, then the Germans came over as soon as we were back over. We’d fought until they called a retreat and I haven’t slept.”

I hope this is a book you guys will be able to read in 2014.

Hopefully that wasn't too overwhelming. I write a lot in a lot of different genres and voices. If nothing else, I hope you guys are actually interested in reading some of these.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tag other authors, but I'd very much leave that up to you. If you're an author reading this who wants to be tagged, drop me a line with your name and your website and I'll add a link to your site on this post.

Guest Post: Janine Spendlove on Interacting with Readers

2013-01-25T16:17:00.002-07:00

My good friend and fellow author, Janine Spendlove, is taking over this space to talk to you about interacting with potential readers. She's written the incredible War of the Seasons trilogy, a YA Fantasy that's definitely worth your time. But for once, you're not here to read what I have to say, so I'll let her take it away:

Bryan Young and I met camping in line for Star Wars: Episode I. This should tell you most of what you need to know about our friendship. I count myself blessed that not only is Bryan one of my very best friends (and has been for well over a decade now), but that we've been able to work together & encourage each other on our personal "writing" journeys.

When we decided to guest post on each other's blogs I asked Bryan write a piece on finding time to write (he's one of the busiest people I know), and he asked me to write "a piece about the importance of networking with other writers and not being a jerk, since you're so good at it."

I laughed and said something along the lines of that it's not something I consciously try to do... that's just me being me.

So he followed up with writing a piece about "how to interact with potential readers at conventions."
Well, let me tell you, it's one and the same. You treat people the way YOU would like to be treated. Meaning that they are important, that what they have to say is important, and what they have to contribute is important. Even if someone is talking to you about paint peeling, and you find it to be the most asinine/boring story ever, remember that to them, it's important, so to you, in that moment that they are sharing their pain peeling story, it's important to you too.

My long winded point is be nice to people. Talk to people. Be genuine. Don't view people as potential "customers" or "connections to get in good with an editor." No wants to be a commodity, or viewed as merely a dollar sign or a bridge to someone better.

And you can't fake this - you have to really believe it. Everyone is important. Talk to people, even the ones that you think would never in any way shape or form want to read your book. Who cares? They're probably really awesome, and because you're just looking for a customer you'll never know that. Additionally, they may have some fantastic personality quirk or background that will inspire a story for you to write, or a future character trait in one of your books. Again, if you don't talk to them you'll never know.

Now I know for many people getting out there & socializing can be scary, or at the very least uncomfortable. Just remember that I'm not asking you to be BFFs with these people, just smile & say hi. Chat about a cool costume - or if they're in a costume ask if you can take their picture. Compliment them... anything, really. Just be nice, be friendly, and be genuine.

The same goes for "networking" with other authors at conventions (and for that matter, people who run conventions).

Oh, and trust me, if you're a jerk, or keep to yourself, or stab anyone in the back, or lie... people will know. Your reputation is really all you've got, and if it's found out that you're an untrustworthy douche-bag? NO ONE will want you at their con.

I love to get work done at conventions. I set up laptop, put out my sign that says "Author at work, please disturb!" (yes, I WANT to talk to people), and wouldn't you know it, I never get any writing work done, but I make friends & acquaintances.

Just through socializing with people I've been invited to be a guest at various conventions, had authors/book reviewers ask if they could read/review my book (this is huge for promotion), and built a network of artist, editing, and author professionals that I've been able to tap into for future projects.
The best part about all this is IT'S FUN!

So get off your butt, make eye contact, smile, say hi (practice at work if you need too), and above all else stop chasing the sale/networking and truly be interested in other people.

Be nice, be genuine, and have fun!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Janine K. Spendlove is a KC-130 pilot in the United States Marine Corps. Her bestselling first novel, War of the Seasons, Book One: The Human, was published in June 2011 and her next novel, War of the Seasons, Book Two: The Half-blood, was released in June 2012. She’s also had several short stories published in various anthologies. A graduate from Brigham Young University in 1999 with a BA in History Teaching, she is an avid runner, enjoys knitting, playing Beatles tunes on her guitar, and spending time with her family. She resides with her husband and daughter in Washington, DC. She is currently at work on her next novel. Find out more at JanineSpendlove.com.

Writer's Rules Revisited #12

2013-01-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

It's been incredibly busy 'round these parts lately. I've finished two more short pieces for eventual publication since last I posted. And I've been working with the artist for the cover for the next novel I'm putting out. I've also started revising that book pretty heavily based on notes from a couple of trusted advanced readers who saw...lots of room for improvement.

I've also been pretty focused on launching a new project. It's a Star Wars based podcast called Full of Sith. Our third episode just went live and I couldn't be more proud of how the show is turning out. I hope you'll check it out.

But I didn't want this to stagnate, so here we are with another installment of this writer's rules series.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here, and Part 11 here.

These next four parts are each in a drastically different direction. I assure you, though, they're all important, even if they all veer off in different directions.

37) Fairy tales and kids stories should have frightening things in them.

I believe it was Guillermo Del Toro who said that and I think it's true. If you're writing a kids story, it does everyone a disservice if there is nothing for the children to overcome. All of the best children's stories and movies I read and watched as a child had frightening elements that I had to get past.

Though it was frightening in the near term, it gave me something to feel good about when all was said and done. The more evil and tortured the event in the story, the more of an impact good overcoming will have.

Take, for example, The Empire Strikes Back. That film is nothing if not a dark and frightening fairy tale. And it has the most awful things happen to the young hero. As a child watching the film for the first time, it was crushing. But it was a lesson that carried on and helped make that saga one of the most formative of my youth. That was the story that got me thinking about all the other horrible things that happen to characters.

When you think about it, it's all the stories with the most frightening things happening to the protagonists that are the most popular. What do Ender's Game, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Star Wars all have in common?

The protagonists all have horrible and unfair things happen to them that were frightening to an audience. It forces us to empathize. With Luke, we're shown the murdered remains of his aunt and uncle. With Ender Wiggin, we're shown the bullying he endures, not just at school, but from his brother, and even in the training center that's supposed to turn him into a hero. Katniss Everdeen lives in a society where she literally has to fight to the death in gladiatorial combat for the amusement of a corrupt government to provide food for her family. Harry Potter is so discarded as a boy, his parents are dead and he's forced to live under a staircase, and when he finally escapes from that, he's tormented by schoolmates and Professor Snape.

All of these are possibly frightening to kids. And in every case these books and stories have turned into the best of what they have.

Vonnegut said (at the beginning of this list, too), "Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them--in order that the reader may see what they are made of." I think this holds doubly true for stories for or about kids.

How much do you think you'd have cared about Harry Potter if everyone were nice to him? Admit it. You hated Delores Umbridge more than Lord Voldemort. Not because Voldemort wasn't evil or terrifying, but because it was more uncomfortable to watch someone that was supposed to be a teacher and a nurturer be so mean and unfair to the hero.

