Category: Dead Moon

            Joyous Kwanzaato all of you celebrating it.  If you’re more the Christmas type, I hope the day was happy and peaceful and Santa got you that one thing that’s been on your mind.  And I hope all of you are looking forward to the upcoming New Year.

            Speaking of which… as this year’s winding down I thought it’d be worth going over what got done this year.  I’ve mentioned before, I think, that sometimes people get a really disheartening idea of how much some authors produce on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis because they’ll catch somebody like Chuck Wendig or Victoria Schwab posting about a particularly productive day they had (or Jonathan Maberry posting about, y’know, a day that ends in Y…).  When you’re struggling to squeeze in a few hours a week, it can be kinda soul-crushing to see people who are writing five or six thousand words a day.

            So I thought I’d go over all my writing-related activities for the year.  Break down what got done and how long it took.  Keeping in mind, again, that this is my full-time job, so there’s some stuff I consider part of the writing job that might not actually involve writing a specific book.  As we shall see.

            Anyway…
            I wrote—and rewrote—a good chunk of a book called Dead Moon.  I started it seven years ago and it’s finally coming out in February through Audible.  I think it’s a much better, stronger book than it would’ve been if I’d written it back in 2011.  Partly because I’m a better writer (I like to think so, anyway), partly because I’m gotten to work with a lot of good editors over those seven years and they each pushed me to be a little sharper, a little better.

            As you’re reading this, I’m a little over 45,000 words into another book, one that ties together two previous ones I wrote.  Overall, it’s going smoothly so far, although I’ve lost about a week to the flu which led right into the holidays, and also a pulled back early this fall.  I’d wanted to be another 20-25,000 words along at this point, but I’m still happy where things are at.  I’m probably going to do a whole post on this one sometime in the spring, because it’s the first time I’ve really done a book start to finish from a full outline.

            Plus I’ve been working on an outline for my next book, too.  Still in the early days, fleshing out a few things, but I’m very excited about it.
            I wrote about fifty-five posts here at the ranty blog.  Yeah, the number down on the side bar is a little higher, but a couple of those posts were cartoons or memes or different con schedules.  I’m not sure how many, but enough that I should probably knock at least a dozen off that final number.

            Probably worth mentioning that this year I shut down another blog I’d had for a few years. It was mostly about my geeky toy soldier hobby and ways to save money with it.  Truth is, though, I just haven’t had time to put into those paperhammer projects that I used to.  Closing it down took a lot of stress and guilt off my shoulders for… well, not coming up with content for that blog.  So that’s probably something to remember, too.  There are times it’s worth it to stopwriting.

            Also worth mentioning that this was a pretty appearance-heavy year for me.  I appeared at five different cons, if memory serves, plus a few speaking engagements.  Plus the Writers Coffeehouse, and now the Dystopian/Apocalyptic bookclub at The Last Bookstore.
            Finally, a ton of reading.  I didn’t get to read as much as I would’ve liked these past few years, so in 2018 I made it a point that I wanted to read a lot of novels from a variety of authors, and try to read at least one a week.  It was energizing and enlightening and I can’t recommend it enough.  Expand your horizons.  I’m currently in the middle of book 51 for the year, and might even get into 52 this weekend.

            (there was a pile of comics in there, too)

            And there’s that.  How this professional writer spent his time this year.  And keep in mind I still had time to binge Lost in Space, Sabrina, and 3Belowwhile also keeping up with my CW shows and The Good Place.

            Oh, and move to another city.

            Almost forgot that part.

            What have you gotten done this year, writing-wise?  Did you hit your goals?  Get close?  Hopefully, if nothing else, it gave you a good sense of where your goals should be.  Did you push yourself too hard, or not hard enough?
            There is no right or wrong answer here.  The right speed for you is going to depend on what you want to get out of this and where you’re hoping to go with it.  There’s no reason for me–or for you– to compare myself to anyone else. It just matters that I’m getting something done.

            Maybe think about that a bit as 2019 rolls closer.

