Search: “faq”

Of course, just as I decided to relaunch and combine all this stuff, my life turned into pure chaos and stress…

Anyway, here’s the April newsletter. In May. The goal (moving forward, ha ha ha) is to put it up on Substack, then put it up here a week later. And maybe at some point, ehhhh… maybe I’ll just phase out Substack. I think a lot of us are already getting newletter fatigue. Let’s be honest–how many of the one you’re subscribed to do you actually open?

But for now, newsletter goes out on the middleish-of-the-month Monday, gets reposted here on the following Monday (without this introductory explanation), and Thursdays will be normal ranty writing blog stuff. Sound good?

All that said…

* * * *

Oh, hey, there.

Wait, there’s even more of you? How did that happen? No, no, never mind. We’ll make it work somehow.

Let’s just get to it, shall we?

You may remember from last time, I’d sent one project. GJD, off to a few beta readers. At this point, I’ve heard back from most of them, so May will be the month of notes and editing and probably sushi. Which means—if all goes well—my agent will be shopping that book around this summer.

I’m a little over 31K into the new book, the one after GJD. I think we’re calling this one TOS. And I just realized if you follow me on the social media you may have figured those initials out by now. Anyway, not a ton since last month, I know, but the horrible truth is, I’m a self-taught typist and I’m kind of awful. Seriously, I’m maybe three steps above hunting-and-pecking. My handwriting’s awful, too. So yeah… transcribing a full legal pad can take some time. As I mentioned last time, though, this also serves as an early light editing pass.

Oh, and I’m working on an updated version of the FAQ—also on the website—to get a lot of answers out there.

And there’s a few small projects that are still small and not quite worth talking about yet. But maybe soon. Relatively speaking.

Other news…

Some of you from the Twitterverse may have watched the end of Saturday Geekery this past weekend. If you didn’t know, it was just me live-tweeting B-movies and pointing out what I saw as frustratingly bad storytelling/filmmaking issues (and giving credit when I stumbled across a little gem of a movie). I’d been doing it for seven years, but to be honest… it wasn’t as much fun as of late. There were times it was, sure. And there were times I got something out of it myself (like the core idea for a book).

But more often than not, for the past year or so, the thing that was supposed to be my day-off relaxation activity just left me feeling… tired. On a few levels. Sometimes even stressed out. It had become more of a self-imposed obligation than an enjoyable activity. Add on the general chaos of Twitter lately—reach being throttled, algorithms manipulated in foolish ways, never being sure which features will work at any given point—and it was just time to end it. And by sheer luck it ended almost exactly seven years to the day from the first time I did it. So I look like I was smart and had a plan.

Forget that whole thing I just said about sheer luck. Very smart, absolutely had a plan.

I mean, this isn’t saying I’ll never, ever live tweet a movie again (or whatever it’ll be called on whichever social media platform we all end up on—live toot? Live shout? Live barf?). But if I do, they’ll be movies I love and enjoy, ones where I can name names. Maybe toss out random fun facts I happen to know. ComicCon weekend’s always a good time for a watch-along, right?

Hey, speaking of movies and TV shows I really enjoy…

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching— Lockwood & Co, Star Trek: Picard, The Mandalorian, finally saw Encanto

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading— The Murderbot books by Martha Wells. Something new from Scott Sigler I don’t think I can talk about quite yet. Also just got the last Silvers novel from Daniel Price. Really, I’ve been working my way through a big pile of books-to-blurb.

Cool New Toys – The new Nebula and Rocket for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I also got a few of the new Disney wave collectible minifigs from LEGO (626-Stitch, Mulan, and Doctor Faciler)

People ask me questions. A lot of questions. Sometimes the same question gets asked frequently. So here’s answers to a lot of them (updated as of April 2023). Now when folks ask said questions, I can just point at this page. It’s even right at the top of the website (look, there it is right up there). The answers are all here.

Or in the books. You’d be amazed how many answers about the books are in the books. Really.

When are we going to see something new?

