Following Anne

If you were here on Monday, you'll know that Briane Pagel is both promoting his new book,

Temporary Anne, and writing a "story on the go," as he calls it. It's kind of a choose your own adventure kind of thing except there are no choices other than the ones the audience comes up with. Part one of that story is here. Part two, wherein Stephen King dies, is here. You will find part three (and Anne) over at Laws of Gravity today, although I would imagine that Anne doesn't really have to follow any laws of gravity. At least, not anymore.

If you want to know what I mean by that, go grab Temporary Anne for the low, low price of less than one dollar! And, remember, within the virtual pages, you will also find the story of "The Magic Cookies," worth the price all by itself! Just don't tell Anne that I sent you. I don't want her looking for me.

And since Amazon puts limits on the number of days we can offer our books for FREE! and, because of that, Briane couldn't give Anne away today (as if she'd let him), he has made another one of his books for FREE! today only: Eclipse
I reviewed Eclipse some time ago, so check that out and, then, pick up your FREE! copy. It's one of my favorites of Briane's books.

UPDATE:
Today, I'm over at Crystal Collier's. She asked me about cheese and made me tell a lie. Go over and see if you can figure out what the lie is. There's a prize involved!

Temporary Anne and "The Gate"

Briane Pagel is here today pimping his new book Temporary Anne.

I'll have a review of it later in the week (possibly tomorrow?). As I'm writing this, I haven't, yet, finished reading the book, but I fully expect to have finished it by the time this posts. So far, I have nothing but good things that I could say about it, but I have to leave open the possibility that the author could spoil it at the end since I've read more than one book that went along swimmingly (ask Anne) right up until the end, when the book suddenly drowned. Of course, in Anne's case, the swimming happened first, but I'm getting ahead of the story, I think.

Before I hand things over to Briane, I should add that Briane has taken my idea of including stories from other authors and run off with it. In fact, he ran off with one of my stories, a story that I had planned to release all on its own for the same price as Briane's book, so, hey, it's like two stories for the price of one. AND I'm not the only one with a short at the back of Anne. You can also find stories by PT Dilloway, Rusty Carl and Nigel Mitchell. So, actually, that's FIVE stories for the price of ONE! What a deal. So go pick up Temporary Anne for the low, low price of absolutely nothing (because today it is FREE!) and read "The Magic Cookies." I guarantee you that it's not the kind of story you've come to expect from me.

All of that said, here's Briane!

WELCOME!

This is DAY TWO of the release tour for my newest book, Temporary Anne.

Temporary Anne is a horror story about a woman so desperate to avoid Hell -- the fate for the evil she's done during her life -- that she makes things infinitely worse after her death.

To celebrate the release, I'm doing a blog tour in which I'm writing a short story, LIVE, with your help!  At each stop, I'll do an installment of the story and you can suggest where it goes next!

Below is PART TWO of the story.  PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, and if you didn't catch it, click here to read that first before going on, maybe, so the story makes more sense to you!

But it was no good, as before I could speak, Stephen King -- the man himself! The legendary author! The guy who once had threatened to punch my lights out in an alleyway, or so I told people back home! -- suddenly shot up out of his seat.

You would be forgiven if you thought I, as a writer, was merely using descriptive language to demonstrate how Stephen King stood up suddenly, perhaps to storm onto stage and announce that he would let me finish but really Dean Koontz should've won this award, but I assure you, I am in no way exaggerating.

As I said "I", Stephen King rose several feet above his seat, lifted in the air and his legs flailing and arms grappling towards his throat but not reaching it, Stephen King levitating above the assembled, dignified-but-suddenly-shocked crowd, a crowd which had figured on simply sitting through boring speeches before cocktails but which now suddenly was treated to a spectacle!

They seemed to enjoy it, for the few seconds that Stephen King was merely writhing above their heads apparently pantomiming being strangled by a being much larger (and meaner! and more claw-ish and fang-having than they were, although they did not know that!) than he, but their enjoyment quickly faded when first Stephen King's left, and then Stephen King's right, eyeball was pulled from his head as if by a vacuum cleaner.

Can you imagine? I, and the Vice President of the United States, and the assembled dignitaries, need not imagine what it looks like, but you may not have read all of the news accounts, many of which were not so graphic, so I'll describe it:

Stephen King's eye -- the left one, first, remember-- begins to bulge out.  As though he were a cartoon wolf, looking at a sexy cartoon sheep! It bulges, rounder and rounder and then, if you were looking closely at it, you'd see the lens about to tear off but the optic nerve must break first, and the eyeball -- still whole! Still whole! -- POPS! from the socket, the squishy rip of the nerve pulling off being overshadowed by the sucking sound the orb makes as it disappears into the invisible maw of the beast only I can see.

I can see all of them.

I saw the beast as it walked through the aisle, not betraying its presence by touching anything until it reached the third row.  I saw its slimy tentacles stretch above Stephen King, nearly brushing the Vice President's ear, and I saw it lift him up.

"Um..." I said, and covered my surprise with a sip of water from the glass on the podium, putting the glass down as pandemonium broke loose upon Stephen King's unfortunate (for him!) demise.

After the eyes, the head appears to collapse inwards on itself-- only I know that it is one of the three arms of the Beast that has used its claws to puncture the ears on each side before crushing the skull.  Only I can see the tentacle then fling Stephen King's lifeless, nearly-headless body, at the now-screaming seats of dignitaries, dignified no longer as they scramble for exits, avoiding the security guards who have rushed in to -- too late!-- to protect Mr. King.

Only I need not fear this Beast, as it turns upon the security guards.

One! 

Two!

ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!

Tentacles grasp and pull, guards' guns stop firing, guards hearts burst from the squeezing pressure.

One!

Two!

ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!