            On which note, I’m going to try to get some work done before we lunge into 2019.  Hope the holiday shave been good to you and continue to be so.

            Next time, I’ll probably be giving my start of the year spiel.

            Until then… go write.    

            A while back I asked for topic suggestions and this got tossed out by someone (you know who you are).  I’ve been playing with it in my head for a few weeks because it’s one of those topics/questions that’s a little more complex than it seems on the surface.  But I think I’ve got a handle on it to where I could mutter on about it for a bit.

            Or maybe not.  Maybe I’m just suffering from leftover Halloween candy withdrawal.  I guess we’ll see.

            So, the question was, paraphrased, ‘Who deserves to be a character in my story?”  Not in the sense of “wow, this guy on Twitter thinks he should be in my next book”—the answer to that is pretty much always no.  No, we’re talking about where we draw those lines between main characters, supporting characters, and those folks in the background. 

            For example, in the book I’m working on right now, I just mentioned a Lyft driver.  How much detail and backstory do they deserve?  Should they have a gender?  A  hair color?  Maybe an elaborate backstory involving a wild one night stand, a million-dollar art heist, and a cursed music box?

            Should I maybe even give them… a name?

            Now, on a simple, first-draft level, the answer to all of this is yes.  Go for it.  I don’t know how many times I’ve said good characters are the most important part of any story.  So, logically, more good characters makes for an even better story, right? 

            And this is the whole point of a first draft.  Getting it all written down.  All of it.  Everything.  EVERYTHING!  Every crazy idea and phenomenal character concept and neat cameo I can come up.  So my Lyft driver is named Phoebe and that one night stand was actually a threesome and she was blackmailed into working the art heist because they knew about her skill with laser-based sensors but she didn’t know “they” were part of the Black Monks of Beleth, a monastery that deifies a fallen angel who’s now one of the nine kings of Hell and, damn, this stuff really writes itself, doesn’t it?

            However…

            Yeah, there’s a “however.” 

            You probably saw that coming…

            Like a lot of first draft elements, eventually I need to sit down and decide how many of them really contribute to my story versus distracting from it.  In this case, how many of these characters.  And that’s when the real decisions happen.

            For me, it always comes down to how much are they moving the plot or story forward.  Are they sharing important information my protagonist (and my audience) don’t know?  Are they setting something in motion?  Is it vitally important we remember this character fifty pages from now?

            And I should be clear what “moving the story forward” means.  If Yakko needs a ride so he doesn’t miss his meeting with Dot, that doesn’t mean Phoebe the Lyft driver is moving the story forward.  Being in the plot doesn’t inherently make a character essential to the plot.
            Easy way to check—does anything change if I cut out that whole car ride?  If I ended one chapter with Yakko calling a Lyft and started the next one with him running into the lobby of an office building… is anyone going to be really confused?  Will my book be lacking something (except maybe an extra 4000 words)…?

            I’ve mentioned the idea of who gets (or doesn’t get) a name before, and I think it’s a great guideline for this sort of thing.  I don’t want to confuse my readers by naming every single character.  If I’m going to bother to name a character, readers are going to assume I did it for a reason.  This person is going to matter somehow.

            And I think this holds for character traits overall.  If I’m going to spend three paragraphs describing her clothes, his drinking habits, their sexual experiences in college, how she turned down her birthright and he never worked for anything… well, my readers are going to assume this is important.  I wouldn’t just be writing all this out for no reason, would I?  I’m a professional, after all.  There’s a plan to all of this, and it’s a plan of my own careful devising.

            But…

            Yeah, there’s a “but,” too.

            But I need to be sure of that plan.  Sometimes things can seem to be important threads of the plan, but really they’re just bulk filler.  Once or twice I’ve mentioned the idea of “describe and die.”  It’s when the writer introduces characters, gives us tons of description and backstory, and then kills them.  It can seem like a good use of description… but it’s something that wears thin really fast. 

            Like… after one use.

            So imagine how frustrated my readers would get if I did “describe and… do nothing.”

