Blarg!

Bill's blog. Writing, guitars, gratuitous Simpsons references, you'll find i​t all here. Almost certainly a waste of time for both you and the author. On the internet, that's actually a plus.

Come see me at Illogicon this weekend

I'll be at Illogicon this weekend in Durham, NC January 9-11. Come on down to the  and hear me say something dumb. This year, I'll be moderating two panels that I'm very excited about: "Make with the Funny" about humor in genre fiction, and "The Sporting Geek," about where sports fandom and geeky fandom collide (see below for full descriptions). Once again, I'll be paneling with some pretty smart folks, so it'll definitely be worth your while.

Friday, January 9

  • Social Scientists' Science Fiction - 5 pm
    There's no shortage of science fiction written by authors with Ph.D.s in the "hard sciences" (biology, chemistry, physics), and their expertise show up in everything from world building to alien physiology. But what about authors with educations in Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics, Economics, and so on? Is the SF experience redefined when it comes from social scientists instead?
  • Bwa Ha Ha Ha! - 9 pm
    Sometimes we take so long creating protagonists that will appeal to readers, we forget to give the same depth and character to the enemy. Let's talk about some of the best literary villains, and techniques writers can use to make a truly memorable bad guy.

Saturday, January 10

Make with the Funny - Noon (I'm the moderator!)
Authors and artists talk about how they write humor in SF&F. They'll also share what books, movies, TV shows, and comics make them laugh the most. The panel itself will probably be funnier than this description you're reading now.

Sunday, January 11

The Sporting Geek - 1 pm (I'm the moderator!)
Being a nerd doesn't mean you have to shun sports. Sure, we'll talk mainstream stuff like basketball, football, baseball, and hockey, but we'll also delve into geek-friendly activities like rock climbing, running, and disc golf. Anything that's nerdy and sporty is fair game, from sabermetrics to fantasy sports like Quidditch and Calvinball. 

New column: How to Schedule Your Holiday Writing Schedule

Photo credit: Jamie McCaffrey

Photo credit: Jamie McCaffrey

My new column is up at Writer Unboxed: How to Schedule Your Holiday Writing Schedule.

"Set goals. The first day of your vacation, write down three things you want to accomplish before heading back to school or work or wherever. Aim high. Write a short story every day! Query twenty agents! Hey, you wrote an entire novel in November; you’re now ready to write one in two weeks. Shoot for the moon! If you miss, you’ll land among the stars in the cold, infinite void of space."

If you like that bit, go read the whole thing. 

If you didn't like it, go read the whole thing as a punishment.

How to Schedule Your Holiday Writing Schedule

Free Short Story: The Consolidated Brotherhood of Truly Bearded Santas

Here's my Christmas gift to you: My Christmas story, "The Consolidated Brotherhood of Truly Bearded Santas," starring everybody's favorite holiday hellspawn, the Krampus. 

The Consolidated Brotherhood of Truly Bearded Santas

By Bill Ferris

"The Consolidated Brotherhood of Truly Bearded Santas" originally appeared in Stupefying Stories, and was reprinted in The Again.

Craig’s Bert and Ernie slippers made no sound as he descended the carpeted stairs. He was a Christmas ninja, silent and quick.

A clatter from the living room. Something knocked against the Christmas tree, clacking the bubble lights together. He heard the hollow whump of a cardboard box hitting the floor. Was that the sound of a new KillBot 4000? Ralph Moyo had already gotten one from his folks, which wasn’t fair because he was the worst kid in class.

Craig pressed his back against the wall that separated him from the living room. He took a deep breath. One...two...three. He peeked around the corner.

He expected to see the red suit, the beard. He did not expect to see fur and fangs and a tongue as long as a garden hose.

Craig stumbled backward, too scared to think. He tripped over his Bert and Ernie slippers and fell on his butt.

The thing that wasn’t Santa Claus stared at him. Coarse black hair covered every inch of its body and goat legs. Two long devil horns erupted from its skull.

The goat-man was upon him now, its animal reflexes too fast to track. The beast had pinned Craig to the floor, flogging him with a bundle of sticks. His brain was too frozen with fear to notice the pain. The creature’s face hovered inches above Craig’s, its breath reeking of meat and death. A glob of viscous drool landed on Craig’s nose. Craig wondered if it would have the mercy to kill him before it started to eat him.

“No!” said a voice.

The beast retreated, hissing and shielding its face from a series of blows about its head and shoulders.

Craig looked up, and there stood Santa Claus flogging the creature away with a rolled-up copy of the Sears Christmas Catalog.

“No! Bad!” Santa said in a furious whisper, hitting the beast again. “He’s on the ‘good’ list! Don’t make me get the squirt bottle. Bad!”

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Your NaNoWriMo Road Map: My New Column

Check out "Your NaNoWriMo Road Map," a day-by-day guide to finishing your novel for National Novel Writing Month. Read up on some gems like these:

 

Day 3: The words are coming more slowly now, which is to be expected. Give yourself permission to write poorly in the name of getting words on the page. When you read it later, you just might surprise yourself with how your protagonist exhibits the mannerisms of your cat. Word count: 1,100.

