It was a rough year for me, personally (I got a little reminder of that this morning), but there were a lot of good things about it, too. It’s rare, I think, to have a year that’s all bad or all good, and a lot of how we think about it just comes down to how we decide to look back it and remember things.
There were a lot of plusses for me this year. Creatively. Socially. Hobby-ly? I’m going to try to focus on those.
So speaking of creatively… what did I get done this year?
Well, 2024 started with a massive rewrite of God’s Junk Drawer. David, my agent, read it at the end of 2023 and made a lot of really solid points. I cut almost 20k words, reorganized a bunch of it, then turned around and added 22K of new material. It’s going to be my biggest book ever. Well, ever published. We don’t need to talk about… the other one.
I finished a first draft of TOS which I’d had to set down (around 40K words) for the above rewrites. Then I did a second draft of it. And I’m maybe halfway into a third draft. It’s really good. I’m enjoying it a lot. I think you will, too. I’m hoping to show it to a few folks in a week or three.
I wrote a story for Weird Tales which was an all time, never-gonna-happen bucket list thing for me. Issue #370 with “Straw Man” is available now. If you’re more of an audiophile, you can get it that way, too, and hear my story read by the ever-wonderful Ray Porter.
I also wrote a new Carter & Kraft story for Combat Monsters, which is out in February. I’ve wanted to tell this one– “The Night Crew” –for a while and Henry Herz gave me the perfect chance to do it, and it fits in quite nicely between two of their previously published adventures. We’re doing a little signing tour for it, too.
And there were thirty-four assorted ranty writing blog posts (counting this one) and a dozen newsletters.
That may not look like much to some of you. I know there are some writers who are much more prolific than me. And other folks might be thinking “holy crap, that’s what he thinks is not much?!?”
But y’see Timmy—it doesn’t matter. I’m not telling you this to make you feel better or worse. You shouldn’t be judging yourself off me either way. Nobody is a better/ worse writer just because they managed to put down more or less words than someone else. What matters is that you keep doing it. Keep writing.
So I hope that’s what you plan to do in the coming year. Tell your stories your way. Let your voice be heard. Don’t stop.
Next time… it’s a new year. Who knows what we’ll do. What do you want to see here?
As always, a reminder that you could just subscribe to the newsletter and get it in your hands two weeks earlier. Some of these notes would be a bit more relevant. Just sayin’. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Okay, this one’s running a little late. I had this week’s schedule all worked out with the newsletter and book edits and seeing my parents and then… raccoons. Every couple of months a group of them traveling through the canyon will discover our back yard (and the garden) and then we’re up for a couple nights in a row making sure they don’t, y’know, destroy everything in their glee at finding this little oasis of food and water and safety. So that’s how this pre-holiday week began. Weirdly enough, it can get really exhausting shooing raccoons away until three thirty in the morning.
But enough excuses…
Wow. It’s the last newsletter of the year. Holy hell, how’d we get here so fast? I mean, for me it was four sick cats and covid and editing two books and politics. That’s enough to eat up many months of the year. And it did. If you’ve been reading the newsletter for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen me talk about some of this already.
On a related note, because I dared to brush up against politics in the last newsletter half a dozen people unsubscribed. No, seriously. One even sent a weird email that sounded more like a cut-and-paste wiseass twitter reply.
Look, I totally get it if you don’t want to hear about politics. I don’t want to hear about politics. I really just want a functioning government I can not think about, one that isn’t actively threatening to wreck my livelihood, my health, or otherwise trying actively to destroy the lives of me or my friends and family and even, yeah, a bunch of strangers I don’t know but who still deserve to be treated like human beings. But unfortunately, that’s almost certainly not what the next couple years are going to be like, and it’s only natural that people are going to say something about it now and then. Yes, including people with newsletters about “what’s going on in my head this month.” If me mentioning politics once in two dozen newsletters is enough to make someone unsubscribe, well… I’ve got to warn you, there’s a decent chance it’ll happen again sometime in the next four years.
