sam

I am a man of few and meaningful fears.

I am a man of many and insignificant annoyances.

The former, I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on, since most people don’t seem to realize how terrified I am of certain subjects.  The latter, though, I need work on.  I can’t really help it; certain things just aggravate the everliving toadwarts out of me.  I earlier, on Facebook, asked my readers if they had a favorite excerpt from The Skybound Sea that I could put up on a blog somewhere.  This was quickly followed by a request for people not to make a joke by requesting “that scene with the guy with the thing.”

I stand by that.  It’s a profoundly lame joke that I’ve heard a thousand times before.  It’s supremely unhelpful and truly, truly epic in the breadth of its unfunniness.  But even then, I had the feeling that I was being a tad unreasonable in being that snippy about it.  After all, when you are an author (or a celebrity or any other kind of figure the public latches a claim on), you’re required to eat a little shit.  It’s just inevitable.

Yet, I couldn’t figure out why it still bothered me until late last night when I watched an author meltdown.

I’m not going to link it here because I don’t want to hurt that author more than they already have been.  I’m not going to link the arguments that led to it because I don’t want to address that specific discussion.  I’m not going to really discuss that particular series of events at all because, chances are, if you hang out in the same circles I do, you’re already well-familiar with the ongoing debate of Authors vs. Reviewers.

But in case you aren’t, the gist of it is that authors shouldn’t comment on reviews of their own work.

This is, in general, good advice for several reasons.

It makes you look unprofessional.

It makes you look insecure.

It effectively derails the conversation from your work to you.

There’s no way you can win.

There’s no way you can emerge from it looking good.

These have been reiterated time and time again by professional bloggers and authors alike and I was very content to let it sit at that because, frankly, I didn’t feel as though I had much to add to the subject.  That is, until last night, when I realized just why it is that lame jokes irritate me so much and why I think a key point is being missed in this particular debate.

Because, until last night, I don’t think I realized just how very precious and limited a resource a person is.

And that’s the crux of the matter: it is so very, very easy to lose yourself as a person when you’re a public figure.  When people fling lame jokes at you, they’re not telling a joke for your benefit.  When people bring up your work, they often forget that it was a person who wrote it.  And when you wade into an argument about yourself, you tend to separate yourself from the author and the person and what’s left isn’t much.

I said I didn’t want to discuss the actual argument that led to this and I stand by that.  In the interests of full disclosure, I’m friendly (if not good friends) with just about everyone involved and I don’t quite trust myself to be academic about it.  But there was a phrase that was thrown about more than once that sort of hit it on the head.

“Quasi-mythical.”

The exact context for that was referring to how an author is basically held above the conversation by the audience due to success or prestige, even if their experience doesn’t reflect that, and thus they would be coming down and speaking from a position of power.  But it’s apt for another reason: it’s quasi-mythical, so you don’t quite get the awe and admiration of a mythical creature (and to be honest, I don’t think a lot of authors are looking for that reverence), but it’s quasi-mythical, so you’re viewed as just one or two steps to the left or right of being an actual person.

And that’s when I realized why I couldn’t stand lame, obvious jokes.  They weren’t jokes being made to me, as a friend would make to a friend, but jokes being flung at me, for the benefit of anyone watching.  It’s the same reason it irritates me when I’ll be making an inside joke with a friend on twitter (frequently self-degrading) and someone I don’t know swoops in and picks up on it like it was meant for them.

Which, I guess, I can’t blame them totally.  I am a public figure.  I do invite attention to myself.  That’s one of the main goals of being an author on social media.  You can’t have it both ways, being in the spotlight and complaining that people are looking at you.  But you can know when to duck out of the spotlight and that’s the whole point of this particular blogpost.

Because the price you pay for being in the spotlight is not necessarily dollars, nor even really respect, but personality.

And sometimes, that price is just too great.

I’ve put forth the idea before (and in this very post) that a person is a finite resource and that, I think, is what makes me want to write this.  Not to address reviewers, nor even authors who are already published, for aspiring authors who may one day find themselves in this particular position.  Because eventually, you’ll be tempted to respond to a reviewer.  It’s an urge that’s frequently understandable, but not for the reasons people have already listed.

When we respond to reviewers, I think subconsciously we aren’t trying to demonize them, but in fact are trying to do the opposite: humanize them.  Turn them from a faceless jerk saying nasty things to a person with an opinion that we can understand, even if we don’t agree with them.  That, at least, has been my rationale when I’ve responded to reviewers (privately, in email) and I find that to be an okay way of going about things.

But I don’t do it anymore.

I don’t read my reviews.  I don’t read conversations about me.  I don’t go on Goodreads.  I try to avoid Amazon when I can.

Because when I first started out in publishing, I made a deal with myself: if it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t do it.  If the lame jokes on twitter annoyed me more than I enjoyed the friendships, the fan interaction, the professional networking and genre discussions, I wouldn’t do it.  If the depersonalizing aspect of Facebook made me more uncomfortable than the chance to see someone post on my wall “I loved your book!” made me ecstatic, I wouldn’t do it.  As a result of Goodreads making me feel like an object instead of a person, I don’t go on there.  Nothing personal to you Goodreads users: it’s an awesome site, but it’s just not for me.