From its seven mouths come seven tongues, tongues that are lined with needles, like a cactus, but only if that cactus had been grown in Lucifer's own garden plot, and even then only by a particularly malicious gardener!

Three arms waving, five legs stomping, seven tentacles grabbing, too-many-heads-having, the Beast dispatches the guards.  Only a few of the audience have been crushed by it, although some probably will die from having been lit on fire by its breath.

In the melee, I close my eyes, but even then, I can still see the Beast.

It is looking at me. 

"YOU!" a voice says.

It is not the voice of the Beast.

______________________________________________________

YOU get to help Andrew pick what happens next!  I'll leave it wide open and see what you, and Andrew, come up with.

Remember: click this link to GET TEMPORARY ANNE FREE!  I promise nobody will suck out your eyeballs*!

*Promise not valid in the 6th, 14th, and 17th dimensions.

--Briane Pagel

"That's a lot of infinity!":  http://www.nonsportsmanlikeconduct.com

"I sometimes call him Pumpkin Pie.": http://www.thinkingthelions.com

"In my defense, I didn't know what whores were" : http://www.troublewithroy.com

This has been a production of the Vince Lombardi fanfic group:  http://www.nonsportsman.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 So you heard the man. Leave suggestions in the comment section about where the story goes from here. I'll pick what I like best and pass it on to Briane. Part 3 of his story on the run will appear on Laws of Gravity on September 18. Make sure you check it out!

To continue on with the FREE! stuff, today is also the release of "Part Thirty-two: The Gate"! Oh, we're so close to the end, now; can't you taste it? Okay, please don't do that. Seriously, get your tongue off of your monitor. Do you know how dirty that thing is? Yeah, I see that those dried coffee spots where you sloshed your coffee two weeks ago and didn't bother to clean it off. And that other thing... oh, man, I don't even know what that is! Don't you ever clean your monitor? It's not a science experiment!

Anyway...

Here is the list of today's FREE! Shadow Spinner offerings:

"Part Thirty-two: The Gate" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, September 17)

"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"

"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"

"Part Twenty-nine: Loss"

"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"

"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"

"Part Twenty-one: The Chase"

"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"

"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"

"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden"

"Part Ten: The Broken Window"

"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"

There you go, twelve FREE! parts, today. And don't forget to grab Anne while you can!

The Religion of Writing: Part Four -- "My Pastor Said"

I'm going to tell you a secret. It's one of those things that people will say with their mouths but they don't really believe. That's why it's such a secret, because it's... it's like a secret of the heart. Your brain somewhere knows the truth, but the rest of you doesn't want to believe it. Are you ready for it? No, I mean, are you really ready for it? Okay, if you say so.

Your pastor... Your pastor is a human. He is human. Just a dude. [And, yes, I know there are female church leaders out there, but the vast majority are dudes, so just go with it, okay. I also know that not all of you, probably most of you, don't actually have pastors, but maybe you once did? Either way, just go along. It will make sense soon.] Typically, he's not even that smart of a dude; he's just someone that went to more church school than you. [Knowing more about something does not make one "smarter," just more knowledgeable, but that's a topic for another time.] There is nothing about his position that gives him any kind of supreme knowledge or authority. All you have to do is look around at all of the different denominations, even among the same branch of churches (like, for example, the Baptists (last time I checked there were something like 30 different Baptist denominations)), to know that none of these guys have the corner on "right." Not even the Pope (just look at the changes one Pope will make in the Catholic Church, in reaction to the changes the previous Pope made, to know that).

So, then, one of the things that has always bothered me (and when I saw always, I mean since I was a teenager involved in youth group) is when someone will say as a justification for a belief or an action, "My pastor said..." Guess what. I don't care what your pastor said, because there is every likelihood that your pastor has never actually even read the Bible. I mean, read the Bible as in sitting down with it and starting at one end and finishing at the other end. [Trust me; I've known plenty of those kinds of pastors. In fact, most of the pastors I've known fall into that category.]

Let me tell you a story (I'll keep it short). It may not seem to relate, but it totally does. Because, as you might suspect, this isn't all about pastors.

My AP Biology II teacher was a big believer in never taking anything at face value, especially because someone told it to you. His position was that, even if the person was sincere, he might just be wrong. So you never should take on faith what anyone told to you even if it was someone that you trusted. Even if it was him. Always verify. Always. This was the one thing he told us over and over again in class. Everyone seemed to be just nodding politely while they scribbled down the notes he gave.

I suppose he'd had enough, because, one day, his notes were nonsense. I'm not even kidding. I wish, now, that I'd actually written down the stuff he said. I don't remember what we were studying at the time (although I'm leaning toward kidney function), but the stuff he was going on about was crazy. It had nothing to do with the topic. I stared at him for a few minutes before putting my pen down. I didn't know what was going on. Only one other student also knew that something was up, and we stared at each other for a few minutes while Mr. A went on giving his bizarro notes.

The next day, we had a quiz covering the topic of those notes. The other student, the one who had shared the look with me, and I were the only two to pass the quiz, because we were the only ones who weren't completely relying on Mr. A's notes for our information. Everyone else in the class answered the questions based on the incorrect notes he'd given the previous day, and everyone else failed the quiz.

That was an important lesson for me. Not that I hadn't already figured it out, but it really made the point in a manner that I haven't been able to forget 25 years later. Because someone said so is never good enough. Not even if it's your pastor. Or your teacher, even your most trusted teacher. Or, even, a best-selling author telling you the way to go about writing. [Because, honestly, the only reason an author is writing a book like that is to make money.]

As you cruise through blogs, you can find the way to do all sorts of things: write, lose weight, get rid of clutter. Really, anything you want to find out how to do, there is someone willing to tell you the way to do it. But, unless it's something technical, like changing a flat tire or hooking up a VCR (as if anyone even has those anymore) or knitting a scarf, there is no the way to do it. There is only your way to do it, like loading the dishwasher. And you can't figure out what your way is if you're busy listening to someone else's way.

