Category: Ex-Heroes

A few weeks back I talked about things getting their genres mid-identified, and afterwards somebody asked an interesting follow up. Namely, how do we identify genres? What are the benchmarks? How do we decide if something’s sci-fi or a techo-thriller or a romance that just happens to be set in a sci-fi world?

I know this sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. For a couple reasons. Which I shall go over now.

First and foremost thing to remember—I shouldn’t worry about genre while I’m writing. Genre’s really a marketing tool more than anything else, so it doesn’t have a lot of use on the creative/ artistic side of things. In fact, if I’m worrying a lot about the guidelines of a given genre while I’m writing, I may want to take a step back and make sure I’m not just trying to jump on a trend. In my experience… that doesn’t work out most of the time.

With that in mind… what even is genre? A great way to think of it is a compass (many thanks to Pierce Brown for this analogy). Genre points you in the general direction of things you’re looking for. You want to head south-west? Just keep going that way. You want to find horror novels? They’re all over there.

And that leads us to another good way to think of it, maybe an even more relatable one. Where would my book get stocked in the bookstore? Don’t think about getting misshelved or getting featured on that best-sellers endcap. No excuses, no avoiding the question. Picture your favorite store and decide where would it be shelved in that store. 

If I can’t answer this… I have a problem. Because this is how an agent’s going to try to sell my book. “It’s something new to go here.” Even if I’m just planning on self-publishing an ebook, Amazon’s going to want to know how to categorize it.

Let me tell you one last little story. My first published book was Ex-Heroes, which ended up becoming a series of books set in that world and all involving the same basic theme—superheroes fighting zombies in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. When the series originally came out, it was through a small press that specialized in apocalyptic fiction, specifically zombie fiction. That was their niche, and they filled it perfectly. So they heavily emphasized the zombie/ post-apocalyptic aspects of the book in their publicity for it. That’s the direction their compass pointed.

But… by book three the series had moved to Broadway Paperbacks at Random House, and they wanted something that would promote well at comic conventions. So… the superheroes became the new focus. And so the compass needle for the books swung from the horror section (in the few stores the small press had gotten them into) to the sci-fi section.

My point being… life finds a way.

No, sorry, my point is that in both cases, the genre gave people a good idea what they’d find when they opened the book. Post-apocalyptic zombies. Superheroes.

So, that said… let’s talk very rough guidelines for a few basic genres. I won’t be able to touch on every genre (and may not even do a fantastic job with these), but I figure if you’re here looking for advice from me, there’s a semi-decent chance you’re writing the same kind of stuff you read. Which is me arrogantly assuming you ended up here because you read a couple of my books and liked them.

Science-Fiction—this is when my fictional elements have a rational, scientific explanation behind them. They don’t need to be explained(although hard science fans love it when you can), but they need to fall within a range of believability.

Science-Fantasy—This is when my story elements are hypothetically grounded in science, but (to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke) they’re so far advanced they’re beyond all possible understanding and essentially magic.

Fantasy—This is when some aspect of the rules of reality are tossed out the window. It might mean magic. It might mean new races or species (dragons, elves, orcs, owlbears, what have you). Fantasy tends to have less technologically-developed settings.

Urban Fantasy—A subgenre I thought was worth mentioning. Here we’re still tossing some of the reality-rules out the window, but we’re specifically doing it in a modern (or near-modern), real-world setting, often with more modern technology alongside it.

Horror—Might sound obvious, but many aspects of these stories involve fear for both the characters and the reader. Depending on my exact subgenre, that fear can have many different causes and intensities.

Romance—again, might sound obvious, but in romance most of the elements revolve around two characters developing a relationship despite various challenges. There may or may not be a sexual element (of varying explicitness) again depending on my subgenre.

Mystery—This is when the main thrust is trying to find answers to a problem—very often (but not always) involving a crime of some sorts. Another good rule of thumb for mysteries—they tend to center around something that already happened. The mystery is past tense.

Thriller—Somewhat similar to mysteries, this is when the plot elements involve a current, ongoing problem. Because of this, thrillers also tend to have a strong action component and fast pacing. The rule of thumb—thrillers are happening right now.

