Year: 2025

As always, if you’re reading the newsletter here you’re seeing it about two weeks after it was intended to land, so some of the information (and random musings) in it might be a bit out of date. Sorry. You can avoid this horrible temporal shift by signing up for the newsletter and getting it right in your inbox once a month or so.

Or not. I’m not the boss of you. Maybe you like the horrible temporal shift…

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Well, for those of you in the United States, I’m guessing today was tax day. Also guessing half of you did them weeks ago and the other half of you are reading this instead of doing them. Or maybe you’re being semi-responsible (for somebody doing their taxes at the last minute) and reading this is your reward for getting everything in the mail twenty minutes ago.

I admit I’m in the first group. Mine were done weeks ago and I got final confirmation they’d been accepted four or five days ago. I did them myself for years, but I’ve hit the point now (in a few senses) where it’s well worth it to spend an afternoon organizing my box of receipts and letting someone else take it from there.

Truth be told… I don’t mind paying taxes. No, seriously, I don’t. The government does some really stupid, awful things with tax money, yeah, but it also does a lot of good things. If any of you have followed me through the the ranty writing blog for any amount of time, you know that my beloved and I spent about three years living well below the poverty line. In Los Angeles. A huge part of how we got though it is because of things people paid for with their taxes. We used the public library’s internet (and to be painfully honest, sometimes stole rolls of toilet paper). We qualified for discounted utilities and even a free replacement fridge (that worked SO much better than our old one). Public transit. Public parks. Someone else paid for it when we really needed it, and I’m really glad to be paying for it now when someone else may need all of it (and more).

And someone on Bluesky pointed out recently… that’s true of so many things. Big things. The Center for Disease Control? Yeah, we all paid for that. People all over the world envy it, the government runs it, but it’s ours. Same with NASA. And the Department of Education, Department of Transportation, Veteran’s Affairs, and more. It’s all stuff we funded. We paid for it with our taxes to serve the public good, so other people would have it when they needed it.

Which is why it’s so frustrating to see some bozo taking a chainsaw to all of it in the name of “efficiency.” That’s our stuff being destroyed! Can you imagine if I smashed your front door off the hinges and then told you it’s better because you can get in quicker when you get home from work? And I unplugged your fridge so it won’t take as long to warm up those leftovers. Yeah, those examples make me sound really stupid (take that as you will) but more to the point… I shouldn’t be messing with your stuff in the first place.

Grrrrrrrrrrr…

Apologies. That turned into a little more of a rant than planned.

Happy tax day, everyone!

In more interesting news…

God’s Junk Drawer is still in copyedits. There was a slight delay, but things are back on track. I should have the copyedited manuscript back in two weeks, which means it’ll probably already be back to the publisher by the time you get the next newsletter. We’re also probably going to be talking about covers sometime soon. And hey, you can still preorder it from your favorite local bookstore, your second-favorite regional bookstore, or that gigantic South American river website.

My agent has TOS. I went through everyone’s notes. Rethought a few things. Thought a lot about a few other things. Moved a few things around. Cut some others. Added a bit more. In the end, the draft he’s got is only about 500 words shorter than the one everyone else saw, but I think it’s a lot stronger and tighter. Guess we’ll see…

David (my agent) and I also talked about another possible project which I’ll probably just call A2Q for now. If you’re a fan of the ranty writing blog, you may have some idea what that is. And what that might mean. So I’m trying to do some work on that before those copyedits come back.

Also doing a little more work on the comic. This is an awful time to try to be doing something new, but I’ve always wanted to do a comic book and never thought it’d be a secret gateway to untold fame and fortune. If this ends up breaking kinda-sorta–even I’ll be thrilled.

Oh, one other thing. Some of you may know I’ve got a short story collection, Dead Men Can’t Complain, that’s been audio-only for a few years now. One of the original stories from it–”Flesh Trade”–is going to be part of a new anthology. Dread Coast: So Cal Horror Tales is going to be out this August and all the proceeds go to benefit victims of the LA wildfires from the start of the year. This’ll be the first time “Flesh Trade” has ever been in physical print, so if you don’t do audiobooks… here’s your big chance to read it. And a bunch of other great stories, too.