Next up is going to be an assortment of short stories in different anthologies. I’ve got a story in the new Joe Ledger anthology, Unbreakable, edited by Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt (and it could also be considered a Threshold story). I think that’s maybe end of summer? I’ve got a story in The Reimagined Detective, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Cat Rambo which I believe is this fall. And I’ve also got a new Carter & Kraft story in Combat Monsters from Henry Herz, coming out early next year. Some of these may be up for preorder now.

After that, probably next year (sorry) you’ll see a couple new things solely from me. Some books I’ve been calling GJD and TOS in such discussions. Maaaaybe something else. Maybe two something elses.

And I’m still hoping to put out my short story collection, Dead Men Can’t Complain + Other Stories, as an ebook. Yeah, just an ebook, sorry. It’s been an audio collection for a while, but it needs to get out more. There’s just been, y’know, a lot going on and I didn’t want to do this half-assed.

Wait, what? Did you say next year? Two years after The Broken Room? Why?

A couple reasons. One I’ve talked about before was a bad case of burnout that I’m still not sure I actually recovered from. Two is… well, despite that, I’ve actually written a ton of stuff. As I mentioned a while back, I did a massive outline for a contained series (more of a hexalogy, really) and then wrote the first book in that series. And then… that got put aside. And I wrote GJD. Then some short stories. Then a few tens of thousand of words on TOS. And now I’m back in edits on GJD, so my agent can show it to some hopefully-interested parties this summer. And then it’s usually at least a year from that point to it being in your hands, sooo… that’s next year.

Why’d you do those “Audible exclusives” a few books back?

There’s a lot of evidence that says the majority of my fan base is audiobook listeners. Audible knows this, too, so when they heard about the rough ideas for Dead Moon and Terminus they made me an extremely generous offer for exclusive rights, meaning both books would be exclusively theirs for the first six months they were out.

And I know that made some folks grind their teeth. I’m honestly sorry if you weren’t an audiobook listener (for whatever reason) and it left you out of the loop for a while. My agent and I talked a lot about the pros and cons of those deals. In the end, I really wanted to tell those stories and that was the overall best way to do it. Again, I’m sorry if it put you in a bad spot.

So still no paper version of Terminus or Dead Moon or any of the others?

No, sorry. There’s a couple of reasons for it that involve different business and PR things. If you’re interested, I went over a lot of it a while back. There’s still a chance these books could become available in print if there’s a big demand for them (feel free to tell Crown Publishing you want to read them and would buy half a dozen copies), but for the moment Terminus, Dead Moon, and a few of my other older books are only going to be ebook and audio. Again, sorry.

Is Ex-Isle the last Ex book?

Yeah, Ex-Tension is back-burnered for the foreseeable future. Simple truth is every series has a limited life. Book one usually sells the best, not as many folks are interested in book two, a few less show up for book three, and so on. Not a lot of people decide to start on book five, y’know? Yeah, something can happen to give that first book a boost (and then all the other books after it) but the series is still on the same downward slope, heading for the red line where things aren’t profitable. None of the Ex-Heroes books ever lost money (thank you all for that), but when the publisher looked ahead to book six… well, the math on the walls was pretty clear, so to speak.

But there may be something else. Too early to say just yet. Have hopes, but don’t get them too high.

Have you ever thought about a Kickstarter or a GoFundMe for any of this?

Okay, look, I love the Ex books. I had tons of fun writing them. I’m still amazed there are so many fans who love them so much. 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 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.

Also, if I do a crowdfunded project, I have to schedule my time under the assumption it’s going to succeed, which means telling my publishers any of those other projects I mentioned above need to be put off and scheduled accordingly. And that leaves a six or seven month hole in my schedule when the Kickstarter flops. Which—again—all the math says is what’ll happen.

Plus… look, Kickstarters are a ton of work to run. They’re even more work if they succeed. It essentially means I have to be writer and publisher and distributor. And to be horribly honest, I don’t want to do any of that. Some folks are fantastic at it, but me… I just want to tell stories. That’s all.

TL;DR—I have and the answer’s no. Sorry.

Do you get more money if I buy books in one format rather than another?