That’s not all possible genres (not even close), and there are sooo many sub-genres, but it’s enough to get you started.

One last thing to tag onto this. You’ve probably heard of terms like young adult or middle grade. It’s worth noting these aren’t actually genres in and of themselves, but additional guidelines that get applied to a given story. It’s not about my story as much as it is about how I’m choosing to tell that story.

All of this leads me to my final bit of advice, which kind of ties back to that earlier post. If I had to give a one or two sentence elevator pitch about my story, what would be in that pitch? What would I be focusing on? Would I be talking about space elevators and moon colonies, or would I be emphasizing the zombie hordes rising from their graves? Remember—I’ve only got two sentences, and they can’t be run-ons. Elevator pitch. Very fast, very clear.

Consider Twilight. It has vampires and werewolves and more than a few deaths… but it’s not a horror story. It barely counts as urban fantasy. The thing we’d emphasize in our elevator pitch is the high schooler who falls in love with a vampire. It’s a romance novel. Supernatural romance if we want to start focusing down.

And remember—there may be elements to my story that’d normally be immediate signs of one genre, but they don’t come up in that elevator pitch. That’s okay. I shouldn’t try to cram them in. Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth has lots of raunchy jokes and a few spaceships, but I’d bet 99% of the people who’ve read it don’t think of it as a comedy or a sci-fi novel–their minds jump right to the necromancy and the murder mystery.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about genre. Unless anyone has any specific questions?

Next time…

Well, in some beautiful, alternate world we all sheltered in place all through March and April, wore our masks for May, and now it’s perfectly safe for all of us to attend San Diego Comic Con next week! YAY!

But in this world, alas, SDCC was cancelled because of folks who refused to do those things. There are still going to be some virtual events, though. I’m doing a panel on sci-fi writing next Friday at 4:00. I’m hoping to have a new Coffeehouse video up by then. And I’m also going to be doing a special Saturday Geekery, live-tweeting a few B-movie classics with some friends. You should come join us.

And all this means that next time, I may revisit and revise my list of top B-movie mistakes.

So until then, go write.

And, c’mon… wear your mask.

Normally I try to update the FAQ every six months or so. Partly for you, partly for me. To be honest, it’s tough for me to keep track of all the stuff going on (and potentially going on) as far as sales, releases, formats, options, and adaptations. Even more so when you figure these past few months time has become less of an absolute, often slowing to a crawl and stretching on and on and on when in fact it’s only Wednesday.

And, well, that particular effect has really intensified, hasn’t it? With the global pandemic and possibly months at home, not to mention the looming threat of murder hornets, I think a lot of us have either completely lost track of time or become all-too-painfully aware of it. I know I spent pretty much all of March and maybe the first week of April doomsurfing. Like, all the time. I didn’t mean to, or really want to, but that’s how every day ended up going.

But even with all that, I figured it might be worth doing a quick catch-up. I mean, I think we’d all enjoy something happening pretty much how and when it’s supposed to, right? Something working the way it’s supposed to? Novel idea, right?

So here’s me scribbling up answers to some of the most common questions I’ve gotten lately. Then when people ask me those questions (again!)—or when their teacher says “hey, hunt down an author on social media and ask them a bunch of questions”—I can say “hey, check out the FAQ I’ve pinned all over the place!”

Or maybe I won’t say it, cause at this point… I mean, there’s a current FAQ pinned right at the top of the page, several older versions of it, this blog, and several dozen interviews floating around the web. Plus I wrote a bunch of books, and it’s kind of amazing how often the answers are in the books.

Do your research, people! Be the mad scientist you always wanted to be when you were little!

If all goes well, the ebook for Terminus should be out just in time for San Diego Comic Con. Hahahaaaaaaaaa… sad laugh. More on that below.

Terminus should hopefully be out as an ebook by the end of July, barring any weirdness. I’m also looking at bringing one or two other things (at least) to ebook that have been kinda out of wider circulation for a bit. I’d hoped to have them done about… well, now, but then, again, everything kinda collapsed and time ceased to have meaning.