Random other thing, speaking of the newsletter. Buttondown (the company that hosts said fine ongoing peek into my head), recently sent out one of their newsletters and it brought up the principle of least inbox interruption. It’s the idea that the more times a newsletter shows up in your inbox, the more likely you are to ignore it—no matter how much it’s tailored to your needs and interests. I’d never heard the term before, but that was basically my thinking when I decided this would only be monthly at most. I don’t know about you, but for a while I was subscribed to a few newsletters that were… well, flooding my inbox sounds excessive, but these folks were definitely putting out newsletters and updates faster than I got around to reading them. Which usually just meant I didn’t read them.
So, heading into the new year, my goal here is still going to be just showing up now and then to let you know how things are going. Maybe share some book recommendations or toy photos. And maybe squeeze in one extra newsletter if there’s actually something important going on. Again, least inbox interruption.
Which, hey… let me tell you how things are going.
As hinted at above, I just handed in my revised edits on God’s Junk Drawer. It was a tiny bit more tightening, some clarifying, and overall I’m feeling really good about it. Barring any last minute tweaks, next stop will be the copy editor, which will probably happen… well, next year right around the time you get the next newsletter. Guess we’ll see where things are then. And hopefully by then I’ll also have some preorder news for you.
I’m also still doing my own initial edits on TOS. It’s also going well. This stage is just lots of little cuts, a word here and there. Basically it’s me trimming all the obvious fat from my initial drafts, but that’s already knocked over a thousand words off this and I’m maybe halfway through. Plus there’s a few larger cuts I already know I have to make. The goal is to have all of this done by the start of the next year. Like, first or second week of January. Again.
I’m also working on some stuff I want to pitch to my agent. One small project, one kinda big one we keep circling around. I think it might finally be time to pull the trigger and say, yeah, we’re doing this. It’ll be a lot of work but I think it could really be worth it, from a storytelling point of view.
And hey, speaking of next year… you may have heard that a few contributors (including me) are going to do a sort of mini signing tour for Combat Monsters, the upcoming anthology that has my latest Carter & Kraft story, “The Night Crew.” We’re going to be at- Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego (1pm, Feb 15), Dark Delicacies in Burbank (3pm, Feb 22), and Artifact Books in Encinitas (3pm, March 1). Preorder the book through one of them, get it signed by us. Or be there and talk with us about it. And if you’re a few hundred miles away and can’t make it, I’m pretty sure they all deliver.
Also, Weird Tales #370 is out right now with my story “Straw Man.” Go grab a copy! You can even get an audio version of it, in which case you can listen to it read by the amazing Ray Porter. See, no excuses!
What else do I have for you…?
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching My beloved and I Transformers One and it was surprisingly solid. So many Transformers movies just devolve into story/ visual chaos and this one was kind of fun and a little emotional and well done. We also watched Hot Frosty, which was fairly goofy and harmless and competently made and hey, for a holiday romance movie that’s 3/4 of the battle right there. Also watched one of my own seasonal favorites, A Prince For Christmas. Yes, it’s one of those, and yes, I really like it. It’s by a director I worked with years ago, Fred Olen Ray, and it’s remarkably good for a movie about a secret prince finding love with a diner owner in middle America. I’ve also found myself watching a YouTube channel called Wheelie Yellow, about a sort of… well, yellow puppet racing around in a little delivery van and offering some honestly nice thoughts on life.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading This hasn’t been a great year for reading (see above: how’d the end of the year get here so fast?) and the past month I’ve only read two books. One ARC for a blurb—the amazing Two Truths and a Lie by Cory O’Brien, out next year). One book for fun—the delightful A Brief History of Flowers by Advolly Richmond, which was so much fun it was a last minute add to my list of holiday recommendations.
Cool New Toys In the weeks before Christmas I try not to get myself anything just so I don’t risk undercutting anyone’s Christmas gift (it happened one year and I felt awful). But I still had a few long-term preorders show up, and one or two eBay auctions for things. I’m afraid I may be slowly sinking into a Cosmic Legions collection, which is funny because for the longest time I’ve held up Four Horsemen as an example of how far I haven’t gotten into toy collecting. “Look, they’re gorgeous, yeah, but I’m not going to pay that much for an action figure, ha ha ha.” Anyway, I’ve got… nine (?) of them now (eleven since Christmas). Plus a big bear on pre-order.
