But, as with any family, I can see all sides. Us fans? We do love a tempest in a teapot.

Fans are mad pedants. We tend to be smart to a degree that cuts through social convention, and that results in a compulsive need to pick apart every statement, every structure, to find flaws and faults and drag them out into the light, dancing and shouting, “look at me! Look at me! I FOUND THIS!”

It’s irritating as hell. It’s also critically important. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and he was right. I’ll stretch the quote: the unexamined work is not worth enjoying. Fans challenge every convention in every medium with a speed and passion that’s breathtaking.

And so the “grimdark” controversy, in which fans decried the gritty, hopeless turn they’d seen their medium take of late, under the pens of such luminaries as Peter V. Brett, Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, George R. R. Martin and Daniel Polansky. Who wants to read such dark stuff? Who wants to put down a book feeling like they got hit by a truck?

I do.

There are a lot of grimdark protagonists to address, but the most shining example is Jorg of Ancrath, Mark Lawrence’s hideously twisted boy king, who horrifies us by turns in the Broken Empire trilogy.

Jorg of Ancrath is a true misanthrope, a man more than willing to snuff out the lives of thousands to achieve his aims. His slaughter is truly egalitarian: women, children, the elderly, his own family and friends, Jorg is happy to put them all to the sword if it will move him closer to his goals.

If Jorg slaughtered and betrayed for slaughter and betrayal’s sake, the grimdark offendees would be right. Worse, he would be an unlikeable character, throwing the reader out of the story.

But he’s not. Jorg is twisted into form by a series of horrific events, thrust into adulthood before his time, surrounded by people who would commit crimes that would put his own to shame if only they had the means. Jorg isn’t burning the world because it’s fun. He’s flailing, coping. He’s trying to come to grips with a world that has failed him, that doesn’t deserve a messiah. In Jorg, Lawrence answers the question: “What if the Chosen One hated us? What if he was right to do so?”

There’s a tyrannical form of optimism that has pervaded our genre for most of its history. It’s the fantasy equivalent of the “think positive” motto, or those omnipresent posters with a kitten dangling from a tree branch, large friendly letters reading HANG IN THERE! at the bottom. It’ll be okay. Things will get better. Frodo will get the ring to Mordor. And even if you don’t feel that way, don’t let on, because nobody likes a downer, and contemplating despair doesn’t help anyone.

Except, it does. Which is why the grimdark authors are so successful, why Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD won the Pulitzer. Sometimes, confronting despair is refreshing in its honesty. Sometimes, saying the monster’s name empowers you to do battle with it. This is why the “grimdark” movement is needed. This is why Jorg of Ancrath is a hero for our age, not just a good character, but an important one.

Sometimes, an awful thing is just awful. Sometimes, we don’t want to think positive. We don’t want to be a kitten clinging to a tree branch. There is no upside. No light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t want to let bygones be bygones. We want someone to pay. Ignoring this, smothering it under a blanket of false optimism fools no one, only allows it to curdle inside you, like the living scars wrought by the hook briar across Jorg’s skin. It is the painfully forced smile, the hysterical edge of a laugh.

Acknowledging the horror of a thing doesn’t change the presence of everything bright and bold and wonderful, it merely allows all things their due, a nod of the head to the complexity of the world. Understanding that complexity is an incredibly empowering. It is what prevents us from cleaving to noble ideals even when they sink us. It is avoiding the fate of Ned Stark, making the kind of thoughtful moves that really change the world, instead of the bluster that purports to the change the world.

The world can be awful. So awful that we want to anthropomorphize it, make it into something we can scream at, we can punch, we can make pay for what we’ve had to suffer. It won’t fix the damage, but it will be justice, and that is something.

Jorg Ancrath does that for us. It is the newest form of the wish fulfillment we enjoyed in the old superhero comics, when the scrawny nerd fought back against the bully and won.

The world punished Jorg Ancrath, so he punishes it back. For all of us, he kicks life in the balls. Not because he’s evil, not because he’s weak. But because life deserves it, because it fucking had it coming.

Jorg leads the grimdark cast in facing bleak reality and finding a way to win in spite of it. Jorg does more than tell a story. He wades into the sea of capriciousness and yanks it into form. In a world where cancer exists, where child abuse exists, where Boston and 9/11 and Deepwater Horizon can happen, he finds a way to exert control, to build meaning out of the tattered, mismatched hand he was dealt. It is brutal, it is savage, it is horrifying.

And it is also hope.

The entire series, and its latest installment, EMPEROR OF THORNS, deserves your attention. Be disgusted by it, be unsettled by it. But don’t ignore it.

Picking winners was tough this time around, but it has to be done, and all the awesome entries can be viewed on the COMBINED FORCE page. I’ll say this about my fans, they know how to work a room.

Let’s get right to the winners, shall we?

My two runners up are:

Dave, who takes a musical approach:

Dave has a dynamic entry style that truly rocks.

and Alex, who breaches with a little help from a friend:

Alex with his K9 Breaching Shotdog

And, at last, John, who relies on nature to accomplish the mission, our winner!