            To be clear, I’m not saying to pare away every single character description that doesn’t advance the plot.  But I need to be careful how and where I’m using them..  There are lots and lots of reasons it might be worth bumping someone up to minor character-hood and giving them a little more.  I just need to be sure I’ve got a valid reason.

            For example…

           In the book I just turned in, there’s an evacuation scene, and I tossed out quick, one-line descriptions for three different characters as my protagonist deals with the crowd.  Two of them even had a very quick dialogue exchange with said protagonist before one of them is abruptly killed.

            Spoilers, but you’ll forget by February.

            Anyway, my editor suggested trimming that down, getting rid of the other exchanges and descriptions and just dealing with the imminent victim.  I explained why I’d rather not—one was that it pushed me into a very light “describe and die” situation. Two is that—after years of watching and working on television—it always feels a little odd and cheap to me when the only person the protagonist interacts with in a crowd is the person something happens to.  Y’know, like when the reporter talks to a random person in the audience about holding the concert despite the building needing repairs, and when that roof beam breaks and falls… well, you know who was under it, right?

            And my editor accepted that.

            Which is a great way to look at it.  Feel free to introduce minor characters.  Give them a line or three of description.  Maybe a paragraph or two of backstory.  But if someone asks why I’m focusing on this person for a few extra beats, can I give a better explanation than “it’s kinda cool,” or “it’s a very pretty description”…?

            Because if I can’t… maybe they don’t deserve to be a character.

            Next time, I’d like to talk about phone calls and rhythm and dialogue.

            Oh, and one other random segue…

            I’m hardly a prude, and I know there are lots of authors out there that have much earthier blogs than mine (some of which are really fantastic).  But I always kept it kinda clean here.  Mostly because this originally grew out of some professional articles I’d been pitching, and I tried to keep that general feel and tone, even though I’ve gotten a bit more loose and casual over the years.

            Anyway, I bring it up because a couple of you have posted some rather *coughs* emphatic responses to things lately.  And while I greatly appreciate the enthusiasm (and the comments), I prefer to keep things at a level that doesn’t get blocked by a lot of web filters.  Alas, the only real moderation tool I have here is a delete button, and I’ve had to resort to that.  Many apologies if your comments vanished in the (tiny) purge.  Again, they’re appreciated but…

            You all get the point.

            Next time, dialogue.

            For now, go write.

            Wanted to take a few minutes and talk a little bit about a way that writing and publishing overlap.  It’s not my usual sort of thing but I figured… ehhh, it’s been a while since I talked about this.
            There’s a lot of pressure to be as fast as possible with writing these days.  More than a few would-be gurus—and even some small publishers—push  a business modelof quantity over quality.  Why take the time on one book if I can rush through half a dozen or so and get the same result?  Selling a hundred copies of ten books is the same as selling a thousand copies of one, right?

            On top of that, the ease of electronic distribution has pushed the idea that moving slow is clunky and antiquated.  Any person or publisher that moves at such a pace gets compared to… well, dinosaurs.  

            This need for speed creates an awful sense that time’s being wasted if I write something that doesn’t sell.  That spending time on editing or revisions is wrong.  And with the raw amount of stuff being e-published, I think all of us have a lurking fear that if we don’t get our idea out there now, someone else is going to beat us to it and have it out there tomorrow.

            I know there are folks (some of whom I know and like a lot) who advocate publishing everything.  Trunk novel?  Throw that up on Amazon.  First draft no agent or editor would accept?  Kindle format for a buck-ninety-nine.  Get it out there because somebody might love it, and at the worst you make fifteen or twenty bucks off it rather than nothing.  You’d pick up twenty bucks if you found it laying in the street, right?

            And I get that this is a really appealing idea.  We want to get paid.  We should get paid.  I’m a big fan of artists (of all types) getting compensated for their work.

            But…

            We also need to acknowledge there’s a learning curve. 

            It shouldn’t be too much of a shock that the first thing I put down isn’t going to be that great.  Or the second thing.  Maybe even the third. 