And there’s something REALLY cool I got to see that I REALLY wish I could share… but that’ll have to wait for now.

What else can I share with you… ?

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
This might sound silly to some of you but my beloved and I sat down and watched Paddington 2 and it truly is a wonder. I’d heard so many people say how good it was I figured there had to be some catch or something but no… it’s just that good. Doctor Who is back and I thought the first episode was so friggin’ clever. We’ve also been doing a rewatch of Grimm and it’s holding up really well so far. Also kind of surprised to learn we’d missed about eight or nine episodes when it originally aired, so we’re getting to see those too.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
A lot of work-ish reading this past month. Read two books to give notes and two to give blurbs–one of which is an upcoming Marvel Fantastic Four collection. So hey, I guess we’ll finally see my name on a Marvel book. Deephaven by Ethan Aldridge was a great little YA story about kids at a mysterious boarding school. I also picked up the collected GI Joe: World On Fire comic storyline by Paul Allor, Chris Evenhuis, Niko Walter, Emma Vieceli, and Ryan Kelly. It was one of the last arcs IDW published, and it’s a dystopian alternate world where Cobra won, the US is an occupied country, and GI Joe is an underground resistance group. Really good, and parts of it hit pretty hard right now.

Cool New Toys
Ooooof. The past two weeks feel like they’ve mostly been indie toy companies saying “we have no idea what’s going to happen, sorry.” One Kickstarter I backed canceled the whole project, saying they couldn’t move forward in good faith. I did grab two more Horrid Infantry figures at WonderCon (giving me a total of “far too many”) and got to hang out at the Spero booth for a bit and talk with folks. I also just picked up the McFarlane DC Universe camouflaged Tumbler. I don’t collect DC figures, or 7” figures, but this spoke to me. For reasons I won’t bore you with here.

But feel free to ask somewhere else if you really want to know.

And I think that’s everything I’ve got for you. As always, thanks for reading. See you next month.

This was supposed to be up a week ago. So sorry it’s late. Of course, y’know, it’d never be late if you subscribed…

Anyway…

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Oh, hey! There you are.

We’ve been having a few long, wet weeks here in southern California. The kind where the rain sucks all the heat out of the air and leaves you with a deep chill. In some ways, it’s great and reminds me of growing up in New England. And in other, much more current ways, I’m reminded that I live in a sixty-year old house built when the idea of needing insulation in southern California was just ha ha ha ha ridiculous. Also that I need to get the roof fixed in the garage. And also that we have half a dozen cats who think the sound of central heating means a street sweeper has somehow gotten into the house and we should all RUN IN TERROR!!!

And speaking of running in terror…

The world is an awful place right now. There are so many things to—rightfully—be angry or worried or openly scared about. I wish I could put an optimistic spin on it but… man, my optimism tanks are pretty much bone dry after the past few weeks.

What I can tell you is that being angry and scared all the time is exhausting, physically and emotionally. It’s unavoidable at points, I know, but try to give yourself permission to just breathe. Toss your phone over there and go for a walk. Go for a run. Play with your pets. Play a game. Read a book. Watch a favorite movie. Work in the garden. Make something. Seriously, do whatever you can to give yourself a couple minutes of peace and joy—and try not to feel guilty about it. We’re all going to need to be strong for the foreseeable future, and it’s easier to be strong when you’re not exhausted.

Thus ends the monthly pep talk.

In other, happier news…

Just as I sat down to start scribbling up this newsletter, I got an email to let me know God’s Junk Drawer is heading into copy edits a.k.a. line edits. The editor and I have already traded a few emails about scientific nomenclature vs casual conversation. Because that’s how my books roll, folks.

Also, a reminder that you can preorder the book right now from your favorite local bookstore. Or request your library grab a copy. Or both! Both is good, as the gif says.

On a related note, I know I’ve mentioned the west coast/ new England book tour a few times. After talking to a few folks, I’m probably going to let that simmer for a few months. Most places aren’t going to be start setting their fall schedules until mid-summer at best, so trying to plan a lot before then is kind of silly. But I’ve made note of the places some of you suggested, and I’ll probably be asking you all again in… July? August? Somewhere around there.

