Your Guide to Book Publicity (that’s legal in most countries)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

From the moment we’re born, we simply want one thing: to be recognized and acknowledged. As we go through life, our end game passes from breastmilk to star stickers to disappointing, booze-fueled sexual encounters, but the underlying need to have our existence recognized never changes. For writers, who are often neglected and emotionally stunted, this need is even stronger. Our stories are there to do what our flabby bodies and off-putting personalities never could. All of this is to say, a good publicity campaign can help prove your life wasn’t a complete waste of time and therefore is a fairly important skill to have as an author.  

However, book publicity isn’t like a son or daughter’s graduation party; you can’t just scream and cry until people pay attention to you. It requires planning, connections and a strong awareness of your strengths as a writer. We’ll lie about our background and make empty promises on this edition of Stories’ Matter.  

~

Finishing a novel is one of the most bittersweet moments in life for an author. On the one hand, you’ve finally completed something that’s taken you months, maybe years. There’s this concrete product into which you’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears. On the other hand, you worry that nobody will ever actually read it and it may not have been worth neglecting things like your job and family, who, come to think of it, you haven’t seen for weeks. 

But with a proper book publicity plan and media pitch, you can relax a bit. Even the most obscure, unappealing book that’s self-published can sell in today’s market with the right publicity. To prove this point, I’ll take you through how I marketed my neo-noir thriller Sam I Am, a story about a man with Down’s syndrome who helps the police catch a famous serial killer.  

Step One: Make it About Yourself

As you might’ve noticed from this channel, I hardly ever spend any time talking about my actual books, but focus on my personal life, everything from the fire that destroyed my publishing company to why my second wife was the most exciting woman I’ve ever been with sexually. My most faithful viewers have probably learned more about the ins and outs of restraining orders than they have about plot structure. However, I do this for a reason and not just because making these videos is cheaper than therapy.  

We’re much more drawn to people than we are to books. For example, most people relish the fantasy of having a drink with Hemmingway or watching the Fitzgerald’s belittle each other than actually reading any of their books.  

So let your fans know about you and your expertise. And this is a point I’ll keep coming back to: It’s okay to lie. When I wrote Sam I Am, my book publicity materials said I was inspired by my son Jefferson, who had Down’s syndrome. Personal connections like these will endear your audience to you. Truth told, I’m not quite sure what was wrong with Jefferson. 

Step Two – Give Expert Interviews

With all this in mind, it’s important you get yourself out there. And one great way is to give expert interviews to the media. You could do book blogs. Write personal essays for online magazines.  Local TV news is desperate to fill the air with something that isn’t tips on how to pack a suitcase.  

Now, you might be thinking, John, I’m not an expert in anything. Who will want to listen to me? Fortunately, you’re in luck. We are currently living in a golden age for dangerously unqualified people pretending to know what they’re doing.  

For Sam I Am, my big boost came from an interview I gave with a local radio station where I claimed people with Down’s syndrome have been unfairly maligned and marginalized and with the right care and guidance they can and have assumed many professional roles in our society. Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time and was just making it up, but it turns out I was actually right.  

Step Three: Offer Special Giveaways and Promotions

Fans of the channel know I don’t believe in giving away anything for free. Hell, because of all the free copies of Sam I Am WKXP made me bring to their studio for my interview, I made sure to raid their green room. I even took the boxes of disposable forks and knives from the cupboards.  

But there are workarounds. You can have a flash sale that lasts only thirty seconds and if people complain, just say you had your clock set to Burmese time. To entice readers, post free versions of your book online but with every other word redacted.  

Here are some other useful tips: 

Put subliminal messages in your Tik Tok or YouTube videos 

Get plastic surgery to make yourself more camera friendly 

Hint that your book will help your reader get laid  

Fake a British accent to make yourself sound more intelligent 

Mail your book to media producers. And use unmarked packages to make it more of a surprise.  

How to Write Diverse Characters (that even racists and misogynists will love)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

Whenever I start my writing workshops at the learning annex, one of the first questions students always ask me, after “Is this class fee refundable,” is “Is it okay to write about characters of a different race or sexual orientation?”

It’s a tough world out there right now. In addition to worrying about honing your skills, trying to get your name out there and getting cease and desist letters from your family to stop putting personal information about them in your YouTube videos, you also have to worry about getting cancelled.

You might feel like you wrote the perfect first page, one that was poetic and enticing and instantly draws the reader into your unique world, but after you think more about it, you get anxious that the woke mob will go after you for using the N-word six times.  In today’s video, I’ll show you how even the straightest, whitest Oberlin graduate who grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis can write about any race, creed, gender or sexual identity. We’re going to put on our metaphorical blackface on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Race, religion, LGBT issues… lots of writers want to shy away from these topics. But the whole reason you’re a writer is to explore the unexplored and represent the underrepresented. We need more books about unique people and unique perspectives. Plus, it’s unfair to ask writers to limit their writing to their own personal experience. If that were the case, nobody from Omaha could ever succeed because who the hell wants to read a book set in modern-day Nebraska?

Before I get to the advice, I want you to relax. Acknowledge your discomfort, but be open to everything. We’ll never make any progress if we embrace our ignorance. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions in the comments. Men, don’t be afraid to ask our female viewership how a vagina works. Black people, don’t be afraid to ask our Chinese, Japanese and Korean viewership what the different slurs for “blacks” are in their native language so you can finally know what those people at the laundromat are really saying.

Step One: Do your research

As with anything else you write, a good story begins with great research. Don’t even think about race, gender or identity for a minute. Pretend you’re a Mormon who wants to write a book about an alcoholic. How would you go about doing it? Now, if it were me, I might do a few different things. I’d watch home movies of my father. I’d attend local AA meetings under false pretenses to get ideas. I’d hang out under a bridge at night. And in fact, these are all things I did when I wrote Plastered Bastard, a revenge thriller about a serial vehicle manslaughter perpetrator.