John’s bleeding edge deciduous assault weapon. (Rotated to give you the proper angle)

Each of our winners gets a signed, hardcover edition of CONTROL POINT.

Thanks to all who entered. These were so cool and creative. Even if you didn’t win, I absolutely owe you a beer, to be collected at the bar at the next con you can catch me at.

Until then, remember to check your corners, go when the smoke pops, and avoid the fatal funnel.

In a way, I’m grateful, because he got me thinking about some important stuff, and sometimes when I do that I take it here, because I do pretty much everything out loud, thinking included.

He asked me what religion I was. I told him that I was an antitheist, that I deliberately chose to believe in God so that I could call him to account. That 3 tours in Iraq and my nephew’s severe autism had enforced the view that God is someone who pulls the legs off spiders, a malevolent divinity that must be resisted, beaten.

He talked to me about Job, assured me that suffering in this life meant treasures in heaven. That was the thing to live for, to die for. My general impression was that he felt that life was a thing you get through, gritting your teeth in the hope of a reward on the far side.

“And what then?” I asked.

“Heaven,” he answered.

“I know, heaven. What does heaven look like?”

On this he was less clear.

He did say that it was different for everyone, and so when I got back to the barracks that night, I sat down and made a list of what my heaven was.

And I was surprised to find, that by the time I had finished, I was grateful to him.

Heaven is games, rustling papers, shuffling cards and clicking tiles. Yelling and yelling and yelling.

Heaven is Manhattan at night, pillars of glowing glass. Palaces of merchant princes. A shining island you have sworn to give your life to defend, but can’t afford to live on.

Heaven is five-foot swells and 24-knot winds, an army of giants hammering on your hull, reminding you that you’re flying.

Heaven is Indigo covered in salt blooms. Gun oil and diesel and burning trash. Radio chatter and acronyms. “Stern aspect” and “check your fire” and “ops normal.”

Heaven is snow on the fantail, fingers burning from hauling freezing wet line.

Heaven is a pistol on your thigh. The stock in the sweet spot, punching your shoulder. The swirl of cordite and smoke, the world gone blurry save the front sight post, as clear and brilliant as a polar star.

Heaven is the watch floor at 2AM, the world silent and dark, your face lit in glowing green and red. Conducting an orchestra that marshals the darkness, channeling shadows until all wake safely.

Heaven is the storm’s edge, swirling around you, winds screaming rage until you wonder if, when they clear, the world will still be there.

Heaven is frozen exhaustion, collapsing into the rack knowing you have spent it all, that there is nothing left, that you found your line and crossed it.

Heaven is danger close indirect, the shock wave ripping through you, rattling your teeth, shaking armored glass until the spalling sprays across your face.

Heaven is terror, fear pushing the needle into the red line so far and for so long that fright laps itself, the joint coming unglued, bringing the fractured calm where nothing can hurt you anymore.

Heaven is derision. Harsh words and accusations. Pointed fingers. Burning in effigy. It is standing in the midst of it, as you did in the storm, and answering silently, “Even so, my life for you.”

Heaven is words, oceans of words. Sending them out and getting them back, the scintillating affirmation, “We have heard you. You have made us feel something.”

Heaven is the crucible, the excitement of meeting the stranger on the other side, the person who you will be, who is nothing like the one you are now.

Heaven is the silence on the other side, shared with others, whispering “This links us. Even though we are nothing like each other.”

Heaven is stinging wounds, throbbing aches, broken hearts. The steady pulse signal repeating over and over again: alive alive alive.

Families that aren’t yours, art that isn’t yours, triumphs that aren’t yours. Alone in the dark, “Dance, drink, screw, laugh. Nothing will hurt you on my watch.”

Heaven is all these things swirling and mixing and resonating, until you realize that life is made up. That this, THIS is who you are, this composite. That there is no calling, no one thing you were meant for.

And you realize that being ready to die doesn’t mean you have to want to.

And that the divines were only half on target: right that there is a heaven, but wrong about how you get there.

That you can leave death for the dead, because heaven is everything else.

And you were there all along.

I’m inspired by Peter V. Brett’s recent ad-hoc contest awarding a prize to the best picture of someone punching a kitten (don’t freak folks, nobody’s *actually* punching anything). I entered with a shot of punching my own protagonist, but he’s probably not cute and cuddly enough to clinch the win.

Now, my novels deal a lot with dynamic entry into confined spaces (what some folks know as Close Quarters Battle or CQB). I’m also semi Internet famous for reading folks the riot act about trigger discipline, so I figured I’d riff on that. Here’s a shot of me stacking on an entry, ready to buttonhook on a signal from my team leader.

Note two things:

- Proper trigger discipline: finger indexed along the upper receiver above the trigger guard.

- Weapon stock in the sweet spot of the shoulder as a pivot point to come up into the low-ready position.

What’s that you say? It’s an umbrella? Well, that’s the point.

