Zarah looked at the other prisoners and furrowed her brow. “A voice can consent or protest,” she said softly. “When the power to do both those things has been taken away, what point is there to speech?”
“Well,” Jak said, “for starters, there’s cussing.”
A writer is a business owner and should act like one. With the recent growth of my team (the addition of Daniel Braithwaite in publicity), I took the opportunity to think about the core purpose of my business. That thinking and the ensuing discussion resulted in two things I’m going to share here, at the risk of seeming goofy, trite, or full of myself.
First, here’s our Statement of Priorities. This is a mission statement, and Daniel and I hammered it out as a document to guide us in allocating resources. It’s a statement of what we do, and in what order. Here it is:
We care for our families.
We write.
We market and sell.
We help other writers.
I also have a Vision Statement. I invited Daniel to write one, because I think of this as a very personal commitment, a star to guide me and a filter to keep me working on the projects I really care about. Here it is.
I lead readers on adventures that show them new ways to be more fully human.
I’m not saying you need Mission Statements or Vision Statements. Odds are, you’ve worked at a corporation or two that have had such Statements, and you may view the whole idea with skepticism. For me, I think these will be helpful in the future. For the moment, they have certainly helped clarify my thinking.
I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing con reports, because I go to too many cons to really do that. I mean, I can write detailed con reports or I can write books, you know?
But I want to say a few things about Salt Lake.
First, Blake Casselman and Ryan Call do great work. I know a few panelists were disappointed with how some things turned out this year. It’s okay to be disappointed — this is a fallen world, and stuff ain’t perfect. But Blake and Ryan work really hard, and deserve thanks.
Second, holy WordFire Press, Batman! Did you SEE those lines? And the press of readers? And the precision control around crowd management? And the awesomeness of those books? I have to say, I feel like I make a great call in jumping for that wagon. Props to Kevin, Rebecca, Peter, Alexi, Quincy, and the rest of the team.
Third, Jim Butcher. That dude is an unassuming, cool cat.
Fourth, Larry Correia. You might not agree with his politics or his views on the Hugos and you might not enjoy being in a debate with him. But NOBODY is more accessible to his fans. Larry is SUPER friendly, available, generous, and as loyal to his fans as they are to him. Color me impressed.
Fifth, also, Larry ran me over like a freight train Friday night at Choose Your Own Apocalypse as the partying Reavers. To be clear, Jason King as the revivalist Borg ALSO ran me over, like a slightly smaller freight train. This is a game I have won before, but man, not this time. I think I had ten different audience members come up to me on Saturday and say “CYOA is our favorite thing. We need one of those every night!” Because yes, I lost, but it was HILARIOUS.
This is an ALLCAPS kind of post. It was an ALLCAPS kind of con.
Sixth, many people are awesome. Nathan Shumate (The Last Christmas Gift, go buy it now for stocking stuffers), Jason and Sariah, Michaelbrent Collings, Judy Collings, Kendra and Matt Santa Cruz, Jared Garrett, Kevin Nielsen, David Young et familia, Justin McBride, the Terrells, Peter Orullian (because MUSIC!), Julie Frost, M. Todd Gallowglass, Scott Tayler, S.A. Butler, David J. West, Holli Anderson, Nathan Croft, Scott Tarbet, Tyler Jolley, Jacob Gowans, Celeste Hansen, Joy Johnson, Daniel Braithwaite, Jason Mocer, and MANY OTHERS I AM FORGETTING AT THIS MOMENT AND TO WHOM I OWE AN APOLOGY.
Seventh, I LOVE doing cons at the table. The green room is cool, that’s a place to meet writers, and Bob Defendi has written a lovely meditation on the greatness of the green room. But at the table I got to chat with Chris the electric ukulelist who build his own instruments and amps, and Terrie the forest ranger who read Hellhound on My Trail up in the Uintas, and other people who bought books before from me and came back for more. How cool is that?
Eight, congratulations to Josh Vogt. Even bigger congratulations to Paizo.
Nine, I met Chuck Gannon. He’s a cool guy, and I’m excited to read his first book.
Ten, I was on some sweet panels. To my surprise, the sweetest was the end-of-con panel on writing sex and gore. People had serious questions, and we attempted serious answers, with a great deal of laughter and more than a little colorful metaphor.
And all that BEFORE the supermoon eclipse.
Oh and hey, look… the world hasn’t ended.