This sounds like an easy question, I know, but there’s a bunch of conditionals to any answer I give. A huge chunk of each and every book contract is just all the different terms and conditions for when and if and how people get paid. Lots of “ifs” and “excepts” and “unlesses.”

For example… format matters, sure, but so does where you bought the book. And when. And how many people bought it before you (seriously). And if it was on sale. And who actually had the sale (publisher or distributor). And all of this changes in every contract. What’s true for, say, Paradox Bound isn’t true for Terminus. In some situations. Usually.

Again, TL;DR—just buy the format you like.

When are we going to see a movie/ TV series/ graphic novel/ video game of your books?

Well, first off, I hope you understand I have pretty much zero influence on Hulu making a Threshold series or Netflix doing a Broken Room movie. I mean, think about it. If the writers just had to say “hey, make this into a movie,” wouldn’t most books be adapted by now? Everybody’d be doing it. When we see a TV series or film adaptation, it means the filmmakers went to the writer, not the other way around.

That said… yes, there’s a potentially big thing going on right now. But like so many Hollywood things it’s moving at its own pace and hasn’t quite hit the point where I feel good talking about it in anything more than vague terms. Once there’s something solid to tell you, I’ll tell you. I promise.

Well, is there anything we can do to help?

Buying books is always the best step. Talking about them is a close second. Producers/ directors/ actors all hear about this stuff the same way you do—online reviews, bestseller lists, and social media. If #TheBrokenRoom started trending tomorrow, there’d probably be a film in pre-production by the end of the year. Seriously.

So talk about books you like (anybody’s books, not just mine). Mention them to friends, write reviews (always good), make TikTok videos, tag streaming networks if you want to talk about how this or that should be a movie. Word of mouth is the best (and easiest) thing to do.

Wait, I thought you don’t like people talking about your books. Which is it?

I’m seriously thrilled and amazed when people talk about anything I wrote. I think most writers are. What I can’t stand, personally, are people who blurt out spoilers that ruin these stories for other people. It’s why I avoid those questions in interviews and on social media, 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. Books, 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? Especially these days when release dates/air dates aren’t the ironclad things they used to be.

Do you have any plans to attend #####-Con?

To be honest, I’m not attending any cons this year. I don’t have anything new out, and I haven’t been really thrilled with how a lot of cons have dealt with certain health/ safety issues since lockdown ended. I debated it a lot over the holidays and ultimately decided not to bother. I’m hoping next year many things will be in better places and I can show off new stuff at cons on both coasts and maybe the middle and who knows where else. Other countries?

And if you’d like to see me at your local con, let them know. Email them, tweet them, post on their Instagram account. Reach out, vote, and let your voice be heard. Also, generally this is a sooner-is-better type thing. If you’ve got a convention near you next February, there’s a good chance they’ll be putting a guest list this summer.

Will you read my story and tell me what you think?

Short answer… no.

Long answer… look, I don’t mean to sound mercenary, but writing is how I pay for electricity and food and booze. And I really like food and booze. So when a more-or-less random stranger asks me to read stuff, they’re asking me to give up a few hours of work. Would you want to give up a few hours of work? Plus, I do have the ranty writing blog sitting right here with over a decade of advice and tips for whoever wants it.

Also, the sad truth is some folks are not too bright and lawsuit-crazy, and they ruin it for everyone. Somebody shows me a piece of bland, generic genre story, then a few years from now they sue me for stealing their ideas of… dinosaurs. Yeah, I know how stupid that sounds, but I’ve been subpoenaed and deposed for a lawsuit with less behind it than that. Really! It’s why I’m verrrry leery when I get a long message from someone 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. And probably block you.

Where are you on social media? Are you more on one than another?

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

I deleted my Facebook account over three years ago. There’s still a fan page there, but it’s just a zombie page (zing) with no administrator.

Twitter’s not doing much better these days. I’m still there, still posting, but a lot of it’s got that same shouting-into-the-void feel, y’know? And there’s no real sign of it getting better.

