Category: Wendig

November 29, 2017

Other Awesomer Books

            Monday I posted the usual ego-stroking Cyber-Monday list of my own books and some anthologies I’m in.  Today–as I have in the past–I thought I’d toss out some other books I’ve enjoyed this year that were written by much more talented people than me.  They’re not really in any order, and a few of them aren’t exactly new, but if you’re looking for something for that special somebody (or for yourself), it’s going to be tough to go wrong with any of these… 
            As always, you can prove you’re a morally better person by visiting your local bookstore.  There’s still plenty of time for them to order something for you if they don’t have it in stock.  Plus, some of them have connections and can get you autographed copies and stuff like that…
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire—the short, simple explanation is that this book is about all those kids who find mystic gateways or enchanted wardrobes or interdimensional touchstones, have fantastic adventures… and then eventually end up back in their normal, mundane homes again and having to cope with real life. The best thing I can think to say is that I’m so ridiculously jealous of this book. It’s just magnificent.

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig – I am super-late to the table with this one, because Wendig’s been writing this series for five years now.  Miriam Black is a foulmouthed alcoholic who’s gifted (or cursed) to immediately know how and when everyone she touches is going to die. After years of dealing with said ability, she’s seen someone’s future death that involves… her.  It’s funny and dark and fantastic and I think there are five of these books now.

Heroine Complex/ Heroine Worship by Sarah Kuhn –superpowers are real. So are superheroes.  The two aren’t always connected.  Oh, demons are real, too, and they can possess all sorts of things.  Evie and Aveda are such crazy-fun -lovable-exciting characters that you’ll devour each book in a day.  I did.

Killing Is My Business by Adam Christopher—I mentioned the first book in this noir-robot-detective series a while back. Adam’s written more of said series.  They’re still amazing, and now there are mysteries-within-the mysteries.  You should read them.
An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King – I got to read an early copy of this and it’s just brilliant.  A dystopian tale set in future-China, where the one child policy has gone… well, just like everyone predicted.  Our four protagonists are trying to form a family while also each hiding an array of personal secrets and deciding who to trust with them.  It’s a fantastic, slow-burn book that reads like the wonderfully twisted love child of The Handmaid’s Tale and Big Love.
Sleeping Giants/ Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel—another one I was late picking up (but got caught up quickly).  A fantastic epistolary tale about the discovery of a giant alien robot and the team that comes together to figure out how they use said robot to defend the Earth.  It’s Contact crossed with Pacific Rim, and if that idea doesn’t excite you we have nothing else to say to each other.
            Good day to you.
            I said good day.
We Are Wormwood by Autumn Christian – a beautifully surreal tale about a young woman growing up with insanity and then… well, descending into it herself with a few nudges from her demon girlfriend.  Christian also has a fantastic collection of creepy/scary/sexy short stories called Ecstatic Inferno that I wolfed down in about a day.  I befriended her on Twitter just so I can constantly prod her to write new stuff for me to read. I’m selfish that way.
Ninth City Burning by J. Patrick Black—okay, this glorious space opera’s kind of tough to explain, because in the future Earth has shifted over to an entirely new form of technology.  In short, its about a group of people developing new weapons, learning to use them, and learning to be them.  It may take a little bit to get into this one, but it’s sooo worth it.

Revolution –by John Barber and Cullen Bunn—I was a die-hard comic fan for years, but got driven out by the constant (and often substandard) crossover events.  I started reading some of IDW’s “Hasbroverse” books last year and was frustrated when they announced Revolution, their own upcoming crossover event.
            Holy crap.  This was my favorite comic book event in at least twenty years. It begins with a conflict between the GI Joe team and the Autobots which gets disrupted when Rom the Spaceknight shows up and uses his Neutralizer to incinerate General Joe Coulton before flying off again. If you were already a fan of IDW’s GI Joe or Transformers books, you can guess how a silver robot showing up and killing the Joes’ CO goes over.  If you’re a fan of Rom… you know what this killing implies.  Revolution is honestly suspenseful and dramatic, and has amazingly solid ties to all the books involved.  It’s clearly a crossover that was planned far in advance, and it made me a regular at my comic shop again.