Also, my early readers for TOS have given me their thoughts and notes and overall they’re… really good. They don’t think it’s flawless (everybody had a few critical observations, and most of them were spot-on), but for the most part they were creeped out at the right points, laughed a lot at the right points, and… well, got misdirected at all the points I’d wanted them to be. So I’m going over the manuscript again with a lot of their notes in mind, then a quick polish, and… well, my agent will probably have this before the next newsletter.

I finished that comic script (finally) and the editor and I are bouncing around a few artist names. It’s still a ways off, but I thought some of you might want to know.

Thanks to all of you who came out during the mini-signing tour for Combat Monsters. Was great to see people and talk about Carter & Kraft. And I think some of those talks actually got me thinking about another story for our two intrepid WWII heroes…

On a related note, at the end of March I’m going to be at WonderCon in Anaheim. I’m part of a Sunday morning panel on Writing Blended Genres, then a book signing right after that, and then I’m probably going to be wandering the floor, talking to folks and looking at cool things. Maybe I’ll see you there?

What else can I tell you about?

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
A couple days after sending the last newsletter we watched Flow, the now-Oscar-winning animated movie about a cat and a capybara and look it’s just amazing, okay? The movie itself and the story behind the movie. Academy Award very well-deserved. My beloved and I are caught up on Severance and holy crap what amazing show! Also, it’s not so much “watching” but we’ve been binging Midnight Burger off a friend’s recommendation. It’s about the staff of a time-raveling, dimension-hopping diner, and if you like my stuff I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
I’m late to the party, but my to-read pile finally coughed up Assassins Anonymous and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Currently about two-thirds through Craig DiLouie’s new one, My Ex-The Antichrist, which comes out this summer It’s about a guitarist who discovers her ex-bandmate-and-boyfriend is the actual son of Satan destined to destroy the world. After that I’ve got a blurb book and then (also long overdue) John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build A Nest In.

Cool New Toys
Not a lot of new toys physically in hand this month. My beloved gave me a Gundam Guncannon model for Valentine’s Day, because somewhere along the line she started giving me a red robot every year. I took advantage of the Spero warehouse sale and grabbed a few Animal Warriors figures to customize and/or add to my Horrid army. I preordered a few things and backed a fun Kickstarter for Space Zombies from Mars action figures because, hey… who doesn’t like zombie astronauts, right?

Okay, I think that’s all for now. As always, thanks for reading. See you next time next month.

Over the past month or three I’ve seen a bunch of people offer their views on conflict in storytelling. And a lot of them had very strong opinions about it. What it is. Why we shouldn’t be obsessed with it. Why, maybe, we don’t even need it in our story.

To be blunt… I think they were wrong. But they were wrong for a few different reasons. And I think if we go over those reasons, maybe we can all get a better grasp of conflict, how to use it, and how we can make it work best in our stories. Sound good?

Let’s start with basics. What is conflict?

In a literary sense, conflict is something between my character and what they want. It’s an opposing person or force or set of conditions. Note that the thing they want doesn’t have to be something physical and neither does the thing between them and it. My hero wants to date the cheerleader/ save Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop/ get the big promotion/ save the world from destruction, but first they have to overcome their shyness/ raise $50,000 by Friday/ figure out what happened to Doug from sales/ stop the alien invaders. Feel free to mix and match those into whatever combination works best for you.

Conflict is what drives my plot forward, because it forces my characters to make decisions and take actions. If there’s no conflict, they don’t need to do anything. And if my characters don’t do anything… well, that’s not much of a story. It might work in a weird artsy way but… look, nobody wants to read the story of how I once did data entry for eight hours a day for the better part of a month.

Two key things to note, before we move on.

First is all the random conflicts I mentioned in those examples up above require a degree of effort to overcome. None of them can be brushed aside or ignored. If I’m thirsty and go the kitchen to get a drink of water, there isn’t any opposition to overcome or effort required. There’s not really tons of consequences if I don’t do it. It’s not so much forcing me into action as barely requiring minimal action. If something doesn’t require much conscious thought to resolve, it’s not conflict.

