• Category Archives writing
  • Judging this Book by Its Cover

    Because you’re certainly on my mailing list and/or following me on social media (and somehow evading the algorithms that keep us all from seeing all the things we asked to see), you’ve seen the cover for Peace Maker already. It’s another good one by George Cotronis at Ravenkult, the artist who did the Peace Fire cover.

    After the clean and simple Peace Fire cover, I thought it might be nice, in a non-spoilery way, if I tried to point out five details of this Peace Maker cover that might tell you a little about what’s in this 2nd book of the Peaceforgers trilogy.

    1. Things are messier, not nearly so clear or obvious or straight-forward.
    2. That same basic silhouette confirms that it’s still Katja telling us this story.
    3. We can see she’s still hood up and boots on and, though it’s not quite the same, still got light in her. Ready for action, but maybe not quite where she was in Peace Fire.
    4. And she’s still facing down a circular shape, but it’s also not quite what it was in Peace Fire.
    5. The picture—in the circles of light and scattered throughout—has plenty of a light, bright blue you might remember from Peace Fire.

    For more than that, well, you’ll have to actually read what’s behind this cover when the book is out 6 October…

    xxx

    Pre-order Peace Maker wherever you usually buy books. Though, at this time, I’ve been told that nobody can find a listing for the paperback. Argh! They are, I’m promised, working on it…

    Here’s a wee link roundup if you’d like to pre-order the ebook at the bigger Usual Suspects:

    But I also know it’s being sold through smaller (aka they haven’t yet tried to take over the world) outlets, and the paperback should also be available everywhere. Eventually…At the very least, once it’s out, you should be able to ask your fav indie bookshop to order it for you!

    Oh, and it’s on GoodReads, in case you want to note that you’d like to read it…


  • News About New

    Did you hear? The next book in the Peaceforger trilogy is on its way!

    Peace Maker launches 6 October, 2020. What’s it about?

    Ears still ringing from their last explosive attempt to save the world, Katja and her friends learn that the war is bigger and the future is darker than anyone realized. So much for life after Demo Day.

    To counter a threat that’s more than just scattered mind control, they’ll have to stay in Seattle. They’ll have to stay in the fight. But maybe this time they can keep their battles in the digital realm. Maybe this time someone else can do all the meat space stuff. Either way, it’s time to regroup, research, resist. And when they do, they’ll learn what the enemy already knows:

    There’s more than one way to reprogram a human…

    Keep an eye on social media and/or join the newsletter for updates. On social media, I’ll be posting some wee memory nudges about Peace Fire, just in case you’re into that kind of thing.

    I do want to acknowledge the times we live in, the ongoing fight for justice and equity, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. With that going on, I particularly don’t want to crowd out voices speaking directly about social change or the voices of BIPOC. I definitely took some time to consider the current world situation and how I might best, appropriately let people know about the book. In the end, I thought about how it’s books, poems, and music that have helped me keep going in all kinds of difficult times, and how it is always my hope that the things I create might at least give people a chance to step out of reality for a breath. So, I’ll try to keep the posts reasonable, and I’ll cross my fingers that this little story about revolting against those in power gives your brain a break.


  • Random Pondering Observations

    (I no longer enjoy, nor have time for, arguing with people online. Especially given what a nasty place the internet has become for any conversation where you don’t agree. So, yeah, I’m talking around a thing.)

    ***

    Before there was an internet, if you wanted a list of all giant robot films, you wrote it yourself. You didn’t have any guarantee that anyone else would have done that, but you knew you wanted to know and, if you were lucky, your friends wanted to know. So, you became the Wikipedia article. (And, even now, the information on the internet doesn’t just appear; someone writes it.)

    So, there’s one reason someone might memorise a lot of facts and trivia about a thing. One reason whole generations of people might see that as a desirable thing to do and to share.

    ***

    It’s not just us Autistic people who often have brains that enjoy cataloguing thing. Kids will memorise all the characters in the latest toy-selling TV programme. Sports fans will memorise sports stats. Etc.

    We like to carry that knowledge around in us. We like to have it to share and to think about. We like not having to look stuff up. It seems to be a normal enough human trait that, with some brain wiring or enough passion, can get turned up to 11.

    ***

    If you’re a fan of a thing, knowing stuff about it can let you talk to other fans (or extol the virtues to non-fans) more easily.

    Which isn’t to say gatekeeping isn’t real or is okay. It is real and it is crappy and nobody should have to memorise, much less prove they’ve memorised, a bunch of facts about a thing they love to prove they love it. I’ve had people play gatekeeper at me, and I hated it. And it took the shine off my love of talking about the things I love. I totally believe that you’re a fan because you love a thing, and your inability to memorise All The Trivia, for whatever reason, doesn’t make your love not real.

    But interest in knowing and talking about the facts and trivia isn’t necessarily gatekeeping.

    ***

    Sometimes, when someone finds out you’re a fan of a thing they also love, and they ask “do you know this thing about it?”, what they really mean is “let’s share in the glee” or “I’m excited for a chance to share information I think you’ll value, and we can share in that glee.”