So, just like you should verify information when people tell you things, you should verify how to do things that people tell you to do, especially if it's something only you can know. Which means that I don't care how much money Mr. King has made or how many #1 books he's had, the way he writes is not the way I write, so him trying to tell me how to be a writer is like him walking into my house and rearranging the dishwasher as I'm trying to do the dishes. And not just him but all of those posts out there that will tell you the way to do "it," whatever "it" is.

Which is not to say that you should just discard everything. There are always good bits to pick out, but it's like when "people" start talking about how dinosaurs were killed by a giant asteroid. There is no proof, and most paleontologists don't actually believe it's true. It was never put forth as an actual hypothesis that had any scientific backing. It was just something someone said, almost in jest--"Well, maybe a giant meteor killed them all"--that the press picked up on, and we've never let it go. Actual theories of extinction have more to do with... climate change. Imagine that. But I digress...

The point is that you should always do the work. Especially if it's something that directly affects you. Don't buy into anything just because someone "said so." I'll give you one more quick example:

Many years ago, during a sermon, the pastor of the church I was attending preached about an email he'd received. An email that said that NASA had "proved" that there was a day missing from the universe thus providing proof for the story in the Bible that God had mad the sun stand still so that the Israelites could defeat their enemies before the sun set. That NASA had "proved" this is a complete hoax. But the pastor preached about it... because he believed it. He wasn't trying to mislead anyone or lie to them; he was just wrong.

And people who try to tell you how to write are also just wrong. Not because they are wrong, but they are wrong for you. And there's no other way to verify that information than to work out for yourself what is the best way for you. And, yes, that requires work. Sometimes a lot of it. And the only real rule about writing is doing it. Beyond that, it's all up to you.

Breaking the Blogging Bubble (an IWSG post)

I think blogging is somewhat essential for a writer these days. Well, non-literary, non-bestselling writers, anyway. I'm sure Stephen King has no need whatsoever of any kind of blogging or anything else. But it is probably especially essential for new writers. That's the theory, anyway. And it's what publishers and agents seem to be saying to writers. Get online. Okay, so maybe not necessarily a blog, but some form of online presence, and, as far as I can tell, a blog, tied with twitter or facebook or whatever, seems to be the best way of doing that.

But blogging seems to also create a... bubble... around the blogger. Not a soap bubble, either; a hard, impenetrable, survive-out-in-space kind of bubble. Initially, this bubble is a good thing, because it does allow the blogger to survive out in space, which is what it feels like when you start blogging. Like you're out in space and no one can hear you scream. Or talk. Or type. Or whatever. But, after awhile, if you do it correctly (check my "What Your Blog Says About You" series), you'll actually wrap yourself in a bubble of other bloggers. A nice, comfortable, safe bubble.

Now, if you're just a blogger, this bubble is kind of cool. You have friends. People that know you. People you can count on to comment when you post. Whatever, you know. It's all good. As they say. However, if you're a writer, this bubble can be kind of dangerous, because, basically, whatever it is you're writing will just stay confined to your own personal blogging bubble. However big that happens to be.

For me, at this moment, that's not really all that big. For most of us, it's probably really not all that big. Also, it's not gauged on how many "followers" you have but on how much interaction you have going on. If you have 700 followers but no one ever comments, you probably don't really have 700 followers, just 700 people who, at one time or another for one reason or another, clicked your follow button. If you have 700 followers, but your only getting a couple of dozen page views a day, you don't really have 700 followers. Your bubble isn't as big as you think it is.

But that's not really the point. The point is, as a writer, if you're just depending upon your "followers" to support you and your book (or whatever it is you write), then you're not going to get very far. The truth is is that most people that read books do not also read blogs. But it's those readers you need to get to. Those readers you need to make aware of your existence. And, somehow, you have to break out of your blogging bubble to get to them.

I do know what this is like as it's happened once or twice, like I talked about back in this post when I got listed on a site that suggests books to readers. Readers who are not bloggers and who do not read blogs. It's a hard thing to do, though, to get past the confines of your bubble and make other people aware of you.

I think some people are satisfied with their bubbles, but I'm really not. Nothing against you guys that stop by here and read and my stuff and comment and all of that, but my real goal is to burst my bubble. To get past it. Out of it. To get to the point where Neil Gaiman was at when he said "my job had become answering email, and I had to stop doing that." Not that I want to not have interaction with people or to say "well, I don't have time for you guys anymore," but, if you want to be successful as an author, that's the place you have to get to. And I want to be successful as an author, not as a blogger.

So, yeah, I love all of you guys, but my plan is to... go beyond. Break my bubble.
As soon as I figure out how.

Rules of Grammarization

[Let me point out that this post actually has nothing to do with "grammarization." I actually made up a word to go in that spot that was supposed to be a play off of another word, but, when I looked it up (just to be sure), it meant something... well, it meant something that has nothing to do with any of this. "Grammarization" was the best substitute I could think of, and, at least, it has to do with grammar.]

Some of you newer people may not know about the rep I've developed with grammar, especially commas. I'm like the comma police or something, or so people seem to think. But, you know, one thing is true: I do think rules are important, especially when it comes to grammar. How we speak and what we type say so much about us. And it may not be what we're trying to say. But people make decisions about the kind of person they think we are based upon our ability to communicate. It may not be fair, but that's how it is. [In fact, I just saw a survey, recently, showing that grammar is the #2 thing that people use to evaluate a potential partner (after teeth). At least, on paper it is.]  So I think it's especially important for writers to know the rules. [If you don't, learn them, or, at least, get someone that does (know them) to help you make your manuscript look like you do.]