So when you are writing about another race, you need to come to know that race very well. Do the things you might think a person of that race does. Listen to recorded speeches of beloved political leaders, for example. Watch gay porn. Watch anime. Email your manuscript to someone in your office of that race, even if you don’t know them very well, to get their input. And if they’re a janitor without an email address, print out a copy and put it in their utility shed, as I’ve often done.

Step Two: Describe Your Characters in Detail – When I was teaching at the learning annex, I can’t tell you how many people would give me vivid, detailed descriptions of their white characters while the minority characters were just Black or Asian and the reader was supposed to fill in the blanks. Whenever I came across this, not only did I make this person write an apology to each member of the class, but I also made them wear a sandwich board that said “Ignorant Racist” for the rest of the lesson.

Let’s take an example.

Look at this woman. How would you describe her? Would black suffice? I don’t think so. I would describe her body as voluptuous and her lips as pouty and full. I would say that “her hair was shiny and silken and I wanted her to stand over me, completely naked, bending down and dangling the hair so it was just gently tickling the skin on my chest until I reached orgasm.”

Step Three: Don’t Be Ambiguous

For a writer, specificity is everything. In addition to your descriptions,  this also applies to your diverse characters’ backgrounds. Your character should never just be Native American or Mexican. Are they from the hills of Sinaloa or the slums of Juarez? It doesn’t just apply to race. When I write gay men, the first decision I have to make is if he’s a top or a bottom. Then I ask, Does he generate the power or is he just receiving the power? Does he prefer reach arounds or is he willing to let the release come of its own accord?

Step Four: Avoid Savior Narratives

At the learning annex, I used to have this one student. We’ll just call him Jeff Stanley Wilson. Though he was an older guy, he was about as woke as a boomer gets. He followed all of the above rules pretty well and created some diverse, three dimensional characters of color and other sexual orientations. But Jeff’s problem was his heroes were always white males. And they also were described exactly the way he looked, bald head, glasses and six foot seven. And they were also all named Jeff Stanley Wilson.

I always told Jeff that he was limiting himself as a writer by doing this. Sure, like Jeff you may write as a kind of wish-fulfillment to forget that your wife left you and your son was killed by a drunk driver, but it sends the wrong message to say that people of color rely on whites to be saved. And it’s just not very true to life. I mean, look at… all of history.

Blood Shot: Chapter 3 (By Blake Colby)

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

“What does that hand gesture mean?” I asked Carter.
“He’s challenging you to a fight.”
“Oh!” I had never been great at picking up nonverbal cues. It was by far my worst subject in school.
I’m not sure how much time went by: forty-five or possibly forty-six seconds. I walked to my car. A light breeze passed over me.
I paused for a moment, closed my eyes, and lifted my face to the sky. I took a deep breath. I thought about Jennifer. I thought about Terrald. I thought about Fran in her hotel room in Wuhan, waiting for me, constructing my likeness out of pillows, lamps and assorted vegetables and laying it on the hotel bed beside her.
I sifted through my car’s glove compartment for anything useful. Recalling the coach’s challenge, I grabbed both my switch blade and tire iron, as well as pepper spray and bullets. I remembered I forgot
my gun on the shelf above the urinal in the boy’s bathroom, but looking toward the gym doors, I could see the coaches blocking my way back inside.
From a distance they may have seemed a threat: four athletic, muscular men, none under 6’6”, wielding chains and wooden sticks embedded with shards of glass. But I’ve been in many fights in my life. I’ve taken on white supremacist biker gangs, rogue Mossad agents and Comcast Cable representatives. This on the other hand was amateur hour, through and through. For starters, none of their weapons were even monogrammed.

Shortly thereafter, I saw Carter run out of the same door. I half expected him to start hurling knives into the backs of the four coaches, as he was wont to do. But he just snaked through the rows of cars, taking in the evening air.
I was standing outside my driver’s side door when the men stopped.
“Great game tonight,” I said.
“Heard your lady raggin’ on you for defending her boy,” the head coach said.
“Heard her call you out for being a touchy-feely little pussy,” another assistant chimed in.
“Heard she’s moving to Arizona on account of the emotional distance you keep her at,” a third echoed.
The head coach started speaking again. “We figured you’d bitch out and not show up. Thought we’d get this done as soon as possible.”
The head coach took out a small razor and made a cut on his upper cheek.
“Just think: If this is what I’m willing to do to myself, imagine what I’ll do to you.”
A classic mistake. The head coach probably had little fight experience. Most of the time all he needed were cheap theatrics like this (and his foot and a half height advantage) to scare his opponents into submission. I looked over for Carter. He was still ambling nonchalantly, keying random cars. (Carter drove a Bugatti Veyron – in his mind, he was doing these people a favor.) I would have called out for help, but I knew that, one, I didn’t need it, and two, Carter would’ve understood it was just a scrimmage. The head coach took another step forward.
“So did you choose?”
“You mean between tire irons and switch blades? Why not both?”
“Oh, I’m starting to like you.”
“So whip ‘em out. Let’s do this thing.”
“Too many people around here. Plus, it’s starting to sprinkle and I don’t want to get my hair wet. There’s an abandoned meat processing factory next to the football field. No one will bother us there.”
Carter finally joined us.
“How, pray tell, do you know about this warehouse?” he said.
“I went to high school here. Our football team had a lot of postgame parties in that warehouse. You could say it was the secret of our success.” He proudly puffed out his chest.
(I was oddly reminded of a local news scandal from about thirty years ago. In the winter of ‘85, local police discovered the decapitated heads of ten district star quarterbacks – all but Eichmann High’s – in a nearby river. The boys each went missing exactly one week apart from each other. Around the same time, Eichmann High had its infamous school cafeteria human meat scandal. Unfortunately, in both cases investigators failed to produce any leads.)
My thoughts returned to Jennifer. I knew she wouldn’t want me to put myself in a situation where I would hurt someone. Hell, even I didn’t want to. I’ve been around enough violence to know there’s no glory in it.
“We’re two mature adults,” I finally said. I strained to get the words out. “There’s no need to resort to violence, right?”
The big smile stretching across Carter’s face as he rubbed two knives together disappeared. I knew he’d be disappointed, but I could always make it up to him.
“Just as I thought,” the head coach said.
I turned around and started to walk away. But then I heard it. I heard the sound. The sound I hear in my nightmares. The sound I can never run or hide from. The sound that haunts me.
One of the assistants had a tape recorder in his hand. To anyone else, it would have just been a springy metallic clang. But I knew it was more, a sound of a sinister origin: It was the sound of my free throw shots bouncing off the rim and costing my team the eighth seed.
We all have our weaknesses. For some it’s the bottle, for others a deck of cards. For Carter, it’s something called a Brazilian piledriver. But whatever it is, its presence causes a synaptic malfunction that renders us incapable of saying “No.”
I turned back to look at the coaches. “Take me to your goddamn warehouse.”