But what about actual frightening images and scenes? If you can get their blood boiling, they'll be dying to get through it, just to make sure everything is going to turn out all right.

So the takeaway is to do awful things that are unfair to your characters. Don't be nice to them and have them face off against the horrifying. It'll make people like them and you'll have a better story that more people will want to read.
38) The ego is the enemy of the writer. Listen to what others have to say about your material, even if you don't agree with them. Don't assume you know better than they do.

The only time you're allowed to have an ego about your writing is when your door is closed and you're working on a first draft. If that's what you need to allow yourself to put down on paper the first draft of a work, that's what you need to give yourself. But as soon as you open that door and rejoin the real world, full of people and other writers and editors and the like, that ego needs to go away.

Nothing is more obnoxious than dealing with a fellow writer (or anyone for that matter) with a sense of entitlement and an ego the size of Gibraltar. It's worse when they try to rationalize why they don't have an ego, claiming the're some sort of Human Vulcan, relying only on logic and wisdom. It doesn't exist. There is no good reason for arrogance and your readers and your peers will be turned off by it.

As a writer, you're presumably going to be in situations where people disagree with how you've crafted your work. Here's a secret I'll let you in on: Their opinion is valid and they're probably right.

You don't have to like that assessment. But it's probably true. There are still going to be a lot of people who like your story and there will be some who don't like it. We don't write to please everyone. We write to please ourselves and one audience member. If our one audience member likes it, we're a success and the rest is icing on the cake.

If you approach the opinions of others with anything less than gratitude, though, how long do you think people will care enough to read your work to give you an opinion?

Not very long.

It's even more important to strangle your ego when you're listening to feedback from other writer's about your work in its rough form. You want to defend every choice you've made, but you can't. You need to take their feedback and simply craft something better. Defending your work isn't a valid use of time. That's your ego stealing time from you that is better spent writing or revising.

And really, it all comes down to Wil Wheaton's Prime Directive: Don't be a dick.

39) Have fun.

If you're not having fun, what's the point?

Writing hurts. I get that. Hemingway said, "There is nothing to writing. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

And it's true. But understand that we're all sadists. We get off on the pain of that hard work and find the fun in it. If we didn't find fun in it we wouldn't spend so much of our waking hours doing it. Lawrence Kasdan, one of the greatest screenwriters who ever lived, said, "Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life."

And that's true, too.

But we're that extra-studious kid who is thrilled by the act of learning.

One of the things I've learned if I catch myself not having fun with my writing is to write something else for a little while. I'm usually in the middle of a couple of different writing projects. That way I'm always working on something. But sometimes, when you're in that slog of your novel, writing some of those horrifying things you're putting your character through, you need to take a break and write something fun. This is what I love using short stories for. It allows me to put a different flavor in my mouth and have some fun writing again.

By the time I've finished the short story, my mind is itching to get back to the manuscript proper. And by then, I've given myself enough of a breather that I've worked out what's going to happen next and am excited to write it. But it's important to constantly find ways to reinvigorate that fun you felt when you initially decided to write the story. Even if the story itself isn't fun, the act of writing it should be, even though it's hard.

I know it's a confusing balance, and sometimes the cognitive dissonance of it is too much, but there it is.

Have fun.

If you're not having fun, you're wasting everyone's time.

40) Wait a while before you think you're finished with something. After a time away from the material you'll see problems you hadn't seen before.

My mind is blown every time I hear of someone who doesn't adhere to this rule. When you've just completed a manuscript for the first time, be it a novel, a short story, or a screenplay, you're still in the warrior mentality for the project. You think it's the greatest thing ever, and you're supposed to.

Optimally, you need to forget as much of it as you can so you can attack it in the next revision with a clean pair of eyes that are objective and willing to make the hard decisions. The closer you are to the first run through, the less you're likely to fix in revisions.

It is never a good idea to race a book out immediately. Give yourself time away from it, then come back after you've learned a thing or two.

In fact, for my process, I'm usually at least a book or two ahead of what I'm publishing. So far, in my writing career as a novelist, I'll write a book, then write another one before coming back to revise the first. In the meantime, I'll have been workshopping the second book in its rough state and learning things from other writers. I'll be reading books well above my level and learning tricks from there. I'll be studying writing and learning more about storytelling. And then, usually after about a year, I'll come back to it. After that much time, I'll have learned so much more about writing that I'll see mistakes I simply wouldn't have known existed if I'd've revised it immediately after finishing the first draft.

This is why you always cringe at work you've published earlier. I love Lost at the Con. I love the experience it's given me. I love how much email I get from people who loved it and I love how much attention its received. But when I go back and look at it, I cringe at things that I should have done differently. Not because the book is bad, but because I had more to learn as a writer when it was published. Everyone should be going through this. If you don't suffer from this, something is wrong and you're not learning.

Giving yourself that buffer between drafts allows you to minimize that effect. For example, the book I'm revising now, The Serpent's Head, is a book I drafted in late 2011 and I'm just now getting back to it. There are things I simply didn't know when I started it that I know now that I'm able to incorporate into the new drafts. It wouldn't be as good of a book if I would have started revising in early 2012. And the book I've been drafting now will benefit greatly with some time and experience between me and the next draft. But since it's being written at the cutting edge of my ability and skill, I'm not going to find room to improve it for a good, long while.

So, my advice is to not rush what you're working on. Give yourself some time to grow, then come back. You can attack your work with objectivity and do what's best for it, not what's best for your publishing schedule.

And what better incentive is there to get the next book done if you don't let yourself go back and revise the last one until it's drafted?

It's a brilliant scheme, really.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, and Part 11. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

2013 Convention Schedule

2013-01-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to cut down on the amount of conventions I'm doing, but nothing seems to work. I keep getting invited to cons. That's a good thing and I won't complain.

At this point, here is my schedule:

2/8-10- ShevaCon - Roanoke, Virginia
3/22-23 - Anime Salt Lake - Salt Lake City, Utah
April - SLCNerd - Salt Lake City, Utah
5/24-26 - CONduit - Salt Lake City, Utah
5/31-6/2 - Denver Comic-Con - Denver, Colorado
6/12-16 - Origins Game Fair - Columbus, Ohio
8/30-9/2 - Dragon*Con - Atlanta, Georgia
10/18-20 - Anime Banzai - Salt Lake City, Utah

This list is subject to change at any time, but I think I can say with certainty that I'll be at these conventions. It's less than I did last year, but I'm still hoping a couple of other conventions invite me to come out. (Like GMX, hint-hint.)

And there are other conventions that have very low chances of me coming to, like San Diego Comic-Con. Unless I have more than a couple of panels and a table, I just can't see myself going.

At most of these I'll be doing panels about writing, books, media, journalism, or Star Wars.