If *you* want to win a signed, hardcover copy of CONTROL POINT, here’s what I want you to do: Email me at myke (at) mykecole (dot) com (or post in the comment section of this page) a photo of you (or a friend, or an Lovecraftian horror with prehensile appendages  stacking on an entry with your weapon of choice. It can be a cardboard tube. It can be a baguette. It can be a guitar. It can be your cat (if he/she’ll put up with it). It can be anything EXCEPT a real gun. My only condition is that you MUST observe proper trigger discipline and if you have a long enough stock, it’s got to be in the sweet spot.

I’ll give hardcover editions of CONTROL POINT to the three best photos.

Really looking forward to seeing what folks come up with. The creative response has been nothing short of inspiring for my last few forays.

So, let’s see what you’ve got! Really looking forward to seeing folks ready to take down Selfers with their deadly dried mackerel or dust mop. Bring it.

When I do play games, I try to stick to iPad games, as they tend to be discrete forays that you can complete in 15 minutes or so, then get back to work. My favorite iPad video game, hands down, is Infinity Blade II. If you’re wondering why, then you need to check it out. Also, you may have been living under a rock for the past year.

Anyway, I was playing the game while my 9 year old niece watched the other day, and she noticed that the game could only be played as a male. She wanted to know why you couldn’t play as a female. I told her she might want to write Chair’s CEO with her question, and the email exchange below resulted.

I am so incredibly proud of her, and I provide the exchange unedited for your review.

I would like to see women more often in action games. Many men underestimate what women can do and what is possible for women to do.  It would be helpful and supportive if you could create a girl player in a Infinity Blade (*or something like that*).

Thank you for listening,

Madeline,

New York”

Chuck’s point is well taken. Self-publishing, crowdfunding (kickstarter) are all totally legit means to get work to market, as is going the traditional route.

Self-publishing is such an incredibly hot topic lately that it really dominates the conversation. People are constantly talking about how it’s the future, the new “disruptive” technology/process. People talk about self-publishing successes and failures, Kickstarter rags to riches tales, and on and on and on.

You know what people don’t talk about a lot? Quality.

Recently, I tweeted that I’d completed a novelette in the SHADOW OPS universe. I later tweeted that I was revising rules/play testing a SHADOW OPS table top game. In both cases, the entire Internet instantly reverberated: KICKSTART THAT MOTHERF*!KER SELF-PUBLISH IT YOU’LL BE RICH DO IT DO IT DO IT YESTERDAY WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR.

I’m not dismissing that idea out of hand. It’s definitely on the table for both projects, if we get to that point. But here’s the thing: there are a ton of pieces floating around the Internet discussing how to self-publish. There aren’t nearly enough pieces discussing how to self-publish RIGHT.

In the arts, your reputation is all you have. That reputation is built on the back of your work. 1-star reviews over the price of an eBook drive home a critical point: Whether it’s your fault or not, the author is held responsible for EVERYTHING about a book, from the cover art, to the proofing, to the sale price. This is why it’s so critical for an author to ride herd over everything their publisher does, balancing on that tightrope of not-being-a-pesky-annoying-dick with it’s-your-name-on-the-book-and-your-career-at-stake-so-make-damn-sure-these-people-don’t-screw-it-up (see my last post on why you need an agent to help you with this).

A friend of mine recently did an intensely successful kickstarter for an awesome project. When we talked about my trying to get a publisher for my game, she emphatically said “I would only go with a publisher if I completely failed to kickstart it.” But her project is over a year behind on delivery. Her backers are owed long overdue pledge gifts. Her shipping costs have ballooned to the point where she is asking for additional funding from people who’ve ALREADY PAID to back the project.

And from this she concludes that kickstarting is great? That going with a publisher is a bad idea?

This is what people don’t talk about much. There’s this general sense that self-publishing is easy-peasy. Step 1.) Write a book. Step 2.) Press the book against your computer monitor. Step 3.) Your book is magically self-published! It’s available on the entire Internet with perfect layout, editing, design, cover art, proofing, ISBN! 4.) Collect money.

But it doesn’t work like that. Kickstarting and self-publishing both do the same thing: put you in the publishing business. And like any business, doing it RIGHT is hard.

Author Michael J. Sullivan is a good example of a guy with a diversified approach, self-publishing, kickstarting projects and publishing with major New York houses. He is currently kickstarting his latest novel, HOLLOW WORLD. Last I checked, it was already funded at over 10 times the original goal.

But, scroll down on the page and note a few things:

- He has hired Betsy Mitchell, a major New York editor who has recently gone freelance, to edit the book.

- He has commissioned cover art from Marc Simonetti, a heavy hitting artist who had done covers for George R. R. Martin among other luminaries.

- He specifically states he is laying out the money to hire copyeditors and proofers (emphasis on the plural there) to make sure the book is error checked and up to standard before publication.

And while he doesn’t specifically mention it, I know Mike, so I am confident he is also engaging layout and design pros to make sure the book looks smart.