Only now, about three years into publishing, do I realize the wisdom of this approach.

It’s not merely a matter of stress, nor merely of professionalism (though these are both huge issues that shouldn’t be discounted).  Rather, it’s a matter of preserving my precious, precious personality.  I hesitate to call it self-defense, though I’m fine with the idea of calling it resource management.

Bear with me through this next part, because it will sound a little odd.  But if you look at yourself as a finite resource, then it’s easier to divide yourself up (at least, as far as authors go).

Anywhere from 50%-90% of yourself will go to your work (for purposes of this exercise, let’s say you’re more dutiful than most and are dedicating about 75%).

So, that leaves 25% left.  10% of that will go to the public, through social media, appearances and generally putting on a brave face.  Of the remaining 15%, 10% will go to lives, loves, hobbies and personal interests (this is the part you’ll share with people).

That remaining 5%?  That has to be for you and you alone.  That has to be the one scrap of yourself that you hold onto as tightly as humanly possible and never, ever let go of.

And that’s also the part we give away when we get into fights about our own stuff.  That’s where we give away our fears, our insecurities, our lusts and our passions.  And it comes out as misunderstood and ugly because, how could it not?  That’s the part of us that will only make sense to us because it’s so incredibly intimate.

I suppose I took a very long time to explain that.  But then again, these blog posts are as much for my own benefit as they are for yours.  And I hope that this has been of some benefit to you, aspiring authors and sensitive readers, in explaining possibly where we come from and why things like author meltdowns happen.

It’s not your fault.  It’s nobody’s fault, really.  I hesitate to say it’s the author’s fault, since so many of them (myself included) aren’t quite sure what they are and thus have a hard time qualifying what they can and can’t give away.

But, speaking as a man with few, significant fears?

Don’t do it.

You’re too precious to give it away.

As you could likely conclude from any convention that could give me a three-day hangover, WorldCon 2013 was very good to me.  And as such, I have mostly good things to say about it, having just returned from it on Sunday.

Was it a great experience?

Yes.

Was it an awesome opportunity to see my good friends Kevin Hearne, Brian McClellan, Scott Lynch, Myke Cole and Wesley Chu?

Yes.

Was it a great atmosphere to meet new friends like Chuck Wendig, Justin Landon, Andrea Phillips and Jason M. Hough?

Yes.

Was it excellent to meet editors like Devi Pillai and Will Hinton?

Yes.

Was it a great opportunity for taking pictures of Kevin Hearne looking bewildered and slightly intimidated at the size of his margarita?

 

You better believe it.

Was it an excellent opportunity to grow my business as a writer, attract new readers and further my career by interacting with fans?

…well.

Other people have touched on this in their write-ups of the con itself, but common criticisms regarding WorldCon have been that it is hostile to younger readers and fans, it’s not a very welcoming air, it contains an air of elitism about it and it generally prefers to occupy the same spot it has for years now.  While there have been many less savory terms thrown about to describe it, many people brand WorldCon as “old.”

I hesitate to use that term flippantly, since I don’t like the implication that older readers have no place in readership or conventions.  Many of my fondest readers are older and I would quite prefer them to feel included and welcome in reading my books and those of authors they love.

What might be a better term to describe WorldCon is “established.”  It has been around for awhile, it has seen no particular need to change, it has a built-in community and tradition and it can’t be arsed to go looking for new blood.  It’s a con that started by sitting around, talking about the things that they love and prefers to keep sitting around, talking about the things they love, heedless of the fact that no one really knows what a “fanzine” is anymore.

This is all fine, really.  It’s not my place to dictate terms to a con and I certainly enjoy the service they provide on a personal level.  But on a professional level, this just won’t do me a lot of good.

I’ve made no secret that Phoenix Comicon is my favorite convention.  Not just because it’s my home con.  Not just because I know a lot of people there.  Not just because I get a little smile when local fans come to see me year after year.  Not just because I once met a girl dressed as a scary nurse from Silent Hill and I was intimidated and I think I might be kind of into that is that bad.

But because Comicon targets a big section of my readership: a subset of burgeoning readers who come to novels via other mediums like comics and video games.  A readership I am tentatively calling “book-curious.”

The real advantage of a place like Comicon and other mixed-media events is that it comes at the advent of geek culture beginning to bloom.  Whereas before we were vague tribes (and I’m not saying there isn’t a fair degree of tribalism going on in it), we are at least more inclusive now, resulting in people like Felicia Day who are across-the-board geeks who like games, books, comics and more.  The result is that you have a lot of mingling between the various interests: comic readers and video gamers are slowly peeking their noses out of their holes, inhaling softly the scent of overwrought prose and elaborate descriptions of feast scenes.

And they have found the odor intoxicating.

A lot of my readers are people who are just sort of starting to sniff out the fantasy genre in earnest.  A lot of my readers are people who are excited about the prospect of new authors coming out before them.  A lot of my readers are people who found fantasy novels via other means and have become readers themselves.

I meet a lot of these people at Comicon and it’s really, really good.  Making sure these people have a positive experience with authors they’re curious about means that they will be unrepentantly geeky about it.  Which I loves.