            And anyway, those are some of my favorite things I read this year.  Any one of them would make for a fantastic gift.  And if you’ve got some suggestions of your own, please mention them in the comments down below.

            Tomorrow… regular old writing advice.  Thanks for your patience.

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June 22, 2017

In This Club We Have One Rule…

            I wanted to talk about writing advice a bit.  The good stuff and the bad stuff.  I just did a few months ago, yeah, but this is a little different. 
            This time, I want to talk with you about taking those words to heart… or not.
            Here’s an ugly truth about writing advice. 
            I’d guess a good 40% of it is just people telling you what worked for them.  Here’s how I do characters, here’s how I do dialogue, here’s how I plot, here’s how I write fifty pages a week.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this advice—it clearly worked for that particular professional.  It’s just a presentation problem.  It assumes every writer and project is like every other writer and project.
            Still, that’s better than the 50% of people who are bellowing advice that hasn’tworked for them.  The only thing sketchier than someone  with a lot of credits insisting “this is how it’s done” is somebody with no credits insisting “this is how it’s done.”  Or somebody who had a credit twenty-five years ago.
            What? A twenty-five year old credit should still count?  I mean, on one level I agree with you—it’s a credit.  But it’s a credit from another era.  Seriously.  Johannes Guttenberg may be the father of printing, but he’s not going to be much help if my Brother 5-in-1 gets a paper jam.
            Let me put it in these terms.  Let’s say we were talking about computers. Let’s say I knew someone who’d been a kinda-known name in computers twenty-five years ago. And hadn’t really done anything since.  How seriously would you take their advice about computer engineering?  Or programming?  Or breaking into the industry?
            Actually, I take it back. There’s one thing worse than somebody with no credits insisting “this is how it’s done.”   It’s when somebody with no credits wants money to tell you “this is how it’s done.”
            Anyway, that leaves us with, what… 10%, roughly?  Math isn’t my thing.  What’s that last ten percent of advice?
            You’ve probably seen it. It’s the folks saying “try this.”  Or maybe they’re a couple of provisos before or after their statements.  I’ve mentioned the idea of this here a few times.  It’s called the Golden Rule.
            No, not that Golden Rule. I made this one up.  The Golden Rule is one of the core things I try to put out with all the writing advice I offer here.  It goes something like this.
What works for me probably won’t work for you.
And it definitely won’t work for that guy.
            You see, writing is a very personal thing.  In the same way I can’t say “urban fantasy is the best genre,” I also can’t say “writing 500 words before lunch every day and another 500 words after is the key to success.”  Because it’s not. 
            Oh, it might be for some people, sure, but it isn’t for everybody.  There are people who write in the afternoon.  There are people who only write in the morning.  Some like massive outlines, some like very minimal ones.  If you ask a dozen different writers how to do something—anything—you’re going to get a dozen different answers.  Because we’ve all found what works for us.  That’s the golden rule.
            There’s a joke I’ve used  a couple times to explain this.  If the only time you can write is Sunday afternoons, and the only way you can write is standing on your head, wearing that “enhancing” corset you bought at the Ren Faire last summer, using voice-recognition software, but doing this lets you write 15,000 words…
            Well, that’s fantastic.  Seriously.  I know professional, full-time writers who don’t always get 15,000 words down a week.  I can maybe hit those numbers once a month.  If that’s what it takes for you to do it, and you can do it consistently—power to you!
            See, at the end of the day, how I write my book doesn’t matter.  Perhaps I write first thing in the morning or maybe late into the night.  I could work exclusively on a laptop, on my phone, on a typewriter, or on yellow legal pads with a #2 pencil.  Maybe I reward myself after every thousand words with half an hour of reading, a video game, twenty minutes of exercise, booze, sex, whatever.  Do I do one long, constantly reworked draft or two dozen drafts each with a few minute, specific changes?
            However I do it, that part of writing doesn’t matter.  As long as I’m working, I’m doing fine.  People can insist whatever they want, but at the end of the day it always comes down to the golden rule.

What works for me probably won’t work for you.
And it definitely won’t work for that guy.

