Guest Post: Funny Thing by Curtis Chen

Today I'm pleased to present a guest post from debut novelist Curtis Chen. Coming out June 21 from Thomas Dunne Books, it's a SciFi spy romp aboard an intergalactic cruiser, starring an agent with a pocket dimension... in his pocket. But writing about foiling terrorism emerged from events that shaped so many of us, including 9/11. Curtis now shares with us how tragedy gave him inspiration to brighten our world. Over to Curtis!
SPOILER ALERT: If you’d rather know absolutely nothing about my debut novel Waypoint Kangaroo before reading it, STOP and save this blog post for later!

September 11, 2001, was an awful day for me, as I imagine it was for most Americans. It took me a long time to deal with it. I didn’t cry until two days later. I didn’t write about it until the week after, and I stand by what I said then: Murder defies reason.

The good news: 9/11 directly inspired the plot of Waypoint Kangaroo, wherein hijackers attempt to crash an interplanetary cruise spaceship into Mars to start a war. (In my future history, the Martian colonies very recently won their independence from Earth after a brutal conflict, and there’s still plenty of bad blood between the two worlds.)

The bad news: That particular inspiration also made much of the first draft very dark and depressing—i.e., at odds with the protagonist’s trademark snarky humor—and I struggled to balance those two elements over many subsequent rewrites. I wanted Kangaroo to not take himself too seriously, but I wanted the stakes to be real matters of life and death.

Bathroom Monologue: What If Captain America Isn't Alone?

It wasn’t just Captain America who joined Hydra. Was it weird to you that in seventy years of continuity, Cap never mentioned his fascist leanings, and always stopped Hydra from taking over the world?

Then it’s going to be super-weird when Sam Wilson and Sharon Carter join Hydra, too, plus three quarters of the Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm brings an iPod Shuffle and plays smooth jazz just a little too loud during roll call.

The thing is, having all these new recruits doesn’t make Hydra more effective. In fact the number of missions per fiscal quarter drops. Every time they take a vote to raid some young democracy, the measure is voted down in favor of getting drunk and ordering Five Guys. The TEAM HYDRA Facebook Wall is quickly covered in Bernie Sanders quotes and funny cat memes.

John’s Convention Schedule

Nerd Convention Season is picking up, so it’s time to figure out where we’re going. Last summer got kind of ridiculous for me, so I’m scaling back travel a bit to focus on my health, and finishing a certain novel.

A note particularly for newer con-goers: I know being new sucks. You don’t know anybody, you feel like every attempted conversation is butting in, and you don’t know what the big events are. So if you’re going to any of these cons and don’t know many people, comment on this post, or tweet me, or shoot me an e-mail. Hell, if you see me chatting with a crowd in the lobby, come on over and I’ll introduce you to the conversation. I know how awkward it is standing on the outside of a ring of people. I’m happy to make these spaces more inclusive.

4th Street Fantasy. June 17-19, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I’ve only gone once and this might already be my favorite con in existence. There is one track, and all ~200 attendees go to the same set of panels. Panelists dig deeper into the craft of storytelling than most cons, and the conversation rolls over from panel to panel, since everyone knows anything brought up earlier. For its small population, it attracts a high percentage of professionals, many of whom like to drunkenly sing in the cafe after midnight.

Readercon. July 7-10, Quincy, Massachusetts.
After years in Burlington, they’re moving to a new space that’s hopefully a little less cramped. ReaderCon attracts brilliant writers like Kelly Link, Ken Liu, and Elizabeth Bear, who pontificate generously on panels and at the bar. This is the only con I'm doing this summer where I'm not on panels, so I'll take this one more laid back. I'll be fun to watch everyone freak out over Guest of Honor Tim Powers.

WorldCon, August 17-21, Kansas City, Missouri.
Ending the summer with the big one. This will be my first WorldCon as a panelist, and my first WorldCon with the Rabid Puppy fights going on. People come from around the world, which means seeing more old friends than any other time in the year. I also hope to get some writers together to sneak out for a movie at some point...

Great Things I Read in May (2016)

There were too many good pieces of writing in May. As a result I only finished one novel and two non-fiction books (well, that and copious editing of my own work). I don't regret a moment of it, though it does mean my Favorites list is pretty bulky today. Bulky, and still incomplete.

