The Suffering Map is the first thing I finished. It’s the first thing I wrote that made it to second and third and fourth drafts. It’s also—no coincidence—the first thing of mine that got any interest from agents and editors.
Year: 2018
November 29, 2018 / 3 Comments
Next Time, Gadget! Next Time!!
November 26, 2018 / 3 Comments
Cyber Monday VII: The Purchasing
Granted, I do have things out in new formats. Paradox Bound came out in a wonderful paperback this year. My second novel ever—The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe—finally came out as an audiobook. But new stuff…
The God Gene by F. Paul Wilson is the latest book in his ICE Sequence series. It’s a wonderfully creepy story about a missing scientist and evolution. If you or someone you love likes sci-fi thrillers, this is a great one. And I think the new one comes out in five or six weeks, so if you like it, there’s barely any wait ‘til the next one.
Kill All Angels is Robert Brockway’s freakin’ masterpiece conclusion to his Vicious Circuit books. The story of an aging punk rocker and a
One of Us by Craig diLouie is a modern masterpiece. Seriously. It’s X-Men meets To Kill A Mockingbird, about mutant children growing up in the deep south. It’s dark and beautiful and—unless something happens in the next four weeks—unquestionably the best book I read this year
Damn Fine Story by Chuck Wendig is the only non-fiction book on this list. it’s a wonderful (and very entertaining) piece about the art of storytelling. Not writing, but the act of telling stories and narratives and so on. Chuck says a lot of stuff about character and dialogue and structure that I’ve said here on my ranty blog, but he says it in a much more entertaining way. It really is a must-have book if you’re interested about any form of storytelling.
The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera is about two girls with grand destinies ahead of each of them who decide to forge one together. It’s a beautiful, truly epic story of love, demons, and women with swords. In my top five of the year, no question.
The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French is a fantasy novel I first heard about a year or two back (Jonathan and I have the same editor). I’m not usually much of a fantasy guy, but the idea of this was so clever I had to check it out. Orc gangs that ride actual hogs and patrol their territories, with all sorts of gang rivalries and politics. It’s fun, exciting, kinda sexy, and just fantastic.
I Only Killed Him Once by Adam Christopher is yet another series ender. The final story of Ray Electromatic, the robot detective turned hitman in 1950’s
Girl Like A Bomb by Autumn Christian is another cheat. This is a fascinating book about what it really means to be your best, mixed with a healthy dose of sex-positivism (new word? You know what I mean…), and what it’s like to be the person with the unusual superpower that controls all of this. Unfortunately for you, this is another “save a gift card” one—it’s up for preorder now and on sale in the spring.
Constance Verity Saves the World by A. Lee Martinez is more fun with the woman blessed (or cursed) to have a life full of excitement and adventure who really just wants to enjoy settling in to her new condo with her accountant boyfriend. These books are so much friggin’ fun and if there’s any justice in the world we would see them on the big screen.
And real quick, you also can’t go wrong with Heroine’s Journey by Sarah Kuhn, Kill the Farmboy by Delilah Dawson & Kevin Hearne, Zeroes by Chuck Wendig, or any of the Sandman Slimbooks by Richard Kadrey. And I may add to that previous sentence in the next week or two.
November 23, 2018 / 5 Comments
Black Friday VI— the Von Trappening Pt.2
And, yeah, I’m speaking from experience. I grew up kinda poor at points in my childhood, but when I became a full time writer I was very poor for almost three years. Phone-shut-off-and-stealing-toilet-paper-from-the-library poor. All-our-shopping-at-the-99-Cent-Store poor. I had a chance to sit down with Shane Black for a coffee or two as part of a work assignment and I had to turn it down. I didn’t have enough money to buy a coffee, and possibly not even enough to get me across the city to where he was. Yeah, I didn’t have enough money to go work.
Being poor is just a constant feeling of tension. Of being painfully aware of what you don’t have and what you can’t do. And in today’s climate… hell, for the past ten or fifteen years, a lot of people have made it painfully clear that they judge you because of that. They find you lacking as a person because of your poverty.
It sucks.
At which point… I would like to tell you about the redheaded woman in the sundress who came to my rescue. She parked across from me at the Arco, started pumping gas, I begged her to take pity on someone moving and if she could spare three dollars. Three dollars of gas could get me home. Or to the big empty house that would hopefully soon be home.
Again, this is only for those of you who need some help getting gifts for others. The people who are pulling unemployment, cutting back on everything, and feeling like trapped because they can’t afford gifts for family or friends. It’s not so you can recommend someone who might like a free book. You could do that for them, too—go get them a book.
Also… I’m also doing this on the honor system, so if you’re only trying to save yourself some money or score an autographed book, I won’t be able to stop you. Just know that you’re a deplorable person and you’re taking a potential bright moment away from someone who needs it this holiday season. And you’ll probably burn in the fiery pits before Krampus feeds your cajun-fried corpse to a squale.
November 20, 2018
Top Ten Rules for Writers
But a few people also put up serious, much more useful lists. Things to help with being a writer and with the writing itself. And I thought, hey, I’m not going to be posting on Thursday because of Thanksgiving (I’ve got a turkey to cook and classic movies to watch)… maybe I could do a top ten list, too!
Because I always make sure to jump on every trend a good week after it’s dead.
If I want to do this for a living, I have to think of writing as a job. That’s an ugly truth. This is my job. I do it full time. Probably more than full time. I’d guess at least once or twice a month I’ll have a week where I work hours close to my film crew years.
Yeah, you may not be there yet. I get that. But the whole reason I got here is because I started treating my writing like something that had to happen every week. It wasn’t a hobby, it was something that needed to get done. Because if it didn’t need to get done… well, it usually didn’t.
8 – Write
But I don’t need to be trapped by them. I shouldn’t feel like rules are the end-all, be-all of writing. Just because someone can quote a rule that my story breaks doesn’t necessarily mean I’m doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean I’m doing anything right, either, but it doesn’t mean automatic failure.
And that’s that.