At places like WorldCon, though, I mostly see people still talking about the authors they once loved.  That’s fine.  I like Heinlein, too.  But as a new, often struggling author, this sort of environment is not really conducive to spreading my work like a disease.

I suppose this must all sound frightfully mercenary, talking about expansion and occupation as though readers are a commodity.  The truth is that all authors think in business terms at least a little.  We kind of have to if we don’t want to stop writing and, you know, die in poverty.  But these are typically at the back of our minds.  At the front is the sheer joy of being a geek, geeking out about what we’re excited about in the hopes of spreading and absorbing each other’s enthusiasm.

I suppose that last metaphor must have sounded a little more disturbing, but you get the idea.

I’m not going to speculate on the future of WorldCon.  Plenty of other people do that enough already.  But what I do think is that we’re going to start seeing more cons embracing the idea of mixed media and a coalescing of tribes.  And for authors, this is a good thing.  This is where we can start branching out creatively, reaching other communities as they sweatily brush against each other in crowded hallways (that’s just another metaphor, by the way, you shouldn’t actually be grabbing people in hallways, especially if they’re sweaty).

Ultimately, WorldCon is an excellent con, loads of fun, a nice place to go.

But it’s not my con.

It is a point of semi-morbid pride when my twitter feed erupts in emotion over the latest arc of Unsounded, a comic whose writing and art is really just some of the best I’ve ever seen.  I am immensely happy when I see that people I’ve directed to this wonderful comic are enjoying it as much as I am.  Ashley Cope has been a very good friend to me, her art style is one I adore and I have every desire to see her succeed.

Which is why I backed her Kickstarter and advised other people to do so.

Suffice to say, when it comes to artists I love, I permit myself to be more enthusiastic than normal.

I’ve always had the fantasy of being a patron of the arts.  You know, one of those wealthy Renaissance-era nobles who lavishes money on long-suffering artists while pounding powdered fist into oiled palm and shrieking so hard that it makes the quill in their hat quiver: “More!  MORE EMOTION ON THAT BOWL OF FRUIT!”

But, as I am a humble fantasy author who is not so fabulously wealthy as to afford a quill in his hat, I relegate myself to championing artists who draw stuff more interesting than bowls of fruit.

Artists like Edwin Huang.

I first noticed Edwin’s work when I discovered Skullkickers, by the supremely talented Jim Zub.  The story of a semi-comedic band of maladjusted adventurers on a quest for loot at the cost of their own dignity–frequently involving tentacled monsters–appeals to me for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has ever read my books, even without Edwin’s supremely great art illustrating it.

But really, Edwin’s art is something special.  I rarely see lines so clean that can be so expressive.  I rarely see action conveyed so clearly through something that looks so elegant.  And I rarely re-read comics just for the art so I can go “damn, that is actually pretty kickass.”

But Edwin’s that kind of artist.

Which is why I was very happy to back his Kickstarter campaign to produce an art book and guide to character study.  And, given the fact that he met his initial goal in under three days, I gather I wasn’t the only one.  And since he’s decided to put up some supremely awesome stretch goals, I’m very happy to present his work to you, my readers, and urge you to take a look and donate to a very talented artist.

Granted, I’ve only backed two Kickstarters publicly so far, and they’ve both been artists.  There are a few reasons for this.

For one, if it wasn’t clear, I’m a total nerd for fancy art (especially ones of my characters).

But for another, less selfish reason, I know it’s freakin’ tough being an artist.  This I learned by working with Michael Lee Lunsford, the greatly talented artist responsible for the supremely awesome Lost Pages on my site.  While the life of an author isn’t exactly easy, it’s slightly more predictable than a freelance artist’s.  They don’t usually get advances, their steadiest work is always under threat of disappearing under their feet, and unlike authors, going to conventions to promote themselves isn’t so much a smart business move as something wildly necessary.

Existing chiefly on commissions and public interest as they do, I find it easy to want to help them out.  I find it a lot easier when their art is so freaking awesome as Edwin’s, though.

So, for those of you who trusted my judgment on Unsounded and were supremely rewarded, give a look at Edwin’s upcoming book Rogues’ Gallery and see if you feel like kicking it some donations.

I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

My priorities in life are pretty weird.

I started writing when I was young and thus my list of what was important to me usually went: 1) Getting girls to notice me, 2) Playing video games, 3) Writing, 4) Doing Homework, 5) Seeing people.

But now that I am older and wiser, my priorities have changed, giving more credit to what’s truly important.  Nowadays, they look like this: 1) Eating tacos, 2) Playing video games, 3) Writing, 4) Logging onto twitter and laughing at people who still have to do homework, 5) Avoiding people.

To that end, you can certainly understand why I don’t often update my appearances until, like, a week before I’ll be there.

But this weekend, I’ll be at Bubonicon!  George R.R. Martin’s mofuggin’ alma mater of cons!  It’s always been a huge boon to me and I’ve always loved going.  I hope you’ll come around and see me at my many, many panels.  You can check out a schedule here.

And the weekend after that, I’ll be at WorldCon.  Now, it’s true that I’ll be at panels there, as well.  But again, priorities.  You should definitely catch me at this event here on Saturday night if you’re coming to WorldCon.  Now, granted, that schedule says Sam Syks, but I’m fairly sure that’s intended to be me.  If not, I’ll find this Sam Syks, kill him and take his spot.  No one will ever know.