Short Stories and Flash Fiction

"The Middle Child’s Practical Guide to Surviving a Fairy Tale" by Mari Ness at Fireside Fiction
-Meta on fairy tales is past its Best-By date, and yet Ness has a great steamlined take on them. Here we sympathize with the older (and usually less attractive) sibling in fairytales, the one that usually exists to die horribly as a warning, as a tragedy, or as plot fodder. Over her list of thirteen items, Ness points out the warning signs and tropes you must avoid to survive someone else's magical journey. Being supporting cast is hard. You might as well try to live through it.

"The Rogue State Next Door" by Vajra Chandrasekera at Unsung Stories
-It takes him six paragraphs to establish a cutting satire and vision of the world. It's an uncomfortable story about how the President tries to negotiate with another nation sharing his border, which is apparently so powerful his entire country fears them, and the President won't look through the fence at it. It gives a vaguely surreal vibe akin to Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, inviting you to wonder if this is a superpower, or some evil alien mega-entity. I kept the tab open to re-read it every week this month. It's like instant fiction: toss this in your imagination and it expands to the fill the container.

X-Men is My Star Wars

Star Wars or Star Trek? My answer is X-Men. Because I grew up with them, I like my SciFi Extra-Special-Implausible. Not growing up with Star Wars, I confess to never “getting it.” When the Prequels landed, I was unfazed. They were just another trilogy about a Mary Sue with his cast of not-as-special-people who were important because he knew them. They weren’t as well made, but they were clearly the same model. Today, the greatest thing about Force Awakens is watching other people get so much out of it.

I told you that to tell you about ADD. In my lifetime ADD became ADHD, then became a "myth," a thing doctors made up for money, or lazy people made up as excuses. The current scorn for its sufferers is garbage. I have it, and have since childhood - the same week I received medication, my grades skyrocketed. Even then I struggled with reading. Superhero comics, with their mixture of art and the written word, were a huge part of introducing me to the desire for literacy. Here, nothing was more invigorating than X-Men comics, and particularly Wolverine.

So half my readers just closed this article because, ugh, another Wolverine fan right?

The rest of you: hold on for four more sentences.

Because he became particularly meaningful to me at Age 13, when medical malpractice put me in full-body pain for the rest of my life. As opposed to Superman’s invincible skin or Batman’s eternal dodging reflexes, Wolverine feels every blow. He’s shot, stabbed, even eviscerated, and the good artists captured that the pain registered on his face. He could survive anything, but only win by powering through the pain.

Great Things I Read in April

Well, this is late. I've been sacked by a bronchial affair, one truly pesky insurgency that's left me lucid for less of this week than I wanted. I'll do my best to keep this round-up comprehensible. Like at the end of every month, I'm collecting a list of excellent short stories, flash fiction, and journalism. This is probably a little less complete than usual on account of it feels like my furniture is floating. All the stories and articles below are free and can be read just by clicking the link.


Short Stories and Flash Fiction
"Deportations to Begin" at The Boston Globe
-Allegedly this fictional front page of The Boston Globe hurt Donald Trump's feelings. The Globe is an unusual outlet for Speculative Fiction, and yet that's inarguably what this is: speculation on what a Trump presidency will mean for immigration, abuse of law, and the economy. Balder than 1984, and a far sight more likely in its ugliness.

"Foxfire, Foxfire" by Yoon Ha Lee at Beneath Ceaseless Skies
-This belongs on the syllabus for Fantasy classes next year. I love the language. I love the worldbuilding. I love that two paragraphs in, you realize you aren't just hearing this from a human civilian, and not in a clunky line like, "I was born a vampire," but subtly, with, "Better to return to fox-form, surely, and slip back to the countryside..." I love the narrator's indignant place in the society, not utterly helpless, but feeling the pressure of what's coming and expected. Whenever you can establish your world enough that the characters can push back against it in favor of how it should be without it all feeling contrived, you've created a genuine Fantasy. Here the fear of tigers and tiger-sages, and the rush of evacuation, is all potent. It's a story that I thought was going to be shorter, and then was sad to find ending so soon.

"Foreign Tongues" is live at Flash Fiction Online!

What if an alien visitor wasn't as reliant on sight and sound as we are, but rather wanted a taste of our culture? Would you mind an alien tasting you? And would you taste polite to them? Those are some of the questions behind my latest story at Flash Fiction Online, "Foreign Tongues," about an alien explorer that finds earth and thinks ice cream is our best ambassador. The humans? Well...

By bizarre coincidence, this is the third story Flash Fiction Online has published from me in an April. The third comedy, too. So the amazing people at Flash Fiction Online put me on the cover. But they didn't just put my name on it or an author photo. No, no. They painted a tribute to "Sun Belt," "Alligators by Twitter," and the latest story.