            Sure, there’s always a chance that my first book is pure gold on the first pass.  Scientifically speaking, there’s some chance almost anything could happen.  I mean, I wouldn’t put money on any of those things but, hey… there’s a chance.

            Because of this—he said, bracing for angry comments—I often find myself really doubtful when people say they wrote a book in four or five weeks.  I completely believe a draft can be written in that amount of time.  I wrote the first draft of 14 in about six weeks, and that was around 150,000 words.  But a finished book manuscript?  Something ready to hand off to an editor?  Or put up for sale?

            I just don’t buy it.  Sorry.

            Writing takes time.  It can take a lot of time.  It takes time to learn how to do it right and then it takes time to do it right.  I can’t expect the first thing I write to compare to something written by someone with years of experience.  I can’t rush through one edit draft in a day and expect to get the same results as someone who spends weeks going over their whole manuscript line by line. 

            Simple truth is, the majority of us aren’t ever going to put out material that doesn’t need work.  Not later in our careers.  Definitely not at the start of our careers.

            Yeah, ourcareers.  This holds for me, too. I wrote a lot of stuff that never got published and probably never will.  Why?  Because it’s bad!  It’s that first attempt at making chocolate chip waffles or trying to grill Ahi tuna.  It may be edible—barely—but no one should be asked to pay for it.

            I’ve mentioned The Suffering Map here a few times.  Okay, a bunch of times.  Consider this… when you pare away all the time where I worked on other projects, it’s probably fair to say I spent two, maybe two and a half years on that book.  My first 100% completed novel.

            Any d’you know what I’ve done with it?

            Nothing.

            Oh, sure, I submitted it a lot at the time.  It got some interest.  But everyone passed on it, and (lucky for me) most of them offered a few suggestions of where it needed work.  And they were right.  It did need work.  It had some real problems, and I’m glad it’s not out there hanging on my career like some kind of literary albatross on a cursed mariner or something like that.

            Or consider the book I just turned in.  That took seven months, start to finish. And that’s considering I’d plotted out a good chunk of it years ago  It went through four drafts before I even turned it in to my editor, because there were lots of things that needed tweaks and adjustments to make the book as good as it could be.  Believable characters.  Sharp dialogue.  Solid pacing. 

            And that’s okay.  Really.  The important thing is for me to write something good.  Churning out 8000 words every day or 400 pages for NaNoWriMo is an achievement, yeah, absolutely.  But in the end it’s always better for me to have 1000 good words or 100 polished pages.

            Now, going slow isn’t an ironclad rule.  Sometimes everything just lines up and my third or fourth draft only takes a few days.  No two projects are the same and no two writers are the same. 

            But if every draft of every project I work on goes fast… maybe I should take an effort to slow down for a while and see how it affects my writing.

            Because the goal for all of us is to be great.  To write the best thing we can.  Not to rush toward “okay” and stop when we get there. 

            Even if it makes us fifteen or twenty bucks.

            Next time I’d like to come clean about a couple more things.

            Until then, go write.

            So, this may come as a shock to some of you but… I write books.  People often ask me questions about these books. Sometimes the same questions. 

            See, I’m a big fan of social media.  Yeah, there are some deplorable folks, but there are a lot of good people, too.  I love that I get to say “hullo” and chat with people about things.  Books. Movies. LEGO.  Games.

            However…
            It can fray one’s patience to answer the same questions again and again and again because some folks won’t bother to scroll down two or three posts or up through the comments.  Between this blog, the Facebook fan page, Twitter… well, that adds up to a lot of people repeating the same questions.

            Not you, of course. You just asked that one time without thinking.  You’re cool.  I’m talking about that other guy.  Him.  That guy’s so friggin lazy.  

            We all know it, I’m just the one saying it…
            Anyway… rather than get annoyed at someone for asking the same question that I already answered three times this morning in the same thread, I figured I’d scribble up answers to the ten most common questions and pin them here and on a lot of my social media pages.
            And then everybody can just ignore that…

            Well, we just had the paperback of Paradox Bound come out last week.  Hopefully you all checked that out and left kind reviews with all your favorite booksellers.