    Not always. I know too well that it can be the start of gatekeeping misery. But it is an invitation to share joy regularly enough that I feel safe saying it’s a thing that happens.

    ***

    When I met Ernest Cline, we talked about a thing we were both huge fans of. He didn’t do any gatekeeping. Instead…You know how we’re always saying, “Instead of being a gatekeeper, just be thrilled to find someone who loves a thing you love”? Yeah, he did that. And, when I didn’t know about some trivia, he didn’t sneer. He was excited to fill me in, to make the glee and the knowledge mutual.

    ***

    Requiring people to know facts to win a contest isn’t the same as being against, for instance, fan fiction.

    People wanting to know what’s canon isn’t the same as being against fan fiction.

    ***

    For as long as I’ve thought about virtual reality, I’ve imagined doing there what I do in my imagination: filling it with things/people I love from fiction and hanging out with all that. I know others who’ve thought the same way. So, yeah, of course the OASIS is filled with all the cool media and culture people love. And to not mention that would be to leave out one of the cool aspects of being there.

    ***

    All those people running around the OASIS with their media interests? Driving the robots and the cars and hanging with their fictional friends? Lived fan fic, baby. And I think most of us, including authors, just sort of assume you’ll all be doing that…We’ll probably do a little of it with you.

    ***

    As a creator of things, I do understand why you’d want people not to disregard your canon or to treat your characters as if they know those characters better than you do. I feel torn; I want people to respect that I know my characters best and I want them to love them so much (so much that it leads to fanfic).

    But, also, I have friends who write fic and there’s this one idea that I sometimes play with in my head. So, I guess I’m saying that I feel like living proof that you can strongly value canon and the facts about a fiction whilst thinking it’s great your friends write fic. I think I lost the plot on this particular random pondering observation…Sorry.

    ***

    If you were/are a geek, someone has probably told you that you’re wasting your time with all that geek stuff that makes your heart happy. Learning facts, playing video games, maybe even reading/writing fic as a supplemental source of joy, etc. And you know what would be the dream come-uppance? If it was the opposite of a waste of time. If, in fact, it was what let you win a life-changing prize. Yes, please!

    ***

    But, listen, if a book or film just isn’t to your tastes, that’s okay too. We can like different things without either of us being bad. What makes you bad is if you’re a jerk to other people for having different tastes.

    Also, you can dislike a thing without that thing itself being bad. Maybe it’s just not to your taste. That’s okay. Few things are for everyone.

    ***

    Ready Player One was for me.

    ***

    Maybe it was for you too, and you’re looking at the impending film and you’re worried. Neil Gaiman has said that a film doesn’t ruin a book; the book is still on your shelf. (Though author’s are allowed to feel some worry, because people will tie their book to the film, especially since people seem more wont to watch than to read. It’s definitely possible the quality/qualities of the film will impact how people see their work. For example, I was given the Magicians trilogy when I mentioned to a friend that I love the programme but hadn’t had a chance yet to read the books. And I had to work hard to get rid of the TV image of the characters and explore Grossman’s world as he’d written it. If the TV version had sucked, the books might not even have gotten a chance.)

    Plus, there are some great reviews and a friend who saw it already LOVED it. So, optimism!

    ***

    Maybe RPO was for you too, and you’re already criticising differences in the impending film. I have definitely done that. And then I realised that the novelisation of something from TV or film and the dramatisation of something that was first written is like a remix.

    Remixes are never exactly like the original. But that doesn’t mean they suck. (I mean, sure, sometimes they do…) They’re just different. They explore a different aspect of the original, or they allow the song to serve a different purpose (e.g., make it better for dancing). And that film that’s coming out? It’s a remix of the book, meant to fit the cinema. Meant to explore the themes that most appealed to the filmmaker.

    You’re smart. You get what I’m saying.

    And maybe, like me, thinking of the film as a remix will make it easy to just let go of the original and enjoy what’s good in the film.

    ***

    I expect, when I see the film tomorrow, that I’m going to enjoy it. I do so love a good remix.


  • Bad People Under-React to Bad Things

    MAJOR MUTE SPOILERS!!!!

    I’m going to assume you’ve seen the latest Duncan Jones film, Mute. I am very likely going to say who did what and to whom, so there will definitely be spoilers.

    I ought also to mention the following:

    • I went into this film expecting to like it because, to this point, I’ve liked everything that Jones has done. Enough so that, in a dream world where my books are made into films, he’s the top director on my list at the moment.
    • I can’t speak to Jones’s authorial intent. As an artist, I both think authorial (or, more generally, artist) intent matters, but also…Once you put your thing out into the world, you must assume people will see it without reading introductions or listening to director’s commentary or anything else. And so, as I opine, I’m basing this purely on what my experience was as a watcher.
    • I love this film.
    • I’m doing this in a blog instead of a tweet storm because Twitter is an ugly place and I didn’t get my degree in Philosophy just to have trolls call it a “discussion” when they fling their excrement at me.