Past that… I’m just finishing up a book that kinda came out of nowhere, fortunately at a time when I could devote a lot of attention to it. It probably would’ve gone faster, but… again,  doomsurfing. As you’re reading this, odds are my agent’s reading that.

And I’ve got a big idea I might be pitching him. Like, silly-wildly big. Maybe we’ll be talking more about that in another six or seven months.

2) So, wait, no paper version of Terminus?
No. There’s a couple of different reasons for it, and they involve assorted business and PR things I’d rather not get into (okay, fine, I’ll get into it). There’s still a chance both books may still become available if there’s a big demand for them (feel free to tell Crown Publishing you want to read them in print and would buy half a dozen copies), but for the moment Terminus (and Dead Moon) are only going to be ebook and audio. Sorry.

Threshold is the umbrella label for the shared “cosmic horror” universe I unknowingly began eight years ago with 14. There are some books that form a more linear story, a “series” if you will, and some that stand alone. A lot of Marvel movies are part of the direct Avengers through-line, but some—like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 or Thor: Ragnarok—are just set in the MCU. You can enjoy them without knowing a lot of the other movies (you’ll just catch a few more nods and references). Make sense?

And, yeah, this can make things a bit awkward sometimes. I know at points the marketing/publicity campaigns were pushing Thresholdas a pure, straightforward series (Book One, Book Two, etc), even though I’ve said many times that it isn’t, and I know a few readers went into some books with very different expectations. I apologize if that was you.

As it happens, I wrote a whole book explaining this called Dead Moon.  Also check out #3 up above.

Well, first off, I did two. Arguably four, since they offered to release some previously-published, out-of-print stuff nobody was interested in anymore—The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe and a bunch of short stories we combined into Dead Men Can’t Complain, but really those aren’t even exclusives.

Second, there’s a very solid argument to be made that the majority of my fanbase is audiobook listeners. Audible knows this, too, and so when they heard about Dead Moon and Terminus they made me an extremely generous offer for exclusive rights, meaning both of them would be audiobook only for the first six months they were out and then I’d be free to do what I want with them.

Yes, I know it made some of you grind your teeth. I’m sorry if you’re not an audiobook listener (for whatever reason) and it left you out of the loop for a bit. My agent and I talked a lot about the pros and cons of doing things this way. In the end, I really wanted to tell these stories and this was the best way to do it. Again, I’m sorry if it put you in a bad spot.

6) Do you make more money if I buy one of your books in a certain format?

I know this sounds like an easy question, but there’s about a dozen conditionals to any answer I give.  Figure a huge chunk of each contract is just all the different terms and conditions for when and if and how people get paid.

For example… format matters, sure, but so does whereyou 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, Paradox Bound may not be true for Terminus.

TL;DR—just buy the format you like.

Hahhahahaaaaa remember when this was a serious question?

Okay, in all fairness, I’m doing a lot of virtual-con stuff. I was “at” WonderConand as I write this I’m about to do some things with Denver Pop Culture Con, plus I’m doing one or two things for SDCC in a couple of weeks. Also worth noting that I’ve tried to take the Writers Coffeehouse virtual, so for the next few months you can try to find me there.

After that, well… hopefully next year will be a bit closer to what we think of as normal? Maybe? If you want to see me at your local con, let them know. Email them, tweet them, post on their Instagram account. Reach out and let your voice be heard.

So, when people ask this, there’s a basic misunderstanding of how Hollywood works.  I have pretty much zero influence on Netflix making a Threshold series or the Hallmark Channel doing a Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe movie. When we see a film adaptation or TV series, it means the studio went to the writer, not the other way around. I mean, if it was just about writers saying “hey, make this into a movie,” wouldn’t most books be adapted by now? Everybody’d be doing it.  

9) Well, is there anything we can do to help?
Buying books is the best step. Talking about them is a close second. Hollywood likes to see big sales numbers and interest.  Producers/ directors/ actors all hear about this stuff the same way you do—online reviews, bestseller lists, social media. If #ParadoxBound or #Terminusstart trending on Twitter tomorrow, there’ll probably be a film deal within a week. Seriously. Try it.