But all of this gets kind of sticky. Why should we, any of us, follow the rules? Aren't they there to be broken? To be ignored? Aren't they all subjective anyway?
Not really, no.

I'm gonna bring Picasso back up (not for the last time). The reason he was able to "break the rules" of painting is that he had mastered them. He was possibly the greatest classical painter of his day, but painting the way everyone else painted didn't interest him, so he explored new territory. He broke the rules. It was only possible because he knew them so well.

What it comes down to is how on purpose your disregard for the rules is. So, on the one hand, when we write, it may be okay to break some rules here and there, but, when we're breaking those rules on accident because we don't know the rule or don't know how to apply the rule, it makes us look amateurish at best. Haphazard. Inconsistent. On the other hand, when it's purposeful, it suddenly becomes artistic and meaningful.

One of the things I see most often is long, run on, sentence fragments. Yeah, that sounds oxymoronic, but it is what it is. I see it both in the manuscripts of the middle schoolers I teach, which is to be expected, and from adults, which shouldn't be happening. But it's easy to get lost in a long thought and forget to include a sentence. Let's try to put together an example:
"When I got up for school, brushing my teeth and eating breakfast, though I dropped toothpaste on my shirt and didn't notice and missed the bus when I went to change."
See, that looks like a run on sentence except that there isn't a sentence anywhere in there, so what you have is a string of fragments. I expect to deal with this kind of stuff with my creative writing class, but it's more than a little distressing to see it all over the blogs of (supposed) writers.

And don't even start me on commas.

Look, I know a lot of the rules are arbitrary and some of them are even kind of stupid. For instance, I was just reading last week about how the rule about splitting infinitives came into being, and it was, really, more like an misinterpretation than anything else. Some guy (no, I don't remember his name) was translating some Latin, and he realized that in Latin they don't split infinitives, so, he thought, we shouldn't either. The thing is, though, in Latin, the verb is always one word due to the way they conjugate, so you can't actually split an infinitive. Prior to that, splitting an infinitive, "to boldly go," was perfectly normal in English and in all of the Germanic languages. But, suddenly, this one guy decides it's wrong, and we've had this rule, now, for a few hundred years that no one can follow. Is it, "boldly, to go" or "to go boldly"? The problem is that "boldly" only modifies "go" not "to go," so only "to boldly go" sounds right.

And, yeah, I hear you all screaming about why, then, should we follow grammar rules?

I'm not saying that you should. Necessarily. If you know the rules and know how to use the rules, do whatever you want to with them. If you're just busy writing "like you talk" or saying "well, that's just the character's voice" just so that you don't need to bother to know the rules, well, then, the likelihood is that your writing is busy being juvenile, inconsistent, and, well, unreadable. Except by other people who can't tell the difference. At least, not on a conscious level. Meaning, they can't look at your writing and tell you what's wrong with it, but they may be able to set it against someone else's writing and say the other one is better.

To put it another way, hordes of people might like Twilight, because they can't evaluate the grammar (or the story), but people that know the rules tear it apart. The fact that Stephen King ripped Twilight a new one while praising Harry Potter ought to tell you something.

Anyway... All of that to say you need to learn your rules and, probably, you ought to be following them. Actually, it's kind of like driving. If I'm gonna get in a car with someone that's gonna speed, I want it to be a Nascar driver or a cop or someone that's had training and knows how to do it safely. I don't want it to be my college roommate who's doing it just to see how fast he can get the car to go (going over 100 mph isn't as fun as it sounds). All I have to say is that a lot of you (meaning no one in particular) need to slow down, maybe take some driving classes, and follow the rules of the road.

Now the disclaimer:
This post is sort of a prelude to a book review I have coming up. I don't want to spend the book review talking about rules and such, so this will be here to refer back to instead.

Tolkien's Failure (an IWSG post)

This is not one of those posts meant to make you feel better by allowing you to compare yourself to the failure of "stars" before they made it big. Actually, I hate those posts. I don't care how many times Rowling or Dr. Seuss or Stephen King or John Grisham were rejected before they met with success. If it makes you feel better when you get a rejection, well, good for you, but that's not what this post is about. Personally, I just don't find those kinds of stories all that inspiring, but, maybe, that's because I don't have an issue with persistence. Or maybe I just believe in the value of what I'm doing and don't care so much about the outside validation. That's probably closer to the truth. I do what I do because it's what I do, and I see the value in it, so I don't care as much whether other people do or not.

Sure, I'd like it if other people value my work, because, you know, it would be nice to actually make a living, well, even half a living, from writing, but I don't derive my worth from what other people think of my work.

I think it's vital that we don't derive our meaning from other people's opinion of what we do. After all, there's Van Gogh. Completely not appreciated in his own lifetime. We just don't, can't know how our work will be perceived later on.

Which brings me to Tolkien...

It might seem surprising, but Tolkien considered himself a failure in his literary life. Yeah, that's difficult for me to imagine, too, but it's true. But, then, it all comes from how we define our success, which is something I've mentioned before. The importance of knowing what it is you want when you start all this writing business. If you don't know what it is exactly that you want, you are sure to meet with failure, because you're going to layer over the world's idea of success over your life rather than your own.
Which isn't actually what Tolkien did, but, still...

So what happened with Tolkien?

The main thing to realize with Tolkien is that neither The Hobbit nor The Lord of the Rings was what he considered his real literary work. In many ways, those books were accidents. No, Tolkien's real work was The Silmarillion and his history of Middle Earth, work which never saw publication during his lifetime. So, despite the wide success and popularity of his two most famous works, he never believed he'd been successful because of the repeated rejection by publishers of his "real" work.