             I don’t write books the way Victoria Schwab does.  She doesn’t write books the way Andy Weir does.  Andy doesn’t write like Sarah Kuhn.  Sarah doesn’t write like Chuck Wendig.  He doesn’t write the same way as Kristi Charish.  And she doesn’t write like me.

            And none of us write like you. We don’t have your habits, your preferences, your thoughts, your goals.  We’re not telling your story your way.
            Which is why you shouldn’t worry about writing like us. Sift through all the hints and tips.   Learn which ones do and don’t work for you.  Don’t worry if four of the six people above do X, find out if X works for you.  Find your way to write.
            And if your way happens to involve a corset… hey, who am I to judge?
            Next time… I want to talk about babies.  I hate those guys.
            Until then… go write.
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April 25, 2017

Amazon Review Revisited

For those who came in late…

 About seven months ago I came up with this idea of running a little experiment with Amazon’s review policy. A new wave of complaints had cropped up about reviews being deleted or blocked, and—as they tended to-there wasn’t a lot to them past “Amazon took down my review of XxX!” Supposedly, the new rumor at the time was that everyone’s favorite online megastore was surfing social media sites, looking for potential connections between reviewers and reviewees—and using them as a reason to delete reviews.

It struck me that I’d been hearing about review policies for years, but never seen any hard data on them. It always came back to he said this, she said that, lots of people had it happen to them. There were never any hard facts.

So… I decided to find some.

I reviewed thirty books I’d really loved. One every day for the month of August. I listed out all the social media connections between me and each author. I even did a handful of control reviews—ones that should get pulled regardless of social media connections. And I listed all of it out for everyone to see. And tweeted about it. And talked with folks on Twitter about it.

A month after my little experiment ended, nothing had happened. No warnings, no deletions, no reprisals… absolutely nothing. Even on the control reviews, which really should’ve been removed under every possible version of the review guidelines. I left it at that and decided to check in six months later.

Which is… right about now.

How many control reviews finally got spotted by Amazon’s algorithms? How many warnings were issued? Did my account get frozen?

Pretty much across the board… nothing’s changed.

All thirty reviews are still up, including all the blatant control reviews.  Heck, two of the control reviews even have “people found this review helpful” checks.  I never heard a peep from Amazon. Even with the tweets.

Seven months since the first review, Scott Sigler’s Alight (great series, check it out).  Scott and I have known each other for almost our years, if memory serves. We follow each other on Twitter, we’re both with Random House subsidiaries, we’ve done panels together, he even interviewed me last year at WonderCon in front of an audience of about three or four hundred people. There is absolutely, no question a connection between us.

That review is still up.

I feel pretty comfortable saying the social-media scanning algorithm is either a myth or reaaaaaaally poorly written. If it can’ t find a connection between me and Scott, it’s pretty inept. Same holds for me and the next two authors on the list—Chuck Wendig and Eloise Knapp. There’s social media connections and shared blurbs galore. Heck, with both of them I think there are pictures floating around. Incriminating pictures, for these purposes.

And yet… the reviews are still there.

So, yeah, the social media bot probably isn’t real. I wouldn’t bet anybody’s life on it, but the evidence sure seems to point that way.

I think there’s another possible conclusion we can draw here, too. I might be stretching here, so bear with me. Feel free to point out flawed logic.

The control reviews have nothing to do with the social media bot. As I mentioned above, just as they are they violate the basic rules for reviews. And all six of them are still there. Yeah, six examples isn’t a great number for a data pool, but considering the 100% survival rate…

I think getting reviews pulled doesn’t have anything to do with the reviews themselves. I think it has to do with me. Or at least, my account. Last time, one of the spitball-hypotheses I tossed out was that Amazon only applied its all-seeing eye to accounts based on suspicious activity or complaints about said account. I’m more inclined to lean that way after six months of no activity.

So if my review of Yakko’s Yappy Dog Omnibus gets quickly pulled, I think it’s more likely because of something else I did in the past than anything about this particular review.

But, again, other ideas are always welcome.

If I happen to notice anything happen with these reviews, I may revisit this again. Barring that, though, I’m probably done with it. Feel free to share the data with anyone next time you hear about reviews being pulled.

Or, in the spirit of science, repeat the experiment and share your results.