Because Mike understands the key element here: quality. He knows that, rightly or wrongly, his readers will hold the author responsible for any/all problems with the final product. He understands that, as a self-publisher, he isn’t just the writer, he’s the PUBLISHER which means that being a great artist isn’t enough. You’ve also got to be great at everything else.

Now, Mike is crowdsourcing this, but had he just self-published, he’d need to put up THOUSANDS of dollars of his own money and HUNDREDS of hours of his time, all in advance. Heck, by pre-commissioning the Simonetti painting, he’d already put money on the table before even launching the kickstarter.

This is what I wish those who boost self-publishing/kickstarting would talk about more. When people suggest that you self-publish, they are suggesting that you take on a huge range of additional tasks to just the art, all of which are complex enough and expensive enough to warrant a life’s work. This is the part that we don’t hear enough about.

Because the truth is that self-publishing is like everything else in life: doing it is really only the first step, the easy part.

It’s doing it RIGHT that’s hard.

But here I am, posting my second writing advice blog post in a row.

Part of this is good, old-fashioned MY GOD SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET self-indulgence, but part of it comes from a better place. There’s a lot of questionable advice floating around out there, and I don’t want aspiring pros to be taken in by it. Or, at least, I want an alternative perspective to be presented. It’s my clumsy way of trying to pay it forward.

So, here it is: Some folks are advising writers that they don’t need an agent. I guess it’s true. If you live in rural Montana, you don’t NEED a car. You can walk the 30 miles to the nearest grocery store to get your food. It’ll, you know, take a while, but you can do it.

I won’t say that you MUST HAVE an agent, but I will say that it’s really, really, really smart to have one.

Now, let’s get all the standard caveats out of the way: You need a real agent. Not a scam agent. Not a “business card” agent. You need an agent who actually has some wasta as we say in Arabic. How do you identify such an agent? You look at their client list. If they are representing clients whose careers are where you’d like yours to be, that’s a pretty good indicator. You also need an agent with whom you have a good relationship (responsive, communicative, willing to work with you on issues, prompt with payments, etc …)

All the things that make an agent “good” could be the topic of another blog post, but assuming that you can get a good, real agent, let’s look at why you are better off with one than without:

1.)  They have, not just contacts, but a TRACK RECORD WITH THOSE CONTACTS in the publishing industry. Maybe you’re some kind of super-powered schmoozer who has hit all the right cons and made all the right moves at each one. But, assuming that you’re like the rest of us, your agent has contacts that you need. Most importantly, good agents have a track record of selling manuscripts to their contacts that make those publishers money. It’s not just your reputation, it’s your agent’s reputation that helps sell your book. If your agent has sold books by 10 different authors to a publisher that all turned out to be commercially successful, and then decides to champion yours, that publisher is far more likely to sit up and take notice. Because this agent has a track record of MAKING THEM MONEY. Which is, after all, why they’re in business in the first place.

2.)  They know how to negotiate book contracts. A general intellectual property lawyer doesn’t specialize specifically in book contracts, game contracts based on books, or film/TV contracts based on books. A literary agent does this, and pretty much only this, all day, every day, for years. There are nuances, standard clauses, and most importantly deviations from standard language that only an experienced literary agent is going to spot. Good agents are intimately knowledgeable of the specifics of the standard contracts of the publishers they sell to. If a publisher suddenly changes their boilerplate, an agent with years of experience negotiating contracts with that publisher is going to spot it. An IP lawyer who has been looking at the occasional book contract doesn’t have that intimate familiarity.

3.)  The publishing world is all about relationships. Your agent goes to bat for you in negotiations, leveraging relationships built over years to win concessions for you. Publishers are far more likely to make concessions to an agent who has brought them millions of dollars of business and may potentially bring millions more. Even more importantly, the agent is a buffer between you and your publisher. There will be times that you need to stand your ground and fight with your publisher on an issue of importance to you. You do not want to sour your relationship with your publisher. Sending your agent to fight the battle provides a step of remove that protects the critical relationship between you and your publisher.

4.)  Foreign Rights. Foreign rights are a major part of making money as a novelist. Foreign rights are usually sold through a network of subsidiary agents to your US agent. Great US agents have built that network over years. Are you, as an unagented writer, going to pay your own way to London Book Fair to try to hawk your book? How about Frankfurt? Are you going to submit your manuscript to publishers in 30 countries?  Do you have the time and money to take care of this on your own? 

5.)  Administrative work/Counsel. Want to have a royalty statement explained? Call your agent. Want to bounce an opinion off someone as to how to word an email? Call your agent. Want insight into how to develop your career? Call your agent. Want to vent about how you’re not happy with your new cover? Call your agent. Want your tax information neatly organized in a single statement? Call your agent. Agents provide a wide range of basic administrative work, and most importantly act as advisors in navigating the often confusing and challenging world of publishing. It’s certainly possible to figure this all out on your own, but unless you’ve got a magical machine in your basement that churns out free time, you’re going to be really glad of having an agent to help.