I couldn't be more tickled by this. I'll have to take their editors out for ice cream. It's what civilized explorers do.

Great Things I Read in March

If I can say anything about reading in March, it's that my Favorites List is probably incomplete. Between illness, family emergencies, travel, and rebuilding my computer from scratch, I have forgotten an obscene amount of data this month. It's been easier to forget a good story because I read so many this March. While everyone else was (somewhat justifiably) freaking out over Donald Trump steamrolling the Republicans, I kept finding wonders from around the world. Here are a few of them.

Fiction

"Your Orisons May Be Recorded" by Laurie Penny at Tor.com

-A story that treats angels as switchboard operators for prayers. Our narrator is an experienced, ancient being who's been demoted a few times given their extreme fondness for human men. They keep screwing human men - and falling in love, but there are centuries of sexual indiscretions too. Once they married a country pastor. The scenes are quick and spry, the tone ceaselessly funny, resigned to their place in the cosmos, but also wry. It's the most fun I've had with a "fallen angel" story since The Screwtape Letters.

"The Curse of Giants" by Jose Pablo Iriarte at Daily Science Fiction

-The story about a giant growing up. Already you're envious of Iriarte's inspired premise, but it can be read literally or allegorically, about the abusive forces you encounter as you grow into your own strength and bravery. For something so short, the ending has a hell of a punch. And it hits back, too.

"Opening Move" by Xin Rong Chua at Flash Fiction Online 

-A striking slice of life piece of a struggling chess player, who's managed to escape the Girls category and instead plays in the Open. But that puts her up against the top-rated player in the entire league. It's a flash packed with milieu.

Stop Calling Fiction a Lie

What's the difference between lies and hyperbole? Lying is wrong, but hyperbole is the worst thing ever.

One pernicious hyperbole is that fiction is a lie. The truth is that fiction is untruth, and if that confuses you, welcome to my job. My grandfather believed fiction was a pack of lies, and even tried to talk me out writing the one time he drove me back home from Liberal Arts college. Over burned toast and runny eggs, he argued that someday society would recognize that novels and movies were feeding us falsehood and that we should only deal with facts and non-fiction.

That's what I hear when people joke about writers as high-paid liars. If anything, the lie is that most of us are paid very much. Lies and fiction are two kinds of untruth that are little alike.

Lies are non-consensual. You speak misinformation under the assumption the other person doesn't know better. Your kid doesn't know there isn't a Santa Claus, but you want to fool him, for fun, or to get his mind off a chronic illness. The IRS doesn't know how much money you've hidden under the table, and you want to deceive its agents to get away with paying less. A lie is your decision without the informed agency of the other person.

Kryptonite or Bad Writing: What's Superman's Real Weakness?

The more I hear people wishing Batman would take down Superman, the more I believe it comes from a greater hatred of power than of its abuse. The current popular iterations of Batman are of a tyrant building his kingdom, an autocrat ruling Gotham with an iron fist, an angry billionaire of unchecked privilege and brutality. Somehow Superman is the one labeled overpowered and unrelatable.

People keep saying he's invincible and therefore a bad character. But Superman's weakness isn't just Kryptonite. In the biggest comic event of all time, the mofo was straight-up beaten to death in a fist fight.


His weaknesses include magic, mind-control, various diseases, other Kryptonians, and the bajillion other aliens that are just as powerful, or more powerful, but are dicks about it. He's vulnerable to super-sharp weapons, the light of a red sun, pretty much every energy weapon I've ever seen. He can be out-smarted, caught by Green Lantern rings, or Black Lantern rings. And there are always nuclear weapons. If he has a greatest weakness, it's probably the emergencies of normal people who he constantly puts his own life on hold to assist. That's why I like him better than Batman. Increasingly, Batman is a fantasy of punishing someone, where Superman is a fantasy of helping someone.

Crediting the Idea Factory

Last night I was doubting my imagination. I'd just finished a new short story, which was the conclusion of a premise I came up with fifteen years ago. My last three short stories were ideas I'd had for decades. Weary from pain, I worried the only ideas I had left these days were the creations of my younger self.

In my malaise, I started backing up my computer so I could rebuild it this weekend. My writing folder was full of unfinished drafts that I had to open to recognize. They were tens of thousands of words of plots, many I'd created in the last couple months but had been so busy I'd forgotten I'd written.

The idea factory was still open. It just wasn't getting credit.