    Got it? Right, then let’s talk about my response to one critic who implied that, perhaps, Jones has dealt with paedophilia in a way that doesn’t adequately display that it’s A Bad Thing. And, to do that, I’m going to talk about the bad guys.

    Cactus Bill is a bad guy. We might go in a bit unsure about that. After all, at least from the image we get of Paul Rudd in social media, the actor is a good guy. We kind of expect that he’ll either be full on good guy or that he’ll be a screw up who turns it around because he’s actually got a good heart. Plus, look at how much he loves his kid. For most the film, it looks like he’s just a dad trying to get him and his kid a good life. Sweet, right? And it’s even kind of understandable that, as his country of origin goes into yet another war, he’s fleeing that for said good life. We know, from other films, that he could well be someone who turns out to just be a brash loudmouth, someone who’s part of the solution.

    So, maybe we spend most the film thinking that Cactus Bill is a rough but possibly okay character. He may well work out. Save Leo and Naadi and also get him and his kid a nice life. Yay!

    And it’s even easier to think this might be what’s going to happen, because Jones carefully and subtly lays a trail that suggests maybe Duck is our real bad guy. Though, again, it’s a slow build. He’s an adoring “uncle” to Cactus Bill’s kid. He’s played by a handsome actor, and we all know that people have a hard time accepting that characters played by handsome men can be really and truly bad. He seems to be a supportive and good friend to our “maybe going to show his smooshy core” other bad guy, Cactus Bill. His focus is building cyber limbs and implants for kids. Really, until we get quite a bit into the film, we’re probably only looking at other characters as we try to work out who’s behind Naadi disappearing.

    But the veneer cracks a little in the bowling alley scene. What got me most about this scene was how played out and normal it was for some macho guy to have no shame voicing his schoolgirl fetish. (Same thing when he mentions it again later in the massage parlour.) Ugh. So, maybe Duck’s a jerk, but he’s a “normal” kind of jerk and, really, it seems like Cactus Bill is probably the one of the two friends most likely to help our protagonist anyway.

    I can’t, as I said, speak to authorial intent, but my reaction to that is to note that maybe, once we get the full story on Duck, we should start being less tolerant of the schoolgirl fetish the normal jerks in our lives have. You’ve heard similar things about all facets of rape culture: stop treating this behaviour as a joke, as okay, because you don’t know when your mate who’s saying sexual things about under-age girls is going to take your lack of reply as condoning his despicable actions. To me, this scene, especially in retrospect, is giving that warning.

    Cactus Bill, again adding to his “good guy waiting to happen” tally, doesn’t just let Duck get away with it. Right? Well, kind of. In actuality, like so many men in the sexual assault/consent arguments, he just lets it go…Until his own female family member is brought into it. To me, this was when I started to definitely not like both men. Duck has a tiresome thing for under-age girls (and, at this point, we don’t know that it’s worse than tiresome) and Cactus Bill isn’t worried about the dignity/consent of all women, just his daughter. Ugh.

    Still, to the viewer who spends less time being mad about topics this connected to for me, this probably just subtly reads as “hey, guys, Duck might not be entirely awesome.” Jones is keeping this a mystery still.

    Now, fast forward to the night Cactus Bill learns that his friend is a paedophile. Where, if you didn’t before, you start to feel gross about Duck cuddling the daughter or filming the gate of the under-dressed little girl on his treadmill. You maybe wonder why he was putting his shirt on at the start of that scene whilst an unexplained little boy hovers in the background. And, yes, Cactus Bill storms in to confront him. Go, Bill! Start showing us you’re on the good guys’ side!

    Except, and this is where you should start to question Bill, he doesn’t say, “You need to stop and you need to pay.” No, he’s satisfied if Duck just promises to stop. You know, just lets him get away with it (like all those people in power in the world who let fellow people in power get away with sexual assault). But they’re interrupted, and Jones pulls us off the trail for a moment. Even gives us a scene where Duck makes a comment that lets us know that he knows Naadirah and that he’s pretty sure she’s gone for good.

    Could it be that Duck is the bad guy and we get to keep being fond of lovable Paul Rudd and Moustache? Indisputably, one hopes, he is a bad guy, given he’s a paedophile (and paedophilia is absolutely despicable). But he might also be the bad guy in Leo’s story.

    Even when we eventually learn that it’s really Cactus Bill who’s taken and murdered Naadirah, Duck’s paedophilia continues to be part of what is bad and menacing in the film. Part of why Duck is bad. Pretty clear statement, Msr. Le Critic.

    So I can only guess that the reviewer’s objection to the handling of paedophilia is based on how Cactus Bill reacted (or under-reacted) to it. But, here’s the thing, Cactus Bill is a bad guy. He is, in terms of the story at the focus of the film, the bad guy. He’s a murderer, possibly a kidnapper (you better believe Naadirah didn’t just let him have their daughter and that she’s trying to get money in order to get and keep her daughter), and he’s just letting paedophilia happen. His lack of action isn’t Jones condoning paedophilia or saying it’s not that big a deal. His lack of action is part of how we know he’s bad. Bad People Under-React to Bad Things seems unambiguous to me.