I will also be premiering a new book in time for Origins. I hope to have it ready by CONduit, but you never know. Especially since I'm spending 3 weeks in Paris to write just prior to that.

I hope to see you all at these events. And if there's a convention close to you that you'd like to see me at, let them know. Let me know, too, so when they call I know people want me there.

Writer's Rules Revisited #11

2013-01-14T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've taken some time off of this series. I'll be honest: I was using this column to procrastinate on a difficult stretch of my novel. I'm still doing it, but whenever I write one of these I turn around and put another significant dent into it. I'm almost done with it and a couple more short stories. And I've begun revising the novel I'm going to be putting out next.

Things are getting busier for me, but that's always a good thing.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, and Part 10 here.

34) It's helpful to write scenes to music of a similar tone. It will give your scene a beat and pace you don't have to think about.

This is a rule that certainly helps me out on occasion. Sometimes, when you get stuck you need to evaluate what's going on around you. Sometimes just changing the tools you're using or the tone of the music you're playing in the background is enough to help you get past a difficult moment.

Music is something incredibly subjective, though. I could give you an idea of the sorts of music I listen to to help me get into scenes, but your mileage may vary because of your own musical tastes. Really, the point of the music is to help set your mood so you can set the mood in your story.

It's remarkable how much that can work. If you need to write a scene that's morose, you find music that makes you feel that way and soak it in.

That sounds like a really basic thing that should be common sense, but I marvel at how many people haven't made the connection. Since you're reading this, I'll assume you've probably already put this one together.

But I can't tell you how many times I'll get stuck writing and know exactly what needs to come next but the words simply won't come. If you change something, just one thing, your brain is thinking from a completely different spot and you can move on. Change the music you're listening to. Put on some movie soundtracks. Anything by John Williams or Bernard Herrman is always a good bet. Howard Shore can be useful to get you into a fantasy mindset. Need something a little fun and possibly romantic and silly? Henry Mancini is your man. If movie scores don't do it for you, don't hesitate to fall back on the heavy hitters: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.

It's amazing how much that can free your brain.

If that doesn't work, change something else, too. I'm a big believer of shutting off the computer and working in longhand or on a typewriter. It's amazing how much your word count can suffer with just your computer on and your email going on in the background.

35) Qui-Gon Jinn said, "There's always a bigger fish." You will never be the best writer. There's always someone better. Learn from them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Qui-Gon Jinn gave great advice to everyone except Obi-Wan Kenobi, vis a vis, training Anakin.

"There's always a bigger fish," he stated matter-of-factly. And the same is true of writing. You're not the best. There is no such thing as "the best." Even if I were the best at some aspect of writing (and I'm not), there would be someone else who could beat the pants off of me at another aspect. We all have weaknesses and there are people out there who have strengths in those same areas.

I've seen too many writers convinced they were at the top of their game and too choked up on their own egos to recognize the qualities they could learn from a peer. Your ego is your enemy when it comes to writing. You're not better than anybody and there's something to be learned from everyone, even if it's what not to do.

Everyone can be your teacher if you can approach them willing to learn. No one is your teacher if you're closed off from that because of an over-inflated ego.

And I understand the desire to have an ego in this game. There is nothing that makes you more vulnerable than bleeding tears onto a page and showing the words to someone else. An ego can be the armour you put on to prevent all the heartache involved in every other aspect of the writing. But it's not going to help you be a better writer.

Writer's feel. We take those feelings and translate them into words in the vain hope that we'll communicate them to others and give them an understanding and the illusion of emotions they aren't physically experiencing, but the experience is no less real. If we wall ourselves off with ego and don't feel emotions, then we're not going to be good writers. Feel everything.

Take that on as a personal challenge for yourself. Find a writer whose work you despise, whom you're convinced you're better than, and find something appealing about what they do that is better than your own craft. Then, only then, will you be open to learning from them.

36) George Lucas told Irvin Kershner, "Don't expect things to work." That hold true of writing and filmmaking in every aspect, starting with the first words you put down on the page.

This rule is incredibly important for the sorts of writers who find that everything needs to be perfect by the first draft. Don't expect things to work though.

If you don't expect them to work right off the bat, you won't be put off by the toil of making it work later in the revision process. If you're convinced that it's perfect from the get go, that endless process of refinement will wear you out and you won't have the stamina to get the final product where it needs to be.

Bearing in mind that things might not work from the beginning is also permission to experiment. If you have what could be a brilliant idea, but you're not sure, it doesn't matter if you do it wrong the first time. Don't expect it to work. If it does, score. If it doesn't, you didn't expect it to work in the first place and you're not disappointed.

So much of writing is coming up with ways to tell yourself to write whatever you think of without censoring yourself. Censoring yourself in the first draft is, in my view, some sort of enemy to creativity. You need to give yourself all the license you need to ensure that you put down what your first instincts were. Then in the first round of revisions you'll over-intellectualize them and force craft and form on them. Then in the second round of revisions, you'll take the more clinical version you made in the first round and do your best to marry your first instincts to the more proper structure and form.

It's always a possibility that things won't work. You need to be ready for that eventuality.

If you can admit it to yourself from the get-go that it's an experiment and doesn't have to be permanent, it's easier to fix it when it's wrong and it's a sweeter victory when it turns out to be right.

The last bit of rule thirty six, that it starts with the first words you put down on the page, might be the most important. The first words of any text might be the most important. They draw the reader in. And what are the right first words? Or last words for that matter. The correct answer, for a first draft anyway, are any words that get you writing to the second sentence, then the third, and so on. If you expect those words to be wrong, you can always find the exact right words later.

More than anything, this is permission to keep going without fear of screwing up.

And sometimes that's just the push you need.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

Triumph Over Tragedy - Available Now

2013-01-10T14:49:00.001-07:00

Triumph Over Tragedy, an anthology for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, is officially out now. Not only does it have a new, original science fiction written by me, it also has stories by Michael Stackpole, Robert Silverberg, Michael J. Sullivan, Jean Rabe, Maxwell A. Drake, Timothy Zahn, Elizabeth Bear, Marion Zimmber Bradley, and dozens of others. 40 authors had donations accepted into this collection and I'm quite proud of the piece I contributed.

R.T. Kaelin put the whole thing together and contributed a story of his own. He's a class act.

For those of you who didn't pick it up on Indiegogo when they had the donation page up, you can get it on Amazon now.

I implore you to check it out. It's only $6.99 and contains 40 sci-fi and fantasy stories. There isn't much better you can do with bang for your buck, and all the proceeds are still going to the American Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Though it's available for Amazon, it will be on the Nook soon. Buy it. Read my story. Read the other stories. Leave a review.

My story is called "No Good Deed" and revolves around a starship captain named Arianna and her Dracadian first mate named Bolt who find a mining outpost smashed by asteroids. They're carrying a hold full of illicit cargo for a crime lord on a deadline, should they even bother to stop and help?