            Two weeks from now, July 17th, my second novel, The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe is coming out as an audiobook almost eight years after it was first released.  It’s being narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds and… well, I’m really looking forward to it.  I’ve always had a special fondness for this book, but I know the period writing style didn’t thrill a lot of people.  It won’t be as noticeable in a spoken performance, so I’m hoping a lot of you will give it a try and have some fun with it.

            Then, if everything times out right, I believe at the end of the year you’ll be seeing Dead Moon, a sort of sci-fi horror story about zombies on the Moon.  No, seriously. I think it’s kinda fun and pulpy and creepy.

            I guess we’ll see if I’m right.

            Hard to say, but… yeah, it’s looking that way.
            The simple truth is, every series has a limited life.  Very few people decide to start on book three of a series—they go back and start at book one.  So book one always sells the best.  Attrition says not as many people show up for book two, even less show up for book three, and so on.  It’s always a downward slope heading for that red line where things aren’t profitable.  None of the Ex-Heroes books ever lost money (thank you all for that), but all the numbers said book six…  Well, the prognosis didn’t look great for book six.
            Keep in mind, nothing’s set in stone.  Any number of things could make the series surge in popularity and get the publisher more interested.  Or, depending on how things work out, I might be able to apply a little leverage.  But for now…  Ex-Tension is moving to a back burner.  Very sorry.

            Okay, look, I love the Ex-Heroes books.  Hopefully you all know that.  Those characters and stories got me where I am today.  I love that there are so many fans who feel passionately about it.  I had tons of fun writing them.
            But…

            The simple truth is, if there were enough people willing to pay for another book, the publisher would still be willing to put it out.  Sure, some people might pay twice as much to get one more book, but experience tells me four times as many people wouldn’t pay anything (for one reason or another).  There’s pretty much no way this would end up working out.

            Plus, my schedule’s set up many months in advance.  I already know the projects I’m working on until September of 2019.  Doing something like this means I haveto plan on it happening, which means… a potential gaping hole in my schedule when it doesn’t.

            Sorry.

            Yes!  I’ve started working on it already, and probably going to be diving in right after SDCC (see #10 down below) and the target date is to have it in to Audible by the end of the year, so they can have it out to you in spring or summer of next year.

            Also, yeah, we’re calling it the Threshold series now. 

            I talked about it a lot with my agent and the folks at Audible, and we bounced around a few different options (some of which originated over on the fan page) and rationales.  We wanted a good, overall title that could reference all these different books with subtle and not-so-subtle connections. Sort of like how King has a lot of stuff that falls under the Dark Tower umbrella even though there are a few specific books telling that story.

            Thresholdfits in a few different ways.  A threshold is part of a doorway, and doorways figure big into most of this series. It also refers to something reaching a specific critical level—another recurring issue in these books. And, finally, it’s also a reference to an old H.P. Lovecraft short story.

            Which has nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was kinda cool…

            Yeah, about that…

            I have a fantastic relationship with Crown, but they have their own tastes and expectations.  These two books—Dead Moon and the new Threshold book—just didn’t appeal to them.  For a couple of different reasons.  And that’s fine.  Seriously.  I want to stress that none of it is negative.  My editor at Crown, Julian, has already talked with me a bit about what we’ll be doing together next year.  We’re all cool on that front.

            Now, as all this discussion is going on, Audible starts gesturing to me from across the room.  I also have a very good relationship with them and it’s worked out very well for everyone involved.  There’s a fair argument to be made that the majority of my fanbase is audiobook listeners.  Heck, when Paradox Bound made the NYT Bestsellers list, it was with the audiobook version.

            So Audible made a very generous offer for these two books.  For exclusive rights to these two books.  So both of these are going to be audiobook only for the first six months they’re out.  After that, we’re talking to some folks, and I should have some answers for you by the time I update this FAQ.