One easy thing to help with this?  Don’t buy books from Amazon if you don’t absolutely have to. Write reviews there, sure, but Amazon sales figures don’t always get included in  bestsellers lists. Yeah, buying or pre-ordering from your local bookstore might cost a buck or two more, but it’s a purchase Hollywood’s much more likely to notice in the long run. Plus, now you’re one of those cool people supporting local businesses—and we need more people like that right now.

I’m thrilled and amazed people talk about anything I wrote. Seriously. What I can’t stand are people who blurt out spoilers that can ruin the impact of these stories for other people. It’s why I avoid those questions in interviews, ignore them on Twitter, and why—where I can—I delete (or block) posts that reveal things from a book.

And not just my stories! You shouldn’t mess up other stories, either. Movies, TV—I’m just saying, if you enjoyed it spoiler-free, why not try to give other people a chance to enjoy it the same way? I still haven’t watched the finales of She-Ra or Game of Thrones, dammit! I’m looking forward to finally seeing Arya on the Iron Throne!

Yeah, Ex-Tension is staying on that back burner for the moment.  Sorry.

The truth is, every series has a limited life. Book one always sells best, not as many people show up for book two, even less show up for book three, and so on. Not a lot of folks leap in on book five, y’know? Something could always happen to give the first book a boost (and all the other books after it) but they’re still all going to be on a near-constant downward slope heading for that big red line where things aren’t profitable. None of the Ex-Heroes books ever lost money (thank you all for that), but they were on that slope and when the publisher looked ahead to book six… well, hitting said line was pretty much unavoidable.

Yeah, the answer’s still no, sorry. I love these books. I had tons of fun writing them. I’m still amazed there are so many fans who feel so passionately about them. But the math is pretty simple—if enough people were willing to pay for another book, the publisher would be willing to put out another book. And all the numbers say that’s just not the case.

Yeah, I know some of you might be willing to pay twice as much (or more) to see one more book, but I think we can all agree there’s at least as many people (probably more) who wouldn’t pay anything. And that’s the math again—it just doesn’t work out for this.

Another point to consider. I’ve already got a good idea what I’m working on… probably for the next two years at this point (that big idea I mentioned up top). Maybe even a little farther. But if I do a crowdfunded project, it means I have to schedule things under the assumption it’s going to succeed. Which means telling my publishers those other projects need to be put off and scheduled accordingly. Which leaves a six or seven month hole in my schedule when the Kickstarter flops. Which, again, all the math says is what’ll happen.

So again, no. Sorry.

Short answer… no. 

Long answer… look, if I say yes to some folks, in the spirit of fairness I have to say yes to everyone. Now I’m spending most of my time reading and doing critiques instead of writing.  I don’t mean to sound mercenary, but… writing is how I pay my mortgage. So when someone asks me to read stuff, they’re asking me to give up a few hours of work. Plus, I do have this ranty writing blog sitting right, y’know, here with over a decade of advice and tips.

Also… some folks are lawsuit-crazy, and the bad ones ruin it for everyone else. Somebody shows me a piece of bland, generic fanfic and a few years from now they sue me for stealing their ideas. Yeah, I know how stupid that sounds, but I’ve actually been subpoenaed and deposed for lawsuits with less behind them than that. It’s why I’m verrrry leery when I get a long message along the lines of “You know what you should really do next with the people from 14…”  Heck, some writers respond with cease & desist orders when they get sent stuff like this.  

So the long answer also boils down to “no.” And if you send stuff without asking, I’ll delete it unread, just like spam mail.

Ahhhhh, Facebook. Where we’re the consumer and the product. Just like Soylent Green.

Sad fact is, Facebook made it pretty much pointless for me to have a fan page there.  They altered their algorithms over the years and my posts gradually went from 70-85% engagement to barely scraping 10-15% most of the time. All so I’d pay to reach people who were already following me. And I won’t do for a few reasons, the main one being folks pretty solidly proved years ago that paying for views on Facebook actually decreases your reach. Seriously.

And, sure–it’s their site. They can run it however they like. And yeah they absolutely deserve to make money off it. I’m a progressive, but I still believe in (regulated) capitalism.