The Next Big Thing

2013-01-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

Fantasy Author R.T. Kaelin (check out his books, you'll like them) got tagged (by Michael J. Sullivan, no less) and he, in turn, tagged me.

What does all of that mean? What is "The Next Big Thing?" I'm glad you asked that. It's a sort of meme (explained quite eloquently by Mr. Sullivan and rather comically by Mr.Kaelin) where an author answers 10 questions about his next book and asks five other authors to do the same. It's a way for people to link to me and tell their audience to check me out and find out about my new book. It's also a way for my faithful readers to discover at least a few more projects that might be of interest to them.

So, without further ado, here are the questions:

1) What is the working title of your next book?

There's a couple that are "next" and a couple further out than that. For the purposes of this question (and most questions) I'll stick to the two closest to publication, though. The working title of my two next books are:

A Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination

and

The Serpent's Head

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

The history book was an idea my daughter inspired in me. At my writing workshop two years ago I was able to visit the museum at Ford's theatre. I came home with so many stories to tell from the place and my then 8 year old daughter was thirsty for as much information as I could find about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that was age appropriate. I was doing some research and found that there wasn't quite a book that fit the bill. After researching other attempts on the lives of President's and discovering that Davy Crockett helped foil the first attempt, I knew there was enough material to present a good book that would be fascinating for adults and kids alike. Then I brought on Erin Kubinek as the artist and she's been working on the illustrations for the last 6 months. I assure you, they're gorgeous.

The Serpent's Head is an altogether different beast. It's a sci-fi western that sprung out of my love of pulpy westerns and science fiction. A few years back I wrote it as a screenplay and the screenplay sat languishing, so I thought I'd adapt it into a book of my own. It was a little bit more challenging than I would have expected, but the reward will be well worth it.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Well, clearly the first is a history book, the second is a science-fiction western.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The history book speaks for itself, but for the sci-fi, I can pick dead actors, right? Maybe I'll mix and match.

The Stranger - Clive Owen, channeling Clint Eastwood. He's a nameless bounty hunter sort on a planet on the frontier of the galaxy.

Guerrero, The Serpent's Head -- Ron Perlman, channeling Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef. He's what we'd call the heavy.

There are four kids of varying ages in the book and more than a couple of them would be too young to pick known actors for, but for the oldest girl I'd probably pick Chloe Moretz or Elle Fanning.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The Serpent's Head is about a nameless gunslinger who takes in three kids after a massacre killed their families and helps them exact revenge against the men who did it.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

At this point, it seems like The Serpent's Head will be at the same imprint, Silence at the Library, that Operation: Montauk was put through. If not, I'll probably be putting it out myself.

I'm sending out proposals to publishers for the history book, though I expect little to come from it. The plan at this point is to set up a kickstarter to put out a very lovely hardcover edition of the book, as well as a softcover and digital copy. The art is so gorgeous, though, we're going to be doing plenty with that.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The history book took about 3 months and it was mainly research and boiling down the essence of each president's life up to the point of the assassination (or assassination attempt.) I wanted to make sure to keep the most interesting things and keep it relatable to as wide an audience as possible in hopes that parents and kids (and history buffs) would all find some enjoyment out of the book.<

For The Serpent's Head the first draft clocked in at about 60,000 words and it took me about 6 weeks.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I look back to Heinlein's work. His sci-fi seemed to come from a different direction every time. But also Louis L'amour. I remembered reading his Sackett books in high school and they filled me with all kinds of joy and helped me fall in love with the entire western genre. I know Firefly is a sci-fi western, but this book is a little bit more Sergio Leone than Joss Whedon.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The history book was singularly inspired by my daughter, Scout.

The Serpent's Head was inspired by everyone from Sergio Leone and Robert Heinlein to Joss Whedon and Louis L'amour. But I find inspiration an ill-fitting word. I'm not inspired to write, per se, writing is forced on me as a need. I just had to write. When I sat down to write this in 2011, this is what came out. It's what I wrote immediately following the first draft of the Operation: Montauk manuscript.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

For the history book, put this in your pipe and smoke it: The first would-be presidential assassin misfired his gun twice, was beat down with his cane by the president, and subdued by Davy Crockett. And can you imagine the redoubtable Erin Kubinek illustrating it?

For The Serpent's Head, I want people to see a different side of me and my writing with each new book, and I hope this one doesn't disappoint. It's funny, it's heartfelt, it's action-packed, and it's set in a science-fiction world that a lot of thought and tender, loving care was put into. My ardent hope is that you enjoy it all.

My tags:

I've been in contact with five authors about following up with their own "Next Big Thing" post, but only two-and-a-half have got back to me so far. I'll put their links below and add others as they agree. Please, go check out their websites and consider buying their books.

Paul Genesse
Chris "Ruzkin" Hayes-Kossman
Warren Murphy

And don't forget to check out R.T. Kaelin and Michael Sullivan, too.

Finding Time to Write

2013-01-01T11:27:00.001-07:00

For the first post of the New Year, with everyone eager to set New Year's resolutions they'll keep, I wanted to chime in on something I hear all too much of. I love seeing people who enjoy writing use that talent just because it feels good. For them and for me. I know far too many people who write because the act of doing so makes them happy, but they don't do enough of it (or let it fall by the wayside entirely) and they're plagued by a hundred different excuses.

If writing makes you happy, you should be writing. Period. And if your writing is good, there's no reason you shouldn't be publishing.

But the biggest stumbling block for people always seems to be, "I don't have time to write."

I'll let you in on a secret: Me neither. I make time.

I wrote and published well over 250,000 words in 2012.

In 2012, I also held a full time job. I had freelance work on top of that. On top of that, I have a family that demands attention. Dates, play dates with the kids, school functions, and on and on and on. I've got a gig hosting a pub quiz every week, and that needs to be written as well. I'm as busy or busier than you or anyone you know. And none of that is going to give in 2013. In fact, I'm going to beat this year's record and publish even more next year.

You're not too busy to write, you're simply not prioritizing it.

Repeat that in your head, because you know it's true: YOU ARE NOT TOO BUSY TO WRITE.

Hell, maybe you should put that on a post it note in plain sight. Write it in your notebook, or wherever else you'll read it. Because it's true. You're not too busy to write.

You want to know how I get so much written? I make sure I write something every day. Seven days a week. Whether it's a review for Big Shiny Robot!, my column for StarWars.Com, my column in City Weekly, or on a novel or a short story, I make sure I'm getting something written. I don't even count the writing I do in this space, or many other spaces. You should see my writing journal, too. I fill a moleskin every couple of months full of ideas and I don't count those words, either. And emails... Sweet Jesus, if I counted my emails, my annual word count would be in the millions...