Guest Post: Great and Terrible - 8 under-used, seriously scary monsters

Today I'm proud to present a guest post from author Tam MacNeil, who's just launched her paranormal thriller Salt and Iron. It's about the youngest member of a monster hunter family trying to make his way in the world - while the world is crawling after him, looking for a bite. To commemorate to the book, Tam wants to introduce us to some of her favorite monsters that you've probably never seen in a novel or movie before.

Monsters are one of my favourite things. Like pantheonic gods they often represent some aspect of human life - fear of mortality, personification of tragedy, unutterable pain, or mental illness. They are expressions of the uncertainty of human existence, which makes them familiar, and that is part of what makes them so proudly horrible. -Tam MacNeil

Gashadokuro - Japanese

One of my old Greek History professors once told me, “History is a body count,” and she was right. Anywhere you’re standing, odds are good somebody’s spilt somebody else’s blood, either through murder or neglect. Well, in Japan there seems to be some social anxiety about that, because Japan has the gashadokuro, the colossal ghost-skeleton.

Usually to be found stalking the unwary traveller with a broken-down car or hurrying home through the countryside at night, gashadokuro are voracious ghosts made up of the bones of those who died violently or of starvation. "Ravenous" is an inadequate little word for these colossal creatures, which are said to devour anyone found on the road at night.

Since they’re said to be invisible, the only way to know if there’s a gashadokuro in your vicinity is by a sudden ringing in your ears. What do you do when your ears start to ring? Run. And hope you’re running away from the monster.

Great Things I Read in February

February is one of those months when I'm grateful to do lists like this. I've been so busy with healthcare problems and editing that, until I checked the list, I thought I hadn't read anything special. Life can get so busy that it's easy to forget all the great art that flies by.

As usual, I'm collecting great short fiction and non-fiction that's free to read on the web.

Fiction

"Between Dragons and Their Wrath" by An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky at Clarkesworld

-No short story has haunted me more in the last month than this. The dragons are a metaphysical terror, casting a shadow of mutations across the landscape of two absolutely lovely characters. With scenes whipping by, each has a punch, even in the last line.

"43 Responses to In Memory of Dr. Alexandra Nato" by Barbara Barnett at Daily Science Fiction - I love stories that creatively use unusual real world formats, and here's a story told through a Comments thread. It's a bunch of believers who might be experiencing a haunting, since one of their dead friends seems to have shown up and is poking at their insecurities. It can't help but be funny and creepy at the same time, which is hard to pull off, especially with such limitations. Masterful work.

"Lotus Face and the Fox" by Nghi Vo at Uncanny Magazine

-Two god-masked figures pull off a little robbery in the dead of night, and it keeps up its creative enthusiasm from there. It feels flash-length despite being longer because of energetic pacing and a lovely handling of its world.

"Ars Longa, Amor Brevis" by David Twiddy at The Sockdolager

-Two pretentious master-artists bicker over their accounts of a calamity that their magical arts *may* have brought about. A fine use of homunculi! I actually beta read this story, but it's only grown stronger since the version I saw in 2015.

Bathroom Monologues Movie Awards 2015

It's almost March 2016, so of course we're all talking about the best movies of 2015. If all the griping on Twitter is any indication, I'm once again happy to have skipped the Academy Awards. Naturally I disagree with some of the winners. More naturally, I don't understand what some of the categories mean. But nothing shall dissuade me from telling a sizable democratic body of people who devote swaths of their lives to film that their mass conclusions were wrong. Here we go.

"Foreign Tongues" sold to Flash Fiction Online

I'm happy to announce I've sold my short, "Foreign Tongues," to Flash Fiction Online. FFO is one of my favorite short fiction magazines, and I'm tickled to return there. The story will go live in their April issue.

"Foreign Tongues" is the story of an alien explorer the communicates through taste rather than sight or sound. Upon landing in a strip mall, it decides ice cream is the greatest ambassador for earth, while humans are less savory. They keep resisting being swallowed.

I'm so grateful to Cassandra Williams, Sunil Patel and Arkady Martine for beta reading it. This marks the third time I'll have been published by FFO, and the third time I've been published in their April issue. I think I'm living up to my desire to be their personal April Fool.

Should Obama Replace Scalia?

This isn't about respecting the dead, as Justices have almost always been replaced within six months after they die. Obama has twelve months left in his term.

This isn't about whether a president should be allowed to nominate a new Justice in the last year of a term. FDR, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover did just that.

The root of the Conservative objection is that they don't want such a Conservative icon replaced by a Liberal Justice. Antonin Scalia seemed, more than anybody on the Supreme Court, like he was Their Guy (even when he was sometimes selling them out to the Kochs). I can get that, but consider the other side.