To put this slightly more into context: When Tolkien originally wrote The Hobbit, it had nothing to do with Middle Earth. At all. It was a bedtime story for his kids. He didn't ever really mean to publish it. Only by the insistence of his friend, C. S. Lewis, and the accidental discovery of the manuscript by the publisher's son did it end up being published at all. Tolkien didn't take it all that seriously, and, like I said, it wasn't related to Middle Earth, which had already been his writing project for 20 years by the time The Hobbit was published.

The Hobbit was successful enough that the publisher wanted a sequel. Tolkien tried to give them The Silmarillion, but they turned it down. No, they wanted more hobbits. Tolkien sat down and began to work on that sequel: An Unexpected Journey, the book that eventually became The Lord of the Rings. See, as he was writing it, he realized that the stuff with the rings was the stuff from the end of The Silmarillion, and it was at that point that it all became a part of Middle Earth. It was an accident, and Tolkien had to go back and revise The Hobbit to make it part of  the narrative. Because, you know, it wasn't.

So, see, George Lucas is not the only one to go back and change things after the fact. That ring Bilbo found really was just, initially, a trinket. Something Tolkien threw in to enable Bilbo to escape from Gollum. He had to go back to the already published manuscript and make the ring important. Make into the One Ring.

Of course, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings became more and more popular. This is despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews when the books were published. Well, not so much with Hobbit, everyone loved The Hobbit when it was released, but, initially, the critics and reviewers hated LotR. But people did not, and they became great best sellers.

But it didn't matter to Tolkien, because, despite their success, he still couldn't get anyone to publish Silmarillion. He spent the rest of his life working on it and the other histories of Middle Earth, and no one would agree to publish it. To himself, he was an artistic failure. It would be rather like painting a great, intricate painting and not being able to get anyone to look at it, to study it, but, one day, sitting down with a kid and making a doodle for him and having everyone go crazy for the doodle. Tolkien was saying, "Look at this! Look at this!" and pointing at Silmarillion, but everyone was busy waving his doodle around saying, "But we like this!" And that is how things stood when he died.

It was only after his death that his son succeeded in getting The Silmarillion published.

So what is it I'm getting at here? Well, a couple of things, actually.
1. I think the thing that more people really need to do before they start writing is figuring out what they want to get out of it. I mean, what they really want to get out of it. Is the actual goal popularity? Is the actual goal to get rich? Is the goal immortality? Is the writing a path to something else or is the writing the goal? If more people knew this ahead of time, they might be more satisfied with their journeys.

Here is where Tolkien knew what he was doing. He knew what his goal was, and he didn't achieve that, so the success of his published works didn't matter so much to him, because those things were not his goal. He did actually fail to achieve his true goal.

2. Be malleable or flexible. Be able to acknowledge the things you do actually succeed at. Recognize your triumphs and adjust your goals to fit with where you are succeeding.

This is where Tolkien did not know what he was doing. His purpose was so single-minded and he was so unwilling to adapt that he was never happy, and he could not acknowledge the success of his two books. His creation, his Middle Earth, is brilliance. The scope of what he did is beyond what anyone else has ever done, and I'm not sure it's something that can be done again. Well, perhaps Asimov achieved something of the same thing with his robot and Foundation books. At any rate, so focused was Tolkien on the foundation, on The Silmarillion, that he could not see how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings rested on that foundation and how much they relied on his entire body of work. They were a part of that whole; I think he just chose to ignore that.

The thing is, Tolkien's goal has actually been achieved; he just wasn't around to see it happen. The Silmarillion has been published along with so so so much more of his work. It's actually quite incredible what Middle Earth has become. It's too bad he wasn't around to see it happen, but... But.
That's kind of the thing, he did what he wanted to do and what he believed in, and, even though it took people a while to recognize it, they did recognize it. I think he would be dumbfounded to find how... pervasive... Middle Earth has become on a cultural level. Which is what he wanted. He wanted to create a mythology that would speak to people, and he stuck to it, and, in the end, succeeded. Beyond anything he might have imagined, I'm sure.

But, see, he knew what he wanted, knew what his goal was, and he stuck to that thing. I think the real achievement is being able to look at your work and know that you have done what you wanted to do. Which is why you have to know why you're writing. And, you know, if you are writing for fame and fortune, not because you want to write, maybe find some other way to get there, because writing isn't a great way to go about it.

An Interview Out of the Shower

The boys over at A Beer for the Shower have a new book out. It's called The Missing Link, and it looks like this

(but you can't open it here. You  have to follow the link over to Amazon to do that). In an effort to get to the bottom of what it's all about, I had a small chat with the boys, Bryan and Brandon. Yes, I made them get out of the shower for it; they were getting a little pruny, anyway. I think the coloration was due to the fact that they used up the hot water weeks ago. After waiting for them to sober up a bit, here's what followed:

How did the two of you meet, and how did you discover your mutual desire to write?

Interestingly enough, we've known each other since elementary school. However, neither of us knew the other to be a writer until we brought it up about 5-6 years ago. We'd both always been writers but never really talked about it with anyone. After that, we started critiquing each other's work and eventually decided, just for kicks, to collaborate on a novel. We found that we worked together really well, and the rest is history.

Well, that's pretty cool, then. I guess you know each other pretty well considering how far back you go together. What kind of writing partnership do you have? For example, in the partnership of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis (who created and wrote Dragonlance among other things), Hickman is sort of the creator and Weis is the writer. I'm not sure how far into plotting Hickman goes, but I do know that he created the world and the characters while Weis did the actual writing. However, in the collaboration of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett on Good Omens, they split up the writing chores so that each one of them wrote particular scenes/characters. Prachett wrote most of the material revolving around the kids while Gaiman wrote the angels. Do you have a particular method?