    Sure, I’d like to have seen Duck be destroyed because of his paedophilia, not just because he had the poor sense to go after Leo. But the fact that his death didn’t come due to the paedophilia isn’t the same as Jones failing to treat paedophilia like a Very Bad Thing.

    And that’s my 1400+ words just to tell a critic that, in this way and others, they were wrong about Mute. I thought it was a nuanced, engaging, well-acted film. I loved the world building (and not just because I need a Free the 156 shirt!) and the soundtrack. I enjoyed not just what, to my biased eyes, it had to say about things I covered here, but also what it had to say about communication and those without voices. I seem to recall a tweet about how Jones had to trim hours from his ideal version, and I very much want those hours added back in. Mute might not have been for everyone, as Jones warned us for months, but it was for me.


  • The Road to Dystopia

    If a utopia is a society/world where everybody gets to be happy and free, a dystopia is a society/world where nobody (except the person or tiny group of people at the top) gets to be truly happy and free.

    The 4 main characters from Mean GirlsMaybe we all spend a few years in a dystopia…

    A lot of times, an apocalyptic event is a great excuse for some person or group to set up their dystopia. The founders of dystopic societies aren’t picky, either. Any apocalypse they have survived and that has put them into a position to enact their bad ideas will do.

    Sometimes, the post-apocalyptic dystopic society is the result of the fact that humans can be really stupid, so they think they’re setting up a utopia and, oh, never mind…It’s all horrible now.

    A lot of the dystopias we’ve seen lately in popular books (and the films based on them) are post-apocalyptic. Which, sure, I get. An apocalypse wipes the slate clean (and, hey, as a writer I can’t hate the apparent freedom from “nobody would do that” that comes from a society that’s been wiped like that), and makes room for big and obvious changes. And I’m not here to hate on that. I’m even open to the argument that most societies in post-apocalyptic settings are dystopias, and that that is necessary for dramatic tension and plot to exist. I haven’t read All The Books though, so I’m not here to talk about that either.

    Because as much as a massive natural disaster or a man-made apocalyptic event can be enjoyable, it’s those dystopias that have less epic roots that really get at me. Those times where you find yourself looking at the world around you, the real one, and seeing the hints that, oh my stars, we could be headed there.

    I don’t think I read any dystopian books before I was a teenager, which seems weird to me…But, I also don’t know if I would have really noticed them if I had read them before my teen years, so, maybe I did? But as a teen…Starting to notice the things that are crap, unfair, dangerous about the world…Idealism in full bloom, in the heady and gorgeous way that mostly seems reserved for adolescents…Having had a little time to simmer on the distrust of government that Ender’s Game woke in me…I picked up 1984 and began to paranoidly fancy dystopian fictions, whilst also worrying that they weren’t just fictional. That we were headed that way.

    Slogans from 1984: "Big Brother Is Watching You" and "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength"I weep…

    I managed to not let the dread kindled by dystopian novels drive me. I managed to keep it locked in a tiny cupboard inside me, to be pulled out when it was strongly merited. But, quietly, my subconscious was looking for the warning signs that we were headed for a dystopia about which I’d already read or for one that no writer had thought to warn us about.

    In my early 20s, I finally read The Handmaid’s Tale. No, I have no idea why it took me that long. Some failing of adults and supposed good influences in my life, no doubt. Heh.

    Drawing of two women in loose red cloaks and white head coveringsThe mandatory fashion isn’t the only thing terrifying in this one…

    That woke me back up, pulled the dread and paranoia out of the cupboard and dusted the whole lot off. That one, as we started to learn how that world came to be, seemed (still seems) far too possible and real. And that’s when I realised that it’s not just the story of the dystopia that matters, not even if there’s a part where someone escapes or overthrows the dystopia (causing me to take note, lest I find myself trying to survive a dystopic scenario). No, if the author lets us see it, the road to the dystopia is just as important. But I’m one of those people who thinks that truth hides in fiction and we shouldn’t treat fiction as unimportant.

    So, the road to dystopia…

    It was The Handmaid’s Tale that made me wonder if we would notice a dystopia creeping up on us. Because, sure, a terrorist group (or a fanatical religious group pretending to be another kind of terrorists) shot the government. But, you know, we’ll recover. We’ll sort it out. Humanity can totally come back from stuff like that. Oh, limiting of rights? Listen, it’s just temporary and isn’t a temporary sacrifice of rights worth it for freedom? But I’m not here to dissect our current world or modern events in Western countries.

    I always felt like dystopian fiction overlapped well with my enjoyment of cyberpunk, because I could so easily see the worlds, regimes, societies, ambitious antagonists in cyberpunk stories being the road to dystopias. There are other reasons I like cyberpunk and other noteworthy points, but we’re talking the road to dystopia today, poppets. I’m not here to praise cyberpunk things.