Instagram’s long been the geekiest of my social medias. Lots of toys, model robots, gardening, and cats. Can’t have an Instagram account without cats. Yeah, I know Instagram’s also owned by FaceMetabook, but (for the moment) they’re not quite so reprehensible and algorithm-manipulative as their parent site.

I’m on Mastodon. I like it in general, but it feels sluggish to me. Not a lot of response or interaction there. And the federated aspect of it can make it really hard to find people unless you already know where they are.

Tumbr—I’ve got an account, but I usually have to remind myself to post there. More sluggish than Mastodon.

CounterSocial—have an account but haven’t posted there in months.

The Hive—was fun while it lasted. Looked great, but it quickly became clear the folks had no idea what they were doing.

Spoutible—I think we’ve seen enough impulsive, narcissistic billionaires in charge of social networks, don’t you?

Bluesky—Maybe? Maybe they’ll fix their terms of service and get a block feature and be fantastic. Or maybe they’ll implode in three weeks like so many others have. Who knows?

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

I know, I know. I’ve been really bad about this lately. As some of you may be aware, it’s been a wild month for me. New book comes out next week, so I’ve been doing tons of promo stuff, some interviews, scheduling other promo stuff and interviews, and also—when I can—trying to work on my new book. The one everyone’s going to be asking about week after next.

Oh, and I also spent some time going up on the roof (twice!) trying to fix a tarp. That ate up a fair amount of time.

Also, random fun fact– this is post #750 here on the ranty writing blog. Yay to all of us for sticking with it this long. Hopefully you’ve gotten something out of all these random rants and musings.

 

Also-also… holy crap this has been a stressful week. We’ve been dealing with some horrible stuff here in the states and as of last night a large chunk of Eastern Europe kind of spiraled into.. well, hell. So I completely get it if you’re not up to this right now. It might help get your mind off things, but it also might feel kind of frivolous, both me writing this and you reading it, and stress you out even more. I know why I’m here, but seriously– if you need a minute to not look at a screen, to just close your eyes and listen to music or something… go for it. Take ten, take a few deep breath, put your favorite song on repeat. Take care of yourself, okay? You can’t do anything if you’re a wreck, so do what you need to keep yourself together.

Anyway…

I wanted to talk to you real quick about that unknown thing. You know the one I’m talking about. Yeah, that.

And fair warning, this is one of those posts inspired by a Saturday geekery movie.

So, hey, I was watching a Saturday geekery movie a few weekends back, and the actors, director, and even the writer didn’t know what the monsters were. From a production point of view, anyway. Y’see, it was pretty clear the movie was done very cheap and on the fly, without much of a script. It’s my educated guess that they just shot the movie and figured “well, when we’re in post we’ll see what the special effects house has for cheap models and CGI in some kind of monster then.”

The problem, of course was… well, they’re filming now. And the actors need to look at that spot on the driveway and pretend there’s something there. But they can’t say anything definitive because nobody knows what it’s going to be. Maybe dinosaurs. Maybe giant insects. Maybe dragons. Who knows. Again, we’ll figure it out later, right? For now, just… be vague. Act confused.

Which they did. A lot. And it got thin really fast. Because while it was unknown to them, filming the movie, the monsters were very clear and visible to us watching the finished movie. So nobody’s reactions made any sense, because nobody knew what they were reacting to. What it was doing, how big it was, nothing. People were looking past monsters, above monsters, at one point kind of uncomfortably at a monster’s crotch.

Plus, nobody’s dialogue made any sense because it was all about “those things” rather than what those things were. I mean… that’s a dinosaur. No question. Even if it’s secretly a giant robot or an alien, it looks exactly like a dinosaur and it’s kind of silly for nobody to say that. If anything, it makes the characters look really stupid.

Perhaps even more jarring, nobody ever talked about whythese things were there. I mean, if you and I went outside and almost got killed by a dinosaur/giant spider/dragon and ran back inside (slamming the door behind us), it makes sense we’d be yelling “WTF was that?!?!” But after things calmed down a bit and we had time to talk… wouldn’t we wonder how there’s a dinosaur in the driveway? Maybe question where these giant spiders came from? That’d seem kind of natural, right?