The root of the Liberal desire is to see a Justice that doesn't dismantle the rights of racial minorities, LGBT+ people, unions, and the poor for another thirty years. It's not just that Scalia said racist and homophobic things. He facilitated numerous reductions in rights and protections for so many marginalized people, and was at work doing more of this around the time of his death. Liberals are eager to see someone who will stand up for egalitarian values get into the Supreme Court and go to work immediately addressing grave concerns.

It's pretty easy for me to pick which is more important. One side wants someone from their team in power, while the other side wants millions of people who aren't in power to be treated like they're on our team.

Great Things I've Been Reading (December/January Combo Edition)

December ended busily with Books of the Year and Games of the Year posts, so I couldn't fit my normal short story/non-fiction round-up. January is now in our rear-view mirrors, so I figured I'd lump the two months together now.

As always, the rule is that whatever I link is free-to-read with no paywall. The selection will be bigger for this post, but it still feels too short, mostly for the December stories that melted from my memory with the pressure of deadlines and the holidays.

You and I Will Ruin X-Files

If one thing ruins this X-Files revival, it will be us. It won't be Chris Carter's zany and plodding scripts - you liked that twenty years ago. It's not the actors aging - Gillian Anderson has only gained more gravitas with time. No, we've changed. We've changed in a way that can screw this up for us.

I had a great time watching the premiere last night. It captured the unabashed hokeyness of the original series, a willingness to believe things that no one in my social groups does. It is once again a show about Belief and Plot getting along much better than they do in reality. It is once again an escape from the way things are, an itch only Welcome to Night Vale scratches for me these days.

But people got furious over the New World Order conspiracies that flooded the episode. They were angry that the show wasn't doing "better" than Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. Jones and Beck are contemptible in real life, but X-Files is not The Wire. It performs a different function. From the first episode when Mulder spray-painted an X on the street and gauged how much time a flash of light made him lose, it's been about indulging in tinfoil hat thinking.

Last night's premiere was remarkably faithful. The X-Files didn't change. We did.

Most Anticipated Books (and other things) for 2016

Hello, January! What a nice year you've brought behind you. Today I want to share the books I'm most looking forward to this year. Like every year there will be huge surprises, but there's already outrageous promise for what we can read. I've added a couple of games and movies to the end, because anticipation isn't reserved just for writing. But damned if I won't be unreachable the week Children of Earth and Sky releases.

The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster
(Right Now, Tor.com)

The first book on my list is actually releasing this week! One of Tor.com's hot novellas, The Drowning Eyes is a tale of the high seas, and the people that control the wind behind your sails. Wind mages are a great idea for pirate stories. Their power stopped raiders for years, but that magic has been stolen, forcing an intrepid captain to risk her ship and crew to get it back.

A Realistic Spider-Man?

The Russos Weigh In On Their Realistic And Grounded Take On The Amazing Spider-Man #Marvel #SpiderMan... https://t.co/tgXxvOGeIa

— ComicBookMovie.com (@ComicBook_Movie) January 9, 2016

So yesterday the Russo Brothers did an interview about how "grounded" and "realistic" their approach to Spider-Man would be. I couldn't help offering some tips on how a realistic Spidey story would go.

• A realistic Spider-Man? So, a kid is bitten by a spider, gets no powers, and struggles with poverty?
• His widow aunt can't afford their bills, so Peter gets a second job. They're evicted anyway.
• Peter photographs himself as an elusive vigilante. Daily Bugle won't call him back and he winds up with three reblogs.
• Mary Jane swipes left.
• Rich evil Norman Osborn dons a goblin mask and terrorizes the city. Pundits wonder when he'll run for president.

@Wiswell Continued funding of his secret projects is assured thanks to generous campaign contributions to both parties. #RealisticSpiderman

— Keith Manuel (@KeithAManuel) January 9, 2016

• While Peter is at a wrestling show, his uncle is shot. Naturally he blames poor standard of living and NRA lobbyists.
• Boy genius Peter develops liquid steel webbing technology. A troll swoops his patent and sues him.
• Doctor Octopus is a Podcatcher knock-off app that fills Peter's phone with malware.
• A sexy cat burglar is tearing up the city. Peter, who has crushing debt and no powers, never meets her. The end.

Top Ten Videogames of the Year, 2015

Nothing expresses how Three-Stooges-goofy I find ranking art than my own attempts to do so. After Twitter friends said they wanted to read about my Top Ten Games of the Year, I tried and failed to order them. In recent years I've tried keeping lists like this just to remind myself how great videogames are as a hobby, and every year I come up with impossible ties. 2015 was the year of the most goofy ties yet.