Except you, because I just told you.

I promise not to silence you at these cons.

Hope to see you there, fellas!

Not for the first time, I asked myself last night: “Maybe it’s me?”

I’ve been juggling anywhere from three to four new books by new fantasy authors for a few days now.  Each and every one of them is a lovely story written by a very talented author with a lot of compelling things about them and I can certainly recognize that.  I’d have no problem rattling off a list of what makes these guys very desirable to someone who would be interested in their particular piece of work.

Each of them has a firm plot.  Each of them has a strong lead character.  Each of them has a solid conflict.  Each of them has a fairly unique setting.

So, not for the first time, I asked myself why I wasn’t particularly gripped by any of them.

There are gruff bastards aplenty.  There’s action.  There’s bloodshed.  There’s research.  There’s unique settings and cultures and worldbuilding.  These tend to be signposts that most fantasy readers eagerly follow.  And clearly, these books have a lot of appeal and I’m sure, as days go on, we’re going to see a lot of talk about these various authors and I’ll see a lot of reasons as to why they’ve gripped other people.

So, again, I wonder if it’s me that has the problem.

It could easily be that I’ve seen too much.  An author reads a book for different reasons than your average reader.  We enjoy the story, but we also see the technique, the tricks, the voice.  It’s as much a craft study as it is a romp.  To that end, I think an author values a romp, a moment where he totally forgets he’s looking at craft, even more than your average reader.

And that’s when it hit me.

I can only barely remember the last time I read a fantasy book and felt that the author was having fun with what he was doing.

A friend of mine suggested that a good description for my work was “half-literary savant, half-mega-nerd who can’t see the line between his enjoyment and the audience’s.”  I’m fairly certain he intended the latter half of that statement as a criticism, but for the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would take it as such.

A book, at its best, is not unlike a contagious disease.  It is something that positively explodes and infects you, drawing itself into you as much as you draw yourself into it.  Telling a story is an exercise in sharing joy, in making your enjoyment and the audience’s enjoyment synonymous, and my favorite stories are the ones that don’t hesitate to let me know how much they love what they’re writing.

And I think love is something that’s missing a lot from fantasy literature these days.  We, more than most genres, are obsessed with tradition and influence.  When we review a book we like, we’re as likely to credit the books that came before it as we are the book itself.  When we review a book we don’t like, we usually express disappointment that it’s not a book by someone we did like (in many instances, the fact that it’s not by that person is considered valid criticism in and of itself, which seems silly).  And when someone comes out and defies the genre by subverting it, we tend to cheapen the effort by linking its success to the authors that it’s trying to move away from.

And this, I think, has affected our writing.  Publishing, certainly, has something to do with it: publishers are there to make money and it’s easier to convince them to take a chance on something that’s been done already.  But even more than that, we’re kind of regurgitating the same story.  The names change, we sometimes move from swords to flintlocks, but we’ve got the same bastard protagonists, the same lengthy cultures, the same commentary on the same stuff.

Not that this is a bad thing.  Clearly, it works.

But not for me.  Not entirely, anyway.

So I asked myself, not for the first time, when the last time I was really enjoying a book in that contagious way.

And that’s when I noticed that Fantasy Faction was doing a re-read of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora.

I don’t think I’ve ever made any compunctions about the fact that Lies is my favorite fantasy book of all time and that Scott is my favorite fantasy author (seriously, when he gave me a blurb for The Skybound Sea, I went into conniptions for a week.  They had to pull my tongue with pliers).  But I’m not sure if I’ve ever told anyone exactly why he’s so special.

I mean, the obvious answer to that is to go read it yourself and see exactly what I’ve seen, but for those who are leery…

Lies of Locke Lamora follows the exploits of The Gentleman Bastards, a small band of thieves in the canal city of Camorr, through the past and present.  Equal parts memoir and heist movie, Lies is the story of the titular Locke Lamora, incompetent with a sword, utterly incapable of doing anything without his best friend Jean, and gifted with a singular talent for lying, which he does especially well.

I could go into the worldbuilding here, about how the city of Camorr is a living, breathing thing easily the equal of any sprawling map.  I could go into the character development, how the characters are actually self-actualized and have their own motives and goals that–gasp!–do not always require them to be the remorseless, heartless bastards that are so chic right now.  I could go into the prose, how it’s equal parts lyrical poetry and equal parts bawdy tavern song.

But these aren’t what make Scott such an amazing author.  And this isn’t what makes Lies such a special book.

And the only way for you to find out is to read it, because that’s the only way to realize just how much Scott loves his characters, loves his world, loves his book.  It’s the only way to see what kind of fun he’s having when he’s writing it.  It’s the only way to see how he jokes and jests through comedic scenes and then turns deadly serious in an instant.  It’s the only way to see how he can actually tap into something that’s become something of a dirty word in fantasy: love.

And that love is everywhere in this book.  It’s in the description of the dogleeches in the tunnels, plying their illegal medicine.  It’s in the elaborate weaving of disguises and lies upon lies in an effort for the biggest score of these thieves’ lives.  It’s in the Salt Devil spiders lurking in the sewers and damp places of the city.  It’s in everything two friends will do for each other, in just what it means to be a Gentleman Bastard when the world’s been a bastard to you.  It’s in every single word.