Day 10: Coffee and soda and candy and cookies and whee! Word count: 3,200

Day 11: Beer and whiskey and potato chips and cigarettes and uuunnnggghhh.Nineteen words.

Day 14: Your blood is now twenty percent espresso. The pizza guy visits your house more frequently than the mailman. You’re sleeping five hours a night. These measures feel extreme, but the extra free time will seriously boost your output, right? Word count: 800 words.

Read the whole thing at Writer Unboxed.

Your NaNoWriMo Road Map

New column: "The Aspiring Writer's Dictionary"

Confused by the amount of jargon in the publishing industry? My new Hacks for Hacks column defines all the terms you need to know:

Self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) (n.): antiquated method of delivering bad news.

Self-publishing (n.): the greatest revolution in publishing since Gutenberg, overexposure to which can lead to derision from gatekeepers, intolerable smugness, and interminable arguments using talking points laden with dinosaur metaphors.

Serial (n.): a long story released in short, regular installments until the author thinks up a serviceable ending or the sales dry up, whichever occurs later.

“Show, don’t tell” (exp.): the writerly equivalent of “Have a good one.” An easy thing to say in your writers group when you haven’t read the story, it has been repeated so often and in so many contexts that no one remembers its original meaning.

You can read the whole thing over at Writer Unboxed.

The Aspiring Writer's Dic

"Most of the Stuff You Need to Know to Edit Your Manuscript" -- My new column at Writer Unboxed

Photo credit: rosmary on Flickr

Photo credit: rosmary on Flickr

Check out my latest Hacks for Hacks column at Writer Unboxed, "Most of the Stuff You Need to Know to Edit Your Manuscript," which is pretty much what it sounds like. You'll find helpful hints like these:

  • "Trim the fat. Nobody wants to read a flabby manuscript. Take out unnecessary words, as well as all references to fried foods and soda.
  • Murder your darlings. One of the most useful bits of writing advice, it’s a figure of speech that means that in your novel, you must kill a beloved pet, love interest, or small child. It’s hard, but I didn’t make the rules.
  • While you’re at it, let some of your minor characters know you might bump off a few of them, too, if they don’t start adding more to the story. Do this out loud."

If you like it, you can read all my columns here. 

"Most of the Stuff You Need to Know to Edit Your Manuscript

New column at Writer Unboxed: "Get Over Rejection in 6 Easy Steps"

[source]

[source]

My new column is up at Writer Unboxed, and it deals with the always timely topic of rejection. And by timely, I mean writers get a lot of rejection slips. Here's an excerpt. 

Be proactive for next time. For future submissions, remember the SASE itself is an extra chance at making a sale. Imagine a sinister editor cackling and twirling his mustache as he stuffs a Xeroxed, quarter-page, form rejection slip into your envelope. But what’s this? Waiting for him inside the envelope is a SECRET ALTERNATE ENDING that replaces your dramatic courtroom scene with a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy shoot-em-up. Only someone with your talent and skill could come up with not one, but TWO endings he doesn’t like.

Read the whole thing here.

Get Over Rejection in 6 Easy Steps

 

The AV Club harshly rebukes folks who are too cool for the Super Bowl

[source]

[source]

I'd like to publicly thank the AV Club for so eloquently expressing how I've felt for years. In "Nobody cares that you don’t care about the Super Bowl" writer John Teti explains that he's had enough of people smugly patting themselves on the back for not engaging in something as banal as football.

I’m talking to you, the graduate student who tweets “Time to catch up on my Proust” two minutes before kickoff. May you be struck with the flu on the day of your dissertation defense. And to you, the parent who takes his kids sledding on Super Bowl Sunday and posts a picture to Instagram with the caption “What football game?” Oh, and of course you applied the “1977” photo filter. May your firstborn face-plant into the nearest snowbank, and may you capture the moment in tilt-shifted, high-dynamic-range, desaturated glory...

...it can feel transgressive to proclaim that you don’t care.

But it’s not transgressive, and it’s not even interesting. Last year’s game got a 48.1-percent share of TV viewers. That means that of the people watching television while the Super Bowl was on, more than half were watching something else—and that doesn’t even account for all the people who had the TV off entirely. If you’re ignoring the Super Bowl, you’re not a freaking iconoclast. You’re a member of the silent majority.

At least, it would be nice if you were silent, because it’s fun for the rest of us to pretend that the Super Bowl is one big, dumb party with the whole United States in attendance. We don’t have many of those collective moments left.

Like I've said before, when you hang out with a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy writers, a lot of them aren't very into football. I don't have the least bit of a problem with that. It's people's crowing about their indifference that bugs me. Nobody likes to have other people say that what they enjoy is dumb, even something as culturally pervasive as football.

Nobody cares that you don’t care about the Super Bowl

Relevant

A needlessly long post about the upcoming football season written for people who don't care about football