The six of us crossed the football field and entered the warehouse. For an abandoned building, it was in good shape. It seemed a few enterprising students had converted one of the wings into a successful meth lab. There were plenty of lights on and a couple of guards were sleeping near the entrance.
My change of demeanor sent Carter into a fit of ecstasy. He and the three assistants waited on the factory floor while the head coach and I ascended the catwalk overlooking the giant meat blender.
We reached the area directly over it.
“You’d be surprised what this thing could do to a human,” he said to me.
“I imagine it cuts their flesh and bones into tiny pieces very quickly.”
“Lucky guess.”
Down below, the three assistants surrounded Carter.
“Gentlemen,” Carter said, “a quick word before they commence.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“Simply to issue a brief warning. While it may appear that the number and territorial advantages reside with you, I must reiterate that…”
The head coach, tired of listening to Carter babble, turned on the meat blender.
Unfortunately, dear readers, it’s here we come to a sad truth. While in movies and TV, heroes and villains often monologue and deliver punchlines over the gentle humming of industrial machinery, in real life it’s simply impossible. The deafening noise of the giant motors required to spin three-meter-long blades at 300 RPMs render any kind of dialogue inaudible. (Still, I’ve tried my best to transcribe what I heard over the course of the next few minutes.)
In any case, the noise wasn’t a factor at the moment. I only had one sound in my head: those free throws clanging off the rim. Rage consumed me. I knew it was a mistake to fight this way. You need to keep your adrenaline flow under control, otherwise the other guy could easily pin that soft flesh of yours against the smooth tile of the locker room floor.
I looked at the head coach. For the first time all night, I saw a glimmer of hesitation. Perhaps he realized knife fighting a total stranger over a giant industrial meat blender just to prove a point that you have a right to be verbally abusive to an eight-year-old kid wasn’t the best idea.
The coach led with the hand holding the blade; he twirled the tire iron in the other. I held my ground, flexed my knees and bounced on my feet to stay loose. He threw a few jabs with the knife toward my right side. I easily blocked them both with a quick swing of my tire iron. The coach stumbled backward, his clumsy movements not surprising.
“I’m gonna bill you!” he shouted in anger.
“What?!!” I yelled back.
“You’re wed. Your whole family’s wed. Your son and girl and your friend are all wed.”
“We’re not polygamists.”
“What?!!”
We traded blows for a minute or so. I was only going sixty percent, trying to gauge the coach’s technique. I drove the tire iron hard into his left wrist, causing him to drop his knife to the factory floor. It may sound immodest, but the coach literally had no chance.
True athleticism is almost 100 percent genetically predetermined. Sure, athletic organizations perpetuate the myth of grown athletes to fill their own pockets, but the hard truth is it all starts in the womb. A simple DNA test can determine whether or not a child will be an athlete. In reality, none of my NBA teammates or I ever had to jog or lift weights.
The coach leaned over the rail to catch his breath. He glanced down at the spinning blades below and smiled. I watched a spark of inspiration flutter across his face. He looked at me, took a deep breath and starting spinning both of his arms in a windmill motion.
I used the opportunity to search for Carter below. He was looking for an outlet to charge his phone. The three assistants lie where they had just recently stood, each with a shiruken embedded in his forehead.
The coach continued his slow approach.
“I’m going to read you to those rye stool lids just like I hid when I was a rude dent.”
“I can’t hear or understand you.”
“Do you even grow stew for dressing with?”
“Ummm…yeah. Mmm-hmm.”
“I bone this gown.”
His arms picked up speed. But I saw I had an opening. With one quick snap of my wrist, I threw my switch blade into his exposed torso. The blade plunged directly into his belly button. The coach stopped spinning his arms and fell backward. He grabbed at the knife’s handle and cried out in pain.
“Please, yelp me! I don’t have wealth for hermits!”
I should have let him fall. I should have put him out of his misery. But by now the sound of the rim clanging had dissipated. My rage faded. I looked at the poor man in front of me wincing and pooping himself and trying to seal his wound with poop. And I felt sort of bad. I gave him a couple quick kicks to the face to knock him out and then dragged his unconscious body down to the factory floor where I rejoined Carter, who switched off the machinery.
Looking at the three fallen assistants, I said to Carter, “Tell me you didn’t lace those things with cyanide.”
“No, no. They should come to in a few minutes with nothing more than a real bad headache. And perhaps a newly-acquired speech impediment.”