And that is why it’s special.

And that is why I’m not sure I’ll ever read anything like it again.

Because I’m not sure when it stopped being okay to love.  I’m not sure when we grew concerned with what every other genre thought of us and started striving hard to be taken seriously, leaving behind everything we enjoyed about this genre.  And I’m not sure when I’ll see that sort of gushing joy again.

But, in the meantime, there’s always re-reads!

There is an immense conundrum in being a writer.

I mean, there are plenty in writing, as well, but the very act of being a person public and visible and hoping to carve out a niche of adoration directly in the reverence center of peoples’ brains is bound to have its share of difficulties.  One of which I have stumbled across this very week.

There was a thread on r/fantasy asking “How much self-promotion is too much?”  Now, I’m not quite sure how much is too much, but I can tell you how much is too little: mostly all of it.  Given that the vast majority of publishers don’t have the resources to violently push the vast majority of their writers to the vast majority of their readers, the lion’s share of the work for getting the word about your books out there will be squarely on your shoulders as a new writer.  Self-promotion is just a fact of the industry at this point.  To get anywhere, you must become adept at talking yourself up.

That’s not the difficulty.  The difficulty comes in the fact that the vast majority of writers are not people who are fit for self-promotion.

Writers are creative people.  And as creative people, they have more than their fair share of introversion, depression and a piping hot cocktail of shame and envy.  They can’t self-promote without worrying that they’re annoying people.  They can’t say anything good about themselves without inviting the fear that someone will stand up and say “I disagree, you’re awful.”  And if people tell them they’re good and tell them they’re not being annoying, they privately think people are lying to them just to be nice and they secretly gather in cabals dedicated to discussing how awful you are as a writer and there’s like a little shrine with your picture on it and a fat, bearded guy in a hood gesturing his thumb at your picture and going “fuck THIS guy!”

Yeah.

I might be projecting too much.

I’m only now coming to grips with the fact that self-promotion is a fact of life.  My work has suffered greatly for it.  I’ve always been too shy, too embarrassed, too worried to speak well of myself.  I have a fairly large twitter following and facebook presence and very few people seem aware that I actually write books as opposed to spending my whole day posting pictures of pugs and capybaras.

It’s frustrating.  Not because it’s hard, but because it shouldn’t be hard.  Fantasy fans are unique in that we thrive on exuberance.  We’re happy to geek out over stuff and gush how much we love a series.  And we love it when other people do it, as well.

I mean, for a long time, I got convinced that The Aeons’ Gate was not actually all that special.  A few extremely virulent reviews convinced me I wasn’t that great, that it was just adventure fantasy, not important enough to warrant gushing and I fell silent.  But as I grow older, I can recognize that its flaws gave it strength and vigor.  It has energy I’m proud of and it’s something I’m damn happy with and it’s something I’m fucking thrilled to share with people.

It took me a very long time to figure this out.  I’m still coming to terms with it.

But here are some very simple DO’s and DON’Ts that I’ve realized along the way.

DO

Be Unashamed: This is not the same as being shameless, mind you.  Being unashamed means being happy with what you write, happy that you want people to read it, happy that you are KING NERD and you make your throne atop a mountain of ideas and joyous bluebirds all singing the SHOTS song.  Being unashamed means being totally okay with the fact that you wrote a book and think it’s awesome that people can read it.

Be Involved: The audience loves exuberance, but the audience also loves free stuff.  Do giveaways!  Do contests!  Do fun stuff!  Create bonus content to be seen (such as my Lost Pages) at any time!  Make swag!  Talk to people at panels, online, on twitter, all over the place.  Show love in your project by investing in it!  Make your audience feel like this is something awesome they should be involved in!

Be Unafraid: Asking is not something you’re taught in school.  In fact, by the time most of us are adults, we have no idea how to ask.  We’re too prideful, too afraid of being rejected, too afraid of admitting we need help.  But sometimes, if nothing else can be done, you’ve just got to post a request for people to post Amazon reviews about your book or to retweet something or to otherwise help you out.  Don’t consider it charity.  Remember about being unashamed.  You’re not (just) asking people to help you out, you’re asking them to believe that this is as awesome as you believe.

And most importantly…

Be Enthusiastic: Learn to talk about your project the way you feel about it.  Learn to love what you’ve done and learn to be okay with letting that show.  You wrote a book in a genre you love.  Acting too cool to talk about it merely makes your audience think there’s something wrong with it.  You are a writer, but you’re also a reader.  Be comfortable with geeking out over yourself now and again.  Exuberance is infectious.

DON’T

Get Bitter: Sometimes, you’re going to fail.  Sometimes, you’re going to get a bad review.  Sometimes, you’re going to ask for reviews and get maybe two people who do it and the rest who ignore you.  This isn’t their fault.  It isn’t your fault.  The plan didn’t work.  That happens a lot.  Don’t grouse online about ungrateful people or unappreciated genius.  The rank stench of fear and bitterness isn’t becoming.  Take some time to recuperate the blow, then try again.