And I think that’s everything I’ve got for you. I hope overall the end of the year is peaceful for you, and you’re able to spend a little time relaxing with friends and family. There’ll be enough to stress about soon enough, after all. For now, have a drink, watch some holiday specials, get some much-needed rest.
Okay, let’s talk about animals for a minute, and how we respond to those animals. Just some random thoughts I’ve had that sort of coalesced over the years. Take them as you will.
It’s a pretty basic human reaction to pat a dog. If a dog walks up and bonks their head on your knee, you give them a pat on the head or a scratch behind the ears or maybe a full belly rub depending on said dog’s position at the moment. It’s something most of us do by instinct, and we usually want to do it so bad we’ll end up asking complete strangers for permission to do it. It’s almost like a reflex action. Dogs. Pets.
In fact, it’s such an ingrained thing, it’s kind of unusual when someone doesn’t want to pat the dog. Sure, there’s some folks who might refuse for health reasons, possibly emotional ones, but overall… if someone doesn’t want to pet the dog, it makes us wonder a bit, doesn’t it?
That’s why I laughed when, many years back, I saw a skit where Benny Hill described a horrific movie about a man on a blood-soaked rampage of violent revenge that bordered on torture porn, which the comedian then called “a loving tale of warmth and compassion.” When the interviewer asked him about this, Hill grinned and said, “At the end, as he’s leaving, he pats the dog on the head.”
Now remember this. Patting the dog. We’re going to come back to it later.
There’s a writing term you’ve probably heard called saving the cat. It was coined by screenwriter Blake Snyder in his book titled (wait for it) Save The Cat! No, I’m serious. There’s a lot to be said about the book, but for our purposes right now, let’s focus on that title phrase and what it means.
Saving the cat is when my protagonist does something—usually something small and simple—that assures us they’re a decent person. It’s a narrative shorthand that tells us this is someone we should be rooting for. Helping a neighbor. Feeding a stray. Giving the other half of their lunch to someone. Making a point of leaving a good tip, even if they can’t really afford it. And yes… maybe even saving a cat.
Two things about this I think are worth mentioning. First, these things don’t need to be directly linked to my plot. Personally, just me, I think it’s a little better when they’re not, or only very loosely at best. It’s not something plot-driven, it’s something character-driven. They’re just random, relatable events that show my character (or characters) in a good light.
Second, whatever this moment is, it should happen kinda early in the story. This is a logic thing. By the time we’re halfway through my story, my audience should have a pretty good handle on the protagonist. It’s kind of late for me to give them a little nudge. I’m not saying my characters can’t leave a nice tip or feed a stray at this point (you should always tip well and feed strays), but by now this is just going to be part of their established character, not something shaping how we feel about them. After all, things have different emotional weight depending on where they happen in a story. Make sense?
Now, what’s funny about this is Snyder got the term “saving the cat” from the movie Alien. At the end of the film, the crew decides to blow up their ship to kill the alien and our heroine Ripley makes a point of grabbing the ship’s cat, Jonesy, and getting him to the shuttle rather than leaving him behind. The cat is saved and screenwriting manuals are changed forever.
But the thing is… this happens in the last half hour of the movie. We’re ninety minutes into it. If somebody haven’t figured out Ripley’s the hero at this point, I don’t know if seeing her save Jonesy is going to change anything for them. So the very act saving the cat is named after… isn’t really a save the cat moment.
And all of this brings us back to patting dogs.
There’s a weird moment a lot of <cough> less well-developed stories have that usually involves an antagonist being redeemed in some way. And this redemption is often tied to them doing something… well, really minor. They went on that blood-soaked rampage and murdered hundreds of people but heeeeey, they scratched that good boy behind the ears so I guess they’re okay. All’s forgiven! It’s a weak excuse to switch a character from villain to hero for… reasons.
I call this patting the dog (from the previously-mentioned Benny Hill skit). There’s two key things that give it away. First is that it’s trying to make us change how we see a character, and that change is almost always from negative to positive. Saving the cat is trying to establish our perception of a character, but patting the dog is usually trying to reverse it. And doing so in a clumsy, unnatural way that doesn’t match up with everything else we’ve seen the character do.