If your goal is to self-publish, this may not apply to you. But if your goal is a traditional publishing deal with a major house, then you are going to be really glad of having a good agent in your corner. Of course, it’s harder to get that kind of a deal without an agent, but it happens. In those cases, getting an agent will be pretty easy, as you’ll be bringing them a deal with the up front work of submitting all done.

Another important (and difficult to accept) aspect of agents: They are frequently the first indicator of, not whether or not your novel is good, but whether or not it can sell. Agents are in the business of identifying great books. They have years of experience in picking the ones they think will make money. This is how they make their living. If you can’t get an agent interested in your project, it’s possible that they’re just not recognizing your genius/giving you a chance, but it might be an indicator that you need to do more work.

And that service, they provide you for free.

I knew it would be provactive, and it was intended to be. I find that the best way to get a healthy discussion going is to skate the edge of dickishness. Problem is, it’s pretty easy to skate across that line, and 140 characters doesn’t allow a lot of room for explanation.

So, here’s an explanation.

I knew I wanted to be a professional fantasy novelist pretty much from when I learned to read. I only realized that I could actually do it in 1998. So, I did what most folks do, I hit the Internet, read all about how folks became professionals in the field.

There was an overwhelmingly uniform narrative. To become a professional fantasy novelist one must:

1.) Win the Writers of the Future contest. RESULT: You have a professional credit and associate membership in SFWA on your cover letter. The “Tier I” magazines will now seriously consider your work.

2.) Make 3 short story sales to SFWA qualifying markets. RESULT: You are now an active SFWA member, and are invited to the “closed” parties.

3.) Go to said “closed” parties and meet your agent. RESULT: You have an agent. Without one, you can never ever sell a novel.

4.) Have your agent take your novel out to market and sell it. RESULT: Dream achieved.

I bought this like it was on sale. It was the exact process I followed to where I am now. It took almost 15 years. I repeated it to everyone who would listen.

It’s all wrong.

Notice what’s not on that list? LEARN YOUR CRAFT and WRITE AN AMAZING NOVEL. It’s all cart-before-the-horse-stuff, focusing on the ladder climbing, the networking, the who-you-know.

That stuff is important, but it’s the sizzle, not the steak. The steak is writing the best book ever, and nobody likes to focus on that because it’s really really fucking hard. A friend once told me that he wanted to be a writer like Hank Moody in Californication. I responded: “You know what you never see Hank Moody doing on that show? Writing.”

I can’t prove it, but I firmly believe that if, instead of writing short stories, I had focussed on my novel writing craft, I would have achieved my dream of becoming a professional writer at least 5 years earlier than I did. I don’t think it matters what credentials you do or don’t have. Quality wins in the end. The much derided gatekeepers at the Big 5 in New York City (and the little 3 in San Francisco, Amherst and Nottingham) know their business. They miss a few, but by and large, they back winning horses.

So, here’s my message to the aspiring novelist. If you like short stories, if you want to write short stories, then write short stories. If you want to be a novelist (and, honestly, if you ever want to have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a full time living from your fiction), then write novels.

Some arguments I don’t agree with:

“But writing short stories makes you a better writer! It teaches you craft! The skills translate to novels!”

No. They don’t. Or, at least the translation is so small that it makes no difference. Writing short stories teaches you how to write short stories. The novel is a different animal. They plot differently. Characters develop differently. Pacing is different. Even dialogue is different when you have virtually unlimited space to explore it.

“But selling to short story markets means I’m getting better as a writer and will be able to sell my novel!”

No. Editors of short story markets know how to spot great short stories. They do not necessarily know how to spot great novels. Some of them do, but that’s not what they’re looking for in their current position. Getting great personal rejection letters (I HATE rejectomancy, but that’s another blog post) is telling you that you’re getting better at writing short stories, not novels.

“But without the credentials, nobody will even read my manuscript.”

Wrong. If you write a dynamite query letter, you will catch an agent’s interest and they will look at your book. I’m not saying that they’ll look at much of it, but that’s on you. It’s your responsibility to take the doors off from paragraph 1. Same thing for slush readers if you hit a publisher unagented (which I am also strongly against). Even if you have sold 50 short stories to F&SF, Asimovs, Realms of Fantasy, Analog and … hell, even if you’ve sold 50 short stories to the fucking New Yorker, if you write a lousy novel, nobody is going to buy it. Because editors can spot suck from space. They’ve been at this for years.

Sure, you MIGHT be that undiscovered genius, and if you are, you’ll self-publish your book and make wheel-barrows full of money. And then publishers will see the error of their ways and give you a multi-million dollar contract. But let’s face it, odds are, if your book got rejected, it’s because it wasn’t good enough to sell, and you need to lock it up, lock it on, and get better. I did. For over a decade. The book that finally sold was my 4th novel.

And honestly? I hear all these stories about how great novels were rejected 8 hojillion times before they finally sold. But here’s the rub, THEY FINALLY SOLD. In the end, good books find homes. I can’t think of any novel I know of that was amazing, that didn’t eventually get a deal. I can think of a few self-publishing successes, but they are as rare as four leaf clovers, the shining exceptions that prove the rule.