    Ready for me to pull this together? I’m exhausted as I write, so let’s all hope real hard as I jump into the next paragraph.

    I accidentally wrote a cyberpunk novel. I accidentally wrote a novel that is, arguably, an origin story for a dystopia. A road to dystopia.

    I just thought I was writing sci fi. That’s all I was trying to do with Peace Fire by the time I sat down to pour out the words.

    Text: Peace Fire (Your Brain Needs a Firewall). Beside the text is the Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shapeEven my own cover art didn’t tip me off…

    When somebody sent back notes and called it cyberpunk, I blinked. Oh, okay, sure…I can see that. Okay. Yes! It’s cyberpunk! I like cyberpunk. Somewhere in non-linear time, teen me was suddenly really pleased and she didn’t know why.

    And then I had a conversation with a friend. She’s one of those people who is quite smart, who reads loads, and who happens to do marketing so thinks about how to classify things. She kept using the word “dystopia” when talking about my book. If you read the stuff that came before this paragraph, you’ll know that this didn’t make me unhappy. But, I didn’t see it.

    And, when she pointed it out…when she helped me see that this scenario is a road to dystopia…when my brain imagined the dystopia that this book could dump everyone into…Oh.

    Suddenly, I was wondering when my dystopia-induced paranoia got dulled…Or maybe it was just no longer as loud. Had it been whispering warnings to me from the little cupboard in which I keep it, nudging my fingers as I told this story? Or maybe it was the lack of an apocalyptic event, now that those are so closely linked in the popular imagination…Or did I not see it as dystopian because I just assumed that you know you’re writing dystopic fiction when you write it? Just like you might assume you’d know if your real world was on the road to dystopia.

    I don’t think this will change the sequels. I’m currently working on draft 2 of book 2 and have book 3 outlined (including the ending), and I think I’ve got it right. But now that I see the dystopia on the horizon, it’s like I’m at the optometrist and they’re asking whether things look clearer through lens 1 or lens 2. And I was pretty sure it was lens 1, but lens 2 came down and I wasn’t even aware the world could be so sharp.


  • Hack the Playlist!

    It’s a Wednesday, and I’ve gotten used to Wednesday posts, so here’s one more.

    If you’ve been paying attention, you know Peace Fire came out yesterday. You might also know that music is really important to me. And that’s why I can’t feel like I’ve done this whole endeavour justice without blatantly injecting some music into it.

    When I write, I have soundtracks in my head (and usually on my speakers) that set the tone, and my first mental images of Peace Fire were more like music videos. I think music helped me build a sense of atmosphere, an idea of cool outside of what Hollywood tells me it is. Music, my own and others’, also helped me accept that a non-stop, butterfly-filled utopia isn’t actually the kind of place from which creations that connect with me tend to come. Not unless someone has at least been letting some moths in…

    I wrote about music and how I write, specifically talking about the role of music in Peace Fire, in a guest post for someone else’s blog, so keep your eyes on my social media. I’ll post the link and you can read that post if this topic interests you. I’m not planning to duplicate information 😉

    For this post, I’m keeping it kind of simple. After all, I’m still nursing a sugar hangover from yesterday’s book launch celebration. I haven’t been so reckless in my cupcake consumption since the horrifying “Valentine’s Cupcake Gorging” of 2015 for the Most Worlds blog. Which is why my most-practised form of moderation is abstinence. Ha!

    Simple and musical? That means it’s playlist time!

    My knee-jerk idea for this was to make a playlist of what the characters would listen to, but my characters are young and cool and live in the future. Any song I could put on a playlist is at least 34 years in their past, making it officially an oldie. The characters aren’t too cool for oldies, but let’s adjust focus for my sanity.

    I thought of making a playlist of songs I listened to whilst writing, but that’s a lot of hours and multiple moods (each of which could have its own long playlist).

    So, I present to you a playlist of songs that the main character’s grandmother would have made if you’d told her that her granddaughter was going to be a hacker. Consider this something like backstory on the grandmother…Seriously…

    And consider this your “Mature Content” warning. This is not the Radio Edit playlist; some of these songs have the swears and the sexual themes. (The only editing of content here was the painful process of cutting it down from a 3 hour playlist to something closer to 90 minutes…y’know, as if Gran had made a mix tape…)

    Oh, and probably another warning that I meant this to be quick and then spent way more time on it than I should have…And I still don’t have all the volume levels equalised between songs. Ugh. I’m so sorry. I hate that. If I get more time soon (cue hysterical laughter) I will totally replace this file with something where I’ve manually adjusted everything. Anyway…

    Without further explanation or comment on the individual songs:

    Hack the Playlist!