We left the warehouse without another word. I got home an hour later to three new messages on my answering machine. But I accidentally deleted them so I have no idea what they said. I soon got a pair of phone calls. The first came from Carter.
“We might have a situation on our hands,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Those guys we attacked. It turns out they’re of some renown in the local chain of command.”
“What, did I stab the president of the city?”
“Mayor. Cities have mayors.”
“What am I, a civics professor?”
“Anyway, no. But the guy I popped a shiruken into, and whose hand I later left sitting in a bowl of water, is the city comptroller.”
“They started it.”
“In any case, I think a short weekend in Thailand while my lawyer figures out the details would be well advised.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I hung up. Carter was right – it would be wise to lay low until the heat died down. But I only had a few moments to weigh my options before the obvious answer presented itself. Another call came in.
“Come to me.”
It was Fran. One short conversation and a change of socks later and I was on my way to the airport. I approached the ticket counter.
“Any room left on the 9:30 to Wuhan?”

I Wrote 51 Books in One Year… Here’s What I Learned

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

If there’s one mistake I’ve made in this series, it’s that I haven’t told you enough about myself. Any asshole can get on the internet and give you writing advice with zero credentials. Why should you trust me?

After all, I don’t show my face and I use a pseudonym and, if you listen closely, I frequently have the faint sounds of screaming in the background audio of my videos I can’t edit out. But the truth of the matter is, there’s a lot to be learned from my twenty-five years of experience as a writer, from both my successes and my failures.

In today’s video, we’ll take a deep dive into the most productive year of my career and I’ll share the things I learned about productivity, the elements of fiction and crippling drug addiction. And if nothing else, you’ll be able to identify the warning signs that someone is secretly poisoning you. Let’s ink up our pens and put on our writing gloves to prevent pussing blisters on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

~

Let me set the scene. The year is 2008. The global financial crisis had displaced thousands of hard-working investment bankers and hedge fund managers. America was well on its way to electing its first half-Kenyan president. And Hawthorn had shocked the world and won the AFL grand final.

This was about one decade into my career. As fans of the channel will know, the very beginning of my career was bumpy. I made the rookie mistake of working with the first publisher who would have me, a fringe publisher with no offices who wanted to publish my series of novels about serial killers who brutalize women for all the wrong reasons. And then my second publisher, while more reputable, had set it up so I lost money on every book I sold.

Then, in 2003, into my life came Tabitha Cartwright. Because of certain legal agreements, I can’t go into too many specifics about our relationship, but despite how things ended, it was certainly the most fruitful collaboration of career. She was, just to give an example, the first person who told me I shouldn’t endow all my female characters with DD breasts.

I finally was able to write a book that sold more than 1000 copies. And I grew immensely as a writer, with a much better understanding of narrative convention, how to market my books and myself, how to speak to publishers. Soon, I was churning out books like L. Ron Hubbard possessed by the spirit of Xenu himself. In the final year, 2008, I wrote 51. Here’s what I learned:

Lesson 1: It all starts with a strict routine

As a writer, it’s not enough to want it. You can say you’re determined all you want. The junkies at the support group I’ve joined under false pretenses to get ideas for my writing say it all the time before they inevitably relapse.

But having a strict routine enforces determination. You can see my video on my writing routine here. To paraphrase, you should design a routine that provides the following things: time to write, ways to make writing your happy place, time to edit and…

Lesson 2: Punishment for not following your routine

You can’t let life get in the way of a good idea. Think of what our world might be like if Einstein hadn’t been absolutely revolting to his wife so he could focus on his work.

But it’s not enough to miss recitals or funerals and stay home to write. You need a concrete method for making sure you meet your deadlines. Some people might hook up car batteries to their body and their alarm clock, but I’m not a science guy. As I told you in my writer’s block video, the most effective way to stick to a deadline is to hire ex-cons to inflict physical punishment for missing deadlines.

I got the idea from my loan shark and it worked wonders. Make sure you set clear rules and boundaries. Obviously, you don’t want your fingers broken or that would defeat the whole purpose. But if they rough your face just enough to avoid needing to see the doctor, you’ll find yourself motivated.

Lesson 3: Make sure your POV is consistent

Lots of writers worry about plot holes or creating snappy dialogue. But almost nobody realizes the importance of having a consistent POV that serves a specific function.

Maybe it was because I was writing 15,000 words every day and only getting up when I hallucinated that somebody was knocking on my door, but I would slide between third-person omniscient and third-person limited often.

Lesson 4: Big ideas are more important than details or spelling errors or turning in your final manuscript on the back of horse race pick slips

Whether you’re writing for thirty minutes a day after work or you’re writing all night just to avoid you sleep paralysis demon, keep in mind that publishers and consumers care about the big picture. A unique hook will draw more readers than a completely unfinished chapter will push them away. At least with the latter, you can disguise it as a metaphor.

Lesson 5: There are a lot of legal amphetamines

So after Book 30, even I was a little surprised by my own productivity. I mean, I knew story structure in and out and I also didn’t have to cook or clean or bathe myself because Tabitha had hired a maid to do all that for me.

I was always driven and never had the most normal sleep patterns, but it did seem strange to be awake for 72 straight hours and then crash for the following 16. And it turns out the aspirin the maid was giving me was actually an amphetamine responsible for my loss of sleep.

When I confronted Tabitha, she said it was legal, took me to the pharmacy where she bought it and said it was no different than putting her dog’s heart worm medication in his biscuits.

If I wasn’t so horribly addicted by that point, I probably would’ve gotten mad.

Lesson 6: Sleep Deprivation can lead to memory loss

Just like a porn star and calculus teacher, a writer needs to know their limits. Mine were thrust upon me. Books 32 to 47 are all lost to memory. The only evidence I have of those few months is the final product of 15 very poorly written novels and a very terrible Bernie Madoff Halloween costume.

I’m pretty sure I stopped taking the drug at some point during this period only due to the fact that I am not dead. To this day, I’m still not sure if was through sheer willpower or if Tabitha simply realized my books weren’t selling enough to pay for the pills, the maid and the baby I somehow put inside her.

Anyway, if you’re going to write 51 books this year, make sure to take care of your physical and mental well-being.