We don't quite fit any of those pairings. While we do both create our own characters that we tend to gravitate towards initially, the writing is all split up 50/50, and all characters are fair game. We've written together long enough that we can find a unifying "voice" when we're writing, so that characters/descriptions don't sound different from scene to scene. Plus, when you want high quality writing, you quit kissing each other's asses really quick and learn to say, "Look, that scene could have been written better," or "I think that character probably wouldn't do that." If either of us were stubborn or selfish about our writing, I'm sure we'd probably be butting heads constantly. Thankfully, that's never been a problem.

So, if you split it up 50/50, do you plot it all out ahead of time or do you just work on it as you go and see where it takes you? And what was your inspiration for The Missing Link?

When we first started out, writing our first collaborative novel The Dead Don't Play Slots, we shot pretty much from the hip. It was our first time writing together, and most of the time we were just trying to make one another laugh. It was like running through the forest with a blindfold on. It's funny as shit watching the other guy bash his face into trees, but ultimately the story winds up aimless, bloody, and disoriented. Basically, our story structure was horrendous, and yet we still somehow managed to get an offer from a major publishing house on the manuscript. The deal fell through, but we learned to pay a lot more attention to structure. With The Missing Link, we definitely plotted the story out ahead of time. It's still a bit hectic, with our multiple-storyline style, but definitely much improved. We usually do a broad plan for about 1/3 of the novel at a time, and then just fill in the gaps as we go. That way, we have a solid goal, but are able to let the story take whatever turns it needs to without being on a choke collar.

The inspiration for The Missing Link was twofold: Beer and cell phones. We do most of our story idea spit-balling in bars. When we were trying to figure out what to do for our second collaborative novel, I think we just looked around, saw something annoying, and ran with it. Most of our work together is crassly satirical, so we draw our material and characters from whatever social dumbfuckery seems to be ripe for ridicule at the time. 

Okay, before I get into questions about the book, what are each of your favorite books and what would you say are the books that have been the biggest influence, first, on you, and, second, on your writing?

Bryan: I've got 2. What's Eating Gilbert Grape, the first novel that was serious, and touching, but also made me laugh. I think that helped me realize that you can write humor into a novel without having to be like a Dave Barryish, "What's the deal with guys standing next to each other at a urinal, huh?" 

Also, the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Even today, in the world of 'I can't sell it if it's too unique and doesn't fit a particular genre' (Um, cough, agents) I love that something this strange and this unique, even for a Stephen King book, is so wildly popular. I mean, a cowboy travels through multiple universes and picks up a schizophrenic black woman, an 80s heroin addict, a dead 11 year old boy, and a talking badger as they seek out a big tower. Can you imagine trying to pitch that to a literary agent in this market? You'd probably be laughed at, and yet, look at how well received it was by readers. 

Brandon: That bastard stole The Dark Tower! Alas, I have to say that Stephen King is one of my biggest influences and has been from childhood. In my solo efforts, I write a lot of horror fiction, but I also do a lot of dark fantasy. It would be a three way toss-up for my favorite novel: American Gods by Neil Gaiman, The Shining by Stephen King, and (in the humor realm) A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

Hmm... now, I have to admit that I've never read any Stephen King. Not that I've meant to not read Stephen King; I've just never gotten to him. I do see the Dark Tower series pop up on a  lot of lists, though. And, as a total aside, Brandon, have you read Anansi Boys? It's even better than American Gods.
Neither of you mentioned Lewis Carroll, but he was clearly an influence on, at least, part of The Missing Link. How did that come about?

Bryan: We can no longer be friends until you read some Stephen King. Actually, King gets a bad rap for being a generic horror writer, but all of my favorite stories of his have nothing to do with horror. Also, I can assure you that while Lewis Carroll did "influence" the story, it's hardly a flattering comparison. Carroll writes a flowery, goofy tale that is extremely nonsensical and at times hard to follow. This, more than anything, is why we felt it made for a perfect embodiment of the Internet, because we imagine if someone got trapped in the Web, it wouldn't be a happy place full of endless knowledge, it'd be a madhouse full of clashing thoughts, misleading information, and more than anything, nonsense.

Brandon: I have read Anansi Boys and pretty much all of Gaiman's stuff. I liked American Gods because of the depth, seriousness, and Gaiman's unparalleled usage of archetypal mythology. Anansi Boys was really great, too, but was definitely a humor novel. Even if loosely related, for me they existed in two completely separate worlds, as well as genres.

I didn't really get "humor novel" from Anansi Boys, but that's probably a conversation for another time.
I do agree with you about Carroll, though. I always felt the Alice story lacked something because of the lack of a plot. Maybe it was the lack of a plot. From that standpoint, I'd have to agree that it is a great parallel for the internet; it, also, lacks a plot.
Which brings me to "World of Battlecraft." Another confession: I've never played World of Warcraft (I know! I know!); although, I did play EQ2 for a while, so I "got" what's going on there (and really love your idea of trolls. heh). What brought that into your story?
[And I promise I'll get some King at some point. I'm just trying to get through this towering stack of books I already have before delving into an author with a library like his.]

Brandon: As for The World of Battlecraft, that was all Bryan's doing. He's a closet gamer geek.

Bryan: Actually, that would be my wife, whom Molly is based on. And how can you have a book about Internet addiction without online gamers? The two often go hand in hand.

Admittedly, to get the feel for the book, I joined my wife in gaming for a bit... and wow, it's so easy to get caught up in the game and spend a whole day clicking your screen in vengeance as you blow other people up with magic. And, more than that, it's a social experience. It's amazing how many friends she's made just purely in this game, that talk to you and help you out and get mad when you accidentally lure a troll back to your camp and he kills everyone (that happened ONE time).

Closet gamer, huh? I can't imagine there's much light in there to see with.
Sorry... couldn't resist. We'll stay away from my gaming habits for the moment. Especially since they are pretty much restricted to Farmville and have been for a few years, now. 

Looking at your views on Gaiman and Carroll, how comfortable are you with "The Missing Link is like Good Omens meets Alice in Wonderland"?
Also, have you had to deal with any criticism about dealing in stereotypes?