 

But the characters couldn’t have these conversations because nobody actually knew what was in the driveway. A bat-winged demon with a spiked tail and a killbot with missile pods on its shoulders would spark two very different discussions. But we don’t know what it’s going to be, sooooooo… the characters need to talk about something else. And not the giant monsters outside. Maybe about how she hates her job. Or why they wish they hadn’t argued with their girlfriend this morning. Maybe a little monologue about faith or humanity’s basic nature.

Anyway, have you figured out how this applies to writing in general?

It’s pretty common in fiction to have “unknown” elements. The faceless enemy. The mysterious figure. The unseen monster. Things that leave our characters confused and maybe angry and trying to figure out what the heck’s going on.

But… at some point they’re going to find out what that unknown element actually is. Either that, or we need to have a serious talk about it’s aggressively unknown state. And once it’s known, everything still has to make sense. The way Phoebe reacted in chapter four. Dot’s vague statements in chapter eight. How Wakko was killed in chapter fifteen. All of that’s going to line up and make sense with the now-known element, right? And, yeah, even if I want to keep things unknown to my readers (and maybe my characters, too) for the whole story, I still need to know what this unknown element is.

Y’see, Timmy, the world I’m creating needs rules. because my readers are going to sense if I’m just sort of winging it and saying “anything goes.” Doesn’t matter if it’s sci-fi or supernatural or ancient elder evil from the dawn of time—my story comes with an unwritten promise that all this makes sense. I’m not cheating you, there really is a logic to this. I might not directly tell it to you, but you should still feel it and see its affect on things.

So, yeah, I can use the unknown. But at the least, I need to know which unknown I’m using. because believe me… they’ll know.

 

Next time…

Crap, like I said above, there’s a lot happening between now and then. The Broken Room comes out next Tuesday, and if you’d like to pick up a copy in your preferred format, that’d be super cool. If you’re so interested, I’m also doing signings Wednesday at Mysterious Galaxy and Saturday at Dark Delicacies. You could pre-order from either of them, wherever you are, and get a personally-defaced copy shipped to your doorway. If you order from Mysterious Galaxy, you can watch me babble about the book online in real time.

Anyway, next time, I’d like to talk about making stuff up.

Until then, go write.

And seriously. Take ten. Take a few deep breaths. Drink some water. Listen to some music.

Jeeez, it’s been so long. You’ve both been very patient.

I got a question a few weeks back about using the world of my books in a game setting. Not, like, a question from Blizzard or Bethesdaor something. Just someone running a tabletop campaign who (very graciously) asked my permission to use a bunch of these elements I’ve created in the game they were playing.

And this put me in such an odd spot I didn’t respond to it for a while. The more I thought about the answer, the bigger and more sprawling (and apologetic) it became. And then there was a semi-related question that came up while I was blathering away at the Writer’s Coffeehouse for SDCC, which reminded me I’d never answered it here.

So… let’s talk about rights a little bit. This is one of those terms that doesn’t get discussed a lot. Well, not in the correct way, I think. I’ve seen a couple people get screwed over because they didn’t realize what they were giving up and/or who they were giving it up to.

Also, to be clear, I’m just going to talk about what rights are. If any of you want to talk about how much rights cost or how long they should be held, that’s a different conversation, and not quite relevant to all this. For now, just defining rights and a little bit on how they move around

The easiest way to think of rights is that they’re legal permissions. I’ve created something (for our purposes, a long story of characters and events) and I can give, sell, or rent out (so to speak) all the assorted rights to this story. You’ve probably heard of some like First North American Publishing Rights. This means the person who has those rights is (surprise) the person who gets to legally publish the story for the first time in North America. My agent likes to talk about foreign-language rights a lot—German rights, Spanish rights, Thai rights. That means who gets to tell my story in those languages. And we all love to talk about movie rights, television rights, and action figure rights.