Remember this. It’s going to come up again

The second key thing is that most of these conflicts don’t involve lots of shooting or punching or ninja throwing stars (spoiler about that cheerleader). There’s a common misconception that conflict just means aggression and violence. If I had to guess, I think this view’s grown out of ye olde advice nugget “start with action” which gets misunderstood a lot to mean we should always start with car chases and kaiju attacks. And that just belief just grew from there and now some folks see conflict and action as the same thing.

Remember this, too.

Now… with all of that in mind…

First, I’ve seen a number of folks who have odd ideas about conflict, and I think it comes from that misconception that conflict and action are the same thing. They’re smart enough to know “start with action” doesn’t always mean explosions and no-holds-barred cage matches. It can mean almost any sort of action, right?

The catch is these folks now think any sort of action counts as conflict. Walking my dog is conflict. Eating lunch is conflict. Taking a shower is conflict. But like we just said, conflict needs a degree of effort. It requires something preventing me from doing the thing I want to do. Yeah, it’s possible taking a shower could be a huge conflict in my story but… that’s probably going to be a really specific story.

A simple way to check this is a trick I’ve mentioned before. Whatever story we’re talking about, get the whole thing in your head and write out a good solid summary. One page, tops. Try not too skip anything, but don’t overthink it. Just get it all down like you were telling it to me at a bar or over dinner or something casual like that. “I just read this great book about…”

When you look back over this summary, you’re probably going to see the word but a few times (or maybe some of its kissing cousins like however or although). And a lot of those buts are going to be points where there’s conflict in the story. If I didn’t instinctively use but to explain how this element fits in my summary, there’s a really good chance this element isn’t conflict.

I mean, look at my choose-your-own conflict example up above. It’s a simple story explanation, and what’s the conjunction tying it together? It’s a natural way to explain conflict. They want this, but that.

Another thing I’ve seen a lot of in the discourse is some people arguing conflict’s completely unnecessary in a story. But almost all of their statements seem to tie back to that misconception—that conflict only refers to sword fights and alien invasions and ninja cheerleaders. And conflict can cover a lot of stuff. Heck, how many 80s movies are just about needing to raise money to save the orphanage or the car wash or, yes, Uncle Ricky’s Surf Shop? How many romantic comedies are based around misunderstandings that need to be resolved or class inequality?

So a lot of the folks insisting conflict’s unnecessary in a story are just, well, misunderstanding what conflict is. They’re defining conflict as just punching and ninja cheerleaders and the like, and therefore this story which has neither punching nor ninja cheerleaders… has no conflict. And that’s almost certainly not true. I mean, it’s true that they don’t have a ninja cheerleader, yes (maybe? ninjas are everywhere), but it’s not true the story doesn’t have conflict.

Again, conflict needs to be an opposing force or obstacle, but it could be the nagging doubt in the back of my mind that never shuts up. Or a letter from the bank telling us they’re going to foreclose on the surf shop if we don’t pay back all the loan money by 5:00 this Friday. Or the third point of a romantic triangle. Or the hundred miles of desert between me and getting that drink of water.

I think some of this misunderstanding also spills over into discussions about storytelling forms or structures. Someone will say “this type of story doesn’t need conflict” and then give an example that… well, has conflict. Not jetfighting/ spinkicking conflict, no, but they’re absolutely stories with obstacles that need to be overcome. It might not have one main, overall conflict, but the individual elements have lots of smaller conflicts. Or maybe the ensemble characters don’t have a single united obstacle they’re all trying to overcome, but they each have their own individual obstacle to deal with throughout the course of things. And sometimes it’s just plain old regular conflict.

Now, a closing disclaimer or two before anyone starts typing up responses.

Am I saying it’s impossible to have a story without conflict? No, of course not. But as I’ve mentioned once or thrice before, I personally find it really hard to be interested in a story about a normal day where nothing happens. Yes, it may have beautiful turns of phrase and inspired vocabulary and vivid imagery, but they’re all serving… well, a boring, normal day.

And ultimately—again, might just be me—I don’t think a lot of readers are going to sit through a boring, normal day. No matter how inspired my vocabulary is. Because we all go through boring, normal days all the time. We want to see something happen.