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December 29, 2016 / 4 Comments

2016 Is Over. Finally.

            I don’t know about you, but this year has been kind of brutal on me.  We don’t even need to bring up politics or innumerable dead entertainment icons.  It’s sucked.  I lost my grandma.  Two friends.  One of my cats.  Hell, even the car I’ve had since I was twenty-seven and working on Silk Stalkings.  
           All dead.
           Screw this year.  Screw 2016.  And I’m only saying “screw” so this page doesn’t get banned from your work server.  I’ve been a lot more emphatic in real life.
            But, anyway… let’s talk about writing.
            At the beginning of every year I toss out some encouragement and ideas about writing. And throughout the year, I jab you pretty much every post with a gentle reminder to go write.  Because that’s the only way this happens. We sit down and we write.
            So… what did you write this year?
            I’ll go first.
            Well, let’s be honest.  The vast majority of this year was spent on Paradox Bound (which most of you will get to read in about… seven months?). I turned in a really wild, scattered draft to my editor (I can admit it), and he politely handed it back and said “try harder.”  Which made me take a long, hard look at a lot of it, rip out a large part of the ending and restructure it, which also meant going back and reworking a fair amount of the beginning.
            But in the end… I’m really proud of how this has turned out. I think you’re going to like it a lot.
            Between drafts, I also finally finished (and submitted) a little story called “Projekt: Maria” for an anthology titled Mech.  That should be out early next year, I believe.  If you read Kaiju Rising a while back, this story is another World War II adventure with Kraft and Carter trying to counter the latest weird and unusual Nazi plot.
            Plus, I’ve done a bunch of work on my next big project (no real title yet—well, not one I’m up for sharing).  And a lot of notes and bits on the next Ex-Heroes book (currently called Ex-Tension).  And I scribbled some notes and pitches for some things… well, that I can’t really talk about quite yet.
            And, hey, this is the 46th ranty blog post this year.  Granted, a handful of those were photo tips, but still… that’s a fairly regular output there. I mean, I’m no Chuck Wendig or Scalzi, but I think that’s a respectable number.  I even managed a couple over on my geeky blog, too… although nowhere near as many as I’d wanted to.
            What else did I do with my time?
            Well, if I’m counting right, I read about thirty-eight new books this year. By which I mean, books I’d never read before.  About half a dozen of them non-fiction. 
            There were also another twenty or so books I re-read, either for reference or enjoyment.  Plus a big pile of comic books and graphic novels—the IDW Revolution event (featuring GI Joe, Rom, Transformers, and Micronauts) was magnificent, as was the conclusion to The Sixth Gun. If you added all of those, I’m probably somewhere in the low sixties.
            Not an ugly score.  Essentially a book a week. I’m huge believer that reading is essential if I want to be a decent writer.  I have to take in material if I want to create material.  I can’t be a filmmaker without watching lots of films. I can’t be a bodybuilder without taking in food.  I can’t be a teacher without learning.  And I sure as hell can’t be a writer if I never read.
            So that’s what I accomplished.  How about you?
            Granted, I’m in the fortunate position where I get to do this full time.  On average, I’m probably going to write more, revise more, and read more than most of you reading this.  It’s not a slam, that’s just basic scheduling.  There’s only so many hours in the day, and I get to spend most of them in this area.  We all have different amounts of time we can put toward these things.  People have kids, jobs, other priorities.
            This also isn’t a contest.  I’m not going to berate you because you only read twenty books this year. I wouldn’t feel extra-special if I read a hundred.  We all read and absorb and work at our own rates. 
           The key thing is that I can see honest, real forward motion.  I started here and I ended with all of thisdone.  I can’t be telling myself “well, this counts as getting stuff done” or “I meant to do that.”  I should be able to point at things I wrote.
            I mean, that’s what we’re all trying to do, yes?
            I’d like to thank you all for reading this collection of random thoughts and lessons as we head into (holy crap) the ranty blog’s tenth year.  I’ll try my very best to stay entertaining, educational, and semi-relevant.
            Next time, as I usually do, I’d like to start the year by setting down a couple ground rules—for myself and the ranty blog and the rest of you.
            Until then… go write.
            Have a fantastic New Year’s.  May 2017 be better for all of us.
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