Hah, I'd never really thought of it that way before. I don't know if I'd ever be comfortable comparing anything of mine to Neil Gaiman's. It might even be a smiteable offense. Not going to risk it.

We haven't really met with much criticism about dealing in stereotypes, either in the book or the blog. In the novel, I do feel like our characters are much more "caricatures" than "characters," but that's something we did intentionally. The stereotypes are definitely obvious, and we use them to not only deliver jokes, but to exaggerate the fundamental in our own warped version of satire.

Knowing that you guys have been seeking traditional publishing for a while, now, how do you feel about going the non-traditional route?

Well, there's always this stigma that you're "going it alone." You don't have a big multi-million dollar corporation backing you; all you have is yourself. But is that really so terrifying?

Firstly, what DO you get when you have a multi-million dollar corporation backing you? From what I've heard, most authors are still responsible for marketing themselves. I mean, I'm not going to drop any names, but we have a few friends who are authors under big publishing companies that are selling fewer books than we are, simply because the publishing companies are doing nothing to promote them. Without bragging too much, we'd like to think we've done a pretty good job of promoting ourselves through our site, and that steady readership is really helping to get our book out there.

Secondly, all we were doing, while waiting for traditional publishing, was exactly that--waiting. Days to hear back from queries. Weeks to hear back from samples. Months to hear back from full manuscript reads. I could go on, but you've heard our horror stories. Now--no more waiting. Our book is out there getting read, and by going through Amazon, all rights remain ours should a traditional publisher see what we're doing, see our potential, and express interest.

I have to emphasize that we are NOT against traditional publishers. I'm preparing to show my whiteness here, but it's like the old rap adage, "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The problem isn't the people. It's just the way things are done, and we're finding our way around that

For example, almost every rejection we've gotten from agents stated, "I loved this book, it was funny and well written, and it was a really hard decision, but I think it would be too hard to market, so I have to pass." So instead, we're doing the marketing ourselves and showing them it CAN be sold. Again, it's nothing to stop the presses about, but in our current state we're selling consistently higher numbers than small name authors working directly under the Big Six of publishing, so we have to be doing something right. And once we can snowball some momentum and get a solid, respectable sales number, I think we'll have some serious leverage in the publishing world.

I'm not sure that I'm not against traditional publishers, at this point. I think they need to change their game, and, until they show us they're willing to do that, I'm kind of just against them. Which is not to say that I would turn down an offer, because, frankly, we could use the money. However, it would have to be a lot of money. But I digress...
This next question is kind of obligatory, but that's not why I'm asking it. I'm asking it because I'm curious as to how the two of will answer it in particular. So, yeah, I want an answer from each of you:
Boiling down all of your experience with writing so far, what is your best single piece of advice to writers?
Actually, let me split that up:
What is your best writing advice (just to help people get the writing accomplished)?
What is your best publishing advice (for once people have a manuscript they feel is ready)?

Bryan: So I have one answer for both of those: write for yourself. It sounds simple, and it sounds stupid, but I see so many people look at an agent's website: "Currently looking for: a dark YA fantasy about werewolves with a touch of humor." And then they say, "Okay, maybe if I want to be sold by an agent I should write that!" Ummm, no, that's not what you want to write, that's what an agent wants written. Instead of catering to agents, write a novel for yourself, and then find the agent most likely to want your type of novel. Imagine spending a year writing a novel you're not 100% into, and then sending it to said agent, just for them to say, "Oh, I don't want that anymore! Now I want a romantic epic fantasy where the main character is a 20-something woman." When it comes to what's "hot," agents change their minds like they change their underwear... which, if they're like me, is at least once a month.

Brandon: Bouncing off what Bryan said, I agree that you have to write from the heart. If you try to write to some kind formula, or better yet borrow and butcher previously successful story ideas, it always shows through in the reading. You have to write for you and not for the prospect of future fame. Being unique and bold is what caught the attention of agents and editors for us in the past. To answer the first part of the question, all I can say is you have to establish a writing routine. Plant your ass in the chair. Type. Rinse. Repeat. The more often you write, the easier it becomes to stay in routine. And the longer you go procrastinating, the harder it is to start again. I think I first heard that in Stephen King's On Writing, which even if you're not a fan of his work, is by far the best motivational book on the craft that I've ever read.

Yeah, I keep hearing that about the King book, but, from everything I've read about the way King writes, it's not the way I write, so that has made me less inclined to read it. Maybe, when I'm finished with my current projects, I'll take a look at it.
Let's flip that last question around:
Of writing advice that you see on blogs or in articles or in books or wherever, what is the thing that bothers you the most? The thing that makes you say, "That's stupid!" or "How could anyone listen to that garbage?"

Bryan:  Probably what makes me cringe the most are these two things:

1) "That sounds great!" (when it clearly doesn't). 

You don't have to tell someone "you suck," but if their writing needs work, you aren't doing them any favors by giving them the idea that it's perfect as it is. Don't be afraid to critique. Just say it nicely. And on the other side of that, as a writer, if you ask, "What do you think?" and someone says, "It's good, but you could use a little work with ____," don't get your panties in a twist. You asked for advice, so take it graciously.

2) "Oh, just keep trying, you'll sell it eventually!"

Now before everyone gets out their pitchforks, let me elaborate--in most writing circles, there's a guy who's "been working" on a novel for 5-8 years. It's long, it's been edited 400+ times, and no agent will touch it, so he keeps rewriting it constantly. And yet, rather than try and work on something new, he keeps beating this dead horse until he's all worn out on writing and gives up completely. 