Below you'll find:
-A tie between Tenth, Ninth, Eighth, Seventh, and Sixth Place.
-A tie between Fifth and Fourth Place.

-A tie between Third and Second Place.
-And a game that's unlike any of the other nine, and yet I think is my favorite thing I've played this decade.

There is no objective superiority between any of the tied games. Hell, there isn't even a respectable objectivity in the games ranked above and below each other, because it turns out comparing art objectively is ridiculous. Ask me what I think of Awards Culture sometime for a fun rant.

Aside from revealing how goofy ranked lists are, this is my attempt to celebrate 2015 as a year where so many companies created such different pieces of great interactive entertainment. These were necessary escapes from some terrible health problems, and some enriching narratives that gave me great times with friends. The leaps videogames have made in narrative, in the ability to present art design, and in refining mechanics makes it one of my favorite respites. It's so great that I end the list with a bunch of Honorable Mentions. The Honorable Mentions are not ranked because Shut The Hell Up.

BestReads2015: My Favorite Books I Read in 2015

My favorite thing about BestReads is remembering how many special books I encountered in a year. It's easy to take great literature and fun stories for granted, but when I put them side-by-side like this, I feel privileged.

My picks are not ranked. Ranking is generally ridiculous for the arts, but obscene when you're compiling what art moved you the most. As always, the rules are you can list whatever you read for the time this year. You're not limited to what came out this year, as my first pick shows.

If you do your own BestReads2015 post, hit me up in the comments and I'll link you at the bottom of this post.

Christmas Eve Puzzle: Guess the Book!

I have a tradition with my brother. He likes to figure out what's in his Christmas presents, so I give him a book. Unable to figure out which book just by shaking and groping it, I give him clues to the plot, subject and title. It's also tradition that I post all the clues on this website.

This year's title is eleven letters long, so you get eleven clues, one per letter. If you're stuck in an airport, bored waiting for your date, or need something to play with your family for the holiday, feel free to guess along. Post any answers or guesses to the eleven clues below. Some years commenters have cracked this together long ahead of Dave.

1. This record company released more of his albums than any other. They deliberately mis-spelled their name, and this is the only letter than appears twice in it. Hint: see 11.

2. One of the first movies he appeared in never made it to theaters because he allegedly destroyed the negative himself. It was sensitively titled "_____ Tom's Fairy Tales: The Movie for Homosexuals " This is the first letter in the missing word.

3. The last letter in the last proper album he recorded with his label, and his second-to-last stand-up album ever. Compilations and anthology releases came later, but this was it, a one-word title referencing a superhero movie he appeared in that same year. He was a villain.

4. He was born in this Midwestern state. It's the most populous. The first letter of that state goes here.

5. This letter occurs three times in the title. This is the first time the letter occurs, though.

6. This vowel occurs twice in the title.

7. He wrote for this sitcom, titled after its two main characters whose names both started with the same letter. That letter goes here.

8. This is the first letter in a drug he was famous for doing. It's not much of a hint given how many American entertainers have done it, but few set themselves on fire while under its influence. He was a trailblazer.

9. Comedy Central once spent three hours by counting down the hundred greatest comedians of all time. This is the first letter in the number of where he ranked. Hint: he was in the top seven.

10. If a cop asks if you've committed crimes before, they might ask if you have any "prior ____." This is the first letter in the missing word.

11. This record company released more of his albums than any other. The first letter in their four-letter name goes here. The letter also occurs twice in the name of his home state.

Happy guessing!

My Mom's Six Reactions to Seeing Star Wars for the First Time

My mom doesn't really like Fantasy and Science Fiction. She barely reads what I write, preferring more grounded dramas like No Country for Old Men and The Ghost Writer. It's hard for her in a way nerd kids struggle to understand, because like many of our parents, she grew up without much access to cartoons or Fantasy books, and so didn't develop the taste that we have. She knows I love the genres, but can't get into Hunger Games and Pirates of the Caribbean. Or, she couldn't get into them until this year.

Earlier this year she watched LOST and started feeling like Genre Fiction could mean something to her. It had a blend of human stories along with its fantastic elements that made them approachable to her, something I'll probably write up later. In October, fresh out of European movies to watch, she binged all of Fringe, which was the true gateway drug for her. It's gotten me to start watching it, just to find out why it was the silver bullet.

That set her up, though. When the Force Awakens trailer hit, Mom called me up and asked something I'll cherish for years: "Can we watch Star Treks?"