To help me get the time I need, I get up early. Very early. Before everyone else is awake. Usually, I hit my favorite coffee shop from 6:00 am to 8:00 am, Monday through Friday. That gives me two solid hours, five days a week, to get some productive writing and editing done. At that early in the morning, no one is emailing me or calling me. The family is asleep, so they don't need anything. Then I head in to work. It's a perfect plan that fits my schedule and gives me regularity and discipline in my writing.

But that's not the only thing I've done to save time for writing.

I read once that Brian K. Vaughn said that Video Games were just another name for writer's block. So I cut video games out of my days and that saved loads of time. Occasionally, perhaps once a year or two, I'll cheat, but the only time I really allow myself a video game is when my kids want to play games with me and I count that as family time.

I've also made some changes to my smart phone. It doesn't ring. It doesn't vibrate. It doesn't buzz. It doesn't check for new emails unless I do it manually. That's not to say I'm difficult to get ahold of, but my writing isn't going to be interrupted by a ringing phone. My writing is more important than anyone needing to get ahold of me instantly by phone. And if anyone knows me well, they know they'll get a speedier, almost instantaneous response, in other ways. Try tweeting me. Or an email. Or all of the above. I'll almost certainly see it sooner than I'll look at my phone unless I'm actively using it.

The other thing I do that seems surprising to most people is to have too many projects going on. There's never a chance of getting writer's block if I have two stories due for publication, my novel that needs work, the serial I'm starting up, and any other number of things that need to be done. Every now and again it can feel overwhelming, but the joy and satisfaction of crossing a story or assignment off the list is easily outweighed by that mild sense of drowning.

There's also another sort of person, who has the time to write, but chooses not to out of fear of rejection or fear that they're not good enough or any of a hundred other excuses they give themselves to stop before they start. Ignore those nagging voices that tell you you can't, because you can. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time out, just make the time, sit down, and let the words flow. Eventually they'll be publishable. I promise.

More than anything, though, what it comes down to is this: Write more and do other stuff less.

You can do it. I know you can. If you say you can't, you're lying.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10 of my series of "writer's rules." If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

Writer's Rules Revisited #10

2012-12-29T14:53:00.002-07:00

I've been doing a lot more thinking and artistic soul-searching this holiday vacation than writing. It's been irksome, but there's a reason behind it. If you read my last post, you'll know the reason for it.

But the year is winding down and a number of things have some things have come into sharp focus. After you lose a friend, loved one, or colleague, you take stock in what people will have of you after you're gone and you realize you have so much more to say.

I have so much to say that it's frustrating I can't say it at the speed at which I wish to. With the New Year, I'm going to commit to writing more in 2013 than I ever have in the course of a year. Not just prose, either. Pieces for Huffington Post, StarWars.Com, Big Shiny Robot!, City Weekly, and any other outlet that will have me. I'll write and have published more short stories than ever and I'll be putting out at least a book or two.

I have to.

Time is short.

For far too many it's far too short.

One thing I'm going to work on more is this series as well. I'd like to see it done and see it added to significantly.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, and Part 9 here.

31) The hardest part of writing is starting. Finishing is no trick as you've already committed to start.

Writing is hard.

That sounds obvious, but it's totally true. Presumably, everyone reading this has had a time where they've bled for their writing. It's taken our blood and sweat and tears. Sometimes we get an idea that seems brilliant, but then we think about the torture it will take to squeeze all the right words out of us and we leave it as just that, an abbreviation of an idea scratched out in pen in our notebooks.

It happens all the time.

But getting past that one hurdle is the hardest part. Once you've committed your first words to paper, finishing is no trick. It doesn't matter if the piece doesn't take the shape you thought it was going to. It doesn't matter if the endgame doesn't resemble your idea in any way, shape, or form. What matters is that you've committed to start, and committing to start is the same as committing to finish.

Personally, I try not to have more than two outstanding projects unfinished at a time. If I have more than that, unless it's for a paid deadline, one of them tends to fall by the wayside. It not only allows me to focus on a very narrow band of writing projects, it allows me to know exactly what I'm working on when I fire up my computer, or open up my notebook, or twist a new page into the wheel of my typewriter. But the key is forcing myself to finish them before moving on to the next thing.

I have so many ideas swimming around in my head, I could start a new idea every day of the week, but if I did that I'd have a thousand beginnings and no endings. So you really do have to treat the beginning of every story as a commitment to finish that story.

As I write this, I'm this close to writing "The End" on the novel I'm working on and I'm halfway through a short story that I think is shaping up quite nicely. And I have three or four ideas of what I want to work on next, but I can't. I jut can't do it. I've committed to finish, and no matter how much it drives me crazy, I have to do it. I let the madness that comes with ideas flowing over the brim of my imagination fuel the need to finish these stories, so that when I get on to the next one it's a refreshing exercise and doesn't feel like work.

Getting to that starting line with a story you want to torture yourself with is the hard part. Finishing it and moving on to the next is a piece of cake.

We do this because we love it and because we have to, not because of some flight of fancy. If we don't start things we want to finish, we're not doing anything but kidding ourselves and everyone else.

32) Qui-Gon Jinn said of pod-racing, "Feel, don't think. Use your instincts." The same is true of first drafts.

Qui-Gon Jinn is a fount of knowledge in the living force, sure. And the beauty in his wisdom is that it can be applied to everything, including writing.

In The Phantom Menace, when he tells Anakin that he needs to feel his way through the podrace with his instincts instead of his brain, a light bulb appeared above my head. That's exactly how we have to be to work on our first drafts.

Stephen King said of first drafts that we have to, "Write with the door closed, edit with the door open" and I think these two concepts, Qui-Gon's and Kings, fit together nicely.

It's incredibly difficult to pour our hearts out when we're exposed. Writing is a vulnerable enough thing, we need to imagine that we're doing it with the door closed, away from critical, prying eyes. And we need to trust our instincts to put down what's in our heart and our head down on the page first. Our minds and the critical gaze of others can enter into the process after we've completed our draft and made those first choices.

Our instincts will take us to places our logical mind will never let us go. Too many of us self-edit and say things as we write like, "That might be cheesy," or, "That bit of prose might be too flowery," or, "This piece of story is too serious for a joke or a bit of romance," and on and on and on. Turn that off for your first draft. I've found, over the years, that the things that I self-edit before they make it onto the page usually have to be added back in later in revisions anyway. Or I find that when I trust my instincts and go with something that I might think is silly, or too over-the-top, it finds its way of making every cut of the piece with only minor alterations.

And from these instincts our stories sometimes take turns we didn't expect. We need to follow these side-paths and just write.

We know story inside and out. There's no reason to drown that voice at the earliest stages of work. We need to close the door on the critical part of ourselves every bit as much as we close it on everyone else, in order that we may get the purest words and story on the page. We might have a lot more work to do in the editing phase, but it will be worth it.

33) 32 is only true if you have an outline and a roadmap. Otherwise it's just meandering drivel.

I think this is also true.