            Yeah, I know this is going to make some of you grind your teeth.  My agent and I talked about it a lot, believe me (even with that generous offer).  Every other day on the phone for almost six weeks.  In the end, I really wanted to tell these stories and this was the best way to do it.

            Very doubtful.  I think a lot of the fun of The Junkie Quatrain was the overlapping- interconnected nature of the stories.  It’d be tough to replicate that without feeling kinda forced and awkward.  I think we’ll probably have to draw our own conclusions about what eventually happened to those characters.  Well, the surviving characters.
            Although, one of them may have already shown up somewhere else…

            This sounds like an easy question, I know, but there’s about a dozen conditionals to any answer I give.  Figure a huge chunk of each contract is just all the conditions for getting paid.

            For example… format matters, sure, but so does where you bought the book.  And when.  And how many people bought it before you. And if it was on sale. And who was actually holding the sale.  And all of this changes in every contract.  What’s true for, say, Ex-Communicationmay not be true for Paradox Bound.

            TL;DR—just buy the format you like.

            To be honest, I’m still stunned and thrilled that people talk about anything I wrote. Seriously.  What I can’t stand are spoilers.

           I’m thrilled Wakko enjoyed it so much when the protagonist found that and discovered thisand learned about them.  When he tells people about it, though—no matter what his intentions—Wakko’s ensuring that other folks won’t have as much fun with the book as he did.  It’s like if I tell you how a magician does all her tricks and then take you to see her performance.  You’re not supposed to see a magic show knowing how all the tricks work and being aware of the resolutions in advance.  It kills most of the fun, because the story structure that created a sense of wonder and discovery has been destroyed.

            This is why I avoid those questions in interviews, and why I always ignore/ delete posts that reveal information from the back half of a book (yep, that’s probably what happened to your post).  It doesn’t matter if the rest of the post was positive or negative, spoilers = deleted.

            And not just my stories!  Don’t mess up other stories, either. Movies, TV—if you enjoyed it, try to give other people a chance to enjoy it the same way.

            If you suffer from the heartbreak of spoilers Tourettes and absolutely must discuss your fan theories, there are a couple secret groups on Facebook.  There’s one for Threshold books here, and one for the Ex-Heroes series here

            Maaaaybe.
            In a few weeks I’m going to be at SDCC. Later this fall I’ll be at Dragon Con in Atlanta.  I’ll give more info on each as they get a bit closer. I think that’s pretty much it.  Probably not doing NYCC again this year.

            But—things change all the time.  If you really want me to be at your local con, let them know!  Yeah, them, not me.  I’m willing to go almost anywhere I’m invited, but if I’m not invited… there’s not much I can do.  And keep in mind that most cons finalize their guest list three or four months in advance, so if your local con’s next month… odds are not in your favor.
            So, email them, tweet them, post on their Instagram account.  Reach out and let your voice be heard.

            Okay, there’s a misunderstanding of how Hollywood works in this sort of question.  When you see a TV series or film adaptation, it means the studio went to the writer, not the other way around.  I mean, if it was just about the writer saying “make this into a movie,” well… wouldn’t most books be adapted by now?  Everyone would be doing it.
            Alas, I have zero say in whether or not Starz wants to do an Ex-Heroes series or SyFy does aLycanthrope Robinson Crusoe movie.  They’re looking for things that have piqued a certain level of interest, and so far these stories of mine have only just scraped that threshold. 
            No, me (or you) writing the screenplay won’t make a difference, unless your name happens to be Terry Rossio, Joss Whedon, or David Koepp—and even then it’s not a sure thing.

12) Wait, wasn’t there going to be a TV series based on 14?

            Theoretically, yeah.  A few years ago I was approached by Team Downey, the personal production company of that guy who plays Iron Man. Turned out he’s a fan of 14 and wanted to do something with it, and a deal was struck with his company and WBTV. 