Yes, Mom. We can always watch Star Treks.

She wanted to know about the cultural phenomenon she'd missed, about this weird collaboration between John Williams, the Jim Henson Company, and Harrison Ford. In preparation for the new movie, we watched Lucas's original trilogy. Watching her was more interesting to me than revisiting the films, and I had to share some of it.

#BestReads2015 Is Coming

It's December, which means it's Best Reads time. This is an annual event for bloggers asking what your favorite books were of the last year. BestReads2015 launches Monday, December 28th. That gets it out of the way of Christmas, and gives you a couple more weeks to finish your reading. I know I have five books I really want to polish off before I give up on 2015.

As opposed to Best of the Year lists, this can include any books you read for the first time this year. It includes anything from 2014 you only caught onto now (I presume The Martian will hit a few lists), as well as classics. As someone who's always catching up on older works, my list will probably be half things published over a decade ago. The Color Purple is fricking good.

The tradition is to list your favorite books of the year and write a little about them. You can list as many and write as much about each as you like - there is no mandated standard. A Dirty Dozen or a Top Three? Both work. If you post, let me know and I'll add your link to my post on the 28th. The easiest way is in the comments of one of these posts.

So think on it. What are your favorite books that you read this year? Not what was written or published in 2015, but that you personally read and loved for the first time. Fiction, non-fiction, prose, poetry and sequential art are all welcome. You can handle the number and format as you like.

On Twitter, our hashtag will be #BestReads2015. Feel free to launch questions below. We'll field them together.

KILL ME Props: Twitter, Jessica Jones, and a Thursday with Chronic Pain and Depression

It could be worse.

This is what it's like when it's bad.

Thursday is one of those nights. I intended to push four miles on the elliptical, but by dusk it feels like my spine is being pummeled whenever I sit up, and lying down makes it worse. The medication is definitely failing, so I can't even walk downstairs. My mind is thick with the fog of pain regulation, by all these alarms telling me to escape my own skin. I can't write or edit. I can barely make it through a couple paragraphs of anyone else's work. My friend's story beta will have to wait.

Twitter is something I shouldn't check when the pain is like this. Most often when people are happy, they enjoy the moment and neglect social media. You have more time for wifi when you're bored or angry. It shows.

Tonight people are outraged about anti-Muslim sentiments in America and Europe. Islamophobia will kill more innocents by the end of the year than all the terrorists attacks of the last month, but I can't get my brain to form cogent comments on it. Tweets cluster around the House's bigoted bill to prevent more Syrians from taking refuge here, but most tweets are just pissed in general. I want to support them because this could landslide, but am tag-teamed by the mental exhaustion of the pain, and the sense of worthlessness that depression always uses to dissolve good intentions.

Great Things I Read in November

My November reading got cut short by some health problems, but I still crossed several amazing short pieces. Since October, I've started a tradition of linking to the best free short fiction and non-fiction pieces I read in a given month. Most of these were published in November (naturally), but selections can come from anytime, so long as there is no paywall between the reader and the story.

I'm always looking for more great stories. If you have anything you've been loving, please link me up in the comments.

Also, this feature needs a better title. Please rattle off ideas if you have them.

Fiction

"The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link at Strange Horizons 

-That Link magic kicks in after half a paragraph, when you realize Anat isn't just an adoring little sister, but a flamethrower-wielding vampire hunter. Possibly part of the last duo on earth. In such short scenes it alternates between dark and funny (the vampires might be stranded aliens?), bittersweet (she longs to meet her absent parents, and dreads her brother disappearing), and legitimately sweet (those birthdays, though). I adore how all the bits come together. Link remains one of the greatest short story writers I've ever read, doubly admirable for continually trying the hard things and making them look easy.

"Dispatches From a Hole in the World" by Sunny Moraine at Nightmare Magazine

-Trigger Warning for Suicide. This is a story about a viral epidemic of suicides that science has so far failed to figure out or combat. The grant student goes through case after gruesome case, gradually being worn down by the awful things she studies, and we fear she'll be infected by whatever this thing is. Could despair itself be a villain of Horror?

"The Customer Is Always Right" by Anna Salonen at Mothership Zeta 

-One of those successful all-dialogue stories that pulls off the sense of things actually happening while all you get is chatter. Also, death rays! It's the story of a customer service call for a malfunctioning death ray and just gets funnier as it goes along.

"Horror Story" by Carmen Maria Machado at Granta

-After all the Horror I've read, why did I relish a short that's mostly about figuring out what creepy crawly was stalking their apartment? Because Machado's story uses those tropes to deliver something else entirely at the end. She unfurls her idea slowly and assuredly, through gradual hints of a drain malfunctioning, of escalating blame, in a tight package that hands off to an abrupt and highly unusual ending.