You need a skeleton to flesh out, otherwise all of your instincts will take you on a flowery journey to nowhere. You have to know something about your story before you start. You need to know at least who your character is. What's the setting? What is the plan for the end? These are questions you have to know before you start, otherwise all the best instincts in the world won't serve you one bit of good.

This, like everything in writing, is also a careful balancing act. You need enough of a structure to hang your story, but it can't be so rigid that your instincts aren't given room to move to around and to breath. It needs to be loose enough that the direction is the same, but a couple of turns down the road aren't going to screw everything up completely.

And who knows, maybe your instincts throw you enough curveballs that you find that the story you set out to write isn't really the one you wanted to tell. But you wouldn't know it if you didn't have a baseline to start from.

The bottom line is that you have to have some sort of plan. It doesn't matter if it's an interesting conundrum for a character you just sketched out or a scene by scene breakdown on 3x5 index cards, start with the structure, then move to the prose.

With a map you can always find your way.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

IN MEMORIAM: David Fetzer

2012-12-21T15:13:00.001-07:00

Jitterbug from travis on Vimeo.

Posted above is a short film starring David Fetzer. The best word to describe him would always be adorable. Or kind. Or caring. Or incredible.

David had a way of making everyone feel like he was your best friend, but not in a way that was disingenuous. I'd never call myself David's best or closest friend but he went out of his way to make me know he cared. He might well have been the warmest, most caring person I've ever met in my entire life. I've never met a person with a bad thing to say about him.

I met David working on the film Killer at Large, we hired him to do a bunch of different things on the film, as well as act in it. David was a hell of an actor. His work on stage or screen was powerful and soulful and for Killer at Large we shot a number of scenes from Neil LaBute's play Fat Pig, with David in the lead. It was incredible to see such a commanding performance that was almost entirely private, for our eyes only. I'm looking to see if I can find the footage and edit so it can be shared.

We spent the next years working with David from then to now, calling him every time a film project came up. He'd call me every time there was something I could help with. We helped each other get some incredible projects off the ground.

He was an incredible influence in our writing groups and script-readings. We used to have them monthly and David's advice on writing and outlook on creativity was not only appreciated, but valued and cherished.

I am a better artist for having known David, and the entire world is poorer for his loss.

He was unique and was incredible at whatever he set his mind to, whether it was brewing beer, acting, writing, or playing music:

Seeing his band, Mushman, play at a small venue in Sundance a few years back was a highlight for me. Not just because I was able to see David perform, but for the beers afterward and the always-wonderful conversation.

David inspired me as a creative person, as he inspired many, many others. More recently, I've been working on a screenplay based on one of my short stories and had over the last year been bouncing ideas and spitballing the structure back and forth with David and he was invaluable. His intelligence, knowledge of story and enthusiasm made you feel like anything could happen. We had plans to eventually make the movie when I finished the screenplay. David Fetzer was always going to be a part of that.

I found out last night that David passed away unexpectedly, mere hours into his 30s.

I can't say how devastating this is to me, or to the entire film and art community that knew him. He was a great light that went out far too early. He had so many plans for the future, for art, for creativity, and we all had plans that included him. I couldn't imagine wanting to put together a film project and not make David the first person I planned to call.

I'm going to miss him, and I'm going to keep all the encouragement and advice he ever gave me alive. Both personally and creatively. His dreaming was an inspiration, his advice was invaluable, and I hope that with him gone we can all carry on his dreams, both for himself and for us. He always saw the best and brightest in those of us he worked with, it's my sad duty to live up to that without him around.

It hurts. And I'll miss him.

I always will.

Writer's Rules Revisited #9

2012-12-17T14:18:00.002-07:00

I've made all of my current deadlines, and story ideas are biting at me like no one's business. Plus I have that novel to finish (I'm sooooo close.) But, since I submitted the last piece I had on a major deadline this morning, I wanted to take a moment to bring you another edition of "Writing Rules Revisited."

And I'd like to say the kind words about this series really help. A good friend and excellent writer whose opinion I quite respect told me that she thought this series was invaluable and "an act of generosity to other artists."

I hope you all feel that way and letting me know that any of this is helping is certainly appreciated. And if you have any to add to the original list, I'd be more than happy to add them and write more essays about my take on them as well.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, and Part 8 here.

Without further ado, we'll dive into the next three "rules," two of which involve how to handle criticism.

28) Don't ask people to read your material for praise. Tell them to hate it and criticize it to no end. If they do that, you know exactly what to work on.

This dovetails nicely into a point we made last week, and my larger piece about the importance of writer's workshops. When you ask people to read your work, get out of the habit of doing it for a pat on the head. If we wanted pats on the head, we'd ask our mother's to read it. Or our significant others. Or anyone in our life dedicated to making us feel like we can make it. Which isn't to say it's bad to have a pat on your back now and again, but if you're looking for meaningful advice to make your story as good as it can be, these are not the places you should be looking.

You should be welcoming as much criticism as they can shovel at you. Even if they're dead wrong as far as you're concerned, their criticism will force you to either defend your decision or make you think about it in a different like. We all have different sensibilities and what works for me won't work for you, or the next writer, or the next writer after that. It's why writers, when given a uniform story idea to work from, will each come up with a wholly unique take on that story.

So when they come at you and explain where they'd come from with your story, you need to understand they're not actually criticizing you. They're helping you see your story from a different perspective, whether you agree with their individual notes or not. Seeing your story from that different perspective allows you to better diagnose the problems it does have. But it's a fine line discerning between those elements of taste and them being genuinely right. Sometimes their notes aren't up for debate.

When I was workshopping Operation: Montauk, Aaron Allston explained to me the problems I was having with points of view shifts in the text. I thought the technique that I'd learned in my screenwriting to track the action and see it from different points of view was elegant. Aaron explained to me how wrong-headed it was for prose and gave me a list of a dozen reasons why it didn't work in the book, for him, for editors I'd work with, and especially for readers. That wasn't up for debate.

He was right. And no matter how much it pained me to think about how much work clearing up the POV issues would take, he forced me to look at the entire piece in an all new light and it's not a mistake I'll willfully make again.

These sorts of criticisms aren't meant to get you down, but to improve your prose and make it more salable.

So, when you hand your work to someone, be honest, both with them and yourself. You don't need a pat on the head. You need them to eviscerate the material so you know exactly what to fix, or work on, or polish. Even though you may not take their specific prescriptions, you'll have a good general idea of what to work on.

29) Don't get defensive or mad when someone criticizes your work. Criticism is done to help, not hurt or compete. And chances are the more mad they make you, the more right they are.

Here's the thing to remember: When you ask someone to read your work, they're giving you their time. Time they could spend at work, reading finished books for leisure, writing a book of their own... They could be doing literally anything with their time, but instead they've give it to you. That is an extraordinary gift from anyone. It's difficult enough to get people to read these days, let alone for them to read it with a critical eye, and then have them take the time to give you notes? That is a Herculean feat.