You might’ve chuckled at that last bit, but it’s worth mentioning. The number of rights is pretty much infinite, because there’s a near-infinite number of things that can be done with my story. It can be turned into a hardcover book or a Portuguese eBook. It can be a French stage play or a Russian movie or an episodic Korean podcast with a dozen voice actors. It can be adapted into a comic book or a video game or a line of collectible stickers. It’s sort of like, well, Rule 34. If I can imagine a right, that right exists. Because I own ALL the rights to my work, no matter how bizarre or absurd they are. I still hold all the collectible blind bag phone charm rights to the Ex-Heroesseries and you’d better believe nobody’s getting those cheap.

Also, remember when I mentioned renting some of my rights up above? That’s what an option is. If someone can’t afford to buy the rights (or maybe doesn’t want to commit that much at the moment), they may option them. It means they get to act like they own the rights, but there are certain limitations and a very strict time limit.

This is one of the reasons contracts tend to be long. We want to be very specific about what rights the writer’s giving up and what the other party’s getting (and for how long). F’r example, let’s say I’m making a deal with a company for the audiobook rights to a book. If I just say they get all audio rights, there’s a strong argument that I’ve also just included podcasts and live audio streams and maybe even recordings of performances. Yeah, if someone finally decided to make that stage musical of The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, a good lawyer could argue that those folks couldn’t release an album because this other company has allthe audio rights.

So rights get divided up and different groups get permission to do different things with my story. For example (again), right now there’s at least eight entities (probably closer to a dozen, but eight off the top of my head) who all legally have different rights to my book 14. Some have them for a few more months, some have them for years, one has them for more than a decade. And it takes my agent a bit of work to make sure there are no overlaps, or that things are very specific when there are.

Make sense so far?

This brings us back around to that original tabletop game question. Which was, if you remember, about getting permissions. Sound familiar? So this moves us into tricksy legal grounds. Because this is a discussion about gaming rights and also (looking at the original question) streaming rights. And there’s a good chance (in this specific case, a really solid chance) these rights are already tied up. Someone else has them, which means I legally cannot say “yeah, sure, go for it,” because I’m not the person who can give those permissions anymore.

And I know some of you might say “No, no, Pete, this is just a casual game between friends. We don’t need to be this serious about it.” Which I absolutely get. Seriously, I do. Believe me, I used to work stuff from books into my games all the time. But this is one of the weird downsides of our modern world. It’s fairly easy to reach me (or any other creative person you admire), but it puts us in the weird position of having to respond in writing. And we all know what it means when something’s in writing.

Which is why some writers often don’t answer or give a very definitive nowhen someone asks about things like this. It puts us in a potentially bad position. There’s a lot of deals and contracts out there, lots of rights changing hands, and me (or someone else) putting something in writing that contradicts any of that long contract could be a real headache for me. Or for you. Or maybe for that new deal my agent’s been trying to put together that was going to cover my mortgage this spring. Somebody stumbles across that Twitch channel or YouTube video and suddenly, hey, why are these people saying they’ve got permission to do this? I thought these rights were available?

Which is why a lot of folks—including me—tend to be a bit cold when people message us about this stuff. Because there’s business stuff going on that we might not be able to talk about, but we legally need to respect.

And two quick notes—first, don’t take this to mean you can do whatever you want with someone else’s material as long as you don’t ask. Not what I’m saying here and you know it, so don’t try to use that as justification—to someone else or to yourself.

Second—the simple truth is almost every writer I know loves to hear they inspired people this way. That people want to play in their worlds, literally or figuratively. They’d want you to have that fun. Just because you can’t say anything in writing doesn’t mean you can’t tell them in person (as we creep closer to having public events again).

And that’s some quick facts and thoughts about rights.

Oh, shameless plus in case you missed it. Yesterday we had a cover reveal for my new book, The Broken Room. Out everywhere in just a little over two months, and I’d really appreciate it if you stopped by your friendly local bookstore and pre-ordered a copy. They’d appreciate it too.

Next time… well, there was another question I got at the Coffeehouse that I’d like to answer a little better than I did there.

Until then, go write.

Seriously, the holidays are coming up and you know you’re probably not getting any writing done then. So write now.