I say don't be afraid to move on to another project if you've given your current project a valiant effort and it doesn't work out. Hell, with a novel I'd been working on for 3 years, I was almost on the verge of becoming "that guy," but one day I decided to sit down, write something completely different, and it landed me a huge agent. Only after was I able to see that the original project I was tangling myself up in wasn't right for me at that moment, and really, I was just scared of 'trying something different.' Change is good. And hey, if it IS a genuinely good story, just save it for when you're published. Then you can dig it up and give it the readership it deserves, with your name standing behind it.

Brandon: I once heard a Creative Writing professor profess that "editing is vastly more important than writing." The point she was trying to make was that no matter how bad something may seem after you've written it, it can always be made better with careful, laborious editing. This isn't so. Editing is hugely important, to be sure. But, no matter how much wax and upper arm strength you have, you just can't polish a turd. Some writing is just plain bad. I think there comes a point where, like Bryan said above, revision becomes an exercise in futility. If you have to spend five times as long giving a chapter a facelift than you did writing it, you're addressing the wrong problem. You need to work on being able to convey your thoughts more clearly, not hatchet a piece to death until it no longer has a natural voice.

Yeah, I think sentences, paragraphs, chapters can be made better through editing, but you can't edit a bad story into goodness. When you start "editing" the story, it's no longer that story but some new story you're turning it into. I do have to say, though, as much as you are correct about knowing when to move on, I also get really tired of seeing people that write something, send out a few queries, get rejected, and immediately toss it. If that's all the faith you have in your work, you'll never have any success.
To wrap things up (before I get on to my review), what is the work you are most proud of, both individually and collectively?

Brandon: Individually, I'm not too keen on the solo novels I've produced thus far. I think it will be in my will to burn those after I die. However, I'm pretty proud of (most of) my short stories and novellas, of which I've done about 60. They're mostly all horror, and I kind of miss writing that stuff. I don't know if I'll do much horror in the future, since my currently developing solo novels are all semi-humorous satire. Collaboratively, Bryan and I have written a lot of stuff together, but I'm most proud of our current work-in-progress, titled The Dead Don't Play Slots. Our overall writing is much better than in The Missing Link. Not to say that TML is bad, it's just that as a writer you never stop learning and honing the craft. Practice makes perfect practice, or something like that.

Bryan: I'll definitely agree that The Dead Don't Play Slots is my favorite collaborative story, which is saying a lot because I love The Missing Link. The Dead Don't Play Slots was picked up by Random House, for God's sake (until our deal fell through), so that has to say something. As for individual writing, the project I'm most proud of is Demetri and the Banana Flavored Rocketship.

Fun story: when I first pitched it to the high-profile agent that picked it up and later screwed me over, the story was only 1/3 done. But he wanted it now now now, so I lied and said, yes, sure, it's done... I just need to "clean it up" a bit. Then I went home, locked myself in my room like a hermit, and wrote the entire thing in a week and a half. And it ended up landing me that agent. I think I'm proud not only of the story, but that the whole project snapped together so seamlessly that even writing it in 1 and a half weeks wasn't just 'slapping' it together. It's all high quality writing from start to finish. So take that, NaNoWriMo! (Note: I do not recommend writing entire novels in a week. This was just a very extreme case)

Is The Dead Don't Play Slots something we should expect to see on the horizon any time soon? And, Brandon, what about a collection of your horror stories? Bryan, I'm not even going to ask about why anyone would know the flavor of a rocketship; is that one available anywhere so I can find out?

Brandon: At this point, we're in the process of building something that's going to shake up the publishing world, hopefully in a big way. Can't comment on it much more, at the moment. Meanwhile, we're both trying to juggle a lot of projects right now. Hopefully, The Dead Don't Play Slots will be release ready in a few months. I have short stories in print journals like Crow Toes Quarterly and The Foliate Oak, and in e-journals like Ray Gun Revival, but haven't put much thought into releasing collections any time soon. Honestly, I don't think the quality is consistent enough for pro-level publication, so I'll probably hold off for a while.

Bryan: The title is actually based on the main character, who is a failed (and very terrible) children's author. The book is also, unfortunately, unreleased, and since we don't want to release too many books at once, will remain unreleased for now. But I definitely want to put it out there at some point. If you enjoy my strange sense of humor, you'd like this one. It's basically a love story between a man and a blowup doll, and while on the surface it sounds like a ridiculous gag for a plot, it's actually a sweet story with a lot of heart, and yes, it actually did make my agent cry. And when I think of how much my agent screwed me over on this book, I cry too.

Well, Bryan, I think you know that I like your sense of humor. It's why I read your blog and am enjoying my read of The Missing Link. I'm just sort of assuming that y'all have a similar sense of humor, or does that all come from Bryan?

Bryan: We both definitely share the same sense of humor, however I'd probably say that Brandon's gravitates a bit more toward the clever and mine is a bit more of the random, out-there, nerdy type of humor (like the great Sir McAffery). But I think it meshes well.

Before I get into the review of the book, I do want to say that I love the character concept of Sir McAffery. Especially him being modeled on the klutzy knight from Through the Looking Glass. That's just awesome. So... any last words before I get out my red pen and grade your term paper?

Before you whip out the red pen, we only have this to say: I have years of practice turning an F into an oddly shaped A, so I can re-word anything you say into my favor.

Example: "This is not well written! I would rather take a blast from a shotgun directly into my face than ever read their writing again."

Andrew Leon of Strange Pegs calls The Missing Link: "...Well written!" And "...A blast!"

[Note: There is a review to go along with this; however, the interview is rather longer than I realized (since we did it over days, and it didn't seem so long when we did it), so I'm going to save the review for the next post. That should be up tomorrow or Thursday depending on how things go. I hope you all enjoyed the interview. It was a lot of fun to do, and I enjoyed chatting with these guys. Hopefully, next time, I can get them to wear actual clothes instead of sitting around in damp towels dripping all over the furniture.

Thanks, Guys!]