But then there’s all of Facebook’s side ventures. Collecting countless amounts of personal data. Deliberately spreading misinformation. Malicious social engineering. If you think I’m exaggerating, look up articles about how Facebook shaped perceptions or spread propaganda in Myanmaror Sri Lanka. And these aren’t fringe articles—they’re from major news sites.

So, yeah,  I deleted my Facebook account months ago (long overdue), which means the fan page there is cut loose with no administrator.

I’m @PeterClines on both.  Fair warning–as some of you may have figured out, I’m progressive and I’m a bit more political on Twitter. Most Saturdays I also drink and live-tweet bad B-movies while building little toy soldiers so…  look, don’t say you didn’t know what you were getting into.

Instagram is probably the geekier of  my social medias.  How is that possible, you ask?  Well, there’s more little toy soldiers, LEGO, classic toys.  And cats.  Can’t have an Instagram account without cats. Sometimes these things mix.

Yeah, I know Instagram’s also owned by Facebook, but (for the moment) they’re not being quite so reprehensible over there.  So (also for the moment) I’ll still be there.

And I think that should answer about 90% of your questions, yes…?

Last week I talked about action and I almost spun off on a whole little semi-related tangent. I cut myself off there, but I still want to talk about it, ‘cause it’s one of those things that comes up a lot. And people get it wrong a lot.

What I wanted to address (revisit, really) is that old chestnut that gets dragged out in almost every writing class or discussion or guru-lecture. Start with action. I’m guessing you’ve heard it once or thrice, yes?  Probably just this year.

The problem here is action. Most people see that word and think of… well, all that stuff we talked about last time. Car chases. Ninjas fighting cyborg lizard men. Giant two-headed shark attacks!

So, naturally, this is what they begin with. They come up with a reason to begin with a bank heist. Or a plane crash. Or an armed home invasion. Which is kinda weird in a romantic Christmas story, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? And we need to start with action!

To be clear, this almost never works.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me do one of my Saturday geekery binges, watching three or four bad B-movies in a row. And one of the most common problems they all have is that they start with action. Something crashing to Earth and killing some rednecks or, y’know, a giant two-headed shark attack. Usually in three feet of water. Most giant two-headed shark attacks occur in three feet of water.

But every time, these action-packed events involve people we don’t know and have no investment in. Which immediately lessens the action because it’s not involving anyone I care about, it’s just… happening. To put it in current events terms, we’ve all seen the news about hundreds of thousands of people dying across the globe from Covid-19—heck, we’re past a hundred thousand deaths just here in the US. And while it’s awful, it’s also kind of abstract… until it’s somebody we know. That’s when it hits home and all this stuff happening really connects with us.

Weirdly enough, as a side note… a lot of time the people in these opening action scenes tend to be awful, so I don’t even have basic human empathy for them. I want them to die, and that can switch the whole tone of my opening. Far too often, these events won’t even end up tying back to the story. They’re just little disconnected blips with characters we’ll never see or hear about again.

When I try to start with action like this, I’m just delaying the actual starting point of the story. And I’m doing it in a way that alienates my audience, too. Why would I want to do that?

And one other problem when I start this way. If I structure my story so it begins cranked up to eight-point-three, there’s only two things it can do. It can either take a huge hit and drop down to three or maybe four as I establish some kind of norm. Or it can stay up in that top fifteen percent of dramatic tension and be… kind of monotone. I mean, think about it—a whole story where the tension never shifts by more than ten percent in any direction?

So… why does start with action keep getting parroted around?

As I mentioned last time, there’s more to action than just swordfights. My typing all this up for you to read is action, and you reading it is action. Getting lectured by your boss, trying to get to class on time, cooking dinner, mowing the lawn… All of these things are action. They’re things happening.

More importantly, I think, is they’re actions we can all immediately understand, and they’re actions that can easily tell us something about the people involved in them.

Take mowing the lawn for example. How old is Wakko? Is he mowing his lawn or someone else’s? Why is he mowing it? How much effort is it for him? What’s he thinking about while he’s doing it? These are all really easy questions to answer while he’s pushing the mower back and forth. So something’s happening, we’re meeting the character, and maybe even getting to set up some simple, basic stakes.