And here’s what worries me about aspiring writers trying to tread the same path that I do. I firmly believe that, if you’re dedicated and willing to go the distance no matter how long it takes, you’ll get published. But you’ll also delay your career, just as I did.

Some thoughts on that:

- Short stories have a very limited audience. Even the most prominent short story magazines have tiny circulations. I almost never discuss short stories with people, have them recommended to me, find them reviewed. I don’t know anyone who reads them who isn’t an aspiring writer. I almost never read them. There are some great ones out there, like Greg Van Eekhout’s In the Late December or Dale Bailey’s Death and Sufferage, but the only reason I came across them in the first place was because I was an aspiring writer who was hunting for a magic key.

I know of only two exceptions to this: People are drawn to anthologies featuring big name writers who made their names WRITING NOVELS (like the Warriors series of anthologies). There are also certain topical anthologies that attract a lot of readership (like zombie story collections, etc …)

- Here’s the real danger for an aspiring novelist. Short stories can be addictive, because they offer a quick feedback loop. You write the thing in a month or two, edit it, and send it out. Depending on the market, you get a reply in 90 days or so. You get to enjoy all the EASY stuff (submitting, being hopeful and excited, counting response times on a discussion forum, crowing about personal rejections), and you avoid the HARD stuff: sweating and bleeding for 2 years over a novel before you’re even ready to get first reads on it from your friends.

I worry that many aspiring writers stick to short stories because they have a subconscious voice that says: “I’m frightened to invest 1–2 years of my life in something only to have it rejected. With a short story, I can justify the rejection. It stings less, because it’s only a month of my precious time.”

I know that’s how I felt. Overcoming that little voice was the first step on the path to my vision of success.

- Following the “set path” as I did tends to get you obsessed with all of these BS so-called “rules” of writing that ultimately stifle you. Show, Don’t Tell (bullshit. Show AND tell, and be good enough to know when to do which). Said Bookisms (Sometimes, using “said” constantly sounds dumb). The Turkey City Lexicon has a lot of good stuff in there, but it also has a lot of bad stuff in there, and like any system of rules, if you adhere too closely to them, you can turn good into evil. People will tell you that you “have to learn the rules before you can break them.” Fuck that. If you’re smart, and you know your craft, you can figure out which rules to break and which to follow. And don’t even get me started on the obsession over “proper manuscript format.” If you write an awesome novel and use Times New Roman instead of Courier? If you use italics instead of underlining? Your novel will still sell, because it will be awesome and nobody cares about that crap so long as they can read the thing.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am NOT bashing short stories. If you like to read short stories, if you like to write short stories, more power to you. I *do* enjoy the very occasional short piece. I also *do* write the very occasional short piece.

But if what you really want above all else is to be a novelist, then for the love of all that’s holy: FORGET short stories. FORGET conventions. FORGET SFWA. FORGET money. FORGET connections and an online presence and proper manuscript format and all the other bullshit that gets thrown out there to avoid the bottom line, the ONE thing that you must hold sacred above all else:

Craft.

There is no end run. Want to be a great novelist? Write a great novel. It’s as simple as that.

The thought of talking about what goes on in my head in anything but the most general terms in the public square takes me way out of my comfort zone. But I reread the first paragraph of this post, especially that last line. Sometimes, you need to go outside your comfort zone, talk about a thing not because you need to get it off your chest, but because it might help others to hear it.

I was diagnosed with PTSD in August of ’09, just after my third tour in Iraq. Of course my first concern (like everyone in my line of work) was losing my security clearance, and that kept me from going for help for a long time. But DoD did right by me, and I kept working for another 2 years before the book deal got me out of the business.

I had a hard time admitting it to myself. There was a culture in my line of work, that PTSD was the province of the hard operators, the doorkickers who got into 2–3 firefights every single day. Like most cultures, you bought into it silently, it was simply a thing that was, not worth questioning any more than the law of gravity.

I mean, sure I’d supported certain specialized units, sure I’d been to some funerals, sure there’d been some danger close indirect rounds. Sure I’d had some misgivings about what I was fighting for, what my actions were contributing to. But, I’d seen the ads on AFN, showing young men with gunpowder still on their hands, often fresh off the battlefield, having trembling flashbacks of a firefight where their best friend went down right next to them. THAT was PTSD.

Except, it wasn’t.

I kept seeing nonprofit TV spots, charity pieces and solemn psychoanalytical essays. They all described a PTSD that I’d never seen in myself, and more importantly, in anyone else I knew who suffered from it. I’ll never forget this one spot on AFN, where a soldier washes his hands, only to find blood pouring out of the faucet Stephen King’s Shining style. He hears gunfire, looks into the mirror, the background is a desert battlefield strewn with corpses, glowing red.