Non-Fiction

"Everything is Miscellaneous: Why Publishing Needs Tagging" by Michael R. Underwood at Boing Boing

-There are more books in print today than you could ever read, so we need better methods of discoverability. Underwood recommends adopting fanfic-like tagging systems, with idea clouds identifying this novel has Dinosaurs, Coca Cola Product Placement, and Steamy Sex Scenes. It works for Trigger Warnings (hold your outrage; they're useful to people with actual psychological triggers), but are also greatly useful in finding books to meet your specific mood. Amazon has pushed its sub-categories, but the book-space still needs more robust discoverability options. It's an excellent proposal.

"How to be a Genderqueer Feminist" by Laurie Penny at Buzzfeed

-Feminism is supposed to be about equity for all, but historically has had trouble supporting anyone but cis white women. It's getting better, and discussions like this one are why. Here is a beautiful article about someone who identifies as neither male nor female, who believes passionately in some of Feminism, but whose identity is met with hostility by many adherents. It's food for compassion and expanding dogmas.

"Indonesia plans prison guarded by crocodiles for drug convicts" by Kesavan Unnikrishnah at Digital Journal

-"It’s not a human rights violation when a crocodile does the killing," says Slamet Pribadi, proposing a prison guarded by crocodiles. If you want to read it and gape in horror or laugh at the absurdity, it works for both. This, the Inodesian government believes, will be safer because unlike human guards, crocodiles can't be bribed.

"Campus Activists Weaponize 'Safe Space'" by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic

-Breaking down the recorded instance of Tim Tai, an Asian American photographer who was bullied by a crowd of fellow students into not photographing events in a public space. They demanded he not touch them while marching towards him, said he had no right to photograph them (and ignored when he explained the First Amendment), and claimed the space was only for students despite the photographer being a student at the university. Tai was contracted for the work by ESPN, an outlet the protesters dislike, and so bent every rule available to themselves to intimidate him. Safe Space policies are necessary and indispensable, but it's important to consider how they can be abused as we move forward.

"How Binding of Isaac fans ended up digging holes in Santa Ana, California" by Patrick Klepek at Kotaku

-The Binding of Isaac is a videogame that's gained a cult following for being weird, but its latest expansion took that further. Fans suspected there were hidden levels, enemies, and characters locked away with no sign of how to reach them. Players dug up files from inside the game itself and followed the developer's cryptic tweets until they were combing real-life wilderness and amusement parks for clues over what was in the game. You dream of engaging with your audience that profoundly.

Giving Thanks for Blood Banks and Balloon Malfunctions

I went on a little Twitter rant Thursday morning. It was a positive rant, which is unusual because rants are not usually positive - nor are tweets. It felt weird seeing my string of gratitude filter between people griping or giving half-hearted thanks for tiny things in their lives. Often I'm like that, because you get caught up in your own norms and anxieties. 

But if you have the privilege of internet access, something that would have passed for magic in any time before that of our grandparents, you can be thankful for more than toast. Sometimes it's useful to remember that. So here comes an obnoxious barrage of things I'm glad are real.

For instance, I'm thankful for the crossovers cosplay affords.

"Making Her" in the inaugural Charleston Anvil

I'm proud to announce my short story, "Making Her," is live in the inaugural issue of The Charleston Anvil!

"Making Her" is one of the Bathroom Monologues I'm most proud. It's an unusual dialogue-only story in that it doesn't tell the normal conversational plot. Instead, it's about the people trying to define a girl's life for her as she's just trying to grow up and stay sane. If you miss my experimental fiction, this one's for you.

My story is running alongside work by Andrea Tsurumi, John Butterworth, and Randall Nichols. Randall has contributed his short, "The North Star," a neat tale I had the privilege of beta reading a while back. It's even sharper now.

The digital version of The Charleston Anvil is on sale forPay What You Want. That means you can download it for free right now. They'll be able to afford more authors and issues if you feel like contributing a little, but they'll leave how much it's worth to you. It's a model I respect.

Your Daredevil Fanfic Minute

Foggy: No no no no no.

Matt: What's the matter, Foggy?

Foggy: I just realized this guy is going to kill one of us and you're the main character.

Matt: You're the plucky comic relief.

Foggy: In a Marvel thing.

Matt: They wouldn't.

Foggy: MATT HE LOOKS LIKE JOSS WHEDON