I hope your weekends were as good as mine.
We’ve got a new team member around here. Daniel Braithwaite has joined us as Director of Publicity. If you’re a school principal, book reviewer, or library director, you may hear from him; if you’re a con goer at one of the conventions I participate in or a Black Blazer Irregular, you’re likely to see more of Daniel too.
If you have publicity opportunities, you can reach Daniel about them at publicity-at-davidjohnbutler.com.
Daniel’s a writer. By way of lifting up the curtain a little bit, here’s a snippet from the prolog of his WIP (with all the appropriate caveats about early draft, etc.):
Mahk followed Skip down the hall. Bloam was alive. Maybe his efforts of harvesting his own rotting flesh weren’t wasted after all. After what seemed like an eternity of walking through dank halls past cells that reeked of sewage they finally reached the guard room, and the way out. The room was windowless like the rest of the dungeon, but it had a fire place where the guards burnt scented herbs to keep the stench out. Across the room stood the guard with Mahk’s room key and Bloam, a greasy smile smeared across his jowly face.
“Ah, I am losing my pretty Mahk again.” His crooked stained teeth poked out at odd angles as he leered. “Shame, I hain’t had a chance to visit since Kinnen blasted-out.” He scratched his groin and continued, “But I didn’t want to give you the opportunity your friend missed.”
Skip walked over to the other guard and retrieved the key while Mahk faced his personal demon and tormentor. “You shoulda beat me dead, Bloam.”
“Nah, what’s the fun’in that?” He winked a pale eye lewdly, “I like you better alive. But from what I hear, you won’t be that way for long. Mores the shame.”
“Oh?”
“Oh ho! Your little dirt-licker friend dinna tell you your mission, eh?” Glee filled his jiggling face. “Well, I won’t ruin the boss’s fun then. You wanna give me a good bye kiss, since this will be the last time we meet?”
“Naw, naw. I got something else for yah,” Mahk said, then hocked phlegm up into his mouth.
“Oh, go for it, for old-time’s sake. Dragon’s dung! I won’t even beat yah for it,” Bloam stated as he leaned his face forward to give Mahk a clear target. Fool.
Mahk spat his phlegm out in a tight stream and suddenly, a moment before it touched Bloam’s face, it solidified into ice and accelerated and blasted its way through Bloam’s head like an arrow through an overripe melon.
Salt Lake Comic Con is one of my favorite cons, and I say that as a guy who goes to a fair number of them. It’s a huge event, the organizers treat writers like the attraction they are, the green room has decent food, the space is nice and open, and we’re allowed to beat up the DJs when they push the volume too high.
Whoops, did I say that out loud? Just kidding!
So, it’s that time of year again. I’ll be at the WordFire Press booth for most of the con with an ASTOUNDING lineup of people, including, to name a few, Jim Butcher, Larry Correia, Peter Orullian, R.A. Salvatore, Tracy Hickman, Kevin J. Anderson, David Farland, R.J. Terrell, Quincy J. Allen, Josh Vogt, and more. When I’m not at the booth, I’ll be talking about stuff and performing.
Here’s my Friday schedule:
And here, for you devil-may-care types who can hold out until the end of the con, is my one Saturday panel:
At Rose City Comic Con yesterday, I witnessed a moment that was typical, funny, appalling, and inspiring at the same time. It looked like this:
Ramón Terrell, who stood next to me for two days selling books this weekend, was talking to a potential customer. The shopper had learned that Ramón is an actor and in particular that he plays one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men in Once Upon a Time. She asked many questions, including gently urging him to reveal spoilers about the upcoming seasons (he very professionally demurred). Then she asked what he was doing at the con.
“I write novels,” Ramón says.
Shopper: “Oh, is that your other hobby?”
This was typical — creatives deal with not getting taken seriously all the time. This is what animates the great lyric by James McMurtry: Are those songs real, or did you make ’em up?
It was also funny, because I don’t think the shopper realized what she had said, but an entire row of authors standing nearby heard her and were outraged.
It was appalling, because in one sentence this person managed to clearly state that not one, but two creative endeavors of Ramón’s were both hobbies. As if, as a hobby, one can get cast as a recurring character in a major TV show… and also write multiple full-length fantasy novels, getting picked up by a mid-sized independent press.
And finally, it was an inspiring moment. Because I know Ramón heard what she said. But he just smiled and talked to her about his books, until she had heard all she wanted to and wandered off.