    Animated gif: A CD fragmenting in a microwave

    1. Sound Clip (from Hackers): Hack the planet!
    2. The Cassandra Complex – Nice Work (If You Can Get It)
    3. Nitzer Ebb – Join in the Chant
    4. Welle:Erdball – Starfighter F-104G
    5. Sound Clip (Iggy Pop from Hardware): Good Morning Amerika
    6. Front 242 – Headhunter v1.0
    7. Front Line Assembly – Mindphaser (Single Mix)
    8. TheProdigy – Firestarter
    9. Eon – Fear: The Mind Killer (Altered Edit)
    10. Sound Clip (from Dune): It is by will alone I set my mind in motion
    11. Underworld – Cowgirl
    12. Varnish – Tied to my Chair
    13. Sigue Sigue Sputnik – 21st Century Boy
    14. Placebo – Infra-Red (Hotel Persona Remix)
    15. Sound Clip (from Max Headroom): This is the future: people translated as data.
    16. Orgy – Fiction (Dream in Digital)
    17. IAMX – Cold Red Light
    18. Tubeway Army – Are ‘Friends’ Electric?
    19. The Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays
    20. Sound Clip (from Hardware): Everything. Is under. Control.
    21. Massive Attack – Future Proof
    22. Anne Clark – Sleeper in Metropolis
    23. Visage – Fade to Grey
    24. Shriekback – Faded Flowers
    25. Sound Clip (from Blade Runner): Roy’s “Tears in Rain” monologue

    Only one of these tracks is mine. If you like what you hear, go buy the song or the film and own another piece of happiness.

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape

    Amazon.com logo

    Barnes&Noble logo


  • Support Your Artist!

    This post goes along with this vlog I posted today. I’ve basically duplicated the vlog content and expanded on the things. Please add your own ideas via comments!

    Heya!

    You probably know that I’ve got my first book, Peace Fire, coming out in less than a week (11 October! Squee!), so this seemed like a good time to talk about how to support artists you like, even if you’re broke. Even if they aren’t me. I’ve made sure to include a section, right up top, on free and easy ways to show your love. You can scroll down to find new info, including a bulleted list of ideas if you’ve already watched the vlog.

    Now, I know it’s cheesy, but acronyms help us remember things, so…Quickly, here’s how you can be a STAR fan. If that’s too cheesy, I guess you could scramble it up to be RATS or add some other way I don’t mention and somehow make yourself TRASH…But most of you already know I’m a fan of stars and I think you’re better than rats (however cute) or trash, so…

    S is for social media.

    Following your artist on social media is great (do it!), but we’d also love you to interact with us. We enjoy it, but also, for sites like Facebook and Instagram that don’t show everything to everyone who follows an artist, your likes and comments and shares help us be seen.

    T is for tell the world.

    Talk about our stuff when you get a chance, recommend us to other people, post about your love online, link to us on your own web site, use something to do with us as your user pic or banner, wear our merch outside your house, read our books in public, put our songs on playlists or play them when other people are around…Basically, be the cool friend that, someday, your other friend credits for introducing them to the book or song or whatever that they love. I know those people in my life are the best!

    A is for art or act on inspiration.

    If our stuff inspires you to create—whether original stuff or straight up fan art—that stuff is so great. We love it when you feel inspired by us and when you share what you made with us. I mean, obviously, please don’t plagiarise or try to make pennies off of someone else’s copyright, but we’re pretty sure that most of you are just excited and want to share your love.

    R is for reviews.

    This might be the last letter, but it’s definitely not the least of ways to support artists. Sites that let you review our stuff usually use your reviews to determine whether other people get to see our stuff. For instance, last I heard, Amazon is way, waaaaaay more likely to let someone find a book after it gets 50 reviews. You don’t have to be eloquent or witty. Even just “I liked it!” counts. Plus, we get happy tingles when you leave 5 star reviews.

    Bonus Thoughts and Bullet Points

    Before I give you a list of all the ways I can think of to be supportive (already mentioned in this post and otherwise), I want to include a personal thought for people who are family and friends of artists. You can support us in ways that strangers can’t.

    You can keep checking out new projects or even most recent works. Really, anyone can do that, but friends and family are most likely to know about early drafts or past projects. We promise we are trying to be better than the story or song we wrote when we were 12. It’s very normal for artists to evolve and change over time. We do different things and/or we get better. You might be pleasantly surprised, and we’ll be super grateful.

    Also, being understanding about the time we have to spend alone to make this stuff is awesome. Most artists I know or know about need solitude to work their magic. Even if they’re in a band (which means they also need time with just their bandmates), there’s still work to be done in solitude. Hours of it. (For instance, a novel is at least 40,000 words long. Peace Fire is around 120,000. 1,000 words an hour is a pretty healthy writing speed. So, there’s at least 40 hours alone for a novel in general, 120 for Peace Fire. Throw in at least as many hours for even one edit—but expect more edits—and the time to work out the plot, do any research, and ponder details…You get the idea.)