I picked that apart with some friends for an hour. I’m not saying that there aren’t people out there for whom PTSD is like that, but it sure as hell wasn’t like that for any of us. As I thought about that spot, as I considered the mounting reports of suicides, homeless vets, collapsing families, I began to get the uneasy feeling that PTSD is a lot like autism: A thing identified, but poorly understood. I read about the supposed symptoms, the heightened alertness, the re-experiencing of specific trauma, the going numb. It was all true. Up to a point.

When James Lowder invited me to write an essay for BEYOND THE WALL, we started brainstorming what it would be about. After a few rounds of back and forth, I realized that I wanted to write about PTSD, and how I saw it manifesting in fantasy characters. I used the Cooper Color System, talked about how living in the perpetual state of readiness known as “Condition Yellow,” both enfranchised and hurt people. Constant vigilance has its uses, but it is exhausting and, over time, transforming.

After the book was published I realized that I hadn’t gotten close enough to the issue. Arya Stark and Theon Greyjoy aren’t real people, and so addressing their PTSD was tackling the issue at a safe remove. It was a toe in the water. It wasn’t good enough.

Because the truth is, I’ve never heard anyone, medical professional, spiritual leader or otherwise describe the PTSD I know. What I see are people embracing a definition that explains PTSD using the vocabulary of classical pathology. It implies that, like a disease, you can prescribe a course of treatment and fix it.

But, in my experience, PTSD doesn’t get fixed. That’s because it was never about getting shot at, or seeing people die. It was never the snap trauma, the quick moment of action that breaks a person. PTSD is the wages of a life spent in crisis, the slow, thematic build that gradually changes the way the sufferer sees the world. You get boiled by heating the water one degree each hour. By the time you finally succumb, you realize you had no idea it was getting hotter.

Because you kept adjusting.

Because PTSD isn’t a disease, it’s a world view.

War, disaster response, police work, these things force a person to live in the spaces where trauma happens, to spend most of their time there, until that world becomes yours, seeps through your skin and runs in your blood. Most of us in industrialized western societies live with feeling that we are safe, that our lives are singular, meaningful, that we are loved, that we matter. We know intellectually that this may not be the case, but we don’t feel it.

PTSD is what happens when all that is stripped away. It is the curtain pulled back, the deep and thematic realization that life is fungible, that death is capricious and sudden. That anyone’s life can be snuffed out or worse, ruined, in the space of a few seconds. It is the shaking realization that love cannot protect you, and even worse, that you cannot protect those you love. It is the final surrendering of the myth that, if you are decent enough, ethical enough, skilled enough, you’ll be spared. The warriors that the media ascribes so much power are the first to truly know powerlessness, as death becomes commoditized, statistics that you use to make an argument for promotion, or funding, or to score political points.

Warrior cults (and, heck, most religions) were invented to give death meaning. Even if you look past the promise of immortality, they offer a tremor in the world, a ripple of significance in your passing. You do the right thing knowing that, somewhere down the line, you have a meaningful death. PTSD is what happens when you realize that you won’t, that your survival will be determined by something as random as the moment you bent over to tie your shoelace.

Diseases are discrete things. But how do you treat a change in perspective? Joe Abercrombie captured it best in his description of Ferro Maljinn’s final revelation of the world of demons just alongside our own. Once seen, the creatures cannot be unseen. When you’re quiet enough, you can hear them breathing.

Nobody talks about this. Nobody talks about the boredom, the impossibility of finding meaning in 8 hours work in an air-conditioned office after you just spent months working 18 hours a day on a battlefield where your touch altered history. Nobody talks about the surreal experience of trying to remember how you got excited about a book, or clothing, or even a car or house. On the battlefield, in the burning building, the ground trembled, we felt our impact in everything we did, until the world seemed to ripple at our touch. Back home, or off shift, we are suddenly the subject of sympathetic glances, of silly, repetitive questions. The anonymity of the uniform is nothing compared the anonymity of comfort. We drown in it, cut off from what makes it worthwhile for others, unable to carve out a piece of it for ourselves.

Time helps you to shift back, but you never shift back all the way. You develop the dreaded “cop’s eyes,” where you see the potential threat around every corner, where you ask the waiter for the chair with its back to the wall. Where the trust essential to build relationships is compromised, because in the world you live in, everybody is trying to harm someone.

And this is why so many of us, even post diagnosis, go back to work in the fields that exposed us to the trauma in the first place. Because the fear is bone deep, and the only thing that puts it to sleep is the thought that you can maybe patch a few of the holes in the swiss cheese net under the high wire. Because we are frightened from the moment we wake until the moment we sleep, and if we can stave that off for someone else, well, then maybe that’s something to live for.

And that’s for those of us who get off easy. In the worst cases, people aren’t able to find meaning in a regular job, or in wealth-building, or relationships, or any of the things that modern societies tell us charts the course of a life. These are the people that PTSD takes, as they flail their way into suicide, or crime, or insanity, desperately trying to carve meaning out of a world where all the goal posts have suddenly moved, where the giant question that no one can answer is, “why bother?”