Get Dishonest: Part of being unashamed means being honest.  And that means if someone comes around asking for a hardcore space opera sci-fi and you’ve written spiderotica, you can’t subtly trick them into reading it by claiming “hey, at some point, Queen Arachne, eight-legged sex goddess whose twitching, venom-coated mandibles have tasted the fruits of a thousand thousand men and women’s shaven delights looks into space, THIS MUST BE A SPACE OPERA!”  Your reader might have a good time, but they might also feel tricked and annoyed that you didn’t listen to what they wanted.  Be up front and tell them true.

Get Spammy: I’m putting this third because it’s not quite as important as the last part, but this is probably what sinks a lot of people.  If your twitter feed is full of regurgitated stock lines about how awesome your series is and various #mustread, #buythis, #seriouslydoit hashtags, you have a problem.  If all you ever link is your Amazon page, your Goodreads page, your statistics, you have a problem.  If you have a program that automatically DMs someone an advertisement for your book when they follow you, you have a serious problem because I am about to smash your fucking face in with a brick.

And most importantly…

Get Discouraged: This is a long game and it’s going to take a long time before the highs are more frequent than the lows, trust me.  Don’t make it harder for yourself by thinking you’re not worth talking about.  Don’t make it harder for yourself by getting angry at the world and yourself.  With enough time, any plan will work and any hurdle can be climbed over.  Suck it up, keep at it.

You got this.

I sometimes wonder if my writing will forever be trapped in that rebellious teenage phase.

When I first started writing Tome of the Undergates, it was in direct response to a rough draft that I had begun penning when I was fourteen, which was influenced largely by the books I was reading at the time.

Hence, there were a lot of words like “hero,” “good,” “evil,” “dark master” and I think once I actually unironically wrote “nefarious fiend” being thrown around.

You know the kind of story I’m talking about.  The sanitized, bloodless, swooning-damsels, muscular-men with hearts of gold because that’s what they do versus the ugly, weird orc-like things that are totally ugly and gross and stuff.

I gather that, from all the discussion we’ve had about grittiness lately (and no, we’re not going to talk about that here…much), a lot of people were reading the same books as me.  Hence, when I wrote Tome of the Undergates to feature a lot of unpleasant people doing exceedingly bloody things that bordered on bastarddom, I was pretty pleased with myself.

But now that your average hero in fantasy tends to be an asshole of one kind or another…I don’t know.  I guess I’m getting a little bored?

Don’t get me wrong, I can see why we went down that road.  Beyond just rejecting the idea of white hats and black hats, we were interested in seeing what makes bad guys tick.  It was fun and unique to find out what makes these wicked people do what they do, because up until then, we’ve kind of taken it at face value that bad guys will do bad because they are bad and good guys will do good because they are good.

And it’s paid off.  We’ve come very far in understanding more about the former.  And yet, I can’t help but think we might not have asked ourselves the same questions about the latter.  And one of those questions now is…

Is there room for good ol’ fashioned good guys in fantasy?

Before you answer, let me do it for you: no.  There is no room for good ol’ fashioned good guys in fantasy (emphasis mine).  The traditional sanitary morally-irreproachable fantasies of your granddad’s day are dead and buried and should stay that way.  There are a lot of reasons why, of course.  They simplify all the morality and thought of a human being into an insulting stereotype.  They carry with them a lot of negative and iffy connotations as pertains to the aforementioned swooning damsels and the “other” (orcs, goblins, anything that isn’t a hero vaguely based off a medieval European dude) as a villain.  But for the purposes of this blog post, we’ll be talking about a sin they commit that has led to a slow decline of the “good guy” in fantasy.

They take good and evil as rote.  And that makes them dull.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my friend Carl before, but for those of you just tuning in, he’s equal parts friend, spiritual advisor and fellow nerd.  Carl and I share a love of most video games and chief among them are RPGs.  From Baldur’s Gate to Skyrim, Carl has had one character he prefers to play and it will always be the first character he makes in any RPG: the lawful good paladin.  If there’s an option, he’ll always choose for nonviolence and making everyone happy.  If there’s no paladin class, he’ll come as close as he can.  If there’s no morality system, he’ll impose one on himself.

I can’t remember which game it was, precisely, that led to the conversation, but he was recounting an experience in which he pulled off the classic Lawful Good heist.  He saved every innocent NPC there was right down to their puppies.  He smote every last villain he knew to be wicked.  He made all his companions happy, saved the day and brought about a mighty triumph for truth and goodness.  For his troubles, he was awarded a sword of inestimable power.

And he sighed deeply and turned off the game in disappointment.

“Well, isn’t that sort of the course for video games?” I asked him.  “You are given a task to complete, you do it, you get rewarded.”

“Yeah,” he replied.  “If you’re the average adventurer.  I was the good guy.  If I’m doing it for the obvious reasons, then it’s not really interesting.”

And this, I think, is where we go wrong in writing good guys.

We live in a society where, basically, “good” is taken as the norm.  In most situations, our parents bring us up with the same basic values: don’t hurt other people, think of other peoples’ needs, be generous, try not to be an asshole.  Hence, we’ve sort of come to expect it as the default setting for most people (hence why we get dramatic variations of “I have lost faith in humanity” all over the internet whenever some dumbfuck does something awful in the world) and hence, we’ve kind of figured out all we care to know about it.