     

    A long and partly funny list of ways to support an author

    Now, here are some bullets, some action items, in case you’d rather skim and get right to the point. Though, obviously, I’m also going to second the stuff Ed Yong suggested for how to support his book. Totally do this with mine. Just let me know where to find my ziggurat…

    Things that cost no money

    • Leave reviews of our stuff on web sites. Really important. (This can be free if you borrowed our stuff from a friend or the library.)
    • Follow us on social media.
    • Interact with us on social media (comment, share, like, re-blog, re-tweet, etc).
    • Make art if our stuff inspires you (original or fan art) and share it.
    • Talk about our stuff when you get a chance.
    • Recommend us to other people.
    • Hook us up with any connections you might have.
    • Post about your love for our stuff online.
    • Link to us from your own web site.
    • Use something to do with us as your user pic or banner.
    • Request our stuff at the appropriate place (radio stations, book stores, etc).
    • Bring your friends to our events. (Technically, if they pay for themselves, this isn’t costing you money, right?)
    • Come to free events (readings, signings, etc).
    • Indicate your interest when possible. For example, with my book, you could go to my Goodreads page and indicate simply that you want to read my book. That easy act can make a positive difference in how people perceive the things we make.

    Things that are free after you’ve already spent money on other things

    • Read our books in public. (This could be free if you borrow it from a friend or library.)
    • Put our songs on playlists or play them when other people are around.
    • Related: If your friend asks about the song, don’t play cool; enthuse!
    • Wear our merch in public.
    • Post pictures online of you enjoying what we do or wearing our merch.
    • Stand up front and interact at events. (If we do music, you dancing and singing is magic!)
    • If you get pics or video of our events, share those online and/or with your artist friend (so they can share them on their social media pages).

    Things that cost money

    • Buy our creations (e.g. albums, books, paintings, etc).
    • Buy our merch (e.g. t-shirts, stickers, badges/buttons, etc).
    • Come to our paid events (e.g. shows, non-free readings, conventions, etc).
    • Give our stuff as gifts (creations or merch or entrance to events).
    • Support our crowdfunding efforts.
    • Buy us gear, studio time, and other things that let us do our art better.

    Go be a STAR fan to an artist you love, okay?

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape
    Peace Fire is out 11 October!
    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October


  • The Enemies of Art

    Even if you don’t write, you’ve probably noticed there are a lot of essays out there about how hard it is to just make yourself write. Fortunately, I generally find that I’d rather be creating than doing anything else, and I’m really good about clearing every other possible thing off my calendar to make that happen. I believe that talents and inspiration are divine responsibilities, and I’ve been known to be “too responsible.”

    But that didn’t mean that writing Peace Fire was an easy sprint from start to finish line, an unbroken journey. Oh, no. There were bumps in that road, unnecessary detours, slowdowns. Most of which are just ridiculous, which is why I’ve compensated with a dramatic post title. I’m going to share three of them.

    Most those articles about writing will talk about clearing away distractions and, at least the modern ones, will include resisting the allure of your phone or social media. Yeah, I’m reclusive and have no problem ignoring most people. Though one of you, and you know who you are, is so irresistible that I did lose some time to you. Ugh. You’re lucky you’re awesome.

    I am also able to resist the call of the wild. It’s not just that I’m an indoorsy girl, because I really do think nature is full of beauty. It’s more that this flat’s windows are all on one side, and that side looks out on a concrete courtyard and faces the other tower of this building. I am pretty sure that one or two stray leaves or the neighbours’ toddler don’t count as nature. No, no matter what a wild beast the child might sound like some days…

    My top distraction was another beast. Yes, the cat. The thing is my big, surly boy is not generally cuddly. We’re into bodily autonomy in this household, and that means that, even if he weren’t a mass of teeth and claws, I wouldn’t be into forcing pets and cuddles on him. He is also a master of inconvenient timing. So it’s no surprise that, almost any day that I had a hard time getting into the writing flow, he could sense when I was finally hitting my stride. That was his clue to “need” to be on my lap and get love. And he’s a big boy, so I couldn’t easily work around his formidable fluff. I absolutely cannot keep up a 1000 word an hour pace when pecking things out with just one hand. I told you my hurdles were ridiculous.

    My big, fluffy cat and his stuffed kicker toy, pretending to be innocent and adorableThe fluffy offender

    Ridiculous hurdle the second: Music! Okay, you’ll hear me say loads of other times and places that music is important and part of my process and so forth. But there’s another side to this magical music thing. You see there are songs I totally can’t resist singing along to or even having spontaneous dance parties to. They have such power over me that I will, for instance, have both feet out the door as I’m leaving a club but dash back in if one of them comes on because I. Must. Dance. Seriously. And if I’m home? Even if I can keep my butt in the seat and keep typing, I’m slowed down. Singing along and chair dancing impede typing.

    Wee me with headphonesThe problem started early

    Finally, food. Oh, food…How I love thee! And if I haven’t spent quality time with you recently enough, it is hard for me to think about other things. Like the story I’m writing. Okay, so, get up, go to the kitchen, and…and then stare at the options…If I’m lucky, my body and brain will agree that, this time, cereal is a great idea. If it doesn’t, I’m about helpless to spend the time necessary to make whatever it is that body and brain want. Some days, I felt like all I did was make and eat food. I love you, food, but you are sooooo needy sometimes. Ugh.