The Secret To Writing Great Cliffhangers Is…

Daniel MadisonLeave a comment

One of the greatest feelings I get from writing is when a reader finishes my book and demands I give them answers. And I don’t mean questions like “Why did you name this sex offender character after me?” or “How is a book about 17th century fur trappers going to make enough so you can repay the sixty grand you owe me?” No, I’m talking more along the line of questions like “What happens next?” or “Is the character going to survive?”

Authors need to find ways to get their audience involved in the story. For example, in my promotion for Order of Operations, I set up a worldwide scavenger hunt where readers used clues from the book to find a $10,000 grand prize. This backfired when at least four readers were buried alive when an abandoned mine collapsed in the Nevada wilderness.

So instead, you can try using cliffhangers. This is something TV shows have used for decades and they can be incredibly effective. Audiences obsessed for whole summers about who shot JR, or if Riker was going to shave his beard or not, or if David Hasselhoff would ever turn his career around.

What you have to remember is that reading is a chore for most people. When you put cliffhangers at the ends of your chapters and at the ends of your books, you make it more fun and engaging. Think of your reader as a dog and the cliffhangers are the treats you give them for shitting in their neighbor’s pool after he leaves for work. We’ll manipulate people for personal profit on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now there’s some debate about who first invented the cliffhanger. Some people think it was Thomas Hardy. Others say it comes from 1001 Nights. I always thought it was Melville, who ended Moby Dick with Ishmael starting the Whalers Initiative and going around to recruit the best whalers on the planet to defeat the White Whale. But apparently, that doesn’t happen in the book at all.

In any case, cliffhangers are when a scene, chapter or book ends abruptly without a resolution. Cliffhangers are meant to be shocking. But you need to be careful how you use them. When I wrote Chair, I ended with the main character defeating the villain by throwing her into a tar pit. However, the last scene ended with a hand reaching up out of the tar pit. In the poorly-received sequel Sofa, however, it turned out that arm belonged to a Neanderthal who’d been dead for millennia and had been forced to the surface by tectonic activity. Common mistakes like this are best avoided.

So let’s look at some tips to improve our cliffhangers:

Tip 1 – Give Readers Room to Speculate

A good cliffhanger should hint at a world of possibilities. What you reveal to your reader is just the tip of the ice cube poking out of the surface of your morning glass of scotch. If there’s a surprise death, make sure you’ve got at least half a dozen plausible suspects.

One of the chapters in my sci-fi novel Destination Earth ends with a spaceship signaling red alert. But this could be for many reasons. Maybe space debris hit the lightspeed core, maybe their enemy, the Cormolites, finally honed in on their location, maybe the Alliance has come to arrest them for sex trafficking humans. These are exactly the ideas you want your audience thinking of.

Tip 2 – Brainstorm a Huge List of Problems Specific to Your Character

I suggest making a huge list of potential problems your character will have throughout the story. You don’t need to use or even mention them, but doing so will help you flesh out your character, and then when you get to a point in the narrative that would benefit from a cliffhanger, you’re spoiled for choice. For example, when I wrote Minge, here’s just a fraction of what I wrote:

  • Minge’s former high school bestie wants to kill her.
  • Minge’s is addicted to blackjack.
  • Minge has a narrow windpipe which makes her more susceptible to choking.
  • Minge is addicted to roulette.
  • Minge owes thousands to several organized crime syndicates.
  • Minge’s mother left home before she was born. And then again a few years later.
  • Minge is addicted to scratch off tickets.
  • Minge doesn’t know how to read.

Tip 3 – Use Foreshadowing

A great cliffhanger, especially early in your book, won’t just create suspense but also hint at something further down the line. Chapter Five in Ode to Adelay ends this way:

 “ ‘Cough… cough… cough cough cough.’ I knew I had to stop coughing before Deardra got home. And then I heard the garage door open.” So you can see, not only are we wondering whether or not his wife will catch him smoking weed, this also foreshadows Adelay’s eventual death from choking on a chunk of melon.  

Tip 4 – Resolve the conflict, but not all of it

So often, you want to end a chapter with a big climax, a death riddled with pathos, a key resolution. The key though, is to always have something in the background that’s not settled. You can really take your reader off guard here. If you kill off the main villain, readers might forget about the henchman, and that’s the perfect time have her cut the cable of their funicular. If the characters survive a wild storm, we’re so happy we forget about the bag of drugs they need to survive and we end with the cliffhanger of them realizing they have lost it.  

But really, when you’re writing a cliffhanger there’s one method that never fails to work…

Common Writing Questions Answered By An Expert

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Getting published is a bit like having sex for the first time: you’ve spent years dreaming about it and after it finally happens, you know you did it wrong and are pretty sure you’re being laughed at.

I set up this channel to help young writers through the process of breaking their writing hymen, so to speak. I’ll answer some of your questions on this mailbag installment of Stories’ Matter.

Our first question comes from Xander from Pripyat, Ukraine. He writes:

Hey John. Your books are often filled with interesting facts and information. For example, when I read Bride of Prejudice, I learned that drowning in a bog was the leading cause of death for young women in the 18th century. What is something surprising you learned when writing one of your books?

Great question, Xander. Because I tend to write one book a month, I can’t devote as much time to research as I’d like. But when I was writing The Ones Who Walked (my first book set in the Pleistocene) I learned that of all 100 billion humans to ever be born, almost 50 percent never made it to their first birthday.

Our next question comes from Valerie from Bhopal, India. She writes:

What up, John? I’m trying to get a start in writing, but all my friends and coworkers tell me I should focus on my true talent: being a cashier at Walmart.  Anyway, it would be nice to get some positive feedback. What’s the most inspiring feedback you’ve ever received from a reader?