And a lot of that got translated into our early fantasy.  This guy is the point of view character.  He is like us.  Hence, he is good.  He tries not to hurt people, he isn’t an asshole, he thinks of other peoples’ needs.  That’s just what he does.

If the point of writing is to help us figure out what it means to be human, then it’s a small wonder that we rejected that idea of good as the “default” setting and started figuring out what makes a person a bastard.  We know what makes bad guys tick now, quite thoroughly.

But do we know what makes good guys tick?  Have we honestly asked ourself why someone would choose non-violence?  Have we honestly asked ourselves what makes someone give up everything for another person?  Have we given the good guys the same moral scrutiny that we gave the bad guys?

Possibly.  I’m certain you savvy readers out there could point me to a few examples.

But I’ve become more and more interested in exploring the idea.  If we look at good as “default,” then obviously it’s boring.  We didn’t put any thought into it.  But if we look at good as a choice, as hard and difficult as any bastard’s decision, then it becomes more intriguing.

I guess it wasn’t until The Skybound Sea that I started exploring this in my own work more.  But I wanted to make sure that the desire to do the “good” thing wasn’t the easy thing.

For Gariath, the decision to stick with his friends meant giving up the closest thing he would ever have to people like him.

For Dreadaeleon, the decision to give up power meant losing his one chance to be the hero he always wanted to be.

For Lenk and Kataria, the decision to cling together meant giving up their very identities.

I mean, it’s not like sacrifice, love, friendship, heroism and all those other happy snuggly things are subjects that inherently repulse people.  We’ve seen some of our most timeless masterpieces of science fiction and fantasy penned with those themes in mind (Star Wars comes to mind.  The good ones, anyway).  Every kid grows up wanting to be a hero, after all, but for a very long time our understanding of what it means to be a hero didn’t grow out of that childlike phase.

What we rejected, when we tore away from the old fantasy, was the idea of a spotless hero.  The idea that the world could be totally black and white wasn’t something we were very interested in because we knew the world didn’t work that way.  And don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating for a return to that at all.  It was rejected for good reason.  The idea of the hero as something pristine and flawless is stupid and boring.

But lately, it almost seems like we’re going the other way, where we measure worlds and people in shards and fragments: they are sharp and they hurt to touch, they are broken and the only way to tell the difference is whose pieces fell off in the biggest chunks.

When I think of a hero, I think of something cracked and dirty.  Something that seems like it’ll never quite break, but it’s something that only someone who’s been with it a long time could love.  Because they could point to each smudge, each crack, each break and recall how they got that scar.

I guess the best example of this would Locke Lamora from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series.  He’s not what you’d call a classically good guy.  I mean, he’s a thief.  He robs people, deceives them and he is fairly unrepentant about it.  But he sacrifices, he puts other people over himself (not everyone, mind you) and generally is willing to go beyond the typical pettiness.

Perhaps if we stop treating it as rote, as routine, as default, the idea of “good guys” doesn’t seem so boring.  Perhaps if we understand how painful it is to give up something, how heartwrenching it is to let something go for what you know is right, how beautiful love can be if the world burns for it, then maybe it’s worth talking about?

I mean, I don’t know.  Part of my general desire to rebel against establishment means I’m not always going to reflect what the readers, as a whole, want.  Maybe I’m deluding myself.  Maybe there isn’t a way to portray that idea of “good” as interesting.

But I can’t help but wonder.  If Tome of the Undergates, in all its bloody glory, was a rejection of the stuff I used to read, there must have been a reason it appealed to me in the first place.  Even if I outgrew the presentation of goodness, I never stopped being fascinated with the idea of it.

Maybe there’s still more to say about that.

Here’s a trick all aspiring writers should know: the closer you are to a project, the more likely you are to miss mistakes.  When you’re working on a project, emotions are running high and you’re in-tune with every word being written (this is why so many criticisms often feel like personal attacks; those are your babies there).  Hence, when you finish a project, before you start editing it, you should not look at it for awhile.

Such as I am doing with my latest project right now.  Which is finished.  Whee.

On a completely unrelated note, when you don’t look at it for awhile, it helps to have other stuff to do otherwise you get quite bored.

Hence, when my editor, Simon Spanton, tweeted this earlier…

Imagine a fantasy epic. Imagine a fantasy epic where penguins could fly! #WingsFromTheSouth

I took his advice.  And I started writing.

Chapter One

We expected greatness from Stormbeak.

And why would we not?  Ten eggs before him heralded nothing but greatness.  Blackback, who plucked the left eye of the sea wolf.  Rawthroat, who stood before the storm and stared into nothing.  Longwebs, who laughed at the light-and-shadow-ghosts.  Two-Fishes, who left his burdens on the far ice and returned so swift upon his belly.

Stormbeak came from greatness.  We expected it from him.  And he showed us he was worthy of it.  He always rose to challenge everything: rival males, the sea wolves, the light-and-shadow-ghosts.

Perhaps we were the fools for not expecting that he would rise to challenge God.