If they've given you the gift of that time, you owe it to yourself and to them, to not get upset or defensive when they have something to say about your work that you might not like or may well hurt your feelings. They're giving you the gift of their time and their knowledge, getting mad and defensive is the rudest thing you can do.

And if you're really getting that mad, chances are it's not about something they're wrong about. It's about something you really do need to fix and hadn't considered the option you were wrong and weren't willing to put the time and effort into fixing.

You have to learn to kill your babies. I don't know how many times I'll write the first chapter or scene in a story and absolutely fall in love with it, it's what made me want to write the piece in the first place, and then quite rightly be told that I started the story too early or too late. Either I have to go back and add a better hook before the scene, or axe it entirely. It's frustrating, but it's for the better.

You really can't take that kind of criticism personally. Again, they're not giving you criticism because they're trying to compete with you or tear you down. They're giving you criticism because you asked and because they want you to succeed. They may not always be right, but they would not have taken the time to read your piece if they didn't have your best interests and success at heart in the first place.

I can't emphasize how important that is to remember.

I know how hard it is to hear that your brilliant idea, flourish of prose, or snappy opening isn't as brilliant or snappy as you thought it was. Writing in itself doesn't make you vulnerable, showing it to someone else is what causes that. But you need to thicken your skin and listen to that contention. It's important.

And if you can't take that criticism from your friends, are you going to go to pieces when an editor tells you that you need to fix something?

If the answer to that is yes, then maybe you should give up the idea of writing professionally, because it's going to happen constantly. You need to write for the joy of writing and accept criticism like an adult in the pursuit of honing your craft. It's a whole different kind of writing if you just want to write to blow off steam and not publish.

It's important to manage those feelings and to keep them managed.

30) Don't go back and revise until you've finished. Otherwise you won't get past page 15.

I know far too many people who struggle with this one.

They want to craft the perfect opening before they bother with the ending. They take 30 passes on chapter one, when in reality they should have taken one pass at 30 chapters. It's counter-productive for a few reasons. One, you get caught in an endless loop. And since, presumably, you're still studying and honing your craft you're getting better at writing, you're definitely going to be improving things.

But here's the thing: I never know how to make the best edits on my first chapter until my last chapter is written. I have to know where the ending is headed, sure, but things will present themselves in a way that will require you readjust your first chapter anyway. Chapter one is like pulling the string back on your bow and letting an arrow fly. The final chapter is the target you're supposed to hit. If you don't know where the bulls-eye is, you don't know what minute adjustments in the aim need to be made. So you fire the arrow, see where it lands on the target, then readjust your aim in revision to make sure you hit the bulls-eye perfectly the next time.

Which is to say this: Your first chapter, no matter how endlessly you revise it, is not going to be perfect until it hits the target at the back of the story.

So, it's my firm belief that you need to get a complete draft done before you go back and revise. Period. No questions asked.

That's not to say you can't do minor tweaks as you look over yesterday's work as you sit down to work today. Of course that's going to happen. And of course you'll go back and make notes about things you want to add based on new revelations the text presented to you. But it's imperative that you leave them for the finish. Otherwise you won't have anything to show for yourself.

I understand it's a difficult habit to break, but break it you must. Initially, this is why I wrote the first draft of my first book on a typewriter. I wouldn't be able to go back and do anything but jot down notes until I was finished and could transcribe it into the computer, which in and of itself, was a revision on its own. And it's killing me that I have ten pages of notes and suggestions from my writer's workshop on the book I'm working on now, but I'm unable to do anything about it because my draft of the book isn't finished yet (and it's oh, so close to finished.)

It doesn't matter what strategy you use to finish things, but you have to finish them.

Neil Gaiman gave as one of his best pieces of writing advice:

You write.
You finish what you write.

It's sounds almost too absurdly simple, but too often people get caught in that perfectionist revision trap and end up with nothing but a well polished first chapter.

I'll tell you what: no one is going to publish a well-polished first chapter without the rest of a book to back it up. So spend your energy in where it's needed in the first place, and that's by finishing your first draft.

Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels.

And that concludes another session of these writing rules. Like I said, please don't hesitate to let me know if these have been helpful, and any suggestions for more rules will be greatly welcomed.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

Writer's Rules Revisited #8

2012-12-14T10:39:00.004-07:00

This month has been crazy with the Redditgifts marketplace monopolizing a lot of my time. Shipping and customs forms are a pain, but it's a pain I'm glad to have. It's great to see my books flying to all corners of the globe at such an alarming rate.

But that's a bit of a sidetrack, we're here to talk about writing.

For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since.

If you want to catch up on the series:

You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, and Part 7 here.

We're only going to go over a couple of rules here today, but I think they're important ones to keep in mind as you work, especially coming off the heels of National Novel Writing Month.

26) Never show people your rough draft. Show people your fifth draft and tell them it's your rough draft.

Your first draft is a mess. You might not even know it, but it is.

You need time to get away from it and forget everything about it you'd written. Then come back to it. You'll find a thousand things wrong with it and have the perspective to fix them where necessary and have the ability to cut things without having knee-jerk reactions to what you felt when you wrote it.

In that first draft, you're writing every word down that pops into your head that makes you excited about telling the story, but you haven't yet filtered what you actually need to make the story good. Sure, there will be things to salvage, but it's going to take a lot of work and objectivity.

Showing it to someone that early in the game is going to do one of two things:

1) If whoever you've shown it to loves it and pats you on the back, you're in trouble. You've been given a reason to skip a lot of the hard work of revising because you've been convinced that what you've done is already good enough. That way leads to madness.

or

2) The person who reads it is going to hate it (probably rightfully so) and make a thousand suggestions about how to fix it and you'll lose all of your enthusiasm for the project.

Perhaps you might come to some middle ground, but I see the two situations above happening more often than not. There's a lot of hard work to be done and you can use the excitement of wanting to show your draft to someone else as an incentive to make sure that draft is readable.

Writing takes lots of hard work and it's not just the toil of putting the words down on the page in the first place. Give it at least one or two passes of revision before you show anyone and solicit input. Address what you think are problems that can be fixed and you'll get better feedback from that first round of readers. If your rough is riddled with errors (because no one writes 100% clean copy on their first draft no matter how hard they try) and story problems, many readers will hand you back notes full of stuff you already know is wrong. Fix all that before they see it and make the job of diagnosing your story problems that much easier on them.

If you're going to hand your piece to an editor, you should tell them that it's your rough draft so they give it that extra bit of leeway, but you want it honed and sharpened as much as you can get it before they see it. Editors want to find things to edit, whether it needs it or not. They're clutching a hammer and every problem is a nail. But they also need to be impressed. If you've worked hard enough on your draft and tell them it's your rough and it's that good, imagine how good they'll think it is after they've helped mold you and it into something better?

All of this leads me directly to the next rule:

27) There is no such thing as a final draft.