Thanks for the question, Valerie. Well, actually the best feedback I’ve ever gotten from a fan was regarding my erotica written under my JD Salinger alias. But because this is a family channel, I can’t share the specifics about what she did with her mouth. Instead, I remember another young reviewer telling me that The House on Pain Avenue was “a worse experience than his cancer treatment.” That made me happy because that was exactly what I was going for.

The next question comes from Simon from Guadalajara, Mexico. He writes: 

Hi John. I’m a new writer who has written a few novels. But I find I’m running out of ideas. The amount of books you’ve written is astounding. If it weren’t true, I’d think you were just making it up to be funny. Anyway, where do you find inspiration? Do you ever get inspiration from dreams?

Great question, Simon. Actually, one of the side effects of a drug I use to quell my sexual urges prevents me from having dreams. I, however, find inspiration can come from anywhere: paying attention to the news, being well-versed in history, closely watching fights at the weddings you attend, reading your neighbor’s mail and so on.

Next, we have Grace from Hamlet, North Carolina. She asks:

Yo John. I’ve tried publishing a book. But I’ve gotten nothing but form rejections. And my beta readers keep asking if English is my second language, even though I was born in Jacksonville and went to community college for four years before dropping out. My question is, how do you handle criticism?

Excellent question, Grace. A lot of people assume creatives are just supposed to ignore criticism. But ask yourself: Do other types of workers just let themselves be openly criticized? Of course not. NBA players get hecklers thrown out of games. Cops will use any criticism as a chance to steal your phone and shoot your dog. And politicians will use criticism as fuel to stack the Supreme Court with right wing lunatics and liars to overthrow American democracy. So… be more like them.

This one comes from Nearl of Karachi, Pakistan. He writes:

G’day John. I’m just about to publish my first book, but my editor says the publisher wants me to remove a twenty-page scene depicting a horse circumcision. What’s your favorite scene you’ve had to edit out of a book?

Thanks for that one, Nearl. When I wrote Dawson, a young adult cozy murder mystery set in rural New England, I included a long scene where one character gives another a tour of the town in which it is set, including much of its true history. Unfortunately, my editor told me that town wanted nothing to do with me and would burn every single copy that entered city limits if I kept the scene.

And now we have Watley from Fukushima, Japan. He writes:

Howdy John. I have trouble getting erections and don’t even attempt to pleasure my wife sexually. She claims it’s because I spend seven to eight hours a day writing at my computer. So my question is, does your family also not support your career as a writer?

Thank you, Watley. This is a story I know all too well. Not the no erections part, obviously. But I think three ex-wives and at least seven children, four from whom I’m estranged, speaks for itself.  

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Choose writing. Don’t try to convince yourself you can do both. Even if you remove all other distractions, and, for example, go to a remote hotel in the Rockies, you’ll just go crazy from the disruptions and try to murder them.

Next question comes from Darcelle from Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. She asks:

Greetings John. Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer?

Well, Darcelle, my suggestion would be to watch some of the fifty odd videos on this channel first. Maybe then you’ll at least learn not to ask stupid questions.

Finally, we have a question from Fat Mike from Benxi, China. He says:

Aloha John. As your agent and former next-door neighbor, I’d like to know: What book are you working on right now? I will remind you that you are contractually obligated to write three more books by the end of this year.

Thanks for that question, Fat Mike. There’s a few in the pipeline, but my next book is a century-spanning family drama set in the age of Westward Expansion, centered on two sisters, one who decides to become a nun the Aleutian Islands and the other who marries an abusive oil prospector. It’s called Family Feud.

Don’t Die Sad and Alone… Relationship Advice for Writers

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We’re going to step away from the page today and explore this key question:

“Do writers deserve to be loved?”

Now you may be thinking, what an absurd question, John, of course I deserve love. In fact, the whole reason I’m writing is so that I can get strangers to love me and fill the void left by my abusive parents who bet away my college fund on a racehorse named “Always a Winner.”

But writers also know that when the writing is going good, nothing else matters. Aside from food, water and oxygen, writing fills every other need. I can’t tell how many loads I’ve spilled just from the satisfaction I got from creating a tragic backstory or thinking of a twist ending that would make M. Night Shaymalan’s head explode.

However, writers also know that the writing can’t always be this good. Writing can be as much of a cruel mistress as any $500 BDSM escort you can find on tryst.link.

So you might decide that a real human relationship is something you want in your life. Being a writer makes this very complicated, but not impossible. In today’s segment, I hope to help you navigate the potential problems you might encounter with flesh-and-blood humans. We’ll discuss the agony of compromise on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now, fans of the channel have probably pieced together that I’ve had a shaky relationship history. After all, I’ve been married and divorced three times, even if the first one doesn’t really count because that wife used a fake name and was already married to several other people. So just full disclosure, while I think I have some good advice to impart, keep in mind that I’m mostly a cautionary tale.

Also, my story might not be your story. Sex and romance is varied and complicated. So a little more about me: I’m the type of person who needs lots of love. As my therapist used to say, I’m the type of person who runs into relationships very quickly. The fact that my therapist became my third wife probably means she was right.

Anyway, to narrow the focus of this video, I will try to keep this advice specific to the ways writing can impact your relationship.

Tip 1 – Never Date Another Writer

This almost goes without saying. Obviously, it’s natural to be jealous when your wife gets a massage from her tennis instructor. But that’s nothing compared with the crippling jealousy of your partner getting her story published in the New Yorker. At least I can sometimes get erections thinking about my wife bouncing atop a 20-year-old with a flawless chest and rippled back.  I can safely say another writer inking a deal with Random House has never made me erect.

Plus, with both of you constantly shut away at your desks, nothing is ever getting done. Good luck keep the mold at bay and the power on. And God forbid, if you managed to produce a child, let’s just hope it isn’t fascinated by power outlets.

Tip 2 – Never Date Fans

To be honest, you really should just be with someone who doesn’t read. I’m not saying you should date someone’s who’s illiterate but I’m also not not saying it.