Second is that patting the dog almost always happens much later in a story. Again, logic. If I’m trying to change your thoughts on a character, you need to have existing thoughts on a the character. I have to have built them up as one thing before I can change them to something else. So patting the dog is very much a third act sort of thing.
And I’m not saying characters can’t have a big change over the course of a book. But that’s just it. When someone’s patting the dog, it isn’t over the course of a book, it’s happening all at once. It’s a switch flipping and now things are different.
Y’see, Timmy, these two ideas often get lumped together, and I hope I’ve helped you see they’re very different things. One’s a useful tool and one… I probably want to avoid.
So maybe I want to look at that little story beat from my current work in progress and see which category it’s in. Does it happen earlier or later in my book? Is it helping my readers get to know a character or trying to make them think differently about said character? And if it’s trying to make them think differently, is it doing it in a believable, natural way?
Those are some questions I’ve been asking myself lately, anyway.
Next time… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get to squeeze in some quick thoughts about the holidays? But if not, I guess we’ll be doing the end of the year wrap up.
Is Cyber Monday even a thing anymore? I mean, Black Friday starts on Monday or Tuesday at this point. then spills over the whole weekend and two or three days into the next week. Is it just the Black Weeks? Cybercember?
Anyway, I’ve got a few holiday recommendations for you to check out at your friendly local bookstore, if you’re so interested. Just some things I read this year that I really enjoyed and I thought some of you may enjoy, too. Or maybe someone you know would enjoy them.
How To Make A Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie – the other movie-related horror book that came out this year. Craig’s book is a beautifully gory, disturbing story about Hollywood and how obsessive some artists can get and what they might be willing to do in the name of art. As someone who worked in the film industry for many years, I found too many parts of this book completely believable.
Chronicles of the Lazarene by Charles Soule– this is a companion book to The Endless Vessel, which came out a year earlier. They tell the story of a mysterious research ship (for lack of a better term) that’s been sailing the seas for almost three hundred years now. They’re absolutely both worth reading, but I have to admit… I kiiiiiinda like this one a little better.
What If… — three different books, technically all stand-alones, although there’s a thread weaving through them that’s much more obvious by the third book. What If… Loki Was Worthy (by Madeleine Roux), What If… Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings (by Seanan McGuire), and What If.. Marc Spector Was Host To Venom (by Mike Chen). They thread the line between comics and the MCU, and have some fantastic easter eggs, so they’re great for casual fans or die-hard ones. Full disclosure–Mike named one of Jake Lockley’s informants after me, but that didn’t influence this recommendation. But I am now Marvel canon!
California Bear by Duane Swierczynski –a wonderfully twisty and deranged crime novel about a man released from prison to help an idiot ex-cop, his brilliant daughter, and a reality show based on a legendary serial killer. And honestly, saying anything more than that would be telling. Just trust me, you’ll love it.
A Brief History of Flowers by Advolly Richmond—okay, this probably seems like an odd one but… it’s just what the title says. It’s a collection of short historical anecdotes about how different flowers ended up becoming garden favorites, how they were named, weird stories around them, and it’s all kind of fantastic. Great for history lovers or garden lovers.
Atomic Robo by Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener ended up being my comfort read this year. Reads, really, as I went back over older books and read some newer ones. It’s the ongoing tale of a sentient, indestructible robot created by Nikola Tesla and the team of scientists and adventurers he’s gathered around himself over the years. It funny, exciting, a little creepy at times—really it’s just absolutely perfect. You can pick up almost any volume and read it as a stand-alone, or start with Atomic Robo and the Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne.
I know that’s not much, but I shamefully admit I didn’t read as much as I wanted to this year. And a good chunk of what I did read was stuff that’s not coming out until next year. So if you wanted to preorder some things (gifts of Christmas Yet To Come) I’d highly recommend Coyote Run by Lilith Saintcrow, The Contest by Jeff Macfee, and Two Truths and a Lie by Cory O’Brien.
Also, just in case you missed it, I’m running my usual Black Friday offer for whoever may need a little help this season.
And shamefully, once again, please feel free to give any of my books as holiday gifts. Give lots of them. In multiple formats. I can make recommendations, if you need them.