When we say “start with action,” we want to feel that events are in progress. That these are real people who existed before page one. We just stumbled across them right now at what’s (hopefully) the point when all the interesting stuff’s about to begin.

Also, just to stop one train of thought real quick—yes, thinking is technically an action. So is fantasizing, realizing, remembering, reading, staring into space, and many other such things. But the key thing to remember here is all of these are really just Yakko sitting at his desk and not moving. So really… nothing’s happening.

And we want to have something happening. Something that falls in the middle ground between daydreaming and demon ninjas roaring down the street on AI-guided murdercycles. I mean, just off the top of my head, let’s look at some action-filled books and movies and see how they start…

Captain America: The Winter Soldier begins, as I’ve often pointed out, with the two main characters doing their morning jogs.

Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz begins with a young woman writing/narrating a letter to her father, warning him not to come looking for her.

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A. Lee Martinez begins with the main character trying to explain her very thin resume at a job interview.

Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine’s Journey begins with the main character reshelving books in a book store while she complains about her older sister not taking her seriously

My latest book, Terminus, begins with a guy half-listening to a sermon being given on a beach at night. Heck, Ex-Heroes, the post-apocalyptic superheroes vs. zombies book that launched my career, begins with two people on guard duty chatting while a zombie keeps bumping into the wall below them.

Hell, you want an absolutely crazy one? Do you remember how the Transformers movie begins? Yes, Transformers by Michael “it still needs more explosions” Bay? A bunch of Army Rangers get back from a long patrol and hit the showers while their CO goes to call his wife and baby daughter. Seriously. That’s the opening of the movie.

And again, they’re all starting with action… but they’re not starting with action! They’re putting us right into the ongoing story. They’re introducing us to characters rather than slamming us into them.

They’re catching our interest and drawing us in. Getting us invested. Making us want to read more.

Which is a pretty good way to start a book.

Next time, I’d like to share a special message with you.

Until then, go write.

Another six… okay seven months have passed us by and I promised I’d update this when there’s more news soooooooo….  Updates!

One element of almost semi-famous authordom on social media is questions. I generally like questions and  interacting with folks. But a lot of these questions come up frequently  You could even call them… frequently asked questions. This is less fun and cool. Sad truth is it gets exhausting (and kinda frustrating) to answer the same questions again and again and again.

(And before you panic, person who probably asked a question yesterday, no, I’m not singling you out. You just did it this one time without thinking. You’re good) 

(For now)

Anyway… this is me continuing the somewhat futile practice of scribbling up answers to a dozen of the most common questions I’ve been getting lately. Then when people ask me those questions (again!) I can just say “hey, check out the FAQ pinned at the top of the page!”

Or maybe I won’t say anything, cause at this point… I mean, there’s an FAQ pinned right at the top of the page. And several dozen interviews floating around the web. Plus a bunch of books I wrote. Most of the answers are already out there.

(if your teacher’s making you ask an author a bunch of questions… just give them a link to this)

Seriously? It’s barely been two weeks since Terminuscame out. Enjoy it for a minute…

But, yeah, hopefully you’ve all found Terminus and enjoyed it. For those of you who don’t do audiobooks, for whatever reason, I should have at least an ebook version out in six months so… very early August. Possibly late July, if I’m super on the ball, but we’ll see. I think the Dead Moon ebook was a week or three past the end-of-exclusivity date.

I’m also looking at bringing one or two other things to ebook (at least) that have been kinda out of wider circulation for a bit. News on that as they get more solid/ closer.

Past that… we’re  a little bit in the wild west right now. I’ve got a few things I’m working on, but nothing that’s been sold or I can really talk about right now. So the next few months might be a little quiet in that sense. I’ll try to let everyone know about things when I can and well… when  I redo this later in the summer I may have a lot more to say.

2) Wait, no paper version of Dead Moon OR Terminus?
At the moment I’d have to answer that with “no.” There’s a couple of different reasons for it, and most of them involve assorted business things I’d rather not get into right now. There’s a chance both books may still become available, but for the foreseeable future Dead Moon’s just going to be ebook alongside the audio.  Sorry. And I don’t know for sure about Terminus yet, but it’s looking that way.