While not as bad as dating a writer, this one is easier to fall into. Because naturally you want your fans to love you. And when those fans happen to have perfect tits, you’ll probably think you hit the jackpot.

Wrong: you almost certainly won’t live up to their expectations. I’ve met a lot of writers and they are way less cool in real life. Margaret Atwood: wonderful writer, but she steals silverware from restaurants. Jennifer Egan: maybe our greatest living writer. But she constantly looks at your phone when you’re texting other people. And while Jonathan Franzen was a huge inspiration, he smells like onions, garlic and cigar smoke.

Tip 3  – Don’t ask for writing advice

As I said before, you should never ask people you know closely to be your beta readers. There are only two possible outcomes, both bad.

One, they will be give vague, dishonest support. Afraid to hurt your feelings, they will tell you you don’t to change a thing, which all writers know is never the case.

Two, they will be brutally honest. You’ll share your opinion. They’ll say why’d you ask for my opinion if you’re just going to yell at me. You’ll say you’re not yelling. They’ll then ask why you also criticized their weight. You’ll then say that you’re such a great writer, you could literally have sex with anyone so they should be grateful. They’ll spend the night at their mother’s house. You’ll go on a bender and have to spend any money you made that month from your writing on medication to treat your crabs.  Happens all the time.

Tip 4 – Be Honest. Unless you do something really unforgivable. In that case, take that to your grave.

This isn’t really related to writing. I’ve just always found that this is generally great advice.

Tip 5 – Partners aren’t your characters. You can’t make them do whatever you want.

It’s easy to fantasize about your characters. After all, you can make them do anything and they don’t need to consent to it. Having the power to kill the things I’ve created is probably the main reason I became a writer. But you have to get rid of that mindset and remember that real people are just very disappointing.

And I’m not just talking about crazy sex stuff. I mean, obviously it’s unlikely you meet someone willing to give you a Brazilian pile driver in real life. But you also can’t write your way out of bad situations. Fans of the channel know that my second wife is by far my favorite. If our love story was fiction, I’d find some way to make our characters realize we were meant for each other, perhaps by having our daughter trap us in a broken elevator until we made amends. But in real life, I’d be breaking several laws if I tried that.

As fans of the channel will also know, in real life, I had to settle for finding an escort and making her look, talk and act like. Which reminds me…

Please don’t forget to like and subscribe so I can keep paying this hooker to look like my second wife.

Five Hacks For Writing Great Dialogue

Daniel Madison1 Comment

For years, I struggled with writing dialogue. I just didn’t seem to have a knack for writing realistic conversations. There were a few possible reasons for this: I didn’t read enough, I avoided conversations with people like creditors and my wives and especially my children, I watched too much porn (though, in fairness, I was considering it as a career at the time and was doing it for research purposes).

Dialogue can be one of the most difficult things for an author to master. But first you might be asking, why use dialogue at all? Can’t I just tell a story with no spoken words, where feelings and thoughts are transmitted telepathically or via some system of interpretative dance? And sure, while many authors have tried and succeeded at this, it’s not something I suggest a novice writer attempt.

We’ll look at ways to write more compelling, genuine, realistic and quotidian dialogue that’s not repetitive and mimics the modus operandi by which real people converse and exchange discourse on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Dialogue serves many important functions in your story: it helps you to show, not tell, it helps distinguish between characters and it puts less words on the page to make your reader read faster and feel like less of a dipshit. Plus, many scientific studies have recently proven that humans express themselves through dialogue. Sure, you can tell a lot about someone from how they dress, what they eat or the color of their skin, but dialogue offers such a wider range of human expression. So, if dialogue is so important, how can we improve its implementation in our writing?

Step One: Listen to people talk in real life.

Now there are many ways you can do this. If you have friends, you should probably consider wiretapping them. I’ll post a link in the comments for some great, unobtrusive devices you can set up in houseplants, stuffed animals, ballpoint pens and so on. But, if you don’t have any friends, and the fact that you’re watching this video makes that likely, there are other solutions. Go to coffee shops, grab a notepad and a number two and jot down everything you hear. From personal experience, I can admit that as a man I had no idea how women talked until I started spying on them.

Step Two: Hold back. Use subtext.

Most people don’t just blurt out everything they are thinking. Both drama and comedy rely on characters withholding information. This creates suspicion, intrigue, and misunderstandings. Let’s look at this snippet from my novel, The Island of Lost Time. “Did you…” Angela asked. “Yes.” “Wow, I can’t believe…” “I know.” “So this is…” “Yes, that’s right.” See what I did there? Though revealing little we learn so much about the characters and their struggle: Angela’s issues with her mom, Dan’s homosexual experience from childhood, their fear of climate change, all in an exchange of dialogue about the surprise painting of child’s bedroom.

Step Three: Pay close attention to your character voice

Each character should have a voice unique to themselves. This will help your slower readers keep track of who’s who. There are different ways to do this. Maybe the smart member of your Italian crime family uses words like “matriculate” and “cajole.” Maybe one character turns every question into another question. Other ideas include: characters who speak entirely in haikus, characters who constantly refer to others as “deer fuckers,” or even characters with accents.

Step Four: Use dialogue to reveal backstory.

Let me just give you some examples of what I mean: “Cancer? Not again.” “That was before I stopped being racist.” and “Looks like herpes wasn’t the only thing you got from that trip to Atlantic City.” Now while these are all from a rejected Young Adult mystery I was working on a few years back, I’m still proud of the way they reveal a lot through a little. When you do this technique, think about past events in these characters lives: family deaths, bare knuckled brawls at a school reunions, or even a really bad sore throat they had during finals week. All of this deepens and humanizes your characters and draws the reader in.

Step Five: Read your dialogue aloud.