Even if it isn’t a spinkicking ninja cheerleader.

In other news…

I’m going to be at WonderCon this weekend! All day Sunday. I’m part of a panel Sunday morning at 10:30 on writing blended genres (Room 300 C) and after that, starting at 11:45, I’ll be in the autograph area for forty-odd minutes scribbling in books. And then I’ll be walking the floor saying hi to folks and looking at things. I’ll be the guy in the cranberry blazer with a Midnight Burger shirt.

And next time… well, I’ve been bad about the ranty blog these past few months, so I’m going to try to redeem myself.

Until then, go write.

My beloved and I tried to watch a show a month or three back. From the moment we met them—their very first scene—one of the characters was just awful. Blatantly ignorant and incompetent, and always trying to bluster past it. Insensitive to the point of almost being cruel. And incredibly self-centered. We watched three episodes before giving up, and in all of that I think said character maybe had two conversations that didn’t center around themself.

In fact, said character was the reason we stopped watching. Yeah, by then there were some hints of growth and improvement, but at that point they were so deep in the hole we didn’t want to watch another two or three episodes and see if they managed to climb out.

And just to be clear, this wasn’t a minor character. This was one of the leads! Arguably the lead, depending on who you asked and how the show had worked out billing. Pretty much from the start, the main character of the show made us not want to watch the show.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, first impressions matter. In the real world and in fiction. Maybe even more in fiction.

This ties back to an often-misunderstood idea I’ve mentioned once or thrice before– three act structure. No, really. As a writer, I establish the norm, I introduce some form of conflict into the norm, and then I resolve that conflict. That makes sense, right?

So when I introduce a character, nine times out of ten I’m establishing the norm. This is who they are. It’s how they act every day, how they usually treat people. These first impressions is where my character arcs are going to begin. They’re who my character is without the added pressure of that conflict I’m going to be introducing.

It may sound really obvious, but this is why we tend to meet protagonists doing good things (or at the very least, neutral things) and antagonists doing bad things. Because if I start with someone being a self centered idiot, well… they’re a self-centered idiot. And probably have been for a while. Which doesn’t always make for a compelling character.

Getting past that first impression can be tough, especially if it’s something that’s going to give my audience—my readers—a strong reaction. It’s not impossible, but I’m definitely choosing an uphill battle as my starting point. If your first thoughts are that my character’s kind of a rude bastard or just a general ass or maybe a bit creepy in the bad way… I have to spend time getting past those perceptions. And that’s time I can’t spend getting to, well, the plot.

Think about some of your favorite characters from books or movies and think about how we first meet them. How often are they doing essentially decent things, even if it’s just in a low-key, maybe even not terribly joyful way? It’s rare that a character’s first page is trying to convince us they’re a horrible person.

And just to be clear, I’m not saying they have to be so happy-go-smiley-sweet that Mr. Rogers goes into diabetic shock. I just don’t want them to be an awful person. That’s it. Someone can be frustrated, depressed, annoyed, or even full-on angry and still not do awful things.

This might sound a little weird because we had a big, maybe ten year span where it was really common to have main characters who were… well, jerks. They were rude. Petty. Sometimes flat-out cruel. We’d see it in movies and TV shows and even commercials. They’d show people doing unquestionably mean things and narratively treat it like “ha ha, that was great!” If you stopped to think about it, though… those people were jerks.

And there’s always going to be exceptions of course. It’s possible I could have a clever reveal planned, and this ruthless gang lieutenant we met in chapter one is revealed as an undercover FBI agent early in chapter two and hey wait did we actually see him do any of this stuff he keeps talking about? It’s also possible to structure my story so we’re first meeting someone a bit further along their arc, and that might change things a bit, too.

But I still need to introduce an interesting and semi-likable character. Or, at the very least, not an unlikable one. If my readers don’t enjoy following a character, there’s a really good chance they’re just going to stop reading. And then they’ll never see that cool twist I set up at the start.

So think about those first impressions. Because I only get one chance at them.

Next time, unless there’s some serious opposition, I’d like to talk about conflict.

Until then, go write.