Threshold is the brand name/ umbrella label for the shared universe I kinda-sorta inadvertently kicked off seven years ago with 14.  There are some books that are definitely part of an overall linear story, a “series” if you will, and some that just fall under the umbrella.  Lots of Stephen King books tie into the Dark Towermythology, but they’re not all part of the Dark Tower series.  Does that make sense?

And, yes, this does make things a bit awkward, because I know in the past the marketing folks reeeeeaally pushed Threshold as a pure, straightforward series (Book One, Book Two, etc), even though I’ve said several times that it isn’t. This may give some people false expectations for what some books will be about, and I apologize if that’s you. I’m doing my best to make the books as great as they can be, and hopefully you won’t be too bothered that maybe you went in thinking this was going to be a fourth season of Trollhunters when it had always been a third season of 3 Below.  Again, if that makes sense.

As it happens, I wrote a whole book explaining this called Dead Moon.  Also check out #3 up above.

Well, I’ve done two. And there’s a very solid argument to be made that the majority of my fanbase is audiobook listeners. Audible knows this, too, and so when they heard about Dead Moon and Terminusthey made me an extremely generous offer for exclusive rights, meaning both of them would be audiobook only for the first six months they’re out. 

Yes, I know this makes some of you grind your teeth. I’m sorry if you’re not an audiobook listener (for whatever reason) and this leaves you out of the loop for a bit. My agent and I talked about it a lot and the pros and cons of doing it. In the end, I really wanted to tell these stories and this was the best way to do it. Again, I’m sorry if this puts you in a bad spot.

6) Is Ex-Isle the last Ex book?

Not absolutely 100% sure, but for now, yeah, Ex-Tensionis going to stay on that back burner.  Sorry.

The truth is, every series has a limited life. Book one always sells the best, not as many people show up for book two, even less show up for book three, and so on. Something may happen to give book one a boost (and all the other books after it) but they’re still all going to be on a near-constant 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 they were on that slope and when the publisher started looking ahead to book six… that red line was pretty much unavoidable.

I have and the answer’s no, sorry. 

I love these books. I had tons of fun writing them. I’m still amazed there are so many fans who feel so passionately about them. But the math is pretty simple—if enough people were willing to pay for another book, the publisher would be willing to put out another book. All the numbers say that’s just not the case. Sure, some of you might be willing to pay twice as much to a Kickstarter for one more book, but I think we can all agree there’s at least as many people (probably more) who wouldn’t pay anything. Again, the math just doesn’t work out.

Plus, I already have a pretty good idea what I’m working on into 2021 at this point. Doing a crowdfunded project means I have to schedule things as if it’s going to succeed, which means neglecting a lot of those other projects.

Again, sorry.

I know this sounds like an easy question, but there’s about a dozen conditionals to any answer I give.  Figure a huge chunk of each contract is just all the different terms and conditions for when and if and how people get paid.

For example… format matters, sure, but so does whereyou 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, The Fold may not be true for Paradox Bound.

TL;DR—just buy the format you like.

As I write this, my con schedule for 2020 includes WonderCon, Denver Pop Culture Con, and SDCC. There still may be one or two getting added to that list over the next few weeks—we’ll all find out together.

If you want to see me 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 just not much I can do.  So, email them, tweet them, post on their Instagram account. Reach out and let your voice be heard.

Also, please keep in mind, most cons finalize their guest list five or six months in advance. If your local con’s in three weeks… the odds are not in our favor. Sorry.

Okay, there’s a misunderstanding of how Hollywoodworks in this sort of question.  When we see a film adaptation or TV series, it means the studio went to the writer, not the other way around.  I have pretty much zero influence on Netflix making a Paradox Bound series or the Hallmark Channel doing a Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe movie. I mean, if it was just about writers saying “hey, make this into a movie,” wouldn’t most books be adapted by now? Everybody’d be doing it. 

11) Well, is there anything we can do to help?
Buying books is always a good step.  Hollywoodlikes 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. And write reviews. Producers/ directors/ actors all hear about this stuff the same way you do. If #Terminus or #ParadoxBound start trending on Twitter tomorrow, there’ll probably be a film deal within a week.