The root of the treatment has to come from meeting those who suffer where they are. It isn’t just hard operators. It’s clerks and phlebotomists and chemical engineers. It’s people who thought they were fine, only to wake up one morning and realize that the last few years have changed them in ways they don’t quite understand. It isn’t just soldiers and cops and ER nurses. Life in poverty can bring on PTSD. An abusive parent can have the same effect.

We need to treat the fear, address the world view, acknowledging that these aren’t things you cure, maybe aren’t even things you change. We need to tip our hat to the trauma, and look instead at what the life after it looks like. We have to find a way to construct significance, to help a changed person forge a path in a world that hasn’t changed along with them.

And if you’re a vet, or an EMT, or a cop, or firefighter and you’re reading this, I want you to know that you can’t put the curtain back, but it’s possible to build ways to move forward, to find alternatives to the rush of crisis. There are ways you can matter. There is a way to rejoin the dust of the world, to find your own space on the dance floor.

I know this.

Because I did it, am still doing it, every day.

Don’t give up.

The SHADOW OPS universe gives a good picture of the SOC, the US’ magic using arm of the military. For this contest, I asked folks to send me in their ideas of how other nations approached magic, both in military and non-military applications.

As with every other contest I’ve held on this blog, I was overwhelmed with kickass entries. I say this so much that even I start to get tired of hearing it, but seeing your own art inspiring the art of others remains the most affirming experience I’ve ever had. So, so psyched at all the great entries.

Here are our winners!

In first place, it’s Mia’s idea for a clandestine magic-using corps inside Vatican City. Here’s what Mia wrote: I’m assuming that a certain percentage of priests would also come up latent. The Catholic Church would definitely have a clandestine society of magic practitioners. I see it as a special group directly under the aegis of the Pope. I’ve designed their special insignias which would likely be used on jewelry, pins or even tattoos. Display of the insignia would be required for entry to secret meetings or for members to identify themselves to each other.

Mia nailed it. In the SHADOW OPS universe, the Catholic Church publicly condemns magic (as does the Islamic Ummah), but organizations under both faiths use magic in secret, unable to turn their backs on such an incredible source of power.

The badge of Mia’s secret society of magic practitioners in Vatican City.

Congratulations, Mia! You win a signed copy of FORTRESS FRONTIER (your choice of the US or UK edition) *and* Alan Bookbinder’s dogtags.

Our next winner is Shecky, who came up with a magic-using version of the French Foreign Legion. Shecky was thinking about the isolation of magic users in Europe, and figured that nationalists/patriots/exiles/etc. of those countries might not be taking that with much pleasure, and that groups like the French Foreign Legion might be reconstituted as an underground (like the Houston Street gang) or as a semi-ironic reversal of the Legion’s original design (i.e., as a legion of French soldiers formed up outside of France with the intent of retaking their country). The name (Legion Etrangere) is literally “Foreign Legion on foreign soil.”

The banner of Shecky’s magic using French Foreign Legion.

Congratulations, Shecky! You win your choice of a signed US or UK edition copy of FORTRESS FRONTIER!

Last (but certainly not least) is Bob’s idea for Australia’s non-military approach to magic. Here’s his description:

While a signatory of the Geneva Convention, and its recent amendments, Australia publicly rejects the prohibition of Terramantic Animal Control within its own borders, territorial waters, and anywhere it considers to be “open ocean.”

 After hundreds of successful legal challenges to mandatory military service, the Australian government created mandatory Civil Service positions in order to maintain some level of control over The Awakened.

 There are three options for The Awakened who manifest as Whisperers:

 - military service

 - civil service

 - prison

The TAC designator is used for military assigned Whisperers, while the WSG (Whisper Support Group) is used for those who opt for Civil Service due to moral or ethical objections to serving in a combat unit.

 WSG members are often assigned to State Emergency Services (SES) units or are attached to Surf Lifesaver Clubs for aerial overwatch.

 When a shark is sighted in a surfing or swimming area, it can be gently coaxed out to sea.

 If there’s a bush fire, SES tasked Whisperers can be used to quickly and efficiently remove wildlife and livestock from the affected area.  The WSG is credited with restoring both the Koala and Tasmanian Devil to healthy, sustainable populations because trapping (and the trauma involved) was no longer necessary in order to provide medical care to sick or injured animals.

 Two members of the 42nd WSG are permanently assigned to work with the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling organization because it was discovered that the Japanese were using a Whisperer on their whale “research” ship.

Such a cool idea. I love the fact that Bob is thinking about the role of conscientious objectors in the militarized world of magic. Here’s the patch that members of the 42nd WSG wear:

The patch for Rob’s 42nd WSG, an alternative to military service for Latent people in Australia.

Congratulations, Rob! You win your choice of a signed US or UK edition of FORTRESS FRONTIER!

Such cool entries. It was really tough to pick winners out of all the amazing energy folks obviously put into this. Don’t forget to check out all the entries on the COMBINED FORCE page!

Congratulations to the winners, and I’ll be thinking of some other cool ways to give away free stuff in the near future.