Why? Because Ramón Terrell is a professional.
I’m on the road, heading to Portland. Rose City Comic Con starts tomorrow, and I’ll be selling and signing books along with many friends, including painter Jeff Sturgeon and novelist Larry Correia.
Tonight I’ll be in a coffeehouse, selling books and possibly even playing my guitar. I may have to grow a beard or something.
Ramón Terrell’s Running from the Night starts with a murder. Jelani, California transplant to Vancouver, stop-motion actor, and martial artist, is out jogging and stumbles across a killing.
Not just a killing, as it happens. A vampire feeding.
It turns out that his witness not only condemns Jelani to death, it also condemns to death the vampire whose meal he interrupted.
Soon Jelani and his roommate Daniel are on the run not only from that vampire — a super-fast, super-strong killing machine who decidedly is not bothered by trivialities like running water and crosses — but also from the hunter sent to dispatch both of them, as well as from a strange couple of non-human observers who seem beyond the abilities of even the vampires to hurt.
Running from the Night is kung fu vampire fun and also a sort of love letter to the city of Vancouver. Terrell, himself a martial artist and resident of VC, writes affectionately and credibly about both those things, making this an engaging and fast-moving read.
Angie Lofthouse is one of my favorite authors.
She’s one of my favorite local authors in that she tells science fiction stories that are both deeply Mormon and at the same time profoundly idiosyncratic (I am thinking in particular here of her Defenders of the Covenant, a war of the worlds tale in which straight up Mormons fight against alien invasion alongside native americans whose religion is fairly described as “animistic,” “shamanistic,” or at least “pagan.” She’s sort of Steven L. Peck with the Gormenghast squeezed out of him and the squirrels shaken off, plus lots of singing.
She’s one of my favorite authors, period, for the same reason. The current revolution in publishing technology has deeply subversive potential, because it allows a writer to reach, at low cost, an audience that may be very small and geographically spread out. A big publisher may not be able to afford to go out into the world and find everyone who wants to read about, say, a psychic Seventh Day Adventist private investigator, or a transvestite astrologist secret agent infiltrating the Fourth Reich (I have made both of these up), but if an author has the persistence and the chops to tell those stories, Amazon and similar platforms will let her create a community of people who want to read them.
So I regard Angie as avant-garde, a small-tribe storyteller for the particularity of some of the stories she tells. Ripped is a collection of Angie’s shorter works, many previously published, and one of the great things about it is that is shows that Angie isn’t small-tribe for lack of ability. She writes stories that do a wonderful job of making a straight-line connection from the twisted fabric of space-time to the rumpled discomfort of the ordinary human heart. And while these particular stories may not be for everyone, I’m glad that Angie continues to write, because one of these days she’s going to write the Big One.
In light of the recent (ongoing?) guffaw-faw over the Hugo Awards, I was a little surprised and immensely pleased to pick up Shattered Shields and see the list of authors it includes. Without assigning people to sides, and at the risk of oversimplifying or falsely characterizing (is that enough weasel words?), an antho that includes Cat Rambo, Seanan McGuire, Larry Correia, and Sarah Hoyt, for starters, is solidly ecumenical in outlook.
I actually picked up the book for the editor. I’ve had the privilege of having Bryan Thomas Schmidt work on a few of my books with WordFire Press, and the hope that he’ll work on more. Moreover, he’s a charming and intelligent guy who, like me, doesn’t seem interested in getting crossways with anyone over ideology and who, like me, really isn’t enjoying the brouhaha.
Bryan has really extracted good stuff from these writers, and has moreover worked them into a high polish. Some readers will want to read this anthology for short stories set in existing universes (e.g., David Farland’s entry, a Runelords story, and Seanan McGuire’s, an October Daye prequel). Some readers will just see one of their favorite names (Larry Correia!) and get a copy for their necessary dose of sword and sorcery butt-kicking. Anyone who enjoys adventurous fantasy ought to be able to sit down with this book and pass a couple of really entertaining hours.
And, in a small way, Shattered Shields says to me that there’s light at the end of the Hugo tunnel. We’ll keep having this conversation for a while, and it won’t always be pleasant, and the trolls will get their pound of flesh. But at the end of the day, I think it’s true that (h/t Lou Berger) we are all SF. And we can get there together. Through stories.
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