Like most of your writing, you won’t really know if it’s good unless you hear it spoken aloud. Again, if you have a friend, try reading it to them. If one of your characters is the voice of God, you can amplify the wiretapping hardware you were using to test it out on them. But again, the friendless still have options. You can blurt it out to people in elevators and see how they respond. Waitresses, baristas and topless dancers walking to their cars after work also make good targets.

Blood Shot Chapter 1 – Play Call

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“Meet me in Wuhan.”
Those were the words that lifted me out of my slumber that early Friday morning. I didn’t need to ask – those dulcet tones could only have come from the mouth of a certain European seductress:
the petite, ever sprightly Fran Blauchamp. I pressed the phone to myear and tried my best to respond to her primordial mating call.
“How you doin’?”
“Come to me.”
“I looked for you. For years. I thought you’d run away to Paris.”
“Oh no, I found a place much more romantic. For starters, it doesn’t smell like the piss of Japanese tourists here.”
Her rapier wit had not diminished with age.
“China,” I said. “Just like we always talked about. Where are you, exactly?”
“I’ll text you the address of my hotel. You’d love it here. It’s hot. The food’s great. Plus, you can do your banking on a Sunday! There’s a flight leaving tonight at seven. There’re two layovers, through Dallas and Pyongyang. Tickets start at $3500.”
Dallas? No, thank you, I thought to myself.
I sat up in bed and closed my eyes. Fran Blauchamp. I felt the imagery pulsing through my temples – the smooth, olive skin, that tropical, private island – the one visible from our Holiday Inn SuperSavers suite – that vagina, white sand beaches, shade from palm trees, two bell boys knife fighting along the docks, the ruffled bedsheets, a three-legged dog, Diet Sprite, more vagina, a bottle of
lube leaking onto a copy of Gideon’s Bible.
“You know I’d love to, Fran. But… it’s complicated.”
“Wuhan – do I really need to say any more to convince you?”
She was right. Memories started pouring in. Thirteen years ago we spent four unforgettable days together in Aruba. Two lonely stars crossing paths in the cosmos. I still thought of her fondly every time I stayed at, walked past, or saw commercials for, hotels.
“Just imagine,” she continued. “You and me. Wuhan, China. The Hong Kong of the East. The Pearl of the Clam. Sin City. The Big Hot and Steamy. Fuck Town. Gateway to the Ass.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like one hell of a tourism board.”
I took a sip of water to calm my nerves. “That covers the nights. But that still leaves our days free, though.”
“Well, we can do what everyone else here does.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, mostly wander around watching people fight with traffic cops.”
“That does sound tempting. But…”
I hesitated. I looked over at the picture on my nightstand. Guilt began to creep up my spine. Then I turned over the pamphlet to feed starving children I knew I was going to ignore. But the guilt
remained as my eyes reached back to the photo of my current girlfriend propped farther along the nightstand.
“But I just can’t. I’m seeing someone now.”
“You mean the 9/11 widow?”
I wasn’t sure how she could’ve known. The guilty tingling worsened. I drank some more water.
“She doesn’t have to know. Make something up. People come to Wuhan on business all the time.”
She was really reaching with that one – I could sense the desperation in her voice. Nobody would ever buy that. I tried to think of excuses. To buy time, I started hacking up phlegm into the
small trash can near my bed. I then decided to go on the offensive. “Is there something wrong, Fran?”
“Of course not. It’s just that, me staying in a hotel and all, I naturally thought of you.”
The tension throughout my body worsened. I started chugging any water I could find to calm myself down. “It’s just… I haven’t seen you in thirteen years, right?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“A lot can happen in fourteen years. People might switch jobs or move to a different house, crazy as that sounds.”
“I know.”
“I looked for you for a long time.”
“I know,” she repeated.
A great silence bore down upon us. I thought I’d hack up some more phlegm to break the icy chill, but my throat was all cleared out. Instead of just tiptoeing around it, I decided to take the ball straight
down the lane, see if I could draw a charge.
“Did I mention I’m dating a 9/11 widow?”
“I actually mentioned that.”
“Well, you know, it’s not like I can just…”
“Of course you can.”
The silence returned. I thought I’d let her bring the ball up the court this time. We played this game of cat-and-mouse for five minutes. She finally relented.
“Do you remember when we met?”
I did. We had met coming off some of the biggest disasters of our lives. Her parents had recently passed in a climbing accident in the Apennines; I had just missed two free throws that cost our team an eighth seed. I suppose when our eyes met across the room of that party we could sense it. Through the lines of tears streaming down her face, I could sense a great sadness.
Of course, I never put much credence in the idea that eyes are the window to the soul. For starters, most scientists will tell you souls can’t even be measured.
(Plus, all the time I’ve spent with hardened criminals, I’ve learned the eyes can be used just as easily to deceive. Like when you got a gun on a guy, and then he looks at something behind you and
yells, but when you turn around, there’s nothing really there and he was just pretending, and now he’s running away.)
Fran had a friend at Holiday Inn corporate who had gotten us a great package deal in Aruba. I ran off with her for four days. We made love. We talked. We shared long walks along the seaside. We got first aid certifications. We became proficient in Mandarin. We finished a game of Risk.
“Duh,” I said finally.
She laughed. A lot. But then her tone changed.
“The pain we shared, that will always be a part of us. The anguish that brought us to embrace, it will never leave us. The despair that you shot inside me, and sometimes in and around my mouth, will forever remain.”
“But we can move on. We can rebuild. It’s what makes us human.”
She paused, and then continued.
“For you, maybe. But I’ve been running a long time. I thought the pieces would be there for me to pick up, once I found the right place. But I don’t think I ever will.”
For some reason, it didn’t seem like she was flirting anymore.
“Forget I called.”
“I want to help you.”
“Don’t worry. This didn’t turn into that kind of call. I guess I just wanted to hear your voice.”
She hung up. It was now approaching midday. I put on my clothes and headed for work.