(easy way to do this?  Don’t buy books from Amazon if you can avoid it. Write reviews there, sure, absolutely, but Amazon gets iffy with sales figures, so they don’t get included in a lot of bestsellers lists. Yeah, a pre-order or purchase from your local bookstore might cost a buck or three more, but it’s a purchase Hollywood’s much more likely to see)

(Plus, now you’re one of those awesome people supporting local businesses. Be awesome)

I’m thrilled and amazed people talk about anything I wrote. Seriously. What I can’t stand are people who blurt out spoilers that can ruin these stories for other people. It’s why I avoid those questions in interviews, ignore them on Twitter, and why—where I can—I delete posts that reveal things from a book.

And not just my stories! You shouldn’t mess up other stories, either. Movies, TV—I’m just saying, if you enjoyed it spoiler-free, why not try to give other people a chance to enjoy it the same way? I still haven’t watched the last season of Game of Thrones or Doctor Who, dammit!

Short answer… no. 

Long answer… 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 reading and doing critiques instead of writing.  I don’t want sound mercenary, but… writing is how I pay my mortgage. So when somebody asks me to read stuff, they’re asking me to give up a few hours of work. Plus, I do have this ranty writing blog sitting, yknow, right here with over a decade of advice and tips.

Also… some folks are lawsuit-crazy, and the bad ones ruin it for everyone else. Somebody shows me a piece of bland, generic fanfic and a few years from now they sue me for stealing “their ideas“. Yeah, I know that sounds stupid, but I’ve been subpoenaed and deposed for lawsuits with less behind them than that. It’s why I’m verrrry leery when I get a long message along the lines of “You know what you should really do next with the people from 14…”  Heck, some writers respond with smackdowns or even cease & desist orders when they get sent stuff like this.  

And if you send stuff without asking, I’ll delete it unread, just like spam mail. Sorry.

14) What’s up with yo—wait, foureen? Didn’t you say top twelve?
What are you, the number police?

Ahhhhh, Facebook. Where we’re the consumer and the product. Just like Soylent Green.

Simple truth is, Facebook made it pretty much pointless for me to have a fan page there.  They’ve drastically altered their algorithms over the years so my posts there have gone from 70-85% engagement to barely scraping 10-15% most of the time. Why? Well, so I’d pay to reach people who’ve already said they want to see my posts. Which I wouldn’t do because folks pretty conclusively proved years ago that paying for views on Facebook actually decreases your reach. No, seriously. It does.

And yeah, sure–it’s their site.  They can do whatever they want with it and run it the way they like.  And yeah they absolutely deserve to make money off it.  I’m a progressive, but I still believe in (regulated) capitalism.

But then that brings us to all of Facebook’s little side ventures. Collecting countless amounts of personal data. The spread of misinformation. Social engineering on unwitting subjects… which has led to more than a few deaths. If you think I’m exaggerating, look up articles about how Facebook shaped perceptions or spread propaganda in Myanmaror Sri Lanka. And these aren’t fringe articles—they’re from major news sites. Do you know how many Facebook fact checkers have quit—internationally—because Facebook won’t actually let them check facts? They’re told again and again to let lies and falsehoods stand because of who’s posting them.

So I’ve quit Facebook. Deleted my personal account, which means the fan page is cut loose with no administrator. I think this FAQ will be the last thing I post there.

I’m @PeterClines on both. Fair warning–as some of you may have figured out, I’m progressive and I’m a bit more political on Twitter. Most Saturdays I also drink and live-tweet bad B-movies so…  don’t say you didn’t know what you were getting into. I’ll also 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…

Instagram is probably the geekiest of  my social medias. How is that possible, you ask?  Well, there’s little toy soldiers, LEGO, classic toys. And cats. Can’t have an Instagram account without cats. Sometimes these things mix.

Yeah, I know Instagram’s also owned by Facebook, but (for the moment) they’re not being quite so reprehensible over there.  So (also for the moment) I’ll still be there.

And I think that should answer about 90% of your questions, yes…?