    Me with my mouth between a burger and a mic, sticking my tongue out like it's such a burden to want those thingsUgh. Food. And music. I’m tortured.

    Those are the things that tripped me up, slowed me down, kept me from writing a book in…I’m estimating I could have done it in 5 minutes if not for cats, music, and food. Yeah, that sounds like a legitimate estimate.

    Now, back to writing, lest I have to add “blogging” to my list next time I’m counting my ridiculous distractions.

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape
    Peace Fire is out 11 October!
    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October


  • Tied to My Trailer

    Good thing my band Varnish wrote the theme song for Peace Fire, non? That made the plan for the book trailer easy and took an edge off the part where I have been dying to have a video for this song.

    Music: Tied To My Chair (Single version) by Varnish

    Tools:

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape
    Peace Fire is out 11 October!
    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October


  • First Time Is Novel

    There came a point where I decided I was no longer a writer and would not have a book published.

    Some stuff was going on in my head and with my chemistry and I wasn’t doing anything creative other than my makeup. (And even that was mostly just doing things I’d done before…Yeah, not my most vibrant era…)

    When that stuff got sorted, I poured out a mass of rough material for possible books, a few poems, and began a torrent of lyrics that has me with lyrics for over 250 songs now. Yeah!

    Then came the next point where I decided I was no longer a writer (well, except for lyrics…and then blogs…) and would not have a book published.

    I had started a band and realised that I LOVED making music (it let me combine writing and performing and it was MUSIC) and that I only had time for one creative endeavour until such time as I ceased to have to work a day job or until I somehow became a person who could live on way less sleep than I actually need. I chose music. (I 99% don’t regret it.)

    When the way that things work with my day job shifted so that I started having long periods where I was between projects…Okay, to be honest, I just spent all that extra time and energy on music-related things. Because music was doing things for me that writing hadn’t (and probably at least partly because I hadn’t put in the effort on writing).

    And, listen, a lot of people consider themselves aspiring writers and never get around to writing. They’d like to write a book, they dream of writing a book, but they don’t. There are plenty of reasons for that, and I’m sure that a few were in play in my situation. Plus, I had stopped thinking of myself as a writer…

    Me posing with a guitar, a laptop, and a plastic laser pistol in front of music gear and a poster of Buckaroo Banzai

    Trying hard to make it up to Buckaroo these days…

    Then, my buddy Ernie Cline basically gave me a deadline. And not a “far in the future” deadline, but a “write a book in a month” sort of deadline. (I suspect he didn’t realise the situation and had generously given me the benefit of the doubt, had assumed I was working on it all along like I should have been.) A book that would be good enough that he wouldn’t regret spending the time on me. And here are a few things I learned by finally writing my first novel and following it through to the end:

    • If I spend all my possible free brain time (you know, where I don’t have to use my brain to do other stuff, like when I’m showering) telling myself the story in great detail before I write, I can write it at a speed that shocks me. Every time. I expect it won’t always work like that, so I’m savouring this whilst it’s working for me.
    • If I didn’t pause to edit whilst I wrote, if I just let it flow out of me without analysing it, that was the key. I’m a perfectionist and it kind of killed me to write like that initially. But it also freed me to just get the story out. Because, as I reminded myself constantly, everybody has to do edit passes or re-writing. I wasn’t saving myself that step if I agonised over every word as I put it on the page, I was just making the most enjoyable part of the writing process less enjoyable.
    • On a related note to those first two things, I learned not to stop myself when I suddenly realised I was writing scenes I didn’t expect or plan whilst in my writing flow. I’ve heard about people who say that their characters speak to them or make the choices so that the stories write themselves…I definitely found that knowing the characters well meant I didn’t have to spend time deciding what they would do. But the closest I got to stories writing themselves was times I got lost in the flow and it was obvious to me what the results of all the variables would be. Flow is the best!
    • The joy of even just finishing writing that first draft was enough to make me dance around the flat, loudly proclaiming my potency. Quest completed! Achievement unlocked! And then I finished editing and it was totally done. More dancing and proclamations. And then there was cover art and there were physical proofs in my hand and…Listen, even just hitting a daily word quota can be a rush for me now. I can’t believe I deprived myself of this.

    My computer screen, showing the word count of a document at almost 110,000 words

    I Instagram my word count like you do your food

    So, what was it like to write my first novel? It was terrifying and exhilarating and satisfying. It was hard work (brutal hours and much aching finger/hand/arm time) and enjoyable. (If I was a seeker of fun, I might even call it that…) And then it was incredible to realise that I was, indeed, a person who could write a whole novel. A novel that didn’t suck. Oh my stars!

    I think I had a unique experience. I know full well that novels don’t usually go this way. But I guess the only way to find out whether this is how novels go for me is to keep writing them. I’ve had worse obligations…

    Peace Fire cover: a silhouette with a red flare in the middle, in front of and a large, round, metallic shape
    Peace Fire is out 11 October!
    Pre-order your Kindle edition here.
    Sale price until 10 October