Chapter Five

Long-And-Scarred was flung to the ice, staining it red beneath him.  For a moment, the King of the Sea Wolves felt very close to the floe: he could feel it breaking under him, he could feel it growing colder against his skin, he could feel it slowly drifting.  For a moment, he felt very fragile, indeed.  A drop of blood hung over his eye as a great lid, painting the world red as he looked up.  Red breath coming from his mouth.  Red ice cracking beneath him.  Red world rolling endlessly around him.

All except Stormbeak.  He still stood so tall, still stood so proud, and still stood black and cold as long night.

“It is not right.”  Long-And-Scarred hesitated in surprise.  Surely, that could not be his voice that just spoke.  That ragged, breathless gasp.  “It is not right that I should end this way.  The Great Old Ones assured me I would not die here, not by some meager fish-guzzler.”

“How were you to die, O King?” Stormbeak asked.  When had his voice grown so deep?  When had his eyes grown so dark?  “Tell me what the Great Old Ones said.”

“They said…they said…”  Long-And-Scarred swallowed something sticky and warm and very painful.  “They said I would not die until the ice disappeared, until the light-and-shadow-ghosts no longer drank the sky and returned to the Cold Dark.  They said I would not die until the world ended and was no more.”

“Then they were right, O King,” Stormbeak said.  It was the certainty in his voice that was coldest.  “Long-And-Scarred is no more.  The sea wolves are laid low by the fish-guzzlers.  The light-and-shadow-ghosts do not frighten me.  And the sky…”  He spread his flippers wide.  “Embraces me.”

He flapped slowly, at first.  Flakes of chipped ice wafted away, as if in terror of what he strained to do, what all his forebears’ had strained.  And failed.  For countless eggs.  Yet Stormbeak was different.  Stormbeak was strong.  Stormbeak was cold.  Stormbeak was no fish-guzzler.  This, Long-And-Scarred knew, too late.

And when Stormbeak rose into the air–slowly, at first–and when Stormbeak sailed far overhead and when Stormbeak was but a black star on the sunrise, Long-And-Scarred still knew too late.

The Great Old Ones had been right.

The world he knew had ended.

And what remained was something red and black and very, very cold.

Chapter Sixteen

“They call you Stormbeak now?”  Neoghi laughed.  Or perhaps it was a shriek.  Or perhaps, still, a curse.  The language of the light-and-shadow-ghosts was song, and song could mean many things.

“They call me King Stormbeak now,” Stormbeak replied, puffing up proudly.  His shadow spread behind him like a cloak, large enough to contain the many of his tribe who had huddled behind him.  Large enough to drown them as easily as the world.

“What is a King?” Neoghi asked.  He swam in a slow circle, contemplating this, his black sail cutting through the water as sure as any beak.  “What is a Stormbeak?  Does a King not bleed?  Does a Stormbeak not die?”

Stormbeak knew much of war.  In the years since he had cast Long-And-Scarred down, in the years since he had swept to the skies, in the years since he had cast the sea wolves from his kingdom, he had learned much.  And he learned that challenge was courage and courage was life.  Those that challenged first, had most.  Those that challenged loudest, had more.  Those that challenged the sea wolves, had victory.  Those that challenged the light-and-shadow-ghosts, had life.  And those that challenged the gods…

“No!” Stormbeak crowed.  “I am the very largest!  I am the very loudest!  I am the very coldest!  I cannot die!”

…had much to learn, indeed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“You were not hatched a monster, Stormbeak,” Fishbelly said, dragging himself out of the rubble, rising to his webs.  “You had ten eggs of your forebears’ sin to make you what you were.  Ten eggs in which their darkness and coldness lingered and grew.  Ten eggs for you to become what you are now.”  His eye flashed.  Cold.  But not cold enough.  “Monsters are not hatched, Stormbeak.  They are made over a very long time by the gods.  And like anything that is made, sometimes the gods can make mistakes.”

“Blasphemy!” Stormbeak roared.

The heaven-fire flashed behind him, a jagged bolt reaching down from a shroud–far blacker than Stormbeak’s.  Was that agreement, Fishbelly wondered?  Or an accusation?  Did the gods reach down to condemn the hypocrisy of the one who called himself king?  The one who took this world and its many sea wolves and light-and-shadow-ghosts and made it solely for the fish-guzzlers?

“Is it blasphemy to make, Stormbeak?”  Fishbelly laughed, waddling closer to the Great Old Throne.  “Perhaps it is.  Perhaps only the gods can make.  Perhaps it is blasphemy to pretend that we are they.”  He looked up through his remaining eye, the eye that had once been warm, weak.  “What have you made, Stormbeak?”

“Silence, Fishbelly.  Return to your nest.”

“What have you made?” Fishbelly repeated.  “A world without sea wolves?  A world in which the light-and-shadow-ghosts are forever at our borders?  A world in which eggs are broken upon the ice and females scream into the night and hear no answer?”

“Take not a step closer, Fishbelly!”  Stormbeak rose into the air, carried on whatever power that drove his wings.  “I warn you!”

“Then strike me down, Stormbeak.  Show me who is the cruelest maker.  The gods…”  He spread his flippers wide.  “Or you?”

And he leaned back, and he closed his eye, and he awaited the moment Stormbeak would descend upon him and pluck out his okay you know what this has gone far enough I should get back to work.