            But…  Hollywood’s a big game of if.  If a pilot gets shot, if it turns out okay, if the various network execs likes it, if it gets picked up…  And some of these ifs are on a time limit.  WB paid to push it back once and give themselves more time (which got a bunch of us very hopeful), but… it just didn’t happen.

            Which all kinda goes with what I said up above in #11.  Robert Downey, Jr. had signed on as an executive producer and that wasn’t enough to get it made. 
            But I still get to say he liked one of my books.

13) So, is there anything we can do to help?
            Well, buying books is always a good step.  Hollywood likes to see big sales numbers and interest.  If you want to see something—anything—on the air, talk about it a lot on social media.  Producers/ directors/ actors all hear about this stuff the same way you do.  If #ParadoxBoundor #DeadMoon started trending on Twitter tomorrow, there’d probably be a film deal within a week.
            (true fact—an easy way to help do this?  Don’t buy books from Amazon.  Amazon doesn’t like to report sales figures, so they don’t get included in things like the NYT Bestsellers list.  Yeah, I know, a purchase from your local bookstore might cost a buck or three more, but it’s a purchase Hollywood is more likely to notice.  Plus, then you’re one of those cool people supporting local businesses…)
            (and before you ask, yes, Audible does report sales figures)

14) Wait, wasn’t this a top ten FAQ?
            What are you, the freakin’ number police now?  Most people are happy to get bonus content.  Just go with it.

            I can’t believe you wasted one of your questions with this…

            Short answer… no.

            Part of this is a time issue—if I say yes to some folks, in the spirit of fairness I have to say yes to everyone. Now I’m spending all my time doing critiques instead of writing. Not to sound too mercenary, but… writing is how I earn my living.  When someone asks me to read stuff, they’re asking me to give up a few hours of work.  And I do have this ranty blog just sitting here with over a decade of writing advice and tips.

            It’s also a legal thing.  Some folks are lawsuit-crazy, often for no reason,, and the bad ones ruin it for everyone else. Let’s say Phoebe gives me a piece of fanfic to read where she has Harry and Eli showing up at a certain post-apocalyptic film studio.  And then, a few years from now, I decide to do a big crossover story.  That’s when Phoebe sues me for stealing her material.  

            Yeah, it sounds stupid, but I’ve seen this happen so many times.  Hell, I’ve actually been subpoenaed and deposed over a case with less behind it than that example I just made up.

            This is why I’m verrrry leery when I get a long message along the lines of “Hey, you know what should happen in your next book…”  It’s why some writers have responded with cease & desist orders when they get sent stuff like this.  It’s also why I’m not part of the above-mentioned spoiler groups.

           So, the long answer is also… no.  And if you send stuff without asking, I’ll delete it unread, just like spam mail. Sorry.

            Nope.  Nothing against you (well… most of you), I just don’t like Goodreads.  I’d explain why, but I’m taking the Thumper approach.

            I post nothing there and spend as little time there as possible (which usually works out to “no time”).  If you see anything there from “me,” it’s something someone else posted.  I understand a lot of folks love the site and if it works for you, that’s fantastic.  I won’t be there.

17) What about Twitter?

            I’m @PeterClines  on Twitter.  Fair warning–as some of you may have figured out, I’m progressive and I’m a bit more political over there.   On Saturdays I also drink a lot and live-tweet bad movies so…  you know what you’re getting into.

            Also Loud Howard, my cat, still has hundreds more followers than me. Seriously.  So don’t let anyone tell you being cute won’t help you get ahead.

            I will say right up front I don’t believe in Twitter high school, where I’m supposed to follow someone just because they followed me. So if that’s your approach, I’ll save you time now…

18) What about Instagram

            Getting pretty good at Instagram (also @PeterClines).  Probably the geekiest of all my social medias.  How is that possible, you ask?  Well, go check it out for yourself…

            I’m still not sure if I’m really bad at Instagram or all the people I follow are.  Or maybe Instagram just doesn’t make a lot of sense and I’m the last to know about it…

And I think that covers all the big stuff, yes…?