Once this process has begun, there is no turning back on it. You can revise endlessly. You will always have something you want to fix. There will always be a typo or a grammatical mistake.

You'll want to beat yourself up about it. Fortunately, in the age of digital publishing, some of the more egregious mistakes can be fixed without anyone noticing, but the problem becomes more acute and the pain sharpens when it makes it to print. As someone who's published hundreds of thousands of words in newsprint and in books, typos and errors can sting. Badly. But you have to simply let it go. You can't let it get to you.

I know some people that will endlessly revise their books and stories, never publishing a single one.

They're never happy with it and they're unwilling to stop revising it.

You need to understand that it's natural to want to revise endlessly. We're all constantly learning our craft and growing. If we don't find things about pieces we've written in the past to fix, it means we're not advancing or honing our craft, and that's a bad thing. You want to grow your style and the only way to do that is to freeze your work in the amber of publication and move on to the next piece.

That's what happens with any great writer. Look at Kurt Vonnegut's first book, Player Piano and compare it to Breakfast of Champions. The evolution he took as a writer of those years was astounding, and if you read his books chronologically, you can see that progression. If that progression was absent, if he didn't get better with each passing book, he wouldn't have become a better, more popular writer with each release.

I look back at Lost at the Con and, sure, there's still lots of stuff I love about it, but there are things in it I did that make me cringe. But I had to move on. I've written almost three books and countless short stories since Lost at the Con and reading everything that's come after, I can see that progression. I'm of the firm belief that the progression would not have come if I had spent my time spinning my wheels working on that elusive "final draft" of the first book.

Strive to do the best that you can in a specific moment of your life and your craft at a level of professionalism that is publishable. Then move on to the next thing and forget the last. Challenge yourself with something new. It's the only way to grow, both as a writer and as a person.

So, yes, there's no such thing as a final draft, no document is perfect. But know that ahead of time and make it as good as you can in the timeframe you have allotted.

With both of these rules there's a balance to strike. You need to work hard enough on your manuscript that it's publishable, as free of errors as possible, and written to the best of your ability. But you need to put it down when it's hit that point so you can move on to the next project and continue on your arc of growth as a writer. It's a fine line and hopefully I've help lay out some criteria here to help you navigate it.

Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7. If you want to check out the whole list, you can find it here.

And while you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

The Importance of Story Workshops

2012-12-06T15:54:00.003-07:00

I just returned from a weekend workshop with a number of fellow writers (including Aaron Allston and Janine Spendlove). It's something we've been doing for years now and it's something I look forward to every bit as much as I dread in some small way.

Every year, we all submit between 7k and 10k words of prose and have the others hit us with both barrels of their notes. It's an all day thing, with at least 5 or 6 people sharing stories and notes around the room. We all come having read all the submissions and we pick one victim...ahem...one writer at a time and we all discuss their piece at length.

And this discussion is frank. There is no pussy-footing around. Sure, we'll briefly talk about what we liked about certain pieces, but the point of the workshop is to tell your fellows what doesn't work in their fiction. We're all friends and have been doing it for a while, so the need to sugarcoat problems is non-existent and we have frequent disagreements and arguments among each other. But it's liberating.

This group of people, with totally different perspectives on issues as large as publishing, storytelling, and characterization, and as small as speech attribution tags, semi-colon use, and the font used, is so incredibly valuable to the process, it's almost hard to explain.

Many writers want to show others their work and be pat on the head. And, when you're dealing with an audience, you want to have crafted your work to a point where that's the case. But no one can get their prose to that point on their own. Which is why unloading in sessions like these is so important. You've brought this piece of fiction that you've lost perspective on. You're either suffering from a warrior mentality and think it's the best work you've ever done, or you're terrified that it's the worst drivel you've ever committed to paper and wish you hadn't submitted it. A committed group of peers will let you know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are and put you back on a firm, level ground. That way you can attack your next revision with a level head.

We have very few rules at these workshops, but one of the biggest is this: Do not retort. Unless you're asking for a direct, clarifying question, you need to take what comes quietly. We're all naturally defensive and want to protect our babies, but if you keep your mouth shut and listen, you're going to learn a lot more from your story than you would by arguing to defend it.

And you have to understand when your story is the subject of the critique that you personally are not being attacked in any way. You need to understand that you're in a room of your peers and (hopefully) friends, who want nothing more than to see the best work you can produce come from the piece you submitted. They're telling you their storytelling perspective on your story because they want to help you make it the best, not because they're competing with you or trying to hurt your feelings.

This is part of the process. If you can't handle it from a peer, why would you be able to take it from an editor?

And you also need to be aware that you can discard any bit of advice you're given about your story. In fact you have to. If you've assembled a quality group of writers, they're all going to have wildly different opinions. I can't tell you how often Aaron and I find ourselves giving completely opposite advice to other writers, but even that can be a good thing. Listening to two competent storytellers (or at least one good one and me) give you different perspectives on the same issue, it will force you to evaluate your own instincts on the problem. Maybe you find that neither of them are right and you've chosen a better third path, but pondering those perspectives is the only way to have gotten there.

I've workshopped Lost at the Con and Operation: Montauk at these gatherings and I can't tell you how many mistakes in the narrative and characterizations were revealed by having these extra, expert sets of eyes on them.

I implore you to assemble a group of writers on your own and start tearing each others work to shreds. Like a muscle, the only way to build up a better, stronger story, is to tear it and let it heal. I always leave these workshops newly refreshed to attack a story, either the one I brought with me, or the next one I'm working on. They're invigorating, or at least they should be. If you don't find them creatively nourishing or recharging, you need to work on getting a thicker skin, because this is what writing is all about.

It's better that a friend and a colleague tears your story a new one while it's in its rough, unpublished state, than rushing it out too early with too many problems and then your readers tear it a new one.

I'm more than happy to answer any questions anyone might have about the process and how we run ours, but you should seriously be considering setting one of these up for yourself.

While you're thinking about it, feel free to order a signed book from me, or check out my collection of work that's available digitally.

And don't forget to check out my continuing series of tips for writers.

RedditGifts Marketplace

2012-11-27T21:18:00.001-07:00

For any of you who are aware of Reddit, it's a massive community and every year they have the world's largest Secret Santa gift exchange. More than 50,000 people are participating. I'm participating this year and it's a lot of fun.

One of the ways the full time staff makes its money is through the RedditGifts Marketplace, which is new this year. They're curating a collection of merchants and artists to sell items through their Marketplace to help support the exchange and artists like myself.

I'm the first author they've added to the market place. I'm sure more will come, but right now mine are the only books available through Reddit.

You can buy my books at a slight discount, all signed, through their portal here. I'll be handling the shipping and handling just as if you'd be buying it through me, but it'll be supporting this great team of people at the same time.

If you want the bundles I've put on sale for the holidays still, though, they are still available here.